Allan Appel Photo
West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson compared the wholesale appraisals of artists’ work space to a form of real estate profiling. The Hill’s Andrea Jackson-Brooks said her church and others are already on the way to court to appeal revocation of some aspects of their tax-exempt status.
They and others grilled New Haven’s tax assessor at another in a series of passionate hearings of the once-sleepy Board of Aldermen Tax Abatement Committee Monday night.
Under fire from all sides, Assessor William O’Brien defended his approach and deflected criticisms of how his office has been doing business..
“If you don’t think we have a problem, then we have a problem,” said Jackson-Brooks.
It was one of many moments of intense and pointed exchange between the tax abatement committee members and the assessor Monday night. (Click here for an interview with O’Brien about controversial issues that arise in his office this time every year, as well as some of the specific concerns that have arisen at these hearings. Click here for an account of the committee’s stormy May meeting.)
Conspicuously missing from the grilling was Jacqueline Harris or any member of the Board of Assessment Appeals (BAA), whom the committee had invited. The BAA was in effect grilled in absentia. Committee members repeatedly interrogated O’Brien about the competence, staffing, and customer service style of both his office and the BAA.
Aldermen vowed to use their subpoena powers if necessary to bring the BAA members into the room in the future.
At the last month’s heated hearing, local artists complained of receiving across-the-board $5,000 assessments this year, in some cases a huge increase for property they said they never bought. Despite widespread criticism, O’Brien stuck to his guns and called the assessment “not capricious,” but based on database research and industry standards. (Watch a detailed response to that question here.)
Alderman Goldson said he was troubled that in the case of the artists and churches the judgment was O’Brien’s, with little evidence gleaned from actual physical inspection.
Goldson asked O’Brien if he lacks the staff to make enough in-person inspections. O’Brien answered that his office has one and a half personal property inspectors. But that was not the issue, he said. He said his office discovered that small businesses, not just artists, were paying taxes based on long out-of-date property assessments; and that he used a minimum threshold based on industry standards to estimate their holdings.
Artist Jan Cunningham testified that an inspector indeed appeared at her Erector Square studio early in the year and did inspect her bare bones space and equipment. The result was a leap from $1,307 for the 2008 grand list to an assessment of $8,804 for 2009, plus a penalty of $1,761 for late filing.
“There is not even a remote relation to reality in this assessment,” she said.
Before he was called up to answer questions, O’Brien huddled with Cunningham. He told the aldermen he’d meet with her to discuss the assessment. She still owed the penalty, he said.
“I don’t mind paying taxes. I just wish them to be fair,” she said.
Aldermen focused on both the fairness question, and on allegedly poor customer service style in the assessor’s office .
In her own case, Alderwoman Jackson-Brooks contested O’Brien’s inspection and subsequent revocation of St. Matthew Church’s exemption for an auto shop across the street.
St. Matthew’s is at 400 Dixwell Ave.
“It’s used for church parking,” Jackson-Brooks said. O’Brien revoked the exemption for that parcel, which had been in effect since 2005. The property, an old auto body shop, was not being used for a church purpose, he said. She accused him of not stopping or talking to church members or neighbors.
“We’re on our way to superior court,” she said.
Before the meeting concluded Goldson apologized to O’Brien for suggesting in his metaphor that O’Brien was a “profiler.” Still, both sides stuck to their guns.
Committee Chair Michael Smart said he was frustrated: “We can’t get acknowledgement from you that we need to do a better job?”
O’Brien replied that his office deals with 28,000 residential properties, 4,000 commercial ones, and 20,000 automobiles.
“If we had 50,000 complaints, he said, then, yes, there would be a problem,” he said.
Jackson-Brooks said she’s heard more complaints this year than she has ever heard before since she began her first stint as alderwoman in 1990. Smart said there have been hundreds. He added that 90 percent were as much about the disrespectful or unhelpful treatment taxpayers received by tax office staff as matters of assessment substance.
BAA, Where Are You?
Smart said he is determined to get the BAA commissioners in the room for the next hearing.
He said he was particularly troubled by the BAA’s letter to Bru Café’s Curtis Packer (pictured with O’Brien). The BAA had turned down Packer’s appeal of a $40,000 assessment of his property. Packer showed committee members the reason given in the letter he received: “Your organization has failed to file complete, timely Quadrennial Application for Exempt status as required by Connecticut General Statues 12 – 81;12 – 89;et al.”
“We’re not a non profit. We’re a business,” Packer said.
The BAA is described as the Tax Review Board on the city’s list of boards and commissions. Members Jacqueline Harris and Michael Newton’s terms run through February 2013. The third seat has been vacant since February 2009.
Before the BAA comes before the committee, Goldson said, he first wants some questions answered: Why was one of the three commission seats not filled? How long had it been empty? Why does the board’s chair, Michael Newton have an unlisted phone number? Do we as aldermen have the power to remove a commissioner? Do members or the BAA staff have sufficient real estate experience to make judgments?
Goldson is a member of the aldermanic committee that vets commission members, such as those on the BAA. He acknowledged that he would have to do a better job on that front.
Smart called O’Brien’s performance “a slap in the face” to taxpayers and vowed to get to the bottom of what he termed an ongoing systemic problem, whether O’Brien acknowledges it or not.
Mr. O'Brien's problem is that he thinks he serves the mayor who has given him a mandate to scour the books for more money to support gross, excessive, repetitive spending. He forgets he serves the public. His job in reality is pretty simple - fair assessments and no b.s. when it comes to those asseessments, no excessive appeals, no unnecessary time and expense for taxpayers, and when questioned by our representatives, no evasive answers. When you have to say you are not being evasive, you're being evasive.
That said, using "industry standards" as some sort of benchmark for businesses is a lazy, unprofessional method for higher assessments. If this is the new standard, some undisclosed benchmark, then city government has hit a new low for lack of transparency and accountability. This problem like so many others, can be laid directly at the feet of the mayor, who has never learned let alone exhibited credible and effective management skills. He is skillful at finding dollars so that state taxpayers foot half the cost of operating the city at bloated spending levels, but as that well dries up, he's left with the lowest common denominator. Abusive assessments, ridicule for taxpayers, and tax increases as far as the eye can see. We need change.