Property revaluation underway in Naugatuck  

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NAUGATUCK — The borough is in the midst of a revaluation.

In August, the borough began a revaluation of all of commercial and residential properties.

The state requires towns to perform a full physical revaluation every 10 years to assess the current market values of properties for tax purposes, and a smaller revaluation every five years.

This year a full physical revaluation is being done with inspectors coming onto properties, Assessor Carol Ann Tyler said.

The borough hired the Fairfield-based appraisal company Municipal Valuation Services, LLC to conduct the revaluation for $346,900, Tyler said.

Tyler said the inspectors will likely be done by summertime. Once they are finished, Municipal Valuation Services will begin hearings for any residents who want to contest their revaluation.

Tyler said representatives from the company will have their badge and a badge from the borough when they come to assess properties. If any residents are unsure as to the authenticity of the workers, they can call the assessor’s office at 203-720-7016 or the Naugatuck Police Department at 203-729-5222. Both the assessor’s office and police department will have the schedule of where inspectors are supposed to be and their vehicle information, Tyler said.

The borough’s grand list decreased almost $469 million due to a drop in property values after the last revaluation in 2011. The borough’s mill rate was adjusted up 11.25 mills just to make up for the loss in the grand list.

The decrease was due in large part to the fact it was the first revaluation since the economic troubles of 2008.

Tyler and Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess said the preliminary feedback they are getting from inspectors is that property values are increasing compared to the last revaluation.

Tyler said whether the values increase or decrease doesn’t depend on how the housing market is doing now compared to last year, but rather on how the housing market is doing now compared to how it was doing during the last revaluation.

“We are looking at increases now. Things are actually starting to come around,” Tyler said.

If the property values increase that does not necessarily mean property taxes will go up as well, Tyler said. An increase in property values would mean an increase in the grand list, which would likely be offset by a decrease in the mill rate.

Tyler and Hess said they are determined to make this revaluation as accurate as possible.

“We are making a concerted effort in this year’s revaluation to make sure that we do not miss any taxable property and that we do a much better job than has been done in the past to have an accurate grand list,” Hess said.

The revaluation was originally supposed to begin in 2016. However, the borough received a one-year extension from the state. Tyler was hired in January 2016, and she and the other employees in her office were getting acquainted with new software the borough installed.

“We got through a lot of things we needed to clear up,” Tyler said. “We had a drawer of building permits from previous years that had not been completed. There were some properties that had duplicate street numbers.”

The borough also hired Pictometry, a Henrietta, N.Y.-based aerial measurement company, to assist with the revaluation.

The company uses an aircraft with five cameras mounted on its underside to collect high-resolution images of a municipality.

Once the borough has the images, it can not only see what each property looks like, but it has software that allows it to see if a property has changed since 2007, when the state had Pictometry photograph every municipality, Hess said.

“We believe this technology will help us increase the grand list, but more importantly, make it more accurate so that everyone is paying their fair share of taxes based on their actual usage,” Hess said.

1 COMMENT

  1. A lot of words. Instead of raising the Mill Rate, Hess is sicking this firm on the home owners to raise their already depressed property values, thus increasing your taxes . Simple 42nd street shell game.