 Hello everyone and welcome to this one-on-one conversation with candidate Gordon Jameson. Gordon is a candidate for the Board of Assessors here in town. Gordon thanks for joining us, we want to get right into the conversation. First thing is that you and Mr. Tosjan, Errol Tosjan, both present yourselves clearly I think, as agents for change you both see that change is needed on the Board of Assessors and I'm wondering and I think perhaps our audience is as well, first off are you guys both looking for change and that's the end of the story or is there something that distinguishes what you're looking to do on the board versus what you understand is the case for Mr. Tosjan? Okay so yes I think change is in order. His background is understanding his tax counting that's different than mine. I'm more interested in understanding the process that drives our assessed values. If you look at the database which Mr. Terney the Director of Assessments kindly provided me and sorted by different parameters you find things that pop up pretty quickly that make you question why values are what they are in the process. There's a variety of categories that I mentioned in my profile, be it square footage or condition or grade and it's not really clear what an A versus a B versus the C means and I think in from my past discussions with the board during an abatement process when I first moved to town similar to Mr. the other candidate that there's somewhat you don't really know why those parameters are what they are and my sense is that these parameters have been around for eons and that the one thing might be that might be worth considering is just basically starting the thing over and coming up with parameters that more accurately reflect the properties and buildings and structures that we have in town. Last year at town meeting Mr. Terney noted that while for many years they had just really even though you get a single assessed value on your property plus structure that they had really broken out the property value because as you probably know from your value and the people at home do your land is worth more than your house in most cases and so they've implemented that and that's why some of the assessed values have changed a lot in some parts of town because a buildable lot is a buildable lot but I still see things like in my case I have filed for an abatement this year I did this that about 12 years ago when I first or 18 years ago when I first moved to town after a couple years I don't know why my house has such a high square foot value finished on the street it's higher than newly built properties right next to me and it's 50% more than that a property down the street that has the same square finished area those those are outliers that shouldn't exist and I'm just always confused by that's a simple process to be able to find those and correct those and that's statistical analysis and the things I've mentioned in your candidate profile I do remember you're saying that you among other things you think that things that abatements really shouldn't be necessary as often as they are because as you said things should be done correctly the first time how achievable is that is that is that you know really just something that just requires certain changes in and adjustments and then it can be done or is there something inherent in the process which would mean hey even the best of functioning assessment boards or or assessors are not going to be able to achieve a 100% record there. Well I agree it's not almost impossible to be perfect I wonder what are the parameters in the in the database is the value of the last sale some of them are zero when there's no entry some of them are one dollar because it's like a trust or something and some of them have a value now if that's used in part part of the value assessment process that provides a large variability on on the end product I think as I mentioned a second ago you know it doesn't take a lot of work to be able to scan the numbers and and and in the database based upon different parameters be it square footage or be the size of a property and at the end again you see places in town where the value of a piece of land is twice the value of another part of town now I can see when I first moved to town there might be some rationale for that in that the not all the elementary schools have been rebuilt then and but they all have now so the differential between different parts of town based upon that aspect I think has been greatly reduced so I wouldn't anticipate that the value to the properties given the sales in town should be more equitable across town and those are types of things that you can look at just by sorting and scanning the database the other thing that's not really in the database to my knowledge it may be embedded in some code is the neighborhoods and the question is whether whether those neighborhoods are still the neighborhoods they should that they have been for old again it's the ancestral aspect of the database it doesn't really change that much it's just the the inputs by someone who comes and looks at a property or the sales of properties the other candidate who who's in the race is an incumbent Mary and Leo O'Connor who's been on the board for 19 years now and she has said that she has not seen you at a board of assessors meeting I'm wondering have you in fact attended any board of assessors no I haven't attended those but I do attend the tax hearing every year and interact with the people there their meetings are not at a convenient time they're early afternoon midweek that's something else that I think should be considered is perhaps making those more on the 730 type thing maybe inconvenient for the director of assessments but Thursday nights are a late night so perhaps the meetings could be held in a more a time where more people could attend I think it's important for and not have it held I believe they're held within the the office of the director of assessments I think a meeting room would be a better forum for that in that the public might be more might feel more comfortable or more welcome in that kind of environment is that what you mean yes in in the words most all the other meetings you know the board of select men they have a hearing room the Fincom meets over in the public safety department the school committee has a meeting room over in the high school but all the other major things and this I think is one of the important ones is why it's a townwide elected office they have their meetings in a forum that's you know it only has to be upstairs in the the lion's hearing room which is available next to the to the board just down the hall and upstairs from the assessors that would be something useful to return to something that that we started the conversation with and that is this theme of change and necessary change within the the assessor's office how much of what you would like to do there would be technological change and if so what form would that take well I think part of its perspective you know as I mentioned in my profile discussion the forms are all you know download them and they're not PDF fillable that's just a simple thing that can help people file things if we need to hire another person there's a very capable man gentlemen who works with them who does their data assessment but if we need to hire another person to make sure we get things correct the first time then then that's then we should just add that to the budget and requested from the town and justify the other things that that I think are important are we haven't talked about that much yet but is if I may bring it up is new growth and the fiscal resource task group one of our members was looking at that in part from a property that he has and you know for those listening new growth is a very important part to our financial stability going forward and so when a neighbor when you or your neighbor adds to your house or doesn't it takes a cape and makes it a two-story house those that that additional assessed value it translates into additional tax dollars and those should be borne by the person who's done the structure improvement what a member of our committee determined and we're working with the town to try to understand this better is it seems like somewhere between the inspection process the you pull a permit you get inspections and when those are done to my understanding it goes over a transom and then it goes to the board of assessors we also then they'll also visit the property and then put the additional value on the card and not in all cases but we found some situations where it appears that that that new growth is not being recognized and that needs to change because when you if you were to James if you were to add on to your house I expect you to pay the taxes on that I certainly don't want to pay them and my neighbors don't either are your neighbors the other thing that I think is important is forums I think more public forums that inform the educate property owners about the process and and provide the rationale and how each of these these each of the data points that you will for each property impact their property value would be really helpful in words if someone can tell me okay that a bmc are the reasons that your house is assessed at such a high value compared to your neighbors then I'm fine but as I mentioned before when someone with the same square footage down the street has half the assessed value for the structure part not the land the land for this the land is I think an overall pretty good in an eight within a neighborhood in town that that's something that needs to be addressed and I think some fresh eyes whether or not either of us defeat Mary and Mary's I think one of the best members of the board I hope that the board will seek serve the see fit to listen to our ideas and consider implementing so when our lose I hope to be able to implement change so clearly I'll just tell you that what I took from what you were just saying is that one of the you know one of the main changes you'd like to see your improvements you'd like to see would be in the area of transparency I assume that that's transparency and internal data QA QC analysis so that and not and just I hate to say it like this but just doing the work of making sure that all new all changes in properties are have a visit by someone from the office to because those are the how the interim things are done they aren't done by Patriots properties which is the contractor that they use and while I'm on Patriot properties I don't know whether they look at other people to do this maybe they have maybe they're the only one really in town in the state that can do the work but it would seem worthwhile to at least consider and to present to the taxpayers in the town meeting why this choice is made each and every year I always you know though it's sort of like wouldn't call it a no bid contract but it's sort of one of those things where they've been doing it the whole time and they've been doing okay so we keep doing that and you know someone says that's a good way to not have things turn out so good sometimes there's a quote on that somewhere well you're saying fresh eyes might might be a might might change the perspective there we only have a minute left let me ask you are you in favor of considering a split rate that being you know easing the burden on homeowners by setting a higher rate tax rate for yeah part of the presentations that we've done over the year to the the to the board well it's a hearing is held by the select board and the Board of Assessors present the tax rate and over the years I've asked I and my committee members have inquired about that and every year the Board of Assessors says no no no we shouldn't do that they did one year quote that you know well if we could somehow tax the commercial apartments okay which are taxed in Massachusetts as residential property then they might be okay with that and so it turns out that by using residential exemption and the split rate together one can devise a situation where all of the resident resident owned properties are taxed at a slightly lower rate but commercial and commercial investment apartments are commas are a slightly higher rate and that would that would be it's you have to do two of them together it's sort of complex but it would work out the way where it would be able to slightly lower the rates for mostly the people with lower valued I am sorry I am being told repeatedly that we are out of time so and we'll see everybody at the ballot box on June 7th okay we'll have 10 things there I've been talking to Gordon Jameson a candidate for Board of Assessors here in town I'm James Milan thanks for joining us thanks much Jim