 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this one-on-one conversation with candidate Mary Wynstailio Connor, who wants to return to the board of assessors. We want to get right into the conversation. 15 minutes is going to go by fast. So Mary, first of all, if I can ask you about the fact that in the debate that was recently held, one of the points that was brought up and that you dismissed pretty quickly was the idea that there may be time for a change on the board. And one of the other candidates is from a different generation, let's say, than you and I. And I was talking about bringing kind of new blood and a new perspective. And you were saying that really is not relevant to the board's work. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Certainly. Thank you, James. The board of assessors is not a political board. It is a board that pretty much is a policy board. And the candidate who was suggesting new blood was suggesting it in the nature of getting on the board to essentially help young families in town. That's not what the board of assessors does. The board of assessors basically sits as a jury or a judge and looks at the assessments that the director of assessments for the Department of Assessing puts on property. And when people file for abatements, they look at the information that the taxpayer brings and makes an unbiased decision. So that's one of the reasons. And the other reason is to quote Mr. Jameson of during the debate, he mentioned that I was the best assessor on the board of assessors. So I would suggest that I should be returned to the position based on one of my own opposition suggesting the good job that I've done. Okay. I did wanna just probe a little bit further. Yes, of course, you're right that it's not a political organization. It's also not a representative organization. It's not meant to represent voters or any particular constituency or demographic. However, would you not agree that different people at different stages of their life are bringing different perspectives and different sets of values and concerns to the board? And wouldn't it be a good idea to have somebody who's in the position of the folks that are often on the other side of transactions with the board, somebody with relevant experience from that perspective to bring to the board? Well, I honestly, James, have to take issue with the fact that you're bringing a perspective for a certain age group to the board, you're not. You're applying standards and statutes and laws. And as an attorney, they need to be applied blindly without regard to an age group, except if it's a senior exemption or that type of thing. So bringing a perspective is not relevant per se to the board. You have to be in a position to understand the Department of Revenue standards, the mass appraisal standards and the statutory obligations. So it's not a perspective, it's understanding the law and applying it accordingly. Okay. And one of the things that did come up again in the debate, both Mr. Toschan and Mr. Jamison cited instances of potential inequity, but mostly opacity and kind of difficulty understanding the process when it comes to assessments and abatements and dealing with the board in general. You have been a member of the board for a good long time now. Are there improvements that can and should be made in order to increase transparency and just make the process a little bit easier to navigate? Oh, we have on our website the process and Mr. Jamison or Mr. Taschan had said that there was not a PDF of the abatement application and I actually after the debate checked with the assess director of assessment and he tells me there is a PDF form on there. So it is all explained and the board of assessors office helps taxpayers many times when they come to the counter and helps them with the process. So there's lots of things online that can help taxpayers. And the other thing that the board of assessors does is that when we review an abatement application and if we deny it or we allow it in part we offer the taxpayer the ability to have a hearing. We're not required to do that and we bring them in and we let them present their case again and we tell them our position and then we make a decision. We revisit it. So would I be correct then in assuming from what you're saying that you are quite comfortable with the way that the board does its business right now and that you don't think that either concerns or frustrations that Mr. Taschan, Mr. Jamison perhaps others would have brought up that those aren't being already kind of addressed effectively. I think that they are being addressed effectively. We're always open to listening to taxpayers and addressing other matters. But I think that that was just campaign rhetoric from the two of them to be honest with you. Okay. I mean, one of the, I would like to point out that we've, I've not seen either of them and Mr. Jamison has been in town a very long time. Mr. Taschan has only lived in town since August. They never once come to one of our public hearings to express any concerns. So I think it's just political rhetoric. Yeah, we'll actually be following up on that with them in these conversations as well. So another thing I was wondering about is in the debate you at one point as part of an answer we're talking about how much work is involved for the assessors just in doing the work that you do and that there are only four people in the assessor's office to do that work. Is that, is that adequate? Is the work commensurate with the number of people to do it? Is that a problem at all? I don't see it as a problem. There are 15,000 parcels in the town of Arlington. That includes personal property, commercial, industrial and residential. And the director of assessment's office, that four people are ultimately responsible for the assessments. The board of assessors is the group that hears the applications for abatements and deferrals and exemptions and things. I think it's sufficient, frankly. I think the department has run very well and is cost-effective for the town. Do you have an opinion on the adoption or not of split rates? That is potentially using the burden on homeowners by setting a higher rate for commercial and industrial property? The board of assessors is asked to weigh in when we go to the classification hearing in December as to the impact of a split rate, you know, classification. And we do a chart every year, the director of assessments does a chart which shows the impact that it would have on commercial and industrial property versus the residential taxpayer. We can go to 150% of assessment on commercial and industrial property. The net effect, and it's a board of a select board decision. It is not the decision of the board of assessors. We do not make that type of policy, but based on the information that we have provided to the select board, it would cause a tremendous financial burden on commercial taxpayers because most leases are pass-throughs. They're what's called triple net. So the commercial tenants pay their rent and then they pay their share of all the other expenses. By way of example, for every $500,000 in taxable and assessed value, a residential homeowner, if there was a split rate, the way the property is divided up now would save about $150, whereas the commercial taxpayer would pay an additional $2,700 on 500,000. I think that if you look around town, it's not that we have the strongest commercial tax base as it is. There are a lot of empty storefronts. I think people are concerned the way the town looks, and I think it would only work to further, negatively impact the commercial tax base. That's my personal opinion. Right, you're saying that the way that this functions, it would be a disincentive, basically, to attract in terms of trying to attract more money. Absolutely, and you can see if you look at the heights and you'll recall we had a national Panera bread that ended up leaving. So it's not just, it would have a devastating effect, I think, on the small mom and pops in town, but it's also had an effect on other, it would also have a negative effect on even the bigger companies. So I'm sorry, just to clarify, are you saying that the fact that Panera did move some years back from the heights was connected? No, no, no, no. But it was, what I've heard it was connected because of rising rent costs. That's what people from Panera have told customers. Okay, with about four or five minutes left for us to chat today, I was wondering about one other thing and then I wanted to invite you to add in anything that we wouldn't have covered. And that is, what do you see as the role of technology in helping you do the work that you do and helping the assessors do the work that needs to be done? Is there, are there additional technical tools that could be helpful in doing the assessments? Sure, the mass appraisal process that's used for assessing properties it has IT components to it because the statistical modeling and testing that's used, all of the property record cards for the entire town of Arlington, you can go on the assessors database and get your property record card. As I told you that you can complete your abatement application in a PDF online. So there are a number of technological things that the assessors office uses already. And you know, I guess I did have one last thing. In talking about the split rate earlier you were mentioning and sounds compelling to me that the discrepancy in those rates would be a problem in terms of attracting new businesses to town. Is there a role for the assessors in attracting new business to town? That's not the role of the board of assessors. That's more chamber of commerce, select board. You know, if Arlington had a bigger commercial industrial tax base a split rate could be workable but it's not Boston, it's not Somerville, it's not Waltham or Watertown. But I did want to mention James that both of the candidates running against me had talked about a residential exemption. And you know, I wanted to speak a little bit about a residential exemption. And there were only I believe 13 communities out of 351 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that have residential exemptions. And the cities that have residential exemptions have a very large absentee landlord base and a lot of apartment buildings. So it makes sense. Arlington is not in that situation. And though a residential exemption is something that would be decided by the select board, based on the split now it would unduly burden people, I would say seniors who tend to be in larger homes with a much higher tax rate. One of the candidates said that he wants to help the young families in town. I would suggest to you that any young family that is buying in town is buying at a certain price range and would expect to pay the taxes on the property. I can't imagine that any young family would expect seniors to subsidize the tax rate for them. It also has Lexington looked at this issue in detail and decided not to go with the residential exemption. You know, it would result in frankly, it would have some pretty devastating effects. I think that a lot of people, we had a lot of two families become condominiums. I think you'd see people with two families because they would be over the break point for the residential exemption of about 830,000, converting them, you're taking housing stock off the market, apartments would likely go condo. So people that cannot afford to buy in Arlington, but that can afford to rent in Arlington would be disadvantaged in my opinion. All right, well, we have less than a minute left. I don't know if you wanted to add in anything. If not, we can close the conversation here. Up to you. I just wanna thank you very much for this opportunity and I hope everyone stays well under the circumstances and what we're all going through. Thank you so much. All right, well, we appreciate you're taking the time to talk to us today and best of luck to you and the other candidates on June 6th. Thank you. I've been talking to Mary, Winston, Leo, Connor, the incumbent and in the race of course for a return to the board of assessors. Thank you for joining us. I'm James Milan. This is ACMI. We'll see you next time.