Shelton Budget, Mill Rate, ReValuation.

It is always difficult to get accurate and unfiltered information regarding taxes, proposed budgets and mill rates, especially when it is a year of re-valuation. Recent newspaper articles variously report tax increases in excess of 10%, or maybe it is a budget increase of 10%, or maybe the number is 5% but would have only been 1% if we didn't have a revaluation. All of it is confusing giberish and shows a lack of depth in reporting the subject.

For example: NHRegister 2007/Feb/22 -SHELTON — Mayor Mark Lauretti unveiled a $102.86 million budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year Wednesday night. The plan represents a 10.9 percent increase in spending from this year’s $97.7 million budget. If approved, the plan would set the tax rate at 17.59 mills, a decrease of 6.72 mills from the current 24.31 tax rate, because of revaluation.

Simple math reveals $102.86 million is an increase over $97.7 million by $5.16 million, or 5.28%, not 10.9% as reported in the above article. This confusion is not a fault of reporters (excluding the NHReg math grade of "F") , but more often the unfortunate result from publishers that could and should allow more pages rather than simply a few paragraphs for a better telling of the story.

I have served on the Conservation Commission (CC) since 1998, and I have been Chairman of that advisory agency for a few years. I also served on the Plan Update Advisory Committee (PUAC) for several years, helping to prepare the Plan of Conservation and Development (PoCD). The PoCD is the "blueprint" document meant to guide basic decisions for a municipality, a document required by state law to be updated every 10 years. Our PUAC was organized by the Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC) to do the preparation of the plan on their behalf. The PUAC interviewed every department head, held public hearings, conducted public workshops, provided drafts of the plan once it neared final formulation, and finally recomended to the PZC a draft plan. The PZC held public hearings on it, forwarded it to the Board of Alderman (BoA) which held its own public hearings on it. Finally it was adopted in 2006 after over 2 years of my involvement with it. I feel a gratitude to have learned and experienced all I did in the PoCD coming together. It is from all this experience which I draw my comments regarding the proposed budget, tax rate, and re-valuation.

I recently received my re-valuation notice from the City Assessor office as did everyone in town. I've owned the same home for 15 years so I've seen these notices before as the State now requires revaluations to occur every 5 years. The assessment value is supposed to be 70% of it's market value. A quick calculation of what the Assessor office believed I could receive for my property was, I felt accurate.

The BoA recently received the Mayor's proposed Budget for fiscal year 2007/2008 (the City's fiscal year ends on June 30th). The Board of Apportionment & Taxation (BoAT) will review the proposition, and then forward a recomended budget to the BoA for them to adopt. Given that our Mayor has been doing a very decent job which has kept him in office for nearly 2 decades, the final outcome is likely to be close to that currently being proposed. I did some quick calculations: New Assessed Value multiplied by the Proposed Mill Rate = Likely Tax for Jun2007 and Dec2007 payments. My new 07/08 taxes were rising quite a bit (22.09%) so I thought it worth evaluating everyone on my street for comparison.

The average rise in property tax on my street will be 25.11%

The question immediately pops up: If the budget for expenses is only going up 5.28%, why are my taxes going up in excess of 20%?

The reality is that the BoA, led by our Mayor, indeed do a very good job of controlling expenses, but that is all they control. The revenue side of the equation is simple math of the Grand List multiplied by the Mill Rate. Thus the BoA is forced or backed into setting a Mill Rate by dividing the Grand List by the budget. While the Assessors office puts a value on the Grand List, it is the actions of the PZC over years which create the Grand List, and that is where my concern resides.

The Grand List is all the real property (land and buildings) and personal property (vehicles, office equipement, fixtures, etc) in the City. The real property portion has increased due to favorable market forces, just as it has been shown on my street and likely similarly with other land and building values in the community. The personal property value from companies equipment depreciates quickly however. For example - an office full of Windows98 computers doesn't have the same value as an office full of WindowsXP computers. Another debilitating example is when a building is vacant (for example several years of Index Corporation on Bpt Ave), and is not contributing the way it should be to the grand list as when it is fully occupied. All these assessed property values are accumulated into a residential total and a commercial total.

The ratio of residential vs. commercial in the Grand List is a factor relationship to keep an eye on. Unless attention is given to growing the commercial portion of the Grand List to balance a growth in the residential portion of the Grand List, the ratio will drop and a greater burden will be placed upon the residential portion. That shift is what has been happening in Shelton over the past years, yet you normally only feel the real impact after a revaluation period.

In order to grow the commercial side of the Grand List you need to have either raw land to develop, or revitalization of underutilized property. Shelton is in fact doing the latter very well, notably in the downtown Canal Street area through the leadership of the Shelton Economic Development Corporation (SEDC) and the Mayor's office. However, Shelton does have a limited amount of raw land zoned for commercial, and should not squander that resource with underutilizing development.

It may be nice to have a Bridgeport Avenue strip of eateries that could cover every unique day of the month, but when the traffic they generate and the underutilized land they have sucked up cause a lack of options for future decision makers - these concerns will not just come back to haunt us, it will be a nightmare.

The 2006/2007 tax rate was 24.31 per $1000 in assessed value.
The 2007/2008 proposed tax rate is 17.59 per $1000 in value.

I was surprised that several Aldermen didn't even know what their tax increase was going to be under the proposed budget and tax rate given their new assessments. I thus have created a spreadsheet that shows every Alderman and Zoning Commissioner's residence for assessed value and the possible tax increase (both dollar and percentage) under the proposed budget/millrate. (Note to reporters: this is all publicly available data, and took all of 20minutes to gather and prepare)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pP-srvG8cXQFGrM5ukSO1UA&gid=0

Some have said to me that we have had great "high-end" residential development occur in recent years, which results in less concern over the ability of the City to provide the services residential development demands. I disagree, and thus I have also done an analysis of a typical residential (R1) development that has been in place for a few years (apx5) and what the NET impact is of taxes generated (revenue) vs services provided by Shelton (and only the educational component of expenses at that). The result demonstrates that you need commercial development and its tax base to balance the demands on services created from residential development which can not possibly pay its own way. That arguement seems to have been lost on many of the decision makers, so I provide the hard data here for all to deal with.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pP-srvG8cXQFGrM5ukSO1UA&gid=1

If you are a resident reading this, I hope you hold both your Board of Alderman and Planning & Zoning Commission accountable for the decisions they make, as they impact you aggresively year after year.

If you are an Alderman reading this, realize that you only truly control the expenditure side of the fiscal process. The revenue side is based on a Grand List over which you have little control.

If you are a P&Z Commissioner reading this, I hope you realize the lasting impact of your decisions, and are more careful when evaluating the umpteenth restaurant being proposed on our Bridgeport Avenue "strip".

I have reserved this blog for publicly commenting to, or on, the media for conservation related items. Readers may be questioning how this entry relates to the theme. If the City is to preserve/conserve the parcels of land where it desires and needs to do so, it will require substantial funds to be accomplished. Simple laws of supply and demand dictate that a dwindling amount of raw land for development in the community will increase it's value. Despite the past success and likely continuation of partnering with other agencies regarding cost sharing or grants, the burden of acquisition is largely on the shoulders of the City, which are after all the most direct beneficiaries of such accomplishments. It is important to impress upon decision makers that our ability to make such maneuvers in the future is not squandered.