Council Questions Accuracy of South Windsor Revaluation

The Town Council took another look at revaluation Monday night, considering how the required property value reassessment had affected residents and what might be done about it.

Several councilors called into question the accuracy of the new assessments and some said that in light of the revaluation, taxes should have been kept lower.

“I don’t know the methodology used by the assessor or the company we hired to do the revaluation but it’s something that should be reviewed by the council - what areas of town were improperly evaluated and make a determination if there is a path for the Town Council to correct some of the problems…” said councilor Kevin McCann.

Dr. Saud Anwar said he agreed that mistakes may have been made.

“There clearly are areas where an entire neighborhood feels it was wrongly evaluated,” he said.

And while the council had no control over the revaluation itself, Anwar said it should have done a better job of shielding residents from its effects by cutting the tax increase.

He cited data Democratic council candidate Steven Wagner presented in public comment and apologized to the public for the tax increase, saying that he didn’t do enough to stop it.

Councilors Cary Prague and Deputy Mayor Gary Bazzano were pragmatic.

“It is unfortunate but he lowest price houses in town kept their values because there is a floor with land costs and what it takes to build a house. …If you have a lower priced house you got screwed…” Prague said.

Bazzano said the way the council was using the terms ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ was flawed because lower taxes also means that a home has lost value and it is better to maintain the value of what is usually a person’s largest asset.

Mayor Tom Delnicki, who personally had a problem with his home’s revaluation, agreed that some blame should fall with the revaluation company.

“I think the one thing we should have learned from this is that we need to do a better job learning the methodology the companies used… maybe we needed to go with a better quality revaluation company,” Delnicki said.

But though the town went with the low bidder, Town Manager Matthew Galligan said it also went with the best company.

“We went out to bid and hired Vision. They’re the number one company that does this kind of work,” he said. Of the two other companies that put in a bid, one was new and the other had performed poorly for the town on the last revaluation.

Keith Yagaloff said the bottom line is that the town needs to focus on economic development instead of looking at large spending projects.

“Economic development has stalled for several years now… we cannot improve our situation without growing our grand list.”