To the editor:
Like Pontius Pilate washing his hands, John Kelley would seek to escape any blame for the arbitrary, capricious and disproportionate reassessment of home property values in Marblehead. Kelley’s claim in his March 11 letter “Board of Assessors shares every taxpayer’s concerns” that “the board and the full-time assessor are two different bodies” is patently false, as though he would have the reader believe he was somehow shocked that she did what she did. The assertion that he “drove around the neighborhoods” after the fact to further distance himself from her decision is laughable.
The fact of the matter is that the board and the assessor acted as one to hide what was known to them to be coming and did nothing to explain or justify any of it. There is and remains no transparency from those in the know. If ever there was a situation worth a court’s opinion, this is it.
Finally, the appointment of a Board of Assessors to people without commercial conflicts would be a welcome change indeed.
John Hassett
Bay View Drive
