The Board of Assessors voted Sept. 20 to hire Todd Laramie of Marblehead to lead the town’s Assessor’s Office, with the hope of getting the department back on track after major property validation errors last year skewed tax bills and angered residents. The errors also led to the firing of the then-assessor.
Laramie is the current director of assessing in Hamilton-Wenham. In his interview on Wednesday, he said he could start in Marblehead in about a month.
CURRENT PHOTO / LEIGH BLANDER
Before Hamilton-Wenham, Laramie worked as chief assessor in Amesbury from 2020-2022 and as a residential inspector analyst in Lexington from 2018-2020. He also served as a data collector in the Amesbury assessor’s office from 2017-2018.
He said he’s looking to work a little closer to home.
“This is my town,” Laramie said. “If I can step in and help, I certainly want to do that.”
Many Marblehead homes were “critically over-assessed” last year, according to the board, leading to 344 abatements (refunds) totalling $541,000. Other residents with higher-than-usual assessments said they didn’t know to file for an abatement by the Feb. 1 deadline.
“What happened here … that shouldn’t happen,” Laramie said. “I know that.”
Resident wants a refund
At Friday’s meeting, resident George Pararas-Carayannis asked the Board of Assessors to consider refunding people who were overcharged but didn’t know to apply for an abatement by the Feb. 1 deadline.
“This is a special circumstance,” Pararas-Carayannis said. “There were errors made in the process. I think it would be appropriate to refund people. A lot of people were negatively impacted financially”
Board Chair John Kelley said the “onus is on the taxpayer,” to file for an abatement on time.
Pararas-Carayannis believes he was overcharged by about $3,000 in property taxes.
Board member Jonathan Lederman said he would like to be able to refund residents, but that state law prevents it.
The board has committed to more outreach and education about the valuation and abatement process.
‘Bite the bullet’
Referencing last year’s errors and the public’s frustration, board members asked Laramie at his interview about his customer service skills.
“You’ve got to bite the bullet and suck it up,” he said about dealing with residents complaining about their tax bills.
He referenced an incident in his office in Hamilton-Wenham when he stepped in to support a female clerk dealing with an angry customer.
“I told him, ‘Would you want someone to talk to your wife like that if she worked for the town?’” Laramie said. “You’re dealing with personalities. People get ticked off. It is what it is.”
New growth
Lederman asked Laramie how he would go about capturing new growth (home additions, for example) that may have been missed.
“It’s very important to go out and look at stuff,” Laramie answered, saying he spends a lot of time visiting properties in Hamilton-Wenham.
“We’d be hitting the streets pretty hard,” he said about Marblehead. “You can look at 10 properties a day.”
The board hired Patriot Properties to do an early mini-assessment of the town, so it can send preliminary valuations to residents in late fall, before sending bills. Chair John Kelley said that will give residents a chance to review their assessments and report anything that seems off.
Tax bills go out in late December.
A taxpayer’s questions
In a letter to the editor in last week’s Current, Franklin Street resident Vicky Staveacre posed three questions to the Board of Assessors. Her property valuation increased by more than $335,000 last year.
We put Staveacre’s questions to Chair John Kelley, and the following are his responses:
Question: First, why on earth was the board unaware of the problem until the complaints started coming in?
Response: The board was unaware of the issue because the assistant assessor sent to the DOR (Department of Revenue) a statistical analysis showing that her methodology for valuing the approximately 200 arms-length sales fell within the DOR guidelines. The methodology was then applied to all parcels in Marblehead. The errors in her methodology therefore did not become apparent until all bills were sent.
Question: What is the actual size of the problem? How many households were erroneously overcharged and how many undercharged? What unilateral adjustments would the board have undertaken if it could?
Response: Two neighborhoods were quite over assessed — Naugus Head and the inner Neck. There were neighborhoods that were under-assessed, most notably the area bordered by Rainbow Road, Lafayette Street and the Lead Mills.
Having said that, I must add that many neighborhoods were assessed accurately. I can safely say that if the problem had been known the board would have discarded the values and started the project over.
Question: Given that over 80% of those who requested abatements received them, we have to assume that over 80% of the assessments were wrong. For those of us who stupidly failed to file an abatement by the end of January 2024, what can we do to ascertain whether our assessment was erroneous and what can we do to rectify it and gain restitution?
Response: It is not correct to state that since 80% of abatement applications were granted 80% of the town-wide values were incorrect. The overwhelming majority of abatement applications came from the over-assessed neighborhoods. According to state statute an abatement application must have been filed by February 1, 2024. There is no procedure in place to abate any property for which an application was not timely filed.
