This commentary is by Michael Long, a retired English teacher who has lived in Burlington since 1975.
Burlington’s property taxes are an inequitable shambles. Reappraisal is intended to tweak valuations to make them more equitable because the market evolves and some properties appreciate at a higher rate than others.
This should rarely result in extreme changes, but this reappraisal has made property taxes less equitable, not more. The changes in assessed values and taxes due have been radical.
My Burlington property taxes have increased by more than 40%, and this is after one successful appeal that reduced the increase in reappraised value from 113% to a mere 100%.
Redistributing the tax burden to residential properties and on to renters and homeowners is especially outrageous. So much for the lip service City Hall pays to affordable housing. The pandemic-induced distortion of property values should have been accounted for, not enshrined for the next decade or two.
More than twice as many of the commercial property appeals resulted in a change (74% vs. 33%) and only half as many resulted in an increase (3% vs. 6%). The largest commercial property appraised value reduction on appeal was 58% or $8.1 million. The largest residential property reduction on appeal was 16% or $476,000.
And beyond a hefty discount for commercial property owners is the more fundamental problem: a reappraisal that was done shoddily via driveby and flyover. Many of the values assigned are arbitrary and absurd — just obviously wrong.
For instance, in the previous appraisal, the average value of duplexes on Isham Street and the section of North Willard that parallels it varied by just 9%. Many of these properties share a property line and they are almost all rental units competing in the same market for tenants. They are also quite similar in average building size, lot size, and number of bedrooms.
Nevertheless, in the current reappraisal, the average appraised value difference between Isham and Willard duplexes has widened to 38%. That is, it has more than quadrupled.
It defies logic for properties so much the same to appreciate at such wildly different rates. The average increase on Isham is 60%, what I’ve been told is the city average. The average increase on Willard is 103%. And even the discrepancies are wildly different.
Living space in duplexes on Willard Street, according to the reappraisal, is 31% more valuable than living space on the west side of the same block, and the land on which these duplexes are sited is an astounding 64% more valuable. Given that Willard is a major transportation corridor and a state highway with high traffic volume and Isham is a one-block, lightly traveled city street, it would be plausible to imagine that lots and housing would be more valuable on Isham. Not according to the reappraisal.
These extreme differences suggest that the inequity reappraisal is intended to reduce has been exacerbated instead.
The inequity in values ascribed to residential lots is especially glaring. One 4,272-square-foot lot on Elm Terrace is appraised at $231,900. A contiguous lot on Adams Street is appraised at $143,200. This would suggest a smaller lot on Adams, but the Adams lot is 26,608 square feet — six times larger, yet valued at 62% less. The mayor’s Summit Street house in a prime low-density residential zone is sited on a lot valued at $15,500 less than this same Elm Terrace lot, even though the mayor’s yard is almost three times the size.
How can this be? It can’t possibly be, but the reappraisal says it’s so.
Such outlandish and insupportable differences in appraised value do not inspire confidence or represent equitable taxation. They represent a failed reappraisal that cannot be salvaged through the appeal process and should be thoroughly reviewed and corrected.
Every underappraised property results in excess taxes billed even to accurately appraised properties and foists truly exorbitant taxes on overappraised properties. The appeal process may improve accuracy for some overappraised properties, but it offers no mechanism for correcting underappraisals to achieve the level of accuracy equity requires.
I am pro-tax. I support taxes to fund the schools, parks, streets and services our community needs, enjoys and believes in. But there is no excuse for unfair taxation or for radical decreases for some property owners at the expense of radical increases for others.
Because reappraisal is required by law to be revenue-neutral, for every exorbitant increase, there is an equal and opposite savings being quietly stashed elsewhere in the system.
Transparency and clear explanations are in order. Taxpayers are required to present evidence in support of an appeal. The appraisers often just say no to property owner appeals without any explanation whatsoever.
Fair dealing requires something far different than Burlington taxpayers have been handed here.
