This has been quite a busy year for the Town of Salisbury. Spring 2007 the Board of Listers began their yearly site visits for building permit work. We visit all property with an open building permit and any that have been under restoration, renovation or subdivision. These site visits are critical to helping the town maintain its COD (coefficient of dispersion), a measure of equity across taxpayers’ assessments; and our CLA (common level of appraisal), a measure of where our values are in comparison to the current market sales
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When a town reaches a CLA of 80% or less, and or a COD of 20% or more, the state mandates the town to reappraise. This is what spurred the 2005 reappraisal of the town. In 2004 pre-reappraisal our CLA was 71.88% and our COD was 20.57%. Our 2007 CLA is 99.64% and our COD is 12.85%. Every properly appraised new property or increase in value to existing properties helps us keep healthy percentages. Towns that reappraised at the same time as Salisbury, like Goshen and Castleton, have not been so fortunate. They are being forced to reappraise again. Every small increase counts. We understand how painful any increase can be to property owners and hope we have been courteous and helpful.
We would like to thank all of you who allowed us into your homes to do these appraisals. Your cooperation and patience is greatly appreciated.
This spring we assessed several new properties and reviewed many permits. Our Grand List total would have gone up significantly and reduced the overall tax burden. Unfortunately the State of Vermont, who sets the tax rate for the utility companies, lowered the CVPS rate by 1.5 million in the Town of Salisbury. We contacted several people in the Vermont tax department for an explanation and an appeal. We were told this decrease was due to storm damage and we had no appeal. Thus rather than a great increase to our Grand List we ended up approximately 100,000 short of 2006. Had we not done all those small permit site visits and made so many major and minor increases to properties all across town our Grand List would have been 1.5 million short of 2006. None of us need that kind of hit at tax time.
Spring is just around the corner. We will be contacting all property owners with open building permits and properties with incomplete work from previous years in March to set up site visits. We look forward to meeting those of you we have not yet met and catching up with those we have. Your cooperation is invaluable.
Sincerely,
The Salisbury Board of Listers
Kim Cunningham , Pedie O’Brien , Ann Dittami
Posted: March 17th, 2008 under Board of Listers.
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