by Ed Naile
As we have seen in Orford, Deering, Lancaster, Unity, Winchester and now The Emerald Lake District of Hillsboro, firms like Nyberg and Avitar operate under their own rules although taxpayers are limited to strict procedures in making tax payments and appealing assessments.
CNHT is the only organization helping taxpayers and Selectmen understand this process as well as exposing the failure of The Board of Tax and Land Appeals to protect anyone other than the assessing firms.
Taxpayers should make sure their elected officials hold assessing firms to the terms of the standard contract language and state statutes involved.
See the two items — Administrative Rules 603.10 and Administrative Rule 603.15 — as to what should be in each contract and what type of assessing market data is required by the company to prove the product they have sold the municipality is valid.
As the Orford BTLA ORDER clearly points out, Avitar did NOT supply required market data to that town and in the upcoming Deering Revaluation BTLA ORDER will point out, Avitar once again did NOT comply with the law.
In Hillsboro’s Emerald Lake District Nyberg and Purvis used Avitar software to come up with small, unbuildable lot values so extraordinarily high the town is already changing them as we speak.
A copy of the statistical analysis used by Hillsboro to “correct” the land values in Emerald Lake has been requested and I was told by the town administrator that he will not supply it. A Right to Know case will be pending shortly.