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Advisory Committee
April 7, 2009 Meeting Minutes
Present: Committee Members Lauter, Seelen, Asher, Dwyer, Eldredge, Ellison, Farrell, Friedman, Innis, Johnson, MacCune, Manning, Marwill, O’Meara
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Chair Irma Lauter called the Advisory Committee meeting to order at 7:06 PM.
- Approval of minutes for March 24, 2009
The Committee reviewed and approved minutes from the meeting on March 24th 2009.
- Lane Partridge – Assessment Process in Hingham
Director of Assessing Lane Partridge presented an overview of the assessment process and the role the assessors play in the ultimate setting of the Town’s property tax rate for a given fiscal year.
Presentation highlights included that:
- The Board of Assessors establishes the Total Value of the Town’s residential, commercial, industrial, and personal property for a given fiscal year using sales and other data from the preceding calendar year
- The resultant Total Value ($5,653,800,600 for FY09) is then divided into the fiscal year’s Total Tax Levy ($55,124,556 for FY09) and the quotient is multiplied by 1000 to derive the fiscal year’s Tax Rate ($9.75 for FY09)
- Any given fiscal year’s Tax Rate first affects property tax bills in the first quarter of the next calendar year—the third quarter of the given fiscal year
- Each of the Town’s residential properties is classified into one of 8 ‘neighborhoods,’ which are more price- or style-oriented than geographical
- Only actual property sales may trigger an assessment adjustment to the properties in any given neighborhood class
- An assessment adjustment is only effected when the median of assessments divided by the associated sales prices of sold units in the neighborhood falls outside a 90%-110% window
- The New Growth component of the Total Tax Levy represents the dollar value of what was completed during the previous calendar year (2008 for FY09)
- Development during the current calendar year does not affect New Growth
- The State Department of Revenue’s next triennial recertification audit will occur during FY11
- Warrant Article Discussion and Follow-up
The Chair informed the Committee that the 2009 Annual Town Meeting Warrant will contain 49 articles as enumerated in the Warrant Article Status handout.
Committee members should be prepared to speak at Annual Town Meeting if questions arise regarding either budgets or Warrant articles for which they have responsibility.
- General Business
- The Committee reviewed and approved a Reserve Fund Transfer Request from Library Director Dennis Corcoran in the amount of $5,000 to install an elevator battery back-up to provide automatic door opening of the Library elevator during loss of electrical power
- The Chair’s request for feedback regarding the Economic Summit of April 5th segued into a broader discussion of what role the Committee should play in addressing projected out-year budget shortfalls, known major financial obligations, and persistent underfunding of capital outlay
- Finance Director Ted Alexiades made the point that greater attention must be paid to the Total Cost of Ownership associated with well-meaning gifts and donations
- As a case in point, continued acquisition of school smartboards would result in a $60,000/year addition to the school-technology maintenance cost
- There was general agreement that the Committee should formalize in some fashion its concerns and its intention to enforce or recommend new policies and guidelines regarding the need for the Town to ‘live within its means’
- Dennis Friedman provided an update on new elementary school construction and Plymouth River/Foster refurbishment. Both projects are likely not to fully use their contingency funding.
- Dennis has recommended to the School Building Committee that any unused contingency funds not be expended, and that, instead, the option of receiving Town Meeting approval for their expenditure on future school-related capital items be considered
- The Chair requested that any questions regarding Representative Garrett Bradley’s remark at the Economic Summit with respect to the possibility of a State ‘take-back’ of the SBA $10M+ for the new elementary school—in the event of an override vote defeat—should be sent to her. She will circulate responses received to the Committee.
- The next scheduled meeting is Tuesday, April 21st.
- Adjourn
The meeting was adjourned at 9:35 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Jonathan R. Asher, Secretary