Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Good afternoon. It is Wednesday. It's the Ways and Means Committee. It's February 18, 01:15. We are continuing our work on

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: our regional assessment district language.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Herbie Keaton is here, but we have has not made substantive changes since last week. Is that true? Something substantive? Okay. A few adjustments for the language. We can look at the language as a refresher for folks right now before we hear from our witnesses, or we can not do that. Do people have a preference? Have people caught themselves up and remember what the language is? Is a quick walk through helpful? Yep. Okay.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: Kirby King legislative council. I believe what was distributed at the end of last week was draft 2.3. It's 2.5. I have highlighted any changes from 2.3. I thought as a way to give you a quick refresher, maybe we'll go through the most recent adjustments. So the proposed language starts with the establishment of the regional assessment districts with the legislative intent language, which has not changed. The establishment and the process for the Department of Taxes to establish boundaries for the new regional assessment districts has not changed in this version. But one thing that did change after discussion with the committee last time is previously the municipalities within the regional assessment districts, it was written so that they could jointly do a past appraisal together, but this is changing it so that they're required to work together because I think this

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: That's the point of the whole thing.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: That's what I was going say. I think that was the discussion. But to leave for different cases to leave, I don't know, emergency valve or however you want to put it. There's language here that allows the director to weigh the requirements jointly appraise under this subsection if the municipality shows and the director finds that I have highlighted the word extraordinary as a policy question for you, whether you want it to be that strict or whether it should just say that circumstances would cause a joint appraisal to be too administratively burdensome. Also highlighted whether you want both of these things to be matter just one of them or cost ineffective. So it could read the director finds that circumstances would cause a joint appraisal to be too administratively burdensome or cost ineffective. That would give the most amount of leeway. Thanks. And then also a provision that the director's decision whether the grant waiver shall be final to make it clear that this is not appealable. The standard guidelines and procedures to administer this is the same. And then the appeal sections have some updates based on partly on requests from the department. So we have a new provision. Everyone seems to be coming in on queue. This relates to representative Kimbell and his concern that this could be taken to somehow circumvent or interfere with the grievance process. So there's new provisions saying this section, this is the appeal section for the RAD appeals board. This section shall not be construed to prevent or alter the process for taxpayers to bring and resolve grievances to a municipal subpoenacial under the grievance section.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: And

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: we also have a provision saying, notwithstanding subsection A, which is the section in which people can appeal to the RAT appeals board, Appeals evaluations conducted by the division of property valuation review pursuant to three different sections of law where PVR is responsible for doing the initial valuation for utility property, electric transmission, and telecommunications shall be made directly to the commissioner or superior court. So those valuations would not go to the RAT appeals board. This is a concern raised by the department. This language also adds that the taxpayer would have the choice of appealing to the commissioner or superior court. Some previous versions of this changed it from current law so that appeals would go to the commissioner and then the commissioner could choose to send them on the superior court. But this adds back that or the grounds of the option for a taxpayer to appeal to court instead of the commissioner. And so a lot of this highlighted language is just to conform to that, Allowing that to There's also tweak from department feedback relating to objections when a party claims that there was something faulty with the process involved with an appeal

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: And

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: it allows those objections to it allows 30 to raise to to send notice of those objections. It used to be fourteen days. All the stuff that I'm going past is just conforming changes relating to the option to go to court. We have a change where we've added we've taken the section of law that exists now. That's in the appeals chapter. That's the BAC appeals chapter. That's going to be repealed and replaced by the RAD appeals board. And so we've taken this one section on PVR, valuations for public utilities, and moved it to its own section so it does not get repealed with the rest of that chapter. And I and I have added the the repeal of the chapter here. One question to remind you that's still an open question is, last time we looked at separating out the per parcel fee for grand list maintenance and for reappraisals, those things are separated out now in the language that you see, But that $8.50 per parcel fee that is currently used for both of those things under this language would only be used for grand list maintenance and we've not set

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I've asked the department to make a recommendation on what that number would be because frankly, if we changed it, it would well, it feels arbitrary for me if I picked a number. So we're waiting on that recommendation. But if anyone has a number they wanna put in there, please feel free to say so. 635. It's just 529. Okay. I don't want us to get a reputation for being arbitrary capricious. I wasn't serious. I know.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: There's also some language here adding the we talked about it last time, but the language wasn't in yet on the tax department positions. There's no appropriation because this is for fiscal '29 and we're not there yet. So my understanding is this would be any appropriation necessary for these two positions would take place in the department's budget during that fiscal year. And then we have a lot of conforming changes relating to repealing chapter one thirty one and all the references. So I've gone through many different places and replaced the reference to chapter one thirty one or one of the sections that are being repealed with the what would be the appropriate reference after changing the law. I'll get a lot of that. Trings us to the effective dates. The new effective dates here are obviously, since we don't have section numbers, isn't as helpful as

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: it could be,

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: but there's new effective date lines added for the repeal of chapter one thirty one. And the conforming changes, which would need to take place 07/01/2029 because the regional assessment district appeals boards are set to basically come online 07/01/2029. So that would be even though 01/01/2029 is when the rats themselves would would commence six months later for the appeals boards to start their thing. So we'll be keeping current law until 07/01/2029.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: When picky picky thing up on the first page, I believe there should be

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, but it's not gonna help me. Is it?

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: In the blue writing, the first page, there should be, I believe, line 20. In the word directors, there should be an apostrophe.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Oh. Oof. Not a

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: big deal. But anyway Hold on. One of the things I was drained up on, you know, way back. I do.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Thanks, Ruby. Really appreciate it. Hello, I have you down as

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: not being here yet. Would you like to go first or later? Do you have a yes that's fine I

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: just yeah

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Representability! Yeah now that we're looking at that does it

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: say earlier the director his

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: or her designee or their designee sorry

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: It's not say dissonant. It's standard throughout the PPR sections to just say the director it's understood that that's not going always be that person exactly.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay, well, that's fine with you then.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: Would also refer to the director themselves if they

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: have any.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Robert Vickery? Yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Would you like to join us? Thanks, thank you. Bringing a second person with you, you're welcome to.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Desk space gets a little more awkward,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: but they're both used to it, so.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Mark Higley?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm Emilie Thorstein.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So we represent ballot. So just quick thing. We're a little bit behind on the versions. We just got the 2.3 version yesterday. I'm sure Yesterday? Yes, yesterday afternoon, just did. So we did kind of do some crunching.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'll just offer, we haven't made substantive changes, particularly since we got sent out on Friday. All right, that's fine.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So I wanted to talk just about the language that we have so far, and then a couple other items that Val has talked about in our meetings and things that we just want to throw out on board, see what sticks. So, the first thing would be in three thousand four and sixteen, you know, the Commissioner shall prioritize regional assessment districts, including a minimum of 10,000 parcels. That's quite a large number of parcels, I'm not quite sure what the term prioritize would mean. Is that saying that the regional assessment districts would be 10,000 parcels, or they're just going to prioritize making them 10,000. So, we weren't sure what we meant by prior work to prioritize. Because this would be a new

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: sort

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: of idea on how to reappraise properties in Vermont, we believe 10,000 would be a very large number considering the volume of appeals that would result in 10,000 parcels being reassessed at once, as well as the amount of work that would be done by the rephrase companies for the municipalities to do 10,000 parcels at once. We recommend dropping that number to about 1,000. And I know that's quite a small number. But if you look at the number of properties in the state that are under 1,000 parcels, number number of municipalities, there's about 148 municipalities that are under 1,000 parcels. So those will be the parcels that we would say these ones should be brought into RADS. It all sticks here the issue of the smaller municipalities that don't have staffing to contract with the principles because they will be joining with other municipalities. So, our recommendation is dropping that 10,000 number to about 1,000. Okay, and I think, you know, the average, I gotta put this on here, the average town size is about 1,300 to 1,400 Parsons, So we would be just below the average size of the town around me as a minimum. Now, when we first talked about this, I thought this should be a minimum and a maximum, But that's future talking. So, I know it's a small number, but for the first steps in this process, think that's the best way to go and look at it as baby steps. The second thing we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that it was language that would define how municipalities would be joining. So we wanted to look at what we had this year. If you have a school district, know, a municipality that has 500 parcels on one side of the school district and another one that's 500 parcels on the other side of the school district, not joining those two because of the difference in distance, but only looking at contiguous towns and towns with geographic similarities and also market similarities. So you are having a town like

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Beacham and Groton.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yes, like Beacham and Groton, or Marshfield in Groton, where you have to drive over a mountain to get to. Would kind of defeat the purpose of having a regional area if you're driving long distances to get to another town that's in the same reappraisal cycle. So I think what we wanted to look at was let me get to towns that are contiguous and have similar market conditions. The next one we want to look at is we want to make sure-

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sorry to interrupt. I think it would be helpful if you explained why for each of your recommendations.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Sure, sure. So

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: we'll take Randolph, for instance, or Northfield. So Northfield and Randolph, right now they're in two separate school districts, but if they were to be joined to one, you've got Brookfield, you've got Braintree, what's, Roxbury, would be all in one district, as well as Northfield and Raydal. So Roxbury is on the mopulier side of Northfield, Braintree is on the other side. So it wouldn't make sense to have Roxbury and Braintree in the same RAD, because you'd have to drive through Northfield to get to them, right? It'd make more sense to have Braintree and Randolph in one Rad District than Roxbury Northfield in another Rad District. Does that see what I'm saying?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Like kind of.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So they're contiguous, they're connected, So you're not having to drive through other municipalities to get to a municipality to do the reappraisal work. It also makes sense as far as appeals, the RAD appeal board wouldn't have to be driving all over the county. The other thing is when you look at market regions, they tend not to be spot here and there, but we want to have those all in one area. Randolph is a different market area than, say, Brookfield and Braintree. They have a different market. That's what we'll be looking at. Or asking that be included as you create the markets, create the right districts that you consider continuing continuous towns as well as market regions.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And then how would you define market in this context? Sorry, I'm not trying to, I just wanna understand your, it's a good question, thinking behind your record.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: If you were to take Montpelier, because we're here, Plainfield and Marshfield, they're two different markets. Marshfield, North Montpelier, and Plainfield, they're similar as far as the market. As far as the land values, they're all very similar. Montpelier is a different market. Know, when you go out to East Montpelier, those market values start dropping, those land values start dropping, and you get to Plainfield and Marshfield, they're very similar. With a person buying property in Plainfield and Marshfield, they're gonna pay the same amount, but if you go to Alpelier, it's gonna be a different value.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And what's the value of having the same market, if having one RAD have entirely the same market conditions?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Well, if you were to do an equalization study, you wouldn't have one area that would be increasing in market.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Stay away.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Yep.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay, thank you.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Represent Berkhardt.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Are there different listings and assessors contracting firms that focus on different types of markets, or do the same folks that a regional assessment district would contact with, do they look at all different types of markets and properties?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Right now, the contractor would go into a municipality and look at the entire municipality. They would adjust within the municipality different neighborhoods, municipality or different categories of properties. So I'll take on my town, for instance, we have multiple different neighborhoods in my town in Colchester, where we have Motors Point, which is one market area. We have, you know, up north on two, near Milton, and it's another market area. Then we have a commercial district, which is another market area. But it's all within one town, and we justify neighborhoods.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And so the same listener and assessor would do the full town, presumably? Yes. Yes. Okay.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So the other point is the next part. We want to make sure that in 32 to 16c that the word may stay there. We want to make sure that municipalities aren't forced into regional assessments districts that they have the option to do their own reappraisals. There's many reasons for that. Know, a municipality may choose, they have unique properties. They want to make sure that they have that ability to appraise those unique properties. Want to make sure the talents have the right to hire a third party firm to view your appraisals. This is pretty common. Sometimes, for instance, Burlington, when they did their last reassessment, they had a third party review their assessments. And then we also want to make sure that East Valleys can hire specific specialized appraisers to do specialized properties within that town. For instance, Colchester has multiple arenas, we've hired a separate appraiser to do those marines. We've hired separate marina.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I thought you said greenhouse at first. Oh, sorry. What is the greenhouses in Colchester? Sorry, it continues.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: We have

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: multiple marinas in Colchester and we've hired out specialized appraisers to that assessments. Same thing with our class A office buildings, we've hired separate appraisal firms to do just the Class A office buildings. So we want to make sure that municipalities have that right to do that. Not only during reappraisal year, but also in between reappraisal years.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: In Colchester, are you doing everything in house from your assessors and appraisers or do you hire out to an outside firm?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: We hired out to a firm, but we can't, we don't have the manpower to do all the assessments, to do all the inspections and then to do the review all in one year. We have staff, two people, and we can do about, we average about 400 inspections a year in my office, but in order to do that, know, we're looking at actually the sixth year of your appraisals. Person we hired, they're gonna be our data collector, they will be doing a one fifth of the town inspections over the next five years. On August 6 here in 2032, we will do our updates. So that'll be announced, but when we do it all in one year, we have to hire them. We're gonna go to 03/2016.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I just had a question on your last statement in regards to what your town does. One fifth of the town for five years and then six year, you go all over. How does that work in the sense of a town that you looked at five years previous, I mean not the town but the property, there must be whether it's a building permit or something where you have to go back and make sure that it's still the same, correct?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yep, we will still go and review all the building permits every year. So that wouldn't change, but it would be in order to do inspections entire town, would you want to fit with the town here for the reappraisal and update any records or actually we have very good records, so it's more of just verifying the data in our town.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Okay, thanks.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, and we're lucky we have many zoning, so not all So we want to preserve the right for municipality to appeal to the commissioner. If they get put into a RAD, they choose to be in a join a RAD of another municipality as long as it's within the same school district. We want to make sure municipalities can say to the Commissioner, we don't agree with this placement that we're in, we want to either do it on our own or join a different RAD district. And so we would like to strike the language here in 3four 16 C that says the municipalities shall not have the right to appeal to the Commissioner. We want to make sure we have the right to appeal to the commissioner for placement in RAD. And then going forward, 3,418. This is a little bit more about funding and funding for RAD and funding for the RAD board. The current statute says that the municipalities will pay for the RAD. For the RAD award. So we want to make sure that we rewrite that language so that it's funded by the state, through the state. This is kind of a complex reason, but when you have multiple municipalities coming together and each one municipality has to kind of pop up in a fund, Individually, there's no structure in place to say what a municipality is going to add to that fund. We don't know who's going to hold the fund, which municipality is going to hold the fund, if the state is going to hold the fund for the staffing of RAD board. There's more than just the cost of the board. There's the cost of mailing, there's the cost of scheduling for the RAD board. So there's added costs to just the hearings. We believe that this is better suited if the state pays for that or if the state takes over that payment as opposed to municipalities. So, of course, you know, having municipalities have to come together and determine what they're going to pay each pay seems cumbersome at the best. And if we have the state take over that payment, that makes more sense. The next piece here would be the number of parcels we're looking at, or the number of members on the board. Right now it's 1,000 parcels, and then you round it up to the next 1,000 and round it up to the next 1,000. Now, we'd like to take that down to 500 parcels per member of the board. The reasoning for that is that when you have more members on the board, you have more options for board members to not hear all the hearings. If you have, I'm just gonna say it, thousand parcels in a RAD, and you, you know, typically when we contract, we estimate 10% will go to the first level appeal and 10% of those will go to second level appeal. So that would be 100 appeals to a RAD board with a 10,000 parsons. So in order to make just have five people listen to all 10, all 100 of those, the more members you have on the board, you can rotate the members in those hearings. There's less burden on the members to take time away from their jobs, families. I'm

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: not

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: sure if these are gonna be volunteered or if they're be paid. We don't know that yet, which brings me to another point. BCA members, and I heard this last week, BCA members are paid. So not all municipalities do that, but,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you have a sense of how many municipalities do that?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: I don't. I can tell you that at Pearlchester, we give them a choice to be voluntary or paid. And that's the current town clerk does that. Prior town clerk paid them, made sure that they were paid. So what's interesting is they all mark off volunteer. So they don't actually get paid, they have the option to get paid in cold tester, so I don't know.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: And right now, it's the same thing.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Yep. The pay is so low, it doesn't matter, so they might as well not

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: have anything. Yeah, it's minimal wage.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And there's £48 that have fewer than 500 parcels today, so it gives them equal representation on the board when you get the 500.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I think we were concerned about the board being too wieldy, think people are being too large. And a concept of 10,000 parcels, you're going have some communities that have maybe five members? Theoretically. It's possible, yeah. So question of is that fair? Anyway, I think it was, do you want to have

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: a board of 50 members? Well, Paul Chester, RBC has 20 members and what we do and what we're going to be doing this reappraisal is we're actually going have them on rotation. That last reappraisal, we had all the work just sent the invite to all the boards and said, here's your yearly hearings. And we usually had about eight or five people show up per hearing. We've had as little as five show up, but this year what we're doing is we're saying we're going to do, this is your period of hearing date, this is to break it up into groups of five. That way, not everyone's hearing well and everybody participates versus last reappraisal. We had the same nine people or eight people show up every time, and they got pretty tired at the end. So I think the idea of having a large board might work out better as far as people showing up and spreading out that burden. So we're gonna skip down. So this is on thirty four-nineteen, And I'm not sure, Kirby mentioned this today as well, I don't know if this is the current version, but it appeared that a person could skip the RAD board appeal and go directly to the commissioner or superior court, according to the language that I have of 2.3, because it specifically says the district regional assessment district appealed to work or appealed to the director or commissioner or superior court. I would say that you should have people go everybody goes through the same process, except for utilities. I agree with you on utilities, but we don't want to have people skipping a level of board and not everybody doing that. So I have members in our community that would go straight to Superior Court, and that they just see the VC as a stepping stone, but they have to go through that process. And it's only fair that everybody uses that same process.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: So, sure.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: So sorry to interrupt, I'm sorry to counsel. So yes, to clarify in the latest draft we're just looking at before, there was a miscommunication with part of taxes and what the request was. Their request was to make sure that the PVR valuations are able to skip the board. So the new length, that was what you're asking. Oh, okay. It does not give the time for the option to skip the red board as well as the key number. Okay.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: All right. That makes sense. Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I just realized that what you're reading from, we don't have in front of us. I'm taking notes, but they might not be as good as your notes. So are you able to submit?

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Is there six pages? Sorry. Not refreshing well.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Back to you.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah. And you Thank we were up really late last night. So if there's any

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So we sent the language to Vala on Friday. Is there that we should be like, is there another way we should be sending it to you so you get information in a timely way from us?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: We got language Friday, but we also got the language for two point three. Okay, great.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Okay,

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: received it yesterday. Yeah, Mimi and I were worked a little late yesterday to try to get this out. If there's any

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: spelling errors and there's any No, no, I shouldn't. It's all good. It's more than just Okay.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: So

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: the other thing we wanted to look at, and this is kind of a something that, we talk about about quite a bit is, not allowing property owners to go to Superior Court at all. We don't believe Superior Court is the most efficient way to do an appeal. We would prefer to have appeals done through the Commissioner and a Board of Appeal on the state level. And the reason for this, if you've ever been appealed to the Superior Court in the property appeal, it takes about two years to get a hearing, you could be two and a half years out before you get a get a decision, That decision is in favor of the property owner and reduces the assessment. The town's on the hook for paying those property tax or paying taxes back, plus interest. Whereas a board or state board might be more efficient. Right now, we go to the property valuation review. Property valuation review sends our hearing officer out. We usually have those done within a year, which is still a lag, but it's not as cumbersome as is court. The cost of court, having the property owner hire an attorney and appraiser, It just adds cost to the property owner and makes it so that property owners that don't have the means can't go to that appeal. If you have a property that's sent to Property Valuation Review, an appeal, and the director says it's too complicated, we want the Superior Court to hear it, that property owner may not have the funds to go to court. So, restricts the number of people who can actually go that route. And if we have the same route for everybody, without that split, seems to me to be more affordable for everybody and much more streamlined and not as cumbersome. The other thing is, I don't necessarily think they just want to hear it. They have enough on their docket. They don't need to hear somebody complain that their basement is not finished. Think they're being assessed on the finished basement. I've been there, like eight hours

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: in court. Oh, I hear you.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: That's just something about, I think is an appropriate thing to do. And then, you know, the appeal board could go to the Supreme Court after that. There's other towns, other states, like New Hampshire has an appeal board. They don't, after the appeal board, they can go to the Supreme Court. Massachusetts has an appeal board. So we wouldn't be the first ones that do that. So then on a Well, just moving on down. So, I think for me, you talked about this the per parcel, just making sure that that is for grand less maintenance is what we want to strike out the cost for reappraisal, but I think you are talked about that. And then the next part was the funding for reappraisals, which our recommendation is having that funding be split up for six years and be given to the town in a fund on a six year basis, and that fund be only used for reappraisals. The reason for that is the town, there's more costs to just the contracted reappraisal. There's costs for mailing, there's costs for staffing, there's costs for communication with property owners, there's costs postage, technology. So, there's added costs, not just the contract that the municipalities take on, and it'd be good for the municipality to be able to distribute those funds appropriately the way they want to, as long as those funds are done for reappraisal only. And I think the state should have the right to audit that fund as well. Right now, the funds are being sent to the $8.50 per parcel to be sent to the town. Some towns are putting in their general fund. Some towns are using it from their assessor office or list office. I think that the fund was originally purpose for reappraisals. Like I told you, we put in a separate fund, we don't touch it. That's what we use for reappraisal.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So, what would you think if the treasurer's office would save a lot just helps fund, then you just said, we need them for this.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: I think that's fine. My worry is that the fund would only be going to a contractor, as opposed to costs the municipality has for the reappraisal. And to have to request, Oh, we have this bill from the printer of $500 to be sent out, you know, 300 notices, and having to go to the state treasurer and ask for that money, it just seems an added step. So, if the town has a fund, and that fund is restricted for use only reappraisal on reappraisal, and then if it gets put in it gets put in every year, the town can also collect interest on that. And that fund would grow through that as well. So, that's kind of our suggestion. However that fund amount is, I think $66 based on two thirds of $100 per parcel. Divided by six and split it in that fund. And I also think it's important that the state should have the right to audit that fund, if it's being used in that amount of money. That's what we're going to do. Just keeping those towns on

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: the street. If we could go back up, we've talked briefly about that $8.5 per green list for personal maintenance. That's what it is currently for both personal maintenance and your reappraisal. So I didn't hear you say, are you saying you want to keep that $8.50 for just the maintenance?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, and maybe Jill can talk about this a bit better. So there is amount of money that goes to the towns for homestead, I think it's $1 per parcel. And then there is some of that money I believe was supposed to be for homesteads and current use costs. I don't know what the erection should be at $8.50. But part of that was to take care of current use and homesteads as the cost of the town has. So, you know, if you're separating out the fund, one for grand list maintenance and one for reappraisal, yeah, the $8.50 will stay. I don't know how much you want to make that amount to be. And I couldn't tell you, but the suggestion right now.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: If you

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: want to get back to us on a suggestion around if we're separating out the two amounts, how much maintenance?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Sure.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Can I give you example of why for the groundless maintenance? For my town it has nothing to do with municipal taxes. I spent close to $100 on postage and certificate of mailings just for current use in homestead parcels. That helps.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: And then, you know, on top of that too, are, if we scratched out that $66 figure for municipalities for the reappraisal, Another figure in there that you'd like to see rather than $66

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Well, yeah, so of course we want it to be 100%. Colchester's paying $100 per parcel right now to put our reappraisal. There are other towns that pay more, and I don't know what the average is. Think I've heard $100 to $150 per parcel. It occurred. I don't know. I don't have that figured on me. I can tell you what Colchester pays is $100 per production. That's what we're paying right

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: now. Yes.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So, oh, right. Okay. So So I guess I would ask, I wanna make sure that we're not sort of doing math on the fly and you're not just pitching numbers out. So if you could get back to us on recommended numbers, that would be awesome. We don't have to spend time on it now.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: One thing that was thrown out there was if we could calculate what the average cost is for the prior year, adjusted for the sky, that would just be a formula to keep it every year. So we know how much it is. So the average cost is whatever number statewide, that would seem to be a fair way to do it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. I'm gonna try to ask them to get through their thank you for not making me make much of my sentences represent everybody.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So I guess that goes through the language thinking ahead. Right, the next thing I just threw in this, which is a breakdown of the time it takes for an appeal to the VCA level and what we're looking at for RAD. So typically, just to speak for Colchester, in Colchester, take about twenty minutes with a hearing and there's about ten minutes deliberation. We run, know, this basically tells us what it is. It takes about ten minutes to schedule. That's sending out notice, people calling back, getting the call, scheduling the appeal, twenty minutes of testimony. We have ten minutes of deliberation. We have ten minutes of final report to write up that final report. Typically, those reports are on their boilerplate, so it's just changing things out, but it still takes time for clerk to do that. You know, then we have to post it. We have to do the minutes. We have to post the minutes. So we're talking about an hour and a half per peel, just on average of work and time. And then if you look at 100 appeals, say a RAD is 1,000 parcels, you're getting 100 appeals to the RAD district using 10%, 10%. You're talking about one hundred and fifty hours of work and time that's put into one to those appeals. And then I just said, you know, if we pay our board members $25 an hour, I don't know. But this is just an estimate on how it would cost on our RAD district of 1,000 persons. And then if you go statewide, you know, the estimate estimation that we had heard, that one of our members gave us, was about 3,330,000 parcels in the state. You know, if you take that at 10%, 10%, you have five fifty parcels, five forty four parcels, what that costs would be. So that's just explaining to you what amount of time it takes for one appeal. Right. And that's typical for like the Board of Civil Authority appeal. And then the next thing, this is not really part of the RAD, but we wanted to talk about it. Is currently when a property appeals that current assessment stays on grand list and the person based taxes on that grand list on that assessment. That appeal goes, say the appeal goes to court, it's two and a half years later, that assessment is dropped, the town has to pay back that money, less interest. Our proposal, an idea that we've been talking about, is what if they took that tax dollars and put it in an escrow account as opposed to paying to the state and going to the municipal general fund, it gets put in, if a person appeals, and what they pay in taxes gets put into an escrow account, at the end of the appeal hearing, then end amount can be distributed to the property owners. That amount of money will be gaining interest, so if it's in the property owner's favor, the value is lowered, that person can get to overpaid taxes plus interest. And we're not burdening municipalities by having to pay the tax with interest or coming up with money that's already there. So that's just an idea that, some members have thought of, and I want to throw it out there.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Yep. Much. So Yes, sir.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Before we go to representative Waszazak and representative Masland, I just wanted we invited the league to testify on miscellaneous tax, this bill, and property classifications. They weren't available today, and so they're coming in tomorrow. But none of them were available today. I'm curious if they provide you any assistance in sort of tracking this legislation, figuring out your The League of Cities and Towns? Providing Providing VALOR with any support through this process, yes. Because you all work with municipalities.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, we don't really talk.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Well, we work together on conferences and whatnot, but we are But

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: not in terms of Okay, great, thanks. Because you don't have Do you have any paid staff at all? No. Yeah, you're all doing your jobs and then trying to deal with us. Yeah, that's a lot. Okay. Thank you. That's just helpful Yeah, Ballard does. We have, thanks to this RAD, it has increased our membership. And so we are

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: That's what

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: we're here for. Thank you. Yeah. I'd say between 140 five-one 150 municipalities, which is pretty good being that not all offices are staffed, so we can't say like both. So that's pretty good. And we have like three sixty nine individual members that include contract companies and independent people.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: It's what we're representing, but we're all volunteers. Thanks. Yeah. Rutland Waszazak and then Masland Apisola.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Just to go back to the very beginning of your presentation, going down from the 10,000 to 1,000 parcels, you also indicate that the average town has around 1,400 parcels. So is that recommendation mostly

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: to make appeals more manageable? Yes, that's a primary focus of that.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, that's

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: what I thought, I just wanted to make sure I was on

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: the And also make the reappraisal more manageable

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: maintenance. I'm gonna jump in to follow-up on that same question, if that's okay. Even if it's not okay, I'm gonna do it. The 1,000 parcels, have you thought about our ability to perform statistical analysis on the RAD if you have such a low parcel count?

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, so my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the equalization study will be school district wide. And you can have multiple RADs within the school district. That's how this is written right now. So, if the school district is 10,000 parcels, but you have four RADs within that school district, you're not doing the equalization study on the sides of the rack, it's the sides of the school district. So it's a larger size.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think they would all need to be assessed at the same time

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yes, that that's so the school district would have to

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: have- would be like a meta rad thing. Like you would have the rad and then you'd have the other thing above the rad.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Right, the school districts. And if everybody in the school districts is on the same cycle, its value should be 100% on that cycle on the sixth year. So on the, you know, if it drops down a year after to 95%, it's 95% for the entire school district.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So I think maybe we're defining rad differently just inside of our imaginations, though it's defined in one way in the statute, or imagining it differently. Could have Could you imagine having one because what you described as a school district is how I imagine the RAD. So could you have one RAD with four different appraisal contracts inside it? And would that solve the problems that you're trying to solve by saying 1,000 parcels? I feel like you're imagining a team of three people that needs to drive across town, and I'm imagining an appraisal firm.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, so I've worked with appraisal firms. Yeah. Being on the only person working in a town of, say, 1,200 parcels. Yeah. Yeah, so I get what you're saying. Think what I'm imagining is that you've got the school district as the orders of possibly the RAD, and then you can have multiple RADs within it. Not necessarily one municipality, you can have one municipality being a RAD or we can have two municipality between RAD or five municipalities within a RAD, right? Then that RAD has one contract.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay. That's how you're imagining it.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: That's how I'm seeing it. So the RAD would be the one contract. But if there's a school district that has five towns and one municipality has 5,000 parcels, the rest of them all have 500 parcels, doesn't make sense to have those, though the rest of the schools should be in one RAD and then this county with 5,000 parcels being sold RAD.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thanks. Representative Masland.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah, some of my questions I think you've answered, some stretch back a little bit, but on combining a couple of things. One number, appraisal on different sides of the mountain range, for example, or hill range or something like that. And also, the questions on multiple appraisal firms within a within a RAD comes down to this in special districts, arena, whatever. Essentially, what you're saying is if if they all conform to the same standards when they're doing their appraisal, we shouldn't worry about your farm versus my farm working in the same as long as the protocol parameters or whatever are the same, they should be reasonably consistent and reasonably fair, is what you're saying.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah. The goal is 100% fair market value. Doesn't matter who does the price. Doesn't matter which economy does it.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: I had several different questions, but they all basically relate to the same issue and they've been answered some of things.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: If I could ask, I asked this question, gave this scenario, you kind of mentioned it a little bit in the towns that you're familiar with, in regards to the equalization study, I don't see how my town lore can be compared with JPeak, it can be compared with Westberg, Westman which translates Woodman and come up with a rad wise company like Woodman Page because Jay's conceivably going to be up here with their savings continually, will only stay constant, same thing with Western, so that CLA is going to be dropping in those particular towns, but Rolle may be flat. So that's not fair to my town or other smaller towns that are. So how do you perceive that? Not only the common one with Fraser, go further and talk about the COB. Because I think the COB would even be harder.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So I think the idea is if you're doing an equalization study on a school district, law and J, on the same school district, But if you have, everyone's assessed at 100% market value on the same year, and you have the next year, you have a boom in condo sales on J, right, and they go up 25%, whereas the rest of the town, the rest of the area stay the same, you're going to see that in the equalization study, and it's going to could possibly bring everybody else's equal CLA down bringing everybody's taxes up, right?

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Correct.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: So, you know, we have that right now. I can talk about Colchester, because Colchester has multiple different neighborhoods. Our lakefront property, our ratio on our lakefront property is about 45. Our ratio on our commercial properties is closer to 65%. Okay, and residential properties are down 50%. So, you already have things like that. And because we're shorting the time period between reappraisals from ten plus years to six years, that should not affect that long. It takes a while for properties to see that change. You have one sale in a condo that's 80%. And Jay that shouldn't affect the rest of the town. If you have multiple ones, it's going to take several years to get to that point. But that's kind of interesting. So that makes sense. So we already have that issue in a lot of towns where we have different markets in the towns adjusting. You could, in theory, have a CLA per town. But the idea of going to a school district for your CLA is to expand that number of sales so that one or two sales Jay isn't going to affect everybody else as much.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I guess again, I'm a little confused with talking about school districts and RADS because my understanding is the RADS that we're looking at, if you look at one map that just came out, it's huge. It goes from rural all the way to St. John's Square basically. It goes a whole Essex County. So I don't know how many towns even have but it's a lot. Yeah. So that's not school district, that's a route within this new district. So it's huge, it's not just four towns, but every school district balance, 27 beds.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Yeah, and I think that's why we want to make sure that you could have multiple RADs within this district. If you think of a RAD, it's just a reappraisal district. It's just a district, it's just an area that they're going to reappraise under one contract, or have one board hearing appeals. School district is a school district. You know, that's going to set that school budget. And the reason why we want to make sure we have the equalization study under the same school district and have everybody in that school, all of these values in the school district in the same cycle, is because there's going to be one tax rate for that school district. So there should be one CLA for that school district. And you are going to have towns that are going to, you know, maybe increase in value faster than other towns. But you have the irony. And we have that within a town, I can tell you in Colchester, we have that. You know, so if we shrink the amount of years, which we have six years, hopefully we're not going to see that huge swing in that four year period, where one town is going to be 50% and other towns can be 80% within the same school district. But it's possible. I mean, I think right now, you have towns with four sales, or you have towns with 20 sales. That's not a large enough volume of sales to make a statistically accurate CLA. And when you have 20 sales in a town, you have one sale that's 50%, and the rest of them are 80%. Now all of a sudden your CLAs dropped that one year and for the three years that that sale's in there. And then that sale's gone, that CLA shows back up. Right. Right? So to avoid that, a more larger area has more stable ceiling.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Well, can do that now. I mean, if there's not that many sailors, they can go outside the town, but it's going to be more locally looking at, not St. John's version of Bristol. I'm done, thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you very much, and thank you both very much, I really appreciate all the time you've put into this, especially with everything else you're doing. Really appreciate your attention to it, thank you. Peter, I've heard rumor that your testimony was fairly brief on this topic. Is that true? Yes. Great.

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: Yeah, I mean, that is what I've

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: said. Great. Please join us.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Okay. Great. Thank you.

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: And quite honestly, probably not as technical as what you've heard

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: or what you will hear.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: That's perfectly fine. It's good to have a little It's me. Hi,

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: Peter Tucker here for the Vermont Association of Realtors. Thank you, chair, for inviting me and the committee talk about this. You know, we are supportive of this reappraisal process. You know, we do property valuations every day, and one of the challenges is when you have an old appraisal, you the gap, you can determine what the gap is and try and find market values for properties, but you know, the more current the appraisal is, the more accurate, you know, we're going to be in pricing properties and trying help sellers get the best value for their property. Regional assessment districts lining up with school district boundaries is something that, you know, seems to be the right approach. I know that would be more than the thousand units, you know, RAD district, you know, that was just proposed here, but the reality is that this is all coming out of that education reform bill, right? You know, as And, school districts are, and hopefully we get school district boundaries before long, you know, the taxing capacity of that area is important. Think about school districts that would, vote to provide excess spending for their particular school district. If they're in multiple different RADs, then it's just going to create confusion and challenges to get everybody to vote on the right thing. You know, there was a little bit of discussion about market conditions between towns, and I think that is going to be one of the huge challenges here, you know, going from Cheada to Lowell, you know, there are definitely different property values in both. I think at the same time that, you you look at any particular town and you're going to have better neighborhoods and different neighborhoods and different values. Know, terms of the

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: we speak to that for a minute? Yeah.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So when we use the Jade or Lowell example, and I've not spent very much time, unfortunately, in Jade or Lowell, though I've been I'm also aware of towns with enormous variation, practically how I imagine the J to Lowell variation. Were they in that town?

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: Sure. And they're both smaller towns, right? So, you know, it's just a

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: There is, like, that scale of variation within towns already in Vermont, right?

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: That's correct.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay, that's not my point.

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: And I guess that's what I'm really driving at, is that, you know, there are different community areas within any town that have higher and lower values. Know, so it's, it's still, it's going to be a huge challenge. And to get on a six year cycle, I think, just, you know, adds to the complexity of, you know, what this proposal does. You know, the other part that happens is the market continues. The day the reappraisal is done, the next day the market changes, and continues to change. And I, you know, goes up, goes down, but is always, evolving. I think that, you know, hopefully we're in, you know, I don't know, maybe we had a more stable period. COVID was a great example of where in a two year period, you know, I mean, I track real estate values and appreciation, and from 02/1989, the end of the financial crisis to 2019, you know, there may have been like a 1% increase in value, you know, some towns a little bit more, particular properties more, but the reality is, you know, just very slow and steady, and then you've looked at 20 plus percent increases in 2020 and 2021, and then falling back, right? So the reality is that the market's going to continue forward. Getting on a six year cycle is going to cut out a lot of the, you know, the huge peaks and valleys, but, but you're still going to have peaks and valleys. You know, when we look at the legislation here, you know, it really does, it still puts a lot on towns. Towns need to maintain their grand list. Towns would do their own reappraisals or group together for reappraisals. You know, what we thought going into this Regional Assessment District was, you know, we're going to create these bigger districts that have some efficiencies in terms of reappraisal efforts. You know, you'd be combining a bunch of towns together, getting a big, you know, a big reappraisal done, and have, you know, and have a cost per unit less. You know, so, so I think that, you know, giving the towns kind of the option to band together or not band together, you know, is that really the intent and the outcome? And will you get the efficiencies that, you know, we were kind of thinking were gonna happen here? Let's see. Yep. In terms of regional assessment district appeals, I know of one justice of the peace in a town who said, Hey, this will be great. I won't have to do tax appeals. But they're still going to have to do municipal tax appeals, so there's still the chance that property gets appealed on value, but then has some kind of a different approach with their municipality. So it does seem like this two part system is being created to some extent, with the RADS being the oversight, but the municipality still having some pretty significant responsibility, to maintain their grand list and to do their appeals, and then to figure out how to group together to, to do a reappraisal. You know, we would encourage you to use, Vermont based appraisal companies, whenever possible, not you, but I guess the towns themselves. You know, and, and Why is that? Pardon me? Why?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Mean, I'd like to give

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: it Vermont Business. Okay. Yeah.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Don't know if there's some other reason.

[Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors)]: No, no, no. I'm sorry. Yeah. Just that, you know, really, I think that, you know, anything that we can do within our state boundaries, you know, I'll talk about hiring for my employees tomorrow. But, you know, it just, you know, when it's possible, that would be great. And, you know, I was down in Senate Economic and Housing, last week, and, you know, they were talking in their housing bill about requiring towns to do, you know, twenty year housing projections going forward, and, you know, they're all in the process of that somehow. But, you know, town, most town folks, you know, select board, planning commission, listers are volunteers, and you know, if depending on how the guidelines are set up, you know, in terms of doing reappraisals, you know, many of those volunteers may decide this is, you know, way more than I signed up for, and decide not to, decide to resign their position. So, you know, always respectful of those town volunteers, and concerned that, if this is too big a load, that they won't continue. And that's it. Thank you. Any questions?

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Appreciate it.

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: That's pretty brief.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Thanks. Take care. Okay.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Jill, you want to join us? Wrap it all up with a bow.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: My name is Jill Remick. I'm the director of property evaluation and review at the tax department. Thanks for the chance to talk through with this with you all the latest version. I did you know, I tried to grab the 2.5 on my way out the door, but I just kind of wanted to sort of retable set a little operate under the reality that we and the towns are in while we're talking through some of these larger theoretical pieces. And I'm worried we might be missing some steps in order to set this up for success. So I think, as Peter just mentioned, there's a lot of work that happens between reappraisals at the municipal level. And those things are definitely in need of greater support and resources. So I definitely would defer to my buddies, Megan and Robert, from VALA who were also on our stakeholder group, which we really appreciate. But what we're hearing in our tiny division of PVR is that towns are really struggling to find individuals to do the grantless maintenance work. So setting aside the reappraisal firm piece, which I you know, we've definitely even as of this morning, we were talking to firms about some of the, like, logistical pieces of this. Towns are struggling to find folks to do this work. The reality is that a lot of municipalities rely on our very small team of I think we're down to about five district advisers for a whole lot of work that happens between reappraisals. So I'm not saying all this to whine, but rather sort of the reality is unless we also sort of shore up and support some of this work happening between reappraisals, then we sort of skipped over a big amount of work that needs to happen to set this up for success. Even talking with the firms, right, they're struggling to find folks to do this work for them, even under the six year cycle. You know, they're like, we can find data collectors, which are the folks who are going out and doing the fieldwork. But because of the volume of work that's out there and being on the six year cycle, they're also echoing what we've been saying about we really need some time to build up the field and the expertise in the field so that we have people who can do this work. We do not have that right now. We also have a few pieces that have gone into law over the last few years that we really see are bearing some fruit, and we would like to give them time to bear that fruit so we can then place any reappraisal plans on top of that. So for example, the six year cycle, we are getting there. Every year, more towns are reappraising, and we are now getting seeing contracts through 2030, 2031. So we you know, it's going to take a full cycle, at least one full cycle of the entire state getting onto the six year cycle. But then we could very much see sort of the fruits of that labor and see where there could be some, ability to sort of build on top of that. The certification requirements that have passed recently, you know, we're excited to do that because it is part of this building capacity. But it also has scared a lot of people out of the field and it's not as easy as just saying, you shall get certified. That requires us to build a new system to host the trainings. It all adds up to there's only a finite amount of time. So we also really would like the legislation to include the support for us to actually hire sort of an IAAO or appraisal institute or some firm to sort of analyze and provide us recommendations for our reappraisal cycle. So the conversation earlier was a great example about what makes a statistically significant grouping of parcels or appraisals. And we would love to have some time to build up our and town's expertise on that. We also are If we do not address the sort of brandless maintenance between reappraisal cycles, we have towns on different CAMA vendors. The towns So the towns are working within different CAMA systems. Some have zoning, some do not. Some have volunteer listers, some do not. Some have assessors, some do not. The the firms are saying, you know, if a town is not interested in switching over to our Canvas system, we really can't help them. And if they don't have zoning and we don't know when they last reappraised or, you know, there has been a lull between reappraisals, that's a lot more work to do that reappraisal. So all this to say that, like, I think we are working in the right direction with this six year cycle. I think that's provided a huge amount of stability and direction and trying to provide the supports for municipalities to work together. And we just need a little more time to sort of set these things up so that we can set ourselves up for success. So I'm just expressing a little concernhope that we can continue to talk more about the other components about maintaining the education and grant list aside from just the reappraisal district piece. Because we can keep it at county. That's fine. We our, I think we call them, like, government assessment entities in our report in 2023 that was closer to, I think it was, like, 6,000 parcels. The boundary of the RAD can be all sorts of different pieces. But if we haven't done what we can to sort of shore up the accuracy and consistency and support for that groundless work in between, then I think we've really missed an opportunity. If we're missing language, either here or in our budget recommendation letter

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: about positions you need or contracting authority you need or groundless maintenance. Just say the words and the language. We'll pop it in. Okay. Thank you. Yes. I think representative Masland had something in there.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Yeah. Along the same line, Joe, you said a bunch of things, of which were useful, and of course, I didn't write them all down. If it wouldn't be problematic for you to think of a list of bullets, things that we should consider. I mean, you said what's statistically logical, you know, and you mean, there was a whole bunch of things there that made perfectly sense and perfectly good sense to me when I went out last year. You know? Some of which I think, Cher, is correct. We may be able to incorporate someone reasonably short notice to make their job easier for everything comes out better because and those are the things I think that make a big difference at the end of the day when we the governor signed the bill, you if we could put him in there. So thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes. Sorry. Go ahead, representative.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Jill, to your point, in 2019, there was a law passed, so a lot of three regional assessment districts of municipalities wanted to form them. I'm just wondering, did any?

[Kirby King (Legislative Counsel)]: If they did, great.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: What are the results? If they didn't, why not?

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: No, none did the assessment district formation. I think it comes down to, right, this isn't like a new barrier. I think every room in this building is sort of wrestling with how do we share resources across municipal boundaries. And so I think what we found over our last couple of years and sort of what we tried to articulate in our report was this is a great way to work towards, but we've got to walk before we run. We've got to find ways to ensure that all municipalities, if that is still the place that the grand list maintenance is happening, municipal grand list is being maintained, and the CAMA decisions and the property tax billing and all the administrative pieces that come along with that, then we've it's sort of slowly starving to death. We've we've gotta support them more. And if that means right. That's sort of a path in the road. If we are deciding that we are gonna continue to rely on the municipalities to maintain the grand list between reappraisals, we're gonna continue to rely on them to do property tax billing. We're gonna continue to rely on them for homestead declaration and current use and exemptions and all of those day to day to day to day to day pieces that have nothing to do with reappraisal, but result in a complete grand list, then we've got to inject some support there. Because right now, like my team and the towns we're hearing from, everybody is feeling overwhelmed and wanting genuinely to meet these expectations for the certification and for the six year cycle. And I have to tell you, think the classification piece is coming down the road is also causing a lot of anxiety. These are all pieces that require a human being at the other end to do the work. And I think there's sort of an assumption, not in this room necessarily, but in the building, that there's always plenty of people at the municipal level who are able to take this on, and that's not the case.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think part of the reason we're doing this is because there aren't necessarily people at the municipal level to do this. And so again, if there are changes you want made to the language to meet the concerns you're raising, we share them. And we're waiting for what the right financial resources are for municipalities,

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: all of

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: that. We really want to make this work. We've been working on it for a long time.

[Robert Vickery (VALA)]: Thank you. Is

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: it okay to wait for

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: because I Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: I mean, I realize I'm not responding to, like, specific languages in the very latest bill, but, you know, it's just we we spend a lot of time on this. We really wanna get this right. And and I think the formation of some size of I think, like Robert pointed out, right? So if we're trying to sort of remove barriers and and remove the barriers for towns working together so that they can do this work together more efficiently, then that is that is my goal. And, throughout the stakeholder working group this summer that led to our report, municipalities want to be able to pitch in and help each other out. They want to be able to share these resources. And so I'd really like to also maybe that's part of this this piece of coming back here, but what are the boundaries that we can the barriers we can remove? There are, like, statutory and I think Remote League of Cities and Towns has flagged this over and over when we do talk about this. Like, there are it's not easy for towns to share a contract right now. It is it is challenging for different towns to encumber other towns' funds over multiple years. So if that is something we can address, that is another huge hurdle so that if each of them and Barnett wanted to share a contract or U32 school district wanted, then there exists that structure. We don't have that right now, and I think you'll probably hear more about that from BLCT. If there are ways we can create that interlocal agreement to be more user friendly or possible. Because in PVRs, we're trying to support this and change this and make this happen. We just keep running up against this barrier that it's not as easy as it sounds for towns to jointly contract. Oh, it's really hard. It's really. And so I think then, you know, then you're sort of creating opportunities here. And then when there are municipalities that are being sort of left out or are needing that support, then you've got a construct on which to, like, sort of pull them into the fold and add them in there.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Think Sorry.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: You keep on cutting. No.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: That's

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: fine. No. Can let continue. I'm Then, Representative Higley will say something.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: And I do just I really wanna point out, there are some really big things that have happened lately that are happening. Right? So the six year cycle, like I mentioned. So we are getting there. We are up to 44 towns we're appraising this year. That's the most I've seen in recent history. That is a that is a step towards everyone being on a six year cycle, which creates more up to date grand lists, more clarity between the taxpayers and the municipalities of what property values are so they're not going stale for twelve, fifteen years. It creates sustainability and consistency for reappraisal firms and to towns to know and to plan. And because these folks pointed out too, there's a lot of costs that are really hard to articulate for a town to reappraise and to maintain things between there. We will get a better picture as we get further into the six year cycle. We also are hoping to the data standardization piece, there's a new I think it was in our miscellaneous tax bill, perhaps. But basically, to do a bigger Kama extract to the grand list because that will inform PVR, but more importantly, will inform VCGI, the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. It'll form ACCD to help build that housing dashboard that the legislature has asked ACCD to maintain. So there are like, things are happening. Things are in motion. We're working on instructions for towns about how to do this contiguous parcel now in you know? But those things all sort of take time. I do think I I don't wanna come in here sounding like we're not interested in participating or that we're like, this isn't we're actually the building blocks are happening. It's just taking time to to build them. And then I do think things like the contracting is, like, a barrier that that could use some focus to address.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sorry. Almost done my Jill ramble.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: Little ramble. So, yeah, and then just a reminder, again, not trying to complain to this particular committee, but the tax classifications alone are a lot. There's chips. There's there's all these there's valuation freezes. All of these very good things that have passed recently around the building are sort of built on that presumption that we've got people there who can do that work. Instead what we're seeing is we have fewer people in those buildings. We have, you know, fewer capacity to do that that work. And so the idea of then also on top of that, making massive changes without having any support, feels like we're setting ourselves up for for failure. So I just it's not as exciting to talk about the grand less maintenance pieces between there, but I really think we need to make sure we don't leave that out of the conversation for RADS. I think, like, when we first were talking about the RADS, it was sort of like all of that work should be done in this sort of grouping. The groundless maintenance should be shared. The CAMA system should be the same. The valuation should happen on the same cycle under the same rules. And if we skip over that and we just put a RAD boundary and we don't address the still having the assessment at the local level and still having different CAMA systems, then we're still having the grand list being maintained differently between reappraisals.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So are you recommending that we move the grand list? It's Representative Higley's turn to talk, not mine. Go for it, Mark. So sorry.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: So when I heard you mention how towns have sometimes have zoning, sometimes don't, they have different systems, they have different mapping, talk about licensing of appraisers maybe, all that sort of stuff. Is that in your thoughts going down the road to have that all in line as far as everybody has only, everybody uses the same kind of system, everybody has the same mapping, I mean, definitely it be easier, but that's going to be an unbelievable request for many times that I know. Hear you mention that and I'm just wondering if that's layered on top of everything else that we're talking about.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: I think I'm kind of doing the opposite, which is being, as we said, the tax department is a skunk at the garden party, where it's hard to live in a world of imagining a RAD when we don't have the support needed at the municipal level to still do the work at the municipal level. So would like I said, the six year reappraisal is working. The, we would love to sort of beef up our reappraisal standards. The firms are trying to step up. The towns are obviously coming to the table and participating in this conversation. We're revisiting the per parcel payment, which is exactly one of the places I think we can address this. So I'm actually sort of going the opposite where I would like to sort of, like, build and structure and support towns to do as much as they can voluntarily. And then if there are pockets or or there are places that it makes sense to sort of say, okay. You guys work together. By that point, we'll be equipped to do that. But right now, by just saying, RADS are this. You're doing this. You have to contract together. But we don't who's the contract? Who's holding the contract? Who's doing all the work between reappraisals? Yeah. It's a little sort of more of the long game, but I'm not advocating towards us moving to a statewide CAM or anything like that because it feels like we sort of have gone that crossroads. If the crossroads is we want to continue to have municipalities maintain their own grant list, then we've got to support that and we've got to build the structure to set them up for success. And if we just skip over that and go to reappraisals every six years, but we haven't addressed the work in between, I think we're going to continue to lose listeners and assessors. I think we're going to continue to have a time finding people to do the work. We sort of lost that opportunity.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Jill, you should think about being a skunk at the garden party. I kind of thought we were at the same garden party. And I brought some tea and you brought some cakes. And we had a menu that was the report you gave us that we are now working from. And so I'm just totally confused about what comes next. So I think

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: it was kind of buried in our report that we said, We're not ready for this yet. We've got to do these less exciting things to set us up for success for

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: SuccessFest. And so the date is pretty far out Because this all takes, as you said, on basically a twenty year cycle, and the legislature has a short memory. Such a short memory, two years, if we're lucky, mostly. Sometimes a day. The more we can build in a roadmap for future legislatures to actually be following in partnership with you, the better able we are ever get where we're going. And so all of that preliminary work that you're describing, if there's parts of it that are not in the legislation, like, please say the word and we can put it in. And we can bump out timelines. But without it all being laid out there, I don't know how we're ever going to get anywhere, because this is fairly tedious for all of us. Now is the time that people are interested in the tedious work. I think in the future, no one's going be interested in it, unless we really lay out the groundwork now. Fair. And I think, thank you,

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: and I agree. I know it's been really hard to sort of watch this over And

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I wish I could quadruple everyone's capacity, because I know that your team is stretched like it's crazy good work and stretched really thin.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: I mean, I admit that's part of why I'm feeling the way that I am, is I'm representing what I'm hearing from towns and from my team that, like, we've gotta we have to have a chance to do the things we've been asked to do correctly. So I do appreciate it. Right? Like, this is this is a future state. This is not a 2027 state. But I do think the grand list per parcel payment, I think, I don't know if anybody disagrees that the eight fifty per parcel for reappraisal and grand list maintenance that was set quite a while ago, just by inflation, that is not keeping up. And so I think it's great that we're separating. I think it's great that this is separating the reappraisal from the grand list maintenance. It would be great to have, like, a proposal number. If anything, as I was sitting over there, I'm like, well, we could we could sort of delineate from what was the reappraisal and grand list maintenance. But I think, I think if we sort of did the inflation, I think August is probably not that far off. For just maintenance. For just the groundless maintenance I had a feeling that that was true. We'll we'll just you know, that's close enough. Because I think different municipalities need different support too. I do think another piece that Mimi raised that we also talked about this summer at the stakeholder group is there is a lot of back and forth between the tax department and municipalities, a lot of administrivia work that does not necessarily help the municipal grant list. So like current use, equalization, study, homestead, those are actually the majority of a lot of the work that they're doing. So that is another piece that we would love to have that time to do in the meantime. And this doesn't require any statutory change. But we are hoping to break out each of those processes and see where we can have them go back and forth fewer times and have less work on the municipality because it is for the education grant list than it is for statewide education property tax system. And so we also will it is not necessarily PBR's role to try to build up a workforce, but we're here and we want to try, and we've started those conversations. So I do think we are going to continue in earnest to work with CCV and the labor department. And I'm forgetting someone which I'm speak something. Speak something. Something. Because that's clearly a need. The firms have expressed that. The towns would love to have folks that they can hire or contract with to do this work. I'd love to do the work. Let's be quick.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think there are lots of people who would love to do it.

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: And I think, again, it's gonna take a little time, but if there are people out there looking for work and there are people who are looking for people to do the work, then let's connect them. And it was really exciting to talk to labor and CCB because I do feel like there are some short term certification programs that can help build up that workforce. So all this to just say, we are we are working towards and and wanna support work and where we see the the future state of us all being on a six year cycle and having the more time that goes by there, then the more CAMA systems can get set up or changed or municipalities could maybe contract together so that we can work towards a future state where we are able to do this. But until we address that town to town contracting piece, I think that's always going to be this barrier to that's always been what we've run

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: up against. It's like, Okay, but literally how? I think that's why we were thinking of having you do all the contracts thing despite many, many years. And in my professional non legislative experience, collaborating actually costs money and time. And if you need to collaborate because you don't have money and time, it's really, really, really hard to step outside of your role to spend the money and time to collaborate. Think

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: the pieces about the per parcel payment, we're really excited to see that. That's been a long time challenge. Right? If I if we keep sort of saying we don't have the capacity, well, let's find some capacity there. And having the reappraisal payments come out in some more standardized fashion, the $66 per parcel every six years. That also helps us come back to you in the future and say, know exactly how much it costs to reappraise this many towns every year. We don't necessarily have that level of specificity. But thank you for listening, thank you for all your work on this. And we'll continue to be here and answer any questions.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you need any legislative authority with CCB or the Department of Labor or to do a sunrise study with secretary of state about licensure or anything like that?

[Jill Remick (Director, Property Valuation & Review, VT Dept. of Taxes)]: My understanding is not the first two. I didn't get the sense that we needed a legislative ask for the sunrise report, but I I feel like I heard testimony in some committee that maybe that is I said something. So okay. I can reach out to Secretary of and ask them if they need that. Cool. Anyone

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: else? Thank you so much, Jill.

[Unidentified committee staff/member (procedural cues)]: Folks, we are gonna come back here after the floor

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: to do a quick walkthrough and vote of five seventy eight. That is the one about animal cruelty. I am going to encourage everyone to take some time to read it between now and when you go to the floor. And also encourage you to focus on the very, very, very narrow jurisdiction we have over this bill, please. And so we're gonna be back here, like, really immediately after the floor and try to vote that out. Thank you. We'll do yes or no. That's it? Yeah, heard no rumor of amendment No. Mean, for all I know, gonna find