could this is an incline donation to the conservation commission a move that we accept the sole disposals offer to donate one forty dumpster with disposal of up to five tons of finance director to review property valuations the total value of all property subject to taxation even each of the four classes of real robbery as defined by law the board of selectmen will vote on the adoption of a residential factor and then determine within prescribe limits calculated by the department of revenue what percentage of the tax burden is to be borne by each property class the board of assessors chief assessor and finance director will provide information and data relevant to making these policy decisions including the physical very good evening again that the purpose of the meeting is to review the proper evaluations of all of the property class is subject to taxation and for the board to decide whether to maintain a split tax rate eliminate the split or modify the split and that would be accomplished by shifting the burden between residential and business classes of property hence the terminology classification hearing and just for the record there are four major classes of property one residential  class and three business classes commercial industrial and personal property but we've heard of those three as as business the vast majority being commercial property and just two clarification sometimes there are misperceptions about a the timing of this meeting and b what can be accomplished here first off this is the earliest possible tuesday that we could hold this meeting given that we were waiting for state department revenue are the values of the property this was a revaluation year for the town and we just received a certification last week so this is the earliest that we could schedule this meeting it's not pushed up to close to the end of december in order to you know to rush the process is the earliest we could have it we can't discuss values until they're certified and then the other thing is whatever decision the board makes tonight it doesn't impact how much money is raised or collected it just term and the split of the tax burden amongst the taxpayers in the context of the hearing is it's a required annual touchstone along the way to having the town's tax rate set and ultimately approve a department of revenue once the classification decision is made by this board the last components of the detailed documentation will be submitted to the partner of revenue for final review probably do that tonight after this meeting so only a decision is made assuming everything's in order we're looking for to receive a quick approval hopefully this week to have our  tax rate certified which would allow us to mail our third and fourth quarter bills by the end of december which is required with february first and may first due dates so if it's the board's pleasure i was just going  process question and i wanted to ask it before the recommendation came lot of information in the packet is going to be some presentation they want to get the recommendation from the board of assessors and i'm not sure why we get that recommendation at the table versus earlier in our package so we have time to think about it and digest it is this a policy that's been going on here a few i'm not sure who to ask it to maybe the assassins yeah we've in the nine years that i've been on the board it's always been do this way we meet before the selector in this meeting and we submit our recommendation ok so you came up with that recommendation just prior to this meeting today this is that we met twice a  ago and then we met again tonight just to clarify and discuss that decision and then we came up with the you know that the decision may be a benefit to getting it early that we can digest it and look at the numbers but there may be a detriment because the information is kicked around before it gets to us and i actually concur with your first point that you know there's benefit to having more time with the information i think the conundrum that we have is that the board assessors really doesn't have anything concrete to offer them to make a recommendation on until we have our certified values and if the values have been certified say a month earlier then they would have been you know more time in the process we could have had this meeting a month earlier and then you know it wouldn't have been a big deal to move have another meeting you know if you wanted to hear it here one night and come back you know we could to later but given that the values were just certified last week this is the timing so i'm you know i'm in favor of you know having more time you know with the process one of the reasons why we went to quarterly tax billing you does this mean that the vote has to be taken tonight erick to not be put off to another meaning well you know in order to give us time to digest what you're going to present try i mean the board can you know can do what you know whatever it would like to do i'll just suggest that if there was more time added into the process for a decision we are at significant risk of not meeting the timeline of getting the tax bills out on time not only the steps that have to happen between now and the bills being postmarked no later than december thirty first and explain what happens if they're not is that we have to submit final documentation to race back to the office and if you make a decision tonight and some of the final two pieces that i need to submit and then i'm waiting for the department of revenue for them to finalize their review go through their chain it's not just one individual you know it goes up to  you know to a director we wait for that that could take a day or two could take a week because everybody's in the same boat and then we get that decision then the work starts in the treasurer's office and at the collectors office in the office and there's two weeks of work that has to be done you know there's testing and vetting of the data before we commit as you can imagine there's a tremendous amount of data we don't like these things to turn into you know the health care you know website is just you know we really spend the time sanitizing the data so we do that and then once we finish with that and that's a good two weeks of what we have a work plan laid out then we submit it to our third party billing administrator is actually cheaper for us and other towns a figure that out to have a consolidated happens to be our partner online payment provider they can actually recreate our our bill exactly like ours send it out you could actually pay the it's triggered a lot tropically if you want in and they need time because everybody else is in the same same pipeline so so this time it's not like we're the only customer so there is time so you know we put it substantial risk of not hitting the date having a postmark some to thirty first in the holidays so what happens if the bills go out in january if say you want to take another week and we don't make it which is a real possibility if we took another week first off by law the bills are not due meaningful third fourth quarter not due until may first so the third quarter bill would not be due on february first and in addition to that we have to notice everybody of that fact so we have to create a something and have that stuffed into the into the obviously that impacts the town's cash flow interest etc so it's not a not a good place to be ok you know if you couldn't charge interest rate haven't competed with anything and but i understand the schedule and i was that the primary reason for once we receive the value certified they turned around a corporate and the package immediately and sent it out you know last week able to actually meet a week ago before and you know this this meeting tonight so we were allowed we were able to digest it also for the week if i were just to be saying you know really wouldn't do this on his own behalf but there were circumstances beyond the fine as departments control that made it come out this far they've they've been trying to get information from the state and get it approved by the state and they've been waiting on the state so some wanted to make that clear that it was not nothing happening with tax levy it's increasing by one point three eight million or three point six percent the increase is comprised of three components the first is what's allowed by proposition two and a half and that's eight hundred seventy three thousand that's two point two eight percent of the three point six it's not two and a half because you can't go up to an add percent on the debt exclusion so you have to go back to the base so it's so the number on increased by two point two eight percent excluded that is actually going down because we're amortizing the debt we haven't added more debt so that brings the number down by eight hundred basis points so the total tax increase on preexisting property is two point one percent or eight hundred three thousand  new growth taxes which is the you know the great the investments we made in the community captured by the board in chief assessor adds one point five one percent to the levy or five hundred seventy six thousand brings up three point six percent  so we continue to tax to the limits allowed by prop two and a half for the seventh consecutive year or a foxboro has no general overrides unlike ten of the area communities around us which and their general override capacity on average for those thinking communities is four point four million so the town doesn't have the benefit of any of them everybody has that exclusions but what we don't do general overrides which is i think personally great but most of our surrounding communities do and that's that's how they balance their budgets that's it on the tax levy any questions on that but on the property values what we really are talk about the  fourteen total taxable property value declined so all classes combined one point seven three percent or forty five million the average single family residential values  one point two four percent and the average commercial industrial values decreased by seven point one percent so they decrease in commercial values and decrease about six percent more than residential  what that does just you know what that does is that in effect shifts the burden that's what shifts the burden to residential because if you think of the taxes just one pint we're not changing amount of tax your tax bill is is e the average single family property value excluding car condominiums the reason i'm going to choose that one tonight is that's ninety percent of all the residential property economy and as another ten percent  that decreased the property value decreased by three and a half thousand to three hundred seventy two thousand units the average the residential class a property totals seventy five point nine four percent of of all property in the town it's a significant significant increase over last year which is seventy four point two three percent as may seem like small numbers but there are significant shifts the remaining twenty four point  six percent of property values associated with the all the business classes over the last four years residential property has increased from a low of seventy two point eight percent in fiscal ten of the  total valuation to the current seventy five point nine for this shift results in a continuing trend of the tax burden shifting to the residential tax payers than on business tax payers however in fiscal twelve just to  make sure that where we're clear on what you know what's happened here with the shifting of burden by decisions the board's made in fiscal twelve the board equalized this trend by splitting the tax tax rate for the first time which had the effect of maintaining the tax and so you know that the values the property values you know were very tight you know side is they're going to be going to tightest in a revalue year when the state puts a lot of scrutiny on the values and it was the year when all of the new growth significant  year so that was a good benchmark year for the town and and then we start a shift that the business values fell in and so the decision in fiscal twelve was to equalize that shift by splitting the tax rate to bring it back taxpayers in fiscal fourteen from this four year trend in value shifting away from business tax payers if you can actually quantify it it translates to one point two four million dollars this now it's a three point one three percent shift from where we were we were at the benchmark year translates to about one a quarter million dollars or two hundred twenty six dollars on average for the average residential taxpayer an additional tax burden in fiscal fourteen alone if the town reverted to a single tax rate so if you decide it's enough of the split pull back to single tax tax rate that one point two four million would be shifted on to residential and about two hundred twenty six dollars to the residential tax bills that's the short story on property values i'm sure will come back to that the tax rate itself and again this is a first of this three scenarios here that all run run by you want to is assuming th split tax rate then the tax rate for thousand assessed value will increase the tax rate will increase by six and a half percent or ninety five percent ninety five cents for residential it would increase by two point four percent or about force four percent less for business classes or increased by thirty six cents per thousand assuming the current split that we have is maintained the residential tax rate would increase by  forty four cents to fourteen ninety eight the business tax rate would increase by a dollar ninety six to seven hundred nine assuming the tax rate that maintains the f y ten and the f y twelve split of the  burden the residential tax rate would increase by thirty one cents and the business tax rate would increase by two dollars and thirty eight cents so those and there are many other permutations as represented on page fourteen in the back you could have many different options for the board to consider  as far as the tax bill goes under these these three different scenarios assuming a single tax rate in this particular scenario is detailed on page five i'm just picking up the highlights from it the average single family tax again this is the ninety percent group of residential so it excludes condominiums single rate tax would increase the average sink  single family homes taxable by five and a half percent or three hundred three dollars to five thousand and seven sixty nine the average commercial tax would decline in the scenario by six point  over seventy five percent of all of the business the business property if you maintain the current split the average single family tax would increase by two point roughly two percent or one hundred thirteen dollars  and commercial taxes would increase by just over three percent or seven hundred sixty seven dollars if you maintain the split back that we had in two thousand and ten and twelve the average single family tax would increase by about one point two percent for sixty four dollars whereas the average commercial tax bill would increase by just over five and a half percent or one thousand nine hundred eleven dollars know if you take commercial pull up and it's kind of a tough thing to average because you got some very big value of our room one in new york and small commercial businesses scattered all over town so their average would be quite the same as mine saying it is still it's still an average you know you do have homes that or some properties residential properties that you know around one hundred thousand and you know it's on that are you know seven seven figures so you have that you do have that sort of you know range on a percentage basis within business but just to put it in perspective the the  six million and the remaining business taxpayers comprise twelve point eight percent we're talking about another roughly three hundred eighty businesses you have the larger ones are represent more than half of the business tax levy and everybody else is is the other half last thing that i just wanted to mention is the community comparisons and some folks you know or are interested understand your house foxborough stack up and the comparisons can be done for fiscal thirteen because everybody's still comparisons fox bros f y thirteen total valuation of one point five roughly one point six billion of single family property is just over fifteen percent less than the average of the fifteen area communities so we have less property tax on average compared to the surrounding communities in their smaller communities larger communities but you know on average we have fifteen percent less value to tax  parcels is a big driver of that how many parcels you have to tax you know parcels of the developed or undeveloped the single family parcels that the town has four thousand two hundred forty one that's over sixty percent less than the average of the communities of fifteen area communities that are around us and you know that from my perspective that's one of the key drivers of you know why the foxboro revenue picture from a taxing is within three thousand or less than a percent of the average of the other fifteen area communities so you know right in the mix you know the value of foxborough homes on balance is really no different that that's not what's driving you know  challenge when it comes to tax revenue and the the average single family tax bill the bill itself is that last year forty five thousand for sixty six is just under two percent less than than the average so you know we're not in comparison on average we're not this town doesn't tax more you know on the rez residential taxpayers and that the the town and last key fact that would leave you with given the decision you're about to consider is that last year nine of the fifteen area communities adopted a split tax rate structure and residential rates lower than the business and that's detailed in i'll start off with as i will you know let you know i've already explained that we have met twice so we met a week ago with the same information we met again tonight before this meeting and we had discussions on the different scenarios that were out there i will start it off and i will let you know what our recommendation was it was you unanimous vote and then i'll try to explain to you why we came to that recommendation if you look on page fourteen we see an analysis of the tax b shifting put through you know from zero or a single rate all the way up to a fifteen point four percent that the state allows just see at that because the top is three boxes  that that are kind of highlighted there and the top one again is the single rate and as you slide down if you look on the file left hand corner you'll see one point one zero three one c ip shift and then below that is another box one point one three zero two we have are recommending that we stay with the one point one zero three one should see ip shift which is a factor of three point two seven percent and what that highlight is there is basically saying that we want to just keep the status quo so we're going to read we recommend that you keep the shift and the relationships of the two classes to  basically what is was last year and the reason is is because if you go back again what we had he was saying with the commercial industrial values they drop seven point one one percent and i think it's important to understand that for residential you know a ranch house sold on calm i now have as compared to other ranch houses throughout the town that assault well industrial commercial product properties are not they have the values  based on income and expense report that basically the town of foxborough started when honasan first came on board and it's given out to every business in the community and there they're asked to fill those so to look at that with a drop of seven percent well that means that's a real value drop of their business that's income and expenses that's that they're struggling there's no doubt i mean you don't need you know you read the wall street journal every day to figure out you know that you know businesses are still hurting in the country you know reports just came out that black friday is not going to meet the expectations that the retailers thought and i don't know what yesterday cyber monday turned out but that's just reality and to to shift it more on to the business we felt as a boy that that just wasn't really something that was equitable and fair for them so what we kind of talked about was is that basically the businesses and again everybody talks about businesses in this community in the first thing everybody thinks about is the parts of street and one well you know this little stores down and in the common and on main street you know there are businesses too and you know there are neighbors and everything else but they're part of all this talk also so what we thought was is they've already planned in their budgets for next year with their tax burden is going to be and we thought in our thought process was as well why don't we just keep it the same as it was last year so when i recommended to drop it he lower when i recommended to go any higher on those on that caution the great thing about this as we talked about two years ago when we for the first time in fact was history that we decided to come up with a split rate we look at it every year it could change every year you can go back to zero last year was  back because last year was a good year for the businesses this is the the data showing us right now that the business community is struggling unfortunately again those are those are actual numbers that we receive there are certified financial statements that we better i mean we came up with the split two years ago there was a huge discrepancy is randy said the beginning that you know it was we with a resident who was just going to get slammed here and we made the recommendation and the board again voted for that split last year and we came in and we in we actually were throttling it backwards towards the single rate and we came up with the percentage in the board i didn't use that recommendation they came back even further go residential go up five point five percent and the commercial will go down six percent right i can understand the logic behind that say you know how much kind of the residential setting there because they are work at these businesses if the business isn't doing well you see now assuming that we stayed with the current split that just seems to keep it balanced for now and again going back to the single tax rate that difference nine you i'm really a i'm not a proponent of split tax right and i think you know that however i think i think predictability is very an important issue here and if we maintain it the way you're suggesting everyone will have an i take they can do the budgeting and everything and i think i think it is more equitable i mean we're in tough economic times i mean hopefully if the sewer project goes through and everything business will improve and in we can look at the tech situation again so even though i'm don't like split tax rates but i understand the need for this and the need to maintain what we what we have to be equitable everybody so  i am a fan also of the the single tax rate i remember the discussion two years ago and that's why you know i probably would have voted the same way two years ago as as i did having the information before would h me i think i would i came into that meeting not expecting a recommendation for a split rate because it's never happened before but the reasoning made sense and i think it's important for people understand that the commercial did drop down in residential maybe drop down but not as much so keep in the single rate would have been more of a detriment to the residential so i think we just did the percentages and i think the expectation of the hope was to keep the payments the same even though the but at the same time you know looking at the cycle of the economy i had it in my mind that over two or three years we would adjust back in order order to adjust back i think i was assuming that the rate drops and stuff would stabilize i was surprised to see this year that the commercial dropped a lot more than the residential i'd love to get back to the single  maybe it's a lot to do in one year but the other side of the coin is if you go back to the single rate and i understand what the spread sheet say but in a larger kind of stepping back and look at what the single rate does to if you recall the vision what we're trying to say that to the businesses a lot of the jobs a lot of the income a lot of the you know you look at the five year projection and we're looking for receipts in more developed means more coming in that single rate that single rate may give the businesses a push to have confidence to invest in the town where over the last couple years they were treated differently in a lot of the businesses although they are in town a lot of the businesses are not in town so they don't even get to vote and they don't you know a lot use that the tax items such as schools and things like the residential so there is a i don't want people to lose sight there is a benefit for a split i mean i'm sorry single tax rate the message that we're sending to the businesses that over time you'll get more of an investment into the town because of that and so i thought that would be a healthy discussion for the board to have as well where it doesn't put it simply i hope that's what the fluid will vote for to maintain the status quo and to maintain a certain degree of fairness i think you have to do that you have to think about who makes up the residential you know we speak of it is as sort of a single entity but you know you have people who just got a cut in their food stamps living in town residential or maybe living paying rent someplace which i think is also taxed as residential and it gets passed on so you know there are lots of people  who i think would be gratified to think that there was a philosophical effort on the part of the board to do the equitable thing you know in terms of and i often hear it said about businesses you know and i understand this is drivers of the economy small business i would buy into the idea that they are i haven't heard that a lot of businesses have moved out of town since we have a split tax rate and i haven't heard that businesses haven't come in fact  there are some businesses clamoring to come in as we all know and finally just another thought occurred to me as i was listening over there i'm fortunate enough to own a second home and cape cod and you think about what you get so you know that's nothing's ever completely fair i think we have to accept that and i'm happy to hear people just speaking in terms of the philosophy of equitability that's where i think we should be as a town i think it's something we can be proud of  even equitable not a single tax rate i think we went halfway between what we started and what we were last year is a consideration for the board to inch it towards back towards a single jim i agree with you but had the commercial not dropped as much as it had they might be some appetite for that but the commercials going in the wrong direction and this is actually a balancing act of the presenting to us you know hopefully next year the you know commercial properties will rise and then we can this point hopefully the percentages would all go on not just one side and we can move to a more split in the future but judging by the board i see it going with the