Briarcrest assessments are indeed screwed up

Aware of a pending increase in assessments on their manufactured homes of up to 45-percent, Briarcrest residents such as Bob Thornton called foul late last week. Noting that his 1,800 square foot manufactured home jumped from $150,900 to $214,700, Thornton admitted to being stunned. “There’s no way my home is worth that,” he insisted.

Laconia Assessor Bob Camp agrees. “There’s definitely something wrong,” he said on Monday. “We’re looking at that right now and trying to figure out if there’s something in the coding system in our new software.”

Camp said that in reviewing the assessments in Briarcrest he found there were about 20-odd sales in the 12-months before April 1, 2005, some above and some below assessments. “But our highest sale is $145,000,” he said. “So something isn’t correct.”

Property assessments, for tax purposes, are supposed to indicate the "fair market value" of a property as of April 1 of any given year.

Camp and City Manager Eileen Cabanel vowed to get the problem fixed as soon as possible. “We have a Board of Assessors meeting on Nov. 29 and we’ll see if we can’t get a group adjustment on Briarcrest,” Camp said.

For Briarcrest residents the snafu means they’ll have to complete the tax abatement process because the 2005 tax rate is being set today (Tuesday) and Cabanel said the problem is not simple enough to fix in one day. "We have a very sophisticated software system and many of the Briarcrest homes were apparently coded as condos," she said.

Cabanel said the valuations will be changed later in the week and then Camp will contact the effected homeowners and they will be "walked through the abatement process". "It will be very simple," she added.

The City Manager said the tax bills that will soon go in the mail will contain the incorrect valuations but it is the city's intention to complete the abatement process before the tax bills are actually due to be paid.

Apologizing for the mix up, Cabanel acknowledged the severity of the problem and said she understood why people were alarmed.

“That’s good news,” said Brenda Thornton, Bob’s wife. “We knew there had to be something wrong. I just hope they get it fixed before we have to pay the tax bill.”

Brenda Baer, Briarcrest resident and Ward 4 candidate for City Council, was equally pleased with the news. “I think everyone recognized immediately that something was amiss,” she said. “It says a lot about the people in City Hall that they quickly grasped the problem and are determined to fix it.”

(Ed Engler contributed to this report.)