New Meredith valuations will be online this summer

As the town-wide, state-ordered property revaluation effort nears conclusion, the Board of Selectmen yesterday unanimously voted to authorized the Internet posting of almost all of the same information contained on the assessing cards kept at Town Hall. Concurring with a recommendation from Town Assessor Jim Commerford, the board agreed to exclude only the mailing address of property owners from the online data base.

The data base will be prepared and maintained by Vision Appraisal Technology, the Massachusetts firm that that was contracted to do the revaluation. It will be made available to anyone with Internet access in late June or early July, the same time each property owner will receive a letter informing them of their new, preliminary "fair market" valuation. There will be an appeal process and Commerford said posting the assessing information online will "make the whole (revaluation) job a lot better in the long run" because it will encourage people who did not make their buildings available for a "walkthrough" to challenge the information listed on their card — the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc.

Commerford also suggested that a password system be used for access to the data base — arguing that it would provide property owners with some assurance "that we can track who is using the information — but selectmen rejected that idea. "I have concluded the liability ghost is a phantom ghost," said Frank Michel, stressing that everything being talked about was a mater of public record. "It's (already) all available at Town Hall," he added.

Michel and Miler Lovett were in favor of including mailing addresses as well, but Chairman Peter Miller was joined by Colette Worsman and Peter Brothers in resisting that idea. Commerford told the board that taxpayers are not going to need mailing addresses to compare their valuations with comparable properties. All they will need are street addresses. He said he had heard concerns that the online posting of mailing addresses could be used to generate mailing lists.

Miller said the Selectboard was disappointed to learn that only 50-percent of the homes in Meredith have received a "walkthrough" by Vision's field personnel. He added, however, that the company's managers were comfortable that level comfortably falls within industry standards for such an exercise and he predicted it would grow once taxpayers begin to question the reasonsing behind their valuations.

In response to a question, Commerford said the outside of every building in town had been viewed and measured during the process.

The information that will be posted online for each parcel of land will include the new valuation for both land and building(s), the owner's name, the physical address, a photo of all buildings, and a sketch of the exterior dimensions, as well as the usual property descriptions. The query features of the data base will allow browsers to locate any properties they would like to review by street name and number, by owner's name or by map/block/lot/unit number.

The online data will be accompanied by a disclaimer that the information furnished "is for the convenience of the user" and "is not the official record of the Town of Meredith". The "official" town records will remain in the assessing office at Town Hall.

Vision Appraisal officials are expected to make a major presentation on their Meredith revaluation project to the selectmen at their June 19 meeting.

The final, new valuations will be used to calculate the 2006 property tax bills that will be due and payable in December.