Robert Harrington: Current-use assessments have helped small farms survive

To The Daily Sun,

I would like to offer a local perspective on the article discussing the divide on the issue of New Hampshire’s Use-value Assessment, aka current use assessment. My family moved to the farm on White Oaks Road in 1948.

We farmed some 150 plus acres that had been disused for many years in an area considered prime development land (recognized by the City as such many years later by placing a large-lot zoning restriction on White Oaks Road to “maintain its rural character”), put myself and my two brothers through the Laconia school system and over many years hired local folks (many of them teenagers) to help run the operations.

Current use assessment was key in allowing my family to maintain a successful operation, but one that never made a lot of money.  In due course I took over the ownership of the farm, although by that time my mother had needed to sell about half of the property to support her declining years.  In more recent years, with residential development crowding around us on all sides, my wife and I decided to grant a conservation easement to the City of Laconia to keep it as agricultural land, as we realized that at some point we would need to sell the farm and retire.

During the time that current use assessment was available for our property the assessment for tax purposes was divided into assessment of the buildings at their current assessed value and the land assessed at its value as farm and forest land.  We paid what was deemed as fair taxes over the years and the property did not produce many children to burden the school system or require City services of water and sewer utilities (however, Laconia did extend a sewer line as far as our property  around the 1980’s because of residence development on the Laconia end of White Oaks Road). I expect that this pattern applies to much of New Hampshire, allowing many small farms to survive under sometimes difficult financial times.  Obviously, instances can be found where the system may seem to have been abused, especially in the southern tier of the state, but even then one must look at how each individual property is assessed.

Robert Harrington

Laconia