I just read Laurie Rossiter’s letter to the editor (Cochrane Eagle, March 3) about the property assessments that recently got sent out to Cochrane homeowners and couldn’t agree more. She is bang-on and I am also floored by this.
I live in just a regular house, and haven’t made any improvements or upgrades in over seven years, yet my assessment went up $38,000. Last year, the description read “Residential Single Family,” and this year it reads “Single Family Improved,” despite me indicating in the online census form a few months ago that no changes have been made to the house or property.
I have called the office twice to try to get an explanation, but both times was forwarded to a voicemail box, where I left messages, but nobody has called me back yet.
In this economy, there is no way housing prices have gone up that much. Have the people doing these assessments listened to any news in the past year? If so, shouldn’t they be aware of the economic situation, and that prices are going down, not up?
I suspect I will not hear back until the complaint-filing deadline is upon us, so that I will have no opportunity to do anything about it. Even at that, I believe their process will be to instruct me to get an independent assessment done, thereby forcing me into spending money for that, or just give-in and pay them the extra tax dollars, either of which is going to cost me money I can’t really afford at the moment (layoffs have impacted us too).
Of course, the elephant in the room is that the town is doing this as a way of just raising extra tax dollars without having to increase any tax rates. By simply stating that all of our houses are worth 8-10 per cent more than they really are, they will increase their taxation revenue by 8-10 per cent without ever having to justify a tax-rate increase.
Until I get a fair explanation of what is going on, I must assume that they are being dishonest with us all.
John Rouette
