Board of Equalization Meeting   6/15/2026

Okay, I call this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Equalization for June 15th, 2026 to order.

Can we have a roll call, please?

Frank Friedman, present.

David Mitchell, present.

All right, has everyone had a chance to look at the minutes from the June 12th meeting?

Yes.

Do we have a motion to approve?

I have a motion to approve the minutes from the June 12th meeting and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Aye.

All right.

We'll get started with our first hearing for application number 73, 671, Kearsarge Circle, GD East Hall.

As I told you, you get 10 minutes and then seven minutes and you get three, but we'll make sure everybody gets heard.

Okay.

Everybody who's going to testify, do you swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth?

Yes, I do.

You probably have time to just

Look at my letter here.

It just seems that the real estate tax increases are very arbitrary and going up 18% per year is not sustainable, regardless of the bidding war that we see going on in the county.

Now, what I noticed for the first time

is looking at home sales.

Some homes actually have sold for less than their assessed value.

I find that very ironic.

And I don't think I've ever really seen that occur in the past.

But what I wanted to do is just talk about my house and what it's being compared to.

Because these homes are so different in the county,

I understand that it is difficult to try to match up homes, especially my house, with something that's comparable.

But as I indicated in the letter, families are really looking for family homes.

And while this property is unique, it's very hard to accommodate today's lifestyle.

And I did include pictures of the

Some of the work that has to be done on my house.

And the other homes that I pulled up that were comps to mine were in pristine condition.

I mean pristine condition.

One house that I thought that was almost similar to my house was the one on Plank Road.

And you've got pictures.

You can see the inside of the house.

It's got a garage, three car.

It's got over three acres.

It's got a huge kitchen that you can dine in.

It even has a, from a different view, which I didn't make, has a working station.

It has a walk-in pantry.

Again, more accommodating to what people want in today's homes.

My kitchen was renovated in 2008

and just utilizing the space that was there which was not a primary space and it indicates that there was like quality cabinets but it really wasn't.

They were kind of like plastic resin and this kitchen now has really aged and you cannot dine in my kitchen at all.

The other thing that really stands out is the fact that the porch has fallen off the side of the house, which I've yet to restore, which wasn't comparable to anything I saw with other houses, and they all had outdoor living space, they had patios,

I really don't have any of this and I did build an extra bedroom on the back which has to be redone because attaching structures to rock is a very difficult thing.

The basement speaks for itself.

The laundry room was made by pushing out space where the butler's pantry was on the side of the house and that

That utility room is actually in the foyer.

And I'm not sure if I included a picture of the foyer.

I hope I did.

Yeah.

So here's where the utility room is.

An unlikely place to have a utility room in your foyer.

But this is the only place they could put it.

So it's probably 7 by 8.

It's got a washer and dryer in it, an ironing board, and that's about it for that space.

This closet's not really a closet.

There is an air conditioning unit in this particular door.

The bathrooms are typical of a bathroom during that period of time.

They're not a primary room at all.

and the closet space is very, very limited other than a small walk-in in that new addition on the back of the house.

You can see from the kitchen, the cabinets and this is a huge, what do you call them?

It's a large,

Where the stove is, the stove top is located in this unit here.

Thank you.

Thank you very much in the island.

You can fit three bar stools on that island, but that's it.

The dining room is typical of a dining room.

from that period.

It's a nice dining room.

And then the living room is on the side where the porch has fallen off, and it's about 25 by 17.

And that's really the only gathering space in this house.

So I pulled up this Zillow home that just went on the market.

Five bedrooms, four baths, more square footage.

You can kind of look at it and see it's very well made.

Beautiful new windows.

All the homes that were renovated that were comps to my house all had new windows.

And even this home that was assessed for $1.2 million, the one on Plank Road, but it sold for $999,000 and it is in much better shape than my home.

and it has over three and a half acres and that's pretty substantial and I understand it's got mountain views and it's got the garage.

This house is less than my home.

It has one and a half acres.

It has an ample space for utility rooms, storage as you can see from the pictures, the driveway is in

great shape, that's appealing, it's got outdoor living space, garage, full basement, eating kitchen, dining room, living room, and I left out another living room that was part of this picture, no actually I took to this here,

and then of course the windows are all in great shape.

So, you know, when I look at these homes and I look at what has to be done to my house,

It's great that it's a rock house but that's to me all it is.

I have to remove the chimney.

I've spent over three thousand dollars trying to have a brick mason or a mason come in and stop the chimney from leaking in the kitchen.

It's not

stopping, so now a builder's told me that it just has to be removed because there's really no purpose for that chimney that's in the kitchen area.

So that has to be removed.

The other chimney, unfortunately, I've spent quite a bit of money on that.

The flashing, I've had, again, a mason come out.

It still continues to leak in the upstairs master bedroom.

I can add pictures to show you this if you would like to get those.

So, I just don't believe that it's a fair comparison of my home and the other homes that

It's being compared to.

If anything, the house on Plank Road would be the most similar, but you've got a three-car garage, you've got, it looks like it's in meticulous shape, and it's got three and a half acres, yet it sold for 999,000, and my home is assessed without repairing anything for 984,000.

and so that's where I stand and this continuation of going up by 15% every year, 18% last year and I've done no work on this house.

In fact, anybody that walked into my home would mandate that certain things have to be done in order to bring this to a value

that is worth almost a million dollars.

Now, some gazillionaire can come in and say, I've got plenty of money and I can throw it at this house.

But again, I don't think that we should be assessing houses for potential buyers and what we think the buyer is willing to pay.

For a family of four, a lot has to be done to this house in order to accommodate the types of needs

that families want to see in a home.

I mean, it doesn't even have an outdoor living space and the porch has to be reattached on the side of the house.

So, from that perspective, if all my windows have to be replaced, I do plan on doing all of this work.

but I just feel very strongly that there's a lot more going on here than just comparing this property to these other properties that are very dissimilar other than the one on Plank Road.

All right, thank you.

Mr. Lynch?

So first of all, there's a lot of kind of misconceptions about assessments out there.

A lot of people think that they always trail the sale price and ultimately always trail market value.

But as we've talked before, when we do the sales study and we're finding the median ratio in the sales study, half of the properties that sell are

The assessment is below the sale price and a half of them, the assessment is above the sale price.

So it is not only normal, it happens every single year that half the properties that sell will be assessed above the sale price and a half will be below the sale price.

And that's on the chart, these three

Exactly, and that's best for this specific neighborhood.

Exactly.

And so I get...

It's actually, there are a lot less, and you know, you'll get a chance to... Yeah, yeah.

Actually, it's more like 60%, 70% for this neighborhood that are below the sale price, because there's ratios for the first, I don't know, it's 10% or so on the list, or below 100%.

And

We do not, if you look at page four of our, what we provided, we provided some compables to show things that are similar to the subject.

We had a couple here that are old homes like the subject, even older actually than the subject.

The one that she was referring to on Plank Road is actually 200 years old and

None of these are identical to our property.

So we're not trying to say that this property shows that your house is exactly assessed.

There are similarities to all of these in size and location and grade and style.

So all of that information just

use the model to value those different types of properties that have similarities but also dissimilarities to the subject property.

The model works pretty well.

Now even these sales, the assessments are below

So there's another year of appreciation on that house since it sold in 2024, which is why it's much further above the sale price than the normal, the other sales that took place in 2025.

I believe Jeff has done the inspection on this property that this property is properly assessed.

We do not assess a porch where the porch has fallen off and was removed.

We have 10% functional obsolescence on the property for the small kitchen, the original baths, other issues related to the design.

and we have an average plus.

Average plus in this case means average would mean a house that was built in 1926 but wasn't renovated since then.

Average plus means it was renovated, which it definitely was renovated.

It has, as you can see in the pictures she provided, a new kitchen and other bathrooms and things have been upgraded over time.

But while that normally would be good or higher,

Due to some of the condition issues, some of the deferred maintenance items like the peeling paint and some of the pictures that she showed and the water damage, that brought it down to average plus.

So we believe that the condition is appropriate, the grade is appropriate for this house, and the valuation

Do you have anything to add from your inspection, Jeff, based on anything you've heard here?

It's great based on the quality of build of the house.

What adjustments?

The lot is is below, it's smaller than two acres.

So in the rural areas, anything smaller than two acres has a size adjustment.

It's all home site and it has size adjustment for being less than two acres.

So we reduced that based on a schedule of five was 23% because of the size of 1.15 acres.

Also the location, the cure sarge kind of

Subdivision within the rural area has a 1.3 or 30 percent premium on it from... That's only on the land?

That's only on the land, yes.

Can you tell me what the sub-area totals to 178?

So the bathrooms, fireplaces, the basement, cooling, heating, roofing, and the porch.

The porch has fallen off.

No, no, no.

There are porches that are...

There's a porch on the front.

The porch is not falling off, it is removed.

The porch was right here, is gone.

Where is the 10% functional obsolescence?

Yeah.

So it's incorporated in that 29%?

How do we come up with the 10% functional obsolescence?

So I mean, I'll just, like why not 5%, why not 20%?

I just felt like 10% was an adequate number for the small kitchen and the bathrooms.

It's kind of a, so as we're looking at different properties,

and comparing what the issues related to different properties are, this type of issue with the small kitchen and the bathrooms, those layout issues would be generally at 10% for this issue.

So it's hard to really describe exactly, you know, like we give this much

And it's on the improvements.

On the improvements, yes.

Are you talking about you reduced, because of the functional obsolescence, you reduced it around $100,000?

That's one of the improvements also.

On the improvements, correct.

So the improvements would have been, oops.

Yeah, I can tell you.

Without the functional, I mean, yeah, the functional, 924.

Instead of the current premium value.

It was $120,000.

Correct.

10% functional upload, kitchen.

Right.

114.

Yes, thank you.

So I wondered why the land is at 180 and Peacock Drive with about the same number of acres is 143.

and why would this peacock drive home be on the market for 879,000 with all these incredible amenities located not far from me at all and about the same number of acres.

Yes.

And Kearsarge Circle where I live has just got these retro houses around.

It was one piece of property, it was an estate,

and then in 1964, the heirs sold off all the parcels and there are just these anything houses, kit houses.

It's not like a pristine neighborhood, if you will.

It's very retro and nobody is allowed to have a two-story home in Kearsarge Circle

except for my house because it was there first.

So they're all one floor little houses that are around me.

So when you look at a quality of a neighborhood, certainly these homes eventually probably will be knocked down and something else built.

But I guess I also am confused as to why the value of

Plank Road is 1.2 but it's sold for 999,000 and I don't understand how my home is only 10,000 thereabouts less than this home which offers so much more.

And it's much older and it's in pristine condition and it's got more acreage, it's got a garage,

It just sold in, um, yeah.

Yeah, 15%, but, well, I get that, you know.

I mean, I get that.

What's, you know,

That house literally sat on the market for probably close to two years.

Old homes are only attracting special investors because they're going to have to dump a lot of money into a house.

Unlike this home at Peacock Hill, it is move-in ready.

It has all the amenities, decent space downstairs, the basement, bedrooms,

Baths with two sinks, walk-in closets, eat-in kitchen, just a big difference.

Has this sold?

So one of the risks is the assessor and anybody who's likely to make an argument against their assessment

We really, we pay attention to what happened in 2025 for sales.

This sale that you point out here can be anecdotal, but this won't come into account for the assessment for 2027, assuming this sells in 2026.

Right.

I mean, if you think about look back, then that makes no sense that it's a 79, but that's all right.

Well, looking back then, the assessment is a look back.

Yes.

This is what people think the market is or what a real estate agent is or no, you don't know the motivations of the people, but you know, the data that we need to look at has to be in 2025 for sales and then what the assessments are with this.

and everybody else.

Our goal here is to make sure everybody is treated fairly.

Equally.

Not fairly.

Equally.

And that's the math.

Equally unfair.

So the house, which I didn't make pictures, is an absolutely stunning home that has been completely renovated, was the 675 Broad Axe.

And you can go online and take a look at that.

It's another comp that they used and it's in pristine condition.

They did major renovations.

Yes, yeah.

And I didn't make pictures of this, but it's stunning.

And then what I'm going to say about that is I literally had Schneider come to my home to do something very similar and builders want $1.2 million to do these renovations on my existing home

My son's a builder, a real estate developer, and he goes, Mom, if you want to spend 1.2 million, go buy a new house.

Yes, right at the assessment value.

Yes, but it is stunning.

I mean, it's a world different than my home.

So it's got more square footage.

It's got more bedrooms.

It's got more bathrooms.

Yeah, the problem I'm having is comparing a 1926 home with homes today.

And in the comps, we only have two that are what I would call older homes.

All the other comps are new.

From your experience with older homes in the other parts of the county, is the adjustment that you're making the 29%

Adequate for homes this old?

How does it compare with other hundred-year-old homes?

That's the problem I'm having.

It's very difficult to compare this home with something built in the last couple of years.

From your experience looking countywide, is the demand for the older homes there?

Is the price being paid at the assessed value?

Yes, so obviously you don't have as many of those each year, which is why we provided two here

one from 24 and one from 25, which they sold those years.

And we do see there is a demand for them, and they sell for a good amount of money.

Can I just tie this back to something we talked about earlier?

So the 6742 Plank Road and the 4042 Dick Woods Roads are both the older properties.

I think there's a big difference between an older property that's been fully renovated and modernized and one that has not.

And that's the part where I'm having a little bit of a difficult time connecting the dots here.

So I'm on the same page as Frank.

where I feel like it's really hard with these older houses.

But I think, you know, for me, like the real crux of the issue is sort of how well renovated they are.

Yeah, the windows, everything is in pristine condition with that home.

But I did want to point out that when you look at older homes, that home was on the market, if I'm not mistaken, for a couple of years.

It didn't sell right away.

I think families are really looking for, they don't want to move into a house and think that they've got to raise their kids in a renovation.

So Mr. Naughton, some of the pictures that she provided most of them are of other properties

and she provided all the really nice pictures of the properties.

There is, I believe that's your kitchen.

That is my kitchen.

And there's a picture of the closet and then there's basically every other picture is just a, you know, maintenance issues in the basement.

And those maintenance issues are typically peeling paint.

So, I mean,

OK.

I've got some pictures of the foyer that you see.

I've got a couple of pictures of the bedroom.

Nothing's been renovated other than the kitchen.

And that addition on the back of the house.

We've got a bathroom?

No.

I have a question about the condition.

The older properties on Plank and Dickwoods, you have them as good?

Correct.

Those are full renovations is what you're saying?

Like all bathrooms, all kitchens?

Yes.

Okay.

Then she has a kitchen, the bathroom

Do you know if, what are your?

No, nothing's been renovated.

as far as the other baths are concerned.

That bath that you see with...

The tub to the left and the...

Okay.

The master bath is the one you see.

That's not a master bath.

That's a...

in the hallway.

There's another bathroom that you should see that is the master bath.

I have a question about the condition of the average plus.

How does it feel in paint and all that?

You'd have to have some systems that are not functioning.

That's average.

Well, if it's been renovated and it's got those problems, they would kind of average out the average.

If it was never renovated with those problems, it would be unfair.

But you have to look at kind of the positives and negatives.

This would be the master bathroom for the master bedroom.

There's a toilet that you can't see, but this is the size of the, it's the original from when I moved in.

922-600, call for permission.

Yeah, I'm on board with that.

I mean, I was thinking that maybe the functional obsolescence was a little too low, but that's kind of another way to get at the same issue.

Yes.

Both of them operate through the same thing.

You want to make a motion?

Sure, I'll make a motion.

For application 73, address 671 here, Sarge Circle.

I move that we reduce, you know, help me here, the improvements down to 742,400.

742, how much?

400.

400, yes.

All right, we have a motion regarding application number 73.

Do I have a motion and a second?

All in favor?

Aye.

The next app we're convinced here.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, we're coming a little behind.

All righty, the next application is application number four, 1524, Burch's Creek Road, Jesse Woodbury.

I need to swear you in.

You swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth.

I do.

Okay.

I sent an email on Friday with a letter that I think looks forward to y'all.

I'll just go over it briefly.

I live at 1524 Burgess Creek Road.

Moved in in 2004 with my wife.

We've been there ever since.

When we got our assessment this year, saw that our levy went up 26% last year, over 40% from 2024, which

Kind of caught my attention a little bit, so we called in and asked for an explanation.

Mr. Scholl explained that due to market conditions, my assessment was going up.

He also provided the computer-aided evaluation model for my application.

When I read the model, I came across the economic obsolescence description, which states that there's a reduction in value due to issues outside of the property, such as a view of or proximity to cell tower or power lines, heavy traffic or traffic noise.

Not being an expert in real estate or comparisons or any of that business, I'm a carpenter,

I don't know how our house looks compared to other houses, but I do know that last year Verizon completed a cell tower directly across the street from our house on Miller School's land.

The tower, the base of the tower is 90 feet from our property line, and the tower itself is 90 feet tall, so it is built as close as possible to the property line.

as well as from Windows and Fortress of Our Own.

There is a tree buffer per the plan of the developer that includes a dozen loblolly pines which are supposed to be maintained but anybody that's lived in Virginia long enough knows that a loblolly pine isn't necessarily a dependable piece of screen.

Our property card currently shows a value of zero for economic obsolescence.

Given that you can't build one closer than the one that is close to our house, I feel like we qualify as having a tower proximal to our home, to our property.

and I have views of the tower, we have views of the tower as well.

So in my mind, you know, in a year where our assessment goes up 26% and this tower is constructed across the street from our home but is not being, you know, is not being considered in terms of what it's doing to the value of our

I'm looking for someone to explain to me why the tower that is both proximal and visible is not being considered in our assessment.

That's sort of the

You know, that's my issue.

It's not, I won't waste your time talking about the condition of my house.

That's probably debatable too as a carpenter.

Just like the toddlers, children that wear no shoes, the carpenter's home is never finished and never quite as nice as other people in the house think it should be.

But I've submitted also some photography showing the relative proximity of our home

to the towers as well as a copy of the site plan from the Verizon building permit which shows that not only is the tower 90 feet from our house, the base station is 75 feet from our house and that the lease that Verizon has is 50 feet from the property line.

So the proximity there shouldn't really be debatable.

Also have a picture that

shows the brown monocle visible from our yard and our house.

So there's visibility as well.

And then finally, a picture that the assessor took when he came out to look earlier in the year from the site towards our home.

And you can see our home through the thin loblolly screening.

I got one quick question.

You said it was 50 feet from the house?

Property.

Property.

Property.

Yes, you said the house.

No, yes.

Okay.

So, if you look at this cell tower on the drone, it's quite obvious.

If you look at it from our aerial photograph, you can see it very well.

I was trying to figure out when I was reviewing this after Jeff had written up the file review and if you look and if you look at the pictures that we provide in there, you know, right up, unlike, listen to me a bit, I don't see a cell tower anywhere.

And so I drove out there

and stood on the front porch with her and she's like, yeah, it's right there.

And it was this picture on the top of page four.

And I'm like, I can't see it.

Finally, I could see the brown pole.

Now we're in the middle of, you know, leaf on time.

I'm sure you see it better during the winter, but I had a real problem

taking any value off or something that I couldn't even see when I'm standing on the front book.

And we're not going to put any economic development, economic obsolescence on a house if you can see it from, if you see the cell tower from somewhere else on the property.

and you're closer to the cell tower if you're further over here on the property I'm assuming and maybe you can see a bit over there.

Also, I had to look it up because he referred to, and I said this the other day if somebody had read our documents, and I commend them for reading it because I never know how many people actually read these things we put out there.

But we have never adjusted for a cell tower for economic obsolescence.

I had to run a report to make sure, and we adjust for it.

or power lines, that's kind of one of the big ones.

Power lines, which we talked about before and heavy traffic.

Well, railroad actually isn't under economic obsolescence.

That'll be an adjustment on land, but I don't think we have any for off-sales.

Proximity to roads, stuff like that, I think.

Those are the heavy traffic problems.

That's what we do.

We actually have used economic obsolescence never for a cell tower.

This is the first time I think I remember anybody having this issue and raising it.

But we definitely looked at it, and as you can see in these pictures,

You really can't see that tower.

You can see the brown pole.

The whole reason they painted brown is to blend in with the trees.

To me, it was really good.

No, not one of those.

To me, those stand out even more than the regular.

cell towers too.

But besides that, besides, you know, mine visually looking at it, Jeff visually looking at the cell tower, we were interested in, are there any sales that show, or is there any sales information that might tell us that

the cell tower being in some proximity to a property that sells has any effect on the sale price.

And we don't have, it's very hard to break out exactly what effect the cell tower would have and based on how far it is and if you can see it or not with all other issues that are in the sale.

But like everything else, we look at sales and groups of sales

The number of sales from 2025 in which our median ratio is about just under 100% is just normal actually for this.

They range from 91 to 108%, so all of that is normal for any sales study that we would run.

It's not showing that these properties

had some odd issue that would skew them in one direction or the other.

We would expect if there was a real issue with these properties, it would have the ratios be high.

So when I was looking at this, I had a, it's probably asking a question that's a breach too far,

Could you pull up a map of one of the two of these and see how close the cell tower is?

What's that?

In order to just grab any that were, you know, that fall into a range, we used 500 feet from... Yeah, the document says 500 feet from the parcel line to parcel line.

Exactly.

So we were able to do a search on our GIS site to just pull in parcel, any sale parcel that was placed to a cell tower parcel that has the 500B.

And then we narrowed down from that.

So this is a general kind of study in which we used the three different years, but then we looked more closely at the five sales on page nine and

you know tried to see if there was any and these are not all from 2025 but we know exactly how far the tower is from the house in this case because we were able to measure it.

We know the height of the tower and you know we can see what the ratios indicate and they again they

The ratios for each of these sales have a range.

Obviously, if the sale was in 2024 or 2023, those ratios would typically already be at 110, 100, and 1,520 percent because they're older sales.

But nothing in this has

Batesville is a historic district.

The tower had to get a special, there was permitting that went involved in front of the historic resources.

We were notified well in advance of this tower being constructed.

My wife was upset to the point where we spoke to two realtors and both of them told us that if we were going to sell our house prior to the tower being built, we would have to disclose the fact that there was going to be this tower constructed across the street and that we should expect 10 to 15%, an offer to be discounted 10 to 15% over what they would think would be a sales, ideal sales target.

I don't know about the rest of the comps that you're looking at.

I don't know how you figured out how far my house is to the tower or any of that stuff.

I mean, I guess it's GIS.

But what I do know is that on page 17 of your model, it loses proximity or visibility to a cell tower as the number one example of economic obsolescence.

It's in this.

You can look at this.

I only have one copy of this.

We used it as things that might cause economic or external obsolescence because they're external to the property, but we have never actually adjusted for that one item.

I just have a quick comment for my fellow board members.

I'll just say that if there was a cell tower being built within 100 feet of my house, even if it was going to be obscured part of the year because of being painted in trees or whatever, I know my wife would also be very upset and she would view it as a negative.

And so I just, I'm sympathetic to the idea that

Whether it really causes severe economic harm or not, there's certainly going to be a perception among some people that it's an undesirable feature.

And I know in the past when we've had this with power lines, you know, we've been able to make adjustments for power lines as routine.

And I have a hard time, you know, a cell tower 200 feet away, I would be less concerned about.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

The cell tower is actually 225 or 7 feet away from the house.

To what corner of the house?

To the front of the house.

It might be 90 feet away from the property line, but it's not 90 feet away from the house.

Okay.

So I kind of am on the same page as Mr. Norton.

I mean, if you have to have, everything's the same and you have it without the cell tower and you have it with the cell tower, there's got to be some difference there.

Although I'll ask the most important question.

Do you have good cell service?

I mean, somebody could say, hey, I'm down with the cell tower right next door.

That was it.

I didn't move.

I did in my house.

I think that's true, but then there's a sliding scale in the distance.

That's right.

Sliding scale in the distance.

Right.

I mean, if it's visible, I mean, I would argue it's probably visible half

So I think when we looked at the high tension power lines, the adjustment was in the order of magnitude of 10%.

So to me, this would be certainly less than that.

So if it were 5%, I think that would be,

Economic obsolescence is on the improvements.

That's all.

Okay, I saw that clearly.

I could go.

So 5% on the improvement would be about $30,000?

Approximately, yes.

So we'd drop it to 791.5.

which would be about 36, 35,200 I think if my math is right.

What does that make the total?

791-500.

I'll make a motion that we apply a 5% economic obsolescence, is that what we're calling it?

Right.

on the improvements which would make the total value 791,500 for application number 4, 1524, Birch's Creek Road.

Second.

I have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The brave new world.

Yes, it is.

Thank you, Jeff.

But it's awesome.

I loved it when they built the tower next to me.

I wish that they were.

Years ago, they were all over the county getting potential sites.

Talking about shelf power.

You might want to modify a little bit of that.

Language in your document to reflect that there are variables about visibility, distance, so that they're not all treated the same.

Yeah, that was if there's a mouse and it's on this side and it's 100 feet with no... Yeah, that there are variables in the

But they also do put them on top heels.

You got to be careful with what you're writing that it's clear in all situations.

All right, we're going to get started on application number 75, 1276 Still Meadow Avenue, James Wilkinson.

We have another appraiser who's coming, who actually inspected the property.

Okay.

So, if you know, we'll not disappoint.

Lewis went to get him.

Okay.

I just realized.

So you got to swear.

All right, Nathan, swear you guys in.

You swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth.

Yeah.

Okay.

Application number 75-1276, Still Meadow Avenue, James Wilkinson.

So the way we'll do this is you have 10 minutes to present your case.

You'll have seven minutes to do it.

You have three minutes to rebut, but we're going to be flexible and you have the time to say it to me.

Well, thank you everyone for having me.

My name is James Wilkinson and I'm here about the assessment of our home at 1276 Del Meadow Avenue.

I do want to just check and make sure this is okay.

I know Frank Friedman.

He's my neighbor or both my neighbor.

Yeah, I used to live in 1275 and he's 1276.

I no longer live there.

Are you okay with that?

I just wanted to make sure we were doing it.

All right.

So I'm asking the board to reduce the assessment from 981-9 to reflect more accurate current market value of around $960,000, which would be consistent with an independent fee appraisal that was completed in March 2026.

I want to focus on three different points.

First, just that the appraisal we had done provides current and objective evidence.

It was conducted on-site in March 26 by a licensed independent appraiser for mortgage lending purposes, so the appraiser had no financial stake in either a high or low number, and that appraisal concluded with a value of $960,000, which is $21,900 below the current assessment.

Second, the assessor's comparable sales data when you look at the Stillmeadows sales doesn't actually support the value of 981.9.

The assessor presented five comps of those, four from Stillmeadows sales in 2025.

After the assessor's own grade and condition adjustments, those came in at 881.2, 852.8, 810.2, and 795.7.

So every one of them is below the current assessment and several by a significant margin.

So to get to a number that supports 981-9, the assessor relied on two comps that stand apart from the rest of the data.

Comp 1 is the only same-grade managing still meadow, but it's from 2024.

It's more than 18 months old.

Before 2025, still meadow sales, which better reflect the current market, bulk even below the assessment, even after adjustment.

And then comp number five, it comes from a different neighborhood entirely, Oak Hill Farm.

It's 12 miles away.

It has a lower desirability multiplier than Still Meadow.

It's 18 years newer than our house and had a $37,000 downward land adjustment for a power line easement.

So neither of those comps is a clean like-for-like comparison to our property.

Third, the assessor's analysis of our own submitted comp supports a lower number.

The assessor's report describes our comparable number one

a same grade B plus one home in Cascadia that sold in November 2025 this quote a good comp to the subject that sale adjusted came in comes in at 957 which is 31,000 below our current assessment and it's a more recent sale in the assessor's own primary comp so to summarize if you take out the one comp that's a year and a half old and the one comp that comes from a different neighborhood the recent relevant same data same area data points point toward a value at or below

$960,000.

So, for those reasons, I'm requesting that the Board consider reducing the assessment on 1276 Still Meadow Avenue consistent with the independent appraisal.

Thanks for the chance to speak to you today.

All right, Mr. Lynch.

Well, first of all, I'm not really sure why we're here today for

$20,000 in assessed value.

This fee appraiser did an independent job of $960,000 value.

We have a value of 981 9th assessment.

That's pretty close.

And if you've got 10 different appraisers appraise this property, I'm sure you'll come up with 10 different values that range, probably a much bigger range than $20,000.

Yeah, kind of speak for themselves.

My comments in the owner-provided comparables, yes, they are all lower assessments because they are inferior in some way.

They are low-grade, they're smaller, they're not renovated.

Any combination of those are provided.

Comparables have different

Other differences, they're just the same.

They're gonna be the same grade but smaller.

They're gonna be a lower grade but the same size.

Some are renovated and some are not.

But I think all of these, both the ones the owner provided, which just have lower values necessary, actually they all have lower values because they're all kind of inferior to the subject, but they all support

I really can't just look at the bottom line.

This is not a fee appraisal.

So we're not adjusting the sales to the subject to come up with what it would be if they, what would the value be if it was the subject.

That's what a fee appraisal does.

That's what you see in the appraisal pages that are provided.

What we're showing is what does the model create for a value for those properties and how does that compare to the sale price?

And that's the sales to ratio

0.992, 0.937, 1.001, 1.03.

Those are very tight range around 100%.

And that's an indication that the value, the property valuation is working, the model is working.

are the facts of this description correct?

Is it a renovated home that was built in 2001?

Does it have 2,865 square feet?

Does the grade B plus one, is it a two story?

All of those are what that value is based on.

And it's all supported by all of the sales that took place that both the owner provided and we provided.

And it shows that our assessment is correct.

And it's supported very well with the appraisal that was provided.

So I think the thing I want to emphasize here is

There aren't other comps for Stillman.

There are very limited comps for the neighborhood I live in, which is not a very big neighborhood.

And so I completely agree that the comps that we provided aren't great, but there aren't other ones.

And so when I spoke to assessor Patricia Correa,

as earlier this spring, when I asked her about the value assessment, she described the data for Still Meadow as being quote, inconsistent and wonky, which is that there just isn't much great data for the neighborhood for the period that we're looking at.

And so given that, combined with the fact that, again, one of the comps provided is so different from our neighborhood, I just felt compelled to say that I get that

$20,000 is in the range of reasonability.

So all these others, they sold on Still Bedou.

They're all right there where the assessment fund.

Okay.

Instead of licensing stuff, it's really not going close.

I'm gonna tell you that

Yeah, I don't disagree that we're not close here.

I mean, it's not a large variation.

In general, I've been struck by the rapid increase in property values in the county and in our neighborhood.

And it just seems like for

And I get that they're within the range, but I also understand where you could be below the number and still be in the range as opposed to above.

Can I ask a quick question, Peter or Mr. Lynch?

When I look at comparable number one, which is also in Still Meadow, the age condition adjustment is minus 5%.

On the subject property, it's minus 4%.

Both properties are the same grade, both properties are the same condition.

They were built one year apart.

That's where it goes from one percentage to the next between 2000 and 2001.

Okay.

Yeah, it's kind of a, it comes down like this and blows off.

I can bring it up for you if you want to actually show it.

If you renovate, it resets to some extent.

If you renovate, it just basically takes a good, I want to say, 15% off.

We can see it right here.

So at average, it would have been 70%.

I'm looking at the right property.

That didn't sound right.

That's okay.

As you look for that, I just wanted to just make a comment to my other board members, which is

I mean, I agree with you on that and again,

Any more questions?

Okay.

I move that we keep the assessment as, let me start, read the right one.

Application 75,

I'll second.

Mr. Norford, before you go on.

Yes.

I am only concerned and I don't know how this works.

You'd have to have three people present in the room to have a quorum.

I don't know if somebody abstaining.

Can we do this tentatively then?

If those three are all going to vote aye, it doesn't matter what I say.

Yeah, I don't know.

Technically, I'm just talking about technically.

I will vote aye.

So can we go ahead?

Yeah, we have a motion, we have a second.

Right.

To affirm the number 981-900 for 1276 Still Meadow Avenue.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion carries.

I'll look into that and just so we know that you can evaluate the same situation.

I'll praise her.

We'll love it.

Thank you everyone for your time.

I really appreciate your patience.

Thank you.

Great.

Next meeting is July 13th at 1.30.

July 13th at 1.30.

We have five hearings that day.

That'll be the last, as long as all of them stay on that day, that'll be the last.

That's not where storage go.

No, no, that's done.

Yeah, they withdrew.

I know Mr. Naughton.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

For July 13th?

Okay.

Thank you for doing this, Mr. Naughton.

Oh, not at all.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

Motion and second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

I'm getting there.

Hold on a second.