I have had several exchanges with the Laconia assessor's office since we saw that our land value assessment was increased approximately 23.5%. In typical city of Laconia fashion, this increase was done without warning or explanation from the assessor's office. While it showed up in the Vision database during the summer, the first official notice was seeing it on the December tax bill.
The frustrating part was that individuals in the assessor's office, given multiple attempts, could not explain to me in simple terms how they arrived at the increase. They tried to pull a snow job on me by producing "comps" that weren't really comps and tons of meaningless numbers and ratios. However, they could never walk me through the specific calculations that led to the 23.5% number. I finally gave up, which is what they wanted to happen in the first place.
My feeling is that the city of Laconia views the assessor's office as one big ATM that they can turn to in order to get immediate cash to fund their mismanagement of the city. This is because the assessor's office can play games with "market-based" assessments to make up whatever shortfall the city encounters in its bloated budget. This game playing helps the city increase property tax revenues without the need to significantly hike (and draw unwanted attention to) its outrageous property tax rate.
Belt-tightening and budget cutting are not concepts that the city of Laconia is familiar with or uses to manage city finances. Unfortunately, "spend more and tax more" appears to be their guiding management philosophy.
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