Testing one, two, three.

Wow, okay, wonderful.

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

It is six oh one p.m.

on Tuesday, November 18th, 2025.

And we will be led in the Pledge of Allegiance by Warts five counselor Joseph Lopes.

I apologize.

Thank you.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God is visible with liberty and justice for all.

I'm joined tonight in the chamber by my colleagues in government, Councilor at Large, Ian Abrew, uh Ward Two Councilor Maria Giesta, Ward One Counselor, Leo Choquett, Ward Five, Counselor Joseph Lopes, Councillor at Large and Second Vice President Linda Morad, Councillor at Large and First Vice President Naomi Carney and Ward Three Councillor Sean Oliver and I am Shane Burgo.

We also have our assessors here with us tonight who will hear from earlier Peter Berthium, Marty Treadup, and uh Kimberly Saunders.

Um I'll ask the clerk if there are any letters to be read into the record for us tonight.

No, there is not.

Okay, so oh I want to note that this meeting is being live streamed and recorded.

City council and committee meetings can be viewed on the City of New Bedford's homepage under quick links, then meetings.

I'll ask the clerk to read item one.

I know one is communication, Council President Burgo to City Clerk, Clerk of the City Council, Dennis Farius, calling a special meeting of the city council for Tuesday, November eighteenth, twenty twenty-five at six PM in City Council Chamber, second floor city hall to hold a hearing on tax classification for fiscal year twenty twenty-six.

Motion received in place on file made by Council Oliver, seconded by Councillor Choquet.

Uh and uh can I have a motion to open the public hearing and motion to open the public hearing made by Councillor Oliver, seconded by Councillor Choquette as well.

Uh anyone on the question.

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, the ayes have it.

Um who's doing the presentation.

Kim believe Assessor Saunders.

I'll have you come forward.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Kim Saunders and I'm currently the chairperson for the Board of the Assessors.

I can pull that link.

Um we want to thank Council President Shane Burgo and the New Bedford City Council for inviting the Board of Assessors and the Assessing Department staff to the classification hearing.

We are here this evening so that the City Council can vote on the tax rates for the upcoming year.

We have provided the city council with information that will help them determine the tax shift between the residential and commercial properties and how they will each be impacted.

Please keep in mind that the assessing department is responsible for determining the values of the properties only.

We are not responsible for the overall budget.

The amount needed to fund the budget is what ultimately depri determines the taxes that you are assessed.

It's um my pleasure to announce introduce our new administrative assistant to the board of assessors, Sherry Penzino.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the fiscal year 2026 tax rate.

Before I begin, I'd like to thank the Board of Assessors and the Assessors Office staff for joining us tonight for their hard work and dedication throughout the year.

Since this is my first presentation, I kindly ask that you take it easy on me tonight.

And if you could hold all questions until the end of the presentation, that would be greatly appreciated.

With that, I will start a brief overview of how we arrived at this year's proposed tax rate, and then Bob will continue with his financial summary.

Yep.

Okay, so as you can see here on the left side is what city council is responsible for when it comes to setting the tax rate.

And on the right is what DLS or the division of local services is responsible for.

At this time, everything in black has been approved, and we're still waiting for the items in red.

Now I'm gonna walk you through how the tax rate is set.

I am not gonna go over the numerical budget items and the numbers here.

I'm just gonna give you a brief overview.

The tax rate is set by first determining how much money the city needs for the year through the annual budget.

It then subtracts all expected revenue that doesn't come from the property taxes, such as state aid and other revenue sources.

The remaining amount must be raised through property taxes.

Then the total value of all taxable property in the city is calculated, and the amount that needs to be raised is divided by this total value to determine the single tax rate.

Lastly, City Council votes on the CIP shift in the split tax rate, which determines how the tax burden is shared between homeowners and businesses.

This next slide is the valuation summary by property class.

And here you will see the historical tax rates and shifts.

As you can see on here, the yellow highlighted part shows the increased tax burden on the residential class over the past five years prior to any CIP shift.

Here we're gonna look, we are now going to look at last year versus this year.

As you can see, there is an increase of 0.6 percentage points in the residential, which means a decrease in the CIP.

So the this two pie charts, one for 25 and then one for 26, showing an increase for the residential.

Here is an example of the 1.3.73 shift for 2025 and 2026.

Um I'm going to give a brief explanation of what the CIP shift is.

It is a tool we can use to remove some of the tax burden from the homeowners to businesses.

With the CIP shift, the city can lower the tax rate for residential properties and raise it for commercial, industrial, and personal property instead.

This does not change how much total tax money the city collects.

It only changes who pays more and who pays less.

A higher CIP shift means businesses pay a larger share of the tax levy while homeowners pay a smaller share.

It is a simple, it is simply a way to decide how the total tax load is divided between residents and the business community.

This is the result of a 1.73 shift.

This is last year versus this year.

At this time, I'm going to pass the presentation off to our CFO Bob.

Well, good evening, everybody.

Last year we we saw a 21 million dollar increase in that, and that's really the first step in building a budget.

Tonight is really the last step because the council is being asked to uh vote on a shift between 1.0 and 1.75.

It's really the only thing left to be decided locally here.

Uh the council, as you saw from the sheets that Sherry had presented earlier, appropriations have been set.

The final night that we could have entertained supplemental budgets was last Thursday's council meeting.

So that part is set.

The shift will determine the burden between residential and commercial.

But what I'm going to do now, we've walked through the the rate setting process.

I'm going to go back a little bit and get away from the residential versus commercial, industrial, and personal property, and we'll take a look at things globally as I do every year.

So the one point I wanted to make with this slide when I was going to follow up with Sherry, is that uh again the shift is being set with the red in mind.

Okay.

The 1.75 means that the red or the CIP base can take on up to 75% more than it would have with no shift.

So in this case here, um I don't if I can go backwards.

Oops.

I'm sorry, I'm I'm just gonna back this up for a minute.

I don't know where the uh back button is on this.

Oh, I can swipe backwards then.

Uh so I'm gonna take you back to this slide here.

Um this was the 2025 split shift with at 1.73.

CIP owned 16.5 percent of the levy.

Residential owned 83.5.

So this determines how much we can shift.

It's this base here, the 16.5, when you apply a 1.73, allows us to take 12 percentage points out of the blue stack and put it on the red stack.

Because the CIP, because the residential continues to grow every year, it hurts because it shrinks the red box down that much more.

A smaller red box means less that can be shifted.

So this year at a 1.73, because you picked up uh six per six tenths of a percentage point from 83.5 to 84.1.

The converse is that CIP went from 16.5 down to 15.9.

So where we could shift 12 percentage points last year, we can only shift 11 points uh we can only shift 11.6 percentage points this year.

So that box moves over here as it does in 26.

Now you can see what we've done.

The uh where residential owned 83.5% of the levy without a shift, it now came down to only 71.5 percent after the shift was applied last year.

This year, with a less shift, residential has to take on 72.5.

So the 84.1 without a shift can come down to 72.5.

But that one percentage point difference translates to a million six hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars less that can be moved in this box here.

And that translates to 11 cents on the tax rate for residential taxpayers.

So we have that headwind going into this meeting here tonight.

This the continued growth of residential in comparison to commercial, industrial, and personal property, has cost us essentially 11 cents.

So we'll back up now, go globally here.

I'm gonna take you through the tax levy.

Uh as I as I like I said, I've done this, I think, for three years now.

I think it I find it helpful.

This slide does seem to get a lot of attention.

Uh, and rightly so.

It's part of our total visibility here, so you can see everything that's happened.

The 452 million is what council voted on for appropriations last year.

It's 492 in total because you don't vote on the Cherry Sheet assessments.

So these two numbers, which I'll show in a minute, that's 492 million, the size of the general fund budget.

And as Sherry said earlier, we then subtract anything that does that we can earn without having to levy the taxes.

Cherry sheet aid, local receipts, and uh the enterprise fund indirect.

Part of the uh tax base, we have to have enough in the tax base to to fund the overlay reserve, which we had in the budget as well.

This 1.7 million was in the budget.

And you'll see if you go to the adopted budget, which is online in the city's uh CFO's web page, uh 155.6 million.

So things don't stop there, of course, because uh the state is assesses the tax rates on a on a basically a calendar year basis.

So we have to go through the rest of the year before we get to the stage, and things change.

And they add or subtract to that levy that we had in the adopted budget.

First things that change, this changed somewhere around July 20th or 22nd, somewhere around there when the governor signed the final budget.

They took away 1.2 million dollars of local receipts.

I think a lot of that was in um I think it was the um charter school tuition reimbursements, if I'm not mistaken.

We covered a lot of this when we did the supplemental budget for schools, and uh that changed around the net school spending formula, so you may remember that.

On the other hand, assessments, I think again from school sending tuitions, I think that uh actually that actually decreased by 758,000.

So we can take that off of the levy.

Then we come to the supplemental budgets.

We enacted essentially four supplemental budgets this year.

Uh the biggest ones, well, school costs was two and one.

We had two point eight million dollars for the net school spending eligible, and we added eight hundred thousand dollars for transportation costs, which is not eligible under net school spending formula.

So that's the three point six that was voted on, I think the very first supplemental.

Right around then, the Zaitarian uh theater supplemental budget was passed by the council.

So now comes this the parallel products or the um uh or uh the South Coast Renewables.

Uh the the council had uh correctly surmised what had happened here last week.

There was a hundred thousand dollar appropriation made from the city council.

Uh the form of that appropriation was in a motion.

So in order to not take any chances, the city administration filed a $150,000 supplemental on their own.

And uh it was concluded that that is a double filing.

So we have two orders that we have to fund.

So uh then there's no choice about this because I have to post them on this on the tax rate recap.

I have to show the hundred thousand vote in uh on October 23rd, and I have to show the 150,000 last Thursday.

So these three line items have to be raised in the tax rates because obviously, whenever you do a supplemental, very rarely does it ever affect anything else here.

It doesn't suddenly increase our state aid, it doesn't increase hotel lodging taxes, beverage, food and beverage taxes, and more vehicle excise has no effect on local receipts, it has no effect on indirect costs either.

So the only other source it can come from is the tax levy.

Uh I also can take a look with four months of hindsight now.

I can take a look at the local receipts that we had budgeted back essentially in April last year, just to take a look to see if there's anything that's been tracking.

The idea of local receipts is that you cannot ask for more money in fiscal 26 than you actually collected in 2025 unless you have some ironclad proof that your receipts are going to be higher.

One of those uh items of proof is how did your first four months go?

If your first four months this year are X thousand dollars higher than the same four months from last year, you've got a locked-in basis.

You can increase your estimates.

And that's what's happened here.

I've been able to go back with the help of my staff, and we've come up with almost a million dollars more in local receipts that'll reduce the tax levy.

And then finally, there's two other items.

Um when we did the OL1 uh form this year, which is uh what the DOR uses to assess the adequacy of our overlay reserve, we have to come up with at least a five-year average of overlay charges.

That number was as close to a million seven hundred fifty.

So we had to add another fifty thousand dollars in.

There's uh technical reason why it's not exactly fifty thousand because the DOI uses this line item uh to balance the tax rates completely.

So there's usually a thousand or two dollars one way or another.

So we have to basically we're looking for a million seven fifty this year in the overlay reserve.

And finally, as we do every year, there's a tax title line on item here that we raise through the recap.

So when all of this comes into play, the levy that you saw uh we'll see online right now, one five one fifty-five point six million, is going to be one fifty-nine point six.

I just want to take a quick uh recap to show you one other item.

The the 492 million, we talked about this during the budget setting process, increase of 22.8 million.

Okay, and I I will point out that you know school drives a lot of that.

It's nothing to do with them.

It's the it's the foundation budget.

They have to spend 295 million dollars next year.

And that just so happened to be 23 million dollars, 21 million dollars more than the year before.

They have an extra two million dollars, well, a million in change in transportation.

So that's that brings them to their total cost.

They had 19 million four, and they picked up that extra three point six million.

So you can see the increases are really being driven by the schools compared to the city, the the it's much more uh uh school driven than it is municipal driven.

But again, that's the foundation budget from the Chapter 70 formula.

Uh even though the entire uh budget went up by 22.8 million, the levy's going up by 4.3.

It was about a hundred, coincidentally, it's about 155 million dollars last year.

It went up 4.3 million, but 2.9 million of that 4.3 is because of new growth.

So the actual existing taxpayers are only paying the difference, 1.4 million dollars.

And uh and the untapped tax levy.

So you can see uh the these columns add up to the tax limit, the levy limit as set by proposition two and a half.

This year, for instance, our levy could be as high as 171.9 million.

It's 160 based on the what I've just went over.

New growth accounts for 2.9 million, and is this unused levy is now up to 12, almost 12.3 million dollars.

So you can see the unused levy has been building steadily.

This is the highest it's been since at least 2002.

The reason I picked 2002 is that's the first year that gateway was opened and we have information available.

Before that, we have to go into legacy systems, and it's a lot harder to find the information.

But I can tell you in the early 2000s, we had untapped levy of five figures, something like 17,000, 12,000.

Numbers very, very low.

So we are right up against the prop two and a half cap.

You can see that that's been steadily, we've been steadily building reserves since then.

As of today, there's 118 communities that have filed their tax rate recaps.

We would be second, only behind Cambridge in terms of absolute untapped levy.

They're off the charts.

They they have uh so much growth in that city far out seeds exceeds what they need to balance their budget, so they are always the highest in terms of the actual untapped levy.

Uh when I showed you the slide before, when we were at where we had um we had 22.8 million dollars increase in budget, but we only brought 4.9 million dollars of that down to the tax levy.

It's kind of synonymous with what you've been we've been seeing here for many years now.

New Bedford is the fifth lowest community in all of Massachusetts in terms of reliance on property taxes.

Only 32.7 percent of the amount we need to raise comes from taxes.

Okay, the rest of it, mostly cherry sheet aid.

Uh the the formulas worked pretty well in our favor in terms of of chapter 78, for instance.

Um Lawrence is a little bit of a technicality, they they treat certain things different, but nonetheless, it's still they still would be lower than us.

But you can see out of out of um 351 communities, we are the fifth lowest in terms of reliance on tax rates.

We're gonna take a look at the average tax bill now.

We do this exercise every year as well.

We do uh there's a lot of ways to look at this.

We choose to use, and we have for many years now, the single family units.

And we also take away new growth, because obviously new growth would increase someone's taxes.

If you had a if you had a house and built a sizable addition on it, you have to expect a tax increase.

You have maybe you've in some cases you've doubled and tripled your value.

So we remove that, we filter that out so we can just look at the basic uh the basic uh property tax for us for an existing single family taxpayer.

You can see the average single family valuation is going up steadily uh since uh since the the housing market picked up again uh pretty much right around uh 2008 to 2010.

We had some droppages in here a little a little after the fact, but it's been built up steadily since uh well, basically since 2016.

Uh average value right now for existing single families, 421,000.

This $10.88.

You'll see this on the final slide.

If the council were to vote for a $1.75 shift this year, that average taxpayer will pay $4,584 in taxes in uh in uh this fiscal year 26.

That's $135 higher than last year, and it's a 3.05 percent increase.

This is a new chart because I've been interested in the total base.

You know, we talk about averages, and if you talked about a median, it's just one house.

If you talk about an average, it can get distorted as well.

So this offers us a little bit of deeper dive, a sensitivity analysis into the 12,645 existing single family homes we have.

The highlight here, um, again, it it's it's only 26 percent, but roughly one out of every four single family homes will see a tax decrease this year.

Of the rest, I I put this in terms of absolute dollars in terms of percentages.

So those who are getting $10 or more, $10 a month or less tax increase is about another $25%.

Okay, and that's that's that's half the uh half of the uh of all taxpayers are gonna get no more than a ten dollar a month increase.

But that's that's ten dollars means something different from one person to another.

So if we express it in terms of relative gains here, uh same thing.

There's $3,286 single family homes that will go down in value.

There's $2100 or 16.7 that would be looking at a tax increase of 2 percent or less.

A lot of those are because of the shift change.

Okay, so remember we had that shift cost us 1.6 million dollars because simply the values of residential properties are outpacing commercial and industrial and personal property.

So a lot of those people in this bucket probably would have seen a decrease as well.

But you can get a look at the uh the the distribution uh after those first couple.

So it gives you a little bit better feel for what the total universe is going to see when the tax bills hit the streets.

Now, at this point, what I'm going to do is just walk through this one slide.

We'll leave the next slide up, which the council has liked to see as you debate the tax shift.

It will give you the various price points from 1.70 to 1.75.

But uh the assessor staff did this uh this analysis based on uh average value, so we'll have this available to us.

This 12649 is not the same as the number I just showed you.

There were four homes that hit the tax rolls in 26 that were not at all on the tax rolls in 25.

So they were completely new construction.

So that's why it's four four units different than the numbers I just showed.

And the actual rates are here.

We chose to only go to 1.70.

Once one time we did went down as low as 1.61.

I think it hasn't been lower than 1.70 in quite some time.

So um we can do some interpolation, and we can even do something on the computers if it's needed to.

I I will say that you are often asked to vote on the minimum residential factor.

And what that basically means is Sherry had mentioned the single rate, which doesn't really have a lot of relevance here unless you were going to consider a 1.0 shift.

It it helps set this this minimum rate.

So $11 divided by the $1267, which is the single rate, equals 86.8 percent.

So that's what the minimum rate is.

In the order before you, you'll vote on the minimum rate, and it will say parenthetically this equates to a 1.70 shift or you know 8586, which would equate to a 1.75 shift.

So what I want to do is leave this here.

Entertain questions before you begin any deliberations.

Any questions for the uh Board of Assessors, myself or Sherry?

Thank you, CFO Extram.

Um before we take any questions, I just want to acknowledge the uh our colleagues, Ward 4 Counselor Derek Baptiste, Ward 6 Council Ryan Pereira, and Council at large Brian Gomes uh have joined us.

Uh with that, are there any questions uh from the body?

Chair recognized counselor at large in April.

Thank you very much, Mr.

President.

I am not sure if this would be for Bob or for Sherry or one of the assessors, but I was just writing some notes here, and I was just curious from the presentation we saw at the beginning, um, what trends are being observed um currently right now in the market for uh commercial versus industrial valuations, given the statement that on this packet that they remain steady.

That would be more of an assessor's question, Sherry.

Would you like to take this one?

I won't go far.

Okay.

So um as far as so you want commercial industrial?

That'd be great, thank you.

Um I should have brought my glasses.

So there's been a 3.4 percent increase for commercial and then industrial.

There was no increase that was negative .05 and then negative 1.5 from 25 to 26.

Okay.

The letter here mentions um the expanded circuit breaker tax credit.

Um, what is the city doing to ensure eligible elderly homeowners know how to access this benefit?

Uh we send them notices by mail, and then we're also making it available online on the website to fill out forms and email or call us.

But most of them do come in.

Okay.

Um the last question from me here is um how many do you know offhand how many seniors right now are utilizing the clause 41A tax deferral program here in New Bedford?

Do you know offhand?

I meant to put you on the spot.

I just was No, I I can get you the information though.

I don't know.

I just wonder, and then what the outreach was being done to increase awareness.

So if your office wouldn't mind emailing our office, because I am curious, and I'm sure many of my colleagues are as well.

So if you wouldn't mind, that would be great.

Well, it's it doesn't close until the spring.

Well, up until right now, I am just curious where we are at, if you don't mind.

Thank you.

That's all I have for now, Mr.

President.

I will yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The Chair recognition is Council Choquett on his first.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

I have a question actually for Bob.

That's okay.

No offense, Sherry.

Could you go back a couple of slides?

I had a question about the new growth.

Keep going back.

One more.

Right there.

You see that blue at the bottom of the right where it's uh could you read that number from new growth?

2 million 90190.

I should make a footnote on that.

It's new growth plus it's uh revised and emitted from the previous year, which is essentially like new growth, but just it's just a timing difference.

So that was 155.

New growth was like 2.7 million, something like that.

Okay.

The point is that it wasn't on the rolls in 25, and it is now.

Did we experience more new growth money this year or the prior year?

The prior year.

Could you repeat that?

The prior year.

So we have less new growth this year than last year.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

I yield.

This chart will show you a five-year run.

It's rounded off to um millions, but 2.23 million and 22 up to 2.9.

Thank you.

Any other counselors?

Chairman has Councilman Morat on our first.

Thank you.

So, Bob, um, do we have any idea why new growth continues to fluctuate?

Yes.

Uh actually, Sherry, uh, did you have an analysis on that?

I am going to let Sherry answer the first part of this question.

If there is more, I'll I'll pick up.

So I did a quick analysis on the new growth and why it changed.

Um I can tell you that in 2025 we did have a lot of larger projects completed, which initiated the large growth uh numbers.

We also had uh we hired a municipal auditor who went out to certain properties and found two new um personal properties that increased it by 10 million just for two.

Um in 2025.

Correct.

Yeah.

Okay.

But it's down even over 2024.

I mean, I expected 2022-2023 coming out of the pandemic, but it's it's below even 2024.

Yeah, I can do I can do it, go back another year and do an analysis if you're No, I was just curious if you knew off the top of your head why.

You have explained 2025, but you know, that's a significant change even from 2024 in percentage points.

So I guess this is for Bob.

Bob, when you went back and you looked at estimated receipts, you recognize that there might be increases that we didn't budget because we were conservative when we were doing the budget.

Can you just um synopsize where you found those increases?

Sure.

A lot of my increases were motor vehicle excise.

Uh took that up from um 9.4 million to 10.4, basically.

Uh nine and change to 10.4.

Uh based on receipts that we have had since the end of the year.

Uh, so people are buying more cars?

That would be that would have to be the reason, right?

Because that's the only time we get it.

Right.

Um another big one was EMS.

EMS has been going very well.

It's it reached uh when we did the budget last year, we had only had about 10 million dollars of total receipts collected.

We finished the year over 11.

And the trends have been healthy this year, too.

So I was able to pick that up.

On the other hand, interest income had to lower that.

Uh we had a 4.3 million dollar bogey, and basically rates are about two-thirds of what they were this time last year.

We were getting maybe some accounts, John Taxi Arkansas Treasurer was getting five and a quarter percent.

Now it's 350 if we're lucky.

So I had to take that down.

If I didn't do that, the DOR would have challenged me on that.

Even though it was under last year's actual collections, they're gonna say, how would you possibly make as much money in interest?

What do you know that the rest of the economy doesn't?

So we we weren't gonna win that battle.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, the only way we can really lock in is CDs uh because we are mostly more mostly in treasuries and they fluctuate.

We're in Treasury bills, treasury notes.

Um CDs, we only go out usually about 11 months.

And with all the collateralization and things, it's hard to do a lot of work with CDs.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I don't know who will answer this question, but I think Sherry said you saw the average value on residential increase 3 percent this year?

Is that what or did I misunderstand you?

What you said?

What was the average change in value this year for the residential portfolio?

I know you your memo tells us that commercial and industrial was stable.

I calculate it to be about seven.

I I'm curious what you have to do.

So I know that the uh the value is 5.3 million this year.

I believe last year was you have that?

You said single family?

Yeah.

Average, yeah.

We're showing an assessed value difference of 7.1 percent.

That's what I said, 7%.

Yeah, okay.

And when you're looking at sales, and by the way, thank you very much.

I've noticed in the last month that when something hits the registry, it also feeds to the city system.

So you're automatically updating owners based on sale instead of just once a year.

So thank you.

I think people real I appreciate that.

I think people appreciate that.

Thank you.

But when you're looking at sales and you're looking at assessed value, I I think you do this right.

Um what are you finding?

Are your assessed values close now to what the sales are, or are you still have a large shift?

They're they're relatively close.

They might be off a few, like 20,000, 30,000.

But most of them are coming in right under what the sale price is.

So you don't anticipate that there'll be a large change in value in 2027?

There may, because of the multifamilies, there have been a huge increase we're seeing coming in with the deeds.

So three families are selling anywhere from 700 to 850,000.

Right, and we don't have them assessed at that.

Right.

But okay.

So residential, you're you're close.

Commercial and industrial, you're close.

That seems about, yeah, unless I mean there are the ones that um that are the flips.

Like the one, oh yeah.

Like the one that's a good one.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So there are those still.

Um but for the most part, it it's relatively the same.

Okay.

And there hasn't been.

Okay.

And then the outlier is multifamily.

And are you doing anything to change those values in 2026?

Not at not yet.

I won't I we do have someone who does our values.

We have a vendor who works on those.

I'm I'm asking those questions because it might make my decision as to whether I would shift this year away from the 1.75 or the 1.73 to accommodate that next year.

That's why I'm asking that question.

I think we're not we're we will have no choice but to.

Um because DOR does look at that very closely and will bring it back to us and say why is there such a gap in the assess versus the sales?

So when is the last time we did a city?

I'll yield after this, Mr.

President.

When's the last time we did a citywide assessment?

It was last year, right?

Yeah, last year.

2024.

Yes.

2024.

And when would we normally do that again?

Is there a like industry standard?

Five years.

2029.

2029.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

President, I'll yield for now.

I may have different questions after my colleagues ask.

Chair recognized counselor lopes on his first.

Thank you, Council President.

So, Sherry, I got two questions.

I don't expect the answers today.

Can you break out the new growth per subcategory for 24, 25, and 26?

I would like to see where that new growth is, you know, where it's fluctuating.

Okay.

And then my concern is the Kings Highway plaza just sold for 12 million bucks.

The last time it sold 12 years ago was 26 million dollars.

I'm assuming that new property owner is going to want his valuation reduced.

He has called several times.

Okay.

So I'm assuming you've already done the math.

Can you calculate what the loss and potential tax revenue just on that one plaza could be?

Yes.

Thank you.

Those are my only questions.

Thank you, Council President.

Anyone else on there first?

Point of information.

Sherry, to follow up on Council Lopes' um comment, if there are other parcels like that, either way, up or down, could you include those in the analysis when you do it?

Sure.

That you're aware of?

Yeah.

Anyone else on there first?

Anyone on their second?

Seeing none, this is a public hearing.

If anyone wishes uh to speak in regards to the taxes, this I'm sorry?

Anyone here from the public that wishes to speak regarding the taxes for uh presentation that we have discussed this year?

Anyone from the general public here that wishes to speak during this public hearing, this would be your time to do so.

Again, I'll offer one more time.

This is a public hearing.

Anyone from the general public that wishes to speak.

Seeing none, a motion to close the public hearing at this time.

Made by Councillor Baptiste, seconded by second.

Council Oliver.

Anyone on the question of closing the public hearing?

Seeing none, all those in favor of closing the public hearing say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The ayes have it.

Okay.

All right.

We don't have to read this one in yet, right?

That is fine.

That's absolutely okay.

This is okay.

So don't have it, don't read that yet.

Okay, wait until okay.

All right.

So at this time, I will uh we'll take motions from the floor on uh potential uh factors uh residential factors that we'll take them all in and then we'll vote on them in highest to lowest order.

Uh Chair recognized Councilor Gomes.

Mr.

President, Mr.

President, I would go with the 1.75 MRF 08586.

Second made by Councillor Gomes, seconded by Councillor Carney on 1.75 shift with a 0.8586 percentage.

Is that okay good?

Well, yeah, we'll just say 1.75.

Chair guys, counselor Abraham.

Motion for a CIP shift of 1.74 with a MRF of point eight six zero five.

Motion made by Council Abreu for a 1.74 shift, seconded by oh, does it need to be seconded?

Oh, it does?

Okay.

Second.

Second by Councilor Oliver.

Any other motions?

Chair recognized Councilor Lopes.

1.73 with an MRF of 0.8624.

Motion made by Council Lopes for a 1.73 shift seconded by Councilor Pereira.

Any motion to make a um to set a residential tax rate at 1.72 shift with a minimum residential factor of 0.8642.

Motion made by Council Morret for a 1.72 shift, seconded by Councilor Lopes.

Any other shifts at this time?

Could I get a motion for 1.7 shift from the floor?

Motion to um make a a shift of 1.70 with a minimum residential factor of 0.8680.

Made by Council Moran, seconded by Council Perra, thank you.

No other shifts.

All right.

Oh no, one point sorry, 1.7.

Sorry.

So we'll begin with the 1.7 shift with a minimum residential factor of 0.8680.

Uh counselor Abraham.

No.

No.

Council Baptiste.

No.

No.

Council Burgo.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Carney.

No.

No.

Council Shackett.

No.

No.

Council Giesta.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Gomes.

No.

No.

Council Lopes.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Morad.

No.

No.

Council Oliver.

No.

No.

Council Pereira.

No.

No.

Fails.

3 to 8.

Next will be 1.72.

On the question.

All right.

Again, this is on the question of the tax shift of 1.72 with a minimum residential factor of.8642.

And the chair recognized Councilor Moret on her first.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um colleagues, I recommended the 1.72 percentage shift, because when I looked at the numbers as it relates to the residential property, it would appear to me that the difference between where we are today at the 1.73, and I'm not going to talk about the minimum residential factor, but and where we would be at 1.72 is it's a dollar change.

The increase from 1.75 to 1.73 is $19.

It's $20 at 1.72 for the average tax bill.

But the change is significant as it relates to the commercial relief.

Um the commercial relief would be almost 255 difference.

And I'm just concerned once again this year as I was last year, that we may have seen the top for the time being in the Bristol County area for single family homes as it relates to value, and that's why I was questioning the assessor.

But we probably haven't seen the top as it relates to multifamily.

And those of us that watch sales, I mean I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how people are making these work.

Um they're either throwing an awful lot of cash to the bottom line or they have unbelievable rents, or the or both.

And I'm worried about next year.

I'll I won't be here next year to debate this with you, but I'm worried about next year if we you know stay at the 1.73 or we do something lower, there won't be any room to move.

So that's why I made the recommendation at 1.72.

I'm I'm not married to the number, but I wanted to stand and talk to my colleagues about why I think that might be a prudent change this year as it relates to uh shifting the tax burden.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Actually, you know, I'm I don't want to see any shift.

Um to me it would be perfect if everybody was paying the same, but there's no way the residential people, residential property owners in the city of New Bedford, could absorb that shift, um, especially in one hit.

So thank you.

Anyone else on there first?

Seeing none again, the question at hand is on adopting a 1.72 shift with a minimum residential factor of 0.8642.

I'll ask the clerk to call the roll.

Council Averill.

No.

No.

Council Baptist.

No.

No, Council Virgo.

Yes.

Yes, Council Carney.

No.

No.

Council Shackett.

No.

No.

Councilor Giesta.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Gomes.

No.

No.

Council Oppes.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Morat.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Oliver.

Yes.

Yes.

Council Pereira.

Yes.

Yes.

It passes.

Six to five.

Six to five.

Pass six to five.

It passes six to five.

Oh.

Okay.

Passes six to five.

So to speak.

You guys had that one worked out on it.

That's what I'm doing.

Do we have to read number two first?

This is what we did.

Okay.

And then that's what we oh.

Yeah.

Okay.

So with the appropriate vote of the motion to adopt this to accept the residential factor.

We already did.

Okay.

Okay.

I apologize to the body.

Um, so I didn't have the clerk read into the record on our agenda sheet uh item three, which is the order adopting the minimum residential factor, which is what we just did.

Uh just so for those who are uh reading obviously listening from home and those in the room, um item three, which is what we just did was adopt a uh shift of 1.72, which is a minimum residential factor of 0.8642.

Um that was what was just adopted with a vote of six to five, and so that passed.

And that's all said now.

And now we can find questions.

Wonderful.

All right.

So a motion to adjourn would be appropriate at this time.

So moved.

Motion to adjourn made by Council Oliver.

Second.

Seconded by Councillor Giesta.

Anyone on the question of adjournment?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Any opposed, the ayes have it.

We are adjourned at 6 49 p.m.

Thank you.