Assessors have an obligation to try to keep things relatively fair between the various landowners in a Town and, by and large, they succeed. They do not have an obligation to keep this figure current and it is a whole lot easier on them if they don’t. What an astute landowner needs to keep in mind is not the figure itself but how it relates to other properties within the same tax district. Are you more or less than neighboring properties which are similar? If you are close, the assessor has done their job. You also need to look closely at what is reported on each property. Sometimes new buildings get missed and more often one is removed and the assessors do not notice. It is not uncommon for me to find irregularities where an assessor has missed something. When I learn of these thing, I make sure the landowner is aware of the problem.
Our assessors are part-time and the properties that they provide figures for are constantly changing. The struggle to keep current never ends. The State even offers incentives for those that try to keep figures perfectly current but most do not take advantage of this and prefers to keep voters happy instead. Most people do not realize that it takes a certain amount of money each year to run a Town. Part comes from sales tax, some from fines and permits, but most comes directly from real estate taxes. The assessor's job is mostly to keep things fair and equitable between individual landowners, so no one is taxed relatively higher or lower than his neighbors. Someone else in the Town sets the mill rate. The mill rate multiplied by the tax assessment determines how much we all pay each year. It's a mistaken notion that your assessment determines how much you pay each year. The mill rate does that. The assessment keeps things fair between landowners. what a landowner pays each year is in constant flux. While the tendency is for this figure to follow inflation, it does go down once in a while and sometimes does not change from one year to the net.
When there’s a revaluation, people get all up in arms and many get angry at the upward change they receive. But for every upward change, someone else gets a downward one. Those people keep quiet and don't complain at all. I wouldn’t want to be an assessor. The people you make happy never thank you and everybody else is always on your case.