Assessors Talk Overlay, Residents Talk Excess

Wayland’s Board of Assessors Monday night met jointly with the Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee to explain the process for estimating the overlay account surplus and the overlay need for subsequent years.

Prior to the Board of Assessors and Finance Committee joining the meeting, however, several residents took to the mic during the Board of Selectmen's public comment session to express concerns about the way in which Wayland’s tax rate is figured and what residents called the excessive amount of money Wayland has available in its free cash account.

Resident Donna Bouchard told selectmen there was “something wrong” with how revenue-generating items in each year’s budget are being figured. She cited the $685,000 the School Committee returned to Wayland this year after claiming it was “budgeted to the penny.”

“What I’m really concerned about, it’s not about taking back necessarily what’s in the coffers right now,” Bouchard said. “… what I think is really important is that the FY12 budget that we voted at Town Meeting still has those plugs, those revenue-generating line items that are not being spent on services.

“Special town meeting [is] to meet special circumstances,” Bouchard said. “We’ve got to stop the generation of free cash. I really think it’s workable, and I really think it’s for the benefit of everyone.”

The public comment section segued into a presentation by the Board of Assessors regarding its progress so far in estimating the FY12 overlay reserve and the FY11 surplus. Leftover money in the overlay accounts once all debts are paid can be transferred into Wayland’s free cash account with proper process and votes.

At this point, the Board of Assessors has approved a tentative FY12 overlay amount of $1.21 million, a number slightly below the preliminary estimate of $1.23 million presented in the warrant for the April Town Meeting and slightly above (by about $65,000) the preliminary amount the Board of Assessors arrived at through averaging numbers from previous years.

An independent consulting firm in 2009 found that Wayland’s assessors department had “systemic issues with valuation, inexperienced staff and, most importantly, a lack of credibility” among residents of the town when it came to accurate tax assessments," according to a document about the overlay account available on the assessors department website.

In response to those criticisms and with new Department of Revenue guidelines now in place statewide, Board of Assessors Chair Jayson Brodie said the Board of Assessors, “Tried to take the guidelines from the DOR and put some structure in it that can become a process going forward” and can inform the process year after year.

That process involves systemically using specific information that is available to create appropriate estimates. The initial question, Brodie said, is “What is our outstanding liability?”

The overlay account is funded annually to provide monies for “anticipated property tax abatements, exemptions and uncollected taxes in that year,” according to the definition provided by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.

“One of the things we’ve learned in this whole process is [there is] the timing issue,” Brodie said, explaining that many of the numbers – tax abatements and Circuit Breaker matches applied for and granted, for instance – are not available until immediately before or even after the town is required to submit its tax rate for the coming year.

The Board of Assessors will vote on a final FY12 overlay amount once all possible numbers are available, but obviously before the tax rate deadlines at the end of this year.

As for the FY11 surplus estimate, the board followed the same process in terms of inserting known numbers from previous years into a chart in order to find an average or expected amount and from that subtract the items the overlay funds are intended to cover. Before it makes a final FY11 estimate, however, the board is waiting to hear from the DOR regarding clarification of a particular clause in the guidelines.