My wife and I have recently engaged the civic apparatus of Ripton, Vermont. Our concern is a townwide reappraisal of property values, including ours. The proposed reassessment of our property nearly doubles the previous assessment, which, if the new assessment stands, will raise our annual property tax substantially. Since our income in retirement is now rigidly fixed, it looks as though we are going to be financially straitened.

When, along with our fellow Riptonites, we were mailed the revised assessments, the cover letter indicated a process for claiming a “grievance” if we thought the proposed reassessment is unfair. I believe that nearly doubling the estimated value of our properly, which has not been enlarged or structurally improved since the last assessment, is unfair — not because the assumed resale value of the property has not nearly doubled; it probably has, given the surging home prices in an around Middlebury since the pandemic. If our house and property were resting atop a rise of land, I believe it would sell for rather more than its appraised value. But because it sits low in the flood plain and just a few yards from the frequently surging Middlebury River — one of those surges in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene washed away a 10-by-90-foot strip of our lawn — we will have considerable difficulty selling our house to anyone at any price.

I composed and filed our “grievance” in preparation for a hearing my wife and I attended with two Vermont property assessors in the Ripton Town Office. Prior to the hearing, I had spoken at some length with Alison, our town clerk. Alison is a hardworking, fair-minded near neighbor. We have spoken, corresponded, attended flood mitigation meetings together for uncountable hours since the climate change flooding began taking its toll on us. There is no air of tension or confrontation between us. She is well aware of our concern. We both understand that properties must be periodically reassessed as real estate values rise and fall. She also understands that we do not want to avoid paying a reasonable tax on our property, that we in fact love living in Ripon and are grateful for its services.

It is clearly our bad luck that we are now so vulnerable to the ravages of future flooding. But it is my feeling that our diminished circumstances should not be compounded by a finding that, for tax purposes, our property has become more valuable.

In the course of our hearing, one of the property assessors assigned to us, Louis, suggested that we get in touch with town offices elsewhere to see if properties similar to ours that have been threatened or damaged by floods have sold for less than their assessed value. Should we locate such properties, that would strengthen the case for lowering our proposed reassessment.

Perhaps there is a kind of shrewd and determined person who could locate such comparable properties and calculate the difference between their assessed value and their sales prices, but I doubt it. For one thing, just locating a house like ours, situated as ours is on its property, and as flood-diminished as ours, would be next to impossible. Determining that this all but unfindable property has recently been sold for less than its appraised value more unlikely still.

My “grievance” rests on a principle: that any property vulnerably situated deep in a flood zone, a property already diminished by previous flooding, and understood by any objective observer to have lost resale value, cannot not fairly be appraised as having become more valuable.

I sensed a sympathetic hopelessness in the demeanor of the two men listening to my argument for the principle stated exactly as I have written it above. Their assignment has been to reassess the value of properties in proportion to their current market value, that value determined by recent sale prices. That the resale value of our house has been diminished, not increased, is obvious but not practically provable — until and unless we sell our house. The nearly doubled assessment of our property will stand.

As will our grievance, unto eternity.

Rick Hawley

Ripton