Westport Property Assessment “Model” Made Available

The “model” used by the firm hired to carry out Westport’s controversial 2003 property assessment has been made available at the office of the town assessor.

“It’s there and anyone can get a copy,” said First Selectwoman Diane Goss Farrell today.

Residents had been pressing Farrell for access to the valuation schedule since a Feb. 3 meeting by the Representative Town Meeting (RTM).

At that meeting, John Ryan, head of J. F. Ryan Associates, the firm which carried out the assessment, told questioners that the model was the key to residents’ property values.

“All of the sales here in Westport were used to construct the model that we applied via the computer to estimate what your house would likely sell for,” he told the meeting.

When several residents asked to see a copy of the model, Ryan replied that it would be made available at the assessor’s office after some refinements had been made.

“We had to tweak it as we reviewed the assessments,” he told WestportNow today.

The three-page schedule, available here as a PDF document, includes formulas for “total market value,” “total living area,” and values assigned under the heading “Unit prices Main Building & Attachments.”

There is also a column labeled “Grade,” a “Westport Residential Depreciation Schedule” and a “Westport Residential Site Schedule.”

The last schedule includes columns labeled “average,” “good,” and “waterfront.”

Ryan and Kevin Murowsky, deputy assessor, acknowledged that the document is difficult for the layman to understand.

They said, however, that it is essentially a roadmap the appraisers use for making judgments about Westport properties, taking into account variables such as age, location, and property features.

Both men said it was inevitable that “anomalies” would creep into the assessment list because 2003 was a statistical revaluation, meaning that physical inspections were not made of all properties.

Many residents have complained that some properties were over assessed while others were under assessed.

Complicating the calculations was the fact that about 1,700 properties for which building permits had been issued since 1998 had not been updated for the 2003 assessment process.

Ryan said his staff has found that a number of properties cited by residents as being undervalued, for example, were among those where improvements had been made but the assessment card had not yet been updated.