March 2010
Pursuant to Connecticut State Law, every municipality must complete a town-wide revaluation every five (5) years. Additionally at least once every ten years, each town must “fully inspect” each property. Connecticut General Statutes Sec. 12-62 defines “fully inspect” as “viewing the inside of each property”.
The town of Colchester must complete a town-wide revaluation for the October 1, 2011 Grand List and must fully inspect every property. The inspection process, also known as “Data Collection” is one of the five major phases in a revaluation. The four others are: Market Analysis, Valuation, Field Review, and Informal Hearings.
The last time Colchester fully inspected every property was for 2001 Grand List and that town-wide revaluation cost $284,000. Colchester also completed a town-wide revaluation in 2006 that did not include inspecting every single parcel. That revaluation cost $153,000. Clearly, Data Collection with full inspections is the most costly part of the project.
In an effort to reduce those costs, the Colchester Assessor’s Office plans to complete some of the revaluation functions in-house rather than wait until 2011 and sub-contract out all of the services required. They believe that this change could save the town $100,000 or more.
In March 2010, Colchester employees began fully inspecting properties for 2011 revaluation purposes. Additionally, over the next 18 months, residents will be receiving data mailers asking them to review and compare the actual current data of their property versus the current town assessment records.
In addition to being a cost saving measure, Assessor John Chaponis believes inspections done by his office will be of a better quality than that of an outside firm that would send data collection employees to Colchester for six months and then move on to their next town.
“Town employees have a vested interest in Colchester and we will be here after the project is completed,” said John Chaponis, Town Assessor. “This method is the best way to keep costs down and ensure that quality is not compromised. It only makes sense that we would take more pride, due diligence and avoid shortcuts. Furthermore, when we sub-contract the data collection phase to an outside firm, I still must supervise that work and perform quality control checks and balances to ensure the end product meet our standards”. Chaponis said
“By accepting more duties and responsibilities ourselves, we hope to reduce our contracted 2011 revaluation services to less than $200,000 and still meet all of Connecticut’s mandated requirements,” added Gregg Schuster, First Selectman.
The Colchester Assessor’s Office began the data collection phase of the 2011 revaluation this week and is currently inspecting properties in different sections of town. Chaponis added, “For security purposes, all town employees have town-issued photo identification and their names are listed on the town website.”
Currently our staff is working in the areas of:
McDonald Road, Piekarz Road, Shadbush Drive, Spicebush Drive, Winterbury Drive Homonick Road, Marvin Road, Brainard Road, Daniel Drive, Jan Drive, Stanavage Road, Colburn Drive, Natalie Lane, Mahoney Road and Sashel Lane.
Colchester’s current real estate data may be viewed at VISIONAPPRAISAL.COM. Just go under “on-line data bases” and then “Connecticut” and then “Colchester”. Click Here to go directly to Vision Appraisal's data for Colchester.
You will need to sign in the first time and get a user name and password. There is no charge for access to the data.
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