Norwich
Selectman Steve Flanders pitched the idea in a memo to the board, saying that the complexity of the job and a lack of candidates in recent lister elections made hiring a trained assessor worth discussing.
Listers maintain the town’s grand list, which helps form the basis for the school and municipal tax rates. For the past few years in Norwich, a professional assessor has been assisting the listers by visiting houses for appraisal, although tension recently has arisen between the contractor and the elected officials who oversee his work.
“I’ve noticed that in our town on occasion the ballot has gone empty for lister and that on other occasions only a single candidate is running,” Flanders said, adding that fewer candidates meant less accountability for quality of work.
Selectwoman Linda Cook came out strongly against the measure.
“I do not support it in any way going forward,” Cook said of Flanders’ proposal.
The former chairwoman said she supported waiting out the remainder of the assessor’s contract, which she said incorrectly gives authority over the assessor to the town manager, rather than to the listers.
Vice Chairman John Pepper concurred with Cook, saying the topic had “come out of left field” and ought to be discussed more fully before any action took place.
Selectman John Langhus noted that he was a co-author of Flanders’ memo calling for the abolition of the listers, but said he was “sitting right in the middle” when it came to what he thought should happen.
“I am most sympathetic to the arguments about (the listers) being a part of small-town democracy,” he said, adding, however, that said sympathy “makes me very sympathetic to the change insofar as that’s not functioning anymore.”
Chairwoman Mary Layton said she supported putting the measure on the warning, or at least talking about it more.
“I’m more in the camp, personally, of going with a professional assessor,” she said, noting that professionals can handle the complexities of the job and avoid the sometimes touchy nature of an elected resident making decisions about other residents’ home values.
“It takes the kind of personal element out of it,” Layton said, “which I think is really good.”
Roughly 50 residents and town officials packed the basement meeting room at Tracy Hall on Wednesday night, including a handful of elected officials who came forward to advocate for citizen leadership.
“One by one we’re being grabbed out of our positions because you’re paying somebody who’s from out of this town,” said Town Clerk Bonnie Munday, who also disputed the idea that lister positions were difficult to fill.
“I’ve lived here 34 years, and I’ve seen the loss of elected officials,” said Cheryl Lindberg, the chairwoman of the listers. “We’re losing that kind of commitment by people, and enthusiasm.”
Later, Layton said she was warming to the other side of the argument and thought it would be worth it to “give the listers a chance” to see whether a modified lister-assessor arrangement could work.
After more discussion, the board opted to put the matter aside without a vote.
“We’re just going to drop it,” Layton said.
In other business, board members voted, 4-1, to recommend to Town Meeting voters a $4.5 million spending budget for the fiscal year ending in 2019.
The spending plan is up a little more than half a percent over the current fiscal year’s budget, but does not include about $275,000 in operational costs for the town library and another $85,000 in outside appropriation requests that are expected to be on the Town Meeting warning,.
The version approved by the Selectboard on Wednesday included some trims from the original proposal by department heads this fall, which represented an increase of about 1.3 percent.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-7 27-3242.
Correction
The Norwich Public Library is seeking about $275,000 at Town Meeting in March to help run its operations next fiscal year. An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect figure.