HANOVER — Hanover’s town assessor retired last week, nearly a year after a controversial round of property revaluations caused widespread public outcry.
Dave McMullen, who was hired in 2016, officially left Friday, Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin confirmed Tuesday. She said the decision was entirely McMullen’s, adding that he was “burned out” and frustrated after the 2018 property revaluations, during which many residents saw their property values spike upwards of 50%.
The revaluation resulted in a pushback from the community, with nearly 400 people filing appeals, and many calling for a redo of the entire assessment.
“I wasn’t surprised because it’s been a tough revaluation process,” Griffin said about McMullen’s retirement. She praised McMullen for his “high-quality work” but said that the job of town assessor is an all-consuming position. Griffin said McMullen was paid a salary of around $110,000 a year, though the exact figure was not available Wednesday.
Calls and an email to McMullen were not returned Tuesday. McMullen previously served as the chief assessor in Lebanon from 2006 to 2016 and has been a member of the International Association of Assessing Officers for 15 years.
Griffin said Sue Girourard, the current assessing clerk, will act as an interim assessor while the town seeks McMullen’s replacement. She added, that process might not be easy, though.
“The assessing community is getting grayer and grayer, and the next generation is not out there,” Griffin said. There are few “up-and-coming” young people who want to work as town assessors, meaning that Hanover and other small towns might have to contract with an assessing firm rather than hire an individual — a prospect that Griffin said is not ideal.
“(Firms) take a cookie-cutter approach” to assessing, Griffin said. She said she’s concerned that an assessing firm might not have the same in-depth familiarity with the community as an individual assessor.
“I’m looking at who’s waiting in the wings, and it’s disconcerting,” she added.
Hanover resident Peter Murdza praised McMullen for pushing him to find answers about the property revaluation process, even though he said he’s still “mystified” about why the value of the Ledyard Lane home where he and his wife Barbara Prince live actually went down by 3%.
“He encouraged me to do what I’m doing,” Murdza said. “He was encouraging people to understand the process.”
Whoever moves into the position will be taking on a daunting task; after some property values rose upwards of 50% — and in a few cases 200% — during the revaluation, the town saw a community-wide outcry.
Around 65 residents signed a petition urging the New Hampshire Board of Tax and Land Appeals to force the town to redo the property assessments. The petition accused the assessor’s office of “sales chasing,” an often-problematic practice in which an assessor raises a property’s value to meet its sale price. McMullen has denied allegations of sales chasing. The petition also said the office “often used arbitrary and unsupportable data inputs to manipulate” its computer program that generates assessments.
In October, Dartmouth College, which is the largest property owner in Hanover, joined the fight against the 2018 assessments, saying that their properties were assessed at $86.8 million, but that based on the college’s own calculations, they should be valued at only $51.6 million. Dartmouth asked Grafton Superior Court to grant a tax refund of up to $576,000 on 38 of their properties.
Members of the Hanover Advisory Board of Assessors have blamed at least part of the issue on a new assessment software program called Patriot. The town switched from the previous software, Vision, to the new program last year, because the cost of Vision tripled, McMullen said in September.
Griffin said that the town has put out a few requests for proposals to find an outside assessing firm to redo the property assessments in 2020 or 2021, before the next scheduled reassessment in 2023. She said the town expects to hear back on those requests on Jan. 10. The town is also hiring an independent contractor to review Hanover’s 2018 assessment process.
Hanover resident Richard Joseph, who helped draft the petition, declined to comment on McMullen’s retirement, but he did express hope for the future of the assessment process.
“2020 will be a new year, with a new assessor and hopefully a new assessment of all properties. We look forward to a fair and equitable process for all taxpayers,” he said in an email Tuesday.
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.
Correction
The Ledyard Lane home where Hanover resident Peter Murdza resides — and which is owned by his wife Barbara Prince — saw its value decrease by 3% in the 2018 town assessments. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the change in value to the property and who owns the home.