Waterbury officials on Monday moved to blunt a huge shift of the city’s tax burden to residential property owners, voting to phase in a state-mandated revaluation, which led to significantly higher increases in residential values compared to commercial properties.
“The good news is your house is worth twice as much as what you paid for it,” Mayor Neil O’Leary said of the shifting values. “The bad news is your taxes will probably go twice as high. We are just trying to ease the pain for taxpayers.”
The 2022 revaluation saw residential values rise 75% to 100%, while commercial values rose at an average of 40%, O’Leary said Tuesday. This would have caused the tax rate to drop from 60.21 mills to 40 mills in fiscal 2024, but the shifting of relative values would have led the average single-family property tax bill to jump by about $750, O’Leary said.
Instead, O’Leary proposed, and the Board of Aldermen agreed to phase in property revaluation over five years, which will result in a rate of 55.5 mills for the fiscal year beginning July 1, and an average property tax increase of $236, according to a memo O’Leary sent to the board.
O’Leary, on Tuesday, said that economic development projects in the works – including the potential Amazon regional hub in the South End – have the potential to reverse rising burdens on residential properties.
“I do believe projects we have in the funnel over the next several years are going to have a huge impact on grand list growth, which will be hugely beneficial to taxpayers,” O’Leary said.
Aldermen also agreed Monday to O’Leary’s proposal to double the elderly tax credit to $500, further mitigating impacts on those residents.
Board of Aldermen President Paul Pernerewski said he believed the current residential values are “artificially high,” and could self-correct within the next five years.
“It gives us options to mitigate it,” Pernerewski said.
