HARDWICK – At a recent select board meeting, member Danny Hale said he’d been asked a question about how the amount of a property owners reappraisal will affect their taxes. The answer, that tax assessments won’t double because a property value doubles, because the board anticipates a significant decrease in the tax rate, didn’t fully address the question. In Hardwick, a budget increase of roughly 10 percent factors into tax rates too.
Property owners were mailed reappraisal notices just over a month ago and have now had a chance to meet with representatives from New England Municipal Consultants (NEMC), who serve as Hardwick’s assessors and the reappraisal contractor for the Town of Hardwick in 2024, as they had in the 2006 and 2016 reappraisals.
Over the course of 2024, property inspections were conducted. More than half of all improved parcels throughout the community were inspected to verify the data, according to NEMC in the 2024 Town Report. “NEMC received a great deal of cooperation from the community over this past year and looks forward to the culmination of the project.” Inspections continued into the spring of 2025, with notice mailed to each property owner in mid-May.
An informational hearing process has been underway, in addition to the annual grievance appeals process. Instructions regarding the informal process were included in the mailed notice.
According to Town Clerk Tonia Chase, grievances regarding assessed value are now being heard.
Kathleen Sampson said she and her husband Steve, had stopped in to talk with the assessor after the appraisal on their home had increased by $107,300, from $115,300 to $222,600, an increase of 93 percent and said, “They were really good. I felt we’d been given a fair appraisal.”
The FY26 Hardwick Grand List (a total of all property values) was estimated in the 2024 Town Report to be $331,000,000, roughly a 65.1 percent increase from the FY25 grand list value of $200,471,500.
Those with an increase above 65.1 percent are seeing an increase above the average. That alone doesn’t indicate whether taxes on that property will rise or fall.
The Hardwick Town budget increase for FY26 adds 10.6 percent to taxes on each property, so anyone with an increase in property value above about 49 percent will see their taxes attributable to municipal and highway taxes rise.
Details of the figures won’t be finalized until the Grand List is finalized, about mid-July, which is also when education tax rates and the local agreement taxes (based on the cost of tax agreements for reduced taxes approved by the town) will be received by the Town Clerk, after which tax bills will be sent to property owners.
Taxes on a $100,000 home last year were $1,527. Taxes on a $100,000 home this year will be approximately $1,023, but home values increased by an average of 65.1 percent, A home that increased by the average would now be worth $165,100 and the taxes in the coming year will be about $1,688.97, or 10.6% higher
To determine whether your home value increased by more or less than the average, multiply your 2024 grand list value by 1.651. If that number is lower than your property’s new grand list value, your property increased by more than the average. If it’s higher, your value increased by less than the average.
To determine whether your taxes for the coming year will go up or down, multiply your 2024 grand list value by 1.4927. Your taxes will go up If your new value is higher, they will go down if it is lower.
In determining when a reappraisal is required, a measure of current assessment value compared to recent market sales that have occurred in the community, called the Common Level of Appraisal (CLA), is used; It indicates, on average, how close to market value the town’s property assessments are. In 2024, that figure, at 67.29 percent, was low enough to trigger the reappraisal, which is required when that figure drops below 80 percent, or above 120 percent.
Another figure, the Coefficient of Dispersion (COD) measures how equitably property assessments are distributed within a town based on the accuracy and consistency of assessments based on sales data. A COD above 20 percent means many taxpayers are paying more than their fair share, and many are paying less. Hardwick’s COD in 2024 was 24.26 percent. A COD below 10 percent is considered very accurate, so Hardwick was clearly due for reappraisals to bring property values into line with values that had risen during the pandemic and since the last reappraisal nine years earlier.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
