The town appraiser told the state tax appraiser during appeal hearings this spring that the listers felt including only part of the information was adequate -- and that does not make sense.
It also makes no sense to tell a taxpayer that certain parts of the data are not readily available in the public file because the public will find them confusing. The public may assuredly find some of the arcane details of land use deliberations and zoning ordinances tedious and confusing, but that doesn't mean they should be excluded from the readily available public record.
Certainly all the financial data of the town including records of monies spent on repaying bonds, complex road paving formulas, electricity, phone, paper supplies, etc. (ad nauseum) aren't scintillating nor necessarily easy to understand in spreadsheet form, but no one would ever consider excluding them from the public domain.
Why then would something as important as the data on which someone's home receives an appraised value not be readily available -- all of it -- as opposed to selected or edited parts of it?
It's just plain condescending to suggest that taxpayers will be confused by the information and hence should not find it with the other public records.
To require taxpayers to take the second and extra step of specifically requesting that data is a waste of everyone's time. Surely if taxpayers don't understand the data which directly impacts their tax bill, they can and will ask for clarification.
This policy should be changed by the town as soon as possible.
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