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Hi everybody. Thanks for coming. I'm Kevin Rudden, your principal assessor. >> I'm Karen Sanborn. I'm your deputy assessor. >> And unfortunately, I'm going to apologize. The senior center put out the title, how to reduce your property

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taxes. We're going to explain what is available to help you to reduce your property taxes. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to give everybody a little tutorial first on how property taxes work because most people, believe it or not, don't understand.

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And of course, that's not working. Got it. Okay. >> Okay. There are two halves to the story and one took place Monday night which was the town meeting and that's where the voters of Hollist approved the budget.

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The second half is us. We go out every year and we value all the property in town. Now why do we value all the property in town? Um because if everybody remembers 1980 when we passed a law called Prop 2 and A2

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uh I like to joke about it because if you're younger than 62 years old, you couldn't have voted on it. Uh I I'm going to reveal my age. I did vote on it.

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Um, part of it called for um or part of its effect was that property has to be valued at 100% of full and fair market value every year. If you live in other states, they might do that once every 5 years or 10 years. Um, well, that sounds

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nice. The downside of that is once every five or 10 years, you get hit with a massive tax increase. So, the nice thing about well, nobody likes their taxes going up. The nice thing about it is you do it in little increments here and uh we kind of get adjusted to it. But

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anyway, each year the voters decide on a budget. That number gets reduced by state aid for schools and general government, local receipts, which are building permit fees, auto excise tax fees. We have uh five solar arrays in

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town that pay payment lof taxes. And we have two apartment complexes that pay uh that are run by charities that pay payments in lie of taxes. You subtract all that out of the budget and

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what's left is called the tax levy. And that's what we all pay. And Prop 2 and a half, just to remind you, did not say that your individual taxes couldn't go up more than two and a half% a year. It says the levy can't go up by more than

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two and a half percent a year. So we divide that tax levy by the total value of all the property in town. Here's this year for fiscal 26. The budget was almost well it was $95 million. We had $34 million in state aid and fees

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and we're raising 60 just about $61 million through taxes this year. So you take that number and you divide it by the total value of property in the town and that's how you get the tax rate. Uh basically the uh value of property in

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town has been going up. It's starting to moderate, but from when COVID hit in 20, I'd say 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, we had some dramatic increases in value in town because the sales of houses um went into

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what we call I call the crazy zone. That is um I'll explain it this way. I have a good friend who's a realtor uh in the town of Milford and he and I have been friends for over 20 years and he will call me frequently and say, "Hey, I got a listing on such and such street. What

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do you think it's worth?" And I will go, "Precoid, you'd be lucky if that house would sell for $375,000." And he'll go, I just sold it for $890. >> Uh and that's values went through the roof. And they're based on actual sales.

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So the reason why values have been going up is sales prices are going up. Fortunately, in calendar 25 and calendar 26, the increases are moderating greatly. Uh

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they're still up there, but they're not in the double digits. So, I'm anticipating I can't predict the tax rate this year, but I know the value increases will not be as great as they were in the last five or six years.

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The way your property goes is basically the Mass Department of Revenue has a lot of guidelines [snorts] on how assessments can't rise above a certain percentage. That's also on top of that 2 and a half cap for the town.

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So we take your current assessment and when property is sold we divide it by the sale price and the fraction that comes out according to the department of revenue needs to be between 0.9 and 1.1

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as a whole for the entire town. We make sure we don't go above when you put all the property together we don't go above 0.95. So, you're actually not being taxed at 100% full and fair market value. You're taxed at 95% of that. We do that for two

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reasons. >> Um, one, if the town ever ever gets in trouble financially, which it doesn't, we have that 5% you can make up in the next year. And two, I don't think it's fair to tax everybody at 100%. And the policy in

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this town, long before I started working here six years ago, it keep it at 95%. There's another ratio they make us use which is called the coefficient of dispersion. And I want to get into the math. It's complicated. Thank god there's Excel and computers because I

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couldn't do it by hand. But the median price in town, the median is there's 50% above that number and 50 cent below it. and they will look at how each person's ratio differs from that. We try to bring it

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down smaller and smaller. What do we look at when we look at your house? I talked about arms length. We look at are you single family, condo, multif family? Most of us are single family. Um, what's the style of your house? Excuse me. We

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don't compare, if you live in a Cape, we don't compare you to a colonial. We compare you to other capes in town. The year it was built, the square feet of your lot size, the square feet of living year in a house, the neighborhood you

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live in, and assessing neighborhoods are different than the actual neighborhoods. And I will tell you that by fiscal 28, we're going to the neighborhoods in town. So if you live in Queens, you now won't be compared to a house across town. You'll be compared to just the

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Queens. If you live in Brentwood, you'll be cared to have their house in Brentwood. If your house was built in the last 10 years, and most of them are valued a lot higher, you're only going to be compared to them. Uh the old system that I inherited was

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based on the uh whether you lived on a main road, a secondary road, or a a smaller road. And it just it's not the fairest way to do it. So, we're slowly changing. So, the best thing is when when we're looking at your value,

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you're being compared to if you have a ranch house, we're only comparing you to other ranch houses. If you have a colonial, we're only comparing you to other colonials, etc. in the same 10ear age bracket with the

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same type of land, um the same square feet. We have to do those ratios you mentioned on every one of those little categories and they all have to fall in the limit. It's an awful lot of math, but it you're really getting by the time we get done with about 10 different

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comparisons. We feel it's pretty fair. Now what we do is we do that to the properties sold. There's about between 300 and 400 houses sold a year in Hollist. And we take what's changed in them and then we bring it up to the whole

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universe of houses in the town. So if you might say, but I haven't done anything to my house in 20 years. You're going up because sales in general in the town are going up. But you are going up compared to other the same type and style of houses. I know it's a little

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hard to to grasp, but one of the biggest things when people apply for tax abatements, they always go, "But the house next door to me is just the same." And the house next door usually is a different style or age or square foot. So we really would when we compare them,

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we go to as close as we can get to the age, the style, the lot size, >> the square footage. square footage. >> Y >> and we actually take a while. And I'm actually pretty proud of the fact that when people come in and and ask us to do that comparison,

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they're by and large right where they should be compared to truly comparable houses, that means we're doing it right. Okay. So, we talked about that. commercial, industrial, you can use the sales approach, but quite honestly, we don't have that many

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industrial commercial buildings sold in town. We don't have that many built in town. When they are, we do what's called the cost approach. So, everybody knows there's a car wash being built across the street from the post office. So, 27 will be fiscal 27 will be the first year

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we're taxing it. Okay. What we're doing is we're using the actual cost of what it cost to build that building, which is about a million one. Where do we get that number from? Uh the contractor, the building permit,

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the size of the building. We know the size of the land and what the land's worth. In future years, we'll look more is this is generating income. But so the first time we build it, we actually have cost data. The income approach is real simple. If

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somebody is actually I use a real life example a lot of the buildings are owner occupied. Everybody knows Jimmy Reid on the planning board RNR landscaping. Okay, [snorts] Jimmy owns that building. They just built a nice addition onto it.

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We'll value the addition by the actual cost it took. But when he owns the building and is he's not earning income on it because it's his building. We have to [clears throat] go and look and say if this were rented What would a similar building get in

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rent and what are the similar vacancy rates, expenses, etc. in town? >> And you use that plus profit margin that is common on borrowing. And you can you can get a pretty fair um example on

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that. The the caveat on that is the more vacant a property is, the less taxes it will pay. A commercial and industrial building. So, we have a building on October Hill Road that's three stories and one one floor has been vacant for a

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year. The taxes they will pay next next year will be less than this year because one floor is vacant. They're not earning anything on it. Personal property we talked about there's just a quick explanation. You know, restaurants have equipment, barber shops and hair salons have equipment.

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Uh, the biggest people paying personal property in town are NStar Gas, NStar Electric, and all the landscapers because they have all that equipment. And by the way, we depreciate all their equipment every year. The filing, by the way, that NSA Gas and Electric make is like 200 pages long for each of them.

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They list every pole, everything they own in town, every wire depreciated, and then it goes to the Mass Department of Revenue, and they double check it and say yes or no on the number. and then they give it to us. But as of Monday night, anything anybody

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who's got personal property less than 10,000 no longer pays it. And I said that's a good thing for the small businesses in town. If you think of like the Hollist Diner or uh the Super Rat, uh TC Scoops, for example, they they're

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now free of that. So helps make a little more money and stay in business. When we're done, believe it or not, the Department of Revenue checks everything we do and every document we hand to them, they check and they approve. So, I'm always ask, you know, who actually

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makes the tax rate. It sort of calculates itself, but the Department of Revenue certifies it. Select board don't vote on it. The board of assessors don't vote on it. Um, the Department of Revenue certifies it means you did the math correctly. But I don't think most

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of you realize how much the state department of revenue looks at everything we do. The values every year when people build things, we call that new growth. They get the complete list. And I just to give an example, 10 years ago, the department of

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revenue say, "How much new growth do you have at Olion?" And they'd say, "Okay." About five years ago was, "Well, how much was residential? How much was industrial? How much was personal property? You had to give them the total

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number. Now it's give me a listing of every single property and what they built and how much money it is. And what were we at today? 254 >> thousand. >> No, the number 254 permits or something. >> Oh, yeah.

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>> So, so [laughter] without even getting into a [snorts] lot of what we're still looking at, y >> we already have a list of 254 things going to the Department of Revenue. They really really double check everything we do. All right. How do you help seniors?

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>> These are the four main categories. Okay. Abatements are if we make a mistake when you get your what we call the real or the actual tax bills that get mailed out between Christmas and New Year's.

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That's when you see your new value for the fiscal year. If you think we're wrong, you can come into our office from the date you got that bill in the mail to the first business day of February and you can file for an abatement and we

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will go out and doublech checkck our work and listen to everything you said. It's not just given out willy-nilly, but if we goofed, we correct it immediately and you get the credit back and we reduce the tax bill.

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It's not a common thing. The most common thing we talk about are the exemptions, and we'll go into that in a minute. There are specific exemptions for seniors, there are specific exemptions for veterans. And if you're both, you can qualify for

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both. So, while an abatement reduces your assessment, an exemption leaves your value assessment alone, but reduces your payment. There's also relief fund in town and there's a workoff program in town we'll

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talk about. So we talked about the abatements. Um when you apply you have to prove you're overassessed and I would say we probably hand out about 10 or 15 where you're over assessed and we admit it. The math that

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when you apply to everybody doesn't work. >> Uh we overlooked something. There are 6,500 parcels of land anded buildings in town. >> And I will tell you with two people >> and a consultant working on it. >> We're humans. We make mistakes. We admit

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it, but we'll fix it. >> It is under law, believe it or not. I think it's state law. I get in trouble for saying as necessary. I think it's a stupid law. It puts the burden on on you guys, the homeowners, to prove that we're wrong. I don't think it should be that way, but that's the law.

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Okay. exemptions. You have to apply for them every year. If you already are receiving one automatically in the second half of June, we mail you the application for the following fiscal year that begins

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July one. We do that automatically. If you don't have one before and you're interested, we're actually going to or want to find out more, we're actually going to pass around a piece of paper. If you write down your your name and address, we'll mail you an application and all the data. It is our policy that

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anybody that is entitled to an exemption should be getting that exemption. So, right now there are three or four main exemptions that can help people >> seniors help seniors. Yep.

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>> Okay. [snorts] And we're saying 65 and up. Do I have that right? Uh so clause 41C just changed and we lowered okay >> from the the >> yeah we do assessor speak we refer

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>> the clauses we're talking about the clause in state law it's mass general laws chapter 59 section five you don't need to know this clause 17D that is a $350 exemption but your total income has to be less than or equal to

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20,000 >> it depends on you're single or married. >> Yes. Okay. There's not a lot of people qualify for that cuz today if two people are getting social security, hopefully you're getting more than $20,000 worth. >> That's the 41C. You're doing the wrong We're giving the wrong information.

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[laughter] >> The 17D. >> She's the expert. >> Yeah. The 17D, you have to be 70 years of age or older. >> All right. as of July 1st and it is based off of your assets only.

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We don't care about how much income you have. You have to have $40,000 or less in assets. That does not include your house. All right. That's bank accounts, savings, IRA. >> Okay.

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>> All right. The 41C. >> Wait, wait a minute. Let me just go in there. Okay. And the good news is town meeting Monday night, we had 10 specific articles on the warrant this year. The board of assessors town meeting Monday night um authorized us to put in the

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annual cost of living for the first time in fiscal 27. >> Yep. >> And on the 350, it doesn't seem like a lot, but the cost of living adjustment is 2.7%. So it'll be 350 plus 945, which if my math is very quickly will be

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359.45. 45 >> that that cola will begin compounding every year. This the first year of doing it, but it means that the following year would be the 35945 plus the cost of living. So eventually get up. >> Yep. >> Now you can do 41.

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>> Okay. [laughter] So the 41C this at this pre this past town meeting was voted the age uh has changed. It was anyone 70 and older. It is now 65. And >> actually it has been 65. >> Okay. We had to we had to repeat the

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article because somewhere in the midst of time you have to send these into the department of revenue so they know you're doing it. Nobody ever sent it into the department of revenue. >> So you can tell what the current thing is but it didn't change. >> Six. Okay. So it's 65 um or over. Um and

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there is an income limitation to this one um depending upon whether if you are single or married. Um, so if you're single, I believe the income limit is $20,000 uh plus the uh whatever the social

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security there's a social security deduction that the state gives us every year. Uh this past year it was about $6,000. So you would add that on. So it's around $26,000 uh for single >> and married is >> and married is I believe 30,000 um plus

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the social security deduction. And now and now beginning this fiscal year coming up, you'll get the cola. >> Yep. >> Which makes it 1,027. And I just want to say the state legislature set those numbers. >> Yep. >> Close to 40 or 50 years ago.

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And I always tell people this, you know, [snorts] $1,000 off your tax bill. Let's go back and say it's 1970 might have been half your tax bill. You know, if your tax bill was 2,000, we

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know your tax bill is dramatically more than that. Now, >> the state hasn't changed those numbers. >> Yep. >> That's why we fought to get the cost of living added on. It's just it's something. >> Yeah. We just we don't have control over over what what they tell us we can do.

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>> Okay. But what we did do >> to give a little bit more money is what we call the senior means exemption. And all mean the words mean tested mean is your income and assets are not above what the state says. So what we did this

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is Holliston is one of the few towns in the state that has this. At the 19 at the 2022 annual town meeting the voters unanimously said let's petition the state legislature to create it. Governor Hilly signed it into law. It

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took all the way till May of 2024 to get passed. We're in our second year of it. And here's what it what it works on. When you do your state income tax, if you apply for and get the senior [snorts]

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circuit breaker income tax credit, you're eligible for another exemption just within the town. That income tax credit can be anything. And in fiscal 27, it's

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up to $2,820. It can be We had somebody this year who got only $320, the income tax credit. >> Yep. >> We take that to the select board every year in October.

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>> And they decide to match it by anywhere from 50 to 200%. The first year we did it, they matched, they said match it 50. This year the board of assessors and I argued for 100 because we didn't think it was enough. She got 100% match. So

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this year's cap was 2730. We had 33 people get it. The majority of them got 2730 >> reduction >> reduction in their state income tax and then we got gave them 2730 reduction on their property tax. [snorts]

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So, that's a little more meaningful than the $100 of the 375. There's also, if you're really having a problem staying in your house, [snorts] you can file every year for tax deferral.

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And what that means is the town will put a lean on your property. And when you sell the property or being candidly, you pass from amongst us, the town gets paid back first if the property is sold, passed to heirs, etc.

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with 6% interest per year on what was deferred. And we can do that up to 50% of the value of your property. So right now, if you have a house of land worth $500,000, that's our assessment. we can legally defer up to 250,000 of that

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>> which could be 10 years of taxes. >> The you know the upside is it helps people stay in their houses. The downside is uh if you sell or it goes to your heirs they're not getting the full value of the property because they have to pay

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that back. But it is another mechanism that we have to help people stay in their houses. Uh we have about five or six people a year using that option. We don't have to worry about income. You don't have to worry about assets. You

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just come in and say, "I'm over 65 and can you help me?" By the way, all the info we get on any of these documents, the only people who see it are the two people standing here and the three member elected board of assessors when

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they sign the application and vote on it. It's locked up in our office. Nobody ever sees it. It's totally confidential. Y >> the select board by law can decide to match from 50% to to 200%. >> Y

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>> the first year they did 50%. >> We got them to 100 this year. I believe they're going to stay at 100 for fiscal 27. >> Okay. >> So if the maximum amount you could get for fiscal 27 is 2820. >> Yep. Now, that's a tax credit on your

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state income tax. If the selectments say 100%, you will get two thou your property tax bill reduced by $2,820. >> Oh, okay. So, you apply this year, but it's going to be >> it's based on your >> receive that benefit next year.

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>> Well, no. Okay. It's ba Okay. You get the tax credit right now would be based on filing your 2025 state income tax, >> right? If you applied for the filled out the form CB which stands for circuit breaker and you got that from the state

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and you may not get the full amount. You may only get partial amount depending on your income and assets. >> But let's say they gave you the full amount. We go to the select board every year in October. The board of assessors recommends if they stay at 100%, you

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then get $2,820 off the your tax bill for the year from July 1 of this year through June 30th of next year. >> Starting this July, >> right? You're not going to see any of these reflected until those actual bills

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get mailed out between Christmas and New Year's. >> Yep. Your third and fourth quarter bill, >> right? that gets mailed out. >> It's third and fourth quarter fiscal year. To those of us in the real life, it's the first half of a calendar year, >> right? >> Yes, sir.

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>> Okay. So, my related question is if I get the town gives me that 2820 or whatever the amount is. >> Yes. >> Y >> are you going to report that as taxable income? >> It's not income. >> So, it's not going to be

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>> it's an exemption. is not going to be reported as taxable income on my following year income taxes. >> It's not income. >> No. >> You're not getting paid that money. >> No. It's a reduction in what you owe the town, >> right? All we're doing is lowering your

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tax bill. You're not getting a check from the town. Your tax bill will get lowered. >> So, one of these things would end up being reported as taxable income. >> The IRS knows nothing about it. The state department of revenue doesn't even know who who got it. >> Okay? because that that would really complicate things if it was,

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>> right? But I will want to tell you, and this is bizarre, state law says you have from July 1 of this year till April 1st of next calendar year to give us an application for an exemption. But if you

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want it in the third and fourth quarter bills, that bill you get mailed between Christmas and New Year's, we need it by Thanksgiving because there's stuff we have to do. We have to make sure people qualify. >> The board of assessors has to have a meeting and vote on it and then we have

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to enter it into a very very complicated computer system so that when the tax bill is generated your value your bill has dropped by that amount and it will say that we also have to generate what we call a certificate which is 8 and 1/2 inch wide piece of paper by maybe 3 in

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high >> that says how much you're getting off. You'll get that in the mail first. So, there are specific application forms to each one of these. Yes. >> Yes. The only >> And again, if if you already are getting them, we automatically mail you in late

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June the application for the new fiscal year. If you hadn't gotten it before and you're interested and you're here, we're going to pass around a sheet of paper, put down your name and address, we'll send you applications. I just want to add the only exemption where the time

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period we accept them that's different is the senior means tested. >> We start accepting those July 1. We have to have them in by September 15th. >> And and that's because of the deadlines involved

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in having the we have to process them in the second half of September. Then we have to go to the select board in October for them to pick the percentage. And then we have to calculate that into the tax rate. >> So we >> So that would come in early

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>> that is the hard deadline for the senior means tested exemption only. >> Yeah. >> The other ones you have July 1 >> till whenever >> until April 1st of the following year. >> Although again if you want it reflected on that tax bill that those two tax bills that you're mailed >> y

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>> between Christmas and New Year's we need it by Thanksgiving. All the other ones it's just a matter of processing time. >> Yep. And also then it comes out already deducted off your property tax bill because if you hand it in later than that, what's going to happen is you may

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get it and then you won't know how much you really owe on those two quarter tax bills and we have to send you over to the tax collector's office to ask them because we don't know what people owe. >> Just one more question to clarify.

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>> When you [clears throat] fill out the application for the senior means tested exam, What other financial information is required that affects the amount of this exemption? >> Okay. The state

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has income and asset limits to get that uh income tax credit. We adopt them. So, if you've gotten that credit, >> you're 99% sure of getting the local exemption.

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>> And the states criter doesn't have anything to do with your assets. >> It does have an asset limit. It does have an income limit >> and it changes every year. >> It's >> and it does have a value of your house limit. >> Right. A house limit. I know. But I

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didn't >> and I don't think anybody in here has house and land worth more than 1.3 million. Does anybody? >> No. >> Okay. So, >> I didn't remember other assets. >> Now, now the other the other part of it is you can't have more than $250,000

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in assets, not counting your house. So, that would mean pension, uh, IRA, whatever. And we're very liberal on that. Uh let's say you had the good fortune to have a uh 401k

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or an IRA with lots of money in it. We ask what are you taking out of it this year and count that as the asset. >> It's not fair to say I worked 30 years and I have a 401k with $200,000 in it

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and you're drawing out of it a little bit every year to supplement social security. It's not I don't think it's fair to say you're over the limit. So we say what are you drawing out there that what do you think you're drawing out this year and we count that as the ask.

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I I will tell you the first year we had 12 people apply 11 got it. The reason why the one person didn't get it is they had just borrowed money to uh refurbish a large part of the house and they hadn't hired the

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contractor yet and the money was sitting in a savings bank. The second year they applied again. They didn't have that money because they spent it on their house. Second year we had 33 people apply. All 33 got it. If you get the circuit breaker credit

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from the state and whatever amount they give you, you are 99% towards getting the local one. The only thing we look at is to get our local one, you have to have lived in the in the town 10 years. And I don't care how many houses you

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lived in, if you moved, if you left town and came back. if you could show us and basically we look it up in the assessor's record and if your name was there 10 years ago on the property you're there 10 years there's that one your property can't be worth more than

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1.298 298 million in the coming year. If you have more than one acre of land, they make us count only the value of one acre, but that that means you'd be lowering that. >> I don't know any senior anywhere uh unless they're Elon Musk or somebody

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like that, I don't know how old he is, who have a house worth more than $1.3 million in this town. So, like I said, you're 99% there. What we're really looking at is have you lived in town 10 years and do your assets ready assets

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exceed 250? Most people's don't. I've yet to see anybody that has that. So, we're very generous of that. The whole idea of getting that was the $1,000 you used to have just to me it doesn't do it when your tax

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bill's 5,000 or 6,000 or 8,000. >> I just want to add you if you qualify for either the 17D or the 41C, you can add that onto the circuit breaker, the senior means one, and get

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both >> both. >> And on top of that, there's a workoff program I'll talk about. You can do that on top of it. Clause 18 we talked about. I also want to tell you that Monday night the town meeting unanimously

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agreed to petition the legislature for another Holliston only exemption. So it's not there yet. It has to go through the legislature. I'm hoping we're in calendar 28. Maybe we can do it. It would

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exempt the same criteria. So if we had it today, those same 33 people that got the the means tested exemption would be eligible to have up to 50%

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of any debt exclusion principle and interest borrowing wiped out in an exemption. >> So let's talk as a hypothetical example. Uh in October, the voters will be asked hopefully October to look at the highway

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building on a yet a different site back in the original site on Cross Street. And let's hypothetically say it would add I'm trying to remember what the number was. I'll just pick one off the top of

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my head. Let's say that debt exclusion would add $500 a year on top of your tax bill. If you qualified for the circuit breaker income tax credit, you would be eligible to have half of that annual cost eliminated. So instead

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of paying $500 for the debt exclusion, you'd pay $ 250. Why did we propose that one? Because we know there's debt exclusions coming. You know, Monday night the uh town meeting voters voted to spend 2,500,000

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for study of renovating our new high school. Don't know where that's going. Don't know what, but sometime in the next 10 years, there's going to be a debt exclusion for for something to do with the school. And all we're doing is trying to get something in place to help everybody who's a senior.

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And and again, it's not everybody, but if you qualify for that circuit breaker, you'd qualify for this. Um, we don't anticipate any trouble with the legislature saying no. It's just going to take a year or two to get it into effect. So, that's that's coming down

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the road. And the other thing that we have, there is an elderly and disabled taxation fund. It's funded by people making voluntary uh extra payments with their taxes. And every couple of years there's a

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little flyer goes out with the tax bill that says if you'd like to donate, tell people less fortunate. Um it's been kind of dormant. No one's applied in the last three or four years. So we're going to make sure going forward everybody knows about it. People

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can apply to there's a committee. The chairman of the committee by law is the treasurer collector in the town and the current treasur collector has nominated um the assistant treasur collector Mallerie Franceski will be chairing that committee. Jeff Marshall who's the board

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of assessors chair will sit on it and the select board will very quickly be looking for three resident volunteers to serve on it. Again, anybody applying, it's confidential, but that's right now there's $600,000 sitting in that account. And so starting with fiscal 27,

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people can apply it if they're again in need for some of that money. So that exists. It's just I think people have forgotten about it. We're just trying to get the word out it exists and get it revitalized. The other thing is for the last several years >> question.

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>> Yes. So, what is the point at which you could apply for that? >> When you get your tax bill >> and you say, "I need some help with that." >> 20 for 2027. >> Fiscal 27. I would say when you get the tax bill in between Christmas and New Year's, that's the time to come in and

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apply. That committee will actually set a deadline on when they want you to apply and probably put a notice in the tax bills that it's available. >> Okay. So, as far as the 600,000 concerned, >> there's still more decisions to be made before it gets clear what you're doing.

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>> That committee needs to put out um how and when to apply. >> The committee kind of went dormant. >> So, I mean, the board of assessors are the ones we're in charge of. We have our rules and regulations and like for this uh means tested. The state sets the deadlines for the other ones. This

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committee will set deadlines. >> So, guidelines and criteria that are all that's still up in the air. >> Yeah. But the good news is they will be ready. Um, and we will be publicizing that fund's existence again. >> Um, because quite honestly,

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when I got here six years ago, I'm like, why aren't we doing this? And then it was, well, nobody volunteered and this and that and the other thing. And when we were talking about revitalizing the workoff program, I brought that up and I said, you know, if we're going to offer

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a robust offerings to people, why isn't that working? And so we made sure that it's going to work, which basically is if you know the phrase where you say somebody's a nooge, I'm the nooge.

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Um, I'm also a senior, so I'm very passionate about this. If you don't know, I'm 72 years old. I I'm not ashamed of it. I'm still working because I need to pay my taxes. I am retiring sometime next year. And I just want to make sure everything that's available to

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seniors is up and running and working. I mean, the veteran sitting here, she knows how I feel about exemptions. If you deserve it, we want to give it to you. Yes, sir. >> So, the senior means test. >> Yes. >> Is that determined by the town when you make the application or is that certified by the state?

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>> Okay. When you apply for that state income tax credit and you get it in terms of your income, your assets, they've decided if the state says you qualified, we

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don't question it. >> So do would I send it to the state or go through you? >> The application for the exemption comes to us. >> Okay. One of the things we ask is you must show us your income tax return showing you got that credit,

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>> right? It's called a schedule CB on your state income tax forms and that is something we ask for. We need a copy of that as proof. >> Whether you do your own taxes, a family member does them, or you pay somebody to do them,

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>> just say, "See if I qualify for schedule CB on my state income tax." If you do, like I said, you're 99% qualified for the local one. All we're going to check after that is what you say your assets are

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>> and how long you've lived in the town. >> You have to occupy the doicile as well. >> You have to live there. >> You have to live there. So, right, if you're renting, I'm sorry, you don't qualify. But we're also trying to

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protect. We don't want 20 people from another town that doesn't have this moving in and claiming it. We want it for Hollist residents who've been here a while. >> Yes, sir. >> On this uh workoff, is that per family or per person?

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>> Per person. Let me explain the workoff program. It's existed a while. Um we actually made sure there's funding for 20 people in the fiscal year that begins July 1. So what happens is now this is taxable money just so you know

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it's the pay rate is $15 an hour. you apply. Uh the applications will be available well we say July when they're actually available now in this building. They'll be available in the assessor's office in

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town hall treasur collector's office in town hall and in human resources in town hall. When you apply the human resources folks will try to match you with somebody's

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department's needs. So, I know in our department, I want somebody to look through our online maps and tell me what doesn't come up. And I know that's hard to explain, but most of the work is filing. I know in

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town hall, they're looking for a greeter. >> That is when you come through the door town hall, a senior worker would say, "Hi, what office are you looking for? What do you want to do?" And tell you what office to go to. Because right now everybody comes in and goes, "I want to get a dog license." And if you come in

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through the back parking lot, the first office you see is ours. And we have to go go down the hall to the town clerk. We'd rather have somebody sitting at the door who says, "What are you trying to do? Please go to that office." And it's on this for that floor. But we're not asking you to go out like plow snow.

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[laughter] Um, the rate is 15 an hour, which is pretty much minimum wage in the state, and you can work to earn up to $1,500 per calendar year. What happens is you will get a paycheck

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from the Treasury Collector's Office, but you won't cash it. They're going to convert the money and put it on your tax bill, but it is taxable income. You will get a W2. You have to be 60 years old. You have to order your home. You have to be a

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resident five years. But the good part about this is we put in you can have a proxy do the work. So let's say there's a job open, but you physically can't do it, but you'd love to get the $15, $100 reduction on your tax bill. Can one of

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your children do it? Can a neighbor do it for you? Yes. They'll have to sign the application with you, but we're trying to broaden it so that if people physically can't do even if it's, you know, answering a telephone and you're housebound, if you

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can get somebody over 18 to do it for you, we will allow that. Now, lots of towns have the workoff program. Very few adopted the proxy. >> So, we're we're trying to do it that way. I know I have a slight disability and

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when I retire, my daughter's offered to do it for me in the town we live in. Well, she lives rent free, but she's offered said, "Dad, if you can't do it, I'll go do it for you." Why? If I can do it, I'll do it, but I believe it's uh it's a 100 hours a year.

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And by the way, the little phrase that says granted by the board of assessors shouldn't be there. That's a mistake. um that is determined by the HR department whether you can fit a job that's available. >> It also lets you do it

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>> when you can. Let's say a department needs somebody for four months to answer the phone. Uh we've got somebody in our office going to be gone for a week for training. I'd like somebody to take her place answering the phone. Here's the knowledge level you need. They're not in right now or they're in a meeting. I'll

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take a message and have them get back to you. That's not heavy lifting, is it? Please tell me it's not. And you can earn the $15 an hour doing that. And let's see, that's that would be she's 20 hours a week. That would be 20

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hours right there one week out of the hundred. So most of the people that do it now are are doing clerical work like filing things that just build up that nobody ever seems to have time to do. So there are really, you know, outside of the abatements, you have the

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exemptions, you have the fund, you do have the tax deferral if you want to go that way, and you have the workoff program. We're trying to make it easy for people to apply. We're trying to make it easy for people to get it. I mean, I will tell you obviously this

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paperwork, you apply for that $1,000 exemption, you have to fill out an application. We review it. We then take it to the board of assessors to approve. They haven't turned one down yet because we qualify it. Then we have to put it in the computer when they generate the tax

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bill. So, it does take a while. There is some paperwork. >> Typically, we're able to tell you fairly quickly if you qualified. You know, we're not going to make you wait four months guessing whether or not you got it. We could pretty much say to people, you know, the board has to vote

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on it, but it looks fine. >> And you do have to apply for it every year. >> Yeah. That's the state law. Unfortunately, you don't get it once. Now, if any of you are veterans with certain amount of disability in addition to all the senior things, you

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could apply for those on top of it. The state says there is no limit. If you qualify for for three of them, you get three of them. If you qualify for two of them, you get two of them. You know, all we are is we're following what the state says the rules are. Um, but if you

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happen to been a veteran and you're partially disabled, uh, which we need paperwork from the VA that says that, but that's another exemption on top of that you can get. I will tell you, we give out more veterans exemptions every year than senior

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exemptions. Uh maybe it's because they have that low income limit of of whatever we said it was for the uh thousand one, but especially for that 375 one. You know, I'd like to see more people apply for

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that means tested exemption every year. So the more of you who apply for the circuit breaker get it, the more you're eligible to apply for that. So I can't stress that enough. Even if you're not eligible, at least try for it, you know, by filling out that form CB.

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And if the state gives it to you, please come down and apply. Seriously, we're, you know, by the way, that one is funded by uh um we divide the total amount of everybody getting that and

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it's spread across all the residential taxpayers in town. And I think in the calculation I used Monday night out of town meeting, it worked out to 8 cents, I'm sorry, $2.40 a year of every taxpayer to fund the 33

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people who got the senior means test this year. I don't know about you, but if somebody said, would I give two $2.40 to help 33 people in 5 seconds? It So if you don't get an application, folks, come to our office and we'll give

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you one. Seriously, >> do you go to the office upstairs or downstairs? >> We are on the main floor. So, we're on >> the first floor. >> I would call it the first floor. >> Yep. >> Not the auditorium floor. >> Downstairs is the planning and building and HR office. The treasurer, collector,

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assessor, and town clerk, >> and the town admin uh town manager are all on the main floor. >> Okay. >> Where if you come in the back door with the first office, you come to on the right. If you come in the front door, we're the last office on the left. So, but really we have two part-time

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clerks, Samantha Burke and Chris Bodri. They know how to help you fill these out. Um, we really want to help you do it. If there's a physical issue preventing you from coming to town hall, if you can't drive, if you're physically

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unable to get to town hall, call our office and we will come to your house with the application. >> We can make an appointment with you. Yeah, we will come and help you fill it out. >> We can make copies of any paperwork, any extra documentation that we require. We

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can make any uh copies in the office if you need us to do that. >> And again, the only people seeing your income info or what you apply for, Karen, myself, the clerks may see it only when they enter your approval in

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the computer. The board of health looks at it partially. They they tend to say to us, is this person new? Is this person f fulfilled? And like they just want to know if it's somebody different or if it's somebody from somebody from past years, they

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don't they don't look at it. If it's somebody new, they just say and they do qualify and we go yes. >> We're really trying to simplify it. But, you know, we know taxes are a burden. We know they've been going up and we're trying to do what we can to help it. And

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you may not think that's our job, but our job is equally if you are eligible, we want you to get it. That's probably a weird thing to hear from a town or an assessor because most people think we're the guys grabbing your money. We're not. That's

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the treasure collector. [laughter] But no, we just set the value. They grab your money. I get in trouble for saying I don't actually care what people pay in town. I care if you're fairly assessed. You know, the tax bill people pay.

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You know, if you prove our assessment's wrong, we'll fix it. But I don't I don't ever go to somebody and go and, you know, if they go, "My tax bill's too high." I always start by saying, "I can only look at your assessment." >> Yes.

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>> Hi. Um I have two questions. One is um there's a 10-year residential requirement for the >> means tested. means testing is that for the other exemptions as well? >> No. >> And and then the other question is is there someone who if someone came in and

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said this is our financial situation because you said it's not necessarily based on like your 401k but how much you're taking out for one of these things. Um, >> someone who could say, "Yeah, >> we work very closely with the youth and family services director,

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this building director, the veterans agent who's sitting right there. Um, I'll give you an honest example. The youth and family services director called me the beginning of April and said, "I've got somebody that really needs help and

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I can only do so much." uh and we were able to help that person. Now I also had to tell that person in the future you're going to have to go for tax deferral given their particular circumstance

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but we were able to help that person in about six days time frame. Um and it was not I qualify for these. It was another exemption that doesn't usually go out to the world, but

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it's there. And so, we're able to help that person. Yeah. I mean, I will I will tell you, people come to us all the time with, "I'm having trouble paying the bill." And most people are embarrassed to say that. And it's generational.

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I mean, my parents' generation, my generation don't want to talk about it for some reason. If they're a millennial, they'll tell you what they make and all their financial issues out loud. But if somebody comes to the door, we will find a private meeting room in the building. Nobody has to know. We'll

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sit and go over things and say, "We think we could do X, Y, and Z to help you or only one of them and we'll see it through." I mean, it's the last thing in the world is I don't think any assessor in the entire state gets up in the morning and

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goes, "Who can I throw out of their house today?" I It's rather the opposite. What I like about my job is I actually can go home on a lot of days and say, "I helped somebody today." And I tell the tell people, and Karen knows it, the two clerks know it. The

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experience I want people to get coming to the assessor's office is real simple, which I may not have got the answer I liked, but boy, those people helped me and were upfront and caring. And that's what I wanted to say. Not like, oh man,

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what a horrible experience. They don't care about me or anybody. I really want people to say, "Well, they couldn't help me because X, but boy, they listened to me for half an hour and they tried or they sent me to another department." And

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I will tell you candidly when we talk to the senior center director, the youth and family services director, myself, the tax collector is willing to make payment plans with people who are just temporarily, you know, of any age, out of work,

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stuck. The reason why we talk is to help people. I mean, I know we look like the heartless town hall people, but we're not. We really want the best for people. And I don't know if I got it because I was the caregiver for both of my parents till they passed or I'm getting in that

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age. But I just look and go, I mean, you and I share, we actually have sat together many times in my office and go, they don't really qualify exactly, but how can we help that person? >> And we talk about sort of our duty to

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help people. And that may sound odd in this day, but we literally look at it and go, like I said, Jackie uh over at the family services since she referred that man to me, I hadn't seen her in person. I saw her at the town meeting and the first thing I did, I said, "You know

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that gentleman you sent over? We helped." And she said, "Yeah, he told me thank you. We we don't let it rest." I mean, they're, you know, uh, if if we have a computer in in our office window that the entire town hall when anybody talks about the food pantry, brings them

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over to register. Um, we're, you know, we really care about people. The town manager refers people to our office, the human resources people, anybody that, you know, and we don't care what age you are. There's a young woman in her 20s who taking care

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of her grandparents [snorts] and I don't want to tell you the circumstances. Somebody um took the grandparents financial assets and the granddaughter had to step in and we're working with her every single

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month to keep them on an even keel and make sure that she's trying to finish college, make sure she can finish college and not have to work the other 18 hours a day, which she was doing. and all the town departments are working together to make sure that all winds up and people are taken care of. That's

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what we do. And sometimes we assess property. [laughter] So I don't know. Does anybody have any questions beyond what you've asked? >> Okay, we're at 508-4290604. You can just ask for us by name. Kevin

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or Karen or Karen or Kevin. You can even ask for Chris or Samantha and they'll refer if it needs to go up to us. They'll do it in a few minutes. >> Again, if you're in if you have not gotten an exemption and you're interested in getting info, leave us

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your name and address before you go. We will send you the info. We update our brochures every year. Uh we were having an argument yesterday about do we update it for this meeting, but we're waiting to uh for the state to acknowledge all our town meeting votes

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>> and then we'll do it. But we're serious. We want to help people and we're here for you. Just just as you come here for resources, >> you know, you have the vets agent, youth and family services. We're we're all one group. We really want to help folks. And

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if you have any questions, just call us. We will spend all the time in the world to help you. Thank you all for coming. This is the largest group >> of seniors in five years we've had in these meetings we do. [applause] >> Thank you.