In expressing their position, residents aggrieved by their new tax bills questioned the wisdom of the school renovations, the proposed indoor recreational facility and prodded the Town Council on why municipal employees have not been laid off or taken pay cuts.

The issue of revaluation has been before the Town Council in its past few meetings and rolling back revaluation has been principally endorsed by Town Council member Richard Fusco, who had made a motion on the rollback at the July 20 Town Council meeting to add the item to the agenda for August 17. Before that, Planning & Zoning Chairman David Minnich had suggested that the Town Council undertake the option of suspending revaluation at a special Town Council meeting on May 19.

At the previous Town Council meeting on July 20, the same group of residents had presented a petition to the Town Council with 147 signatures. Residents had hoped this would qualify for a power of initiative, but a legal opinion by Town Attorney Paul Jessell stated otherwise.

Since the petition addresses revaluation and is in response to tax bills, Mr. Jessell cited section 308 of the Town Charter on power of initiative, which states, "the electors shall have the power to propose to the council any ordinance or other measure, except an ordinance or resolution appointing or removing officials, appropriating money, authorizing the levy of taxes or fixing the tax rate."

Mr. Jessell stated, "that's exactly what this petition is," while noting that the signatures on the petition were not certified.

Nick Biello, who presented the petition at the previous meeting, initiated discussion on August 17.

"Since we started the petition, I've talked to a lot of people; not one has said their tax bill has gone down or stayed the same," Mr. Biello said. "If that is the case, where are the decreased tax bills to compensate for the increase? If we have a zero percent budget, why can't we pay the same taxes?"

Town Council member Carl Mancini suggested that the Town Council offer Mr. Biello answers to Mr. Biello's question immediately, which was provided by Finance Director Frank Nardelli.

"When you talk about zero, the town is at zero, the Board [of Education] is at zero, but bonding costs are a million four [hundred thousand]," said Mr. Nardelli.

Mr. Nardelli continued by addressing revenues.

"We're down about $900,000; we have less conveyance fees, less building permits, less interest on investments," Mr. Nardelli said. "So now we're up to $2.3 million that we have to make up. There are also increases in expenses for the bonds and decreases in the revenues."

Following Mr. Biello, Jackie O'Brien, who had advocated rolling back revaluation at the previous Town Council meeting, questioned the Town Council over the costs of school renovations.

"This $1.4 million; who gave the town the right to decide this is the money we're going to use on the work on all these schools?" asked Ms. O'Brien.

Town Council Chairman Elaine Adams responded, "This was three years ago, the Board of Education had approached the Town Council asking for renovations of the three schools. The Town Council voted to put it to a referendum to the townspeople on whether they wanted to spend the money to renovate the high school, Judson and Polk. The voters said yes."

Nancy McCleary then addressed the Town Council, questioning the proposed indoor recreational facility.

"Everyone is having a hard time paying their taxes, yet the Recreation Department is pushing forward on a $2 million recreation building on Park Road," said Ms. McCleary. "How can we even consider building that thing at this time? It is a luxury and we don't need it."

Later in the meeting, Rosalie Loughran, speaking as a Park and Recreation Commission member, countered Ms. McCleary's statements, which caused brief disorder in the room as one resident suggested to "burn it [the indoor recreation facility] for firewood."

Ms. Loughran stated, "the building was donated to us, a State Representative got us a $600,000 grant to build it. We are not spending taxpayer money."

Roger Otto then brought the debate's focus back to revaluation.

"A lot of people didn't realize that even though the budget may be at zero, that with the revaluation, they would see their taxes go up," he said. "I looked at my taxes for the five previous years, and it went up $375 over those years, about $75 per year. This year it's going up by $700."

Town Council member Gary Bernier spoke multiple times during public participation, attempting to inform residents of what influence property revaluation has on taxes.

"Earlier, Mr. Nardelli had discussed why taxes went up, $1.4 million in bonding and a loss of a considerable amount of revenue," said Mr. Bernier. "The tax increase has nothing to do with revaluation; but with or without revaluation, your taxes will go up. If we want to roll back our taxes, we will turn off more lights because we have to save money. There's a deficit between revenue and expenses and revaluation is not the cause of that."

Town Manager Chuck Frigon provided background on the option of rolling back revaluation.

"Other than Monroe and Torrington, no other towns out of the 45 towns who have done revaluation have proceeded with this option," said Mr. Frigon. "There were 45 towns that qualify. The two towns in question did so under a separate ordinance, not under the provision by Governor Rell."

Mr. Frigon continued by speaking on the effects in Watertown if revaluation was rolled back.

"To bring the assessments to where they were a year ago, we're looking at a two mill increase, bringing it closer to 26 mills," said Mr. Frigon. "That's also on your motor vehicles. Where it particularly hurts is on industry and the people who employ all of us."

Tax Assessor Carolyn Nadeau then provided her evaluation on what would be needed to roll back revaluation, which includes $20,000 to reconstruct the grandlist.

"From there, we would have to do the rest internally to eliminate the 2008 grandlist," said Ms. Nadeau. "In addition to that, we would have to stop the 2009 grandlist, which would be motor vehicle, real estate and personal property."

Ms. Nadeau reported it would be too late to do a 2009 revaluation since it would have to be done by October 1.

"The revaluation company projected a cost of $135,000 in 2010," Ms. Nadeau said.

The same company would have to perform the operations for the town, since they own the software which manages the grandlist.

Mr. Mancini then asked how many people have appealed their reevaluations as compared to previous years. Ms. Nadeau responded, "we had two-thirds less."

"That bothers me because all of a sudden we told people that taxes would be going up and then they didn't appeal and now they're here, complaining it wasn't done properly," said Mr. Mancini.

Ultimately, the Town Council would vote to not take any action on rolling back revaluation, which prompted protest from residents and Mr. Fusco.

"Whether they appealed it or not, it gets to the point where you don't know what to do," said Mr. Fusco. "These people are hurting, from what I'm seeing, it's going to be a little fairer if we go back to the original assessment.