Sticker shock from new Charlestown tax assessments

Charlestown’s tax base rockets up by 47%: how this will affect your taxes

By Will Collette

Charlestown property owners received letters this week from town Tax Assessor Ken Swain showing the results of the town’s full reassessment of property values.

Before the reassessment, Charlestown’s “Grand List,” the total value of taxable property, was $2.88 billion. The new number is $4.22 billion, a rise of $1.34 billion or 47%. This will mean higher taxes for some, lower taxes for others and for some, almost no change at all.

Big bucks being paid mostly by wealthy out-of-staters for shore property propelled this increase in the total tax base. However, on a personal level, this has meant an assessment hike for nearly all of the rest of us, averaging around 50%.

For example, Cathy and I received Swain’s notice that the assessment on our home and adjacent vacant lot, five acres total, rose by 65% to just under $1 million ($998,000).

In past articles about fake fire districts, two of which are in Charlestown, I compare our 2.5-acre north of One vacant lot to a 2.5-acre vacant lot owned by the Central Quonochontaug (Fake) Fire District. Both are zoned R3A. Our 2.5-acre lot is now assessed at $262,300 while its southern counterpart is assessed at only $33,700.

We’ll get back to that issue: how the Central Quonnie and Shady Harbor (also fake) Fire District evade Charlestown property taxes when neither Fire District actually fights fires. In reality, they are both jumped up homeowner associations who gamed the system. Anyway, more on that later.

Incidentally, Ken Swain’s office maintains a free, open database you can access for data on every property in Charlestown. CLICK HERE. All information disclosed in this article is public.

For years, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) focused only on the tax rate, noting how low it is compared to most other municipalities, including those that provide far more services for the money. 

But in the real world, what you actually pay in taxes is the product of multiplying the tax rate (projected to drop to $5.71 per $1000 in value from the current $8.17) times the assessment.

My friend and Progressive Charlestown co-founder Tom Ferrio did this analysis for Charlestown Residents United:

New Valuations and Taxes

Use our tax calculator below to estimate you taxes with the new assessment value.

The new Charlestown property valuation letters arriving in the mail have caused a lot of discussion and concern, with many property values increasing by 40% to 50%.

It is very important to understand that a new tax rate is computed every year based on the budget for the town and the total value of the properties in the town. The assessed value of your property going up does not mean that your taxes will necessarily go up - with the inflation in property values over the last several years, the effect on your taxes depends on whether your property value went up more or less than the average increase in our town.

The town website has posted an estimate of the tax rate for 2023-24 tax year based on the new property valuations and the current draft budget. That estimate shows the tax rate dropping dramatically: from $8.17 per $1,000 valuation in the current year to $5.71 for the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

Incredibly easy to use. Plug in the old and new
assessments that are in Swain's letter.

We have provided this online calculator to see your current and projected taxes.

You can get your assessment valuations from your recent letter ( Old Assessment and New Assessment) or the tax database here (2021 Total Valuation and 2022 Total Valuation).

Or you can compute the taxes manually:

Multiply your 2021 Total Valuation divided by 1000 by $8.17 to get a tax bill estimate for next year.

Multiply your 2022 Total Valuation divided by 1000 by $5.71 to get a tax bill estimate for next year.

Thanks, Tom. I used Tom’s calculator to project our new tax bill. It looks like Cathy and I will be paying an additional $250.

When Cathy and I bought our house in 2000 and the adjacent lot in 2001 for a total of $396,000, we never expected to be property millionaires. Thanks to the buying binge by non-residents, lots of us full-time Charlestown residents saw the theoretical (and taxable) value of our homes skyrocket.

Can we actually sell our property for a million bucks? We can ask, but we might not get. Ex-CCA Town Councilor Bonnita Van Slyke put her Arnolda waterfront estate on the market for $3 million. After a year of no takers, she ended up settling for $2 million.

Mortgage rates are at a 15-year high and there is a limit to what the market for homes for working families will bear. While rich New Yorkers may slap down the cash here in Charlestown because our prices beat the Hamptons, it’s a different market north of Route One.

The Providence Journal notes there is an overall shortage of houses, especially acute under $500,000. Even though CCA leader Ruth Platner does not believe in the law of supply and demand, the market does. Shortages really do drive up prices, despite what Ruthie thinks. 

Right now, you need to be rich to get what you want in the housing market. The only proactive step we can take to bring prices down to some semblance of affordability is to increase the supply.

I think there are three take-aways from the new tax assessment numbers.

First, fake fire districts need to be abolished.

Unless a fire district actually devotes most of its resources to fighting fires, it is not worthy of the name. Indeed, these phony fire districts are an insult to real firefighters.

We have two fake fire districts: Central Quonnie and Shady Harbor. There are more than a dozen others dotting the coast. You can read more about them in Alex Nunes excellent series on fake fire districts on The Publics Radio. CLICK HERE.

Shady Harbor FD pays ZERO property tax to Charlestown despite owning six prime pieces of coastal real estate. Their 19.26 acres total includes a private beach where public access is strictly forbidden, a dock, boat launch, three vacant lots on Meyerand Drive and a pumping station for private water, assessed at $247,900 though actually worth millions. The Fire District pays nothing.

Central Quonnie is not tax-exempt, but its property tax assessments are insanely low, as the example I used comparing my 2.5-acre vacant lot with a similar lot owned by Central Quonnie where my assessment is eight times higher than Central Quonnie’s.

Part of Central Quonnie's portfolio, this 4.1-acre tennis 

complex is assessed at only $130,100 

(Charlestown Tax Assessor) 

They own 10 prime coastal properties totaling 38 acres with tennis courts, a sports field, private beach docks, boat launches and a beach club as well as a private water system plus five vacant lots on Surfside Ave. 

Their total assessed, taxable value for all that prime property is $738,323. If they weren't masquerading as a fire district, their assessment would be in the tens of millions. 

Almost 60 prime shore acres owned by the two fake fire districts are not being taxed fairly or at all. We are subsidizing two homeowners’ association to the tune of millions of dollars. That’s just wrong.

Second takeaway: full-time residents deserve a tax break.

The CCA, which counts on non-residents for political donations, has been adamantly opposed to the whole idea of the “Homestead Tax Credit.”

Homestead tax breaks are available in just about every state and are a common practice among coastal communities like Charlestown to compensate those of us who call Charlestown home for the added costs we pay for our summer people.

Narragansett has had this popular program for several years. North Kingstown added it a couple of years ago. Newport is adding it this year.

Homestead tax breaks can be designed in several different ways to reduce full-time homeowners’ taxes. A simple option would be to simply assign a dollar figure, maybe $1000 as town Democrats suggested in 2011, or $5000 or whatever is fair and affordable, to be credited against your tax bill. Or it could be a percentage of your assessment. I like the dollar amount for its simplicity.

Whatever the reduction in taxes for full-time resident homeowners costs the town, it's added back through the tax rate paid by all taxpayers. 

The CCA screamed about the “unfairness” of town Democrats’ proposal in 2011 calling the idea “discriminatory.” It's not, especially since part-time residents probably get a homestead exemption where they live.

Summer visitors can triple Charlestown’s population. Taxpayers support a year-round infrastructure to accommodate that surge in visitors from Memorial Day to Labor Day. We pay for their services. We pick up their trash when they leave it by the roadside. We are also paying for them through our higher tax assessments as their properties drive up housing costs.

Third takeaway: we need to make sure our tax credit system serves those who need it.

Charlestown has an array of tax breaks available to veterans, the blind, handicapped, disabled and low-income elderly. I have long advocated for a new tax credit for volunteer firefighters both as a reward for standing ready put their lives on the line for us and to aid in recruitment and retention.

Do all individuals and households who are eligible even know these tax breaks exist? Qualified property owners need to apply – no one gets the tax break automatically. Links to the tax breaks for most categories plus the FFOS (Forest, Farm and Open Space) tax break are now on the Tax Assessor’s Office web page (left-hand column). 

I would like to see the town do a special issue of the Pipeline mailed to all households.

Whether you see the huge rise in property assessments as good news or bad news, it’s all the more reason why Charlestown needs to take a cool, critical look at tax policy fairness. 

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. While we may never develop a perfect system, we should nonetheless continue to make improvements whenever and wherever we can.