Associate Assessor Melissa Couture-Rimbold discusses the FY25 tax rate during the Dec. 3 Select Board meeting.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet
SOUTH HADLEY — During the Dec. 3 Select Board meeting, the board hosted a tax classification public hearing to set a single tax rate of $13.98 for fiscal year 2025.
Although the tax rate decreased from $14.41 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, the value of a single-family home is going up from 372,100 to $391,100.
Associate Assessor Melissa Couture-Rimbold said this year was a five-year valuation and did a revaluation of all the properties in town.
“Each year we do what’s called an interim value adjustment, it’s not as deep of a dive with Department of Revenue over our shoulder for many, many months. This process started back in February, and we got our final certification in November,” she said.
Last year, Couture-Rimbold said the community’s property value grew 11.2% and increased again this year by about 6.1%.
She said, “I’m kind of happy because our motto since last year’s classification was look at about 10% and overall, the town went up 6.1% but that does not mean that an individual evaluation went up 6.1%. There is a range that they go up, one person called and said their property went up 15% and it did, but overall, the values went up about 6.1%.”
Owners of an average single-family home in South Hadley will see an increase of approximately $105 to their tax bill or a 1.97% increase rising from $5,361 in FY24 to $5,467 in FY25.
The tax rate for Fire District No. 1 has decreased from $2.24 to $1.96 and homeowners in this area can expect to see their tax bills decrease by about $60 for fire, water and ambulance services in the district.
Fire District No. 1 had a larger amount of free cash than normal, and its ambulance provided a decent amount of money to lower the tax rate by pulling from those two things, according to according to Fire District No.1 Prudential Committee member Kurt Schenker.
“We now kind of balanced out, after we increased our staff and it’s caught up now where we’re not paying that full brunt ahead,” Schenker explained.
Fire District No. 2 residents will see an increase to their tax bill from FY24 by approximately $60 after the tax rate went from $2.18 to $2.23.
For a commercial industrial property in South Hadley, an average tax bill is set to increase by $87, decrease by $77 in Fire District No. 1 and increase by $60 in Fire District No. 2.
The average was in FY24 was $391,100 and increased to $409,900 in FY25.
“Incentivize business by our tax rate,” Couture-Rimbold said.
The Select Board moved to adopt a factor of one for all classes of property in South Hadley for FY25 which the Select Board and the Prudential committees for each district approved.
