Haddam First Selectman Announces Flat Grand List

At last night’s Board of Finance meeting, Haddam First Selectman Paul DeStefano announced the grand list total for 2010 had decreased.

In 2009 Haddam’s grand list total was $898,246. But the 2010 grand list total, even after the reevaluation, came in at $890,878, a difference of only $7,368, a less than 1 percent decrease.

Chairwoman Deborah Olsen inquired about the decrease. “What would make it go down from 2009 to 2010?”

DeStefano explained that a lot of it had to do with the reevaluation. “We had the reval and went through and looked at every piece of property and obviously some of them went down.”

Board member Joe Rossi inquired about the number of appeals that have been filed so far and DeStefano explained that the town has not seen many. “I’m surprised, but we haven’t received that many yet,” said DeStefano. “We were expecting more than what we’ve received so far.”

DeStefano has been meeting with his board nearly every day over the past few weeks, discussing and scrutinizing the budget with respect to the new grand list totals.

“What we’ve done based on these numbers is we’ve directed our departments in accordance with a flat year and rebuilt everything," explained DeStefano. “We did the best we could to come up with something that would tie into these revenues.”

“We simply didn’t have any growth,” expressed DeStefano.

The deadline to submit an Application to Appeal Assessment is Feb. 18 at noon. Applications can be downloaded from the Assessor's page on the Town of Haddam web site, www.haddam.org.