Swampscott Median Single-Family Tax Bill To Increase $483 For FY 2023

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — The Swampscott median single-family homeowner will pay an increase of $483 in property taxes next year after the Select Board voted Wednesday night on a 1.7 residential/commercial tax rate split.

The increase — which factors in $2.57 million in free cash, general stabilization and capital stabilization fund transfers authorized at Monday's Special Town Meeting to mitigate the impact on residents — includes $300 toward debt service for the new K-4 school and $183 toward general government spending.

While single-family home taxes will go up, taxes on condominiums, multi-family homes and commercial property will actually go down because of a sharp rise in single-family values. While Swampscott single-family home values went up 16 percent last year, commercial values only went up about 1 percent.

Because of that, Swampscott Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald proposed that the residential/commercial split be pushed from 1.7 to the maximum of 1.75. But, in a rather unexpected vote given the consensus that appeared to be reached during the 90-minute discussion that preceded it, the Board voted 3-2 to maintain the 1.7 split.

Board Members David Grishman, Katie Phelan and Peter Spellios voted to keep the 1.7 split, while Chair Neal Duffy and Board Member MaryEllen Fletcher voted to shift the burden to 1.75.

At the 1.7 split, according to figures presented at Wednesday night's Select Board meeting, the median single-family home bill will go up 6.4 percent. Median condos valued under $750,000 will see taxes go down 2.6 percent, condos valued more than $750,000 will go down 1.7 percent, multi-family homes will go down 1 percent, the average commercial property tax bill will go down 5 percent and the median commercial property tax bill will go down 7.1 percent.

The difference between 1.7 and 1.75 means an increase difference of $32 for the median single-family home valued at about $595,000. At the 1.75 split, taxes still would have gone down across the board, just not as much.

The Board also voted to forego the residential exemption (which would have shifted the tax burden to higher-value and non-owner-occupied homes) and the small business exemption (which was not used the last time the town adopted it).

Finance Committee Chair Eric Hartmann said at Monday's Special Town Meeting that the state's certification for the town's free cash of $3.63 million came in "on the higher end of what we were expecting" and "a couple of hundred thousand higher than with our financial guidelines we would hope to carry."

Free cash is derived from unexpected budget savings or higher-than-expected revenues over the previous year.

He told Special Town Meeting members that this allocation "brings us to the lower level of the range" that is desired.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)