NORTH SMITHFIELD – Five large businesses that followed the town’s appeal process received a total of $69,683 in tax abatements this week and councilors questioned the errors, which will result in a less than projected revenue figure for the current fiscal year.
Tax Assessor Jennifer George presented the changes, approved by the Board of Assessment Review to correct errors from a statistical revaluation completed in 2024.
“This is out of our hands, right?” asked Town Council President Kimberly Alves. “We can’t send it somewhere else for a review, because that’s our board.”
“If you deny it, then I have to deny their appeal, and then they have the right to go to Superior Court,” replied George.
The revaluation process, required every three years under state law to bring property assessments in line with market values, was completed by Catalis Tax & CAMA using sales data. Taxpayers have the chance to appeal new values, and George said around 50 did so after receiving their 2025 bills.
“They appeal to me. I either approve it or deny it,” George explained. “This is the Board of Assessors making a decision on these five properties.”
“All of those businesses have been around for quite awhile, so how can we have such significant discrepancies year over year?” asked Councilor David Punchak.
George noted the largest of the errors, resulting in an abatement of $32,000, was for the ice rink at 1186 Eddie Dowling Highway, purchased by an LLC known as “Albany Road North Smithfield” in 2023. A recorded deed showing a $5 million sales price for the facility failed to note that the purchase also included a second ice rink in Pawtucket, said George.
“According to the owner, that $5 million included both of them,” George explained. “Basically, it was overassessed at the reval based on the sale.”
Two of the recently approved abatements – $14,698 for Lowe’s and $17,152 for Walmart – were the result of a problem with the CAMA software, according to the assessor. The system, she said, used the wrong price per square foot for the two stores, and failed to factor in depreciation.
“Since then, I’ve checked all of them and they’re all calculating the depreciation correctly,” said George. “I had to go back and check all of them.”
“Next reval, I’ll just double check all of the pricing,” George added. “Things like this come up. I run so many reports to check the values as it is. This was kind of a system error because it wasn’t calculating correctly, and I would have never known.”
Stop & Shop, meanwhile, received a $4,640 abatement due to a change in grade – a rating assigned based on the overall condition of the property.
“Wasn’t that store redone a couple years ago?” asked Punchak.
George said the review board reduced the supermarket’s grade from a B to a B- following the review.
The final and least significant tax abatement passed this week went to Kohl’s department store, decreasing funds coming into town coffers by another $1,055.
Punchak asked about the reviewers qualifications.
“Do they have an appraiser? Do they have someone they can consult? Do they have even a commercial real estate broker who can say ‘hey that makes sense..?'” he asked.
George said the town’s three member Board of Review currently has two real estate appraisers and one vacancy, since a resignation last year. She noted that of the 50 or so appeals in 2025, around 20 taxpayers ultimately received abatements on the values adjusted in 2024.
The town, George noted, expects some abatements every year and budgets $50,000 for the changes when there’s a statistical reevaluation and $75,000 for a full revaluation, completed every nine years..
But fiscal year 2025/2026 also saw a payout of $13,559 to settle a court case, putting the year’s total abatements at $105,578, according to a document presented on Monday.
Councilor Rebecca DeCristofaro questioned if there was an issue with the revaluation company, noting she heard many complaints about the 2024 assessments.
“A lot of people had issue with how much their taxes increased,” DeCristofaro said. “Maybe there’s an opportunity in the future to see if we could look into another company?”
But Town Administrator Scott Gibbs noted that North Smithfield’s increase in real estate value was consistent with other local communities.
“Whether it’s Burrillville or Lincoln, we’re all falling into the same category,” said Gibbs. “It was a year where we saw significant increases in residential values, but it wasn’t because of the evaluation process in the town.”
DeCristofaro described passing the abatements as “a hard pill to swallow.”
“It’s helpful to understand the background but at the end of the day, we can’t deny it,” DeCristofaro said. “We’re going to wind up spending as much in legal fees if we try to deny it.”
I love the the council is so concerned about a small tax amount but has zero problems wasting $100 of thousand dollars on wasteful studies and large union raises for less work and productivity.
In other news, Councilwoman O’Hara admitted to cutting down the tree and receiving anonymous letters at her home. She has been advised to contact the Police Department as one TC member advised that the behavior could be criminal. Inquiring minds would like to know, will Mrs.O be fined for cutting down a tree owned by the town, are the letter writers being investigated, are the writers of other “anonymous” letters going to come forward? If you watch nothing else, watch the end of the meeting…oh, by the way, do the taxpayers have to fix the microphone?
I watched it, and heard her say she paid big bucks to cut down trees on her OWN property. Which may be the cause of a giant hole mentioned a few months ago, as roots rot and a sinkhole can occur…but, I did not hear about this one street tree by her, cutting it down, in the meeting. So it is gone now?
She is receiving hate mail with a stamp but not going through the postal route as a stamp would be marked through. It included private stock info. How they got that info makes me wonder of an internal connection to her. That is confidential.
And good luck having police involved. They did nothing when I went to report theft and vandalism, bank diversion and monies stolen from my late parent. And when parent was alive, parent sought help against neighbors dumping on the property, harassing, and was labeled difficult. Rather than see the clique there, committing the vandalism, and theft, I later had to contend with after parent death. My elderly parent underwent exactly what Mrs O Hara is undergoing. I advise trail cams, surveillance cams. But maybe seeing she is a TC member, they WILL get involved. I hope so, she, nor any person, should not have to live with any form of harassment. I had a boatload of proof, the police chose to ignore as a whole.
Are these letters by the same group of people from the previous anonymous letter group that violated federal laws? I wonder whatever happened to that group…
Isn’t it amazing how these billion dollar companies will fight tooth and nail over what amounts to pennies for them?
Also incredible how much extra privilege commercial properties have compared to residents. Imagine if we could deduct “depreciation” due to needed building improvements over time?