The New Ipswich Board of Assessors and Board of Selectmen will reconsider how the town compiles its annual tax maps.
Municipalities are required by state law to update maps every year, and 2016’s work might run the assessing department over budget.
“We have an opportunity now to look at other avenues,” Selectman David Lage said at his board’s meeting Tuesday.
The full Board of Assessors – Jeanne Cunningham, Jim Coffey and Frank Danisienka – attended the meeting to ask for the additional funds needed for this year. The Board of Assessors has about $600 left in its budget, and the mapping service says its work could run up to $1,900.
When the selectmen asked why the yearly expenditure would be over budget, Coffey noted that, like the mapping contract including the phrase “up to,” most of their contracts are not fixed.
“The bulk of the budget is contracts,” he said. “And contracts are variable.”
The boards concluded that they would pay the mappers in January from 2017 funds, and spend 2017 researching more efficient and less expensive ways to handle updates in the future.
Assessing is done by Southwest Region Planning Commission, a group representing much of southern New Hampshire, which contracts its map work out to Cartographic Associates. The changes needed in New Ipswich’s tax map for 2016 include three lot line adjustments, three subdivisions, two mergers, and other changes.
The boards want to include the Planning Board in a process to cut out the middle man in the future. Lage said he would like to have all the files in digital form.
Coffey said, “We’d like to do it with the Board of Selectmen and the Planning Board so that [they] can see what we’re working with.”
Prior to meeting with the Board of Assessors, the selectmen opened their meeting discussing budget requests from the Department of Recreation, whose chair Mindy Buxton requested a large umbrella for the town pool.
“I think it’s a potential maintenance issue,” Lage said. “I think it’s good to have shade somewhere out there, but it’s a sail in the wind.”
The board will look at other less risky options and check on the existing awning, which may need repair.