To support the Spy’s coverage of the Town of Easton’s economic development challenges, we continue today with last week’s presentation by consultant Joseph Minicozzi to the Easton Town Council and the general public.
Minicozzi is the principal of Urban3. Before creating Urban3, he served as the Executive Director for the Asheville Downtown Association and is an urban planner who is imagining new ways to think about and visualize land use, urban design, and economics.
His work for the town of Easton included comparing the economic productivity of varying property types within the Town compared to Talbot County and the region and examining the economic potency of Easton’s downtown.
This video is approximately 50 minutes in length.
Richard Skinner says
Very valuable. Those of your readers who know of Victoria, BC, Canada can attest to its charm and quality of life. A key component of their development is very similar to what is discussed here, including the use of second and third stories of 19th Century retail buildings. Those who wish to preserve the rural character of Talbot County might want to think of how we can build more high density residences rather than the conventional house and quarter acre yard and save the open spaces. If it means the County can pay for services even as it loses land to higher sea levels, that’s a pretty good bargain.
Mark Pellerin says
I’d like to know specifically how the presenter’s land values were derived. Thank you.
Joseph Minicozzi says
Hello Mark:
We used the County’s assessor files to get the values as they’d be “taxed” after all the exemptions and such. So what you see is the “assessed value” divided by the parcel’s acreage to get the “value per acre.” Then we put it all on a map to see it. One way to think of the map is that it is really just a really big bar chart showing relative production of taxes.
Joseph Minicozzi says
Mark:
We used the assessed values of the properties from the assessor database. Simply put, we wanted to show the relative production of taxation, and that starts with how a property is “valued” after all the exemptions and such are taken out. Then we divide the values into the acerage of the site to get the “value per acre” and map it. Think of it as a really big bar chart that is spread over a map. If you want to know the deeper question of “how is value created?”, that is an excellent question to talk with your assessor. It’s sort of complicated, but they can explain that out. It’s basically based on the question “what would someone pay in the open market for your property?” and that’s how they start the value. From there, you have the ‘phase in’ and other things that get taken off the market value to get down to the “assessed values”. Does that make sense?
Andy McCormick says
Thank you for posting this, Spy. Such an important topic. The presenter is a recognized expert in his field. I checked the work he’s done for other towns. The recurring theme is, of course, denser development adds to tax rolls. I would be interested in hearing more about the cost side of the equation. Schools, roads, parking, police. If he covered any of that, I missed it. Many towns across the country have made the mistake of over indexing to near term revenues. We have so much to be grateful for living in Talbot County. I hope the Council continues to take a thoughtful, cautious approach.
David Montgomery, Town Councilmember says
Thank you for this well stated point. My concerns are exactly the same as yours.