OP-ED: Two Different Outcomes of Property Revaluation in Watertown

By Linda Scott
Watertown Resident

A Tale of Two Streets

When Charles Dickens wrote his famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, his intent was to highlight societal injustices, and with great effect he showed us the dichotomy between living very well and simply surviving.

In Watertown, in many ways the seeds of rancor and discontent are being sown … no guillotines involved!

Follow me on this journey, if you will. I’m calling this “A Tale of Two Streets.”

On December 2nd a very important and transparent government document was shared through the Watertown Assessors Office with the people of Watertown.

Watertown News announced its arrival, and I commented, hoping to attract resident attention, which was probably distracted because of holiday activities.

Since this document was very large (almost 300 pages), to digest its contents and make sense of it alI I looked for a simpler way to ponder how it would effect you, me and our neighborhoods. This required quite a bit of thought.

What was the topic of this document? Our property re-evaluations! Every five years, it is state-mandated that your property be reviewed by consultants hired by the City.

These consultants make recommendations for the value of each piece of Watertown property. That value is used to set the taxes owed for that property. Then you, as the owner of that property, pay the determined amount as your property tax.

As I was trying to make sense of this document, I came upon a plan. In the interest of time, I was going to pick two very different streets in Watertown and see how the property values changed.

First, let’s understand the underlying ground rules we were given. We were told in the introduction to this document that it was estimated that this re-evaluation exercise would raise the property values for all Watertown single family homes by, on average, 10.4%.

I thought that I’d concentrate on single family homes and start with the gold standard of Watertown streets as a baseline.

Watertown’s Jewel

Russell Avenue is a single family zoned area in Watertown which has received excellent services (new sidewalks and streets) and is a shining symbol of the history, grand architecture and affluence (past and present) in Watertown.

Russell Avenue has 51 structures on it, counting the architecturally historic church. Of the remaining 50, it has 45 single family homes.

Surprisingly to me, after this recent property re-evaluation, Russell Avenue residents averaged a property value increase of 8.3%. Not 10.4%. I guess that I would have assumed that the property on one of the most affluent streets in Watertown would increase by at least the 10.4% average Watertown increase.

This is not the full and very complicated story of Russell Avenue’s tax increases. For instance, under this new property evaluation, one Russell Avenue homeowner of an approximately $1,700,000 home is getting a tax decrease of almost 4%. At the same time, two of the least affluent houses on the street have been valued upward of between 15% and 18%!

Here’s the Russell Avenue breakdown:

2025 Property Value Increases on Russell Avenue:

Percentage of Property Increase	Percentage of Property Decrease	Number of Homes reflecting that Increase
	3.9%	1
2%		1
3%		2
4%		5
5%		7
6%		3
7%		3
8%		7
9%		5
10%		4
11%		3
12%		0
13%		1
14%		0
15%		1
16%		2
17%		0
18%		1

Yes, after this Russell Avenue property re-evaluation, properties will range in value from approximately $770,000 to $2,500,000. Under this new property re-evaluation, there are people whose property increased in value by a range of 2% to 18% on the same street!

I was left with a question: Why such a large discrepancy on the same street?

Then another, less imposing, street came onto my radar. It has 54 single family homes, but they are more or less mixed in with two family houses. This is decidedly not Russell Ave. The houses are much smaller in scale, closer together, and nice but not grand. With a similar number of single family homes on the street, I decided to give a comparison a try.

Now let’s look at Edenfield Avenue.

Here’s a look at Edenfield Avenue’s 2025 Single Family Property Value Increases:

Percentage of Property Increase	Percentage of Property Decrease	Number of Homes Reflecting that Increase
6%		1
7%		1
8%		3
9%		7
10%		6
11%		6
12%		3
13%		6
14%		2
15%		6
16%		4
17%		2
18%		1
19%		1
20%		4

As you can see, there are many more Edenfield residents whose property values have been raised well above the City average. Edenfield’s increases start at 6%, and Russell’s at 2%. As a matter of fact, compared to Russell Ave. (and to the 10.4% average City-wide increase stated by the City of Watertown), Edenfield Avenue’s average property value increase (13.1%) is quite alarming! I wondered what else could explain this steep property valuation jump for this street. And how many other Watertown streets and houses are in the same situation?

I was able to find a very important piece to this puzzle. Look at the table below. Note the addition of a final column. This identifies how many homes with the classification of “cape” or “bungalow” property values went sky high!

2025 Property Value Increases of Single Family homes on Edenfield Street, with emphasis on Home Style:

I didn’t have time to see how many other streets were stuck in the same unfortunate situation.

So, why is Edenfield Avenue shouldering so much of the potential tax increase burden? Because don’t higher property values translate into higher taxes?

In the case of Edenfield Avenue, it’s two words: “Bungalow” and “Cape.”

You see, on this street there are 16 houses described in the City records as “capes” or “bungalows,” and those particular styles of houses were identified as somehow more valuable than the “large and luxurious” houses on Russell Ave. That’s it!

In a world where living simply and putting a small footprint on this earth, instead of occupying tremendous private lots, is being touted as the Gospel, our state government appears to have put its thumb on the scale in favor of affluence.

Resources on the Topic of Affordable Housing and Taxes:

For more information on the re-evaluation and the tax implications, please see Retired District A City Councilor Angie Kounelis’ excellent Watertown News letter: https://www.watertownmanews.com/2024/12/10/letter-time- for-city-to-rein-in-spending-to-stabilize-property-taxes/

Also, watch the December 10, 2024 City Council meeting for the hearing on the 2025 Watertown property re-evaluation. Click here and start at 7:45 for just the re-evaluation hearing, or start at the beginning if you want info on Victory Field and the winter street parking ban.

And, on December 17th at 6:00 p.m. the Watertown Affordable Housing Trust is holding a listening session for residents to express their ideas for how to make Watertown more affordable. It’ll be at City Hall and on Zoom. For more details, click here.

Why attend this meeting? In order to make Watertown affordable, we need many approaches. Building multimillion dollar complexes is one. City fiscal responsibility and maintaining tax levels is another. Transportation issues weigh heavily. Using building alone to solve the affordability problem will not work. Join the conversation that night with your opinions.

If you will allow me some armchair analysis:

These bungalows and capes are some of the very few potentially reachable properties for families to move to or stay in Watertown. That makes them “valuable and desirable.” So, by adding such an onerous tax burden, you make them less affordable and thus make Watertown that much less affordable.

This just doesn’t make sense! So it would appear to me that a blow has been struck against Watertown affordability again. This also puts pressure on the less wealthy to leave and makes it even more comfortable for the wealthy to stay.

Finally, An Addendum:

While I was at it, I thought that it might be of some value to list the increased values of our politicians’ properties, as is done in many other communities.

Here’s my breakdown of this data: We have five City Councilors who own single family homes. This is how their properties were re-evaluated:

Single Family Property Evaluations for Watertown City Councilors (City Average Increase: 10.4%)

	Position	Property Location	Percentage Increase	Percentage Decrease
John Airasian	City-Wide Councilor	District D	2.9%
Caroline Bays	City-Wide Councilor	District C	6.7%
Lisa Feltner	District B Councilor	District B	12.6%
Nicole Gardner	District A Councilor	District A		-6%
Vincent Piccirilli	District C Councilor	District C	4.5%
Emily Izzo	District D Councilor	No property recorded

Two Family Property Evaluations for Watertown City Councilors (City Average Increase: 8.9%)

Name	Position	Property Location	Percentage Increase
John Gannon	City-Wide Councilor	District C	3.4%
Anthony Palomba	City-Wide Councilor	District C	7.6%
Mark Sideris	City Council President	District B	11.1%

Single Family Home Property Evaluations for Watertown State Reps (City Average Increase: 10.4%)

Name Position Property Location Percentage Increase
John Lawn	State Rep. Dem -10th Middlesex	District D	12.1%
Steven Owens	State Rep Dem – 29th Middlesex	District A	4.3%

Note: Only two of our nine city councilors met or exceeded the average property percentage increases: Council President Mark Sideris and District B Councilor Lisa Feltner. State Representative John Lawn also exceeded the average.

Also to be noted: Here are the city-wide average property increases for all forms of Watertown property:

Single Family homes 10.4%
Condominiums: 7.0%
Two Family homes: 8.9%
Three family homes: 3.8%
Apartments: 4.3%
Commercial: 1.0%
Industrial: 7.7%

I hope that you have found this very long informational journey with me useful and worthwhile! As always, any comments and additional information is appreciated.