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:
| Percentage Property Increase | Percentage Property Decrease | Number of Homes | Number of Cape and Bungalow- Style Houses |
| 6% | 1 | ||
| 7% | 1 | ||
| 8% | 3 | ||
| 9% | 7 | ||
| 10% | 6 | ||
| 11% | 6 | ||
| 12% | 3 | 1 | |
| 13% | 6 | 3 | |
| 14% | 2 | 2 | |
| 15% | 6 | 4 | |
| 16% | 4 | 2 | |
| 17% | 2 | ||
| 18% | 1 | ||
| 19% | 1 | 1 | |
| 20% | 4 | 3 |
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 MiddlesexDistrict D 12.1% Steven Owens State Rep
Dem – 29th MiddlesexDistrict 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.
Speaking of how difficult and expensive owning/purchasing a home in town has become, heaven forbid you buy a cape or bungalow that the unelected yet all powerful Historical Commission comes sniffing around. If the same person that built your house also happened to build a random structure in Pittsfield you may be stuck in limbo for up to 2 years paying all taxes and fees while not being able to make your “new” 100 year old 6-7 figure house with no upgrades since the 40s even habitable.
Please provide back-up for this scenario. Seems far fetched.
Hi Kevin,
I know what you’re talking about. It would seem that if the City had been following through for years on the extensive and excellent historical architectural research that resident and former Chair of the Watertown Historical Commission, David Russo, had been doing here in Watertown, you would have not run into this problem.
If the City had been taking advantage of the state grants (which was was recommended by Russo and others) to weed through so much of our older building stock to determine the ones with historic value, you would have known upfront the difficulty that you were facing. Maybe you did know? But this approach was rebuffed time and time again by Steve Magoon and DCDP. It was short sighted.
The City has now hired experts to do exactly that on the South Side, to ferret out the truly historically significant buildings, no doubt to aide big developers in sidestepping historical buildings that could run them into the scenario you’re facing.
If this had been done before you bought the house, you would have had a very good idea of the restrictions you would face with a particular piece of very old property.
I was not in favor of the new rules as written and said so at the meeting where they were discussed.
Kevin, we are losing our historical streetscapes at an alarming rate. Are you sure that you can’t work to maintain that while updating and improving your property? It would be very appreciated here!!
Full disclosure: I applied in September for a position on the Historical Commission. At the Resident Advisory interview, I was asked if I thought I would be too zealous in supporting historical architecture in the City. It was a fair question. I said that I thought I could be fair and even-handed, but who, if not the Historical Commission, was going to fight for history in Watertown?
I just last week got my letter from Mr. Proakis, informing me that I was not selected. It’s a lot of work I’ve just dodged! More time to write about questions I have in the City.
Interesting, Linda, but isn’t the market what ultimately decides valuations? Edenfield Av may be more in demand because its houses are affordable to more people than Russell Av’s houses. And demand raises prices, and prices raise valuations. Not necessarily to do with house style or description, just accessibility. A homeowner on Russell will still pay far more in real estate taxes than one on Edenfield. I recall that home improvements are also factored in to valuation, but those would be spread across all neighborhoods.
Charlie’s article on the same subject today cements this point. Affordable single-family homes are in high demand. Assessments are tied to market value, so they would rise disproportionately faster than million-plus dollar homes, which are appreciating more slowly. But the tax bill of the “mansion” would still dwarf the tax bill of the bungalow.
Josh’s theory seems logical to me. These comparatively smaller “regular people” homes are in high demand while the “luxury” market has declined in comparison.
Even the same appreciation in values would produce different tax rates. If both a $500,000 and a $1,000,000 rose by $200,000, the less expensive house would have gone up 40%, while the more expensive house would have gone up only 20%. The assessments would reflect that percentage change—the cheaper house had a bigger increase!!!—but the overall bill would still tell the opposite story: the more expensive house still has a much bigger nut to pay.
There are a lot variables that go into determining property tax rates that are not included in that doc that make this analysis incomplete. You need to look at lot size, home square footage, features, etc…. just looking at a change from 1 year to another misses what is actually going on.
The worst, is the one property being called out for a tax decrease on Russell Ave. That property was purchased in 2019 and over the course of the last 5 years the taxes have nearly doubled (12k in 2019 to 20.5k in 2024) I think if anyone experienced that would be petitioning the town for a decrease.
Trying to cherry pick metrics to craft a classist narrative that there are some nefarious intentions at work is just invective on the authors part.
Accusing one’s neighbors of “nefarious intentions” tends to invite scrutiny of one’s own character. It also tends to undermine one’s arguments.
“ our state government appears to have put its thumb on the scale in favor of affluence.”
I am just calling out exactly what she put in her post.
“ our state government appears to have put its thumb on the scale in favor of affluence.”
Perhaps that is true. I expect many of your neighbors would think that is true. The statement doesn’t make one guilty of “nefarious intentions”.
You have spent a lot of energy disparaging Ms. Scott and other good folk. Check your own class biases.
Thank you, Linda, for taking the time to offer insight of the many nuances associated with the data from the Public Disclosure Statement of Tax Valuation document. I commend you for dissecting the material in a concise, fact based manner.
The economy is in flux; with too many unknown variables. Municipalities should tread cautiously.
Herein, I share with you an interesting 12/09/2024 article from The Harvard Crimson. The City of Cambridge is addressing “unsustainable budget growth” through residential real estate tax increases.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/12/9/huang-budget-crunch-services/
“In response to declining revenues, the Council raised residential property taxes by 7.3 percent in October, and the city projected tax increases down the road in the ballpark of 8 percent in November.”
Angeline Maria B. Kounelis
Retired District A, East End, City Councilor
The results of the residential property value assessment process should be as fair and equitable shared burdening of the tax levy as possible. Whatever methods are chosen to evaluate and determine property value, the results should pass the test of reasonableness. The common denominators across properties are land and building square footage and the desirability of the neighborhood of where the property is located. The single-family homes in question for comparison on Edenfield are very small 1,200-1,500 max. square feet of living space on 4,000 square foot lots in a very dense mixed single/multifamily neighborhood. Homes on Russell are much larger and occupy bigger lots and enjoy the spacing and pleasing aesthetics of an exclusive single-family neighborhood. If a home on Russel is 3-4 times the size with 3-4 times the land, it should be expected that the tax burden would be reasonably proportionate. If disproportionate tax burdens are shifting to the lesser neighborhoods, that’s a big problem for those homeowners and the neighborhood. Watertown is gentrifying at an accelerating rate. Wealthy homeowners are at far less risk from spiraling tax growth than the less affluent. When taxes get too high for homeowners to manage, tough decisions need to be made. Maintenance and renovations are usually the first to be deferred, maybe indefinitely. The taxes continue to climb, and the properties deteriorate. This is how neighborhoods decline. Long term homeowners may not be able to remain in their homes as they had planned. Some are forced to sell homes in disrepair to developers who demolish them. Entry level housing is gone forever and replaced with enormously expensive new construction. This is what is happening now across neighborhoods in Watertown.
Seems like the valuations are based on comparable recent sales. If you want to know why certain properties are valued as they are, look to Bob Arasian’s weekly posts about local home sales. There’s not a ton of discretion here on the part of the city to value properties differently – the value is what it would sell for on the market.
I checked my property valuation and it rose so little that it won’t affect my finances appreciably. Market value is determined by all the factors which make a property attractive to buyers, not just the street the property sits on. (obviously)
I see the arguments against “gentrification,” but I ask what is the alternative? Regulating rents or property prices? “Encouraging” landlords to lower rents by calling them greedy? Both are ineffectual.
If people can no longer afford their homes, this is sad and they may have to move to a cheaper location. But this is common throughout history and it happens everywhere, not just in Watertown. Where is the personal responsibility factoring in here?
What these folks are saying is they want to keep people who make high salaries from moving to Watertown. I oppose this, because those people add diversity to our community too. They should not be discriminated against because of their own smart choices and hard work. They are not “the problem.”
In other words, “Let them eat cake.”
Sorry, but a lot of reasonable folks find it problematic when essential workers can no longer afford to live here. A lot of reasonable citizens find it problematic when immigrants who have long been welcomed in Watertown increasingly can no longer afford to live here.
The Ayn Randian arguments about personal responsibility ring hollow. The high salary folks should have some respect for others who work hard and don’t earn high salaries. Not everyone has the same opportunities.
It is more than sad when people get forced out by high prices. We need to respect the humanity of all those who have need of housing, not just those with high salaries. Of course that is out of fashion these days.