Assessor presents credits, exemptions and commercial valuation data as council weighs tax impacts

The Bedford Town Council on May 21 heard a comprehensive presentation from Town Assessor Doug Irvine outlining the town’s property tax credits and exemptions and explaining how residential and commercial values were assessed during the 2023 revaluation.

Doug Irvine, the town assessor, told the council the statutory “standard” veterans credit is $50 but that Bedford has long granted the optional $500 credit; he noted the town could raise the optional credit up to the statutory maximum of $750. He said the overall cost to the town for the $500 veterans credit has been declining because of changes in assessed values and fewer eligible claimants. “Our common baseline is $500 for the optional [veterans credit],” Irvine told the council, and later explained that the total cost of the program has dropped as enrollment and relative cost per taxpayer changed over time.

Irvine reviewed the elderly exemptions the council adopted previously: the council approved a 30% increase in elderly exemptions in January 2024 that matched a roughly 30% median residential assessment increase from the 2023 revaluation. He said the town’s asset limit for exemption calculations is $150,000 and that income limits are adjusted annually using the federal poverty level multiplier described in the assessor’s report. He told councilors that changes to exemption thresholds affect how many additional residents might qualify, and that predicting the fiscal effect of any change is difficult because it depends on how many new applicants would qualify under a higher threshold.

The assessor also walked the council through commercial valuation methods. He explained the three standard approaches to value and highlighted the income approach used for many commercial properties — based on rents, vacancy, operating expenses and a capitalization rate — and contrasted it with the sales-comparison approach used more widely for residential mass appraisal. Irvine showed detailed town data from the 2023 revaluation: residential properties broadly rose (the presentation used a median residential assessment increase of about 30%), while the town’s commercial properties showed much smaller overall valuation changes and in many cases produced lower tax bills. He summarized the effect on taxes: a townwide pattern in 2023 produced an average residential taxable change that translated into about a 10.1% increase in tax for residential properties, while commercial trends produced a median tax change showing a reduction of roughly 9.51% for commercial properties in the same period.

Irvine gave several property examples used to illustrate the commercial valuation process and appeals. He cited an abatement case involving a 42,000-square-foot office building, noting the property sold for $3,450,000 after the 2023 assessment; the town’s assessed value at revaluation had been $4,475,000 and staff were working through an adjustment based on the arm’s-length sale documentation.

Councilors pressed the assessor on practical details: how asset and income limits are applied, what counts as an asset (bank accounts, retirement accounts, trusts), the five-year audit cycle for exemptions, and how projected future revaluations might affect exemption budgets. Irvine said the assessor’s office is building interactive analytics from its MS-1 reporting so the council and public can drill into historic credits, exemption uptake, and scenario modeling.

No council motion was required; the presentation furnished data for future budget and policy discussions, and the assessor said he would update the council with refined analyses and interactive tools that could be posted to the town website.