For all those St. John property owners who complain how hard it is to get a word with the V.I. tax assessor: You are not alone.
Members of the St. John Rotary Club came to their Friday luncheon meeting expecting to hear the man himself, Roy Martin, as their guest speaker.
Martin's last public appearance on St. John was before a roomful of angry taxpayers at a July 25 hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. At that hearing, Sen. Almando "Rocky" Liburd asked the committee to find out why St. John property taxes rose 10 percent this year, while those on St. Thomas and St. Croix increased much less.
Rotary president Ronnie Lockhart took the initiative and invited Martin to speak to the club – on Friday, Aug. 11. The appointed time came and went and finally the tax assessor called to say he was running late. A small group of Rotarians waited an hour, then gave up.
"Martin did show up last Friday – after everybody left," Lockhart said on Friday. The occasion for his comment was the week-later Rotary meeting, at which the tax man had again been scheduled to speak, and for which he had failed altogether to appear.
"We hoped to have him here today," Lockhart told the gathered Rotarians. "We told everybody he would be here today, but he had to be in court."
After the Finance Committee hearing, Martin agreed to meet in Cruz Bay with those property owners disputing their bills. Liburd said he did so "around Aug. 3."
"There were so many people who wanted to meet with him, I think he was going to set up another day," Liburd said, "but I don't know if it happened."
Among those waiting for Martin at Friday's meeting was Ed Bermingham, a taxpayer who is trying to mobilize those who say their 10 percent property tax increases look more like 20 percent. "There's a big difference between what the tax assessor says and what's happening," he said.
Bermingham, who is working with a group called Good for St. John, spoke to the Rotary Club two weeks ago on his views of St. John's lopsided land tax.
He said on Friday that he is working with local Realtors to obtain a list of property assessments to compare with individual tax bills. "I'm morally certain that there's something wrong" with the methodology being employed by the Tax Assessor's Office, he said.
