DUMMERSTON — The Selectboard is not ruling out dropping the town's property insurance carrier as they scramble to hold down a sharp rise in replacement valuations meted out in October by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
Meanwhile, there is no answer from VLCT for why valuations have spiked here.
Selectboard member Joe Cook said Oct. 30 that he pressed VLCT for answers at a recent meeting and didn't get anything useful in return.
“Is the town of Dummerston singled out?” Cook said he'd asked. “Why aren't other towns looking at major increases in the value of their properties?”
He said the administrator he'd asked seemed unfamiliar with Dummerston's situation.
According to Selectboard member Bill Holiday, the VLCT Property And Casualty Intermunicipal Fund (PACIF) has raised the 2014 value for town property from $2.4 million to an unprecedented $4 million.
Selectmen and other town leaders are working to hold the line on valuations at the town garage, community center/library, historical society, and two fire stations.
According to published reports, one estimate shows the town's property insurance premium, now at $8,186, rising by $6,000 should the new values take effect.
“I'll keep working at this,” Holiday said Oct. 30, apprising selectmen of his negotiations with VLCT.
PACIF says on its website it is the leading provider of property/casualty and workers' compensation coverage to Vermont municipal entities.
Replacement values are based on the estimated cost of rebuilding a structure immediately following a disaster.
Officials have had some success in convincing VLCT to reduce its valuations for some properties here, though the new figures settle out well above their starting points.
The historical society building, for example, started at $137,000, then shot to $231,000 before resident Jody Normandeau pressed a VLCT administrator on errors in the evaluation, and the estimate was reduced to $183,642.
“It's way up from 137, but it's still better than the 230,” Normandeau told selectmen.
Normandeau detailed striking inaccuracies in VLCT's assessment: “She [the administrator] had us having water and sewer. She had us as a museum and she had us owner-occupied.”
After its rise to $1.1 million, the garage valuation, through negotiation, settled somewhat lower: to $907,406, Cook said.
Cook explained that, based on Normandeau's success, he asked Town Clerk Pam McFadden to find out why the community center/library's insurance value ballooned from $489,202 to $910,220.
“Do we have someone who can look at the two fire departments [stations] as well?” Cook asked.
The revised estimated replacement value of the fire station in Dummerston Center surged from $143,992 to $270,586, Cook said.
Alternatives on the horizon
Even if VLCT explains itself, selectmen suggested they are open to leaving PACIF, though they're determined to tackle the problem one step at a time - beginning with studying all the estimates for inaccuracies and continuing to negotiate downward.
That said, the market is beginning to court Dummerston.
Cook explained that as soon as news broke of the town's plight, he got a call from an independent insurance contractor (and former student of his, though he said that was immaterial) “who thought that he could do better.”
Cook said he reached out to another independent insurer, and concluded, “There are people [alternative insurers] out there. I don't know what they can do; I don't want to put them through the machinations of going through and offering us alternative evaluations and rates until we're certain that we're done with - and potentially still not satisfied with - PACIF.”