Every parcel, every change, and the bill behind it.

One WebMap, two assessments

Where the data lives

The map is a public ArcGIS WebMap over Esri World Imagery: the Town of Wolfeboro’s 2020 revaluation parcel layer with land, building, features and total assessed values for 2019 and 2020, the tax dollars each year at that year’s rate and the year-over-year change, plus the tax map index and zoning.

New Hampshire municipalities revalue all real property at least every five years to bring assessments back to market. The amount a town raises stays roughly constant, so what a revaluation changes is which parcels carry which share of it. In 2020 Wolfeboro’s valuation rose from 2.0 to 2.4 billion dollars and the total tax rate fell from 15.84 to 13.01 per thousand.

• Town of Wolfeboro Assessing Department — the office behind the town’s assessments.
• NH RSA 75:8-a — the statute behind the five-year revaluation cycle.
• ATS_2020_Reval — the WebMap on ArcGIS Online that both builds load.

Learn the technology

What GIS actually does

GIS is a map and a database in one, joined by location. This explainer shows what that means for a town, a city, a water utility and a land buyer, using the same Wolfeboro revaluation data. The walkthrough below shows the app step by step.

Watch it work

Watch the walkthrough

The whole town, the percent-change theme with the shoreline in red and the inland lots in green, the filters with their live count, 165 Clark Road’s record and grand lists, an address search with the record pager, and the widgets.

How it works

What the map does

Three themes

The map opens on the whole town at 1:104,000 with every parcel outlined. The Map Theme 2020 Revaluation (% Change) fills each parcel green where the tax bill went down, red where it went up and white near zero; Total Assessed Value shades light to dark blue; Parcel Size shades by acreage.

Filters with a live count

Tax Impact and Land Use compose into one server-side filter, and the count beneath them is what the server returned: Decrease over 20 percent is 207 parcels; Single Family Home with Increase over 20 percent is 58. Reset All clears both and returns to the full extent.

Parcel Details

Click any parcel for its record: the percent change, the 2019 and 2020 assessment breakouts (land, building, features, total), the tax dollars at each year’s rate, and below them both years’ grand lists with the town valuation, the municipal, county and education rates and the total commitment. 165 Clark Road was assessed at 1.29 million in 2019 and 2.05 million in 2020, with the bill rising from 20,462 to 26,673 dollars.

Search and the pager

The search bar takes an address. 18-20 Vista Drive, a commercial property, went from 8.6 to 9.0 million in assessed value while its tax bill fell 14 percent, because the rate fell further than the value rose. When several records sit at one point, the pager steps through them.

Widgets

Layers lists the parcel layers, the Tax Map Index and Zoning; the basemap menu adds labels to the imagery. Scale & Extent reports the scale, zoom level and corner coordinates with a Copy button on every value, and the preset scale menu runs from 1:600 to 1:500,000. Measure draws distance in feet and area in square feet. How to Use explains the themes, the filters and the data source.

Limits

What it does not do

• It is not the Town’s official record. The values are the Town of Wolfeboro’s 2020 revaluation figures as published; confirm any valuation or tax figure against the Assessing Department before acting on it.
• It shows one revaluation. The 2019 and 2020 assessments are the pair in the data; later years are not in the map.
• It does not estimate your tax. Each parcel’s tax dollars are that year’s assessment at that year’s rate; exemptions, credits and abatements are not applied.
• The address search is a geocoder. It finds the point for an address; the records shown are the parcels at that point, which can be more than one.

FAQ

Common questions

Why did my assessment go up but my bill go down?

The total rate fell from 15.84 to 13.01 per thousand. A parcel whose value rose less than the town average pays a smaller share than before.

What do the colors mean?

On the 2020 Revaluation theme, green is a tax decrease, red a tax increase, white near zero; the legend under the theme menu gives the scale.

Why is the count different from the number of parcels I see?

The count is the number of parcels the server returned for the current filter, whether or not they are inside the view.

Where do the numbers come from?

The Town of Wolfeboro 2020 revaluation, published as a feature service on ArcGIS Online and linked on the Sources page.

Is the code available?

The app is a demonstration built with React on the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript over a public WebMap; the Calcite build runs the same WebMap on Esri’s design system. The patterns are the ones All Things Spatial builds for clients.