BY MATT SCHOOLEY

Beginning in September, the town of Hopkinton will begin to correct its own mistakes by revaluating homeowners’ property in town due to a software problem regarding last year’s tax bills.

Hopkinton attempted to upgrade its homeowners’ data to new software without going through the process of visiting each home to assess the value. However, due to discrepancies between the two programs, many homeowners were overcharged.

Because of the glitch, half basements and crawl spaces were often recorded as full basements, roof styles were not taken into account and fixtures such as faucets were not analyzed, among other things. The software upgrade even caused one town resident’s tax bill to jump from about $15,000 to nearly $40,000, according to Town Administrator Ed Wojnowski.

Wojnowski said the reactions to the tax bills was immediate.

“I knew right away when the first person came into the Town Hall yelling,” he said. “I think we sent the bills out on a Tuesday and people were lined up in here by Wednesday morning.”

In an attempt to remedy the situation, the town sent all of its residents a copy of their tax card and gave the option to call about any possible mistakes. Wojnowski said about 1,300 people responded to the tax cards.

Residents have filed approximately 500 abatement forms in an attempt to get their tax bills reduced back to normal.

Hopkinton already has a contract with Purvis Associates for general assessment purposes. However, the town has signed on with the group on top of the original assessing duties  to begin to revaluate every piece of property. Because of the new contract, Wojnowski said the town will take a hit financially, but there is a more important fact to consider.

“There is a cost for us on top of the original assessing which will be spread out over the next two years’ budgets,” said Wojnowski. “The bottom line is the issue of fairness will be resolved for everybody, and everyone will be paying their fair share of the tax. We’ll be able to move forward.”

Although the cost and process may not have been necessary if it were not for the software glitch, it still will be helpful in the long run.

“The bottom line is we will have a clean record of what physically exists on the properties, which will provide a fairer tax and assessed value for everybody,” said Wojnowski.

The town will review the abatement applications that have already been filed, and if errors are found, the homeowner will be paid back the amount they overpaid at 6 percent interest.

Wojnowski knows the board members’ steps of beginning the revaluation process, which should be completed by the end of next July, were necessary.

“At this point, the steps that the board has taken are the correct ones. The ultimate goal of the board is to ensure fairness across, and the way to achieve that is by the revaluations,” he said. “If we didn’t do anything, we would always have this hanging over us until the next time, and it would be kind of debilitating. “

Hopkinton’s board of selectmen certainly learned a lesson in spite of the mistakes, said Wojnowski.

“We learned never to do a desktop update and conversion again,” he said with a laugh.