An assessor can’t take back a forest land classification just because it turns out to be wrong. In Campelli v. Town of Mansfield, a Mansfield property was classified as forest land back in 2005, based on the strength of a certified forester’s report saying it was a 25-acre tract. Sixteen years later, the town’s assessor discovered an old survey and found the property was actually 22.53 acres, thus short of the statutory minimum, and had been the whole time. The assessor terminated the classification and, consequently, the tax bill went from $3,800 to $38,640 in one year. The trial court sided with the property owners, holding the assessor had no authority to pull the classification just because it was wrong at the outset.
The Supreme Court affirmed, on three independent grounds:
§ 12-504h (the “sold or transferred” trigger) didn’t apply because the Hickory Lane classification never depended on the Tolland parcel in the first place — it stood on its own as a purported 25-acre single tract. Selling Tolland was irrelevant.
§ 12-107d doesn’t give assessors discretion to override a certified forester’s acreage findings, even if wrong. Following Carmel Hollow (2004), the Court held that disputes over a forester’s findings must go to the State Forester on appeal, not get resolved unilaterally by the local assessor. The 2004 statutory amendments (creating the certified-forester system) didn’t change this — they only added assessor discretion for use changes, not acreage disputes.
§ 12-55 (the general “equalize assessments” statute) doesn’t help either, under Griswold Airport v. Madison. The specific statutes (§§ 12-107d, 12-504h) control over the general equalization power, so the assessor can’t use § 12-55 as a backdoor to declassify.
The takeaway for anyone dealing with a farm, forest, or open space classification: once it’s granted, a town can’t quietly undo it by finding a mistake in the file years down the line. Errors get fixed through the statutory appeal process, not by an assessor deciding on their own that the classification never should have happened.
For information regarding property tax matters, please contact Attorney C. Scott Schwefel at (860) 606-1712 or scott@shipmanlawct.com