Mobile home tax fighter muzzled at workshop, but will get to speak his piece

Kevin Brigham speaking at last Tuesday's City Council workshop (City of Rochester screenshot)

ROCHESTER - After the president of a mobile home park representing Rochester's mobile home community was refused extra time to explain widespread grievances over the city's huge assessment increase at last week's City Council workshop, he will get a chance to air his concerns at a finance committee meeting next month, a city councilor has confirmed.
Deputy Mayor Don Hamann told The Rochester Voice today that Kevin Brigham will have an official agenda item.
Brigham, the president of Hideaway Village MHP, told the City Council during its workshop on Tuesday that he was representing the majority of Rochester's 2,400 mhp residents and asked permission to go over the allotted five minutes to plea their case, but was denied out of hand by Rochester Mayor Paul Callaghan.
Brigham had brought a thick folder of information and statistics to point out how the reassessment - which as much as tripled trailers' tax valuation - was inherently unfair.
Now, however, with an agenda item at the finance board on Feb. 11, he will get ample time to make the mobile home community's case.
The finance board will then be able to relay his arguments to the City Council at their next workshop on Feb. 17.
Brigham oversees the operation of Hideaway Village, a mobile home park with 81 residents.
It is one of nine mobile home cooperatives that exist throughout the city.
At last week's City Council workshop, some 15 mobile home owners blasted the city of Rochester for what they called a "two-tiered assessment that saw mobile home valuations often triple and their taxes double, while residents of single family dwellings in upscale neighborhoods saw their tax burdens shrink.

"My mission is to show all the data I have been researching so we can show the revaluation is unfair to us as residents of this city," Brigham told the Strafford County Community News Facebook page. "We are residents and our (cooperatives) are nonprofits. We exist for the benefit of our residents for the purpose of keeping their homes affordable. Many people here are senior citizens, on fixed incomes and they cannot afford these large increases."
At last week's workshop mobile home owners one by one came up to the podium to relate nightmare assessments that will cause many to lose their homes, all this while those living in single family dwellings in upscale neighborhoods with manicured lawns saw widespread reductions in their tax burden.