FRAMINGHAM - Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky advised the City Council during their meeting on Tuesday, October 8 that he would not be recommending the implementation of a residential tax exemption for the upcoming year.

The city has the option to utilize an exemption to shift the tax burden from one group of taxpayers to another. In this instance, the residential exemption would put less of a tax burden on the owners of moderately-assessed homes, residential condos, and some multi-family properties. In turn, more of a tax burden would be put onto the owners of higher-valued homes, secondary homes, vacant land, and apartment buildings. The exemption would essentially tax those who occupy the units they own less, as the line to determine which owners would pay more or less in taxes would be established by a certain market value.

The topic of the residential tax exemption was raised by the City Council’s Finance Subcommittee, chaired by At-Large City Councilor George King, as officials work towards establishing the city’s tax classifications for commercial and residential properties for the upcoming year. However, King said on Tuesday that he and his colleagues recently realized that the meeting on the exemption might have been scheduled prematurely, as the residential tax exemption has to be recommended by the mayoral administration prior to the City Council’s approval.

“It does put this in a little bit different light,” King said during Tuesday’s meeting, “but as we had the meeting scheduled and there were a couple of things that had to be done, I think it’s worth at least a little bit of discussion as to what it is and being able to get the feedback to the administration as to whether it’s something we would like to adopt in the future.”

Sisitsky and Chief Assessor for the city Ed O’Neil both told the City Council that the administration would not be recommending the residential tax exemption. However, they added that local officials will be looking into other avenues for tax relief for residents based on a number of factors, such as age and military experience.

Ultimately, Sisitsky expressed his belief that the residential exemption idea is an “unfair redistribution of the taxes,” adding that the exemption is more geared towards communities with people who have seasonal, secondary homes.

“It sounds good—it’s called a residential property tax exemption—but it really doesn’t do what people think it may be doing for means testing…There could be some people that are very wealthy or have a good income, but happen to live in a low-value home, who would benefit from this by having some of their tax burden shifted to others who live in a higher-value home, but not necessarily have the income to pay additional taxes,” Sisitsky continued.

Sisitsky said that alterations would have to be made to existing exemptions in order to explore other tax relief plans.