SAINT JOHN – “HUH?”

That’s the reaction some New Brunswickers had when they opened their property tax bill this past week.

Shawn Peterson had a similar reaction when he got his back in 2008, shortly after he bought his first home.

“I basically looked at it scratching my head saying ‘I have no idea what any of this means,'” Peterson says.

Property tax assessments are supposed to be reflective of the value of a property. That can be somewhat subjective so taxpayers are allowed to appeal their property assessment within 30 days if they think it’s unfair.

However, you have to make good case for it. One of the best ways to do this is to show that the similar properties surrounding yours have a lower evaluation, but you need the numbers to back it up.

So Peterson decided to do some digging.

“I found the province does technically provide all the data on the Service New Brunswick website. You can basically look at them one at a time,” Peterson says. “Trying to look them up one at a time was taking far too long. So I thought ‘hey, wouldn’t it be neat if I just looked at my street and I could grab all the results from the website at the same time?'”

That’s how Propertize.ca was born.

On Propertize, users simply type in their address and the results will show their property assessment for the last five years, along with those of the other houses on their street and surrounding area. It’s free to use, though you’re welcome to make a donation.

It’s a pretty busy spot this time of year.

“A lot people use it not just in New Brunswick but outside of the province as well, because you don’t have to live here to own property here,” Peterson says. “It could be an apartment building you might own, it could be a cottage, but you are still responsible to pay taxes here and you still have the right to appeal it if you think it’s unfair.”

Though Propertize is easy to use, Peterson has a hard time getting the data needed to fill it. All of the property assessments are public and available for free on the Service New Brunswick website, however you can only check them one at a time. Also do you know what “tax authority” you live in? It’s not exactly user friendly. They also don’t keep records of previous years, so Peterson has been doing that himself for Propertize since 2011.

“It’s been a long process and it’s a horribly frustrating process, because this is just what I do in my spare time. This is not a day job. I’m not getting paid for this,” Peterson says.

“A lot of other people would have just quit by now out of frustration, but it’s just something that I’m at the point where I just absolutely care that people are not overpaying their property tax.”

He says it’s also frustrating because he shouldn’t really have to be doing this in the first place. He thinks open data is something the province should be embracing, starting with property tax assessments.

“When you’re talking about open data, making things public, people don’t really have a good idea of what that really means or what it could mean to them,” Peterson says. “Being able to lead on this and get this one opened up opens the door to a lot of other really interesting data sets that would be beneficial to people as well.”

Open data can help citizens understand civic processes and how to navigate them.

“The fact that this is a tax where you actually have some control over . . . making that easier for them to actually go determine on whether or not their assessment is fair is really important,” Peterson says.

“It gets people kind of engaged in the system and get a better understanding of how things work and what options they have to fight it if they need to.”

New Brunswick is talking a good game when it comes to Open Data. It’s a priority for the provincial government’s nb+ initiative and the province will be hosting the Open Data Summit in April. The City of Saint John is also making moves toward opening up its data. Peterson said this is the step in the right direction, but he’s choosing to stay cautiously optimistic.

“[Open Data] is becoming something that’s kind of cool and everyone wants to get on board with it. I always kind of hold my breath until it actually happens. It’s one thing to say you’re going to do it. But it’s another thing to do it,” he says.

“Until I can go somewhere and download assessment data as far back at 20 years, for example. . . I’m still going to have bated breath in terms of what’s actually going to happen.”