Regarding the Aug. 3 CVN story ‘Borough defends tax assessments after appeals,’ I appeal to this newspaper, please find out what’s going on and please tell us.

I, like Paul Rogers and others, feel there is something wrong with the process. Having been well trained by recent events, I’m not impressed by “new computer-assisted mass appraisal system,” “away from individual judgments,” “applied to every property, every house in the very same way.” The perceived perfection of artificial intelligence is an illusion, people who work closely with AI will always defend its results, and people offended by its results will always be diminished by that dynamic; the authoritative energy becomes dominant. Taking humans out, relying on AI diminishes democracy; dialogue and reasoning stop.

Is Diane La Course’s four-by-four-foot outhouse assessment of $1,289 objective? Accurate? Equitable? Who/what looked at that outhouse? Who/what named that value? My assessment rose $12,800 from last year to this year. Is that very cool doghouse out front responsible? I’m a naive first-time homeowner who received the Senior Property Tax Exemption, so I didn’t even appeal the big jump in the assessed value of my property.

CVN, please take up Paul Roger’s notion, look at all the houses on my street, Deishu Drive, the closest Haines has to a suburban neighborhood. Start there and go further. A local investigative journalist can do this. People are pushing back. Money certainly matters. What matters even more is to become aware of our tacit agreement. Something is going on. We can act and resist on a personal level.

Evelyna Vignola