With the deadline for property owners to appeal their revaluations fast approaching, Doug Gablinske of AppraiseRI is reaping the rewards of those looking to refute the findings of Northeast Revaluation and arm themselves with an independent appraisal of their specific property.

“What they do is a mass appraisal,” Mr. Gablinske said of the recent statistical revaluation. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said of the large data set used to set property values for individual parcels.

For Mr. Gablinske, the recent — and prior — revaluation is something of a boon for his company, AppraiseRI. Since the notices were sent to property owners, his office has received “four dozen” calls from people who want him to check the figures presented by Northeast Revaluation Group and the town’s tax assessor, Chris Belair.

However, appeals to the revaluation have been coming in at a lower rate than Ms. Belair expected. Northeast had received 246 appeals as of Tuesday afternoon. Typically, assessors expect as many as 10 percent of homeowners to appeal a valuation, a number that can often stretch to 15 percent, she said. So far, just 3 percent of the more than 9,000 properties in Bristol have filed. To appeal a valuation before the Friday, May 8 deadline, call Northeast at 401-737-0300.

In his view, Mr. Gablinske said the fatal flaw in Bristol’s revaluation process was in having “a tax assessor who doesn’t know the town” and “a revaluation company that doesn’t know the town.”

Bristol has “all kinds of nuances,” he said. “If they don’t know that, it’s a roll of the dice if they get it right and chances are they’re going to get to wrong. At the end, there has to be a sniff test of the process. It’s really up to the assessor to do that.”

Mr. Gablinske, for a fee, will give a property that "sniff test" by giving it a closer look. That information can be used as evidence should the client want to appeal the revaluation.

But Ms. Belair said she is confident that the latest revaluation fairly represents the town of Bristol. Further, she contends that having an extensive knowledge of a town isn’t a prerequisite for accuracy.

“You become familiar with the town as you work in it. You have to gather the information and look at the facts,” she said.

And while realizing that some property values will show larger increases or decreases than others, the appeals process helps identify and correct valid errors.

“You have compassion, but you don’t change the facts,” she said of the process.

Critical of the town spending nearly $200,000 for two revaluations and oversight to get one statistical revaluation complete — after the Town Council threw out last year's revaluation after hundreds of complaints from homeowners — Mr. Gablinske said he doesn’t expect the current revaluation to be much different than others.

“If appeals are less than 5 percent, that would be within the norm,” he said. “The sole purpose is to get (assessed value) close to market value. It’s not going to be right on the money, but it will be close.”