Taxing First, Asking Questions Never

“Did the town of Hampton even have the lawful authority to send out property tax bills at all?”

Now picture the court, taking that question, setting it aside, and instead answering three questions no one asked.

Rewriting the Lawsuit to Avoid the Law

The town used similar tactics back in November 2024, no doubt the narrative coming out of Concord way back then.

That’s what’s happening here.

The plaintiffs came in saying:

You can’t tax first and figure out the math later. The law requires measurement, listing, supervision, and current data before a tax can legally exist.

The court’s response?

It picked up the case, turned it sideways, and treated it as something else entirely.

It rebranded an authority challenge as a reassessment dispute.

It recast a legality question as a missed deadline problem.

It forced constitutional claims into a valuation box they were never meant to occupy.

Visually, it’s like this:

The plaintiffs are pointing to a collapsed bridge and asking, “Why are cars being sent across at all?”

The court responds by debating speed limits and lane widths—as if the bridge is standing perfectly.

By funneling the case into administrative procedures and abatement timelines, the court steps around the threshold issue:

Was the tax ever lawfully authorized in the first place?

That question comes before reassessment. Before proportionality.

Before deadlines.

Instead of answering it, the court assumes the authority exists and proceeds as though the only issue is how well the numbers were calculated.

Plaintiffs challenged the power to tax.

The court responded as if they challenged the accuracy of the tax.

That maneuver doesn’t resolve the dispute—it sidesteps it.

And that’s why reconsideration is demanded:

Not to argue harder, not to relitigate facts, but to force the court to do the one thing it hasn’t yet done—rule whether the taxing process infringes on constitutional (inherent) rights.

*Can a town impose taxes at all when the legal foundations required to create them were never completed?