Whitefield homeowners crowded the townhouse Monday evening to vent their anger over property tax bills. Many insisted on a special town meeting that would allow reverting to last year’s values.
Kindling the complaints was the doubling of building values since last year.
Board chairman Steve McCormick said Tuesday he’d been expecting a reaction to the town’s recently completed revaluation. The work was completed this fall by Jim Murphy of Gardiner-based Murphy Appraisal Services. It set property assessment (buildings only) at 100 percent of market value.
“I didn’t realize (the reaction) would be quite so extreme,” McCormick said. “If I’d realized what the impact would be, I’d have done differently.”
Tax bills were mailed last week.
In recent years, the town has been updating properties in what amounts to Whitefield’s first thorough revaluation. Since about 2002, town meeting voters have approved updating tax cards and paying assessor’s agent Murphy to collect the data and enter it into a computer system.
That system came under attack Monday night. The owner of a remodeled doublewide mobile home and large garage was stunned to see his buildings assessed at $400,000. A business owner complained that his assessment had doubled and his taxes sky-rocketed.
McCormick himself was surprised to see a big hike in his business taxes. C.M. McCormick and Sons’ tax bill shot up $6500, he said.
The selectman said he believes the software isn’t at issue, but “some codes that were entered in might have been incorrect. I think the coding is wrong with manufactured housing, and commercial property seems to be askew.”
Of the average home, McCormick said, “Obviously some houses have not been assessed for a long time.” For example, a property that has been assessed at $62,000 for ten or fifteen years may now be assessed at $270,000. “On the one hand, the perception is the (new) value is high; on the other hand, (the earlier values) were extremely low, so the change is huge,” he said.
The selectmen’s goal was to be equitable, he added. “We weren’t targeting individuals. Where values are high, they are consistently high.”
As for Murphy’s work, he said the appraiser “ran the numbers by Maine Revenue Services. We thought we were all right (supporting a 100 percent assessment), and Maine Revenue seemed all right with it, but obviously we didn’t realize the ramifications.”
With taxes committed for the fiscal year, McCormick said his understanding is the board lacks the authority to make changes.
Monday night, resident Mike Panosian offered to jump-start a repeal of the assessment by circulating a petition for a special town meeting. “It would stop this increase in taxes,” he said Tuesday. He said some of his neighbors’ taxes increased by more than 105 percent.
“There was a man in his 90s at the meeting, his family’s been here four generations, and he said he was being taxed out of his house,” Panosian said. “What are you going to do? Put these people on the curb?”
Panosian said he is willing to spearhead the petition effort not only because his taxes are “crazy,” but also because he believes too many people are overly stressed in the economic downturn. If the change could be instituted “over a period of time, okay, but all at once?”
Panosian said he questioned how values could be assigned according to whether homeowners had carpeting or hardwood floors when in fact the assessor’s agent had not been inside a house to determine those features.
Panosian also was frustrated by the board’s inability to reimburse taxpayers for penalties (interest payments) should they be unable to confer with Murphy to answer their questions and then fail to meet the Nov. 30 tax bill deadline.
McCormick said the selectmen don’t have the authority to waive the interest. Voters at town meeting have to approve fixing a rate of interest to be charged on unpaid taxes.
George Hall said he’s assuming the assessment process “was flawed in some fashion” and he’s very concerned. “If the numbers are appropriate, the mystery is the lack of planning to implement this,” he said. He favors returning to the previous assessment levels because “some people won’t be able to survive.”
McCormick said he was researching the legal basis on which Wiscasset voters attending a special town meeting a few years ago repealed the town’s upgraded assessments. “They went back to the previous year’s assessment and they straightened out their (new) assessments. There were still people upset,” McCormick said, “but nowhere near (the number that had been).”
Selectman Sue McKeen said meetings between Murphy and residents begin next Tuesday and board members will attend those meetings. She also said, “We’re meeting with Maine Revenue Service next week to look at other options to address people’s concerns. We’re trying as hard as we can to fix this.” She anticipated the board would have answers by midweek.
An attempt to reach Murphy at his business phone by press time was unsuccessful.
