WHITEFIELD — The town’s new five-member Board of Selectmen is tackling a plan for providing “fair and equitable” property assessments in the community as one of its highest priorities this year.

The board will begin to implement some recommendations from a new report that focused on land valuations, but the process may take years to complete.

In 2009, selectmen had voided a townwide property assessment after residents blasted values that tripled for some homes.

Selectwoman Susan McKeen said much of the problem with the assessments came from a decision by selectmen to leave land out of the value calculations.

The omission left the assessment lopsided, she said. Officials also found problems in values assigned to commercial property and manufactured homes.

The town’s assessment advisory committee presented its report to the Board of Selectmen on Feb. 14, after meeting about a dozen times.

The assessing report says since Whitefield land has been undervalued, the tax burden has artificially shifted to structures. If that imbalance is corrected, then  building assessments could be lowered, and cause tax rates to go down.

To be equal, the report says, “property taxes must be a the same rate for all comparable properties.”
Selectman Frank Ober said the report addressed a source of taxpayer complaints: the values of rear land and isolated land.

“One of the other issues we’d like to look at is remote base lots,” he said. “These are very difficult to utilize because of discontinued roads. Then there’s the isolated base lot where there’s no road whatsoever.”

According to the report, rear land is a portion of a parcel not valued as a base lot. Parcels unsuited for development may be considered rear land on a case-by-case basis, the report said.

McKeen said another suggestion from the report is making assessments more transparent.
“What we want to do is send out pre-tax bills to folks, impact notices, so they know exactly why their assessment is what it is,” McKeen said.

Ober said some of what the report recommends will be implemented this year, but most of it will be done over the next few years.

“The suggestions are all good,” he said. “To get them in place, we have to hire someone to enter (information) into the data base and we don’t have any money left in this fiscal year to do that. We have to wait until July.”

“It was an excellent committee, and they have put out a fabulous report,” McKeen said Monday. “We’ve had their report for about six weeks now, and there’s a lot of things going to be implement. With the five-member board, we’ll divvy up the jobs. Some will be working on assessments, some on roads and some probably working on broadband.”

Voters increased the size of the three-person board to five last year. At the March town meeting they fill the two new seats plus one held by incumbent Steve McCormick, who sought re-election.
Residents were asked at this year’s town meeting to establish a five-member board of assessors, but that measure failed.

Dennis Merrill, chairman of the advisory committee, said additional work, notably determining the current market values, is necessary before a revised assessment system can be implemented.

Mechele Cooper — 623-3811, ext. 408
mcooper@centralmaine.com

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