She was concerned because she had seen the local Selectmen walking around her place.
What's happening??
Well, I explained to her that the Board of Selectmen also act as Lebanon Board of Assessors, and that they were probably re-assessing her property.
Were her taxes going to go up??
Maybe.
First things first, ALMOST everyone in Lebanon is in for a tax increase this year.
Not everyone, ALMOST everyone.
We voted in some pretty hefty increases during our June 9th Town Election and it's time to pay for the services that we voted for.
The MIL rate, the amount of money you pay, per thousand dollars of assessed value, is going up in order to compensate for a half million dollar Fire and EMS budget and a $150,000 road paving budget, along with smaller increases that were voted for other departments.
The Lebanon MIL rate for the 2014-15 tax year was 14.9.
The new Lebanon MIL rate has not yet been established, but Selectmen have given a ballpark figure of about 16.0, (or an increase of about $1.10 per thousand of assessed value on your property).
According to Selectman Thompson, The Lebanon Selectmen, acting as the Board of Assessors, are charged with inspecting every piece of property in Lebanon at least once every 4 years. But according to Maine .gov, the wording is different.........
"To initiate a revaluation will be the decision of the voters, because the voters must appropriate the money to pay for the process. There are several professional firms certified to do the job. A town votes to have a revaluation because they recognize the need to equalize the valuations so that no one taxpayer pays more or less than their fair share of the tax burden. The need to have a revaluation may be due to the lack of an inventory or due to a change in market activity or market value."
So that's a bit confusing as I don't remember voting for a property revaluation, and I could not find anywhere in the State Law that allowed for Selectmen or Boards of Assessors to call for a revaluation. I'm not saying that isn't in the Town's policies, but as for the State, they're pretty clear that it takes a vote of the people to begin a revaluation.
However, when I spoke to Selectman Thompson earlier this evening, he stated that for many years, the people on waterfront property were being taxed the same as people in mobile homes and the people in conventional housing. This is not feeling quite right. The Town's mobile homes, were being taxed at the same rate as they were being taxed when they were brand new, and the waterfront lots were being taxed the same as the properties elsewhere in town.
So the Board set out to make things a little more fair.
Using a book full of charts and figures provide by the State of Maine, the Selectmen have set out with tape measures, and measuring sticks and have been traversing the waterfront properties along Milton 3 Pond, Northeast Pond and Spaulding Pond, the 3 large waterfront areas of Lebanon.
Water frontage is premium space, and money is added to an assessment for the water front footage. Currently, property on the waterfront can easily sell for around $300,000.00, and yet the town has never assessed by State Mandate and people have not been paying their fair share of the taxes. "The State mandates that we asses between 70% and 110% of fair market value," said Thompson, and in the past we have only been assessing at about 52%."
So in other words, according to the State of Maine, you've been getting off on very low taxes for a very long time, and waterfront property assessments are about to go up a bit.
For now, the Selectmen are using the word "WATERFRONT" to mean frontage on any of the town's large sized ponds. The smaller bodies of water, rivers, streams, and man made ponds do not count as WATERFRONT property.
With mobile homes, the Board has their choice of measuring and assessing on size of the unit, or adding in a line on the chart and allowing for depreciation of some of the older units in town. For the years past, the Board would measure the trailer and assess you on the size of your motor home. The folly in this, however, is that people living in a 38 foot double wide that was 40 years old, were paying the EXACT SAME amount of taxes as their neighbor who was living in a brand spanking new 38 foot double wide. The taxes were ONLY based on the size of the mobile home.
With the new assessment, the SIZE AND AGE of the mobile unit are taken into consideration. With the new assessment, a brand new 38 foot double wide mobile home may be worth, let's say, $80,000 (only an number pulled from thin air), in assessment, but after calculating depreciated value, a 40 year old 38 foot double wide may only be worth $18,000 in assessed value.
Now before you go jumping for too much joy, there IS a minimum assessment base of $25,000. for a livable condition mobile home. So even the 40 year old unit will be assessed at the minimum of $25,000. BUT that's still a HUGE savings over the $80,000 it would have been assessed at last year!
I have found watching the Selectmen's Assessment discussions that this is a pretty amazing process. If you'd like to follow along, the Selectmen will be participating in a "Workshop" style public meeting on Wednesday, August 12, 2015 from 9 am to 5 pm.
While this is an open public meeting, the Selectmen have stated that there will be no public participation by way of comments or questions. If you choose to attend, you are only there as an observer.
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