AUBURN – The city should get its fair share of taxes from the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments, says one city councilor.

Taxes are assessed on AVCOG’s building but they are not collected. That policy needs to change, City Councilor Bob Mennealy suggested at a council meeting this week.

“Here we are, a town dying for tax revenue and we don’t collect from them for some reason,” he said. “In my opinion, this hurts the rest of the taxpayers.”

AVCOG provides economic development and environmental and transportation planning services for its members, dozens of municipalities in western Maine. The 43 cities and three counties pay assessments to support the organization.

In 2003, Auburn paid $19,445, the second highest assessment of member cities. Lewiston, the largest city in the group’s membership area, paid $25,000.

AVCOG’s offices are housed in a 9,397-square-foot building on Manley Road in Auburn. City Assessor Joe Downey said his office has assessed real and personal property taxes on the building since 1997. For the current year, AVCOG was assessed $24,536 in property taxes. That amounts to about two cents of the city’s $28.44 mill rate.

Diane Freve, Auburn’s tax collector, said the city regularly forgives those taxes after they’ve been assessed.

“Up to last year, they have not paid taxes,” Freve said.

AVCOG Executive Director Bob Thompson said that’s the way it should be.

“We are a nonprofit, and state laws indicate that we are exempt,” Thompson said.

Mennealy reads the law differently.

“The law is the law, and it looks pretty clear to me,” he said. “I don’t see how the argument that they should be exempt has a leg to stand on.”

According to Maine Revised Statutes 30-A, Section 2304: “Regional councils…are tax-exempt institutions which are exempt only from income and sales taxes.” The statutes don’t exempt those organizations from paying property taxes.

Other municipal planning agencies in Maine pay property taxes. Ken Young, executive director for the Kennebec Valley Council of Governments, said his organization is nonprofit as well but regularly pays property taxes to the Town of Fairfield.

“We pay at the same rate as everyone else,” Young said. According to the Fairfield Assessors Office, KVCOG paid $4,777.88 in property taxes to the town this year.

Mennealy said competing opinions on whether AVCOG should pay the city of Auburn go back to 1996, but he is not seeking back taxes.

“I’m not sure the city would be willing to do that,” Mennealy said. “Right now, it would make me happy to have them start paying current taxes.”

He said he hopes to discuss the matter at the council’s June 9 workshop meeting. City Manager Pat Finnigan could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

staylor@sunjournal.com