NORWAY – Property owners can expect to see their tax bills jump an average of $200 to $300 when they receive them in the mail the week of Sept. 22, Assessor Jodi Keniston said Friday.

Residential property values have gone up 20 percent across the board to reflect current market value, Keniston said.

Over the winter she did a sales comparison with assessed values like the state does every year and found that “I was 20 percent low all across the board on my assessments.”

The state requires assessments to reflect 100 percent of market value. If she’d left values at 80 percent, the town would have seen reductions in both the homestead exemption and the veterans’ exemption, she said.

Ever since the last townwide revaluation in 1990, property assessments have been at 100 percent of market value, she said.

Because she’s a full-time assessor, she’s been able to make adjustments each year as needed.

But in the last three years, with more homebuyers taking advantage of low mortgage rates, the sale prices of homes have shot up.

“An adjustment had to be made,” she said. The new property values better reflect current real estate sales prices, she said.

So a house that was assessed at $80,000 in 2002 would increase to $100,000 in 2003. The tax bill, based on a mill rate of $19 per $1,000 of valuation, will rise from $1,560 to $1,900, an increase of $340, she said.

The mill rate was $19.50 last year, she said.

Keniston didn’t make adjustments to commercial properties, because market values of commercial property in town haven’t increased that much, she said.

Keniston said it was important to note that this year’s 9.2 percent town budget increase also is reflected in the higher tax bills.

“I think it’s important for people to understand where the spending comes from. It’s set at town meeting. And this year 100 people attended out of 3,000 registered voters.”

She noted that the state has already reduced the homestead exemption for properties worth more than $125,000, which translated to a $381,500 loss to Norway.

Keniston said she met with members of the Norway Lakes Association this summer to ease their fears of a big tax hike.

During the 1990 revaluation, some lakefront properties were assessed as low as 30 percent of market value, and so saw a huge jump in their tax bill when the values were brought up.

This year, they’ll see an increase, but not anywhere near as drastic, she said.

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