AUBURN – An 18-month survey of property values won’t be hitting taxpayers in the pocketbook this year, unless the re-valuation is completed by the fall.

Property values are expected to rise by as much as 35 percent when the city completes a re-valuation it started in November 2002. Staffing shortages in the assessor’s office – including longtime Assessor Joe Downey’s December retirement – have delayed results for several months.

“It won’t be done in July, which is when it normally would have been,” new Assessor Cheryl Dubois said. “But we don’t have a reliable timeline at this point, so we don’t know when we can reasonably get it done.”

The city could still apply the new values to the 2004-05 tax bills if they finish by November, Dubois said.

“That’s the latest the state says we can commit new values,” Dubois said. “But I won’t even know if that’s possible until I can meet with the staff.”

Dubois, the tax assessor for Yarmouth until she begins her new job in Auburn, said the re-valuation will be her most important job when she takes over Feb. 17.

Assessors began re-evaluating property a year and a half ago, aiming to finish in time for the 2004-05 tax bill. But Downey’s retirement and an appraiser’s illness pushed the project back several months.

Appraiser Renee Lachapelle said staff has finished re-evaluating city land and commercial values and are double-checking those databases. They still have to re-evaluate about 3,500 homes, however, and that could take several months to complete.

The city also needs to give owners time to get used to the new values, Dubois said.

“We’ll send letters out to everyone notifying them of what their proposed assessment will be,” Dubois said. “Then, we have to set aside a huge block of time to explain the assessment and give them time to dispute it.”

Yarmouth completed a town-wide re-valuation last year, and it took three months to settle all of the disputes, Dubois said.

“Auburn has so many more properties, we need to be prepared for more time,” she said. “We will not shut people off.”

The last re-valuation in Auburn was completed in 1990, and the city will continue to base its assessment on those values.

“We still need to commit values for the budget, so those are the numbers that I expect us to use,” Dubois said.

Mill rates

The citywide property value is now set at $1.24 billion. The city multiplies that value times the tax rate to get its property-tax revenues for the year. The current tax rate is $29.38 per $1,000 of value, so the city hopes to collect $36.6 million in taxes for fiscal year 2003-04.

That rate also determines individual tax bills. The city multiplies a property’s value times the tax rate. For example, the owner of an $80,000 home would pay $2,350 in taxes.

Raising citywide property values lets the city decrease the tax rate and still get the same revenues. Levies on individual homes won’t change much either, unless the property is worth much more.

City Councilor Rich Livingston said he expects property values to rise evenly, meaning the tax rate will drop but most residents won’t notice a difference on their tax bill.

“A re-valuation shouldn’t change much from the revenue the city collects to the tax bills people pay,” Livingston said. “And that’s what people are usually concerned about – their tax bills.”

It’s up to councilors to keep those bills stable, he said.

“We do that by reviewing the budget and keeping expenses down,” Livingston said.

Auburn currently has the highest tax rate of any Maine city and the re-valuation won’t change that.

“I don’t think most people look at the mill rate, anyway,” Livingston said.

Either way, Livingston said he doesn’t expect the re-valuation to affect City Council decisions in the coming budget season.

“We’ll build the budget in the usual way, by trying to control our expenses as best we can,” said Livingston. “We’ll do that whether the re-valuation is done or not.”

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