By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

MOUNT VERNON – Townspeople voted this week to appropriate $120,000 for a property revaluation and $2,600 for a grant match, and increased the pay for two employees.

The special town meeting Wednesday “went well,” Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Bruce Inch said. “It was contentious in an orderly sort of fashion,” he said Friday.

The item eliciting the most discussion was the property revaluation. Selectmen chose to recommend the most expensive bid in order to get the revaluation done by August 2006, according to Inch. The town’s last revaluation was in 1992. Others bidding on the job could not get it accomplished before April 2007 or June 2008.

There were a “goodly number” of people there with waterfront property, and they were concerned with the effect a revaluation would have on their taxes, Inch said. Values for those properties are likely to increase thereby increasing their taxes.

Currently, the assessed value of waterfront property in the town is 42 percent of the average sale price whereas other residential properties are currently assessed at about 71 percent – effectively people who do not own waterfront property are subsidizing those who do, Inch explained.

“The handwriting was on the wall for people who lived on the waterfront,” he said.

But the tide turned when Richard McKeen, a resident who owns a large waterfront lot on Echo Lake, spoke.

“It’s a fairness issue,” McKeen said, according to Inch.

In the end, the article passed 26-14. Two other articles – to appropriate $2,600 for matching funds for a more than $28,000 grant to buy a new radio system for the Fire Department and one to increase the hourly pay for two transfer station employees – passed overwhelmingly, Inch said.