By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – City leaders and tax reformers both called for decorum at a special City Council hearing scheduled for tonight on new property values.

“Everybody will have an opportunity to speak,” Mayor Normand Guay said. “I know that people are angry, and we expect that to come out. I’d just ask that people be brief and direct in what they want to say.”

The meeting, scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in the Central Maine Community College gym, could draw as many as 1,000 people eager to talk about property values and city budget reform, according Norm McKeone, one of five residents who met with Guay on Friday morning to discuss the meeting.

McKeone urged Guay to start the hearing by acknowledging mistakes and admitting a new citywide property revaluation is flawed.

“Just a few words at the beginning could take care of 80 percent of the problems people have,” he said.

Guay said he wouldn’t do that.

“We can’t say anything like that because it’s not true,” Guay said. The revaluation is fine, but property tax bill estimates are not.

“This is part of a longer process, and we want people involved in the entire thing,” Guay said.

The city began mailing revaluation notices on Nov. 4, and they began arriving in area mail boxes the following Saturday. The assessed value of the city could increase from $1 billion to almost $2 billion, based on the revaluation.

But the letter also included a property tax calculation that showed taxes doubling or tripling for most homeowners. That led to most of the uproar, according to Ed Desgrosseilliers, a member of the citizen group.

A group of New Auburn taxpayers decided to form an association to review Auburn’s city budget. That group’s first meeting last Monday night drew more than 300 people and the meeting turned into a rally, with angry taxpayers spilling out of the American Legion Post 153 and shutting down South Main Street for an hour.

Taxpayers won’t pay a cent based on the new revaluation until September 2006, and the amount they’ll pay hasn’t been set yet, Guay said. That will be determined when the City Council adopts a budget in June.

Monday’s meeting will be an opportunity for taxpayers and residents to speak. The city won’t answer their questions at the meeting, Guay said, but will write them down and respond later via mail.

Monday’s meeting will be telecast live on Great Falls TV. It will be rebroadcast on Thursday night, according to City Manager Pat Finnigan.