By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – A property tax revaluation and a bigger budget likely will affect about half of the city’s property owners, City Administrator Jim Bennett said Monday.

About one-quarter of the taxes will increase, about one-quarter will decrease and the rest will stay about the same, he said.

“There will be some that increase, and those will be significant,” Bennett said. “We have houses that were valued at $50,000 and they’re selling for two, three times that. Their tax bills are going to go up and they won’t be happy about it.”

He stressed that changes in tax bills would come from changes in value, not from government spending and not from a shift in commercial values.

Bennett will present his draft budget to city councilors tonight at City Hall. It includes more spending, but Bennett is not asking for more in property taxes.

A big piece of his presentation will be the long-awaited citywide revaluation that will set Lewiston’s overall value at $2.3 billion, up $900,000 from the city’s assessed value last year.

Bennett said he is not seeing a big shift in the tax burden from commercial to residential taxpayers.

“If you look at what we’ve done in economic development, you can see how it’s paying off,” he said. He pointed to an estimated $50 million worth of new businesses coming to the city in the past year. That represents $1.37 million more in property tax revenue before the revaluation and without increasing the tax rate.

The city plans to begin mailing new value notices to property owners in May.

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