By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Property values across the city could climb about $613 million, based on a new revaluation.

Auburn’s new assessed valuation will be $1.89 billion, City Manager Pat Finnigan said Monday. That’s the final tally from a controversial citywide revaluation.

Next, councilors need to decide whether they will accept the values completely or whether they will phase them in over several years.

Finnigan said councilors will discuss phasing plans at their workshop meeting next Monday. They’re scheduled to vote on the property tax rate and phasing in new values at their July 10 meeting.

The city unveiled preliminary values in November, mailing notices and tax bill calculations to Auburn homeowners. The notices showed tax bills doubling and tripling in some cases and ignited a tax reform movement.

Assessors have been meeting with property owners to review their property values since then.

Phasing in the new values would be one way of keeping tax bills from rising too quickly, she said.

“I’m not as concerned about the property tax rate as I am about what people end up paying in taxes,” Finnigan said.

The new values would set the property tax rate at $20.88 per $1,000 of value, based on the budget councilors adopted Monday night. More than half of Auburn homeowners would see their values increase by 50 to 100 percent under that plan. It would mean steeper tax bills for those homeowners.

Phasing the revaluation would mean taking only part of the new value this year. Instead of $1.89 billion, the city’s new assessed valuation would be set at $1.6 billion. The new property tax rate would be set at $24.65 per $1,000 of value.

Under that plan, 53 percent of homeowners would see their values increase between 25 and 50 percent. Their tax bills would go up, but not as much.

For example, one house valued at $84,000 in 2005 would nearly double in value, to $158,300, under the full valuation plan. The tax bill on the home would increase from $2,289 to $3,034.

The home’s value would still increase under the phase plan, to $121,300. But the tax bill wouldn’t increase as quickly. Instead of $745 in the full value plan, the tax bill would go up by $446 if the city phased in the values.

Values accurate

The new property values do paint a pretty accurate picture, according to auditors from the International Association of Assessing Officers.

Auditor Frederick Chmura said he found significant errors that changed property values in eight of the 150 property records he studied. That’s a 5.33 percent error rate, which is respectable.

“It’s especially good when you consider how many problems auditors had to overcome,” Chmura said. Auburn’s assessing department adopted a computer system during the revaluation. The revaluation itself took almost four years to complete.

“Especially with computer conversions, data gets lost,” Chmura said. “There is nothing you can do about it but fix the problems when you find them.”

Chmura urged the city to put more of its assessing information on the Internet. More public access helps make the information more accurate.

“People check on their properties, and those belonging to their neighbors, and they find discrepancies,” he said.

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