AUBURN — A state tax official gave the city’s tax assessing efforts high marks, despite being slow with a property revaluation in 2007.

Mike Rogers, supervisor of municipal services at the Maine Revenue Services, said the city’s current assessed values are considered to be highly accurate, based on state audits.

Rogers said the city’s assessed values were at 93 percent of market values in 2000, but had dropped to 69 percent by 2003.

The city didn’t bring assessed values back into line until 2007, when they completed the revaluation. That was Rogers only critique of the city.

“They did not react as quickly as they should have,” he said. “And now we’ve gone the other direction. How long before the city has to perform another revaluation? That depends on the markets.”

Currently, the city’s values are assessed higher than market value, at about 102 percent.

Rogers said that difference doesn’t affect property taxes unless property owners are assessed differently.

“If the city’s overall assessment is 50 percent of market value, that’s fine as long as all properties are assessed at 50 percent,” he said.

City Manager Glenn Aho said he invited Rogers to help answer some questions about property tax assessing. But Councilor Eric Samson said he had bigger questions about the Patriot system, the software the city uses to keep track of property values, sales and market prices.

The city purchased the Patriot system in 2002, paying $76,000 for the package.

“I was told that when we purchased the Patriot system, we wouldn’t have to do revaluations ever again,” Samson said. “I thought it was supposed to keep our property values adjusted and level so we’d never have to go through that again.”

Aho said the city should revalue all properties every 10 years but that the Patriot system will make it easier and keep property values from making massive shifts.

[email protected]