OTISFIELD — The Board of Selectmen discussed the need for a property revaluation during Wednesday evening’s meeting at the Town Office.

Administrative Assistant Anne Pastore said the last revaluation was in 2005.

“We’re at the 12-year mark right now, and the state of Maine says that towns should have a general revaluation every 10 years,” Pastore said. “They don’t enforce it, because there’s no way the state could do that, but we’re at the point we should be looking at it.”

She said she recently spoke with John O’Donnell and Associates about a timeline for having another revaluation.

“O’Donnell said that it’s $160,000 for a full revaluation, and he said that we don’t need to pay for a full one,” Pastore said. “It’s $120,000 for a general revaluation.”

She said if the town decides to schedule a revaluation by the end of 2017, it would be finished by 2019.

The town would have three years to budget for it, Pastore said.

She said that as of Wednesday night, the town has $80,000 saved for a revaluation.

Selectman Rick Micklon said, “We should know whether we’re going to do a revaluation by our next town meeting” so the board can figure out how much money should be added into the account.

“We don’t have to fund the remainder of the revaluation by raising the mill rate,” Micklon said. “We have money in other places that we could draw from if we needed to, and it wouldn’t add to our taxes.”

Chairman Hal Ferguson said taking money from another account for a revaluation account would require a vote by townspeople.

He said that at last year’s annual town meeting, voters appropriated $10,000 toward a revaluation.

“We could probably ask for $10,000 this year, and the year that we have to pay for a revaluation, we could put an article asking for the remainder to be pulled from an account,” Ferguson said.

The board agreed to continue looking into the issue.

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net

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