A Hillandale Farms chicken barn is seen April 2 in Turner. Town Manager Kurt Schaub said the property’s value plunged this year from about $31 million to roughly $11 million. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

TURNER — The Board of Selectmen has approved a 20-cent increase in the property tax rate for 2024, Town Manager Kurt Schaub said Friday.

“The increase in our tax rate from $12.55 to $12.75 is an increase of $20 per $100,000 of assessed value,” Schaub said. “So, if you have a home that’s valued at $300,000, for example, the increase will come to about $60.”

The slight increase comes at the same time as a major reduction in the value of properties belonging to Hillandale Farms egg farm, a stable source of tax revenue for years. The value plunged this year from about $31 million to roughly $11 million.

The town has been anticipating a drop in the operation’s value for at least three years, Schaub said. “There was anticipation that this was coming. So, the selectmen made a couple of strategic moves to increase the town’s fund balance so that we could use that as a cushion when the value ultimately would be reduced.”

Planning ahead finally paid off.

“It’s been a struggle for them in the last few years because of, from what we understand, the cost of shipping feed to this area, which comes in by rail, and the increasing demand for cage-free eggs,” Schaub said. “The facility in Turner is not a cage-free facility. It never has been.”

The company has been transitioning to more cage-free environments. However, the buildings and facilities in Turner don’t lend themselves to such changes, Schaub said. “As they’ve shrunk things down and closed different complexes on the property, they have ceased to maintain them and they’ve deteriorated quite a bit. Very sizable parts of the property are now on the market,” he said.

A Hillandale Farms chicken barn is seen April 2 in Turner. Town Manager Kurt Schaub said the property’s value plunged this year from about $31 million to roughly $11 million. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

How did the town grow its fund balance?

“When tax rates are set each year, there’s a figure that’s called ‘overlay,'” the town manager said. “Although we’ve never gotten close to 5%, the selectmen have increased the amount that we normally collect, so that at the end of the year when it’s not needed to fund any abatements, (the overlay) comes along into the fund balance.”

It’s been through a combination of factors that the fund balance has grown.

“Turner has been very fortunate in that we’ve had some pretty steady growth in other areas such as residential construction and businesses that have come to town or grown here. That’s been one source of assistance to offset this,” Schaub said.

“We’ve had other types of revenue such as motor vehicle excise tax that have greatly exceeded estimates in the last few years,” he said. “When your revenue collections exceed your budget, you can use those funds as well to increase the fund balance. They just simply automatically lapse there at the end of the year. We’re at the upper end of the recommended amount. The town is in a very good financial position because of this.”

The reactions are not in yet, but some elderly homeowners might see “a larger-than-typical increase in their property tax bill,” he said.

The Property Tax Stabilization for Seniors program allowed eligible homeowners to have their property taxes frozen for a while.

“When the state does enact a program that affects town property tax collections, they’re also supposed to reimburse towns for the lost revenue,” Schaub said. “In Turner alone last year, that program cost state roughly a $100,000 in internal loans. When the Legislature realized that financially, this really wasn’t sustainable, they did away with the program and expanded some other tax relief programs for senior citizens.”

“What it did was, it put two years of a tax rate adjustment into a single year for the people whose bills were frozen last year,” he added.