FARMINGTON — At the Farmington selectmen meeting on Tuesday evening, Oct. 22, information regarding this year’s tax bills was shared.

Farmington Seal File photo

“There has been some speculation from our residents that new valuation has caused the tax bills to go up,” Town Manager Erica LaCroix said. “That is not the case. The assessment information that we were waiting on was one large solar farm that we were trying to get the accurate assessment on.”

LaCroix said the tax commitment was finalized on Oct. 11. “The truth is that our budget is up, the mil rate is up,” she noted. “Why is our budget up? It is primarily due to the rise in county and school budgets. As a town, we don’t have control over the county bill, the school.”

For some properties, letters of intent regarding building plans that were given to the code enforcement officer could have had an impact, La Croix said. For example, someone building a new deck filed a letter of intent which was sent to the assessor who appraised it, she stated. The vast majority are based off last year’s values, she noted.

By state law the value of properties on April 1st of the tax year must be used, LaCroix said. “April 1, 2024, was the date used for this year. We weren’t even doing field work with the revaluation yet,” she noted. “So those values won’t hit until 2025. I will again remind everyone that our town operating budget did decrease by 0.7%. We did what we could to try and keep that budget as flat as possible.”

When property values go up, the mil rate goes down and vice versa, LaCroix stated. “If you think of it as a seesaw with the budget in the middle as the pivot, your values and mil rate are the kids on the seesaw,” she said. “If one goes up, as long as the budget stays the same, the tax will stay roughly the same. If the budget moves up and these property values don’t move up, it pushes that mil rate up, and that’s what happened this time.”

LaCroix said she plans to do community outreach as the town gets closer to the revaluation being finished in April 2025.

One of the things that’s reflected in this year’s tax bill is the state stabilization discount that went away this year, Selectman Dennis O’Neil said. The other factor is because of Farmington being at less than 100% for not being revalued, the $25,000 homestead exemption is impacted and reduced, he noted. His tax bill this year is only a couple of hundred dollars higher than in 2020 and 2021, it went down the last couple of years and now is going back up to almost where it was before, he stated. “You have to look at the whole picture,” he added.

The school department share from last year to this year is up 21%, the county share up 30%, O’Neil said. The stabilization discount loss makes it look like Farmington has a higher percentage than those two, he noted.

Not having a current valuation of properties is affecting tax revenues, LaCroix said. “Another reason that is so important to the town and that people really need to understand is exactly what you were saying,” she noted. “When we don’t achieve 100% certification ratio, meaning that our sales aren’t matching very closely to what the actual valuations are that are assigned by the state, when you drop below 90% it hits your homestead, it hits your state revenue sharing, it hits our county valuation. So it starts to snowball itself. We lose revenue, and there’s only one source to make up that revenue, because, again, the budget is what it is. The budget got voted on back in March, so we have to raise our money to cover the budget, and when we lose revenues there’s only one place that can come from, and that’s the taxpayers. It will drive the mil rate up and it will drive your tax bill up accordingly, because our values haven’t gone up.”

If the revaluation isn’t completed next year, the highest Farmington can certify at is 59%, LaCroix stated. “That’s a big hit,” she added.