Trevor Doiron lives in Jay. He is a candidate for Maine House District 76, covering Jay, Livermore (part) and Livermore Falls.

Earlier this year, while speaking with a Livermore Falls select board member about the rising cost of living, he said something that stuck with me.

“I’m happy to fund the schools,” he told me. “It’s a good investment. But it’s getting to the point where it’s too expensive for too many people.”

That simple observation captures what I hear almost every day from people across our communities. One woman in Jay recently told me her property tax bill doubled last year. As a volunteer Meals on Wheels driver, I meet seniors every week who are living on fixed incomes and trying to stretch every dollar just to remain in the homes they worked their whole lives to afford.

Many of the people I deliver meals to own their homes and deeply love the communities where they have lived for decades. To them, the affordable housing crisis isn’t about new construction or development. It’s about whether they can afford the tax bill on the home they already have.

Across Maine, property taxes fund a wide range of local services — roads, fire departments, police protection, libraries, other operations like water, sewage treatment and maintaining recreational facilities. But by far the largest driver of property tax bills is public education.

That reality means conversations about property taxes inevitably lead back to how we fund our schools. For more than a decade, I have watched the consequences of this system play out firsthand.

In high school, I served as a student representative on the RSU 73 school board. Each spring during budget season, our community would gather for hours of workshops and meetings, debating line items in a multimillion-dollar budget.

Stakeholders would argue passionately about relatively small adjustments — sometimes just a few thousand dollars — while the broader cost pressures driving the budget were largely outside the district’s control.

Year after year, these discussions divided neighbors and pitted people against each other: taxpayers against teachers, parents against administrators and community members against the very schools they care deeply about.

The truth is that this system isn’t fair to anyone.

It isn’t fair to administrators trying to run responsible budgets. It isn’t fair to teachers and students who need stable support. And it certainly isn’t fair to homeowners who feel increasingly squeezed by rising tax bills.

When a community is forced to argue over the last few thousand dollars in a multimillion-dollar school budget, the problem isn’t the people around the table. The problem is the system itself.

Maine uses a formula called Essential Programs and Services (EPS) to determine how much the state contributes to local education costs. Reaching the long-promised goal of 55% state funding was a milestone achievement in 2019 — one that took 15 years after voters approved it in a 2004 referendum.

But the progress of that moment quickly became blurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflationary pressures that followed. Rising costs in staffing, fuel and basic supplies have pushed school budgets higher, while the property taxpayers who ultimately fund local government have struggled to keep up.

Recently, some have begun promoting the idea of abolishing property taxes altogether. While that proposal may capture headlines, it does little to solve the real problem. Property taxes currently fund the essential services that keep our communities functioning — including schools, police departments, fire departments and local infrastructure.

Eliminating them outright would leave towns scrambling to replace a massive share of their budgets and would threaten services that many communities are already struggling to sustain, particularly public safety departments working hard to recruit and retain officers.

The answer isn’t to pretend property taxes can disappear overnight. The answer is to fix the structural flaws in the system that determines how education is funded in the first place.

One place to start is the way Maine’s Essential Programs and Services (EPS) formula measures a community’s ability to contribute to education funding. Today, that calculation relies heavily on property valuations.

But property values do not always reflect a household’s ability to pay.

In today’s housing market, many people are what economists sometimes call “house rich but cash poor.” Someone who bought a home 40 years ago may have seen its value rise dramatically on paper, but if they have been retired for 15 years their income likely has not kept pace. A rising valuation may look good on a tax roll, but it does little to help someone living on a fixed income pay the bill.

When funding formulas rely too heavily on property values alone, they can misrepresent the real economic circumstances of a community. A better approach would consider income and ability to pay alongside property valuations, creating a more accurate picture of what local taxpayers can reasonably afford.

The formula should also better reflect the real needs within a school district. Communities that have experienced economic hardship often face additional challenges in the classroom — requiring more support staff, counselors and social workers to help students succeed. Poverty rates and other indicators of need should play a stronger role in determining how resources are allocated.

Finally, Maine should not be carrying this burden alone. For nearly 50 years, the federal government has promised to fund 40% of the cost of special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Congress has never come close to meeting that commitment, leaving states and local property taxpayers to fill the gap.

If Washington honored that promise, it would provide meaningful relief to school budgets across Maine.

None of these changes alone will solve the problem overnight. But taken together, they point toward a more balanced and sustainable system — one that better reflects the realities facing Maine families today.

Property tax reform is one of the rare issues that unites people across geography, income levels and political parties. Homeowners in rural towns, working families in small cities and seniors on fixed incomes all feel the pressure of a system that no longer reflects today’s realities.

Getting this right would not only bring relief to taxpayers today — it would strengthen Maine’s communities and economic future for decades to come.

Across Jay, Livermore, Livermore Falls and towns throughout our region, residents are proud of their communities. They support their schools and care deeply about their neighbors.

But they are also sending a clear message. Property taxes are becoming too expensive for too many people. And it’s time we started building a system that works better for everyone.