NEWRY – Tax bills from Newry should be arriving in 2,816 mailboxes today. Or, for the nearly 90 percent who are from out of town or out of state, sometime this week, Administrative Assistant Loretta Berry said late Tuesday afternoon.
Selectmen, she said, set the new tax rate of $8.30 per $1,000 of valuation at Monday night’s board meeting.
Last year’s tax rate, Berry said, was $13.15, and in 2003 it was $12.80.
She said the large drop in the rate from last year’s was tied to the revaluation the town had conducted this year.
The town tax base reflects the Sunday River Golf Club course and its associated lots, and the sale of Powder Ridge subdivision lots on which homes have been built.
Those factored into the $4.85 tax rate decrease from last year, Berry said.
However, the town’s valuation increased more than $109 million, from $204,153,388 last year to $313,137,236 this year.
That meant “most tax assessments just about doubled. Timeshares and some condos went down, but the rest of the properties went up,” Berry said.
She said, for example, that a house and garage with three acres on Newry’s Bear River side was valued at at $38,000 for the land, $54,600 for the buildings. Its 2004 tax assessment was $677, but the 2005 assessment is $768.58.
For one property with two garages, two barns and a house on the Sunday River side of town, the land was assessed at $78,300, and the buildings at $288,700. Berry said the property’s total tax bill last year was $2,776; this year’s tax assessment is $3,046.10.
In other business, the Newry Density Study Committee is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. today in the town office to better define ordinances that relate to structures and lot sizes, said Planning Board and committee member Brooks Morton.
“We need to clarify definitions of different situations to give the Planning Board clear parameters,” he added.
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