AUBURN – A city board will decide the fate of the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments’ $25,000 property tax bill next week.

The Auburn Board of Assessment Review is scheduled to review AVCOG’s tax status at 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 23, in the Auburn City Council chambers.

The city sent AVCOG a bill last year for the first time ever. The organization appealed, the appeal was turned down by city officials, and a decision was sought in Superior Court.

Auburn Assessor Cheryl Dubois said the court would have simply referred any decision to the local appeals board.

“And since they had never reviewed it, we decided to save the attorneys’ fees now,” she said.

AVCOG has never paid property taxes on its nearly 10,000-square-foot office building on Manley Road. The city didn’t even assess taxes on the building until former assessor Joe Downey did it in 1997, eight years after it was built.

The city repeatedly waived the tax bill, however. Officials claimed the group was exempt until last year, when Councilor Bob Mennealy questioned the practice. An interpretation by the city’s lawyer agreed that AVCOG should pay up.

The pending tax bill represents $18,012.88 in real estate taxes and $7,345 in personal property taxes. The property taxes were due in July 2003, and half of the real estate taxes were due in September.

AVCOG provides transportation, environmental and economic planning to 43 communities in central and western Maine, including Auburn and Lewiston. AVCOG collects membership dues from those communities. In 2003, Auburn paid $19,445, the second highest assessment. Lewiston, the largest city in the group’s membership area, paid $25,000.

In January, the Auburn City Council asked legislators to clarify rules requiring metropolitan planning groups to pay property taxes. Statutes exempt similar groups from sales and income taxes, but not from property taxes.

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