AUBURN – The Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments plans to leave its property taxes unpaid.

Instead of paying, the group will seek help from the Maine Legislature.

“It’s the course that most people, even outside the organization, would tend to support,” said Phil Nadeau, among the council of government’s leaders who voted Wednesday to lobby lawmakers for a tax exemption.

“We’re going to put our trust and faith in the legislative process,” Nadeau said.

AVCOG is hoping to convince lawmakers that the nonprofit group and others like it ought to be exempt from paying property taxes.

However, until the law is changed, AVCOG ought to pay its tax bills, said Auburn City Councilors Bob Mennealy and Belinda Gerry. The group currently owes the city more than $25,000 in taxes.

“It’s just a matter of taxes and the laws,” Mennealy said.

The organization has never paid property taxes on its nearly 10,000-square-foot office building on the Manley Road in Auburn. The city didn’t even assess taxes on the building until former Assessor Joe Downey did it in 1997.

AVCOG is funded by a combination of state and federal grants and money from its member towns, which stretch across Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.

As such, the city repeatedly waived the tax bill. City officials claimed the group was exempt until last year, when Mennealy questioned the practice.

Recent decisions by the Bureau of Taxation and the city’s Board of Assessment Review both backed Mennealy.

AVCOG is currently taxable.

The outstanding tax bill represents $18,012.88 in real estate taxes and $7,345 in personal property taxes.

“I support the organization 100 percent,” Mennealy said. Yet, at a time when budgets are tight, breaks cannot be given.

In response to the AVCOG decision to lobby the Legislature, Gerry plans to ask the City Council to withhold its annual dues to the organization, totaling more than $18,000. Mennealy said he, too, would back the measure.

However, the motion is unlikely to get widespread support on City Council. Earlier this year, the majority of council members voted to support a legislative clarification of the tax issue.

After all, some councils of government are taxed. Some are not.

“It’s a legitimate issue that needs more direction from the Legislature,” said City Councilor Richard Livingston.

If lawmakers say AVCOG should pay, then he’d support the charge, he said. Until then, he would oppose anything that might endanger the group.

Members towns all benefit from the services that the organization delivers, said Livingston, who is a member of AVCOG’s executive committee.

In Auburn’s case, hundreds of thousands of dollars have come to the city in economic development, new investment and jobs that wouldn’t have come here otherwise, he said.

“The organization is too important to the city and performs too many services,” Livingston said.