Portland actual property homeowners await the outcomes of the primary citywide revaluation in 15 years

Portland residential and commercial property owners will be taking a peek at their revalued property values ​​this spring after 15 years of soaring property values ​​in many areas. Tax invoices based on the newly determined values ​​will be sent out next autumn.

The city was last revalued in 2006 and property values ​​have changed dramatically. This was communicated to Portland City Council members Monday night during a re-evaluation workshop.

“As someone else on the council said, this will have a big impact,” Mayor Kate Snyder said after a presentation by Portland Tax Officer Christopher Huff.

Huff said most of the fieldwork for the new reassessment was done in 2019 and 2020, but implementation was delayed last year due to the pandemic. According to a new schedule that Huff unveiled on Monday, the owners will receive their new estimates in mid-to-late May.

Due to the unknown financial impact of the pandemic, Portland decided to wait a year before doing the reassessment. Huff said at the time that it was not advisable to set new property values ​​by the April 1, 2020 valuation date because property values ​​could fluctuate.

The goal of revaluations in Maine is to evenly distribute the property tax burden, with a third of landowners seeing an increase in property tax bills, a third staying about the same, and a third seeing their bills decrease. However, it’s too early to know how many Portland residents and commercial property owners will experience sticker shock.

Property owners who disagree with their new assessments can appeal from June 7th. The informal appeal process ends on August 13th. The city council sets the tax rate for the 2021-2022 fiscal year on September 1st. Property tax invoices will be sent out in the mail as of September 10th.

Maine law requires that the appraised value of a property should reflect what the property could be sold for in the open market. Two weeks ago, Maine Revenue Services announced to Huff that the current estimates in Portland averaged 66 percent of market value, below the state minimum of 70 percent. Huff said the re-evaluation should bring those numbers back into line.

The Maine Constitution requires that municipalities conduct a property reassessment every 10 years. Huff said the assessor’s office will work to shorten this period. A 10-year cycle for a growing city like Portland can increase inequalities and usually result in larger, unpredictable changes in property values, he said. A shorter cycle would make property taxes fairer, more predictable and more manageable.

The city councils left open the possibility that the city would consider re-evaluating the re-evaluation over two years.

A step-by-step approach could reduce the initial financial impact on taxpayers, but the council’s legal advisor warned that this approach would likely be successfully challenged in court. A gradual revaluation would spread the tax hike over two years over property owners whose value has risen sharply. However, owners whose property values ​​have fallen would have to wait two years to receive the full tax break.

Longtime Alderman Nicholas Mavodones said the city was progressing its most recent reassessment in 2006, and District 1 Alderman Belinda Ray said it would support a phased approach to mitigate the impact. However, further discussion is unlikely to take place until the Council starts reassessing at a meeting in May. A specific date has not been set, but the meeting will take place before Huff sends out the new rating notifications.

“The last time we did a reassessment, it was the islands and the waterfront that were framed,” Mavodones said, adding that he doubted this would be the case. Ray, who lives in East Bayside, expressed concern that the Bayside and Munjoy Hill neighborhoods of Portland could be the hardest hit this time around.

Huff said his department plans to run a wide-ranging public relations campaign in the coming weeks that will use social media, newspaper articles, television interviews, podcasts and digital ads to raise public awareness. Tyler Technologies CLT Appraisal Services has assisted the appraisal department with data collection and will be holding informal appeal hearings this summer.

For more information on the city’s revaluation, please visit portlandmaine.gov/2444/2021-Revaluation-Project.

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