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Casco Waterfront Homeowners Feel Soaked; File Tax Abatements

May 07, 2008 - CASCO -- The tax revolt resulting from the revaluation of properties in Casco implemented last summer came ashore April 25 as 225 waterfront property owners filed 233 requests for tax abatements. [0]

The abatements, averaging more than $104,000 and totaling more than $24 million in requested relief, were filed by Casco resident Bob Levesque of the Casco Tax Fairness Association, a group which formed after revaluation results were announced in August.

Levesque, owner of two properties on Sebago Lake, is an organizer of the association who maintains the revaluation performed in 2007 was both improper and inaccurate. He said waterfront property owners were the only landowners in town to see tax increases and that assessor John O’Donnell used inaccurate data and failed to visit local properties.

O’Donnell, who also serves as assessor for the town of Casco, has 60 days to respond to the abatement applications. Appeals to the decision could then be made to the Cumberland County Commissioners and could eventually reach the Maine Supreme Judicial Court by way of Cumberland County Superior Court.

Levesque saw the valuation of the land and home where he has lived for more than 33 years increase from more than $234,700 in 2006, to more than $655,000.

While the town mil rate, the amount of tax levied per $1,000 of real estate valuation, was reduced from $17.80 to $9.65, Levesque’s tax bill rose from around $4,100 to about $6,200.

Levesque said when he noticed how his taxes would increase last summer, he contacted other waterfront property owners throughout out town and found that whether they lived on Thomas Pond, Thompson Lake, Parker Pond or any other bodies of water speckling the Casco landscape, they were all facing marked increases as well.

O’Donnell was unavailable for comment Wednesday. However, his brother, Michael O’Donnell, an assessor with John O’Donnell and Associates, the firm that conducted the property revaluation, defended both the methods and results.

“We set more fair, current market values,” said O’Donnell about the revaluation, although he said there was a significant shift of the tax burden.

That shift has come as a result in the increased values on shorefront property and was exacerbated by the fact that this was the first revaluation in Casco since 1990.

The tax bills were paid for the 2008-09 fiscal year, and the association now seeks abatements that also claim waterfront homeowners were unjustly singled out for tax hikes.

Michael O’Donnell said each abatement will be reviewed individually. But the formula used by Levesque on the abatement is drawn from a state report John O’Donnell, the assessor, spoke about at a Casco Board of Selectmen meeting last summer.

Each year, the state reports sales of homes and compares the selling price to the assessed value by the town. In researching sales of Casco waterfront homes, Levesque said he discovered the ratio between sale price and assessed value was diminishing.

He created a formula that used figures from the years 2003-06 and then placed higher emphasis on the most recent ratios listed by the state. Levesque then multiplied the figure by the 2006 property valuations to determine what he felt the property increases on valuation should be.

The applications now in the assessor’s office all ask for abatements to figures Levesque reached but are not based on private appraisals, as Levesque believes John O’Donnell or others would find those figures too subjective.

Levesque said he has calculated how much each abatement should be, but has done so for people he has could not always recognize in town.

“I don’t know many of these people personally, he said. “I would not recognize then if I saw them on the street.”

For Michael O’Donnell, the question is a wider one when it comes to revaluations in Casco and other towns. While he said some of the 233 properties could have been assessed above value, “the truth is somewhere in between.”

By David Harry
dharry@keepmecurrent.com May 2, 2008


Lakes: Coffee Pond, Crescent Lake, Panther Pond, Parker Pond, Pleasant Lake, Sebago Lake, Thomas Pond, Thompson Lake
Regions: Sebago


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