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Owners Appeal New Values of Waterfront Property in Casco

May 07, 2008 - CASCO -- Robert Levesque, who filed tax reduction requests for 225 property owners, calculates that Casco has overvalued his two properties by $350,000.

The organizer of Casco's waterfront tax revolt has filed abatement requests on behalf of more than 200 taxpayers who face higher bills because of a townwide property revaluation.

Robert Levesque submitted requests to the town last week seeking property tax reductions for 233 waterfront properties. He maintains that the town's most recent revaluation -- the first since 1990 -- discriminated against owners of residential waterfront properties, subjecting them to unduly large increases compared with owners of other types of property, including commercial waterfront property.

Levesque, a 69-year-old retiree who divides his time between Arizona and a home on Sebago Lake, has used his own calculations to estimate that waterfront properties have been overvalued by a total of $24.4 million, an average of $104,907 per property.

He is coordinating appeals for people in his Casco Tax Fairness Association, and says members have sent him $200 per property to support the fight, which he believes may end up in court.

The revolt erupted last summer, when the revaluation quadrupled the taxable value of some waterfront properties. Selectmen voted at one point to use old valuation figures, but soon reversed themselves after it was determined that only the assessor had that authority.

Tax bills went out last year based on the updated values. The deadline to appeal was Wednesday.

The assessor has 60 days to review the abatement requests, though an extension is permitted if property owners agree to allow extra time.

Subsequent appeals go to Cumberland County commissioners, Superior Court and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Where Levesque sees unfairness for waterfront residents, others see a long overdue correction of an inequitable distribution of the tax burden among the 3,200 properties in town.

"The basic premise we're trying to adhere to is the Constitution of the state of Maine," said John O'Donnell, the town assessor and president of John E. O'Donnell & Associates of New Gloucester, which was hired to complete the revaluation after the town's previous assessor died in 2005. "Fair means property tax is based on the value of the property."

Before Casco's revaluation, O'Donnell said, waterfront properties were assessed, on average, at 40 percent of their market value while rural residential properties were assessed at 59 percent. The disparity developed because waterfront values increased at a much faster rate.

"Taxes are so much fairer (now) than they were before," O'Donnell said.

Because so much time had passed since the town's last revaluation, taxpayers got accustomed to seeing their property values at a certain level and the shift was dramatic, O'Donnell said.

A southern Maine community that did a revaluation in the late 1980s or early 1990s probably would have had figures that were a good basis until at least early 2000, said Mike Rogers, supervisor of municipal services for Maine Revenue Services. But, he said, the period between Casco's revaluation overlapped with a "feeding frenzy" for waterfront property throughout the state.

"Waterfront values were escalating more rapidly than non-waterfront everywhere," he said.

Other towns with waterfront properties have seen dramatic shifts in assessments:

In Raymond, the total valuation rose from $307.3 million to $966.5 million after a 2005 revaluation, the first since 1989.

Windham's tax base increased from $1.089 billion to $1.772 billion in 2006, after a revaluation in 1998 and an adjustment in 2001.

Sebago's went from $137.4 million to $322.4 million in 2004, after its first revaluation in about 15 years.

In Casco, Levesque owns a property with a two-story house and another next door with a guest house. Before the revaluation, he paid $6,685.68 in annual property taxes on a combined assessment of $375,600. After the revaluation, his taxes rose to $10,667.98 on a value of $1,118,490. He calculates that the total value should be $759,285.

The abatement requests he submitted for himself and 224 other waterfront property owners were based on a formula he developed by applying figures that are used for determining education funding.

Rogers, who supplied the figures, said they can't be applied to particular parts of a community or individual properties. Levesque said Rogers is a state employee would be biased in favor of town officials.

By Levesque's calculation, the value of Jim Alden's camp on Coffee Pond would increase by 125 percent, rather than the 250 percent under the revaluation. Alden, a candy store owner from Franconia, N.H., is skeptical about the methods used in the town's revaluation, especially because he felt officials were unresponsive to property owners' concerns during meetings during the summer.

"It didn't appear to be fair," said Alden, who like most members of Levesque's group are part-time residents. "And the more you asked questions, the more bridled up they'd become," he said of town officials.

Muriel Learnard, an 82-year-old widow on a fixed income, saw taxes on her year-round home on Sebago Lake increase from about $5,000 to more than $7,000. She worries about how she would deal with a big jump in the future.

Learnard said she already stretches her budget by going without things like cable television, a cell phone and the GPS she'd like for her car. And though it wounded her pride, she said she has sought fuel assistance. She will probably forgo putting her pier in this year, to save about $500.

While Learnard understands that she could get a good price if she were to sell, that's not an option she wants to consider for the place that's been home since 1977.

"People don't understand," she said. "It's one thing if you want to sell. It's another thing if you're forced. I feel they're forcing me out so they can get someone in who can pay these taxes and more."

By ANN S. KIM, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, May 1, 2008


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


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