RUMFORD — The Board of Selectmen voted at their Sept. 19 meeting to place a bond application request for a property revaluation on the November ballot, according to Craig Chamberlain, chairman of the Board of Assessors.
Chamberlain said that on Sept. 19, he told selectmen the town should look into a revaluation, because it has been 14 years since the last one.
“The state advises that towns should do a reval once every 10 years, and it’s been 14 since we did it here in Rumford,” Chamberlain said Friday. “A reval would put everybody on an even keel again, in terms of how much people pay.”
Chamberlain explained that the longer a town goes without a revaluation, the more “unlevel the playing field is.”
“What happens is that the older and newer properties change values at different rates,” he said. “As a result, some people are not paying enough for their properties, and some people are paying more than their fair share. The reval puts everybody back on an even playing field.”
The major reason Rumford has not had a revaluation since 1999, according to Chamberlain, is that the “town hasn’t been able to fund it on a regular basis.”
“It’s always one of the first things to get cut,” he said. “This year, our original budget request was to put $50,000 toward doing a revaluation. Right now, it’s down to zero. I think that we’ve got to the point where the process of getting a budget passed took precedence over a reval.”
Chamberlain said that 14 years ago, a revaluation would have cost “about $250,000,” though that number has increased over the years.
“We did some research and figured that it would cost between $300,000 and $350,000,” Chamberlain said. “The Board of Assessors recommended that the town go with $350,000.”
Since the money has not been budgeted, Chamberlain suggested to the board that the money be raised through a bond application, which would be voted on in November.
At the Sept. 19 selectmen meeting, Town Manager Carlo Puiia said the town would not be able to apply for the bond until next April, though he agreed with the Board of Assessors’ recommendation of $350,000.
If approved, the work would be contracted to a professional appraising company.
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