SCARBOROUGH – More than 90 Scarborough property owners scheduled to have appeals heard before the town’s Board of Assessment Review were dealt a blow late last week when the Maine Revenue Service released a report backing the work of former assessor Paul Lesperance, accused of unfairly targeting beachfront homes.
Following a July 15 meeting with two Scarborough residents, Mike Rogers, supervisor of municipal services at the state’s Property Tax Division, prepared a 53-page analysis of Lesperance’s work.
Rogers said in a July 29 interview the report would be finalized by the end of that week, but the need for review from higher-ups repeatedly delayed release, according to Maine Revenue Service spokesman David Heidrich.
By last week, the report had ended up in the Gov. Paul LePage’s office and Town Manager Tom Hall said he was on the verge of filing a Freedom of Access Act request to get its release.
“Why on earth would the governor be interested in this?” asked Hall following the Aug. 21 Town Council meeting.
The governor’s spokesperson, Adrienne Bennett, did not return a call requesting comment.
However, when Rogers’ report finally came out Friday afternoon, Hall said he was satisfied, although he had initially heard the report would run to 70 pages, and had considered demanding Rogers’ working papers, to see what might have been “sanitized” from his work.
“I am quite pleased that he [Rogers] was so direct and clear in his report,” Hall said. “The detail and the data in it will be valuable in the appeal process.”
At issue was the fact that Lesperance, an assessor for Scarborough for 29 years before retiring in March, had not conducted a full, town-wide revaluation since 2005. At an Aug. 19 review board hearing, he said that was partly due to the recession, which more than mitigated the need. However, while most home sales stagnated, beachfront property held its own and even continued to rise in value, based on property sales. Last year, he adjusted land assessments upward as much as 40 percent to reflect the market changes not yet captured.
At the Aug. 19 hearing, Lesperance said he hiked values on 279 properties in town last year, “most of which were water-influenced areas,” while lowering values on 475 properties. Scarborough has roughly 8,500 lots, about 6,500 of which are residential.
However, some residents saw a change in assessment as a way to pad the town’s tax rolls at the expense of certain property owners.
“The numbers clearly demonstrate that it was a targeted appraisal,” said Pine Point resident Don Petrin.
The assessed value of Petrin’s .35-acre lot on the Scarborough River jumped 25 percent this year, from $585,700 to $732,100. That drove his annual tax bill from $10,481 to $13,320.
Rogers, however, found no fault with Lesperance’s efforts.
“It is the opinion of this appraiser that the 2012 assessments employ sound and acceptable mass appraisal techniques and methodology,” he wrote. “No individual areas or categories of property appear to be inequitably assessed in comparison with others. That conclusion is supported by the levels of equity and consistent ratios derived from the sales-ratio analyses that are part of this review.”
According to the report, the 2012 revaluation brought assessments at the disputed waterfront lots to 93 percent of market value, up from 79 percent the previous year. Meanwhile, other inland residential and commercial lots remained closer to 100 percent, indicating that they had previously been shouldering an inordinate share of the town’s tax burden, according to Rogers’ report.
“The 2012 assessments “clearly demonstrate a decisive improvement in equity and assessment levels,” he wrote.
A one-page Maine Revenue Service letter accompanying Rogers’ report essentially declared the review finished, remanding any additional action to the property owners’ right of appeal.
Those appeals will begin in earnest Sept. 23 when 44 appeals will be heard by the assessment review board, all filed by owners of waterfront property on Higgins Beach and Pine Point. Additional appeals already have been scheduled for other waterfront areas in October.
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