March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Steuben: grinding continues

Coastal Steuben is being battered like municipal flotsam — ground between an outgoing federal tide and the coastal granite of state government. It is caught in an absurd and financially damaging situation. It needs help, and has asked for it. The political system should deliver.

The issue is the conflicting values placed by Washington and Augusta on 1,107 acres of land located in Steuben that lies within a pristine, coastal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Preserve.

From 1990 to 1994, the state’s valuation of the entire town went from $34.3 million to $49.3 million. A $15 million increase in five years, “based almost entirely on the value of the shorefront property,” its three selectmen explained in a recent letter to the Maine congressional delegation.

None of the locals are surprised by this. Steuben is picturesque, in the rough fashion of working coastal villages. Ann West, secretary to the selectmen, describes it as a “little town with no industry, one store and a little pizza place.” No factories, she reports, and “everyone is kind of self-employed” in fishing, clamming, blueberrying, wreathmaking and the other seasonal occupations that support much of rural Maine.

Out of synch with their honest if sometimes hardscrabble existence, the price of shore frontage continues to inflate. Mrs. West remembers one coastal acre last year selling for $60,000: “I just don’t know how the people are getting such ridiculous prices.”

No one, however, has told the federal government about the bidding up of Maine’s coastal real estate, a phenomenon that has been at flood tide for a quarter century: The Fish and Wildlife Service has been aggressively devaluing its Steuben holdings, which include 30,650 sometimes spectacular feet of shore frontage.

In 1988, USFWS said the view from its digs at the end of the Pidgeon Hill Road, which includes Petit Manan, was worth $5,048,400. In 1993, it had fallen to $4,217,817. (USFWS must be taking lessons from the feds liquidating savings and loan assets. Would it consider selling some of the property?)

The feds pay no tax on this land, but send the town money in lieu of taxes based on a formula developed with congressional guidance. The formula includes the shrinking federal assessment of the property. It not only cheats on value, but skimps on the rate of reimbursement, which recently has fallen from 81 percent to 75 percent. The kicker: “In no year since the payments began, has the USFWS paid 100 percent of the amount due,” the selectmen told the delegation.

No surprise that under such a arbitrary system, employing a skewed formula drafted by people reluctant to pay the bill, the checks to Steuben get smaller each year. In 1991, the feds paid $38,929; in 1992, $37,269; and last year, $33,978. In 1994, the town was told to expect $24,371. If USFWS was taxed, based on state valuation, the bill would be for $48,000.

The selectmen, in plain language, described their predicament to the delegation.

“The higher valuations by the State mean that Steuben gets less State money for its schools; the lower valuation by the USFWS means Steuben gets less in-lieu-of-tax money. We are getting hammered both ways.”

It is a view shared by other coastal towns.

Unlike the gulls and seals at the preserve, protected by the vigilance of USFWS, the people of Steuben must look out for themselves. They like it that way. But they expect help when they ask for it. They should get it.

They want an investigation of the 1993 USFWS revaluation of its property. One is in order. (Sen. William Cohen’s office, the only one of the delegation’s to respond so far, says it is looking into the valuation methodology.)

The town’s objective is to have the valuation restored, consistent with acutal shoreland values and with valuations in other communities. That makes sense.

They also would like the federal government to honor its own formula at 100 percent, and not reimburse on a sliding scale that changes at federal convenience. That’s only reasonable.


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