March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Bucksport’s assessor defends techniques> Champion International mill revaluation at issue

AUGUSTA — Of Bucksport’s top 10 taxpayers, Champion International may have been singled out for a tax increase, an attorney for the company said Friday at hearings of the State Board of Property Tax Review.

In his second day of testimony at state hearings on Champion’s request for a $1.5 million tax abatement for 1992, Bucksport Town Assessor Bill Mayo answered questions for several hours on the consistency of his methods.

Champion officials say the mill was worth $210 million at the time in question, whereas the town valued it at $310 million.

Having served as assistant assessor in York previously, Mayo became Bucksport’s assessor in 1989. He began a revaluation of the town that took effect in 1992. The town’s assessment of the mill rose from $248 million in 1991 to $310 million in 1992, a smaller percentage increase than the rest of the town sustained, but a hike Champion considers excessive.

Attorney Mike Wilson wanted to know why the assessments on several of Bucksport’s biggest taxpayers (as of 1991, the last time the rankings were documented) had not risen since 1987. He also wondered why Mayo apparently left no paper trail on his calculations in those instances.

Major taxpayers whose assessments stayed the same in that period include A. Johnson Energy, McDonald’s Restaurant, Wenbelle Apartments, C.H. Sprague Co. and Webber Tanks Inc.

In using A. Johnson Energy as his first example, Wilson noted that the company’s property tax card had no notes indicating Mayo’s rationale for his assessment, nor any indication that he visited the property in recent years. By contrast, documents on the mill’s assessment suggest greater scrutiny.

“Does that mean only when you visit the mill do you take notes?” Wilson asked. Mayo replied that he generally makes notes if he sees something “out of the ordinary.”

Wilson said it was logical to assume that since the town’s value went from $106 million in 1991 to $141 million for 1992, that a tax increase should have been spread proportionately among the town’s 3,000 taxpayers, a concept Mayo agreed with in theory, while insisting there could be cases in which exceptions were justified.

In going down the list of five of 10 major taxpayers, Wilson asked whether Mayo had inspected their properties, and the assessor replied that he had.

Asked why there were no inspection notes from his visit to properties such as the franchise restaurant, “It looked like a typical McDonald’s to me,” Mayo replied.

In seeking to establish a pattern of inconsistent treatment, Wilson asked whether there might be others among the town’s taxpayers beyond the 10 whose assessments had stayed the same for the past several years.

“There could be some other ones, yes,” replied Mayo, adding that unless taxpayers declare changes to their property, he often holds their value steady.

In defending Mayo’s methods, attorney Robert Crawford, representing Bucksport, said the percentage of the town’s tax base provided by the mill actually decreased to slightly under 70 percent after the revaluation.

Under Crawford’s questioning, Mayo said his conclusions and depreciation methods had been affirmed by a state Bureau of Taxation official, who conducted a routine review of Mayo’s assessment, although without visiting the mill property as part of the review.

The hearings will continue in Augusta the weeks of Jan. 9 and 23.


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