MILLINOCKET, Maine — If you’d told assessor Michael Noble when he began working for Millinocket 14 years ago that the town’s valuation would drop below $200 million, he would have thought you were crazy.
That’s what Noble told the Town Council on Monday when it voted 6-0 to accept a $29.66 property tax rate per $1,000 of valuation as part of the town’s tax commitment for the 2015-16 fiscal year.
The mill rate is only slightly higher than the $29.60 rate set for the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, and a bit more than the $29.63 rate councilors anticipated when they approved a $6.18 million school and a $4.69 million municipal government budget on July 16.
Councilors expressed relief at the mill rate being below $30. If it gets that high, they believe economic development will be all but impossible. Councilors amended the $29.63 rate on Monday to reflect underestimated expenses.
Millinocket’s 2015-16 valuation, about $176 million, represents a decrease of about $35 million from the appraised value of all taxable town property in the previous year. The town was valued at $211 million last year, Noble said.
The $35 million drop in valuation was caused in part by losses of $2.3 million in the town’s total real estate value. The real estate drop, Noble said, was primarily caused by the demolition of buildings at the Katahdin Avenue site that was once home to a paper mill. The town also lost real estate valuation with “a few” properties the town acquired through foreclosure.
The town lost $32.5 million in personal property valuation with the removal of equipment from the mill site, Noble said.
The $35 million loss translates to a loss in tax revenue of about $1.036 million in one year, Noble said.
“It is pretty significant,” Noble told councilors, calling the drop an “exclamation point on the town’s struggles with budgets and trying to keep them balanced and cuts and everything we have been through.”
The town’s property tax rate has climbed from $19.32 per $1,000 in valuation in 2004, according to the state report, which includes Homestead, BETE and TIF state property tax relief program adjustments.
Noble said he didn’t expect the town’s valuation to plummet further because of decreases in value at the paper mill site. Demolitions there have ceased, he said.
The town issued 252 liens in July as part of efforts to collect more than $300,000 in overdue property taxes, but the owners of those properties have 18 months to pay up before the town can legally own those properties.
The town’s $29.66 rate is comparable to that of its Katahdin region neighbors, East Millinocket and Medway. East Millinocket’s rate for the 2014-15 fiscal year, which ended June 30, was $28.54. Medway’s mill rate for that year was $26. Officials from both towns said they hope to make their 2015-16 tax committals by the end of the month. No dates have been set.
Millinocket’s new rate is likely among the highest single mill rates in the state, said officials at the Maine Department of Revenue Services, who are compiling statewide mill-rate data on the 2014-15 fiscal year and hope to finish in three months.
Comparisons between Katahdin region and statewide mill rates are imprecise. The most recent statewide figures available at maine.gov are only as recent as the 2013-14 fiscal year, and they carry adjustments for the state’s Homestead, BETE and TIF tax relief programs, which lower the average rate slightly.
But according to the state compilation, Maine’s average municipal property tax rate was $14.49. The average rate in Penobscot County for 2013-14 was $18.22. The state’s list, which dates back to the 2003-04 fiscal year, shows that the Katahdin region has among the highest property tax rates as a region in the state over that timespan. Two towns on that list, Mexico and Bancroft, have had mill rates greater than $30. Mexico’s mill rate was $30.16 in 2012-13; Bancroft, $31.16, the same year.
And the Katahdin region’s prospects for significant economic development over the next year look bleak, officials have said.
“If you think it looks bad now,” council Chairman Richard Angotti Jr. said when the council approved its budgets in July, “wait until next year.”
Millinocket’s property tax payments for the year are due Monday, Sept. 28, and Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016, Noble said.