Sumner taxpayers get answers on assessments

SUMNER — Property-tax assessor Michael O'Donnell spoke to property owners at the Sumner Board of Selectmen meeting on December 13 about the process by which a property is valued and assessed.

"You need the combination of judgment and mathematics. We use what are pretty standard industry models to price property, then we calibrate them to the town," he said.

In Sumner, said O'Donnell, assessors have "historically done equalization projects, which is a periodic resetting of property values."

He said the last time Sumner's property values were set was in 2010. Prior to that, they were set in 2003, he said.

"Revaluations are typically done periodically," said O'Donnell, "but the town decides when it's time to set new property-tax values. Since the market value is always moving up and down, you set values in one given year, and the next year they may be lower, they may be higher."

O'Donnell said that as an assessor, his job is to provide towns with tax maps, assessing software, and web services, in which "a town can put all their tax-assessment data on the web, so taxpayers can have an easy and convenient way for looking at information – pictures, sketches, values, and how their value is made up ... " he explained.

O'Donnell has been working for John E. O'Donnell and Associates for more than 20 years. He said that Sumner is one of 30 small towns throughout Maine that he serves.

In many cases, said O'Donnell, the selectmen don't have assessing experience, so hiring a company like John E. O'Donnell and Associates has its advantages – all of an assessor's work is done without bias, he said.

"It's more of a judgment call," he said.

Then again, O'Donnell said that it's ultimately up to the selectmen to change an assessment they feel is inaccurate. When this happens, he said residents will often request more standardization in the model, such as assessing land based on square footage, rather than on fairness.

According to O'Donnell, when an individual wants to know whether their assessment is "equitable," he suggests that they look at properties they consider a good match.

"Where it starts to fall apart," he said, "is that people start to cherry pick parts and pieces; 'Well that guy's house is like mine, but I am on 50 acres, and he is on one.' It's a little tough to make that comparison, but if you separate the land from the building, it helps."

O'Donnell said in doing this, people might occasionally find a similar property assessed at a lower value. However, if most similar properties are valued comparably, O'Donnell said it is more likely that the lowered one be raised, rather than the higher one lowered.

"If you predetermine that you are over-assessed, and you are looking for examples that are going to prove that, " said O'Donnell, "I typically tell people to keep an open mind and compare to a number of people. If you try to look apples to apples, and you're open-minded about it, usually you can determine with three, or four hours of effort whether or not you're reasonably fair."

If the taxpayer disagrees with an assessment, they have 185 days from the day the tax is committed to file for an abatement, he said. "They are carrying a burden of proof," he said.

According to O'Donnell, "Maine tax law is predominantly stacked in favor of the town against the individual. The taxpayer has the burden to provide evidence that they're over-assessed relative to others in town," he said.

Due to the poor real estate market, he said, the likely sale values of most properties in Sumner are now lower than their assessed values. He said the problem with setting values is that there is not much good-quality data to work with in rural communities.

"The market has been substantially distorted," he said. "There's no immediate authority in the individual to force the selectmen to direct the assessments to go in a different direction. ... but we [assessors] try to make reasonable judgements and try to stay consistent."