Mil Rates For Maine Towns (Augusta, Ellsworth: sales, real estate market, houses)

[karen rizkalla]

I've looked on the internet and can only find mil rates for each town individually. Is there a website where I can search by County? I'm looking primarily for all rates in Knox County. Thanks.

[bigchuckie]

I dont think counties have specific mil rates each town has it's own as far as I know. I dont pay a specific county mil rate. Just the one assesed by the town

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by karen rizkalla

I've looked on the internet and can only find mil rates for each town individually. Is there a website where I can search by County? I'm looking primarily for all rates in Knox County. Thanks.

Mil rates won't tell you everything that you need to know. The valuations in towns are different and vary due to many factors. Also it would be useful for you to know when the last town-wide valuation was done. Last year Ellsworth announced that it was going to have a city wide reassessment since the real estate market had been so robust and house sales had risen so rapidly. That was just before the current retraction in the general real estate market took hold, and now the city has put off its reassessment for at least another year. Some towns like Bar Harbor have had their reassessment last year, and the mil rate went down, but the value of properties went through the roof. I live in Trenton, and this year we will "enjoy" the third of three adjustments to the town's valuation. Three years ago, the town decided to increase assessments by 33% in three installments, rather than go through the cost of a formal revaluation process. Our tax rate is less than $11 here, but my house has nearly doubled in assessed value.

Maine is about to undergo a major change in the way it educates its children. The Governor has announced a major revision and contraction in the number of schools districts, school boards, and administrators. This is a move that is long overdue here, as so many small towns are much less a town than a school district. Anyway, there was a major study recently completed about the state by the Brookings Institution, and the recommendations made by that study will radically change the cost of eductation, and hopefully, stabilize the residential property tax structure in Maine.

[Dwatted Wabbit]

^^ Radically change as in reduce? I can't believe any action by any government I know of will result in reduced costs.
I hope that happens, but my suspicion is more "management" positions will be created and more central management such as the feds have imposed, with increasing bureaucratization and dysfunction.
I think we should go back 100 years to one room schoolhouses with lots of mixed grades, basic ABCs, discipline, teachers with unquestioned authority, with an emphasis on a knowledge base and learning to think and concentrate. I will dream on.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by Dwatted Wabbit

^^ Radically change as in reduce? I can't believe any action by any government I know of will result in reduced costs.
I hope that happens, but my suspicion is more "management" positions will be created and more central management such as the feds have imposed, with increasing bureaucratization and dysfunction.
I think we should go back 100 years to one room schoolhouses with lots of mixed grades, basic ABCs, discipline, teachers with unquestioned authority, with an emphasis on a knowledge base and learning to think and concentrate. I will dream on.

Yes, indeed you will. I too, would prefer to a previous time when there was dicipline in society and in the classroom children were taught by professional teachers, not unionized crybabies.

There are several expensive and major issues here in Maine. Local schools are very expensive to operate, and the only source of money to pay for these schools and their teachers and administrators, comes from the local property tax. In most cases this local property tax is that which is raised from the single residences in the community because the community either has not or has no ability to find new forms of non-residential property taxes.

Now, Augusta mandates all sorts of special educational programs and if there is ONE special needs youngster in the town, there must be a program and teacher for that ONE child. The mulitiplication of costs associated with this kind of program is enormous...AND THE STATE HAS LONG BEEN MANDATING ALL KINDS OF SPECIAL PROGRAMS, BUT NOT PROVIDING ADDITIONAL FUNDING FOR THEM. THAT is what has been driving the mil rate through the roof.

Basically, Maine's educational system is built on an antique model, much like the rest of Maine's economy. But sociological, economic and political situations have changed, and what worked a century and a half ago is no longer viable. IF Maine is going to be able to provide a good place for people of all ages and social strata to live, then there must be changes in the state, beginning at the top. Thus the educational system must institutionally change, and this overhaul is an essential first step.

There is going to be quite a war about this, a since the governor's announcement the expected wagons of the educational bureaucracy have begun to be circled. There will be an emense struggle to achieve these changes, and much like any birth, the blood and screaming will be worth it when the birthing is done.

[Submariner]

The state does set a mil rate for each county, then each township starts with that number and adds onto it what they need to support the town, which finally gives the town their finalized mil rate that they charge folks.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

That is only for the Unorganized Territories which make up over half the state. Each incorporated town can be as frugal or spendy as it likes. Some towns have extravagant highway departments. I have seen a town where the selectmen were shoveling cold patch out of the back of a pickup to patch potholes in town roads. It was the honorable thing to do. The town was broke and they didn't want to borrow against anticipated tax revenues.

[SteveMartin]

So...there is no place to find mill rates by town in Maine?

I've searched and searched, and I have had no luck.

Isn't that convenient!?

Hard to fight ridiculous mill rates when you can't easily compare to other towns, now isn't it?

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Mil rates are determined primarily by school districts and total town valuations. Rich towns with paper mills to tax have extravagant police, fire and highway departments. More frugal towns get by with private contractors to maintain the roads, volunteer fire departments and have no police. If somebody gets really aggravated and can't deal with the situation themselves, the sheriff's department will come out to take a report after a while.

[atardie]

People...mil rates are determined by the valuations of the towns real estate and the towns operating budget. The state sets the valuation by recently sold property, and the town than will assess property by that benchmark. Then the town will adjust the mil rate to accommidate its own operating budget. Each town is different as previously posted because the differing services in that town. Hope that helps...