Assessor warns revaluation delay could complicate Bangor's tax billing

Bill Drew, city assessor, told the Bangor City Council on June 10 that the consultant doing the citywide revaluation had not completed commercial and large multi-unit work and asked for an additional two to three weeks to finish.

That delay, Drew said, leaves the city without reliable commercial assessments and puts the revaluation's July 24 project completion at risk. "I am still working through the commercial industrial large apartments multi-units and exempt properties which I will need a solid two or three weeks to complete that," he said. Drew provided preliminary residential estimates and said the city's current working estimate for assessed real-estate value is roughly $4.2 billion, up from about $3.8 billion last year, but stressed the commercial side — roughly half the valuation — remains incomplete.

The timing matters for tax billing. Councilors and staff discussed three practical options: (1) proceed with the assessor's adjusted numbers this year for budget and billing; (2) delay tax-bill dates if the new data arrive soon enough to bill on the updated values; or (3) hold the newly computed values until the following billing cycle to avoid sending taxpayers conflicting notices. City staff cautioned that a mid-August delivery would be very close to standard billing deadlines. The manager noted the simplest path for taxpayer continuity could be to "hold them over" to next year if the new numbers cannot be used reliably for billing.

Drew and staff said residential reviews are nearly complete and can be presented to the public soon, but commercial review and the city's validation process require more time. The assessor also confirmed the city's data-conversion process between the Patriot valuation software and the city's Trio billing system is functioning, so any delivered values can be imported when finalized.

Next steps: staff will present an updated tax-rate calculator and proposed budget adjustments on Wednesday for council consideration and asked the council to signal whether to proceed using the assessor's adjusted numbers if revaluation data are not available in time for billing.