Dozens of Hampden residents are challenging their growing taxable value of their homes as the town completes its first reassessment in nearly 35 years.
Hampden’s assessor, Rick Thibodeau, has fielded complaints from a few dozen homeowners who are appealing their homes’ new values in recent weeks after reassessment letters were sent to a portion of the town.
Despite residents angrily posting on social media about their home values spiking, reactions to the letters from people who have come to the town office have been “reasonable” so far, Thibodeau said.
Most homeowners who have asked to talk about their bills just wanted an explanation for why their home’s value went up, he said, but others brought forward issues with how assessors valued their homes.
Hampden homeowners are being hit with the town’s first reassessment since 1992 during a time when both municipal and school budgets are spiking the cost of living. Although Hampden’s budgets are not finalized yet, those combined with Penobscot County’s tax jump are projected to raise the amount of money the community needs to collect through property taxes later this year.
Residents are mostly bringing forward concerns about the condition of their homes’ interiors, Thibodeau said. Assessors value the interior and exterior of the homes they see, sometimes without entering their home because the owner wasn’t there or decided not to let them in.
“If [the assessors] go to a property and see that new siding and windows were put on, sometimes they would assume that, well, they must have remodeled or updated the interior as well, and it may not be the case,” he said.
For one house, the assessing company, Municipal Consulting Group of Maine, saw a chimney from the outside and assumed there was a fireplace despite not entering the property, Thibodeau said. But the house didn’t have a fireplace, he said.
Changing a home’s reassessment for whatever reason is easy, with Thibodeau and the assessing company reviewing the property and putting a new value into the town’s system, he said.
Homeowners who make an immediate appeal with the town when they receive their reassessment letter give the town ample time to make any changes before tax bills are sent out this fall, Thibodeau said.
A jump in a home’s value doesn’t directly equate to a larger tax bill, Thibodeau said. The majority of homes reassessed will either see their tax bill go down or stay the same.
For example, if Hampden has a higher valuation as a community but has the same budgets, the tax rate would go down.
With the school and town budgets still being drafted and tweaked, Hampden Town Councilor Eric Jarvi has been attempting to educate homeowners about what goes into the town’s property taxes through social media and a presentation at a Regional School Unit 22 budget committee meeting on April 30.
Jarvi and Council Chair Matt LaChance did not respond to a request for comment about how the reassessment will change this year’s budget.
Following multiple posts from Hampden homeowners who said there were issues in their reassessment letters or that they didn’t agree with the updated value to their house, Jarvi told residents to go to the town office before they get their tax bill later this year.
“In my experience, this process works if you give it a chance. It is important to get adjustments recorded before our property tax bills come out later this summer,” Jarvi said in a May 1 post about residents’ backlash on new home values.
