Aug 06, 2025
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.
BAR HARBOR—Bar Harbor property owners that were expecting large assessment jumps this fall will not be seeing the increases they’d been told of in May by the town’s former assessor. Instead, all properties in the town will have an across-the-board 6-8% assessment increase on their value.
“It looks like the town overall is in pretty good shape with its assessments,” Josh Berry told the town councilors, August 5.
Berry said that his company, RCS Assessment Services, a Maine-based firm, had been doing data analysis and sales data.
There were a lot of assessments that changed quite a bit in that May assessment which had not been finalized, which means that the town would need time to explain to those property owners why those changes happened. Berry did not believe that the town had enough time to do that, especially since he didn’t have a blue print to understand how those varying new assessments sent out in May came about.
“The best approach for Bar Harbor would be to roll back those reval (revaluation) numbers. We can do a 6-8% market-based adjustment town wide,” Berry said.
This means that property owners would have a 6-8% increase on their properties’ values. This will be reflected in the fall tax bill.
Many of the approximately 3,800 Bar Harbor property owners had a shock in May when they opened their mail from the town and learned that their property’s value had been reassessed.
“We would not have been able to explain them (the changes) to people,” Berry said of the previous assessments in May.
When a town reassesses a property, it determines the “assessed value” of a property, which isn’t quite the same as a “market value,” which is the likely price someone will pay for your property if it’s for sale.
A property’s assessment impacts its tax bill. It basically determines the property tax liability.
State law created standards for towns and cities to meet when it comes to assessing the property in a town. A major standard that causes revaluation is that the total valuation of taxable property should not fall below 70% of the fair market value. On the other end, it can’t exceed 20% of the assessments’ quality rating. This means, according to the Maine Municipal Association that “the difference in valuation between similar properties should never be greater than 20%.”
“Property taxes currently account for 45% of the revenues in Maine generated by the three major taxes,” in the state, according to the Maine Municipal Association.
The association further explains that “the Maine Constitution says that property shall be assessed at its ‘just value.’ The courts have interpreted ‘just value’ to mean fair market value or in other words ‘what the property is worth.’ A property’s worth is commonly looked at as ‘what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller’ for a particular piece of property.”
Berry recommended a 6-8% revaluation across the board, which he said was a market-based approach based on the town’s really good quality rating with the state.
”That tells you that you can make a market-based adjustment,” he explained to councilors.
If the town had a poorer quality rating with the state, it would more likely have to go with the original plan proposed by former tax assessor Steve Weed.
“This isn’t just a one-year situation. We have time to really look at this and see what changes should be made in the future,” Berry said.
Shortly after those May assessment notices were sent out, Weed resigned from his position and took another position in mid-coast Maine. Hannah Phelps was recently promoted to that position, but has been on maternity leave. She presented with Berry at the August 5 meeting.
“Before departing, the assessor had completed a statistical update to property values and scheduled more than 100 meetings with property owners who requested to review their assessment data. These property owners are receiving direct communication from the town about next steps,” a June press release from the town had said.
One property owner had posted her reassessment letter from the town on social media. Her previous assessment was $602,300. Her new assessment, determined on April Fool’s Day, 2025, was $712,700.
Weed had stressed that the new assessments don’t increase the amount of tax money the town collects as a whole for the fiscal year, though it may distribute the individual property owners’ burdens a bit differently.
“The range of value changes is wide,” he’d said in May of those initial property revaluations. “The largest increase was a 289 percent jump for a newly constructed home. The largest decrease was 68 percent, related to a parcel in a state current-use program where the valuation method is set by law. Most properties fall somewhere in between, with value changes driven by new construction, demolition, corrections to property records, or shifts in the local real estate market. Every property responds differently to these factors, which is why the values vary so significantly.”
$377 was the median increase in the proposed budget for the property owners, Weed had said.
The town had offered property owners a chance to have meetings with Weed and abatement hearings could also occur.
The timeframe to conduct all those hearings was pretty tight, Berry said. During public comment, Ruth Eveland said she’d tried to contact the assessor’s office after her appointment was cancelled because of Weed’s resignation and did not hear back.
“Valuations are finalized with tax commitment later in August,” a June press release had said.
Town Manager James Smith said it was likely that there would be targeted assessments in the next few years. Those would be driven by data that showed when things were out-of-line with market values. Typically, Berry said, the state looks at values from a couple years prior, which allows him to project what the town might need to do to stay or be in alignment next year.
How Are Property Taxes Collected?
A town’s mill rate determines how property taxes are levied.
“The mill rate is the dollars/cents per $1,000 of value that you will pay in property taxes,” the Maine Municipal Association explains. “For example, if you own a home valued at $100,000 and the tax rate is 20 mills (or .02), then your tax bill will be $2,000 (or .020 x $100,000).”
That rate stems from how much revenue the town must raise to fund its budget (municipal, school, county, and debt payments).
“That amount is then divided by the total local assessed valuation to get the local tax rate. For example, a town that has a local assessed valuation of $100 million and needs to raise $2 million in property taxes will require a tax rate of 20 mills to do so ($2,000,000 divided by $100,000,000 equals .020),” the association writes. “Another way to look at the mill rate is as a percentage of value. For example, if your home is valued at $100,000 and the mill rate is 20, then your property taxes are equal to 2% of your home’s value; if the mill rate is 15, then it is 1.5% of the home’s value; 10 mills is 1%.”
Council Vice Chair Maya Caines and council member Joe Minutolo were absent.
QUICK NOTE: This is the first story of multiple stories stemming from the council meeting.
Photos: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Bar Harbor Property Reassessments Shock Many
Bar Harbor Assessor’s Data base (you can look up your property here)
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