Carrie Jones

Feb 25, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Maine Seacoast Mission.

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MOUNT DESERT—Property owners in town will most likely have the assessed value of their homes increase this year, Mount Desert Assessor Kyle Avila told the town’s selectboard on Monday.

This revaluation is interim, he said.

The fuller revaluation will likely occur within the next two years.

“This is pretty important. It’s going to effect a lot of people,” Avila said.

State law requires towns to keep the assessment ratio of properties above 70% and below 110%, he explained to the board.

If a town isn’t in that ratio, it impacts state subsidies. Those subsidies help support portions of school budgets. Property taxes are based on assessments and the town’s budget and mill rates.

Currently, the valuations he looked at show that the assessed values of homes are at 78% of the sale price of the homes.

“That’s not out of compliance, but we’re pretty low,” Avila said.

The goal is to bring everyone into the 90 to 100 range, he said. The last full revaluation for the town—often called a re-val—was in 2007, according to Town Manager Alex Kimball.

“The only outlier that I see so far is that Northeast Harbor has the lowest by a long shot ratio for dwellings and it also represents half of the dwellings on the east side as far as sales are concerned,” selectboard member Geoffrey Wood said.

He compared it to the west side.

“I appreciate that you’re lumping the two sides together to try to get a better overall spread, but that seems to be that piece of data that 11 dwellings sold in one might represent being as its own. I mean that seems like to be fair that could possibly need a bigger increase than the others,” Wood said.

“I looked long and hard at that. I think you’re right, it does stick out, but what I resolved was that I have to balance these adjustments with equity and fairness but also that I do have the purview to make adjustments down the road. If that trend continues, Northeast Harbor would get an adjustment when nobody else did. I‘m doing a lot of variable adjusting this year and that one I just didn’t feel comfortable putting at the top of the heap and really adding 30% increase to one village. Hopefully, we’ll get out of this trend where the market continues to skyrocket but I haven’t seen it yet,” Avila said.

Avila took sales and divided them into areas to compare to currently assessed values. Those areas were Somesville, Pretty Marsh, Hall Quarry, and Beech Hill in the west, and Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor, Otter Creek in the east.

Both sides were lower than the 90% mark he’d hope for. The eastern side was at 74%. The western at 83%. He suggested a 10% increase for the western area for all properties that are not vacant or commercial. Those were in that 90-100% ratio. He suggested a 20% increase for the eastern areas. In those villages, vacant land would be adjusted with a 10%; oceanfront property would increase 5%.

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NOR’EASTER POUND AND MARKET

The town approved the liquor license and special amusement renewal for the Nor’Easter Pound and Market on Huntington Road.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/zvdgFPA-nxs?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

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