Informational Meetings Planned This Month For Bangor’s Revaluation

Bangor's Assessor will be answering questions at an informational meeting planned to take place Tuesday evening. The topic of conversation: Bangor's upcoming Revaluation process.

The City of Bangor has not had an update in property values in 37 years. This means that the property taxes are being based on information that's more than 3 decades old. As such, Bangor's Assessor, Phil Drew, recently recommended that a full revaluation be done within the city so that upcoming taxes can be determined on accurate data.

The process of determining property taxes is broken down very simply in this video, here.

Drew says while some folks may be leery of the revaluation process, the more accurate and updated the information the City has access to, the better the City will be able to do its job of setting property taxes that hold true to the actual state of the buildings within its limits.

"There will be some people who benefit because they'll be assured that the data and property description is accurate and is not misleading. And some individuals are likely to see a valuation increase because some of the older data doesn't arrive at a value that's close to the market value."

Drew says there are a number of different things that can affect the value of a home.

"It's generally the things that can change in a home like the siding, the windows, the roofing, the age of the kitchen, the age of the bathrooms, the age of the heating system, the cooling system. And those homes that have had all of those elements updated, are likely to be in good or very good condition. And if the current assessment reflects maybe an average condition, then those properties are likely to go up in value."

And while some homes are likely to see their home value rise, some might actually see it come down a bit.

"There are some that may be in lower condition than the current rate, that maybe haven't been able to maintain their home over the last 20 years, we could have it in as above average condition, and maybe it's just average or fair condition."

Drew says the City has contracted with a professional revaluation company to execute the undertaking of gathering all of the updated information.

"The City has hired KRT Appraisal, a professional revaluation company out of Massachusettes, and they will have a team of data collectors who will attempt to inspect every single property in the City of Bangor over the next two years. "

He says that he hopes everyone will actively participate in the process. Drew realizes some folks will be hesitant to embrace the process. Because of this, the Assessing Department, in collaboration with the revaluation firm, will be taking steps to make sure no one is caught off guard by the data collectors.

"There is no state statute that requires an individual to let somebody in their home, but usually when the data collector arrives at a property, first of all, the property owners will have already been notified a couple of weeks ahead of time. They will have received a postcard from KRT Appraisal letting them know that soon a data collector will be arriving at the property to do an interior and exterior inspection. If the individual is home but doesn't want an interior inspection, they may be able to answer the questions of the data collector regarding the interior of the home. And the data collector may rely upon the information given by the property owner."

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The folks coming around to do the walk-throughs will be well-identified and vetted.

"The car will be identified. They will have a written letter that they can show to the property owners that they are representing KRT. KRT provided them to me, and I've provided them to the Bango Police Chief, a profile for each data collector. So, each sheet has a picture, their car, and identifying information so that if anybody is concerned and calls the police, the police have a database of individuals who are out collecting information. And we'll be able to update the police and the public on where they're working. They'll generally work in a particular area for a couple of weeks. "

And Drew says the encounter shouldn't last more than 15 or 20 minutes total.

"A quick walk-through of the house will take between 5 and 7 minutes. The property owner should make the data collector aware of any deficiencies or anything that needs to be repaired or updated or malfunctioning."

"KRT is a team of professional data collectors. They do this throughout the year in multiple states. They get in, they get out. It takes a very few minutes, maybe at the most 15 minutes, for a data collector to finish obtaining the information from the taxpayer, so it's a short amount of time. If I wanted to know that my assessment was accurate in 2026 and remember, this data will be used for decades to come, so an inaccurate value in 2026 is likely to be inaccurate, if based upon inaccurate data, for a long time."

Drew says if people want to have the most accurate tax rate in the coming years, it's important to take part in this revaluation.

"There's no way to determine the values now of the taxes then because the principal year of sales that they utilize will be from May of 2025 to April of 2026. So we're a year down the road before we even have sales within that time period. And the budgets for 2026/2027 municipalities and schools haven't even been thought of yet."

An in-person informational meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 11th, for taxpayers who may have more questions or concerns. It will take place at the William S. Cohen School at 6 PM.

There will be a virtual meeting, on the same topic, the following week on June 20th.

You can find out more about the meetings that are scheduled by clicking here.