Town manager says Amish should not receive special treatment
EASTON, Maine — The Town of Easton will be filing an appeal this week in response to the County Commissioners recent decision to award tax abatements to six Amish residents who have built barns in the town.
“The town is not very happy right now,” said Easton Town Manager Jim Gardner. “We want people to understand that, just because the county made a decision, it is not set in stone.”
One of Gardner’s main concerns regarding the tax abatement was a “lack of evidence” and “supporting documents.”
The Town of Easton will be filing an appeal with the Aroostook County Superior Court this week on those grounds.
“They won’t be getting a tax abatement,” Gardner added. “No money is being distributed. We’re very confident that once this gets into a real court they’ll overturn the decision.”
The Commissioners’ decision is available to the public and delineates both Easton and the Amish’s side of the debate. Ultimately the three-member panel decided to award the abatements since the Amish barns did not have electricity, bathrooms, insulation, and running water. Further, the Commissioners added that the Town of Easton did not adequately provide comparable property, concluding that the current value of the Amish barns was unjustly high.
According to the county’s decision, they “found the Respondent’s (Easton’s) testimony to be materially weak as it pertained to grading. The Respondent also testified that the barns were valued at D grade, but that was simply not true in all cases.”
The decision continues to state that at the conclusion of the June 22, 2016 hearing, Commissioners requested more information from Easton concerning grading, and that their request, along with a second attempt made on June 28, was denied.
Easton’s Gardner says he plans on making the decision document available via the town website, so the people can see that the Commissioners referred to their testimony as “weak.”
“We gave them two comparables,” said Gardner, “and then we gave them an Amish-built structure that was the same size because it had electricity. What they don’t say is that, under the gentleman who teaches tax law in Maine, those buildings are rated as a Grade D. We gave the lowest grading we could give them because there was no plumbing, heat, or electricity.”
The aforementioned tax law instructor, Garnett Robinson, was a Respondent in the hearing, along with Gardner.
“Since we hadn’t done an evaluation in over 23 years, we hired Robinson, who runs Maine Assessment and Appraisals out of Dixmont and teaches tax law to other assessors in Maine,” Gardner said.
Given Robinson’s credentials, the Town of Easton, or at least its manager, is not worried about the Superior Court decision.
“What hurts is that this doesn’t just affect Easton,” Gardner said, “this will affect the whole county and anywhere else the Amish set up residency, because they should be able to go in and do the same thing that happened in Easton, without providing any evidence.
“Every assessor in Aroostook County will have to figure out how they’re going to assess buildings of an Amish nature, and they shouldn’t have to do that. You should be able to assess your building the same way as ours, minus electrical or plumbing. That’s the real American way of doing things; it doesn’t matter what race or religion you are,” Gardner said.
