To the editor:
Every community has a tipping point, when it comes to property taxes. If property taxes are too low or too high, life in the community can become unsustainable and even harmful for many of its citizens.
The city of Caribou reached that tipping point in 2011 when it carried out its 2011 property revaluation. As a result of this revaluation, city leaders imposed excessively high property taxes on their community. At least one property in the rural area has seen its valuation by the city go up by 300 percent. Many other properties in the rural area of Caribou have seen assessments of their property increase by as much as 60 percent to over 100 percent.
On average, the valuation of property in Caribou is 25 percent higher than what the real estate market will actually pay for that property, that is, the market value. This excessively high taxation is both unsustainable and harmful for the following reasons.
Homes in Caribou are not selling because of the excessively high property taxes that the city has imposed upon its community. It takes an average of 300 days to sell a home in Caribou, if it sells at all. This can make those folks, who wish to sell, prisoners of their own homes.
This creates a feedback loop for many folks, especially for our senior citizens and for others struggling to survive on a fixed or low wage income. If these folks want to sell their homes because they can’t afford to pay the excessively high property taxes, they often end up trapped because they can’t sell. This then forces many of them into arrears on their taxes or it makes it more difficult for them to pay off a mortgage. They are then faced with the following no-win situation: they can’t sell their home, but they are going to lose it to the city of Caribou or to the bank.
The bank is not the problem here, however, the excessive tax greed of the incorporated city of Caribou sure is. The city of Caribou is clearly living well beyond its means, while at the same time pretending that every day is just another feel-good “Thursday on Sweden Street” and that if you build it they will come.
It is time for the entire community to wake up to the stark reality that no municipality can spend its way into prosperity!
Municipal property valuations across the state of Maine have fallen uniformly. The peak of Maine’s real estate market was reached in 2010. The State of Maine’s office of taxation reported that year Maine’s real estate value had reached an all time high of $170.336 billion. When the 2015 report was issued the real estate value in Maine had dropped to $158.704 billion.
The $12.632 billion loss of real estate value was shared about equally amongst all 16 counties in Maine. Only a few glaring exceptions and the City of Caribou, of course, is right there at the top of the list of excessively high property valuations. The consequences of this revaluation have been dire for many, especially for those in the rural areas of Caribou. Real people are faced with the loss of their homes because of the city’s property tax greed. Others are going hungry or can’t afford to heat their homes properly because property taxes take a huge bite out of their Social Security check. And more and more of our friends and neighbors can’t afford to pay for necessary medications because of the crushing financial burden high taxes placed on their household budgets.
Our senior citizens are frightened of becoming homeless and/or losing their independence because the city of Caribou thinks only about spending and not about finding ways to cut its expenditures.
The future town of Lyndon offers an alternative to these unnecessary high taxes that have been imposed upon our rural areas by the city of Caribou. Folks living in the rural areas of Caribou will have their property taxes lowered by 28 percent in the first year alone. This will make a huge difference, especially for all of those folks who are living on the margins and struggling to pay their taxes.
Your new town will be dedicated to achieving a better life experience through smaller, more cost efficient government. Please stand with us to make Lyndon a reality. The Secession Committee has said from the beginning that taxes in Caribou are much higher than they need to be and with your help we will prove it.
