11/21/2025
For the love of all things Holy, if you have questions about property taxes ask the Assessor. The level of ill informed posts and ignorance of the subject being touted as facts is mind boggling. Without writing a full dissertation on the subject, I will briefly explain the changes to your valuations and your bills. In my explanations I use 2020 as a benchmark year, not because it was magical from a tax standpoint but because it's where events started to occur that changed how the state perceives our value as a town.
Your valuation is, in fact, driven by the states valuation of the town. If it were the other way around the state would be chasing our values vs us chasing theirs. The state's valuation of the town is driven by sales and market value. Since 2020 the market value has boomed in Pembroke and in nearly every other town in the state. As a result the state's valuation of the town has increased from 70 million in 2021 to 113,800,000 in 2025. When I say the state's valuation increased more than 42 million dollars, I didn't make that number up, I didn't dampen my finger and wave it in the air and check the wind direction, it came from the link provided below which in turn came from the Maine Revenue Services website.
If your town's assessed value is 91% or higher of the state's valuation you can claim that as 100% valuation. You need 100% valuation to get 100% of your homestead and veteran's exemptions. It also allows the town to receive 100% of the state's approved reimbursement for any of the reimbursable programs i.e. Tree Growth, BETE, Veterans, and homestead. Those reimbursements help offset your tax burden by offsetting appropriations going forward. Pembroke is currently sitting at 91% with this years changes.
A Real Estate Tax Assessment is an inventory of what items are on a particular plot of land, factored by what condition those items are in. Items are typically defined as components for dwellings, outbuildings, or amenities. A Real Estate Tax Valuation is figured from the Tax Assessment inventory multiplied by the cost file for each particular part of that inventory. The cost files for Pembroke have not been adjusted since 2010. Meaning, whatever the items in the inventory were worth in 2010 is the value they had until our latest update. Our cost files should have been incrementally adjusted as the values changed according to the Marshall and Swift cost estimator. Marshall and Swift is the standard that nearly all real estate building costs are modeled after. Most towns, Pembroke included, are nowhere near reflecting Marshall and Swift costs in their cost files but mirror the percentage of movement in cost files to it. Between the previous assessor's health problems and an inability to see the future real estate cost trend going through the roof, our cost files stayed the same.
With all that being said, your bills went up because appropriations went up and revenues went down. Every line item under appropriations in the tax calculator increased from the previous year. Some very little, some not. Those appropriation line items are identified as Municipal, County, and Local Education. Every Line item for Revenues in the tax calculator went down. Some by a little, some not. Those line items under revenues are identified as State Revenue Sharing and Other Revenues.
If we had not made any changes to the town's valuation, our valuation percentage would have been in the 60s. Your homestead exemption would be 16000 or less. Veterans exemption would be less than 4000. And your MIL rate would be around 30. Your taxes would be somewhere right around where they are with the new valuation. And our reimbursements would be in the tank. Incidentally, the state only reimburses at 76 cents on the dollar for the homestead exemption regardless of where we are percentage wise.
As a last thought, what is MIL rate and why does it matter? The MIL, mil, mill rate, or millage rate is the rate at which your property is taxed per 1000 dollars value. All of those variants of the word are derived from the Latin word millesimum meaning thousand. To calculate the Mil rate, 18 today, you multiply your property's valuation by .018.
Please note that the numbers in the link below need three zeros added to the end of each number to reflect actual millions. They leave them off in the spreadsheet to save space when showing historical changes.
https://www.maine.gov/revenue/sites/maine.gov.revenue/files/inline-files/SV_history_1.xlsx
Edit: That link should work correctly now. It will automatically download the Excel sheet.
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