New tax assessments mailed out at Orono

ORONO — Notice to residents: If you’re ticked off about your revaluation announcement, please, please, let’s not be nasty to the people answering the phones at the town office.

Officials from the town and MMC Inc. have spent the better part of a year sizing up the taxable property here for the first time in a decade, and finally sent out the good news to some 2,000 households last Friday. On Monday morning, residents peered into their mail boxes and found the infamous form letters bearing greetings from Assessor Stanley Borodko. Some residents were in for a surprise.

Before the coffee finished brewing in the town office Monday morning, the phones were ringing off the hook, with residents offering whoever answered their own special greetings. Many of those greetings, however, cannot be printed here.

Mostly, residents were suffering from “sticker shock,” said Ruth Vaughn, the recipient of most of those pleasant calls directed at the assessor’s office. Other brave office workers also unknowingly answered the phones, and were treated to an earful from angry residents. By Tuesday afternoon, she said, things had calmed down somewhat, and people calling weren’t quite as nasty. They weren’t exactly pleased, but, the subject is taxes, after all.

And, she said, they likely will calm down more “once they see their neighbors are paying as much as they are.”

Many residents, she said, feared that the notice, which listed an estimated tax rate, was a tax bill and that they had no recourse. However, Vaughn and MMC Inc. represenatives have spent the last two days making appointments for reviews of the revaluations, scheduled for next week. So far, they said, about 70 residents have requested such reviews.