Levant taxpayers question assessment

LEVANT — Some Levant taxpayers are not satisfied with the results of the town’s recent revaluation.

Fuller Goodwin and Paul Griffin were the latest two to protest their tax assessments.

Selectmen considered Goodwin’s complaint first, Wednesday night at the selectmen’s meeting.

Goodwin contested the assessor’s findings and produced copies of tax maps and documentation to support his case. He was asked how much he was seeking for an abatement but he said he didn’t have a figure. He questioned the assessment methods.

Selectmen said they would review the information he provided them and get back to him.

Griffin had a lot more information for the selectmen and he charged that he had been assessed for property he didn’t own.

He was being taxed, he said, for a lot that he gave his son, and his son was also being taxed for the lot.

He was critical of Assessor Mark Gibson’s evaluation of two buildings he owned.

One building, a hangar-like structure, he said, was evaluated at $3,600 and he promised to buy lunch for the entire board if they couldn’t find 200 holes in the roof of the structure. He said it was just a shell of a building, with no finished lumber inside, that cost him $300.

He also questioned the assessment of a camp he owned and the land that it’s on. The land, he said, was two-thirds wetlands. He charged that Gibson had never visited the site to see the camp. He had just asked questions about its size.

Another son, he said, had been charged for land he doesn’t own anymore.

Griffin said he was very unhappy with the town’s revaluation. “All of these people with problems can’t all be wrong,” he told the selectmen.

Chairman David Cowallis told Griffin that they would schedule a meeting with Gibson and review the material they had received and they would be getting back to him with an answer to his questions.