A radio station affiliated with Bangor Baptist Church has lost its tax-exempt status, which has upset church leaders who have asked the congregation to launch a letter-writing campaign against the Board of Assessors.

The assessing office at Bangor City Hall has received 120 letters and cards from the church’s congregation and listeners of WHCF protesting the decision to tax the FM radio station.

State law provides exemption from property taxes for “houses of religious worship, including vestries, and the pews and furniture within the same” and the parsonage to a value of $20,000.

The Law Court’s policy of construing statutes for tax exemption is long standing and holds that taxation is the rule and tax exemption the exception, Diane E. Doyen, assistant attorney general, wrote a year ago in a memorandum on the state’s involvement in the case.

“An exemption is not to be extended to situations that are not clearly within the scope of the statutory provisions,” she said. “The person seeking an exemption from taxation has the burden of establishing exemption.”

The state became involved several years ago over one of the radio station’s towers in Grand Falls, an unorganized territory where the state levies property taxes.

In her memo, Doyen wrote:

“The term house of `religious worship’ means an ordinary church edifice in which a religious organization conducts public worship. It includes land upon which the building stands together with that land sufficient to permit normal ingress and egress and parking. It does not include property which houses a radio station, its transmitter antenna, et al.”

From 1981 to 1984, WHCF had not been taxed by the city; from 1985 to 1988 the city sent tax bills, said Thomas Obey, general manager of the station. “In 1988, the back taxes were waived and we were granted tax exemption.”

For the past five years, Obey said, the taxes on the tower in Grand Falls were paid to the state under protest.

“We’ve always felt that it’s been part of the church,” he said. “The services are aired over the station. We look at it as the reaching arm of the church. The school is the teaching arm of the church.”

When the state’s position was bolstered by the memo from the assistant attorney general, the state tax assessor notified Bangor.

“What happened was the State Bureau of Taxation sent a letter, and notified me that they were taxing the radio tower,” said Edward Lovejoy, Bangor assessor. “They felt that it didn’t fall within the guidelines and that the station should be taxed.”

The church is seeking an abatement from its 1989 tax bill, which amounted to $1,000 for the transmitting tower on the property in Bangor, and $3,000 for the radio station.

The hearing before the Board of Assessors will be held at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 12.

The assessing office has been kept busy by the case. Not only has it had to keep abreast of the rulings coming down from the state, it has to keep up with the letters coming from members of the congregation of Bangor Baptist Church.

A reply — a form letter explaining the city’s position — was sent to every letter that came with a return address, Lovejoy said.