Westport Island may be looking at a 2026 revaluation rather than 2025, Selectman Jeff Tarbox told fellow board members Oct. 30. He explained, based on his research, a lot of the firms that do revaluations tend to do it part-time, except for larger ones, possibly out of state, who he said might be here five days a week.

An out of state firm would probably cost a lot more, Chair Donna Curry said. 

Revaluation options and the firm picked will impact cost, Tarbox found from speaking with Monmouth Town Manager Justin Poirier, at Maine Municipal Association’s recommendation, and with Woolwich Selectmen’s Chair David King Sr.

Tarbox said Woolwich has a firm starting a revaluation. Tarbox learned firms can offer several different options, from basing the revaluation mainly on data on the property cards, while still being thorough and checking some properties, to “the other extreme (of) measuring every single outbuilding ... and also going into the properties and looking at the quality of constuction. So that’s a very intrusive and intensive (way).”

“And costly, I bet,” Curry said. “More costly,” Tarbox agreed.

From King, Tarbox said he learned a town can, annually, if need be, analyze property value factors based on sales trends. Transfer tax information from the state provides data for that, Tarbox added.

“We want to make sure we’re being as fair as possible, to the townsfolk.”

Tarbox said Poirier is part of the firm Woolwich is using and MMA recommended him as a revaluation expert to speak with. It was Poirier who explained about the time a revaluation can take due to the people having other jobs, like Poirier does as town manager, Tarbox said. “But he gave me some good coaching. One piece of coaching was that we’re probably too late for 2025.” Tarbox plans to call some firms “to see if there’s any hope of 2025, but I think this may mean that we’re going to need to plan for 2026.”

Curry wondered about seeing if the firm doing Woolwich’s revaluation would do Westport Island’s after. “Seems like it might be good to try to piggyback (and) grab him and say ‘OK, now it’s our turn.’”

“Could be,” Tarbox said. 

On an audience question, Tarbox said Westport Island did a complete revaluation in 2015 for $46,000, or about $45 a property. The next one might run as much as $100 a property, “hopefully lower,” he said. If it is that high, “You’re talking about $90,000.” 

Tarbox said Poirier recommended, if the town requests proposals, to then narrow the field and do interviews to see how the chemistry is, because, Tarbox said, “you’re going to be working with these people for a year-plus.” Selectmen would like to seek proposals this fall. Board members said that could help determine how much to keep putting away toward the project each year at town meeting.

Also Oct. 30, the board named Kevin McMahon to the shellfish committee and nodded the committee’s request to seed McCarty Cove next spring.