The Mill Rate Fell. Why Didn't My Tax Bill?
It's the question of the year in Edgecomb, asked at the town office counter and over a lot of fences: the town finally did its revaluation, the mill rate dropped by more than half — so why is my tax bill the same, or higher?
The short answer is that the mill rate was never the thing you pay. It's arithmetic that happens after the real decisions. Here's the longer answer, which is worth having before next May.
Think of it as a pie.
Every year, Edgecomb has to raise a fixed amount of money in property taxes: the town budget voters approve, the school budget voters approve, and the county assessment. Call that total the pie. For the current year, the approved pie is about $4.90 million — roughly $2.98 million school, $1.50 million town, and $414,000 county. (The commitment the assessors actually recorded that October came to $4,937,602 — the approved amounts plus the overlay added for abatements and final assessing adjustments.)
Your tax bill is your slice of that pie, and the size of your slice is your property's share of the town's total value. The mill rate is just the knife: total pie divided by total value. It is computed last, from the other two numbers. Nobody votes on it, and by itself it decides nothing.
What the revaluation actually did.
Edgecomb went twenty years — 2005 to 2025 — without a full revaluation. Over two decades, properties don't appreciate evenly. Waterfront pulls away from the back roads; a renovated farmhouse pulls away from an untouched camp. But the old valuations stayed frozen at 2005 relationships, so the slices drifted further and further from reality. In the years just before the revaluation, the mill rate climbed from 16.7 to 21.98 — not because the pie had exploded, but because the town was dividing it using a shrunken, outdated measure of value.
The 2025 revaluation re-measured everything at once. Total town value jumped to $505 million, reflecting two decades of appreciation, and the rate fell proportionally — from $21.98 per $1,000 of value to $9.776 — and each property's slice got re-cut to match its current share of the whole.
So who paid more, and who paid less?
Exactly the people you'd expect once you see the mechanism. If your property's value rose faster than the townwide average — waterfront, views, renovations — your slice grew, and your bill rose even as the rate collapsed. If your value rose slower than average, your bill fell. A homeowner whose value tracked the town average saw almost no change at all, which is the revaluation working as designed: it doesn't raise or lower the total, it re-deals the shares fairly.
The two questions worth asking about your own bill:
1. Did my valuation change by more or less than the town as a whole? That single comparison explains most of any change in your bill. The town's assessing agent holds property-owner office hours during assessment season; bring your valuation notice and ask to see the comparison for your neighborhood.
2. Is my valuation accurate? Revaluations are mass appraisals — mostly right, occasionally wrong about a specific house. If the facts about your property are wrong (acreage, condition, outbuildings), that's correctable, and it's worth correcting: an overstated valuation overcharges you every single year until the next revaluation.
And the pie itself?
That's the part residents actually control, and it's decided the old way: at the Annual Town Meeting in May, article by article, school budget first among equals. If the total concerns you — whatever your view — the meeting is where the number is set. The mill rate will take care of itself. It always does; it's just the knife.
John Allen serves on the Edgecomb school board. This series explains how the numbers work; it doesn't advocate for or against any budget. Figures are from the Annual Town Report for the year ending June 30, 2025 (Budget Committee table) and the 2025 Edgecomb Tax Commitment Books, committed October 23, 2025.
