Select Board extends contract of Town of Raymond’s assessor

By Ed Pierce

By a unanimous vote during a meeting on Nov. 14, the Raymond Select Board has extended the contract of Assessor’s Agent Curt Lebel through June 30, 2024.

Contract assessor's agent Curt
Lebel has had his contract 
renewed by the Raymond
Select Board through June
2024. FILE PHOTO

Lebel has served as Raymond’s assessor’s agent since 2011, splitting his time between three different Maine towns as an assessor.

“The primary function of the assessor is to apportion property taxes which fund many operations which benefit the general public,” Lebel said. “Education, Police, Fire, EMS, County Courts, Local Zoning, etc. are items which are all funded, in part by the property tax. Voters, or their representatives determine how much they wish to spend on these items.”

He said that it is the assessor’s responsibility to assign each property owner their respective share of this amount.

“In accordance with Maine’s Constitution and Statutes, this is conducted through a valuation process, where taxes are apportioned out by property value,” Lebel said during a previous interview. “Most secondary duties of the assessor, such as tracking ownership of property, mapping of parcels, the management of tax exemption and incentive programs are done in support of the primary function.”

In accordance with Maine’s Constitution and Statutes, this is conducted through a valuation process, where taxes are apportioned out by property value, Lebel said.

According to Lebel, the most challenging aspect of his work for the Town of Raymond involves taxes.

“Taxation can be a controversial topic. Everyone has their own opinions as to how much money should be allocated to certain functions of government,” he said. “Because the assessor has a lot of interaction with the public, a large part of the assessor’s role is speaking with citizens about the value and benefit of their public institutions and public workers, while understanding frustrations around escalating costs of goods and services and occasional flaws in the tax system. It is all too easy, in today’s climate, to lose perspective on these issues.”

Lebel is from Richmond, Maine and makes the commute to Raymond about 60 days every year for his work for the town.

He’s worked as a professional tax assessor since 2004 and attended classes at the University of Southern Maine. Before becoming an assessor, he previously worked in the fitness industry, in the real estate and general contracting fields, and spent several years working in security operations for Maine Yankee Nuclear Power.

As Raymond’s assessor’s agent, Lebel is often asked what causes assessments for properties to go up or go down and how frequently that happens.

“Property valuations generally will increase or decrease for a couple different reasons. Individual properties which undergo renovations, new construction or perhaps have sustained some type of damage, may be adjusted up or down as those things happen,” he said. “Also, market forces over time can erode the equity of a valuation model, necessitating occasional revaluations which reset the values of all homes in a given town to current market conditions and restore greater equity and fairness to the valuations.”

Revaluations generally occur in 10- to 15-year cycles and have the effect of redistributing how the overall tax is apportioned, depending on how the markets view differing properties and neighborhoods,” Lebel said.

And revaluations do not generally produce more tax revenues for the schools and towns, he said.

When his current contract extension expires, Lebel said that he will seek a new three-year contract from the Raymond Board of Selectmen as he prepares for a new revaluation process for the town. <