Abrupt tax hike impacts Sidney farmers
Farmers in Sidney said they were concerned about an abrupt increase in the property tax bills on farmland doubling from $250 an acre to $500 an acre, the Kennebec Journal reported.
Dale Cole, a dairy farmer who owns about 150 acres, told selectmen the increase came as a shock.
The board is scheduled to discuss it further with farmers and a representative from the Maine Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Conservation tonight.
The hike was supposed to come in 2005, during a townwide property revaluation.
A state farmland protection program allows owners of working farms to put their property in a protection zone and get substantially reduced tax value on the property. Sidney has roughly 1,300 acres in 42 parcels in town that are under farmland protection — about 4% of the 30,000 taxable acres.
Sheila Thorne, administrative assistant to the Sidney selectmen, told the paper the benefits of farmland protection are substantial: 10 acres of prime development land in Sidney would be valued at $43,000 and have an annual tax bill of about $595. The same land in farmland protection would be valued at $5,000 and have a tax bill of $58.25.
When farmland values were increased in 2005, however, the majority were not recorded and the mistake wasn’t caught for 10 years.
Sidney’s farmers are part of an increasing economic sector for the state. According to the Maine Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Conservation, the number of Maine farms is on the rise, as is the market value of the state’s agricultural products. From 2002 to 2012, the number of Maine farms has increased to 8,174, up from 7,196, at a time when the number of farms in the United States is declining. From 2007 to 2012, the amount of land in farms grew by 107,738 acres, or 8%, and the value of agricultural products increased from $617 million to $764 million, or 24%. The growth coincides with renewed consumer interest in locally grown foods.
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