TURNER — Voters at a special town meeting Thursday will be asked if they want to move ahead with a townwide property revaluation.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the Town Office.

Town Manager Kurt E. Schaub said the first article on the warrant asks voters if they want to spend $52,000 in fiscal 2021, 2022 and 2023 so the town can enter into an agreement with John E. O’Donnell & Associates of New Gloucester.

Turner’s last townwide revaluation was 20 years ago, Schaub said.

“An effort is being made to try to minimize the tax-rate impact,” Schaub said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re stretching it out over a three-year period.”

Schaub said townspeople voted at the annual town meeting in April to add $15,000 to an existing reserve account that had been set up years ago for a revaluation.

The second item on the warrant asks voters if they want the town to include $10,000 in next year’s budget to contract with O’Donnell & Associates for annual assessing work.

Schaub said O’Donnell had done the town’s assessing work in the past, but after the town voted in 2017 to reject a tax revaluation proposal of $199,000, O’Donnell decided to leave because it viewed the town’s assessing methodology as “functionally obsolete.”

“Our selectmen believe strongly that bringing O’Donnell & Associates back to do assessing work is in the best interest of the town,” Schaub said.

O’Donnell has agreed to again work for the town, Schaub said, on the condition that townspeople agree to a revaluation program.

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