The Falmouth Town Council is about to vote to send our in-house assessing operations to the County of Cumberland. In my opinion this is a huge mistake. I spent six years working with and watching the professional operations of our town Assessing Department and was amazed at the work they do.

The only reason we have the highest assessed value is because our town has 2.5 (one part-time) dedicated employees that are diligently watching over real estate and personal property valuations.

I believe that the county oversight will never be this good. Falmouth will see growing valuation disparities as well as a rising mil rate. The personal service we receive at our Town Hall has been and should continue to be excellent.

Parking at the new county assessor’s office (the old TGIF restaurant) in Portland is terrible. I went in to do business at the county deeds office (same building) and spent 20 minutes just finding a metered parking spot.

Our Assessing Department is the only one that has reduced their budget and the number of employees over the last 15-plus years. Technology has been a leveraged advantage for this department. Why turn this super-efficient department over to an unknown entity as an “experiment?”

For these reason and violations of our own Town Charter, I urge the council to vote this bad idea down.

Dave Libby
Falmouth