Gilford property owners to see slightly smaller tax bill

GILFORD — Property owners will see a slight drop in their property tax bill after the town’s tax rate came in fractionally lower than the current levy.

The new tax rate, as set by the state, is $12.25 per $1,000 of assessed value, which is 0.2% below the previous rate of $12.28.

While property taxes can often increase despite a drop in the tax rate due to increases in property assessments, the assessment on most individual properties in Gilford remained unchanged from 2021 because the town did not recalculate the property assessments this year, Town Administrator Scott Dunn explained.

The new tax rate means the owner of a residence valued at $200,000 should see their property tax bill go down $6 compared with last year’s bill.

Gilford did a complete on-site revaluation of property in 2019, followed by statistical updates in 2020 and 2021, Dunn explained. Another update is scheduled to take place next year, he said.

Under a statistical update, the assessed value of a piece of property is recalculated based on the latest sale prices of comparable properties in the town.

The breakdown of the new tax rate is: $4.14 for municipal services, $6.04 for the town school tax, $1.09 for the state school tax, and $0.98 for the town’s share of county services.

In addition, residents of the Gunstock Acres Village Water District will have a tax rate of $0.76. This is a $0.07 — or 8.4% decrease — over the 2021 tax rate of $0.83.

The town’s total assessed valuation increased by $18.2 million — or 0.07% — from about $2.583 billion to almost $2.602 billion. Dunn said that increase was almost all attributable to new construction or additions or other significant improvements to existing properties in the past year.

Dunn said tax bills should be in the mail sometime during the last week of this month with a projected due date of Dec. 29.