Samuel Rosenthal’s recent letter to the editor (“Making Portland a more affordable place to live,” March 12) promoted a false notion of how Portland property owners would be affected by the city’s revaluation.

Mr. Rosenthal uses a hypothetical example of an increase in a property assessment from $200,000 to $300,000 and asserts that the property owner would see an astronomical increase in their tax bill. However, Mr. Rosenthal uses the current tax rate for the basis of his calculation, and this is simply incorrect.

The tax rate for every municipality is computed by dividing the property tax levy stipulated in each annual budget by the total taxable valuation of the municipality. When Portland finishes its revaluation, the total valuation will increase so the tax rate would go down.

Let’s say the revaluation increases the total valuation of Portland to $11.5 billion and the budget called for the same $188.1 million to be raised from property taxes. The tax rate would drop from $23.31 per $1,000 of valuation to $16.36. That would mean the hypothetical homeowner would be paying $246 more in taxes, not the $2,331 that Mr. Rosenthal purports.

A revaluation does not generate any additional revenue for the city. It reapportions the assessed value across all properties in a uniform way so that everyone is paying their fair share based on the fair market value of their property.

Allowing false and misleading attempts to misinform your readers does a disservice to the community.

Christopher Huff, CMA
city tax assessor
Portland