Much has been said about “sticker shock” in recent years — that feeling of your eyes widening when you see the new price of eggs, gas or back to school items. Affordability has been a real challenge, and one I’ve been focused on addressing in the Legislature. And for many families and older Mainers, there’s no shock quite like when a sky-high property tax bill comes in the mail and suddenly you are scrambling to readjust your budget.

Joe Rafferty

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a phenomenon that many Mainers have experienced recently. It’s undoubtedly frustrating. While there are some common misconceptions when it comes to property taxes in Maine and the Legislature has taken real steps to reduce the burden, we also want see what more we could do to address rising property taxes.

It’s important to remember that it is town and city governments that assess property taxes, not the state. Maine has a long, proud history of local control — ensuring that decisions about our schools and everyday services like trash pickup can be made closest to the communities that are served. But that doesn’t mean that Augusta doesn’t have a role to play.

As town councils and school boards put together their budgets, we in the Legislature can lend them an important hand that allows them to keep roads plowed and schools in good shape, while reducing the burden on property taxpayers.

One critical way that we have done that is by keeping our promise to fund 55% of K-12 public education costs — something that voters told the state to do nearly two decades ago, but wasn’t fulfilled until the Mills administration. We also kept our promise to a program called “revenue sharing,” in which we use some of the sales tax revenue the state takes in from our strong tourism industry to provide additional assistance to towns and cities in crafting their local budgets.

Keeping these promises helps reduce the property tax burden by reducing the amount of money local governments need to raise to keep local services intact.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the very real fact that too many Mainers are seeing eye-popping property tax bills. Revaluation practices and the outsized burden on low-income and older Mainers should be seriously looked at. And like all good policy in Maine, solutions will need to be smart, well studied and collaborative. That’s why, this year, we established the Real Estate Property Tax Relief Task Force, which will examine and develop responsible and effective solutions for reducing the financial strain on households. Their initial report will be due January 15, 2026, and I am hopeful there will be meaningful findings that will allow us to reduce costs for our constituents. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the task force’s activities and be sure to support any recommendations that will meet the needs of our communities here in York County.

Maine is a beautiful place to live, but it should be affordable for the people who have long called it home and the people looking to settle down. Whether its housing, health care or property taxes, you have my word that I’ll keep working to lower costs and protect our state’s future.

Joseph Rafferty is a member of the Maine State Senate representing District 34, Berwick, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, North Berwick and Wells. He can be reached at Joe.Rafferty@legislature.maine.gov or 207-287-1515. Sign up an email newsletter at mainesenate.org.