Cumberland County Board of Assessors denies three Zaquilo Island tax abatement requests

The Cumberland County Board of Assessors voted to deny three separate tax abatement appeals from owners of Zaquilo Island properties after a multi-hour hearing in which owners criticized land valuations and the assessor’s vendor defended its mass-appraisal process.

Appellants Lawrence Curtis, James Bynes and representatives of the Jamieson property argued Parker Appraisal Company improperly allocated value from buildings to land — inflating island land values — and that island lots should receive deeper discounts because of limited access, higher construction costs and service constraints.

The board’s hearing included extended testimony from Lawrence Curtis, who said Parker Appraisals “has unfairly assessed the land values on Zaquilo Island” and described the property he and his neighbors contend should be treated differently from mainland Long Lake parcels. Curtis pointed to a 06/26/2021 sale of 7 Zaquilo Island Road for $1,250,000 and said the dispute centers on how that sale’s price was split between building and land.

Jessica Westaver, an assessing agent for Parker Appraisals, told the board the firm used a mass-appraisal approach built on sales across Long Lake, a land schedule in the assessing software Trio, and uniform rules for applying neighborhood and frontage adjustments. “We do a mass appraisal approach. This is not the same as an individual appraisal for a market sale,” Westaver said. She also said assessors do not conduct interior inspections unless invited and that building values were developed from cost schedules and available sales data before land values were set.

Appellants listed practical limits they say reduce island marketability: seasonal access, higher hauling and piling costs, limited buildable area because of shoreland setbacks, firefighting that would rely on containment rather than structure protection, intermittent utilities, and insurance cancellations. James Bynes and other appellants provided comparisons of square footage and assessed per‑square‑foot building values for several lakefront properties to argue Parker’s building allocations were too low and land allocations too high.

Parker Appraisals defended its methodology in detail: the firm said it used Long Lake sales to set a base acre value, then applied standard‑deviation adjustments, frontage and neighborhood factors and a uniform 25% reduction to Zaquilo Island parcels to reflect access limitations. Westaver said the company looked at available sales going back four to five years, adjusted older sales for market increases, and examined listings and photos where interior access was available.

Board members repeatedly said the island appears to be a distinct neighborhood and several members expressed discomfort with the apparent reliance on a single island sale to help set values. Multiple board members said they would have preferred an independent appraisal that isolated the sale’s allocation between land and improvements and that adjusted the sale for time and other factors; several described the 25% island reduction as imprecise. One board member said, “I don’t have enough data to say it should be 35% or 50%,” while another described the 25% factor as a “guesstimate” reached after hearings and internal review.

After deliberation the board took formal votes on each appeal. For each parcel the motion to deny the abatement request carried by a 4–1 vote; one board member dissented in each vote. The board cited applicants’ failure to produce an appraisal or other market evidence sufficient to overturn the assessor’s mass‑appraisal results.

Under the hearing rules described at the start of the meeting, the board will issue a written decision to the applicants, the town assessor and the Cumberland County Commissioners within 10 days. The board’s procedural statement also noted that if the board fails to issue a decision within 60 days of the application filing (unless extended in writing by the applicant), the application is deemed denied and the applicant may appeal to the superior court.

The parties indicated the island owners intend to continue pursuing their concerns: appellants pressed that the county and the vendor reexamine how the single island sale was allocated and asked the board to consider whether a neighborhood‑level reanalysis or an independent appraisal of that sale would produce a different baseline for island land values.

The board closed the public hearing and scheduled further business; the three denials are final actions from this meeting subject to the county’s written decision and any subsequent superior‑court appeal by the appellants.