By Seth Koenig
Bangor Daily News
Cities and towns all across Maine have spent the last few months wrangling financial numbers and approving municipal budgets for the fiscal year. Local officials have spent many long nights trying to decide where to cut spending and where to invest more, and weighing those decisions against the impact they’ll have on the property tax rate.
Property taxes — typically based on a certain dollar figure per $1,000 of a property’s assessed valuation — are how Maine cities and towns fund the vast majorities of their respective local budgets.
But while property taxes are very common throughout the entire U.S., there are some places where local officials have eliminated them entirely or never established them to begin with.
Here are five of those places and how they raise revenues to fund local services, like trash disposal or law enforcement. While it’s easy to romanticize the idea of living without annual property tax bills, and some of these municipalities have found success with alternatives, not all of the other revenue options come without controversy.
- Campo, Colorado
- Dewey Beach, Delaware
- Youngtown, Arizona
- Stafford, Texas
- Port Alexander, Alaska
Read how these cities were able to supplement the removed property taxes here.