School Population Trends

• In 2003, Gorham’s k-12 school population was 2,751 students; twenty years later, our k-12 population is actually slightly LOWER at 2,738 (FY26).  Although Gorham’s town population has steadily grown beyond 18,000, our school population has fluctuated between 2,700 - 2,800.  

  This means that our recent property tax increases are NOT caused by increases in our school population.  This also means that new housing built in the past two decades has NOT produced increases in our overall school population.

Currently, we have a few more years of larger classes working through our Middle and High Schools, but recent incoming Kindergarten classes are smaller than these graduating classes.  Working families just aren’t having as many kids as prior generations, and our demographics consultants are projecting that Gorham’s school population could see future declines if our current housing stock remains unchanged… but our budget increases aren’t correlated with our student population trends, so a lower student population does not guarantee reductions in our property taxes…

So, what is driving our property tax increases? Nearly 80% of our school budget is labor costs. On the town side, people and pavement (roads) are our biggest expenses. The more prices rise for housing and other costs of living, the more we have to pay our staff to earn a living wage — and the market forces of supply and demand dictate the cost of housing and other daily needs…

Tax Impacts of Industrial / Commercial / Residential Development

Different types of development bring very different costs and benefits to our community.  Some Gorham folks seem convinced that any new housing is bad, while any industrial business is good. The truth is far more complex than this.  We must be laser-focused on the NET gains / losses from new development.  This requires a more thorough accounting of all the costs and benefits of prospective development:  

• Station Square in our village is home to 30 apartments above Junction Bowl and other local businesses — this building takes up less than 2 acres and generates more property tax revenue than most any building in our industrial park, while adding few (if any) kids to our schools, and creating an excellent space for folks to gather and build community.

• Our real estate tax bills are assessed against the value of the land and the buildings.  Giant parking lots generate very little tax revenue, but quality buildings generate lots of property tax revenue.  People-friendly buildings like Station Square are valued much higher than common industrial warehouses.

• Gorham land-values are evolving post-COVID: at our 2022 property revaluation, our residential property values sky-rocketed, while industrial parcels saw markedly lesser increases… some even saw reductions in their property tax bills!!

  (BTW Property tax bills are public records and you can check the math, if you are interested.)

• In addition to real estate taxes, businesses are assessed for the value of business equipment housed in Gorham; HOWEVER, Maine offers a Business Equipment Tax Exemption (BETE) program that dramatically reduces these business tax liabilities.  A stark example in Gorham is the new battery storage facility.  This company’s business equipment is valued at $85M but the company pays no tax to the town on this bill; instead, the State of Maine rebates the town for half the value — and this payment is subsidized by Maine’s tax-payers (primarily residents like you and me).

• The BETE program does have some defensible benefits (particularly for small, local businesses) but large, out-of-state corporations can manipulate this program to fatten their profits at the expense of Gorham tax-payers – and if it benefits their owners / share-holders, many will employ all means possible to exploit such incentive programs….

• In Nov 2019, the town committed to borrowing $4M to purchase 140 acres of land for industrial park expansion — only 1,378 voters approved this off-year referendum plan, while Gorham saw nearly 12,000 voters in our 2024 presidential election…

• This plan also called for another $1.9M debt to “improve the land” for expansion, but this ballooned into another $4.9M investment to build out Cyr Rd off New Portland Rd, most of which currently sits vacant.

• Since 2019, Gorham tax-payers have invested roughly $9M into an industrial park expansion that thus far has returned $1.5M in land sales, and no additional buildings to generate more property tax revenue.

• In 2026, the town council approved another $2M investment in public water & sewer infrastructure along Main St, between Libby Ave and Mosher Corner. This investment makes it possible to attract more buildings like Station Square along this corridor. Gorham has relatively few parcels running along public utilities, so we must maximize taxable value on this land. We could do that if we update the zoning, to allow for more people-friendly commercial land-uses.