This is the reason, town officials say, that the town's total valuation dropped about $1.3 million from 2001 to 2002.

The drop in the town's valuation was questioned by former First Selectman Ben Rines last fall. Town manager David Kinney's explanation was that town hadn't plugged in a depreciation factor on buildings.

Several residents, including Rines, have since called the newspaper, questioning the rationale of using a depreciation factor at a time when real estate values have gone up 13 percent in one year in Lincoln County.

Other residents have questioned why their assessments went up, while others went down, or stayed the same.

Bill Van Tuinen, an independent appraiser who re-valued the town in 1998, says that selectmen, as appraisers, "have a lot o'""-f desecration" about how they appraise property."

Asked about depreciating buildings, Van Tuinen said, "There's nothing that says you have to, and there's nothing that says you can't."

"I've never depreciated homes on an annual basis, however," he said. "I don't know too many towns that do."

Sue Varney, the town's assessing agent, says it really depends upon the individual property when it comes to explaining why some went up, some went down, and some stayed the same. The town uses a "cost approach," she said.

Varney said she, too, was surprised when she ran the numbers last fall and discovered the town's valuation had dropped. When she called the computer software company for an explanation, she said she was told there is a built-in depreciation factor that kicked in, based on the age of a building. In previous years, this factor had not been used, she said, except on mobile homes.

Buildings start to depreciate over a period of time, she said, but at some point the depreciation factor levels out. This explains why some property owners saw no change in their assessed value.

As for those properties which increased in value, it may have been a matter of improvements made to the home that had not been previously taken into consideration by the town.

The Wiscasset Newspaper building on the Gardiner Road is one of many which dropped, from $107,200 to $104,200; the land valuation stayed the same at $30.600, while the building dropped in value from $76,600 to $73,600.

Next door, the total assessment on the First National Bank of Damariscotta dropped from $331,400 to $322,300. The land value of $161,200 stayed the same, but the building was depreciated by $8,200.

David LeDew, Supervisor of Municipal Services for the Maine Revenue Services says, "The cost approach makes a lot of sense in areas where the real estate market has been flat." But in southern and coastal areas of Maine, "current market conditions really throw that out the window," he said.

He questioned why a town "would tie itself into any set depreciation over a period of time."

Rines said he's not happy that Wiscasset taxpayers were left with the impression that the former board of selectmen, acting in their capacity as assessors, had "done something wrong" by not depreciating the buildings.