As founder of Maine ROADWays, (Residents & Owners on Abandoned & Discontinued Ways,) I see this complaint all the time, so this may be a more lengthy response than you bargained for!
People on roads that are not maintained by the public effectively get taxed twice - once in municipal taxes, which largely go towards maintaining all the other roads in town, and a second time for maintaining the road they live on. It's bad enough when it's a private road, where the owners can restrict public traffic, but abandoned and discontinued roads often remain "public easements," making them open to unrestricted public traffic as well.
There are some towns that do take the status of road frontage into account in their assessments, and place a lower value on properties where the access is not maintained by the public. But many towns do not consider this a factor. I even know of two towns that assessed properties on discontinued roads as being among the highest value in town. Sure, they were nice properties, but what good is that if you can't get there because the road is so bad? Or if you have to spend a huge percentage of your income trying to keep the road passable?
The rationale many use is that even those who live on privately maintained roads get the same benefit of use of the public roads in town that everyone else does. Or they argue that it's like paying your taxes to help support the public schools, even if you have no school aged children. Everyone benefits from having an educated public. But there's a flaw in this argument. If you have no school aged children, you are not also spending money to educate children at home. (Double taxing for schools - we hear this similar complaint from people who homeschool their children. They pay taxes to support the local school, then must pay again to buy their own curriculum and pay other expenses related to homeschooling. If it's a benefit to the public to have every child educated, why doesn't the public pay education expenses for the homeschooled child?)
The problem is magnified on discontinued roads that remain public easements. There, the land owner not only pays to keep the road passable for their own use, but for the public’s use as well. Since these are often through roads, public use can become a huge burden. Returning to the school analogy, this would be like requiring the homeschooling family to build and supply a school of their own and allow the general public to attend it for free, while also supporting the local public school.
In any case, whether the road is private or a public easement, there remains the question of what you are getting in return for your tax dollar. The U.S. and Maine Constitutions state that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation. On public easements, it’s easy to see that the public use “takes” the land owner’s gravel without compensation. As for tax dollars, that gets a bit more subtle. If you are turning over your money to the public, you should be able to expect something in return, just as when you walk into a store and pay the cashier, you expect to leave with merchandise. Yes, paying taxes gives you the right to use the town’s public roads, school, library, or any other public facility or service your tax dollar supports. But if your tax payment uses up the dollars you would otherwise have spent maintaining your road, and as a result the road becomes impassable, you lose the only possible means of getting from your home to the nearest public road. How can you then receive any return for your tax dollar, if you cannot get to where the services you’ve paid for are offered??
You pay tax dollars out. You have a Constitutional right to expect equal value in return. You should not have to pay an extra fee (in road maintenance) in order to get what you paid for - especially when others in town do not have to do the same. In fact, your tax dollar is going to maintain their roads so that they can access town services without paying an extra fee.
So why do towns do this? We call it “mining taxes.” Wherever there is a road in town that costs the town nothing to maintain, the town can get “free” tax dollars to use elsewhere in town. If it comes down to a town vote on policy, those on publicly maintained roads will likely have the majority of votes. And since they don’t live on a privately maintained road, they don’t understand what a struggle it can be. They don’t have to cope with mud season, or worry about how emergency vehicles will reach them during a snow storm or towards the end of winter when the snowbanks have narrowed the road to the width of one car. They will say, “You knew what you bought when you bought it.” Or, “You get lake frontage. You should expect to pay more for it.” Or they will use the argument about childless couples supporting the public school.
While there may be some truth in each of those arguments, there are also less obvious truths that can only be fully appreciated by those who have actually lived on one of these roads. Maine ROADWays has been fighting for years to get legislative reform regarding abandoned and discontinued roads. In recent years we have begun to make small progress. Real estate agents must now disclose to the buyer if the access to a property is not maintained at public expense. Hopefully that will mean that the buyer really will know what they are buying - although the full impact of “private road” status may not hit until later.
The question of property tax evaluation on privately maintained roads has yet to be addressed by the legislature, although the question has come up during discussion of other bills. When and if a bill ever does come before the legislature on this subject, I’ll be sure to post it on the MARA forum. Meanwhile, you can try requesting a tax abatement, but depending on which town you are in, you may or may not get any reduction.