After a public hearing this week, the Freeport Town Council will adopt separate 2016 municipal, capital and tax-increment finance budgets at its next meeting, on Tuesday, June 16.
The public hearing on the budget, held Tuesday night, was after the Tri-Town Weekly print deadline. Town Manager Peter Joseph said last Thursday that the council probably would make adjustments to the proposed $9.3 million budget on Tuesday night.
The original $9,353,907 budget, which had been tweaked slightly prior to Tuesday night, was about 4.5 percent more than this year’s $8,965,659 plan.
The capital budget to be voted on June 16 is $2,311,500 and the TIF budget is $166,000. Those budgets will be voted on separately, and are not part of the municipal budget, according to Jessica Maloy, the finance director.
Joseph said that it is impossible now to calculate the municipal budget’s impact on local taxes, both because it is not settled yet, and because revenues and valuation will not be known for some time. His best-guess estimate last month was that the $9,353,907 budget, with additional revenues and a proposed change in how the town takes care of its property, could keep the municipal tax increase down to 1.18 percent, or 4 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value.
It is known, Joseph said, that a 7.14 percent hike in the Cumberland County tax will add roughly 5 cents to each $1,000 in assessed property value. The $29,407,203 Regional School Unit 5 budget that goes to referendum on June 9 would add $1.02 to the tax rate.
“The mil rate happens because of different types of revenue – non-property tax revenue and property tax revenue,” Joseph said. “Right now, property-tax revenue is up only 2 percent. We’re still really early. There haven’t been any motions to add or cut. We’re expecting the council to have proposals after the public hearing. There will probably be a lot of deliberation.”
Right off the top, the council will be able to subtract $20,000 as a first-year payment to Portland Metro, which will not be able to begin bus service from Freeport to Portland in July, as originally planned. Portland Metro has decided to order larger buses, meaning they won’t be available for another 10 months.
The town expects to save about $10,000 by adding the equivalent of two full-time workers to the Department of Public Works. Joseph said the councilors on the Municipal Facilities Committee met last summer and studied how the town maintained some of its fields, the Amtrak Downeaster rail platform building, Gorman Park landscaping and downtown trash pickup. Private contracts for those services expire on July 1.
The committee recommends that the town hire one more full-time, one part-time and one seasonal part-time worker in public works. Joseph figures that will save about $10,000 a year.
The town has offered a 1.69 percent pay increase to employees, amounting to $64,000, which is slightly less than nearby towns are offering.
Joseph said he doesn’t yet know if he can expect a net drop in the budget.
“There’s not a lot of new service in the budget,” he said. “The biggest new service is to increase the buildings and ground staff, but we’re proposing that as a cost-savings measure.”
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