Raymond voters returned Joe Bruno to the Board of Selectman once again on Tuesday.
Bruno, 59, a Raymond selectman since 2006, narrowly defeated Louise Lester, Raymond’s town clerk from 2001-2014, by 30 votes. Bruno won 273 to 243, with 12 blank votes cast.
For Bruno, who described Lester as a worthwhile adversary, the vote was gratifying.
“I expected it to be close,” he said. “Louise is well known in town, and I’m glad people had the confidence in me to re-elect me.”
Lester said she was proud of her effort to defeat Bruno.
“There’s always another year,” she said. “I was hoping to win, no question about that that. I had a lot of backers, obviously. Joe’s been a selectman for a long time, so to beat him would have been quite an effort. I came very close.”
Raymond voters also elected Debra Duchaine, Robert Gosselin and Willard O’Brien Richards to the Budget-Finance Committee with Duchaine receiving 341 votes, Gosselin 342 votes, and Richards 295 votes. Each term is for three years. While Duchaine and Gosselin were running for re-election, Richards will replace Peter Dunn, who stepped down from the committee.
Raymond resident Diana Froisland received 428 votes in an uncontested run for re-election to the Regional School Unit 14 School Board.
Lester-Bruno
Prior to the vote, Lester said she wanted to replace Bruno in order to bring a fresh perspective to the board. In particular, she criticized the board’s increasing willingness to float bonds since the town received a AAA rating from the Standard & Poor’s credit-rating agency in 2013 – a willingness she believes can be attributed to Bruno’s influence. Since 2013, voters have approved an $885,000 capital improvements bond and a $2 million road improvements bond package. Town officials, Lester said, should be more reluctant to rack up debt.
A Long Island native, Bruno moved to Maine in the late 1970s and served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1996-2004, acting as House minority leader for the Republican Party from 2000-2004. He also served as the Raymond board’s chairman from 2010-2012, and is the president and CEO of Community Pharmacies. In response to Lester’s critique, Bruno said he was proud of his impact on the town’s budgetary policies.
In particular, Bruno pointed to his involvement in the decision to impose a cap on the town’s undesignated fund balance, or surplus account – at 15 percent of the total budget – a decision that he believes is directly linked to the AAA rating. The credit rating has allowed the town to independently pursue bonds at about a 1.9 percent interest rate, according to Bruno. Before 2013, the town would bond through the Maine Municipal Bond Bank, with interest rates approaching 3 percent, he said.
Annual Town Meeting
On June 3, at the Jordan-Small Middle School gymnasium, 63 Raymond voters approved each item in the Board of Selectmen’s adopted budget during the annual town meeting. The budget decreases spending 5.5 percent, while raising the municipal contribution to the property tax rate 8 percent, thanks to a large decline in surplus spending.
The budget will raise the municipal portion of the tax rate by 19 cents to $2.62 per $1,000 of valuation.
The $4.14 million budget represents a $238,813 decline in annual spending. Yet because of a $435,850 projected decline in non-property tax revenues, the budget requires a $194,734 increase in property tax collection.
Last year’s budget used $428,500 from the town’s nearly $2.2 million surplus account for a series of one-time capital project expenditures, such as road improvements and the purchase of a new ambulance. This year’s budget, however, does not spend any surplus funds. The elimination of surplus spending is the main cause of the decline in non-property tax revenues.
The town is also projecting a 1.7 percent decrease in state revenue sharing, from $130,470 to $128,728, as well as a 4.1 percent increase in excise taxes, from $780,000 to $812,000.
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