LIMESTONE, Maine — Pushing back the annual Town Meeting a week to Wednesday, June 19 instead of its previous June 12 date, Limestone’s governing board cited the state legislature’s inability to produce revenue sharing figures the town needs to finalize its budget.
According to The Maine Townsman, the municipal revenue sharing program began in 1972 with the purpose of reducing the property tax rate for municipalities. The state sets aside a fixed percentage (set at 5 percent in 2009) of all state sales and income tax revenue for municipalities to use as property tax relief. Municipalities plug certain data — like population, state valuation and tax assessments — into an equation to determine what percentage of the set-aside funds they’ll get.
But this year, neither Limestone nor any other municipality can anticipate how big their piece of the revenue sharing pie will be, as lawmakers are still deliberating over how much that pie will shrink this year.
Selectperson Gary O’Neal proposed pushing back the budget-finalizing town meeting by a week in hopes of having a solid revenue sharing figure to work with, instead of having to guess.
“It’s a week of hoping they’re going to do something in Augusta,” O’Neal said, expressing his concern that the selectpeople wouldn’t be able to answer questions posed by the town’s budget committee.
Town Manager Donna Bernier echoed his concerns.
“It would be very difficult to go to Town Meeting because people always ask ‘if this budget goes through, what’s it going to do the mil rate’ and today, we’d have to say ‘I don’t know,’” Bernier said, explaining that the town meeting’s voters would probably not want to act on a partially-finalized budget.
While the selectpeople previously lacked a school board figure for their budget, that number was approved by the school board during their May 1 meeting — the same night that the selectpeople met.
Bernier explained that Limestone’s commitment to the RSU 39 budget remained roughly the same.
“We are going to see a slight increase of about $6,450, and that’s only because our state valuation went up,” she said. “When our state valuation goes up, the school’s reimbursement goes down a little bit and that’s what affected [the increase],” Bernier added, expression her opinion that the $6,450 could be easily absorbed by the town.
Before solidifying the schedule change for the town meeting, the board opened up the discussion for anyone in the room to chime in.
“Right now if you go into the town meeting with the [budget] you have, you’re going in blindly,” said Harold Grass. “You can’t answer questions … and people are going to look at the budget a lot different if there’s a 2-mil increase, a 6-mil increase or what have you. I think a week later is a good idea.”
The board agreed to postpone the annual town meeting until Wednesday, June 19.
While the town meeting has been put on hold, the board strongly clarified that the election on June 11 hasn’t changed; voters will still need to, among other items, determine whether or not to cut the hours of the police department from a full 24 to 18 hours.
Put to a referendum vote, citizens will be asked to approve one of two budgeted amounts for the police department — $247,000 for 24 hour coverage, or $200,000 for 18-hour coverage.
In anticipation of a possible 25 to 29 percent reduction in municipal revenue sharing for Limestone, the selectpeople have issued almost $100,000 in proposed cuts to compensate for the loss — and the proposed reduction in police coverage equates to roughly half of those cuts.
With no real idea as to what revenue sharing might be, the question was posed during the meeting as to what happens if revenue sharing is reduced by far greater than the budgeted 25-29 percent.
“If it does [get cut] to 40 or 50 percent, we’re going back to the drawing board on cuts?” asked Limestone’s Public Works Director Michael Cote.
“Either that, or raise taxes — and I don’t think anybody wants to do that,” said Selectperson Chair Tom Devoe.
O’Neal did reiterate that should the revenue sharing be reduced by less than anticipated, the board has already promised to reinstate wage increases for town employees.
“We made the promise that if we’re not cut … that the step increases [for employee wages] would definitely be the first thing on the agenda to go back in,” O’Neal said.
The next meeting of the Limestone Selectpeople is slated for Wednesday, May 15 at 6:30 at the Municipal Building.
