Town hires new officer
As it heads into a new budget year, Fort Fairfield has been building a small budget surplus and town manager Jim Risner would like to see it grow more in the coming years.
With a $230,000 surplus currently and a budget ready to go, the town would need an estimated 24.18 mill rate as a minimum for the next fiscal year, Risner said at Fort Fairfield’s last town council meeting August 17.
That’s a little more than 1 percent less than the town’s current mill rate of 24.5, although Risner is recommending that the mill rate remain the same for the 2016-2016 fiscal year. That would create about $50,000 in a surplus that would be devoted to reserve accounts that “are desperately low,” Risner said.
In the 2015-16 budget year, the town “used reserve accounts to make several large purchases,” including a plow truck, police vehicle and repairs to the community center floor and roof, Risner said.
“I would like to use the surplus to replenish reserve accounts and plan for expenses in the upcoming years,” he said, mentioning repairs to the chimney at the community center and roofing on the town’s public works building.
The town council is set to discuss and adopt the next year’s mill rate at the meeting on September 20.
In related budget news, the town mailed out 230 notices of liens to property owners for delinquent taxes from 2015, Risner said. Those overdue taxes, representing about $231,000, are up slightly from the year before, Risner said.
The town received $140,000 from the state government for homestead exemptions, as well as more than $5,000 for veteran exemptions.
At the last meeting, Stev Rogeski, a member of the Tri Community Landfill board, also told the council that the Tri Community Landfill and the Presque Isle Landfill are awaiting the results of financial audits as the two organizations consider the possibility of a merger.
Fort Fairfield also welcomed a new police officer to the town’s police department — Ryan Eagles, a town resident and three-year veteran of the Presque Isle Police Department.
A graduate of the University of Maine Presque Isle’s criminal justice program and the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, Eagles found himself working in a variety of law enforcement areas during his time in Presque Isle. Among those was an investigation he led into a brutal assault of a man in Presque Isle last summer, which has led to a series of prosecutions of six individuals involved in the crime.
“We’re pretty excited to have him here,” Fort Fairfield patrol officer Dale Keegan said of Eagles. “He’s going to be a great asset to us.”
