With many municipalities trying to keep their property taxes under control, the Aroostook County government may be able to help in a few areas, according to county administrator Ryan Pelletier.
“We are kind of starting to explore, in a small working group, regional cooperation,” Pelletier told a group of business and government leaders at an Eggs & Issues talk organized by the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce Wednesday.
Pelletier, who until May was the town manager of Madawaska, said that local municipalities can collaborate amongst themselves through shared services and interlocal agreements, and they also can work with the county government.
Pelletier is hoping that localities will consider “services that they’re individually providing that might make more sense to be provided under the umbrella of county government.”
The administrator recently reached out to all of the county’s municipal governments asking for their interest in participating in talks about regional cooperation.
“I got a really good response from central Aroostook,” he said. “In southern Aroostook, I got a lot of responses from the really small towns. All of the towns around Houlton, they’re interested in talking.”
One of the government services that Pelletier said is ripe for collaboration is tax assessing, “something we don’t think about,” he said. “That’s a needed service” and experts in the field are hard to come by.
For instance, more than 20 towns hire the longtime Aroostook County assessing expert Randy Tarr, who already is semi-retired and has ruled out performing any further property tax revaluations, according to Pelletier.
“When Randy is done, there’s going to be a major hole in Aroostook County for municipal services.”
In some counties, such as southern Maine’s Cumberland County, the county government employs a regional assessor who towns pay for as they need assessing services. “That’s just one idea.”
Another tax-related issue that Pelletier said came up at a recent meeting of Aroostook County municipal managers was mapping. The Maine Office of GIS is scheduled to collect flyover imagery in Aroostook County in 2022 and will provide the imagery to municipalities for a fee.
“It makes no sense for each individual town to pay or get a contract, when the county can get one contract,” he said.
