CARIBOU, Maine — Councilors went over next year’s budget during a Nov. 13 meeting, which sparked a conversation about the condition of High Street, where the city’s municipal office, library, and fire station are located.
The 2018 budget draft is included in the council packet, available on the Caribou website, and indicates a possible $310,213.59 or 3.21 percent increase over this year’s approved budget of $9,651,898.50.
According to Caribou City Manager Dennis Marker, the increases are primarily a result of hikes in operational budgets, capital improvements, enterprise accounts and employee salaries.
After Marker summarized the increases, Councilor David Martin, acting as mayor in lieu of Gary Aiken, who could not attend the meeting, opened up a public hearing on the budget, asking if the “people who pay the bills” had any comments.
One Caribou resident asked if any of the municipal budget increases included renovations to High Street.
Public Works Director Dave Ouellette responded to the question, and first clarified that High Street and Bennett Drive are actually owned by the state and not Caribou.
Officials with the Maine Department of Transportation have “promised that in 2018, they would do drainage and infrastructure repair,” Ouellette said. In addition, he said that he and city officials have been working on an application to the DOT for renovations, with the city and state sharing the cost 50/50.
“The city has had money set aside for this for the last fifteen years,” Ouellette said. “So nothing is added to the budget for that, but the money is there to fix it. It’s been in that account for years.”
Martin assured those in the audience that High Street is “not neglected by our Public Works Department.”
“When you want the state to work on a project, you have to start with a PIN number,” Martin said, “and we’ve had ours with them since 2005. Once you have a PIN number, then the project is in the works. Well, somehow, they say [our PIN number] got lost.”
Ouellette clarified that the number wasn’t lost per se, and that the original number, which was submitted in 2003, included several changes to the street, including a third lane in the center which would allow traffic to turn onto Hannaford or the gas station.
That proposal, according to the Public Works Director, was deemed “too expensive” by MDOT, which led to them dropping it entirely.
Then, a downsized version of the High Street project was submitted to the state and “slipped through the cracks,” according to Ouellette.
Despite this, Ouellette is optimistic that repairs to the road will be complete at some point next year.
“I honestly believe we are going to see the complete project in 2018,” he said.
