PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — In an effort to control taxes, city manager Martin Puckett and city councilors are hoping to find some areas to reduce spending in next year’s budget ahead of the New Year’s Eve deadline.
The City Council meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6, for a second public hearing and further discussion on Presque Isle’s 2018 municipal budget.
Currently, the working proposed budget would be about $130,000 more than 2017’s $13.4 million municipal budget, which came with a 1 percent local tax increase, not including the county and school district assessments.
Puckett said his goal now is to pare down that $130,000 increase, preferably to zero.
“My goal is to present a flat budget, if not lower than last year,” Puckett said. “We’re turning over every stone with this budget and taking a look in non-conventional ways. It’s been a healthy exercise.”
The city councilors “have made it clear they want a flat budget if not to reduce it more,” Puckett said. Likewise, many of the public comments the city has received on the budget urged the council to adopt a budget that doesn’t raise local taxes. “I urge people to attend the final public hearing,” Puckett said.
The council could vote to adopt the budget Wednesday, but also has two more budget workshops scheduled this month for Dec. 13 and Dec. 18, Puckett said.
The impetus to control taxes after years of reductions in state revenue sharing puts the city in a balancing act of trying to maintain services, infrastructure and equipment, Puckett said.
“It’s definitely a struggle that we’re facing,” he said. “The biggest challenge we have is funding our capital expense. We’ve been cutting capital in an effort to have small increases or keep a flat budget, and that’s proven very difficult as equipment gets older.”
For instance, Puckett said, one item that will be discussed Wednesday night will be whether the city should purchase a new plow truck — one of the main drivers of the $130,000 in proposed additional spending — or consider an alternative, such as contracting with a private plow operator for a certain route.
“We need to plow the streets. We have an older fleet of plow trucks and the cost of a plow truck is about $185,000,” Puckett said.
The city has used loans instead of funding capital reserves, such as for replacing Public Works Department equipment such as a front-end loader and dump truck. There also is an effort to buy used or military surplus equipment and vehicles, such as the recent purchase of a used Freightliner truck that will be outfitted with a leaf collector to replace the city’s aging leaf collection truck.
