As the area’s potato crop settles into storage in a couple months, the Presque Isle City Council will be working on crafting a 2018 budget for cost-conscious taxpayers.
While October would normally kick off the council’s major budgeting sessions, this year the budget sessions are planned for November, still ahead of the New Year’s Eve deadline in the city’s charter.
“We have a better idea at that time what the bottom line is going to be,” City Manager Martin Puckett said at the council’s September meeting.
Over the last two months the city council has heard capital funding requests from municipal departments and started discussing challenges ahead, like funding for fire truck replacement. But some major cost areas for 2018’s budget won’t be determined until November, such as health insurance for city employees, Puckett said.
Puckett added that the city council also will be using a more lay person-friendly budget document for members of the public who are following along with the process. The city council’s meetings are live-streamed and archived on YouTube and streamed on local access Channel 16.
Last year, the city council adopted a $13.4 million municipal budget on Dec. 12 with a 1 percent tax increase, not including the county and school district taxes.
Among the budgetary decisions city councilors will be making this fall are funding requests from the Planning and Development Department.
Ken Arndt, the department’s director, said he’ll be asking for $800,000 to be devoted to sidewalk repairs around downtown Presque Isle over the next decade.
“Take a walk between Church Street and Governor’s,” Arndt told the councilors at the last meeting, referring to the stretch of Main Street hosting the city’s core downtown. “There are some very unsavory situations there with the brickwork out of place. You’re almost begging a trip and fall type of situation.”
Arndt said he and a consulting engineer will be mapping out ot those areas in the worst condition and then developing a cost estimate to present to the council. He added that this kind of project will have to be locally-funded.
“In the past, we thought we could get money from the Office of Economic and Community Development with the state,” Arndt said. “But that’s a thing of the past, so we’re pretty much on our own.”
Arndt said the city staff also is working on an extension to Presque Isle’s four mile bike and walking path.
The city had been planning to extend the path around Peace Park, although that has been stalled by the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation due to concerns about the route’s proximity to the edge of the Northern Maine Regional Airport and an active rail line.
Arndt said the city is now looking at alternatives to that plan and having the path extend along Parson’s Street.
