MAPLETON, Maine — With municipal budgets compete, David Dionne is finishing up a busy season and nearing the end of his first year as town manager of Mapleton, Castle Hill and Chapman.
The three towns, which share a municipal government through an inter-local agreement, all approved their budgets last month and now await a finalized school district budget to determine their exact property taxes.
On the municipal side of the budgets, the towns each saw decreases in expenses, with an average decrease of $32,173 between them.
“While we’re looking at flat funding on the municipal side, we’re getting hit from school and county,” said Dionne, who started on the job last May. “We’re just waiting for the school and their budget to pass.”
The three town’s saw reductions in town expenses, but will have an increase from the county government and a likely increase from Maine School Administrative District 1. Approximately 70 percent of the towns’ taxes goes to the school district, while 9 percent goes to the county and 21 percent goes to the municipal government.
Based on MSAD 1’s proposed budget and the increases from the county government, each of the three towns are looking at property tax increases for 2018, Dionne said.
Including the county tax and estimated school tax, the estimated mill rate for Castle Hill would total $16.90 per $1,000 of property value, up from a rate of $15 per $1,000 last year. For Chapman, the mill rate would total 17.6, up from 15.2, and for Mapleton, it would total 16.1, up from 15.45.
MSAD 1 operates on a July 1-June 30 fiscal year, so Mapleton, Castle Hill, Chapman and other municipalities operating on a calendar year budget do not know exactly the school portion of their taxes for the second half of the year.
According to MSAD 1’s working draft budget proposal, the property tax levy would increase 8.6 percent for Mapleton, 4.35 percent for Castle Hill and 4.59 percent for Chapman. A large part of these projected increases are due to increases in the state’s valuation of the three municipalities, Dionne said.
“Presque Isle’s average valuation went down, and that meant that Mapleton and the other communities are looking at an increase,” Dionne said.
The county budget also increased the three town’s costs by about 15 percent, Dionne said. This was largely due to wage and benefit increases at the county level, according to the budget documents.
Other factors in the towns’ budgets include the state’s minimum wage increase to $10 per hour, which led to a 9 percent increase in the municipal recreation department’s budget. Castle Hill and Chapman, which each own approximately 7,000 acres of woodlands, also saw a decrease in stumpage fee revenue from logging operations, Dionne said.
