CARIBOU, Maine — The Aroostook County Commissioners have endorsed a grant application to help create a joint regional office for assessing and code enforcement.
The office would provide complete assessing services for the contracted municipalities, and would determine the valuation of specific real and personal property as well as provide code enforcement services for those communities without a contracted or employed code enforcement officer.
“We have been discussing this concept with our local towns and cities for a while and conducted a survey last fall seeking their input as to what services might be more efficient to deliver at a regional level,” said County Administrator Ryan D. Pelletier.
“The response to the survey was very good and the overwhelming majority of towns said that assessing and code enforcement services were areas that they currently need help with or believe that they will be in need of those services in the very near future,” Pelletier said.
According to Pelletier, the majority of towns in Aroostook currently contract those services with an individual or firm, while a few towns employ either a full-time or part-time person to conduct the services. Commissioners believe greater efficiency and cost savings could result if towns band together under one regional office, which would be supervised by the County.
The proposal would also create a Regional Board of Appeals to serve all participating municipalities, with a pool of participants that would be available for towns lacking members of their own appeals boards.
Pelletier stated that according to the results of the survey, municipalities are spending on average over $10,500 per community for the services that are being proposed.
“That’s a lot of local tax dollars that, combined, exceed $750,000 annually, and that does not take into account the funding that is raised to conduct property revaluations from time to time,” he said.
Pelletier estimated that County municipalities spend over $1 million yearly on coding and assessment, which a regional office could do for a fraction of that cost.
The commission has submitted their funding proposal to the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development under the Efficient Delivery of Local and Regional Services grant program, and anticipates a decision later this spring or in early summer.
For more information,contact Pelletier at ryan@aroostook.me.us or at 493-3318.
