Council approves $11.2 million
budget center payment sparks increase
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — After narrowing down debt options for a new community center and pondering a host of savings, members of the Presque Isle City Council are hoping their 2016 budget offers a balance of public services and fair taxation.
Presque Isle’s approved 2016 budget, totalling $11,268,547, is 6.6 percent larger than the 2015 budget, mostly due to the $525,000 anticipated payment for the community center’s financing.
If nothing else changes and depending on the school and county budgets, Presque Isle’s 2016 budget will bring the city’s tax levy to an anticipated $26.71 per $1,000 of property value, an increase of 1.25 mills. The tax rate will be set in July.
The largest category of the budget is $1.89 million for employee benefits, followed by $1.63 million for public works, $1.29 million for the police, $921,627 for the fire department and $895,485 for debt, including the first community center payment. Other allocations include $782,614 for parks and rec, $656,156 for the capital reserve, and $41,00o in outside payments to groups like the Aroostook Area Agency on Aging, the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce and Wintergreen Arts Center.
The budget marked the end of a long conversation between councilors, city manager Martin Puckett and others about how to manage local services, programs and spending for Presque Isle as a modern “service center community,” with two colleges, a hospital and a number of other employers but a tax-base of less than 10,000 residents.
With more than half-a-million annually expected in payments for the community center in the coming years and funding requests from police, fire and other departments that went unfilled this year, city councils left their budget approval Monday Dec. 14 wondering about how to save money in the long-run.
“I think any savings at this point are bigger regional things that we need to start working on for next year,” said Michael Chasse, who was recently re-elected to another term as councilor.
Councilor Craig Green said he’s hoping to meet with leaders from surrounding towns to inquire about ideas and opportunities for efficiency in times of scarcity and a population growing fewer in number. “Regionally, we’re paying much, much higher costs to do business than they do in other areas,” he said. “You don’t need a superintendent in Easton, you don’t need one in Presque Isle, you don’t need one in Caribou.”
Green said he thinks that demand for regional shared services will “have to come from the people in the community to say, ‘We want this to happen because we can’t afford to live where we want to live any more.’”
Puckett told the council he’s planning on studying the region’s municipal services and spending to compare to Presque Isle and look for possible solutions. One area where other towns might follow Presque Isle’s lead is in posting the whole budget online, which would make spending and service trends more transparent.
The new budget also marked the end of an era for outgoing councilor Peter Hallowell, a Farm Credit East manager who spent five years as voice for financial sustainability and skeptic of spending in city departments.
“I always think that governments when they were started were meant to be volunteer and short-term in nature, so farmers and merchants would go away to help for a while and then go back to their fields and stores,” Hallowell said.
