PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — City Council has started a new year, swearing in a new councilor and beginning discussions on a range of issues.
The first council meeting of 2017 started with new councilor Pete Freeman being sworn in, along with longtime council member Emily Smith being voted to another term as chair of the panel.
Council meetings are now being held on the first Wednesdays of the month, a change from the tradition of holding them on the first Monday.
The council’s first meeting of 2017 included discussions of two issues that the board ultimately decided to table for further action at another time.
One of those is a request from the Presque Isle Industrial Council to use more than $5,000 in excess rent revenue to pay off a building loan fund on the former Acme Monaco building. The medical device manufacturer has been in the midst of moving into a new PIIC building with the support of federal grant funding, and expanding its workforce.
Typically, the excess revenue from the Industrial Council is transferred to the city’s general fund, to pay for debt service and other expenses, and in most years the Industrial Council has generated revenue for the city.
Some councilors expressed support for the request, including Randy Smith. “It’s a very small amount that could help them clean up the books on their old buildings,” Smith said.
Members ultimately voted to table the issue until their next meeting.
The council also voted to postpone any decisions on a proposal from the Presque Isle Development Fund to start a “micro-loan” program for start-up businesses. While the Presque Isle Development Fund essentially is a start-up loan program in itself, City Manager Martin Puckett said the fund has not received any applications in the last year and has a number of flaws in its processes.
“People who have applied gave pretty negative feedback about all the hoops they had to jump through and ended up going to the banks,” Puckett told the council. “This would basically streamline the process,” he said of the micro-loan idea.
The micro-loan program would lend out a maximum of $25,000 and a minimum of $5,000 to entrepreneurs looking to start a business in Presque Isle, Puckett said.
Other issues on the city council and Puckett’s radar include trash collection, following the council’s decision to end the pay-as-youth-throw trash collection program as of April 2017. (The recycling portion of the program will remain.)
Puckett said he’s been getting comments from residents asking about whether once PAYT is gone there will be any other options for trash collection beyond hiring a garbage hauler or driving trash to a landfill. When PAYT trash collection is retired this year, Presque Isle residents will be faced with choosing between those two options, as is the case throughout Aroostook County.
