HOULTON, ME — Town councilors tabled the renewal of a proposed lease agreement with a local company on Monday evening after some members said they felt the tenant was being undercharged.
The proposal would have had the town and Ammex Warehouse Co. Inc., located on Airport Drive near Houlton International Airport, enter into a 20-year lease for a two-acre parcel of land. The company owns the building. Under the terms of the contract, Ammex would have paid $1,600 a year for the first and second years of the term and then the annual rent would have increased by 2 percent each year over the prior year’s rent starting in November 2018.
Charles Taylor, a resident of Houlton, questioned the proposal after calculating that the company would be leasing the property for about $133 a month over the first two years of the lease.
Under the last 20-year lease, the tenant paid $350 annually. The new figure was adjusted for inflation and compared to leases at area camp lots and lots at a local mobile home park, according to Town Manager Butch Asselin. The land is assessed at $10,000 because the tenants added water and sewer at their expense.
Councilor Raymond Jay asked Asselin for more details about the proposal, calling the monthly lease payments “extremely cheap.”
Asselin said that besides adding water and sewer, Ammex also employed people, which benefited the community and factored into the proposed lease amount.
“It was difficult to find something to compare this to in order to get a figure for the lease,” he said.
Jay said he felt that the premises should have been compared to businesses downtown or elsewhere in the business district to calculate a proposed monthly payment. He noted that he owns less than 2 acres of land as a homeowner and pays $1,800 a year in taxes.
“I am open if you want me to go back to the table on this,” said Asselin.
Councilor Brent Dickison was the only councilor who openly disagreed with the idea of taking another look at the proposal.
“I think you are crazy,” he said to his fellow councilors. “You’ve got a local business out there and it is hard to find people to come out to work there in the airport district.”
Several councilors told Dickison that they were just putting the matter aside to research and consider other figures, and in the end, might accept the lease agreement as proposed.
The council will take the matter up again at a meeting next month.
