Caribou Conundrums
Points to Ponder
The secession committee did not appreciate my article on seceding from Caribou the other week. They stated and I quote, “the rural residents of Caribou have to endure public ridicule and mockery in a childish display of buffoonery! In a meaningless diatribe, not worthy of a response, we are deliberately and metaphorically denounced for attempting to exercise our Constitutional right to form our own government! That is about as un-American as it can get.” Geeez! I had to get my dictionary out to determine what they meant. Apparently they didn’t like it. Please accept my apology. Obviously they are not willing to accept my invitation to discuss their grievances and share their plan for the 15.9 mil rate with the rest of Caribou so I thought I would comment on both here for their benefit.
As far as their grievances go, I hate dealing with facts and figures but when I have read where at least three of the secession committee members have referred to the “out of control spending” of the city council, I feel a reply is necessary. I joined the council in January of 2012. If I look at the expense budget for 2011 before I was elected and compared it to 2014, the last year of my term, spending has increased by approx. $79,000 in total over three years. If my math is correct that is an increase of less than 1 percent in total for three years of operation.
Obviously some people think this is excessive, including the former council member who is on the secession committee, so I decided to put things into perspective by looking at the spending habits of the council he served on. His term was from January 2006 to December 2008. If I used the same scenario and look at the city’s expenditures in 2005 the year before he was elected and what they were in 2008, his final year in office, spending increased a total of approx. $1,232,000, an increase of over 16 percent. Wow, I guess even I might consider that out of control, unless of course that was what the majority of taxpayers wanted.
In regard to “through the years we’ve brought many different ideas and plans forward to try and help curb the growth of government and out of control spending and they’ve been shot down every time by what I call special interest.” The idea of privatizing the ambulance department and saving 1.5 mils on our tax rate was brought forward. It was investigated by a committee that happened to include one of the committee members of the secession group, determined that it would actually cost the taxpayers an extra 1.5 mils and yes shot down. City council was asked to do a forensic audit. Since the city is audited every year and with no evidence that there was any need to justify spending over $100,000 of taxpayers’ money to perform this audit, this too was shot down. Council was told that we didn’t need as many people in our police department as Presque Isle had fewer people than we did. Upon investigation Presque Isle had more employees than we did. There have been other suggestions as well, such as doing away with the airport, library, rec center etc. and just having essential services. I wonder if these five people or 20 people, whatever the number is, realize that they are exactly what they are complaining about, a special interest group.
The 15.9 mil rate still remains a mystery to me as I haven’t spoken to anyone who has seen the breakdown on it. I find this strange since I’ve heard many members of this group continually preach about transparency in government. I guess technically they are not a government so they don’t feel it pertains to them. They have however, stated their position on schooling. “There are three participating communities in RSU 39, Lyndon would be the fourth. Our children will go to the same schools they’re going to now, they’ll ride on the same busses. Because those services are provided by RSU 39, not Caribou.” Hopefully that would be the case, as the children have nothing to do with this and their fate lies in the hands of a bunch of adults who are not looking at all the possibilities and scenarios. I hope the committee has taken the time to read MRS Title 20-A, Chapter 103-A: REGIONAL SCHOOL UNITS 4. Referendum on the admission of an additional school administrative unit to an existing regional school unit. In plain English it says, the existing communities of the RSU (Caribou, Limestone and Stockholm) would have to hold a referendum to decide if they would accept you into the RSU. You would however, have the ability to tuition your children into RSU 39 if you weren’t accepted. Based on the present tuition costs and your estimates of the number of children, this would probably cost around $3.5 million a year. I may be wrong, but, I think that would work out to about 25 mils just for the education portion of your tax bill based on your projected assessment. Tuition students are required to provide their own transportation to school. I don’t know if the new municipality planned on looking after that or if it would be left up to the parents. Of course there is also the concept that Caribou might decide to secede from the RSU and revert to its own school system again, if it would decrease their tax bill. That would give the new municipality two options, tuition the students to Caribou or bus them to Limestone if they were accepted into the RSU.
I am also not sure I understand the statement “Our vision for the future Town of Lyndon is a place where citizens have all the services they need and none they don’t.” Who decides what they don’t need? I guess that question has been answered already since one would need to know what services the community would have and the cost in order to set the mil rate at 15.9. I have reviewed the information on the Caribou Services Survey taken at the June polls for just the “country folk. (those voters who indicated they lived in the country)” Sixty-three percent of respondents thought the services they had were adequate, 15 percent thought there should be more services available, and 22 percent thought they could get along with fewer services. This was based on 160 survey forms. Must have been quite a job determining what everybody needed, to arrive at that 15.9 mil rate.
Again, I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights. If there is a plan, I think people should have the ability to see and question it before they make a decision about what they feel is best for them. If there is not a plan, than maybe someone else should apologize.
“What have you done today to make Caribou a better place to live.”
This column is strictly the opinion or view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the City of Caribou’s administration staff, its employees, or other council members. Gary Aiken may be reached at garyaiken@hotmail.com.
