CARIBOU, Maine — Roughly 20 Caribou residents attended an information meeting on the proposed town of Lyndon last Wednesday and though there were some facts and figures shared with the audience, Caribou Secession Committee members were quick to qualify that all figures were merely proposed or suggested.
“These are numbers that we generated,” explained Maynard St. Peter, one of five leaders of the Caribou Secession Committee, alluding to the fact that that the citizens of Lyndon would have the power to vote down a budget. “I have no idea what numbers you’re going to come up with,” he told one participant at the meeting.
As St. Peter presented, the 80 percent of Caribou that would become Lyndon should secession goes through currently generates $3,211,200 in taxes under a mil rate of 22.3. With a lower mil rate of 15.9, which secession officials say is the target, the same area would generate $2,289,808 that could fund the proposed town while lowering taxes.
Committee spokesperson Paul Camping opened the meeting by stating, “If you’re a rural resident, you already know that you’re paying higher taxes than somebody who lives in the downtown urban compact territory.”
The residents in Caribou are taxed the same rate, and Camping explained that people in rural areas pay more in taxes because they live on farms, or lots that are subdivided from farms, and their land parcels and homes tend to be larger and more valuable that property owners in the downtown area, who have smaller houses with less land. He also explained the “rule of 30, 40, 50.”
“Thirty percent of the population of Caribou, which is everybody who lives in the rural area of Caribou, pays 40 percent of the taxes and gets 50 percent of the services,” Camping said. “That’s another thing that’s very obvious to us is that there is this very unequal delivery of services to the rural community.
Audience member Diane Gove disagreed with the committee’s assessment of unfair taxation.
“I have a 2,000 square foot home with 10 acres. Naturally I would pay more than someone who has 1,000 square foot home on an acre in town,” she described. “You’re saying that the taxes aren’t equal, but they are. I’m going to pay more if I have a bigger place.”
St. Peter explained that though the small city properties are equal in tax rate with the large city properties, “The question here is the size of the property that we own in the country is always larger than the ones in town,” he said. “But when you add it all up, you will find that this (rural) area, which is represented by only 30 percent of the voters, is paying 40 percent of the taxes to the city of Caribou.”
Some proposed figures were presented, such as there are 1,873 taxable real estate properties in Lyndon, and the town would be able to generate a proposed $2,250,000 in taxes, $80,000 in road assistance from the state, $200,000 in revenue sharing, $250,000 in excise tax and $80,000 through the homestead exemption and VA reimbursement for a total town revenue of $2,860,000.
Audience member John Swanberg mentioned that it would be very helpful for people to better understand the figures if they could have a tangible copy to look at, but the committee members maintained their position of not sharing their full findings.
“We just didn’t want them out there in the public; we’re getting enough flack with them every day,” St. Peter said. “The city manager, the Mayor wanted to be a part of this tonight. Could you imagine what this would have been like? We don’t have time for playing games like that, we will do that though if this goes to a public hearing.”
“We will take them on one by one with their own numbers,” St. Peter said adamantly. “Remember, every number that they’ve generated is being looked at in an audit. Now that audit is being manipulated to by the town managers so it’s presented to the city council the way they want to present it.”
Coincidentally, a representative of Felch and Co. presented the city’s annual audit during Monday night’s city council meeting. Gregory Dickinson, CPA with Felch and Co. LLC. of Caribou, gave the city the highest positive ranking of “unmodified opinion, which means these financial statements are fairly stated in accordance with general accepted accounting principles, and there are no exceptions as far as we know.”
As the meeting reached the 90-minute point, Swanberg asked the commission members what they wished to accomplish during the public hearing with the city council. The first thing, of course, was a discussion of the numbers.
“The second one is to list the grievances we have with the city of Caribou,” St. Peter said. “The way they operate that budget is just atrocious.”
St. Peter hopes that by exposing all of Caribou’s problems during the public hearing, people will begin asking questions and decided to change the form of city government.
“And that’s my fondest hope — keep Caribou together, but as a town. The way it was. And I think we can grow from that,” he said. “If we reduce our mil rate, we would be the only attractive community within northern Maine.”
At the time of the meeting, secession committee members said they’d collected about 600 signatures on their petition to secede; to go forward in the process, they need to collect about 1,000 signatures of registered voters in the secession area.
“It doesn’t mean that we have to go through with secession,” Camping explained. “We feel like we may be able to come to terms with the city of Caribou and make some changes that obviate the need for secession,” he added. “And this petition is basically saying that we’re tired of taxes, we’re tired of the undelivery of services, and we would like to have a public hearing to hear what the city has to say about it.”
