Falmouth residents soon won’t be able to obtain a dog license, pay their excise taxes or do other business at town hall on Fridays, because the building will be closed.

In Mechanic Falls, residents will find locked gates at the transfer station on Thursdays and reduced hours at the public library on Mondays.

In Cape Elizabeth, officials are considering laying off four dispatchers and joining a regional emergency communications center.

All across the state, communities are curtailing services, scaling back operating hours and cutting positions to keep their budgets out of the red in the face of a merciless recession.

As towns begin to map out their spending plans for the next year, the outlook is bleak.

Most of the key sources of municipal revenue, including excise taxes, state revenue sharing, investment income and permit fees, are projected to decline significantly.

Raising property-tax rates to offset these revenue declines is not an option, town officials say, because residents already are struggling to cope with economic pressures.

That means the only recourse for balancing a town’s books is to cut, cut and cut some more.

“This is definitely the most difficult budget year I can remember, by far,” said Sanford Town Manager Mark Green, a municipal administrator for nearly 30 years.

Property taxes are often regarded as the principal source of money for police, fire, trash disposal, library and other services provided by Maine towns. But most of the money for the typical municipal budget comes from other sources, such as excise taxes, state revenue sharing, permit fees and interest on town accounts.

The recession is playing havoc with this flow of dollars.

Mainers aren’t buying new cars and trucks. Contractors aren’t building many houses or shopping plazas. And banks are paying very low interest on the deposit accounts for town funds.

Tony Plante, town manager in Windham, expects that these three factors will account for roughly a $500,000 drop in revenue for the 2010 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

That’s a significant chunk of a budget that totaled $14.5 million this year.

Green, the Sanford manager, said that town has seen a decline of up to $300,000 in revenue from excise taxes, investment accounts and state revenue sharing.

“Essentially, you’ve got to make that up if you’re not going to have a tax increase,” he said.

In Falmouth, a shortfall of $600,000 to $800,000 is looming when present spending is compared with projected revenues for 2010, said Town Manager Nathan Poore. Not only are excise taxes and investment income down, but the town also is not seeing its customary growth in property valuation.

Poore said construction usually generates up to $200,000 a year in added property-tax revenue, which tends to dampen the effect of rising costs.

“That isn’t there this year,” he said. “We’re just not seeing the building activity, the growth in valuation.”

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The problem may be even worse in small towns such as Limington, which relies heavily on excise tax revenues to pay for plowing, sanding and other winter road maintenance.

Selectman James Bickford said Limington is expecting a $40,000 drop in excise tax revenues, and when town meeting unfolds on March 7, residents will face some tough choices.

Selectmen have recommended deferring the purchase of new public works equipment, hoping the town’s existing fleet will hold up through another winter. He said cuts also have been proposed in funding for social service agencies, with the hope that they can find other sources of income.

“It’s going to be a rough time, it really is,” Bickford said.

More than 400 Maine towns have populations of less than 3,000, so the problems faced by Limington likely will be widespread.

Michael Starn, spokesman for Maine Municipal Association, said rural communities don’t provide more than essential public services, so revenue declines are especially painful.

“For a number of them, there’s really no low-hanging fruit,” he said.

But towns of all sizes are bracing for cuts.

In Cape Elizabeth, where the dispatch center may close, Town Manager Michael McGovern has prepared a list of potential cuts for the Town Council to consider.

The list includes shutting off 100 streetlights, eliminating a volunteer recognition program, a family recreation day and a fall cleanup program, closing the recycling center one day a week and charging a fee at Fort Williams Park — an idea that has been rejected in the past.

Last week, McGovern urged the council and school board to form a citizen committee to look into consolidating health insurance plans for all the town’s public employees. The town spends $3 million a year on insurance coverage, and premiums and benefits vary widely among the three unions representing municipal and school department employees, McGovern said.

“A lot of changes would have to come through collective bargaining,” he said, “but it’s a huge chunk of the municipal and school budget.”

Plante, the Windham town manager, told the Town Council last month that “it is likely that some reductions in staffing, either hours or positions, will be required” to meet the council’s direction not to increase taxes.

Plante said if positions are eliminated or scaled back, the town office or public library might have to trim hours of operation.

Some officials hold out hope that the federal economic stimulus will help towns, but Starn, at the Maine Municipal Association, said there’s too much uncertainty to count on federal relief.

He also noted that state actions could work against town finances. Gov. John Baldacci has proposed reducing state revenue sharing, from 5.1 percent to 4.6 percent of sales and income tax revenues.

In addition, a pending citizen initiative to reduce excise taxes could slash that form of revenue even further, by an estimated $70 million to $80 million statewide, Starn said.

“This just won’t work,” he said.

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Despite the grim realities, some town officials see an upside in the recession. Poore, the Falmouth manager, said the coming year or two present an opportunity for innovation, creativity and rethinking the traditional ways of doing things.

“If we’re doing something that doesn’t make sense any more, we really need to be brave about talking about that and making some changes,” he said. “During these times, there may be more tolerance for those types of changes.”

Green, in Sanford, offered a similar view.

He noted that the town combined tax assessing functions with Old Orchard Beach about three years ago to cut costs. Now, Sanford is looking at sharing information technology services with other municipalities and combining facilities, business and other operations with the school department.

“So sometimes out of adversity come some good ideas,” he said. “In good times you probably wouldn’t have to make some of those difficult choices.”