LINCOLN, Maine — Property tax bills will not be mailed until late next month as town officials continue to probe and fix errors that created a $1.58 million shortfall in this and last year’s budgets, Town Manager Bill Reed said Tuesday.
Reed said he, Assessor Ruth Birtz and Treasurer Gilberte Mayo met Tuesday with officials from the Bangor law firm Eaton Peabody to review the town’s Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, processes. The town’s auditor, Maine Municipal Audit Services, is writing a report on the errors and their potential remedies that Town Council Chairman Steve Clay wants councilors to have in hand by their meeting on Monday night.
The council will discuss the auditor’s findings with the auditor by telephone conference during an executive session that night, said Clay, who arranged the call.
“I want to find out what the problem is, where it lies, and have her describe the problem as she sees it,” Clay said Tuesday of the auditor. “She is the auditor. She should be able to explain to us what happened and after speaking with her today I am confident she can do that.”
The executive session will be necessary as part of the financial review to protect town workers’ right to privacy, Clay said.
“There could be personnel issues that come out of this. Once we determine that, we can start talking more,” said Clay. “We don’t know yet. I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus at this point.”
In publicly disclosing the problems for the first time on Oct. 2, Reed blamed the errors on miscommunication and a lack of understanding of a new computer financial program causing double reporting and miscalculations of revenue.
He, Birtz and Mayo said they and the auditor found a $200,000 double-booking of revenues from the state Business Equipment Tax Exemption and the Maine Homestead Exemption program accounts in the 2011-2012 budget, a $575,000 overestimation of projected revenues in the town’s four TIF accounts listed in the 2012-13 fiscal budget and an $809,000 underestimation of projected expenses in the town’s TIF accounts in the 2011-12 budget.
Eaton Peabody consultants John Holden, who specializes in TIFs, and Richard Metirier, a former finance director for the city of Lewiston, are working to review the town’s TIF and budgeting procedures, confirm the errors, devise safeguards against their repetition and find the best way to minimize the errors’ effect, Reed said.
“The situation is very fluid, and as we detangle the budget relationships, it leads to different outcomes,” Reed said. “Once you take out of the budget the TIF items, you actually have the real budget and you have to look at that — and the real cost of that — and that is something that seems to have been overlooked. When we include TIF revenues and expenditures into the municipal budget, it distorts the true growth of the budget.”
Tax increment financing is among the state’s leading tools for aiding economic development. When a town sees an increase in valuation created by an investment, it also experiences a reduction in its share of state revenues and an increase in county taxes. A TIF allows a town to “shelter” or keep the new valuation from the calculations of state revenue sharing, education subsidy and county tax assessment — in effect creating more money for the town.
TIF agreements are created in contracts with the businesses that benefit from them and are calculated as part of the town’s budget every spring and its commitment to the state to pay its share of state taxes, which typically occurs in October. TIFs create a lengthy and complex paper trail, Reed said.
“The complexity is why we thought it best to get a consultant in here to help us with a fresh pair of eyes to evaluate the situation,” Reed said. “It’s what we have been focused on for numerous days.”
Reed compared the paperwork review under way to “trying to do a whole municipal budget, which typically takes two to three months to do, over again in a two- or three-week period,” he said.
Reed has said he anticipates no immediate increase to the town’s $19.86 tax rate, but has said town officials will have to find about $575,000 in savings or budget reductions to cover the shortfalls.
So, apparently , those in charge of the numbers couldnt understand
how to work the new computer program and misunderestimated the
numbers they were supposed to be crunching.
Or did they misoverestimate the numbers ?
Compounded by an inability to communicate effectively with each other.
I hope the interns that were doing this work that was so poorly done
will not be invited back to the City Rooms any time soon.
Maybe another couple of semesters at the Community Colleges night school program
will help these struggling budget bunglers get a handle on the situation.
Perhaps Angus King can bring in some hot air powered computers to straighten it all out.
All the taxpayers in that area are counting on some degree of accuracy with their
hard earned tax dollars, Im sure.
Even though its only a measly One and a Half Million Dollar mistake.
The $575,000.00 budget reductions should start with eliminating the overly excessive taxpayer funded “homecoming festival” party and the selling of the Ballard Hill Community Center money pit.
Does Lincoln have a Chamber of Commerce?
I’ve lived here a long time and have never seen a worse Chamber!
Absolutely unbelievable.
Windmills , more windmills.
Yes, 53 more windmills (Triple-bladed Ponzi scheme) so the Town Of Lincoln will get another $800,000.00 payday.
And my taxes will STILL go up.
These turbines truly are the Trojan Horse of our times. Hidden within these monstrosities are hidden political agenda’s, seprent like tax loopholes, big money deals between Maine Land Owners such as recently indicted Haynes Timberland and large corporations such as Chianbro, all in the name of “saving the planet” when all they are doing is destroying our natural resources and benefiting the richest in Maine. I feel terrible for the people of Lincoln who will soon find out first hand the consequences of corrupt politics, sneaky tax loopholes and an industry which only benefits the richest in our state and leaves mill rate crumbs for the rest of us.
Expect your Lincoln mill rate to go up next year.
DHHS and now Lincolns computers ? The machines are out to get us ! Either that or no one took the time to read the instruction manual……not glance through….read
I hear there is a Chamber of Commerce, but have yet to see anything to do with one. The two Lincoln websites, Welcome to Lincoln Maine and Exploring Lincoln, both do a better job than any chamber that may or may not exist in Lincoln.
“In my observation of Town of Lincoln (I have a Masters in Public Administration), I came away with the sense that Lisa Goodwin and Ruth Birtz ran the town as Tweedle dumb and Tweedle dumber, that they were way in over their heads. Same goes for the Town Council.”
Over the past decade, this once civil town has become a cesspool of vested self-interest, nepotism ,secret meetings and perhaps a seat of corporate corruption to thehighest levels.
Otherwise good citizens have too often used the philosophy of “see no evil , hear no evil , speak noevil”, for fear of employment repercussions as well as feeling hopeless and non-empowered.
Most of the council has disdain for the citizenry.
First Wind found a seat to spread the disdain for civil process.
A town of once wonderful outdoor potential, has been turned into a corporate industrial wind slum because of lack of any foresight.
The feudal society that presently exists in Lincoln is now being exposed .
Nothing will work better to cure the evils than civil town government, and governmental transparency at all levels.
Lincoln has lost its path.
Only an open civil process and its citizenrytaking action can change it .
The town’s citizens must act and demand changes .