BANGOR, Maine — Bangor city councilors are worried about a looming tax hike and plan to ask the Bangor School Committee to help bring it down.
As both the city and school sides of the budget stand, Bangor residents will be looking at a $1.50 property tax rate hike, bringing the rate to $22.30 per $1,000 of valuation, or a 7 percent increase. This means a property worth $150,000 would be taxed $3,345, about $225 more than it is taxed currently.
Most councilors said during a budget meeting Monday night that a tax hike that significant would be hard to swallow.
The increase stems from a 2.2 percent spending increase in the Bangor School Department budget and a 2.9 percent increase on the city’s side, which is in the process of being reduced. The school board passed a $43.57 million budget earlier this month after making its own round of cuts. The school budget still needs the council’s OK, as well as voter approval in the June election.
While the council has no authority over the line items within the school committee’s budget, it can direct the School Department to not exceed a certain dollar amount.
“I would like to see the amount of the [mill rate] increase at less than $1,” Council Chairman Ben Sprague said.
In order to accomplish that, both the city and School Department would have to take further hits, reducing staff, services, programs or delaying projects in order to bring down spending. City departments have been working on identifying services and programs to reduce or cut. City Manager Cathy Conlow said the city has been cutting positions through attrition and other staff reductions for years and there aren’t many more people left to lose.
Councilor Pauline Civiello said the city couldn’t be expected to shoulder all of the burden in bringing down the mill rate increase and that the city and the School Department should work as a team to minimize this budget’s effect on taxpayers.
“We should be looking at this as one,” Civiello said.
She suggested decreasing the projected mill rate hike by 50 cents — with both the school committee and city taking 25 cents out their respective budgets. That would equate to roughly $600,000 in cuts from each budget.
Some, including Councilor David Nealley, are concerned that might cut too deep for both the city and schools.
Councilor Joe Baldacci was adamant against directing the School Department to make cuts. He said Bangor’s school system was a major draw for new residents and that further cuts would harm the quality of education in the city. He said a 2.2 percent budget increase on the school side was comparable to inflation, and argued school officials have proposed a “conservative” budget.
A meeting with the council and the school committee is scheduled for 5:15 p.m. Wednesday on the third floor of Bangor City Hall. The school board will follow that session up with its own regular session at 7 p.m.
Conlow said she would talk to Superintendent Betsy Webb on Tuesday to notify her of the council’s concerns and desire to see a trimmed version of the budget.
Webb said Tuesday afternoon that she planned to fill the council in on the latest developments with the budget. Last week, the school department learned it would lose about $102,000 in state subsidy, bringing the total lost subsidy revenue for fiscal year 2015 to more than $1 million.
“The School Committee has expressed concern regarding how tight the current proposed budget is and further cuts will make it difficult to maintain the quality of education provided,” Webb said in an email.
Webb called Bangor schools “higher performing and efficient,” citing an average annual increase over the past six budgets of less than 1 percent, in spite of losing about $6.7 million in state and federal revenue during that time.