BANGOR, Maine — With a potential tax hike looming, a small group of Bangor residents on Thursday night offered up ideas on how the city might help its bottom line.
Under the budget proposal for fiscal year 2015, Bangor’s mill rate would increase from $20.80 to $22.17, a number that most councilors have agreed is too high. City officials held a public meeting on the budget at the Cross Insurance Center to gauge resident feelings and come up with ways to ease Bangor’s fiscal woes.
“I think our taxes right now are right on the edge of being out of control,” said Wayne Levasseur, a Bangor resident and retired veteran living on a fixed income. “We need to learn to make due with less.”
Levasseur argued the city needs to find new ways of generating revenue — namely, a local sales tax.
Bangor, the largest generator of sales tax in the state, statutorily should be getting more than $5 million from the state in revenue sharing in the next fiscal year, but it expects to receive just over $2 million.
Past efforts to launch an optional local sales tax have fallen flat. Most recently, the state Senate scuttled such a bill in 2013. There seemed to be some interest among a few councilors and city officials in reviving that push.
Another resident suggested an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut for all city and school employees, rather than laying anyone off or eliminating positions outright.
Skip Black of Bangor suggested a $5 parking fee at the Cross Insurance Center for anyone who isn’t a Bangor taxpayer. Since Bangor funded the arena, its residents would get a pass to park for free, Black suggested. An early effort to get other Penobscot County communities to foot part of the bill for the arena, which draws people from across the region, failed.
One resident at the meeting who complained about concert noise said the city should consider a “decibel fee” for any concert that exceeds a certain level of sound as a new way of generating revenue.
The city already has reduced staff, invested in natural gas and other energy efficiencies, changed insurance carriers, refinanced its debt and more in an effort to soften the impact of reduced state funding and increasing mandates, Conlow said.
During the next two weeks, Bangor department heads will bring fresh versions of their budget proposals — with reductions — to the council for review. Those reductions could include programs and positions.
“The council hears your concerns and understands we need to make some changes,” Conlow said. “We can’t always be everything to everybody.”