MATTAWAMKEAG, Maine — Residents shouldn’t see much of a property tax increase, if they see one at all, in the $1.15 million town and school budget that selectmen are assembling, the board’s chairman said Sunday.
The Board of Selectmen is due to complete the budget at the town office Saturday before it goes to the town Budget Committee at the end of the month and a town meeting on July 27, Chairman John Whitehouse said.
“If my numbers are right, we should be just about where we were a year ago,” Whitehouse said Sunday.
Unofficial figures provided by Whitehouse place the overall budget for the 2014-15 fiscal year, which ends June 30, at $1.06 million. That’s about $89,700 less than the proposed budget, and Whitehouse said he expects that the budget at fiscal year’s end will probably come in lower.
Selectmen, committee members and residents can also cut the budget further, he said.
The new year’s budget includes a $16,000 increase to $56,000 for the town’s ambulance service and a $57,000 allocation to pave Hathaway Road, a two-mile residential street that parallels the Penobscot River, Whitehouse said.
“It’s in pretty bad shape,” Whitehouse said.
The town’s only paving project last year, improving the front of the public safety building, will occur before the end of the fiscal year, he said.
Selectmen set this year’s property tax rate at $20.38 per $1,000 of valuation in August 2014. That was down slightly from the $20.40 rate set in 2013-14, town officials have said.
The town hopes to get some additional tax revenue from a pellet mill due to go into the former Dr. Carl Troutt School next month. The most recent conversations with the developer indicate the project is on-track to get all of its permits by June 30, Whitehouse said.
Ambulance service revenues should pay for most of the $16,000 increase, Whitehouse said.