MACHIAS — Washington County has a budget.
On Wednesday morning, following a two-hour meeting of the County Commission and the Budget Advisory Committee, members of the budget committee approved a plan to raise $11.6 million through taxation for the 2026 budget.
The vote was 9 to 2. The three commissioners also gave their stamp of approval.
Spending for the year will be closer to $13.4 million because some costs are paid through revenue that comes from county services, including the Registry of Deeds and Probate Court.
The vote to adopt the budget, which is about $1.7 million more than the 2025 budget, represents a 17% increase.
That’s much less than the 40% increase recommended by the BAC in September and slightly less than the 20% increase rejected by commissioners last week.
County officials have said the 2025 budget was incomplete, and are scrambling to address a huge shortfall after voters rejected an $11 million bond in November.
Commissioners and budget committee members agreed to reduce the December budget proposal by $215,794 by not funding a patrol position at the Sheriff’s Office, which is a savings of $96,509, reducing the uniform allowance for that department by $5,000, reducing the fitness incentive offered to deputies by $7,000 and reducing the number of replacement cruisers from two to one vehicle, which represents $75,000 in savings.
In both prior budget recommendations the budgets included filling one of three vacancies at the Sheriff’s Office, but the version passed Monday does not fund that position.
Commission Chairman David Burns said he knows “2026 is going to impose an incredible increase in taxes on the people of our county. Almost double some of the increases in taxes. Some people can afford that and some people can not. That’s just a fact.”
That sense was what drove his recommendation not to fund any of the current vacancies in the Sheriff’s Office, but he stopped short of recommending layoffs for current employees.
He called further cuts for county law enforcement “an inappropriate move for us to do,” and felt very strongly that the 12 existing patrol positions remain in 2026.
He suggested the Sheriff’s Office consider putting deputies on call for emergencies to reduce the number of full-time shifts, but that recommendation was not considered in the final budget.
In addition to the cuts at the Sheriff’s Office, the budget does not fund a current vacancy at the Probate Court, which represents $77,153 in savings, and removes stipends for 14 cell phones in place of less expensive county-issued cellphone plans.
There was a suggestion early in the meeting from Burns that salaried non-union employees, along with commissioners, get a zero percent raise versus the 3% included in an earlier version of the budget. He called it a “show of leadership” for salaried employees and commissioners to forgo a raise, but that idea wasn’t popular with budget committee members or staff.
Commissioner Billy Howard objected. “I’d cut hours before I cut the increase,” he said.
In the end, the 3% raise stayed in the budget.
Commissioners and budget committee members added $70,000 to hire a full-time finance director and decided, after much discussion, to keep $50,000 budgeted for auditing support services. They also decided to keep in an additional $50,000 from an earlier budget to pay for deferred maintenance of county buildings.
Early in the meeting Burns echoed the sentiments of a full-time dispatch employee who attended last week’s commission meeting and had complained the budget process had taken too long and county employees were stressed by not knowing if they would still have jobs in 2026.
“Here we are at the eleven-and-a-half hour,” Burns said, urging fellow commissioners and budget committee members to “get this wrapped up. This is a heck of a time of year to give bad news to anybody.”
In addition to the budget changes that passed, Burns suggested that a part-time position at the Probate Court be filled by reducing a full-time position in the Registry of Deeds and having that employee split their time between the two departments.
The suggestion caused some concern for Michael Vaugh, who attended the meeting representing unionized employees, because of contractual concerns and possible restraints on moving employees between departments.
In the end the group decided that Emergency Management Agency Director Lisa Hanscom would split her time between EMA and probate, which she said she is willing to do. There was some concern about how much of her salary is currently paid through grant funding, which is specific to EMA tasks, but she said her department would work it out.
Commissioner Courtney Hammond agreed with Burns’ recommendations for the Sheriff’s Office, adding his own recommendation to eliminate the part-time position in the Finance Department that hasn’t been filled. He also suggested that the $50,000 added by the Budget Advisory Committee for auditing support be taken out.
“Our goal here,” he said, “is to come forward with a strong budget proposal so the bank will look at us favorably” for further lending.
Budget committee member Ben Edwards strongly objected to trimming any proposed positions from the Finance Department. “This seems incredibly short-sighted given the situation we find ourselves in,” he said, “and I hope someone agrees with me there.”
Hammond defended his recommendation saying he’d talked with Finance Department employees and “once we get beyond this process the workload for the current Finance Department is going, there won’t be as much focus on this process here. It will be focused on what they need to do in that office to make sure we’re staying on budget,” along with catching up with audits that haven’t been done since 2022.
Howard didn’t support that recommendation. “If we want to speed up this process, we’re going to have to get outside help,” he said. “We’re going to need money to cover that and I would hate to see us come here next year and not have those audits done.”
Edwards insisted the additional funding for finance was essential, as is outside expertise.
“It has to be an outside agency that specializes in this,” he said, noting that the $50,000 set aside may not be enough to cover that help. But, he said, “to underfund finance and essentially increase the risk that we perpetuate this problem, it just seems crazy to me that we would even consider this.”
His recommendation was to hire a full-time finance director even if it’s just to get caught up on the audits and get the county’s financial books sorted out.
“The books are the inhibiting factor to getting the audits done,” he said, and “given what has happened over these last years I believe we should fully fund a finance director and get rid of the elected treasurer’s position. We are here because our finances weren’t managed properly.”
Commissioners chose to support this proposal, adding in $70,000 for that full-time position and recommending moving the $40,000 treasurer’s salary over to fund that position at $110,000, which they think is what it will take to get an experienced finance director in place. That is in addition to the $50,000 funded for audit support the county would get through contracted services.
Even Hammond eventually signed on, saying, “we cannot go backward at this point.”
As the meeting closed, budget committee member Lewis Pinkham thanked fellow committee members, commissioners and county employees for their work in getting the budget passed. Earlier this week, budget committee member Dan Daley said much the same thing.
“I am incredibly proud of the work, effort and dedication shown by the BAC members, the commissioners and every department head along with their support staff in navigating this colossal budget challenge,” he said. “While we may not always agree on the path forward — or on how best to correct and ensure we never repeat the significant missteps of our predecessors — we are making meaningful progress.
One of the recommendations that was not acted on was Burns’ suggestion that the county crack down on personal use of county vehicles by employees. He said vehicles should only be used for county business, which includes the county’s utility terrain vehicles.
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.