Penobscot County Commissioners approved the county’s 2026 budget with a unanimous vote on Wednesday during their final meeting of the year.
The three commissioners, Andre Cushing, Dave Marshall and Dan Tremble, approved the $35.3 million budget at a Penobscot County Commissioners meeting, an increase from the $34.5 million budget for 2025.
This year’s budget process has been longer and more contentious than previous years after a $3.5 million shortfall emerged in the county jail budget. The county had previously been funding the jail through undesignated funds instead of budgeted funds in previous years, creating a $7 million crisis.
Commissioners originally presented a $36.1 million budget for 2026 in November, but the 15-member budget advisory committee approved a $35.1 million budget without passing specific departmental budgets. This approval required the commissioners to make specific departmental cuts to get to the committee’s amount.
Commissioners cut roughly $850,000 in expenditures and found roughly $150,000 in additional revenue, lowering the amount to be collected through taxes by almost $1 million.
The cuts did not add up to the committee’s specific motion, but Cushing said the final budget was “in-line with most of the goals” the committee put forward.
Last-minute changes to the budget were made before the vote, with $50,000 in expenses being added to building and improvements, $20,000 to the commissioners fund for a transitional period between the interim County Administrator Gary Lamb and the administrator to be hired in 2026 and $5,000 added to the finance department.
Commissioners also added $127,800 to revenue from taxes collected in previous years.
With the changes, the budget went up nearly $4 million, or 15.6%, from last year, raising the amount to be collected through property taxes of county residents by the same percent.
County Treasurer Glenn Mower said the increase will add 21 cents per $1,000 of property value to the Bangor tax rate. If there were no other changes to the tax rate, the Bangor tax would be $17.91 per $1,000 in property value, or $3,582 in taxes for a property valued at $200,000.
All three commissioners said county departments were not the sources of the growing budget.
“It’s a big increase,” Tremble said. “But the facts are, if you look at the county department by department, there aren’t any huge increases in the budget this year. [The increase] is because we had a deficit that grew in the jail and it had to be addressed this year.”
A new jail and increase in state funding for the jail would address the deficit and yearly funding shortfall for the jail, Marshall said.
If previously discussed plans go forward, a bond for a new jail would go out for public vote in June. A new facility could shrink the jail budget by lowering the number of inmates being boarded out, but a new facility by itself won’t solve the budget problem, Tremble said.
“The problem is not going to be solved until the state steps up and funds the jails the way that it’s supposed to be funding,” Tremble said. “The jail desperately needs a new facility, but that’s not going to cure our problem.”