Staff Writer
HOULTON — Next year’s budget for the town of Houlton is looking a little lean according to Town Manager Doug Hazlett, but that doesn’t mean the spending plan will be without a number of “big ticket” items.
The town manager presented his budget message to councilors during their regular council on Tuesday, Nov. 13 and part of that message involved increases to the town spending, which Hazlett feels cannot be avoided.
“We are going to add another $150,000 to Roads 2000,” he explained. “We have to add $96,000 for the school budget because it’s going to go up in 2008 because of the re-valuation back in 2005 and we are adding almost $4,000 more in county tax because we assume that it too will be increasing next year.
“The other thing that’s going to hurt us is we have a $41,000 increase in our electric rate because come February, the electric rate is going up,” he added. “When I take those four things and put them together, we have about $191,000 worth of increases. On top of that, there are only going to be four projects that are included in the budget this year and the entire total of that is only $56,000.”
Hazlett said the priority of next year’s capital projects is the roads. He said several projects have been deferred because of needs of road repair. He said those costs become complicated when the school and county taxes are combined.
“The budget at this point is increased by $360,000, which given the fact that we’re taking on about $141,000 of money that we can’t get out of the way of, that’s pretty conservative,” he explained. “I don’t know that the mill rate is going to stay at 18.25, it’s probably going to go up. I’m a little uncertain at this point as to what that will be because it’s very dependent on the revenue side and this does have a pretty hefty investment in roads.
“We’re going to have to have a discussion about do they want to do that or not,” said Hazlett. “It still has to go through board of budget review and through final council review, it could change, it always does.”
Hazlett said the town has a strong growth in revenue — approximately $250,000, which comes from increased excise tax and state contributions.
