Houlton council reviews long-range plans for town

  HOULTON, Maine — Long-range planning was the focus of Monday night’s Town Council meeting.
Town Manager Doug Hazlett is required by the town’s charter to give the council an update on future needs for the community and what he sees as the highest priority.
    “It is the status of major expense items on the capital front we see over the next five years,” he explained.
Hazlett pointed out that these items may or may not be funded and carried over year to year.
“Some day we may get to them, some day we may not, depending on what the budget can handle,” Hazlett noted.
The three areas discussed were — buildings, computer equipment and combined equipment and vehicles.
“Every year we have been very diligent about trying to fund as much improvement work needs as we can without adversely affecting the mil rate,” said Hazlett. “In the case of buildings, we’ve done a very good job. I think we have improved the heating plants in many of them and we’ve taken care of carpeting and needs like that.”
One of the major items that has been talked about for years is coming to fruition this year as the Gentle Memorial Building will install a new gymnasium floor.
The only other major expenditure will be a collective $40,000 to $50,000 for parking lot repairs at the Town Office, Gentle Memorial Building and Town Garage.
“We will have to face up to those in the next few years,” said Hazlett. “Other than that, the buildings with normal maintenance are in very good condition.”
Hazlett also addressed the upgrading of computer equipment.
“We have reduced vulnerabilities that we had from old computers and particularly, file servers,” he said. “Both the police department and town office have been updated this year with new file servers. No matter what we need for computer equipment in the next few years, we will put it into our normal budget.”
In equipment and vehicles, Hazlett mentioned an expected expense in the Public Works Department will be a crack-sealing machine.
The crack sealing machine melts large rubber products and applies the hot material to cracks in the road.
“We are very fortunate, as we run our public works department, in particular, with some very old equipment, which is the talent of the two mechanics out there that keep this stuff looking brand new,” he added. “We buy used equipment and have them refurbish it.”
The crack-sealing machine that the Public Works Department has is a 1984 model.
“The technology certainly is not what it is today,” Hazlett added.
Phil Bernaiche, a member of the Roads 2000 committee and former councilor, has been pressing a lot in the last few years to do more crack sealing to preserve roads, said Hazlett.
“We wouldn’t have to do so much costly overlay,” Hazlett noted. “This is really a key piece of equipment and the process of crack sealing would be a lot faster and would require less overtime if we had a piece of machinery that was more modern to do it.”
Other than that, the town is in good shape equipment-wise, except for a backhoe for the Public Works Department.
“We will see if we can find a used one on the market,” Hazlett said.
Both the Police Department and Emergency Medical Services have moved to a routine funding process for replacing vehicles, according to Hazlett.
Another impending need within the next five years is a new pumper for the Fire Department.
“Our second pumper is quite old and it’s not going to last forever,” explained Hazlett. “The pumper is an essential piece of equipment because we serve a lot of surrounding communities that do not have fire hydrants and a very big portion of Houlton does not have fire hydrants.”
Hazlett would like to continue to have a reserve account set through the Board of Budget Review.
“We put away a little bit of money every year and have funds available to act on used equipment when we can find it,” he said.
One area sparking some council discussion was the status of the John Millar Civic Center.
“It is suggested we are going to have to spend a lot of money,” said Councilor Mike Jenkins. “What I would like to see is some type of breakdown on income versus expenditures for the building, plus a prioritized list of what is essential to be done.”
Hazlett responded that the problem with the civic center is that the items needed are “big ticket” items and the priority at this point is the computer that runs the air-handling system.
“If it fails, we have no choice but to replace it,” he said. “It is a very complicated piece of computer equipment.”
The next item would be the installation of new hockey boards.
“Boards are a major safety issue for the players,” said Hazlett. “What I have tried to do, for example, on the new hockey boards, is again, put a little money away over the next few years so it isn’t [requested] all in one year.”
Councilor John Fitzpatrick inquired about advertising on the boards.
“We had a whole plan put together and we actually kicked that off in 2008,” explained Hazlett. “It was  not a good year to do it because that is when the economic crisis hit. Each of those advertising panels has to generate, on average, $7,000 to $14,000 to be a meaningful number to the total of the boards.”
What Hazlett would like to see is a joint fund-raising effort.
“When the economy improves, I would really like to see a very strong push by the users to help have some private fundraising to support that as well,” he said. “It is going to have to be a joint effort between taxpayers and users of the facility.”
The cost would be between $125,000 and $150,000.
In other business:
• Councilors approved the Credit Enhancement Agreement (CEA) for Market Square Housing. When CEI built the senior housing apartments, one of the agreements at the time was to provide a 15-year tax incentive via the normal CEA.
“The agreement is consistent with the Downtown TIF District as approved by the town council two years ago,” Hazlett explained.
Councilor Sue Tortello wanted to know how far along was the occupancy of Market Square Housing and Hazlett responded they were about 75 percent occupied.
• Councilors approved a liquor license renewal for the Horn of Plenty Restaurant.
• Councilors also acknowledged the donation from Tom and Sally Callnan of labor and mulch for the town’s flower beds.
“We purchased the flowers from the Callnans,” said Hazlett, “and they graciously agreed to do all the planting and mulching at no charge, which is more than 40 hours worth of labor. It is very much appreciated and their generosity is certainly improving Houlton.”
• Councilors also approved the authorization of the town manager to certify Urban Initiative Funds will be used only for maintenance or improvement of public roads and Rural Initiative Funds will be used only for capital improvement of public roads and to sign all documents pertaining to this certification.
“In order to qualify for URIP funds from the state, we need to attest to the fact we are actually using those funds for roads,” Hazlett explained. “We budget a mil for roads every year and just our summer road repairs are more than what the state gives us by a wide margin.”
The town of Houlton gets just over $100,000 in URIP funds and on top of that, the town spends $292,000 of taxpayer money, he said.
The program is under review and Hazlett hopes that “whatever agreement comes out, it continues to be something that helps communities maintain roads. That is a critical issue.”
The next Houlton Town Council meeting is Aug. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at the town office.