What would you do with $6,067,892?
IN THE CITY
by Jim Bennett
It is your turn to have the ultimate authority over all budget decisions in Presque Isle. Imagine for a few moments that you have been given the one-time exclusive authority to make any budget decision you like for the city.
To make it more enjoyable, let’s all imagine that you have suddenly been given $6,067,892 of new money to spend as you deem worthy. To assist you in your decision making, let’s provide you with information regarding some of the things the city has done over the last few years in order to prevent the tax rate from going up for four of the last five years.
To fix the old outdoor pool to make it safe and acceptable to the insurance carrier, improvements have been estimated to cost around $400,000 to $500,000. Cost for repairs to the leaking roof and associated damage present at the Haskell recreation center is estimated to be in the $1 million range. To make further improvements to the facility to ensure use for the next 20 to 30 years could run in the area of another $500,000 to $750,000. A new roof at the indoor pool was estimated at $350,000. The operating loss at the pool is about $100,000 per year.
Annually, we spend about $25,000 on new books, magazines, newspapers and audio/video resources at the library. Maybe you would like to increase that amount. New public access computers could be purchased at an approximate cost of $1,000 each (with software).
Repaving a road is about $25,000 for the average quarter-mile stretch. Maybe you would enjoy having more police or fire personnel working. Each additional employee would cost about $75,000 (with benefits and other costs). Of course, you could also use it to reduce taxes. For every $100,000 you would use, it would save $0.20 on the tax rate. In fact, if the total amount was used for property tax reduction, it would save $12.13 per thousand.
Some of you are probably asking what is the point of this? Obviously, $6,067,892 is not a random number. How did I arrive at that number and what does it represent you ask? Over the years, you have heard me share with you the impact on your local budget because of state government’s continued raids on revenue sharing.
Since 2009, Augusta has not been able to live within its available resources. Every year since then, they have taken money away from you. Using 2008 as the base (the last time Augusta complied with the revenue sharing law) through to the current state budget (ending 6/30/15), Presque Isle has lost $6,067,892 in revenue sharing. This does not include another $477,304 of funding for Presque Isle that is at risk if the next $40 million is raided as well!
What is the point here? Revenue sharing represents less than 5 percent of all of the revenues that the state receives. This year’s city budget is impacted by a loss of 12.5 percent of total revenue — every cent of those reductions is the loss of revenue sharing (when compared to the 2008 amount). If the state takes another $477,304, the impact is another 5 percent. Your City Council is living with 13 percent less total revenues; why can’t the state figure out how to live with a 5 percent less?
Finally, your City Council members have not enjoyed changing your services. Neither have the staff or myself. The alternative was to raise your property taxes. So ask yourself again, what would you do with $6,067,892? Better yet, what do you think the City Council and I would have done if we had the $6,067,892 that the state of Maine has taken away since 2008 from you, the property tax payers of Presque Isle?
Jim Bennett is Presque Isle’s city manager. He can be reached at 760-2785 or via email at jbennett@presqueisleme.us .
