D-F officials propose $5.4M 2019-20 budget

DOVER-FOXCROFT — On Saturday, April 27 residents will gather in the gymnasium at the Morton Avenue Municipal Building at 9 a.m. to vote on a nine-article warrant during the annual town meeting. Items approved on April 27 go to a referendum ballot on Tuesday, June 11.

During a public hearing hosted by the selectmen and the budget advisory committee on March 27 at the town office, a proposed $5,470,475 municipal budget for 2019-20 was presented. This gross figure represents a $451,120 increase (8.99 percent) from the current fiscal year.

The approximate $5.4 million would be offset by just under $2.56 million in revenues, an amount up by $354,360 or 16.07 percent from the figure for 2018-19. The result would be a net amount of $2,911,010 to be raised through property taxes, an increase of $96,760 or 3.44 percent.

Town Manager Jack Clukey said the April 27 warrant will include articles on the municipal budget as well as several non-monetary items.

“There’s a pretty big difference in appropriations and some pretty big differences in revenues,” he said about the respective approximate 9 and 16 percent increases from 2018-19.

Clukey said the proposed municipal spending plan includes a little more than $160,000 to pay off some leases. “That’s an expense we didn’t have last year,” he said. “But we’re using money we already have,” meaning these lease payments are not resulting in a net increase to the budget being brought to the town meeting on the last Saturday of April.

“The difference in the amount to raise in this budget is 3.44 percent,” Clukey said about the $96,760 increase to $2.9 million-plus.

“We are trying to offer up a mill rate projection but we really can’t do that at this point because we’re waiting on the valuation, which should be finished at the end of June,” the town manager said.

Clukey estimated the 2018-19 municipal budget would lead to a $.3 mill increase with another $.1 mill rise stemming from the town’s share of the Piscataquis County budget. The current mill rate is $21.20 per $1,000 in assessed property, which also is comprised of funding the RSU 68 budget and several other expenses including the TIF financing plan and overlay.

“It’s a 1.86 percent tax increase based on the current numbers,” Clukey said.

On April 27 residents will be voting on the appropriation of net proceeds from the sale of tax-acquired property as well as to approve the selectmen’s order of discontinuance of a public easement associated with a portion of the former Dawes Road extending south from the Department of Conservation trail to Route 15. The discontinued portion is about .25 miles long.

Clukey said in 1982 the town voted to discontinue a portion of the Dawes Road but in doing so retained a public easement over the travelway. In the years since Foxcroft Academy athletic fields have been built over the fourth of a mile stretch from the trail to West Main Street. Another path connects Route 15 to the trail system.

“That’s what that is and tonight we need to authorize the order of discontinuance,” Clukey said. He said a public hearing will be held on Monday, April 8 as part of the next selectmen’s meeting.

The only abutters to the public easement are Foxcroft Academy, A.E. Robinson and the Department of Conservation.

On the June 11 referendum Dover-Foxcroft residents will vote on a pair of positions, for terms of three years apiece, for both the select and school boards. The referendum will include a three-year position on the HAD 4 board of directors as well as another one-year seat for the hospital group and a one-year term on the Thompson Free Library Executive Committee. Nomination papers are available at the town office and the deadline for filing is 4 p.m. on Monday, April 29.