County budgets will be ready to go by year’s end

DOVER-FOXCROFT — Just over a week after the annual public hearing on the Piscataquis County and Unorganized Territory (UT) budgets, the county commissioners are nearing a final decision on the two spending plans.
“After the public hearing I didn’t hear anything that the numbers should change,” Interim County Manager Tom Lizotte said during a Dec. 6 meeting.
The total proposed county budget is $4,038,985, just over $20,760 or 0.52 percent more than in 2016, and the UT spending plan for the 2017-18 fiscal year is a little more than $1,541,000 (a $69,215 or 4.7 percent increase). The tax committment for the 17 towns and two plantations in Piscataquis County for 2017 is a little over $2,287,000, a decrease of $52,171 (2.23 percent).
With the UT budget rising, largely in part from the county continuing with its 10-year paving plan which includes $180,000 budgeted for 1.76 miles of roads in Elliottsville, the commissioners needed to approve an LD1 property tax growth factor override for 2017-18. Lizotte said the UT finances will be more than the 1.2 percent LD1 property tax growth factor.
“We need to have that on the record and it’s probably better to do that today than on the 20th,” Lizotte said, as the commissioners are scheduled to formally sign both financial plans at the Dec. 20 meeting.
During the budget discussions, county officials and the budget advisory committee considered the addition of a full-time investigator for the district attorney’s office but opted to keep the position on a part-time basis.
Corina Tibbetts of the district attorney’s office said the department has been awarded a federal grant to make the investigator full-time next year. “It’s one year, it’s Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 of next year,” she said.
The county would fund $31,264 to go along with the $63,475 grant, and about $25,000 is already earmarked for the investigator position. Tibbetts said the department could come up with the remaining monies.
“It sounds like it will have no net effect to the budget, the bottom line,” County Treasurer Johanna Greenfield said.
“That’s the only new development between the public hearing and today,” Lizotte said. “We will prepare a slightly revised budget for your meeting on Dec. 20.”
In other business, Lizotte reported that he is working on assembling a task force to examine all aspects of law enforcement in the county. He said Jane Conroy, a member of the Dover-Foxcroft selectboard and the county budget advisory committee, will serve as a citizen at large on the task force, and Piscataquis Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Bob Young will represent county law enforcement.
Other task force members will be Piscataquis County Emergency Management Agency Director Tom Capraro, Brownville Town Manager Kathy White and Brownville Police Chief Nick Clukey, Milo Town Manager/Police Chief Damien Pickel, Dover-Foxcroft Town Manager Jack Clukey (a representative of the town’s police department is to be determined), Greenville Town Manager Jesse Crandall and potentially Greenville Police Chief Jeff Pomerleau.
The group may have one more citizen and the suggestion of having a representative from the district attorney’s office was made.
Lizotte said the question of why such as task force is being convened has been brought up. “The sheriff’s department did not propose this, it came out of the budget committee,” he said, saying the group will have no predetermined outcomes about what the future of law enforcement services in the region could look like.