Former councilor heads drive to shave budget

A few people disgruntled with the size of Bangor’s budget have gathered enough signatures to force the City Council to at least consider their proposal for reducing the budget.

In gathering signatures, former Councilor Arthur Tilley said people were so upset that they suggested he start a recall drive on the council.

The council may not have to put the proposal on the ballot or even act on it. City Solicitor Robert E. Miller said that he has informally told the council and the petitioners that he did not think the matter appropriate for the process.

Thursday morning Tilley turned over to City Clerk Russell McKenna petitions with nearly 650 signatures. McKenna must verify the signatures. City ordinances require at least 500 signatures.

Tilley, and Irene Estabrook and John Ryan, two backers of the failed effort to place a 3-percent cap on spending increases, led the effort of at least a dozen people to gather signatures.

Before he turned over the batch of petitions, Tilley told the assembled media that enough sheets were still in circulation to add as many as 150 signatures to the total.

The group’s goal is to trim $1.1 million from the combined school and city budgets. About $1 million of the total would come from the School Department.

The budget calls for spending $43 million. The group’s proposal would increase property taxes by 5 percent as opposed to the current increase of 8.3 percent.

The petitions may circulate until Aug. 16 but, Tilley said, they wanted to get the process started as soon as possible.

“It was very easy. Oh, it was so easy” to collect signatures, Estabrook said. “I filled eight sheets (120 signatures) in just an hour going door to door around Fern Street.”

Tilley said people frequently expressed dissatisfaction with the council, the city management, and the School Department. “And they said, `Why don’t you start a recall of the council?”‘ he said.

“I think you would have to have a strong basis for a recall,” he said. “I think you could build a fairly substantial case for several of the councilors. But I think you’d need one big item. And if we won a big approval in November and the council still took no action, I think that would be a good case.”

But the focus of their efforts was the petition and the overly large budget increases, Tilley said.

Among the comments he made in a written statement released Thursday are:

It is difficult to reconcile statements that budgets are bare bones when new people are being hired at $50,000-$70,000 a year for wages and fringes…

ufb There is disappointment in the quality of education and the escalatng cost of the School Department…

A good understanding of what is happening in Bangor seems to be prevalent. There is despair about “what do we have to do to straighten things out.” The existence of certain groups with funds to promote candidates for the City Council and the School Committee is making it impossible for a truly representative City Council or School Committee to be elected.

The best scenario would be for the council to embrace the proposal, Tilley said. But that is unlikely, so he would hope to see it put to a binding vote of the people.