BELFAST – Driven by a new communications center and across-the-board pay increases, the Waldo County budget for the coming year will have a hefty increase over last year’s spending package.

Despite the 17 percent increase, the county budget committee gave unanimous approval to the $3.4 million appropriation following a public presentation of the budget document Wednesday night. It took the seven voting members present less than 15 minutes to approve the spending guidelines for the county’s 2001 fiscal year.

The $3,433,408 represents an increase of $678,420 over the $2,754,988 raised by the committee last year.

The increase is fueled in most part by bond payments on the new $600,000 communications center and pay-raise recommendations made by the county commissioners.

The new regional communications center will require the addition of four full-time dispatchers from the city of Belfast. Belfast will relinquish its dispatching to the regional center when it opens in early summer. As a result, the projected budget for the communications center for this year is $447,374, compared to the $212,717 budgeted last year.

The communications center will be equipped with the latest state-of-the-art equipment and will be capable of handling all of the county’s E-911 calls and other emergency services. Groundbreaking took place this month and the center is scheduled to be running by midsummer. The center’s construction bond payment adds another $93,750 to the annual cost of its operation.

The approved budget also establishes that all nonsupervisory employees will receive a 35-cent per hour pay raise and all supervisory employees will be granted a 75-cent per hour raise. The commissioners based their wage package on the results of a study conducted by incoming commissioners John Hyk of Prospect and Jethro Pease of Morrill.

Because their election was assured long before November [both ran unopposed], Hyk and Pease began working on their pay study last summer. Their comparison with other counties found that Waldo County employees were among the lowest paid in the state. The low wages were particularly harmful to the sheriff’s department and county jail as both institutions experienced the loss of county-trained employees to similar but higher-paying jobs in other counties.

“It was long overdue,” Hyk said Thursday of the pay adjustment. “How can you keep experienced people working for you if you don’t pay them?”

Before voting on the issue, Mark Schnur, Islesboro’s representative to the budget committee, questioned the cost of the pay raises but said he was not prepared to vote against the proposal. Schnur estimated the raises would cost taxpayers more than $35,000.

The other major expenditures in the coming year’s budget are the sheriff’s department, county jail and employee benefits. It will cost the county $600,565 for benefits, while the jail will cost $733,245 and the sheriff’s patrol $665,171.

Other accounts approved by the budget committee include $52,649 for the District Court; $56,135 for the Superior Court; $158,232 for the probate court; $64,925 for emergency management; $79,442 for the district attorney; $123,820 for the county commissioners; $21,037 for the county treasurer; $185,285 for the register of deeds; $125,700 for debt service; $48,000 for interest; $43,643 for cooperative extension; $18,475 for soil conservation; $5,500 for promotion; and $4,200 for auditing.

The budget committee also appropriated funds for the following reserve accounts: District Court, $7,000; Superior Court, $28,246; employment security, $6,000; equipment, $5,000; jail maintenance, $18,299; renovation reserve for register of probate and deeds and district attorney, $104,000; and county bridge reserve, $16,366.

Hyk, who along with Pease will take office Jan. 1, commended the budget committee for its recognition of the county’s needs and attention to the bottom line.

“I think that the budget committee was very cooperative and I don’t have a single problem with what they did,” Hyk said. “I feel that this budget is adequate and I feel that the county commissioners and the budget committee worked extremely well. We all know that the county has a number of things that have to be done, and they have to be done by the numbers in a professional way.”