GREENVILLE – This town could potentially lose a community staple if Maine residents adopt the Palesky tax cap in November.

Because of the town’s isolation, its high state valuation and declining school enrollment, it’s likely that both Greenville middle and high schools would be forced to close because of a lack of funds, according to school and municipal officials.

Property taxes would be lowered under the Palesky tax cap program, but it would come at the expense of services, Greenville Superintendent Steven Pound said Friday.

“The loss here is not going to just affect municipal services such as police, fire and garbage collection,” Pound said. “It’s going to drastically affect our schools and how we deliver education.

“It’s quite possible many of students will not be educated in our community,” he warned.

The Palesky tax cap proposal would cap property taxes at $10 per $1,000 of assessed property valuation, based on 1996-97 values. It also would limit assessment increases to 2 percent a year while the property’s ownership remains in a family.

Based on 2003 assessed values and the 2004 municipal school budget, the Greenville schools would lose about 56 percent of its funding under the tax cap, and the town would lose about 55 percent of its current budget, according to Greenville Town Manager John Simko.

Greenville School Department receives very little state aid for education because of a small student population, about 270, and its high state valuation. Yet, unlike school districts elsewhere in Piscataquis County, the schools are funded primarily by the town of Greenville.

Proponents of the tax cap say municipal officials are scaring Maine voters into defeating the measure by saying that fire departments, schools and police programs will be slashed or eliminated under the measure.

“‘I think it’s too bad that the experts who run our government at all levels have concluded that this is the only solution to lowering people’s property taxes,” Phil Harriman, a Portland small business owner and member of Tax Cap YES!, said Thursday.

“I would hope the experts who run local, county and state government would recognize Maine people are hurting.”

Pound and Simko said there are so many variables in how school financing could be disbursed under the Palesky tax cap that they want constituents to know the worst case scenario.

“It’s like a moving target,” Pound said.

“I don’t want people to think I’m crying wolf, there’s still factors to consider, but the future for education being delivered in our community as in the past will be bleak,” Pound said. “If you loose forty to fifty percent of your revenue, you don’t have much of a choice.”

If the middle and high schools were closed, the town would have to tuition about 175 pupils to another school, the closest of which is SAD 4 in Guilford about 26 miles away, according to Pound. The Greenville Elementary School likely would remain open. Beaver Cove and Shirley, which tuition pupils to Greenville, would need to find their own solution.

But Pound and Simko wonder how surrounding communities would be in a position to take additional students since they too, would be affected by the Palesky tax cap.

“Who’s going to be sending who to who?” Pound asked.

That is a reasonable question, according to SAD 4 Superintendent Paul Stearns. He expects that if the Palesky tax cap program is approved, his district also will be subjected to financial losses.

“We would have similar difficulties also,” he said Friday.

Without the local schools, the community would change very drastically, according to Simko. About 50 full-time and 20 part-time jobs throughout the town likely would be lost and the ripple effect would leave no town department or service untouched from the local hospital to the Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce, he said.

Because of the region’s geographic isolation, the hospital has difficulty recruiting professionals and having no school in the community would make that difficulty even greater, according to Geno Murray, chief executive officer at Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital and Nursing Home.

The Palesky tax cap is very concerning, he said Friday. Fifty-five of the hospital employees have a total of 93 children enrolled in Greenville schools, he said. In addition, hospital employees have spouses who work in the schools.

Murray predicted the hospital would see an out-migration out of patients, professionals and employees.

Pound, who also serves on the hospital board and the town’s economic development committee, said that without those three entities – town, school and hospital – the vitality of the region would be compromised.

“If implemented, this tax cap initiative would make Greenville a place where current residents do no want to live,” Simko predicted.