HOULTON – Though very few people showed up at the town’s tax cap forum on Monday evening, and no one phoned or e-mailed questions to be answered at the meeting, town officials still hope that people are listening.

“The purpose of this forum is to pass information on to the voters,” interim Town Manager Phil McCarthy said at the meeting. “I have confidence in the citizens of Houlton.”

Monday evening’s forum came on the heels of the town forming a tax cap council to discuss the potential impact of the 1 percent tax cap referendum on the municipality.

The so-called Palesky tax cap, named after tax activist Carol Palesky of Topsham, would scale back assessed property values to their 1996-97 level and cap property taxes at $10 per $1,000 of valuation if approved by voters in November.

It also would limit assessments to an increase of 2 percent a year while a property remains in a family. One component includes a rollback of property values to 1996 levels, which state supreme court justices and the state attorney general have advised is unconstitutional.

The forum was broadcast on the town’s public access channel, but fewer than eight people showed up at the event on Monday evening.

Houlton stands to lose more than $2.7 million in revenue if the cap passes, and McCarthy explained that the town would have to increase revenues or reduce expenses to make up for the shortfall.

The manager noted that the town could possibly fill the void by reducing and eliminating essential and nonessential services, regionalizing services, and increasing the nonproperty tax revenues.

McCarthy noted that even if the town cut the number of full-time municipal positions in half, down to 26, officials would still need to cut $1.3 million out of the budget to meet the mandates of the tax cap.

Mitch Holmes, a tax committee member who has spoken out strongly against the cap, reminded the public that the referendum would not just affect municipal staff if voters approved it.

“The little guy who doesn’t think that this is going to affect him better look at his weekly paycheck,” he urged. Holmes noted a study that suggests that the state could raise both the income or sales tax if the referendum passes.

“If the income tax goes up to 64 percent like they are projecting,” he said, “it could affect [a person’s] paycheck by $20 to $30 per week.”

Few proponents of the measure have spoken out publicly at town meetings. On Monday evening, only one resident said that she approved of the cap. Nancy Bell said that she supported the measure, noting that government spending has gotten out of hand.

The tax cap committee anticipates distributing additional information about the referendum before Election Day.