Orland officials pan tax-cap plan Selectmen paint bleak picture for schools, town if Palesky initiative passes

ORLAND – The proposed tax-cap referendum is a “meat-ax” approach to tax reform that would devastate the town.

That was the message from town officials this week at an informational meeting on the Palesky initiative.

If it passes, the tax-cap referendum would cap property taxes at 1 percent of their assessed value and roll back property values to their 1996 levels. In Orland, that would reduce the town’s property tax revenues by approximately 44 percent, according to Selectman Wayne Ames.

“This meat-ax approach can totally devastate a town’s budget,” Ames told the handful of residents who attended Tuesday night’s meeting.

All areas of the municipal and school budgets would be cut if the Palesky bill is enacted as proposed. The town would have to cut funding to all special interest groups ranging from the Red Cross to the Bucksport Regional Health Center, and all town parks and recreation programs, such as the historical society, library, Friends of Fort Knox and the Orland Field Day.

The Fire Department budget would have to be cut to just $9,000.

“Basically, that’s heat, lights and gasoline,” Ames said.

It’s also possible that fire victims could be assessed suppression costs, he said.

Road improvements, building maintenance and capital improvement funding would all be cut from the municipal budget.

The town would still have to pay county tax and debt service and would continue to pay on existing contracts, Ames said. The town now contracts snow plowing, dispatching and solid waste disposal, he said.

“We can fund those contracts until they run out,” he said. “We don’t know what will take place after that.”

Despite those projected cuts, Ames said the worst effect of the tax cap is that it takes away local control of the town’s spending and gives it to someone else.

“This bill is saying that you don’t have the skill and knowledge to govern yourselves, so someone else is going to do it for you,” he said.

A 44 percent cut in revenues would remove $714,593 from the school budget based on this year’s budget, according to Superintendent Allan Snell.

Because the town has no high school and tuitions students to area high schools, the total reduction would have to come from the kindergarten through eighth-grade budget, Snell said.

That would likely force the school to cut six classroom teachers and reduce or eliminate guidance personnel. It would also threaten art, music, speech and physical education posts, as well as a technology consultant, a special education teacher, a librarian, six ed-techs and a part-time custodian.

It also would eliminate all extracurricular activities.

The central office staff would cut one part-time secretary and reduce the superintendent’s time to three days per week from four.

The school district might consider negotiating an exclusive contract with one high school in an effort to reduce tuition fees and may have to consider eliminating student transportation.

“The school committee would have to make the final decisions, but these are the kinds of reductions that would have to be considered,” Snell said. “We would be on a skeleton crew and class sizes would zoom up.”

Despite the predicted impacts, there was some sympathy for the tax cap expressed at the meeting.

Resident Dick Berry argued that the property tax is the most unfair of taxes since it is not based on ability to pay or on services received. While he agreed that the Palesky proposal might be a “shock treatment,” approval might be a way to send a message to Augusta that the Legislature needs to take some substantial action on tax reform.

“If we don’t approve this, what incentive will they have?” he asked.

Ames acknowledged that taxpayers are frustrated, but said the Palesky bill was the wrong way to resolve the property tax issue. Kent Price, the Democratic candidate for the House seat in District 41, pointed out that legislators had addressed the issue during the last session but had not been able to agree on a solution.

Price said voting for Palesky may send a message that legislators already have received, and that it may be firing a shot in the wrong direction.

“You’re firing at Augusta, but you’re going to hit Orland,” he said. “The pain is going to be felt here, not Augusta.”