Veazie taxes likely to see little change Town officials optimistic about stability

VEAZIE – Initial budget projections for both the town and school show little increase to property-tax payers for the coming year.

“Right now, it’s just looking like it might be that if there’s increased community value, the mill rate might not even change,” Town Manager Bill Reed said Tuesday.

The town’s tax assessor is in the midst of completing the city’s valuation, and if that amount increases, the tax rate may not go up at all.

“The school just outlined that their budget increase this year is only 4.5 percent,” Reed said. “That is going to be very palatable for us.”

Last year’s mill rate was $18.30 per $1,000 of valuation, and the ballpark figure that Reed is looking at for next year is $18.50.

The municipal budget currently is estimated to have an increase of 3.5 percent, but once the town’s revenue is subtracted the actual dollar increase is about $40,000.

On the school side, the increase will be about $23,000 once the revenue is figured in.

“We’re actually, I think, in pretty good shape considering the challenges we had last year with the loss of tuition revenue,” Superintendent Kelly Clenchy said Tuesday. “When you look at our revenue and carryover funds, we’re in a pretty good spot.”

Last year, the school department was faced with increased fixed costs in high school tuition, fuel and contractual salary increases, but made significant cuts to reduce the impact on taxpayers.

“I’m hoping our tuition enrollment is stabilized and I really think it is,” Clenchy said.

In an effort to explain school funding to the council, management systems specialist Jim Rier from the state Department of Education, attended Monday night’s council meeting.

“He talked about how Veazie, under the new funding formula of the [Essential Programs and Services], as being a smaller school we probably don’t feel like we’re getting our share [of funds],” Reed said.

Rier explained the funding formula and noted that it should be used as a measuring tool to see if the programs being offered match the needs of the community.

“We lost a lot of funding from the change from the old program to the new program,” Reed said.

In the future, as the funding comes back up and the state provides more money, Reed said the school likely will see an improvement.