Brewer budget to be released June 9

BREWER – With only one month before the city budget needs to be finished, figures still are not complete or available to the public.

But that is expected to change by next week, leaving local residents only three weeks to review the inch-thick preliminary document.

City officials have changed the way they’re handling the budget process from previous years.

“We would hope to have the final city budget available to the council by June 9,” City Manager Steve Bost said Wednesday.

Once the draft budget is given to city councilors, it also will be made available to the public for review, he said.

Sometime later in the month, at a date and time yet to be determined, a special council meeting and budget hearing will be held for the board to consider and ratify the budget, Bost added.

In previous years, residents were presented the budget at a joint meeting of the council and school board, typically held in May.

Maternity leave for Karen Fussell, the city’s finance director, postponed the budget process this year, but city and school officials have met individually several times over the last month with city leaders to discuss the budget, she said.

“I take all responsibility for this,” Fussell said Wednesday, adding that an ongoing audit of the city is also delaying the budget process.

“All the meetings we’ve had with council are what we’ve done in prior years,” she added later. “There is a lot to it. Council has been in the loop, but we don’t have it in a form that’s presentable to the public.”

The annual joint meeting between the Brewer School Committee and City Council, held in May last year, was canceled this year.

“That’s a tradition, not a requirement,” Fussell said about the joint meeting. “This year, we’ve decided to forego that.”

The school committee was first briefed on its 2006-07 draft budget in March and has spent the last couple of months fine-tuning the figures.

“Our school board will approve our budget at its June meeting on June 12,” Superintendent Daniel Lee said Wednesday. “If they approve it, they’ll forward it to the city for their approval.”

The most recent figures will be slightly different from the approximately $15.9 million draft school budget presented in May and reflect minor changes made in the last month, Lee said. Debt service for the new science wing at Brewer High School, changes in tuition rates this year and renegotiated teacher contracts, which expire in August, are all part in the coming budget, the superintendent said.

“Those are large factors that are looming over us,” Lee said. “I’m confident the budget we present [June 12] will be satisfactory.”

While no figures are available, the city is projecting good news for taxpayers, Bost said.

“We’re anticipating a substantial reduction in the mill rate,” he said.

Fussell concurred adding, “we’re not expecting anything really dramatic,” such as big increases in revenues or expenses. She did say there are typical increases for fuel, debt service and cost of living allowances.

While the schedule to present the budget to the public has been delayed this year, it’s not abnormal, Bost said.

“It’s not unusual to have a meeting late in June” to finish the budget, he said. “I don’t think the timing of this is all that unusual.”