Bangor adopts $78.7M budget

BANGOR – In a series of nine separate resolves Monday night, city councilors unanimously adopted a $78.7 million operating budget for municipal and school operations in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The budget will result in a tax rate of $19.40 per $1,000 in property valuation, a decrease of $1 per $1,000 from this year.

The new gross municipal budget of $40.6 million reflects a 5.8 percent increase from this year. The $38 million education budget is up 4.9 percent.

In both cases, increased revenues – tax and nontax revenues – will offset the budget increases, according to city budget documents. And as was the case last year, councilors voted to exceed state budget caps for municipal and school needs.

Last year, city councilors authorized an additional $416,727 in local funds to cover school extra- and co-curricular activities, including reading and math recovery, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, staff development, and elementary and middle school gifted and talented programming.

School officials said at the time that the state’s Essential Services and Programs funding formula did not fully cover the cost for providing those services.

This year, school officials sought and received an additional $1,617,071.

Of the total request, $415,962 is earmarked for teachers’ salaries, $272,645 for student transportation, $838,464 would go toward extra- and co-curricular programs, and $90,000 toward food services, according to a proposed council order to that end.

On the municipal side, city officials authorized an override of LD 1, a statewide property tax reform initiative that took effect last year. LD 1 aims to ease the local cost burden on the school side of the ledger by providing more state money while curbing municipalities’ ability to increase taxes.

But it also requires municipalities to offset “net new state funding” by reducing the maximum allowable tax levy. The maximum allowable tax levy, however, can be exceeded if approved by a majority vote of city councilors.

Last year, councilors voted to increase the city’s total tax levy by $278,205, or the amount that general assistance reimbursement from the state was projected to receive in excess of the state-mandated growth limit.

Since then, Maine lawmakers have exempted general assistance increases from the equation. This year, the problem has to do with local road assistance.

Bangor is set to receive $60,720 over the growth cap through payments from the Urban-Rural Initiative, a state program formerly known as local road assistance.