Piscataquis County budget hearings scheduled

DOVER-FOXCROFT – The Piscataquis County budget advisory committee will hold its final meeting tonight on the 2008 proposed spending plans for the county and Unorganized Territory.

The public hearing on the budgets will then be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, in the Piscataquis County Courthouse. Typically, the public hearing is held on the last Monday of the month, but this year the meeting was delayed when bad weather forced the cancellation of the budget committee’s meeting last Tuesday.

The proposed county budget of $4.5 million is up from $4.4 million last year, and reflects about a 1.55 percent increase in spending, according to County Manager Mike Henderson. Last year’s budget included the final debt payment on the jail bond.

“I don’t know that we could do much better considering the rising costs of fuel and anything associated with it,” Henderson said Friday. “We’ve essentially kept it flat.”

The proposed Unorganized Territory budget, which will be distributed for review tonight, is $1.8 million, up from nearly $1.3 million in 2007. The UT budget includes $190,000 for construction of a sand-salt storage facility in the Elliotsville or Blanchard areas.

Thus far, the budget committee has recommended only a few revisions in the proposed county budget. While the county’s auditor had recommended using $65,000 from surplus to restore the contingency account to $100,000, the budget committee believes that the contingency account should be reduced to $50,000 and that an operational reserve account of $50,000 should be added to the budget.

The county is expected to end the year with more than $1 million in surplus. By law, the county can keep $880,000 in surplus and the excess must be used to restore contingency funds or reduce the tax commitment, according to Henderson.

While the proposed budget does not have any new positions, it does include a 3 percent cost-of-living increase for all employees and step increases for qualified employees.

The proposed budget also includes funds to build capital accounts, including $15,000 to eventually upgrade an emergency telecommunications tower on Big Moose Mountain.

Program grants in the budget which are recommended by the budget committee for funding include: WomanCare, Heart of Maine, Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce, Piscataquis Chamber of Commerce, the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council, University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Piscataquis County Soil and Water, Eastern Maine Development Corp., Penquis (formerly Penquis CAP), and Eastern Agency on Aging.