February 13, 2025
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Council nears end of budget review Requests for additional funding for library, visitors bureau shelved

BANGOR – City councilors are nearing the end of their department-by-department review of a proposed city budget.

City officials this year are faced with a proposed $85.7 million budget for municipal and school operations in the fiscal year that starts on July 1.

Of that total, nearly $44.3 million is proposed for municipal expenses, and $41.4 million is earmarked for the School Department, according to budget documents prepared by City Manager Edward Barrett, Superintendent Robert Ervin and their respective finance directors.

If the budget is adopted as is, the city’s property tax rate would increase from $18.80 per $1,000 in valuation to $19.23 per $1,000, an increase of 2.3 percent.

That could change as councilors delve deeper into the budgeting process.

The councilors’ budget review began April 30 with the first of a series of workshops that is expected to continue into the last week of May.

Their review work began winding down with back-to-back workshops Wednesday and Thursday nights, when they looked at enterprise funds, or those that are theoretically self-supporting, and local nonprofits that depend on the city for funding, which took up the bulk of Thursday’s session.

Two of the nonprofits, the Bangor Public Library and the Greater Bangor Convention & Visitors Bureau, attended Thursday’s workshop to make a pitch for increased city funding.

Councilors, who have been agonizing over how to pay for new sidewalks, street paving, heating fuel, diesel and other basics, made no changes.

The library was first up. The city has budgeted $1,501,491 for library operations, or the same it received this year. The library’s director and board, however, asked for about $62,000 more than that.

“We’ve cut everything to the bone as much as we can,” library Director Barbara McDade said.

Board member Frank Bragg added that the library has been hard-pressed to keep its book collection current because its budget for new books has been running out as much as two months before the end of each fiscal year.

Security also is a concern, given the size of the library’s staff. The library’s stacks used to be accessed on a permit-only basis. Since the library expanded several years ago, its stacks now are open to the public and are being frequented by people whom some patrons find intimidating. Some staff worry that drug transactions are taking place in the stacks.

The convention bureau is slated to receive about $71,000 next year, or 15 percent less than this year. It was among the groups subject to the annual 15 percent across-the-board reductions the councilors began imposing in 2005 to wean “outside” groups off city assistance, but so far has largely managed to escape the knife.

After listing the business the CVB brings to the city and the work it does to welcome such visitors as the cruise ship passengers who come to the waterfront every summer, CVB board Chairman James Gerity and new Executive Director Kerrie Tripp said the CVB will become increasingly important as the city gears up to build a new arena at Bass Park.

Despite the pleas, councilors did not add the requests to the funding issues they want to consider.


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