BAILEYVILLE – Voters took about 15 minutes at the annual town meeting Wednesday to approve a $4.55 million school budget – but nearly an hour to approve the town budget.

Last year, the total school budget was $4.6 million. This year’s proposed budget is $4.55 million, down $88,000 from last year. The proposed local share is $2.93 million, about $287,000 less than last year, according to school officials.

The combined town-school budget is about $600,000 less than last year.

Although the overall numbers are down, voters did linger over a special warrant article that asked them to approve a multimillion-dollar capital project to upgrade the town’s sanitary and storm water collection systems. According to the warrant article, the total town indebtedness will be $3.7 million in principal and interest.

The mill town faces many unknowns including how to pay sewer fees now that Domtar Inc. has downsized. Last year the company announced it was closing down its paper machine, tossing 150 workers out of work. The company retained the pulp side of its business and the nearly 300 employees who operate that facility.

But with the loss of half of its business, the mill is no longer paying 71 cents on every dollar spent by the town. That means property tax payers will have to pick up more of the costs.

Interim Town Manager Dorothy Johnson said the town still does not know what the increase in the tax rate will be. “We won’t know exactly until we go through everything, including what we are getting from the state, because state revenues are unknown and we have a lot of things to figure in,” she said.

The town’s mill rate is 16.1, she said.

“When we figured it the first time, it went up to 19.9, but we have cut some more and the school has been able to cut unused revenues that they had set aside, so we’re hoping that 2 mills will be the top for the school and municipal budget,” she said.

On a $100,000 house, Johnson said, the increase to the taxpayers could be around $200.

On top of the mill rate increase, Baileyville residents also will pay a sewer fee for the first time. Johnson said the cost would depend upon usage. Johnson said her cost will be around $350 a year, while a family household will be more. She said that Councilor Derek Howard’s cost will be around $690 a year.

“The laundromat and carwash is going to be more than that,” she added.

Johnson said the Maine Bond Bank demanded the fees. “The Maine Bond Bank would not approve our loan for the reconstruction of the sewer treatment plant and the I & I [inflow and infiltration] that is going on unless we put in sewer rates because they don’t consider Domtar a viable big taxpayer [anymore],” she said.

The sewer rate goes into effect on July 1.

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