| Joanne Cole |
New Gloucester’s Annual Town Meeting convenes Monday, May 1, at 7 p.m. at Memorial School, 86 Intervale Road. Voters will consider proposed FY24 municipal operating budgets, capital projects and payments into capital reserve accounts, revenues and more.
Voter check-in begins at 6:30 p.m. Residents can register to vote at the meeting.
The full May 1 meeting warrant with all the items to be voted on can be reviewed at this link. In addition, informational booklets with explanatory details will be available at the meeting as well as at Town Hall. Please note that the Town Hall service window closes at lunchtime and will close early at 5 p.m. on May 1 so that staff can prepare for Town Meeting.
Budget overview. Three elements make up the overall budget and the town’s resulting property tax rate: the municipal budget (town operations and commitments), New Gloucester’s share of the Cumberland County budget, and the MSAD 15 school budget.
The MSAD 15 FY24 budget, the largest of the three, has been approved by the school board but won’t be final until voters weigh in. As it stands, the schools budget reflects total expenditures of $31,276,816, an increase of 5.98 percent over the current year. After revenues are taken into account, New Gloucester’s share would be $6,169,685, up $433,504. Gray’s share would be $11,981,537, an increase of $1,087,921. Again, however, the numbers are not yet final.
The next step in the schools’ budget process will be the District’s Town Meeting/Budget Validation on May 18 at GNG High School in Gray. Once the MSAD 15 budget is final final, a firmer tax rate can be calculated.
On the county side, as a result of Cumberland County’s moving from calendar-year to fiscal-year accounting, a one-time six-month assessment is due. In Article 34 of the May 1 town meeting warrant, the Select Board proposes to use $187,928 from the Undesignated Fund Balance to take care of this additional charge.
New Gloucester’s proposed municipal budget–town operations, capital expenditures, paving, revenues and more–is what will go before voters at Town Meeting.
Municipal budget items. This year, the municipal budget has few big-ticket purchases or major new building projects. Instead, it reflects increases in compensation for town employees, modest additions in staffing, and down payments toward long-term capital projects. A recap follows:
— A 4.5 percent cost-of-living increase in compensation for town employees is woven throughout departments’ budgets across multiple warrant articles. Increases above that are proposed to support recruitment and retention of Fire Rescue personnel (Article 5).
— Capital spending proposals include deposits into long-term reserves for Public Works vehicles and equipment, Fire Rescue capital needs, Transfer Station safety improvements, upgrades/expansion to Town Hall and the Town Hall Complex, and for Parks & Recreation to use toward permanent toilet facilities at the Fairgrounds and storage (Articles 15-21).
— Proposed capital projects include $60,000 for a new Fire Rescue command vehicle (Article 22) and use of $20,236 from reserves to help purchase a Pak-Mor trailer/compactor for the Transfer Station (Article 23). Bids for the trailer/compactor came in $20,000 over what had been budgeted.
— Funding for the Cemetery Association for a proposed cemetery expansion project is another capital project (Article 24). The Select Board recommends $50,500 from FY 23 taxation for surveys, planning and preliminary work, while the Budget Committee recommends funding the Cemetery Association’s full $160,000 project request and using FY23 and FY24 taxation.
— Also proposed are painting/staining and other work on buildings in the Town Hall Complex (Article 25). The Select Board and Budget Committee differ over the amounts and sources of funding for that work.
— A slate of $230,000 in spending from the town’s allotment of American Rescue Plan Act funds is proposed. ARPA expenditures would support the Fairgrounds toilet project and Town Hall upgrades/expansion, as well as broadband expansion and safety striping on stop signs (Article 31).
— For paving/chip sealing of town roads and associated work, the Select Board has proposed $477,899 (the sum includes using $100,000 in TIF funds for Morse Road). The Budget Committee recommended $377,899 (Article 14).
No new or revised ordinances. In a departure from recent years, there are no new or revised ordinances (town laws) to consider at Town Meeting.
There’s more on the meeting warrant than this recap can suggest – and there’s more to Town Meeting than a succession of votes. Join your New Gloucester neighbors Monday evening May 1 at Memorial School to participate.
