West Paris faces 38.8 percent budget hike

WEST PARIS — It’s that time of year again, when area towns which have stuck to a town meeting date in March begin to hammer out annual budgets for voter approval.

In West Paris, work gets under way in earnest this evening, with the first meeting of the budget committee. 

This seven-member citizen panel will review the 2007 budget proposal submitted by Town Manager Don Woodbury, starting at 5 p.m., Thursday, January 4, at the town office.

Woodbury’s initial spending plan, unveiled at the December 28 selectmen’s meeting, rang in at $961,665, or slightly less than the current $1,011,390 municipal budget.

“I was just looking at what was spent [in 2006] and being more realistic,” Woodbury explained, on Friday.  “Rather than raising money that doesn’t get used, I’m only asking for money I think we really need.”

Roughly $82,000 was freed up with the completion of Main Street construction this year.  Everywhere else, it was simply a matter of tightening the belt, says Woodbury, as he budgeted fewer dollars wherever sizable amounts looked to be rolling back into the general fund, untouched.

However, Woodbury’s first draft did not include some large items expected to be in the budget voters will debate come March.

“We have three major, big ticket items that we really don’t have a good plan on, yet” explained selectboard Chairman Bill Birney at last Thursday’s meeting.

Later in that session, selectmen settled on their one of these items, the town’s one major road project scheduled for this summer.  At an estimated cost of $150,900, they hope to have the last gravel section of Tuelltown Road paved.

Also, selectmen plan to ask voters for money to buy a new fire truck.  After several back and forth rounds with Fire Chief Norm St. Pierre, the current request looks to be $178,171 for a 2008 Kenworth pumper from Southern Fire Services in Jasper, GA. 

That engine is about $30,000 less than a different Kenworth model St. Pierre asked for three months ago, when he first broached the topic of buying a new fire engine.  Despite haggling down the price since then, selectman continue to push for a better deal.

“I’ve asked Norm [St. Pierre] to check on different chassis,” said Dennis Henderson.  “There’s quite a difference in price.”

When St. Pierre went before selectmen in late September, he asked for nearly $200,000 to modernize the town’s two-vehicle fleet.  He wanted to buy a new fire engine to replace a 1979 pumper that was acting up, plus spend another $22,000 to put an automatic transmission in the town’s newer, six-year-old engine, making it easier for firefighters to drive.

Selectmen briefly considered calling a special town meeting to approve the purchase, but held off.  Instead, they spent a total of about $15,000 to install a less complicated manual transmission in the new truck and to make repairs to the old one.

“Bill [Birney] figured out that we could fix the old truck for about what we would have spent in interest charges [between November and town meeting], had we gone out for a loan on a new one,” said Woodbury.  “This way, if we do decide to buy a new fire engine at town meeting, we still have the old one to use as a back-up.”

Whatever selectmen finally okay for a fire engine, it will need about $13,000 in equipment before it can be put into service.

“I think as a board, we’ve agreed that we do need a new truck,” said Birney.  “As to how to pay for it, I think we have several different options. 

“I would prefer to pay for it all right off through [property] taxes, or financing a minimum part of it,” he said.  “I just can’t see financing it for five or six years like we did the last one.  We were paying $13,000 a year in interest charges.  That’s really just a waste of taxpayer money.”

Birney also is championing the purchase of a new bucket loader for the town highway department.  Bids are due at the town office tomorrow, Friday, January 5, and are expected to come in at “about $100,000,” says Woodbury.

If all three “big ticket” additions are approved, West Paris’ 2007 budget will run to $1,403,736.  This means that as budget committee members sits down to work, they face a potential 38.8 percent increase in municipal spending.

Woodbury says the budget committee will probably hold “two or three” meetings, including at least one joint session with selectmen.

“It’s helpful if we can get them to come to an agreement, but it varies,” he said.  “Sometimes they come to an easy agreement, other times the warrant will have two different recommendations [on certain articles].”

One budget committee meeting will be set aside to meet with representatives from various social service agencies, which routinely ask for public funding.  However, some of those groups could be turned away empty handed this year.

“It’s my understanding that there was a vote taken some time ago at town meeting not to include any new requests,” explained Selectman Wade Rainey.

The budget committee must wrap up its work by February 10, when the annual town meeting warrant is scheduled to go to the printers. 

“We’ve all got a lot of homework to do in the next two to three weeks,” quipped Birney.

West Paris’ annual town meeting is set for 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 3, at the Agnes Gray Elementary School.

The West Paris budget committee members are: Lisa Henderson, Betty Jones, Sylvia McCann, Dale Piirainen, Ken Poland, Diane Rainey and George Twine.  A committee chairman will be chosen at tonight’s meeting.