SCARBOROUGH – A public hearing on Scarborough’s 2011-12 municipal budget
was scheduled for Wednesday, April 27, after the deadline for this week’s
Current. However, at the April 20 council meeting, Councilor Michael Wood,
speaking for the finance committee, said both school and town budgets had been
cut by “equally, in the $250,000 range.”
Wood also said the finance committee has recommended that
all requests from nonprofit agencies be rebuffed, saving “about $18,000.”
As detailed in the agenda for the April 27 hearing, the
municipal budget will ring in at $27,681,770 – a 1.89 percent increase over
current spending.
The largest increase (16.59 percent) is in debt service,
which jumps from $4.25 million to $4.96 million. Other increases are in fire
protection (up 3.46 percent, to $3.62 million), policing (up 3.46 percent, to
$6.41 million) and community services (up 1.6 percent, to $2.15 million).
The school budget is slated to go up 2.58 percent, to
$35,877,462. However, the share to be paid out of local property taxes is
proposed at a 5.04 percent hike, from $27.98 million to $29.39 million.
The $1.98 million tax to be paid to Cumberland County is up
2.7 percent.
According to Wood, the hit to the tax rate – which stood at
3.1 percent in the original budget draft – was hovering around 2.7 percent as
of April 20, “on current recommendations.”
“I think I can speak for the finance committee as a whole in
that they would really like to see that reduced further,” said Wood. “A tax rate increase at 2 percent, or
less, is what we are hoping to achieve.”
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