City Council - Regular Meeting

about the last when you want to sell their trucks in. Good evening everyone. Want to call this meeting to order, please. Item two is adjustments to the agenda. I do have a couple of adjustments. Um I've had two requests for appointments since we put out the agenda. So I was going to ask that we add um 6B1, appointment of Deb Pigeon to Energy Committee. That would come right after Kieran Weston. That's what I mean by B1 and 6B2, appointment of Russell McCrae to the budget committee. And I will ask you to remove uh 7A as I do not have minutes from October ready for approval.

Make that motion. Do we have second? I'm sorry. I'll second it. We have a motion moved and seconded. Uh there was some discussion earlier about does the appointments need to be done at this meeting the two new names and wait till next because we're getting this right now. We haven't even had a chance to review this. That's why it came to me late. I said I would I would ask it if you would choose not to bring it on or simply talk about it and not approve it. It's obviously your call.

We could put them on next month's agenda. There's no urgency. Budget committee is not meeting as of yet. And the other committee is the um energy. Uh they had a meeting today. So I I don't if you if you prefer to um um if you prefer to to not uh amend to not make that change, you can amend your motion and just remove 7A. That's your fault. I don't have a strong 7A or 7A to remove 7A which is uh minutes of previous meetings as I have done. So, do you want to withdraw your second or I'll withdraw my second? Draw the motion.

Is our new motion? Not sure motioning anymore. The agenda to remove 7A. Can we just table them when we get done? Uh, we can also do that. Fine with me. I guess hearing no adjustments to the agenda. No adjustments to the agenda. Anything else?

A long trip, but we got that. Okay. Okay, we are on item three, public open forum. Before we have public open forum, this is a brand new um time for this to happen. Um, a couple questions or concerns that have come up. Uh, I have no problem having the public forum in the beginning. Um, I will ask we do have our podium back. We do have our microphone back. I would ask that you approach the podium if you're able to and please state your name. And that's not for me. That's for the captioner to hear. Um, please keep it to 2 to 3 minutes max. Um, please direct your questions or your concerns to me and I'll do my best to answer them and if I'm not able to answer them, I will get back to you with an answer if I'm able to. So, let's we're going to do that if we can. Anybody in public open forum?

You go first.

Hi, my name is Jamie Pram. I live at 144 Road. Um, I wanted to know when we can anticipate having um a city audit that would answer what the problems are because we haven't been audited for a while. Do you have any idea on that?

I I'm not 100% sure, Jean, as to what year because I'm dealing with the port authority and the city at the same time. I'm going to say I think we're 22 or maybe 23 already completed. Um the auditing firms in the state of Maine are very limited and very selective and when they get time to do them that's when they do them. We don't have the luxury to say well if you're going to put us off for 6 months we'll go to this guy because there's no this guy over here. So, I don't have a a good answer to say yes, by the end of spring, we'll have them all caught up. I I I wouldn't dare say that.

Okay. Um, has there been any followup on whether or not we can institute annual permit fees for verbos and Airbnbs?

There has been no movement on that. Uh I I think it would take a lot more to submit um not so much submit a annual fee, but in order to do an annual fee, you also need to do an annual inspection. You also need to do filing. You also need to do a lot of other things in order to just set a fee. Um and I we don't have number one the personnel to do that. Number two, and I'm going to go back probably three, four years ago, we when Carolina was a tax assessor, she did get a copy from Bar Harbor on it. Um, we would be spending two times the amount we take in. So, do we really want to do that? I'm I'm not sure I would be in favor.

Okay. It on the assumption of what kind of fee would we in fact be paying twice as much? We got to hire personnel. Number one. Um, so that's that's a number one. We can't I shouldn't say we can't. Number one, we would have to get the personnel to do the the job that we're looking for them to do to hide to also maintain how many people have Airbnbs, who's paying it, and how long they're renting it. You got to have somebody that's going to be dedicated to just that alone. I So you're telling me that it's really not feasible? I don't believe it is. From what I have seen so far,

it could change. I am looking for ways to take some of the tax burden off the city. And even if it's not a big dent, I think that it's something that would warrant further exploration and um investigation. So, I'd like to keep on attracting flies. Um, my next question is the city manager position a full-time 40hour a week position. Yes, probably 40 plus. I was going to say 40 plus right now.

Um, my concern is that it came up last month that the city manager was in fact chairing the budget committee for Washington County. My concern lays in the fact that that is obviously a very timeconsuming thing because Washington County is a hot mess. But is it in fact taking his time from the city that could be better utilized within the city? Yes, it is. But at right now it I think it's very soon to be over and his term will be over because he assumed that term and the two-year term has run out. So next year district two, which is this district, will appoint somebody from Eastport. Whether they choose to ask Brian if he'd be willing to do it again or whether they choose to ask you, it is entirely up to them.

No, statistics was not my thing. Well, I know, but I mean that's that's how that process works, and you're on for a three-year term. Okay. My concern is that we really need to address our own house issues. Correct. Before we take the time to go out and that was a concern that I had. Yeah, it's our concern, too. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your questions. Anybody else? John,

I'm glad you moved things to uh the beginning because I was dreading the speech. My name is John Martin. I'm a citizen of Eastport. I'm formerly uh committee of for disability and disability affairs. I find it apparent that I found out that I was quote unquote fired or let go or however you want to look at it through the newspaper. It would have been nice to have had a phone call or somebody saying there was a vote that we were going to get rid of the committee when I was looking to fill the committee um positions. It is my hope to get that committee reconstituted after the beginning of the year. That said, when I was 21, I had a saying, and the saying was, if you wanted a good idea to die, the best way to do that is to send it to committee. We had about four or five good ideas that we were working on. We were looking to fund them. We were really, really pressing on it and it's a shame that we didn't get a chance to finish some of that. Some of that had to do with snow removal, which for anybody who has lived here for more than one winter is a huge problem. Some of that was looking at getting maybe the sidewalks fixed. Um, I'm aware that there's money out there. Um, I'm aware that some of that money is grant money and we would have to do some budgetary things to get that around. If I can't get that committee reconstituted, I would love to sit on the budget committee. That said, the committee system as a whole was very very broken. Um we and the disability committee felt that it was important

that we get our mission statement and our purpose for being you know together set out largely because there were so many people at the time some of them who sat on the the board here who thought that our committee was not about disability but was about a larger attempt to uh grab power for something that was called DEI which was not our intent and certainly I would not have been for that sitting on the committee saying we're coming here for people who are disabled and to say that we're you know now competing for DEI um that should be its own separate committee and I would not be on that committee. I'm hoping that in the future that when we do have committee assignments and when people like there's a couple people coming onto committees now that the committees are wellformed, they are well regulated to the the purpose of their mission statement and that when the people do get on those committees, there's not this um background of, oh, they're only on that committee because of this this thing or that thing. that we maybe add to the oath that I have signed twice now to um state that you're only going to be working for the issues of your committee. That would be a thing that I would approve and I would hope that some of the the funding things that I worked on um people get back to me on because I would love to continue to work on those things even if I'm not a committee member. Okay.

Thank you, John. John, I will take responsibility for not having contacted you. I was your liaison. I somehow did not pick that up. My apologies. That was totally on me. Um, all the things that you're working on, you can still be working on. You can still bring them to the council without a committee. I appreciate that and I will continue to try to work towards them. Thank you. Anything else from the audience? Just I'm not even getting up. Just a quick thank you for putting the open forum at the beginning. I appreciate that. You're welcome.

Hearing nothing else. We'll close the public open forum and item four, public hearings for a liquor license renewal for Wicked Good Corporation doing business as the Wacko Diner, 47 Water Street. Anybody in the audience like to speak either for or against? Hearing no comment, I'll close the public hearing on 4 A 4B. Liquor license amendment for Porn Run Brewing LLC, 75 Water Street. Anybody in the audience like to speak for or against that?

What is the amendment? The amendment is to sell cider. It's another type of beverage. Any other comments, concerns, questions? Hearing none. 4 B is closed. 4 C sale of foreclosed city property 3537 Key Street 10 Evans Street 1A Readout Hill lot F4- D5-09 anybody in the audience like to speak for or against that hearing none I will close 4 C 4 D proposed amendment to the sale of city property ordinance striking the final clause of the first paragraph of section three beginning with with the additional provisions. Anybody in the audience like to speak for or against that hearing? None. I'd like to close item 4 D. Item five, action on public hearings. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the renewal license for Wicked Good Wacko Diner and the approval of the amendment for Horn Run Brewing.

I'll second it. Been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Cummings. Yes. Council Moran. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Council. Yes. Any further motions on the public hearings?

We do not require a motion on on anything with C. Well, 6A will discuss one thing there. But we do if you choose to move forward on the I'm trying to find it. I move my papers around. It removes the requirement for the sort of generic public hearing we just held um if the city is choosing to sell property as foreclos. So how will the public be notified that the city is going to sell it?

There is no particular mechanism for doing that. We spoke with that. The city has already foreclosed on the property. I mean, if it's we're going to be discussing a resale right now, uh, which is hopefully what would happen with some repurchase, uh, being sold back to heirs. Um, if the city wanted to actually sell the property, well, yes, then we'd have a realtor and it be published and because we'd be following all the requirements of that, uh, that section that I had memorized once. Yeah. So, 35 and 37 Key Street, that's going to be sold though. That's

that. So what this does is permits you to sell. Actually you're not actually that's part of what was confusing about the ordinance is it only said that you had to hold a public hearing if you're going to sell it. We've discussed 35 and 37 key street and a little bit later we will um I can talk about what we've done with respect to foreclosed property. But yes, in the case of 35 37 if you're choosing to sell um we'd have to go to a realtor on that and I'll be discussing that a little later. Okay. because I know the lady next door to that property, Joyce, yeah, wanted to be notified if that was going to go up to bid. Yeah. So, this only takes out the fact that we need to have a public hearing about whether or not we're going to sell.

Correct. Right. Okay. Can I have a question in the middle of this? Probably not. Okay. Thank you. So, do we want to make a motion on that or do we want to It just speeds things up, doesn't it? It's Well, right. In the case so in the case of the repurchase where you know council felt that we had a we did not want to take his property from someone.

We went through this back in the spring actually and we held it up because oh well our ordinance says we're supposed to hold a hearing to do this and so we hadn't held the hearing in the case again of something where we're not and then there's no limitation on repurchase. You don't have to take it to a realtor and that sort of thing. So ultimately that's the one thing it's making. It's it's if if you're concerned about not notification, there's no preliminary notification before you take that step on a repurchase agreement.

Okay. And we again, we just talked about this last I guess it was two two meetings ago and so that's why we did the Well, we've talked about this a lot on and off. It's been to the point where I'm almost like I'm not even sure what we're talking about at this point. So that that's what it is. This is not a know if if we're obviously if we're going to sell our own property. Uh we're actually also not under any obligation to uh do that. We'll be putting it out to bid in this case. But um this the the the sentence only applied to foreclosed property. Um so what else would we do with a foreclosed property? Take it from the city for it if we did. Yeah. Mhm.

And actually technically from the reading of this thing, you wouldn't have to hold the public hearing to do that because you wouldn't be selling it. You'd actually just be taking you'd be paying back the uh the previous owner for their equity. But we already know.

Okay. We have a motion on the floor or do we want to move on or you've talked about the public hearing feeling irrelevant? Correct. It's honestly it's your fault. It It's additional. it. I mean, from my point of view, it's an additional hoop to jump through. Um, it can delay the process. I'm not sure about Demmesis violates nothing in the law.

No, I'm I'm fine with that amendment. Um, I I'm you your ordinance is a little different than any place else. Anyway, well, we are esport. Oh, probably not. It's probably not okay.

And of course to remind you, so we had a much more elaborate ordinance back in the fall, spring, winter, whenever it was. I retained when I made that first cut because it was not uh congruent with state law at that point. That was the biggest problem. and we discussed at length that time about how it handcuffed the city's ability to to so the intention behind this was to make it as simple as possible but I retained that one sentence simply kind of made the reason we're having here I wasn't sure if there was a compelling historical reason for retaining it we haven't discovered one it was in the way so we just proposed it last night but ultimately you guys can choose to do with it if you if you feel like you need more time I my feelings won't be hurt to table it hearing no motion. I'm going to move on.

Are we tableabling yet? I We can You've actually It's not really on the table. So, it's not really a motion at this point. You've held your hearing. You've chosen personal action. That's fine. There's nothing to do though, is it? Well, we have to take out that sentence or not. Yeah. If you want to actually approve this change, you have to move to change it. You've only had a hearing to that effect. Okay. Yeah. Make the motion. I move to strike the sentence in the the last sentence of section three. The first paragraph, paragraph one, section three. I'll second it. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Cummings. Yes. Councelor Morang. Yes.

Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor Boom. Yes. Boy, that took a long time.

Item six, new business. 6A, approval of repurchase agreement for 10 Edmond Streets to Megan Smith and Desiree Basset heirs. U we've discussed this a couple times. Let's say this is uh this property went into foreclosure. The uh original owner um passed away. The heirs requested shortly after it went into foreclosure that they would like to uh um reassume the building. We've spoken in the past. The city had no compelling interest in acquiring it. Um you should see the the amount um due in taxes is $3,239.15. The pending sewer bills including uh the one that will be coming due is $2,76147. Well, I'm sorry. That does not include the most recent one, but then we added the most recent one, $16,952 for a total of $6,170.14. Uh, I will point out that we stopped accumulating interest on this um after April 30th because it was our fault that we weren't able to move forward. They've been requesting since January to move forward on this. So, we made uh an agreement that it would work that way. I've spoken with the owners there finally. As a matter of fact, they uh already begun to send us money even though we haven't approved it yet, but we can

I was just going to ask, are we put a good timeline on it? Uh yes, 30 days. Okay, I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Don, yes. Council Mor, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Councelor,

yes. I I need to apologize. In the beginning of the meeting, I should have alerted to the audience that councelor Celely will not be present this evening. I apologize for that. That was my mistake. Um, just thought of that when we got only got four answers up here. Uh, either way, item 6B, appointment of Karen Weston to the deer committee. Uh, yeah, Karen approached me 3 weeks ago. I've written you a short summary of discussion he and I had. Uh, Chris Bartlett believes he's a valuable addition. Uh, dear committee hasn't started their business yet. That's partially my fault for not getting them old and sworn in because that was a without a clerk to restrict. They're getting ready to go. So, I'll make that motion.

I'll second it. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana, yes. Council, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Council, yes. Item 6 C, accept acceptance of resignation of Pat Christopher from the recycling and energy committees. I'll make that motion. I'll second. President discussion on the motion hearing. None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana, yes. Council Moran, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Council Gome, yes.

6D, commitment of sewer fees in the amount of $176,85623 for the period of April 1, 2025 to September 30, 2025. This is just to allow the money we've already budgeted. This is the official commitment of the actual billing. I I will point out it's a little bit late this year because of TRIO and I will not bore you with the details. I'll make that motion. I'll second. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana, yes. Council, yes. Councelor T. Yes. Council Boom.

Yes.

6E. approval of a loan for $258,55 for dump truck approved in fiscal 26 capital plan. We approved this back in July. Uh but you need to approve the actual loan. Um I'm giving you an amortization schedule. We've we've obtained two rates from the first 5.34% for a 5year rate uh loan and 5.5 my eyes eight for sevenyear. That's the difference in payment of about $15,000 between 60,270 and 45,618. Um, you didn't ask law offer my own opinion. I feel like that hopefully the lifetime of a brand new truck is going to be 10 to 15 years and so I'm inclined towards a 7-year uh rate. Um, it it spreads it out over more generational time actually. Um but um this will obviously hit next this coming year's debt service line. Um it's equivalent to about 1.2 or uh 2 No, wait a second. Two. No, I'm sorry. I should have done that before. 1.2 and 1.8% of taxation. I mean, other things will change. We're going to drop some other stuff off. We'll talk later. In any case,

that's what we have in front of us. So, did did you audit this dump truck? Yeah. So, we've audited it. So, I mean, I'm gunshy. I haven't spent any money. I'll be honest with you. I mean, we had already approved. Unfortunately, we approved it before and we put the order in right after all this came in. So, they've been sitting on it. They've been working on it for 3 months and now it's ready, which is why I'm coming to the loan now.

So, we've already committed to this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what would happen if I turned around and told them we don't want it now, but we we committed to it. They built us a truck and we put it into our capital plan. It's in the capital plan. It's not coming out of capital funds, but uh in July when we voted on the capital plan, this was one of those items and we voted that we'd be doing the financing. When's these payment stuff? Sorry. When's the payment start? Next year. Not till next year. Yeah. Okay. Um I you know I we've been doing annual loans. Um I've continued with that. It's makes for large payment numbers but um it's simple to keep track of and you get a year.

So is anything else coming at us like this or is this it for that's the only we will be talking about the county budget and I guess I know that. Yeah. I know that's haunting us and I will be talking about the capital plan at that point as well because looking at our capital fund is one potential approach for dealing with that. But no, we've not committed anything else to getting to taking any further debt. This is the only is the only debt item. And while we had some items on the capital plan that we haven't done yet primarily work on city hall, um uh we've not I've not taken any action in that direction. Okay. I I didn't I just wondered if they already audited the truck and all this stuff.

Yeah. I got the invoice and it's it's sitting there for us net30. Okay. So, our question is whether we're taking a 5year or 7-year loan and the difference of money between the two is 15. So, over the lifetime of the loan um I thought I had another copy of this for myself. So, you try to stretch you're going to try to stretch this right as long as you can.

So, I'm stretching it out there. It does add up to $,000 in interest. You can do that math on your own, but I provide an amortization schedule and what you've got there. Um, what I didn't provide you, so when I try to assess the the actual cost of financing, one of the things I do as well is is compensate for the time value of money. In other words, the dollars you're going to be paying for in seven years will be worth less than the dollars you're paying with today, almost certainly. Um, so it blunts a little bit that there we go. If I assume a 2 and a4% inflation year on year in $225, um, you're paying essentially $23,000 in interest over 5 years total of $23,000 over 5 years in in $225 in a 5year term or $33,000 um in a 7-year term. still, you know, it's still funding on a very large item, but

So, you want the seven years? Is that just you want to go seven years? If if you if I'm forced to choose, I'd say seven right now. looking at potential cash flow on some other issues we've got right now. That extra $15,000 might be that we're not paying out each year might be nice. Uh and I, you know, we don't know what's coming to us in the future. Of course, we might all be swaying at ourselves 5 years from now. That's always the risk on these things, but I'll make the motion for seven years. And approve the loan for the loan. Yes. Sorry. Okay. Do I have a second?

I'll second for discussion. We've already I guess we need to discuss it. The capital plan. We've already approved it. We We got to do it. Yeah, we've got to take the loan, but we save 10,000 if we just I don't know if that's worth it for the two years. 10,000 is what? A third of a percentage point of taxes. Uh well, so 10,000 is about 02 a little more than 0.25.27% tax 38 again 386 is 1%. But there's nothing that would behoove us if we become flush with money that Brian can pay it off early and save.

That's entirely possible. Actually, we're going to talk about the next thing on here is to put the truck the truck we're replacing uh out to bid. And I'll I'll spoiler alert on this one. I'm going to actually recommend that we don't automatically say we're going to pay off this loan because of our the uncertainty of cash flow coming up. But under normal circumstances, I would absolutely say immediately take whatever comes in on that truck and pay down this lo by. So, yeah. Any further discussions on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dan, yes. Council Mor, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes.

Yes. 6F. Request to put out the 2008 Sterling dump truck for bid. I'll make that motion. How will we I'll second it for discussion. Okay. Sorry. There we I always forget that. Um, how are we looking to bid? Are we doing like a closed bid, a Well, so typically what all we would do for a bid is do kind of you, you know, we put it out in the paper. Billy, putting a minimum. Billy asked me if there was a minimum. I I asked Howard if he thought there was a minimum. He did not think we needed one. Um, so, so went out for two grand.

The truck is not in great shape. That's why we're replacing it. However, and part of the issue is apparently Sterling trucks have been difficult to get parts for and so could be a parts truck for a larger department. Um, so we would typically advertise, you know, we advertise locally and advertise off top of how I think there's an MMA thing we do, but we usually don't advertise it. An advertisement with Banker Daily costs over $1,000. So, we don't usually do that. It's pretty rusted out, too. I think that's the primary issue. It's beyond what we can weld. And council has the right to accept or reject any. Yes, we just always language that you can always accept or reject any bit. If we get stuff for 500 bucks a shot,

take the tires off. Is it all yours? Uh, so we have a motion on the floor. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana C. Yes. Councelor Mor. Yes. Councelor Steven. Yes. Councelor Boom. Yes. 6G. Realtor assignments for full foreclosed property. Yeah. I actually don't have an action on this. I haven't had time to put um I showed you a draft policy for going to realtors on this. What I can report is um I've had Wes basically call every realtor who advertises locally and we have a large pool of people who are willing to be put into a pool to be drawn from.

Oh, okay. So, I will provide uh I will take that policy I put together and try to get that to you this week again so you guys can all look at it and I'll run it past Dennis and we should be able to put stuff out to bit in December, but no action today. All right. 6G. Thank you. Um 6H request to go to bid for fiscal year 27 property revaluation.

Yeah. So, this is the beginning of that conversation. Uh the reason I'm bringing it up today is um the more we get into our assessment system, the more it's clear many many parts of it have not been updated properly for years. Uh and we're going to really need a a full reevaluation. It's our belief that if we have the right assessor in place, we should be able to avoid doing this maybe not forever, but for many many years. So the last one was 10 years ago. Yeah. Uh and um 20 I want to say 2015. I think that might be right. Yep. So, uh, we had a consultant in to work with Wes to make sure that we understood what was going on and her recommendation was get your name on somebody's list. Now, that's what West was saying.

A year to two, year or two maybe even just to get out there. Um, we do not have money in the capital plan to pay for it this year. How much do are we looking at? I've been told ballpark 100 to $200,000. Holy crap. And it takes one to two years to complete. Yeah. Well, if you think of it as a single person doing, you know, a consultant doing more or less full-time work during that period, it's and it's not just that, but and part of that's what the market will bear. So, um I don't intend to go to bid on this immediately. I'm thinking January probably because we're looking at bid language. We'll make sure I have a proper RFP, but I wanted to get approval to go forward with it. Um it's got to be done.

Yeah. And again, except for you have the the ability to accept and reject if all the bids come in and they come in at $300,000, you might, you know, we'd still be kind of stuck. It's one of those things ultimately we're going to have to do either um on our own or um by calling someone in or we'd have to hire a separate consultant. I don't know. But it's um as the pressure on the the concern about taxation grows, we certainly had a lot of complaints this summer. It's important that we know that we've got our system put together properly. Can you explain the um like because we haven't had it done that like our homestead exemption is only at a certain percentage.

Yes. Um that's so that's what the state calls your ratio. We our valuation is what's in our computer. Um you know I'll I'll use my house. I believe my house is valued at about $88,000. Now I know I can sell it for more than that. way more than that. Um, the state takes by looking at real estate records, looks at what your valuation is that you report and they make an estimate of what they think your valuation is. And the difference between that they call your ratio. If your ratio drops below 70, you're really supposed to do something about it right away. Our ratio is 56.

We're way off. Now, what happens is if your house is, let's take a house that's worth $100,000, um, just cuz it's a round number. If that's a correct valuation, your ratio is 100%. The homestead exemption, it's 25.

Thank you. The homestead exemption is going to knock a a quarter of your taxes right off, right? $25,000. And who's going to pay that quarter? The state. Well, they'll pay 70% of it, but that's what the state does. In other words, that's how the homestead exemption works. What the state says is if your house is valued at $100,000, but it's really worth let's say let's say 200 just to make it easy. We don't want to that $25,000 should be going against that $200,000. We should be knocking an eighth of your tax off because it stays $25,000. Your house is worth $2,000 now. You should only be getting $25,000 off a 10. Don't um so that's what that's about. When your ratio is off and the ratio is applied across everyone. So we actually you're allowed to put f up to 5% more to say you think the state is wrong. So we actually did at 61% and people should be getting 61% of $25,000 as their homestead exemption right now. So now here's the bad news which is if we revalue and everyone's house is properly valued, you're not going to get any bigger break off your homestead exemption, right? Your value is going to go up. The homestead exemption will go up. If if it's all the same, if the same amount goes out, it's just it will now look like $25,000 on your tax bill, and you won't wonder what the city did to knock your your homestead exemption down.

Also impacts the mill rate. Yes. Oh, it defines 3056 right now, something like that, which is staggeringly high.

But if we if the state's correct and we're we're valued at 56%, our mill rate would be in the 18s. So again, your value will go up, but the mill rate will drop. So reevaluation does not change everything else staying the same does not change taxation. I'll say that again. Revaluation does not change taxation. Taxation is the same before and after. You know it's going to take two years anyway. What changes and this is what will get people worked up is the distribution of tax because the implication is over 10 years of not being valued some houses have will appreciate more will have more increase over their valuation than others based on how the market has evolved. And the rule of thumb is when you do a revaluation is a third of the taxpayers see their taxes go down a third see them go up and a third see them stay about the same. Um however what it will do is make sure that we are rationally and correctly taxing people so that we don't run into issues with you know essentially abatements or anything else when you have very old and out ofd things and it ensures fairness. That's you know it's the biggest concern everyone has about taxes. Is this a fair tax bill? And that's really the only way you can do it is ensure that your valuations are fair.

It also affects your your school subsidy, right? And hey, if the state's actually wrong, that's the other thing. If the state's valuing us and we say, "No, they're off by $10 million." And we do a revaluation and it's down $10 million, we should be able to argue back at least if we're going to drop some of that back off because otherwise they're we don't know how they're doing this, right? They're they're doing their best, but it's statistical. Um, so you're only asking to take it out to bid so we can get on a list. So we can get on a list and ideally see what it looks like. And I'm I don't know what a correct RFP would look like for that, but I figured it was better not to wait out. I make a motion that we go to bid for a property re-evaluation request to bend. I'll second.

Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Yes. Council Moran. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Councelor B. Yes. Item 6 I, Submission of the November 4th, 2025 election results. You should have that vote. You should add you have the state ballot in front of you and Teresa gave me the local ballot which I know we have but I didn't give you a copy of it. Um I've seen it online. Yeah. Shame on you. Yeah. Shame on me. I'm very sorry. I took the wrong one. Um do we need it to read into the minutes?

I I think just I I think literally you just have to accept the results of the 25th election. Do I have a motion to that effect? I'll make that motion. I'll second. Been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? I could be wise and ask who won. I won't be. Roll call, please. Council, yes. Council Morang, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Council Boom. Yes. Oo. 6J. Discussion on county fiscal. Yeah.

Crisis. So, this is still a moving target. Um, today would have been a county budget meeting day, but um the county commissioners are still looking to speak with uh the bank to make sure there's no other nothing else that can be done to try to reduce the impact of the $8 million shortfall that's coming up to pay off the TA. Um, obviously we all know the bond failed and the the hardest thing about that is, you know, the all of us have been saying for a while if anyone has a better solution for finding $8 million to avoid going into default in the county, we've been dying to hear it. Um, the bond was just the one that provided the most flexibility. Um, we don't have that tool. So, I don't exactly know what's going to happen. The budget committee has spoken about whether it might be necessary either on its own or um at the request of the commissioners to bundle that $8 million into next year's county tax. Right now, that's the only alternative we see that can happen at that level. Um the the idea would be by doing that uh essentially we'd be able to do a little slight of hand and right at the end of the year, you know, pay off the tan by taking out this other tan and operating on that debt for the year as we try to build up um a reserve. That would mean if you just take um where we think you are with the draft budget right now and add $8 million to it, that would be a 97% one-year increase. Um, we currently pay $400,000 in county tax. So, we'd be looking at not close to another 100,000 to pay off. The other thing that has been suggested at this point is to try to see if municipalities can come up with their their proportional amount of that $8 million in advance by December 31st. Eastport's portion is $323,000. Um, I know that Machias is talking

openly about looking to finance theirs. They I've been told they're looking at uh rates less than 5% that it may be due to the fact they're looking at the Chai Savings Bank which is at risk for the 8 million that's going out um and some other things. I have not been able to uh get numbers like that for us if we just wanted to borrow. I did want to talk about what some of our options might be and I'm sorry let me find my document to that effect. There it is. Well, Mai's Mai is head in the paper the other day that they were just going to write a check out for theirs. Well, I think they were talking. I I was They may be choosing to do that. I haven't been following them there. No, but I mean it's like that's one option. You know what I mean? But it's it's So, Eastport

Yeah. The sheriff sent us a letter. Yes. You know, I I'm going to be the devil's advocate here. Mhm. They sent us a letter that they weren't going to patrol esport cuz we had we have a police department. So why should we write we should take the portion of the sheriff's department out of it if we've got to pay for that?

Well, I I I understand your point and I share your sentiment, but the problem with this $8 million gap. That might be an argument we're also talking about and this is what's taking up so much of my time admittedly um is fiscal year 2026. Um, you know, the sheriff has already, for example, agreed to not fill two open positions and not fill an RCC position, not open a jail position, which knocks $800,000 off. But the $8 million we're talking about here have already been spent over the last 6 years. It's not something where we can pick and choose how much we're paying for the county. I mean, we can certainly say no. the risk is that the county goes into default. But it's very much like if you know if the citizens of Eastport chose not to pay something um and put the city into default, it could end up rebounding on you because that money has to be paid and it gets paid by the municipalities that make up the county. The county is not an optional organization, right? We belong to it the same way the state of Maine belongs to the United States of America. So while I take your point,

you know, I'm not trying to say that be mean, but Barry Curtis was at it long right now. So I'll be getting to if you want to actually have some police numbers for you that's going to bring, you know, I have no problem with the ICC. I think they awesome job. I think Sheriff's Department does a good job, but they don't control these people. They don't control. And what they have been doing and they've been doing this in all all the communicators and PDs is they stack calls that aren't actually like felony emergencies. Er calls that respond to. Exactly. So Monday mornings have it's gotten better. It's quieting down. But during the summer, yes, Monday mornings are often kind of difficult because we don't always have people on like on anytime we have on overnight and stuff. Sundays almost never anyone is

and that's when that's when things get stacked. So I I take your point and um you know we can talk about that. I've talked with Barry. I've talked with Mike Crabtree. You'll see when we get to this, the sheriff does respond to a portion of our calls. When they're able to and when they're here, they respond. Okay. For the calls, but but what they did not, they basically said, "We will not guarantee we will respond to calls that are not emerging." And actually, to be fair, been their standing position anyway. Yeah, it it is. But Barry's letter was maybe not I'll leave I'll just stop there. It wasn't a very nice Yeah, I'll stop there, you know. So, so let me tell you where our financial situation is. I do not expect or want a motion tonight because I don't think we're ready. There's been I'm not going to get a motion. I'm just giving you the

Oh, I understand. My end of it.

Uh so, uh we had a question about audits earlier. Let me actually address that. The 2022 audit is complete. The 2023 and 24 audits are in the hands of the auditors. In other words, we're just waiting for them to finish their work and come back and give us something. and they start at 2025, but that's a longer period. That's a longer stretch. We don't expect to see that real soon. Now, we don't have fully audited numbers, but we have sat down with the auditors to say, "Give us, you know, a good estimate of where we are with unassigned funds." Um, you see, actually, I don't know if you see, I've given you um I was going to talk about my financial report, but I think as well, but let me show you quickly. The financial report, there's a graph where each line is how much money we have in the bank. and we have as much money in the bank as of the end of September as we've had since 2024. So, you can't trust that, right? We don't know if that's set aside for anything, but I take it at least one sign of general financial health where we have good cash flow. The auditors have told us looking at what we have that they think we have about a million dollars in unassigned funds, but they're, you know, they say be cautious of that. So, for for the purposes of my discussion, I'm assuming we have about 925,000. You'll recall we passed a policy um that we need to have between 11 and 14 weeks of taxation and unassigned so that we avoid doing tax anticipation notes just like the county that um let me see uh so we should be carrying somewhere between 818,000 and a million dollars in unassigned funds. So we're kind of pretty much where we need to be. If anything, we're on the high end because that same policy said if we went over 14, we'd sweep the the excess to capital. So that means we have about $107,000 that we could kick out and still have still be within our policy. Um we have about $370,000 in our capital fund. The packet I've given you, I did I reproduced the uh the capital thing we we approved before. And uh stuff that's crossed out is either uh one thing

should not have been here, the Vaness grant match because that need to go to sewer. That was for that. But we pay for paving. We pay for the police cruiser. We paid for and we took two two police cruisers were paid off. Um the two major things that are left on there is uh city hall which came out to it's actually about 885. It was a combination of the roof line, the generator over it, and the highspeed sidewalk local match of 147,000 tons. I'm going to assume we can't touch that 147. Uh we start going out to bid. I don't know if it'll happen next year, but we're committing to do that project. That means we have about if we if we assume we're not going to do any other capital work this year. We have about $223,000 in capital that we're not planning on spending this year. that plus on a sign gives us $330,000. So $7,000 more than needed to cover that amount. How if we were to do that, so it would be possible for us to cover our our portion of uh of that shortfall, which is darn close to 10% of tax, local tax, without raising tax. However, we don't have a 5-year capital plan. If we were to do that, I'm, you know, I I don't believe we have anything we were pressing that we had to do next year, but we'd be ending if we did or we had the capital plan, something capital come up that we didn't expect. Let's say the city hall roof really starts leaking and we know that's $50 to $60,000. Um, we just have we'd either have to tax for that, take it out of an assignment, so it takes our cushion away. And this should not be a surprise. It's it's a large amount of money. One possibility then the reason I'm putting all this number out in front of you is is we can also then of course look into borrowing um did a number here if we were to borrow what you saw the number what we just did for the dump truck you know that was $258,000 add you know up to $325,000 similar sort

of payments not backbreaking but it's not the sort of thing I like financing you're not getting anything for it we could do a combination of these things we could clear out an assignment we could take a chunk out of capital but not all of it. We could finance say 100,000 of them something like that. I'm throwing all of this out at you because I think at our next meeting things will have cleared up and the option right now if nothing else changes I don't see anything that can be did the only two options I can see are to pay it up front with whatever combination of cash we want to or take the hit in tax which will be the equivalent of paying it anyway. Right?

I mean that's the problem. The one thing we could do and the one reason it might make sense to to finance it is the exact reason that a bond made sense that it would spread out the impact of this hit. Um you'll see and through all of this to your point Dave I'm not speaking to whether the count county is at the right level of expenditure whether where the budget is with the county what the county is doing with services because all of this is stuff we spent already. Um, and like I said, I've spared you yet another presentation. I'm finding more stuff where you can see how we were double spending on the county budget from that. Here's my question that I keep asking and here is my fear.

So, say we do whatever it is we need to do to pay our money up front and we're done.

How do we guarantee that we're still not going to get hit with the interest payments? So the way that's supposed to be handled and this is one of the things I I want to make sure is actually you know written down and adopted but the intention is that this amount of service is going to be accounted for separately that your county tax bill going forward. So if you choose to pay in advance you'll just get whatever the normal county tax bill would be. If you're going to not choose to pay in advance, that amount is going to be accounted for separately and be that would be added on to the bill for whomever did not pay in advance. Now, having said that, we haven't really pinned down that mechanism. Um, and actually, I keep saying we because the commissioners and the budget committee have been working hand inand on this, but this is really all the commissioners. They have a meeting tomorrow night. I'll be going to that um just to see what where they're at with things. But um and again, if anyone has a brilliant idea for how to approach this differently, we're all looking for it because um it's a it is not a mess.

It is a mess. So the you know there's been a bunch of numbers flying around. they actually know they owe $8 million. Do they know it down to like the dollar? No, because they are they are still dealing with audits as well. That's what I was wondering.

But what they did have I I didn't I can get that sheet. Actually, it's in here and I'll get it later. Um they did the current auditor went through all of the previous budgets to see where the double spending was happening. You know, it's one of these things where it's like a lot of gallows humor. One of my thing was, you know, boy, if we only found this two years earlier, we'd merely be broke. Wouldn't that be great? Um, the other one here right now is that if the county had actually spent to its budget, the the department heads did a great job through all of this. This is, I guess, one thing I found that the county ran well under its budget this entire time. So, the poor department's heads are kind of up in arms. They said, "We really broke our backs to stay in budget and everything else." The problem was the numbers were so far out of whack. if they had stayed on budget, this hole could be half again as large as it is. Um, but they made an estimate. They went through and rounded it up and that's what they came up with $8 million. Um, so I can't tell you that that number won't ever change, but I feel reasonably confident. It's certainly at least that. Um, and I don't think it's I don't think it's significantly worse than that, cuz that's worse than my wildest dream. When I was when I was preparing to go into this before I knew about this, like I said, I was working under the assumption we were broke or or, you know, maybe $400,000 out, something like that, my back of the envelope. Um, 8 million blew me away.

And this money is due by February. That's another interesting point. According to state statute, it's due December 31st. Okay. State statute says you can't take out another TAM until you paid off the other one, and you must pay it off in the same fiscal year. The note itself is not due until February. So, we're going to have to have a council workshop in de.

That's why I'm bringing all this to you now when I wrote this tedious thing, but now I said most of the numbers that are in it, and you can look at it in your copious free time. Um because I think once we I think next week's meeting a lot of stuff stuff's going to have to come clear. It will be the 19th of November. Um and then I'll be able to come back with you and see if there's a specific ask and it's structured in a way that we can make it clear. So we'll have to have a council meeting another one in November. I mean I mean we would certainly have to do it no later I think than the schedule meeting which is the 10th I believe. 10th of December. Okay.

Yeah. But um but it might particularly if it's going to come down to I mean I I've said this every meeting, let me say it again just because it makes you all wins and everything else. We of course do have the power to issue a supplemental tax. Um we're going to share. Yeah, exactly. We can't throw that on the people. I I figured but I my job is to provide options. So I'd rather go with no options or Yeah.

Now that all said, let me I want to throw one other thing at you here. One of the things that we talked about at the last budget meeting in some depth, um Ben Edwards from AIS in particular put this out there. He said, "Are we intending as a committee to leave services as they are? Are we intending to do something dramatic here to change the way the county works? We took a non-binding sort of temperature of the room and the temperature of the room at that point was to attempt to provide approximately the same services at the best price we could. In other words, not to bust things up at past 7 to four, but that was non-binding. I'm coming to you and I don't expect you necessarily to answer this now, but the question is if we want to make significant changes to the county budget. I mean, it's going to mean reducing significant services. It's 70 to depending on how you measure it, 7 65 to 80% of county budget is public safety. Um, it's been very hard. I don't see when the sheriff's came back and offered four open positions that would be taken out of the budget. Plus, they're also looking at a fleet management uh process using Enterprise, which Baileyville uses, which say Prescy or Holden uses, which they they see realizing $300,000 save on the first year. So, with those two things, we've managed to knock a million out of the budget, but it's still coming in, I believe, 17%. That's an increase of 17%, not including debt service. Part of that's because things were zeroed last year like certain liability insurance lines that should not have been. So last year's budget was kind of a fiction in places. It's a mess. Um it really is.

But wouldn't that be that'd be a commissioner thing, not a city council of Eastport to cut their budget? Well, I mean, you know, it's actually the budget committee can do it. Well, the budget committee budget committ. And that's why I'm coming to you as s your representative. Yeah. Because and um I don't mean to put you on the spot. Say, okay, what do you want to cut now? But I wouldn't want I wouldn't want to cut the county. I really wouldn't. No. You know,

it's very difficult. I mean, uh I've got to say I believe jail is something like almost $2 million out of $13 million budget. And really there's nothing to cut. It's it's everything they're doing is state mandated. The jail could be run in some ways more efficiently, but not because they're doing anything wrong. It's because, for example, it's a two-level jail. So you need somewhat more staff when they're when they're running when they're full. The last time I got numbers, the jail holds 43 people. There were 59 people in there really

and of them four of them were sentenced which means the rest were awaiting trial because we get 21 days I think it is of judge to to get through I think that's what they were saying. So um the state does not provide enough in the way of judges and so we accumulate people. It's it's it's the whole thing and a lot of what's a lot of what's causing us a mess is stuff that's outside of us. Um, I'm sorry. I feel like I'm just being you are here, but that is kind of how I feel. No, it's good to be able to understand it. I appreciate that. Um, I'm actually worried about eliminating the RCC job. Um, that scares me.

A year and a half ago, we the budget committee, this was the very first meeting I was ever in, actually, were called in because um the state used to cover some of the dispatching and they withdrew from that completely when they withdrew patrol. Um, and at that meeting we were told that you were getting people who were regularly pulling 80 hours or more a week. They were paying insane overtime and the people were delaminating, right? They were getting ready to fall apart. And so they approved new positions, one of which um they are they were been struggling to fill and are willing to keep open. Um the uh sheriffs um say that essentially they're giving up a lot of admin stuff because normally they want to have five guys on at any given time. Four control one doing admin. They give up the admin position. They've been living without it. That's part of the reason they're doing what they're doing. Um you know you're not going to balance a bad balance the budget on the back of probate on the back of deeds. Billy, can I have one more clarification, please?

Certainly. Um, Brian, I heard you say that if the taxpayers at Eastport paid their taxes by February 1st for 2026 or was I way out there? Um, I was never talking about what the taxpayers are going to city to pay our portion of the county.

Okay. But then the question is followup. Thank you, Ron. Is if the city of Eastport residents paid their taxes instead of by the end of October by the 1st of February for 2026, would that help the city relative to the county? Um, even the tax taxes have already been paid for this fiscal year. Yeah, and we'd have to pass a budget for next fiscal year for everything else to be able to pay.

We don't even know what the taxes would be yet at that point. Saying is that if we brought in that income early, would it in fact help to weigh what's going on with the county? It would help us do our part. Right. We've been talking about having to find the 323,000. I I'm not sure I think there's I'm not sure there's a mechanism to make that work, Genie. But let's just say there was. Okay. What that would do would be to cushion the choice they are making. Um like I said, instead of emptying out unassigned, emptying out capital if there certainly if there was new revenue coming in, you know, we may sell a piece of property in December. That would certainly help. Um I haven't included that in because it's not guaranteed, right? Um,

you know, if we just went ahead and paid last year's taxes or paid what we paid this past year, then had to just additionally pay whatever the drive by assessor. I don't think we do that legally. We'd have to issue a new tax bill. We couldn't just That's prepayment. That's a whole thing. Yeah, I I could double check that, but I don't think I I don't think we could do that. But if people wanted to volunteer because I like pay ahead on my sewer constantly because I worry about forgetting it.

Well, and the volunteering thing would be nice. I mean that that's So I brought up a supplemental tax bill. I know that everyone winces when you say that, but a supplemental tax bill would be we would basically go around ask everyone to pay what is that 7% of their tax. It' be an additional tax, not a tax in advance. It would be an additional tax, but it's only 7% of your tax bill. That would kind of be what she's looking at doing. But I can't do that voluntarily. That would be compulsory and that would be and I wouldn't be doing it and there will be tax bill too.

So anyway, the question I do have for you and please communicate with me later is that at this point my position um as as a member of the budget committee is that we can't we can't I can't in good conscience gut the county budget. And I feel like to do that would be to open up some sort of something that we're going to regret. We're going to be playing with public safety. And um although I'm certainly going to be open to suggestions and so I hope someone comes up with a really creative one that knocks something else out, it does mean that above and beyond this $8 million, you should expect your county tax to go up and buy more than inflation. So that 97% additional is just to cover the 8 million.

No, no, that would be okay. But that would include that 16% or whatever. God, you're trying to kill me. But it be a one time. But what that all that would be that 300 get conceptually the idea that you just say you take that 323 we can pay by December 31st and they're just going to dump it in next year's county tax. It's a onetime thing. Goes up like that. It's a little bit higher than 323 at 97% because there's also the addition of county stuff on it, but that's essentially it. You know, I keep waiting for if someone in the state can find a way to get get this train from hitting us. Um, I'd love to, but and as I understand it, Maryanne Moore has put a bill up that they have rejected to help us.

Yes, I believe the straight up give us money bill went away. Okay, that was we've looked at, if I understand it right, we've looked at like businesses to see if they would be willing to help. There's something that I could go through. There is a two-page thing I can dig up for you about the things that the county is doing, but it's not that people are just sitting around going, "Okay, there's been a lot going We have one potential win. Maryanne has gotten a bill to come out of committee with an ought to pass to allow the county to declare bankruptcy."

So again, this is another gallows humor thing is, "Oh, we win. we get to go bankrupt, but it would actually it would give us some freedom to to reopen contracts and do some other things. The problem is they don't even go to session until the middle of January, right? So, by the time they get it through and they vote it, they put it we're already past our deadline. Um so, it's one of those things you do cuz um you know, it'll help in the help help other counties in the future, but right now it's actually not going to get us out of this. Um there's still a lot going on. I know Ben Edwards has been making a big push to try to see if you can get um the unions and the other and and the non-UN staff even to uh delay uh contracted payraises and things like that. I don't know if we're going to get any traction with that at all, but we're trying everything. Um

you can't we can't reopen or break those contracts. We've looked at that. There's no reopener clause. Um so that's where we are with the county update. We'll figure it out. Thank you, Brian. Um 6K, discussion of relocation of city polling place. Councelor Dana Cumins brought that up to me in an email about uh

perhaps moving it to the Whoops. I asked a couple years ago about moving it here because of political um atmosphere at the Poland places that it interfered with school um and I thought this was a good option but then the cruise ships their schedule and Ella being sick. But now that we have the community center um I think that's another great alternative. It has handicap access. I think um it's easily accessible. So, does it have enough space to do everything that needs to be done? How he said? Yes.

So, I I I the biggest problem here right now is is the absence of a real clerk, right? Because this requires paperwork and a map and everything else in the state. I I I will take it up. Um, you know, I think the only other the only other place we could reasonably do it out is I don't know if the airport terminal is large enough, but that would be the only other thing. And we could probably look at both locations and just say, is one better than another, but um, do I remember beacha having to be at the fire station? Yeah, we used to do at the fire station. I thought so.

So, um, we'll definitely look. There's no reason not to. And I agree with you. The school is has become awkward for a number of reasons. Um, and uh, I will take that up. Um, I I'm going to I honestly don't think that I'll be able to do anything on it before our next meeting, but I should be able at that point. And that's just until June June. Uh, yes. Although we have another item coming up involved. Uh, but yes, the next state election is the primaries in June. I don't know how long I don't know what the timeline is to get approval for a new polling place. That's the one thing I will try to answer. I'll just go to MMA and see the state has to approve a remote vote. I did not know that. They got to come inspect it and everything.

I thought Ellis said, we got to have so many booths past 6 months, which means measure it. If we want to do it for June, wow. We'd have to be getting going on it now. So, I will do what we will do what we can. If worst comes to worse, Colleen, we won't get it this year. Um, but I think I think it's a reasonable goal that we move it as soon as we can. By the June polling, school will be closed anyway. It's mid June. What's the date on it? I don't know. Let me make sure I make a note on that though. So, I'm going out with that. So, at the very least, I'm going to confirm the timeline.

Probably the state has two people that did that. They're both busy until June. But uh so yeah, look at the center and uh and the airport. Yes. Yes. The airport committee was very happy to hear that they would be interested in using that. I I don't think the airport would accommodate like I mean would you want to go all the way up to the airport? Could you get all the way up to the airport to go vote? Um well I'm probably the worst person to ask that question. But that's the point. I always that's kind of the point, John. Well, I would vote absentee.

One of the things that I would say, and it might be something to look into, I know there are certain states where there's mandatory absentee voting. Um, it's just the places are too spread out to have um a reasonable polling places. So, it's something that maybe you can look into. I can m I personally can make it to the airport. It's across from um Labor of Love, which I've had to go up to a couple of times. So, I personally can make it. I don't like going up that road and especially the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Probably not the best road for me to be on. Well, we'll we'll see. It's just more a question of if if we're going to go to the trouble of figuring out what you need to do to have a legal polling place, if it's not going to cost us a lot more work just to get uh you know, know that's an option or not. Opinion. Is there a reason why the city hall building isn't in the mix here? Oh, we we could we definitely don't have the room there. Um

yeah, we everything out and hopefully well maybe we'll have some more walls which also but that's not happening anytime soon. All right, we have my action from that is to confirm the timeline and uh if there is something we can do that's lightweight to start that process, we will. But um I'm going to have to talk to them. Should we just make a motion now or we'll attempt to come back? I think I think maybe you'd want a motion when we agreed on the place. Okay. All right. All right. This one's confusing. Seven. Yeah. 7 L. discussion of school budget validation continuation vote.

So, every 3 years since 2010, as far as I can tell, the city of Eastport has elected to opt into the state budget validation referendum process. This was something that was brought forward during the whole reorganization in 2010. Um, this was first brought to my attention actually by Billy who noted this past summer that the city of Caribou held, I believe, three elections to pass a school budget. Said, "Well, why don't we do that?" I called Caribou when they explained this school validation thing to me about between us having our own charter and us being in an AOS, they said, "I can't tell you if that makes sense for you." And I I kind of let it drop. Ella told me um a couple days before the ballot was due that we needed to include that language this year that this was an every third year where you have to opt in. Um the ballot as you've no doubt noticed it did not make it to the ballot and that's that's on Teresa and I who just it didn't get on the ballot. However, the language there said asked if the city wanted to continue with the process of having the city council validate the school budget, which is not what statute says. Statute makes it pretty clear it's the voters that are supposed to validate it. As far as I know, this has never happened. Maybe it happened in the midst I've been the midst of time. I've been told some people recall there was a vote somewhere that gave the city power, the city council this power, but we haven't been able to hunt it down yet. On top of that, it really doesn't make sense for the city council to validate the school budget because, and this is a surprise to me, if I'm reading the charter, right, the city council is supposed to be voting on the school budget

explicitly. The city charter says that the school committee will provide an estimate of the various costs needed to run the school and the city council will approve a single allocation that the school committee will then be responsible for for spending. I've talked with the AOS on this and I'm waiting to hear back from their attorney, but their read on this is that the city council should be voting on the warrants, the you know the the various school warrants that intend of meeting come up separately. Um our our um You mean the one they extend that we sign in on?

Not. No, no, no. Okay. Okay. Let's Sorry. This we're talking Eastport school budget, but it's kind of like that. You're thinking the AOS budget which is run like a town meeting does not require a validation because it's run like a town meeting but it kind of looks like that. So if I'm understanding right the correct process actually is the school committee votes on their budget. They that is their estimate. They vote on it to pass it to you. It passes to city council. City council then can vote yes or no on that budget. Um if not you haven't allocated it and you still need to do it. Presumably, it goes back to the school committee. If you do, you're done. So, it's separate within the budget cuz we just approved the budget.

Correct. But that's what I that's what I'm getting at. And this is as confusing and surprising to me as anyone because I, as you know, I've assumed that we were tacitly doing it. That that that that was good enough, but I know you guys have expressed concern about wanting to have maybe a bit more in control and that sort of thing. So, so if that's what you're supposed to be doing, it doesn't make any sense for you to validate the vote, right? to have the city council validate. No, you'd be validating your own vote, which means to me I think it needs to go to election. So, we have here's what I'm and this is all just like my thinking of what I'm doing with this. It just started with me trying to do it right and this is the rabbit hole I've ended up in. So, first thing is we're going to need a special election in the spring to approve to ask the voters if they want to continue with the referendum process even though we haven't been doing it. Um, when I talked with Dennis about this, I'm not going to um get into the formalities of this. I I think on the face it the intention is that the people should have been doing the voting. We just haven't been doing it.

That used to be on the ballot every 3 years. See, this is Well, no, this question is Yeah. I remember that being on But but the thing that it said you were doing should have been to take the school budget to a referendum. And so I don't know if that ever happened.

I can't remember it ever happened. It passed. So, I don't know if that was just a misunderstanding if I mean Dennis and I have talked about this and I'm still waiting on the AOS attorney if they can come back and say suggest that no, you've been doing it right. You had this power and I'm no lawyer but my my read of statute and the AOS so far doesn't seem to suggest it's anything other than a referendum and the fact that we've seen the city of Caribou and I believe the city of Lisbon was just going through it now as well um that they were going to elections. I will say it's a pain in the butt for us because we have to go to election. Uh but that's what you get for being a city. So in the absence of a clerk, this also makes that more difficult. Uh which is why is so I just wanted to bring this up right now. I'm going to the language. I'm going to make sure we have the correct language. Um at the next meeting I'm going to speak with you and say I think we just have to approve an election warrant on this one question. Assuming that that passes and the people want to have another budget referendum, then we will need to work with the school committee to figure out the timeline. Um, and if for some reason it doesn't pass referendum, just like with the AOS, you got to go back and do it again until it happen.

So, we're asking for a vote to ask the people if they want to vote on the budget. There you go. And then we're having a referendum to see if that's what it is. Okay. That's what I see. So, um, I have no action for you today, but um, why don't you see if we were doing it right in the first place? I think that's part of what you're checking. That's what I'm trying to get a definitive answer on. MMA will not talk. Every time I've asked MMA, MMA doesn't understand an ALS. They've referred me to the wrong parts of the statutes. They keep going, well, it's an AOS, so it doesn't require a referendum vote. No, no, they said that's for the AOS budget, which is a separate vote because we are all separate. What we did up in Penroke all last Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, and that's why I'm waiting on the AOS attorney. Now, the AOS attorney doesn't work for us. He works for the AOS. Um, when I get that opinion back, I'll talk with you guys. We could talk about finding somebody who specializes in this to give us a a focused opinion. AOS attorney is probably Drummond Wilson when they're supposed to be like Woodson. That I believe they would do the drum. So, primary date vote is June 9th, right? Just so so we could of course potentially piggyback on that, but that would mean we would be putting off the referendum on the school budget until June. Oh, so we need a referendum vote like March April.

Like how much are we talking like for special election? What how much you talking? Oh, I don't what is it going to cost us? I don't I haven't I can go I mean we have an elections line. I mean it we probably don't we don't incur that many direct costs because they're basically it's the election the cost for the election workers that day and it's not a huge amount. Um of course it does consume our time. Oh right. We've been publishing costs and everything else and making sure we're doing that right. Um yeah. So I wanted to let you know that was coming. Um so when do we have to approve that?

I don't know. I I I have to get that together. I I I just clarified. I mean, I don't I I honestly, unfortunately, the one one big black hole for me right now is elections. I don't know election law. So, I don't know how far in advance we'd have to pass an election warrant and all that other stuff. Well, generally speaking, things have to be out within 6 weeks prior to an election, right? Um, but so far I don't say the referendum is 45 days. I do know that when you get to the referendum, the referendum itself only requires 45 days. uh to get this question voted on.

We we may not be doing anything incorrect as as we have been doing because I don't think I have ever even heard of another city in the state having a h having the voters do a referendum. Most of them most of them rejected it in 2010, but Caribou does it and Lisbon doesn't. I know that for sure. Lisbon's not a city. Lisbon's attack. Oh, okay. You're right. You're right. But Cara was doing it. I remember that people and we can go through. I mean,

to be fair, so I'm bringing all of this up because we've been if that's the thing, well, this is where we're turning into legal stuff. And I guess I'll leave it at this point. I wanted to bring it up because if anyone had been aware that we've been doing this every 3 years and said, "Where was it this year?" Say, "Yeah, we missed it." First and foremost, the second question is what's the language and what's the appropriate process? And I guess I might ask you as council to think a little bit about what you think the appropriate process is for the council of the school budget approval process because I think that's been a question. I don't have an answer for you, but that's up to you. But um it's very confusing. I'm sorry between county budget and this um I've got nothing but nests of confusion for you. That's what I'm looking

but no action required today. Do it in June. All right. That's Thank you for that update. Um, we skipped 7A, so we're on to Oh, you're right back at it again. Number eight, city manager report.

I will try to be brief. I have given you um this financial report that I'm still evolving on. So, my measure of where we are is usually to take how far are we into the year, which is 36.7%, and see where our spending is. Um, our net expenses are somewhat over that at 40.4%. However, we have paid all of our city debt. We have put $98,000 into reserve. We have a lot lot of large ticket items that have are are gone and will not recur. We've done we paid um we paid county tax, of course. Um, so my take on this right now is that we are broadly in pretty good shape. Um, there are a couple things. Admin's a little bit high. Postage is higher than I thought it would be right now. um we're way over on advertising because we ended up advertising for more positions and more stuff than we thought. Um and we had to do a couple things to the advertiser which is more expensive. Um but uh I'm happy to go through all the details on things. The one thing I will point out I guess is that under programs which is at 120%. That's because we have $28,000 of renovation costs in the senior citizen center and we haven't talked about how to account for that. We did not tax for it. So, um, for now I'm just carrying it there, but I I would like to talk at a subsequent meeting about what if any of that we can take out of, um, other sources or find other revenue for.

Can can I ask you a question? Yeah. So, what's the total we've spent on that? Uh, 28 round purchasing and renovation. Sorry. Purchasing. Oh, no, no, no. The purchase was separate. The purchase we did in the previous visit, that was 40. Oh, it's already went into last year. That was that was in the previous fiscal year. I don't think your number I I don't I don't want to be the black sheep here, but I don't think your numbers are correct. That uh what I just said that's possible because all I did was take the amount that's in there and subtract the 14,000 out from their stipent.

So cuz right now sit down and do it, you know, it's possible you miscatategorize something. Yeah. Well, um and and uh I I do recall that we agreed 20,000 10 from the council, 10 from seniors because that was a quote that I received from um Ryan Ryan.

Um much to my surprise, we also had plumbing and electrical thrown in there. And some of the stuff was not necessarily senior reconstruction like this the sewer alarm was going off one day out there and they had to get down into the sewer pipe and replace all kinds of stuff. Um I think overall the total project and I I could we just put the door in too and just submitted that. I think I think we're closer to 48 total renovation. Uh, I will ask where where I'll I'll go. Let me go. Give me a quick check, Chance. Let me say since that's so far off. Um, let me quickly and

I don't believe we have a $14,000 deduction. We We issued a $14,000 to the senior center that they didn't realize they had to submit a letter to receive the funding from the last budget because quite honestly, they're going to use 10 of that 14 to pay the 10 that they said they paid. We'll figure that out. If they if if they had not requested it from the previous budget, they didn't realize they had to. So if but if they if that's what they've requested, that might be that's being charged in this fiscal year. And well, we'll have to talk about it then. Um I'm still confused as

Yeah. Well, I am too now. And uh cuz I didn't I I mean and I'll be probably the first because I did look at some of the bills. I didn't realize everything was $100. Every time you turn around it's 100 bucks. 100 bucks. I I'll take a look at if there's any chance that some of this renovation money went out in the previous fiscal year. That might be part of it, too. I'm only looking at this fiscal year. Did Did we approve a dollar amount or I don't remember. We did. We approved 20. That's what I'm writing. Yes. 10 and 10. We're going to split it with them, but we're up to 48. You said I I'm I'm almost thinking,

well, you and I have to sit down. Right now, that line for this fiscal year is expended at $41,000. I had been under the impression they had requested their $14,000 in this fiscal year. So, I subtracted 14 from that 41 to get 28. It sounds like we need to sit down and look what actually happened. The point being, I guess I'll put it for the point of my financial report, and I'm glad I brought it up, is that that's one of the lines that's completely blown out of the water, and that's why. Yeah. So, um, we'll fix that.

Um, so otherwise, I actually think we're broadly in good shape. I have told I've not made a formal proclamation, but I've told all the department heads informally to please watch anything that's even remotely discretionary just because of what we're facing with county tax. Um, they they've done a they've done a good job so far. Um, and you also have the whole trio report. If you want to go through that and sit down and talk with me, you're welcome to. Uh, I also briefly wanted to talk about um something I've been working on for a while. We finally made some progress on it was trying to do a better job quantifying um what the police department how much work the police department is doing, how we're covering it. Now, this is only the first step, but um we had some we had some confusion because uh the counts that Don Rice was putting together out of the police department didn't always add up with some other data we had. And I found out why. I will I'll spare you the painful detail, but the system he was trying to get the data out of was excruciating. If it had more than 50 results, it said there were too many and wouldn't show them all. Turns out we had Mike Crabtree in deputy sheriff today showed us how to get the data out in a way that we could do reproducibly and put together. And I put together is the world's ugliest graph. But the first graph is just how many police calls there have been and by the responding agency. And then I turn that also into a

what's the time frame table? Last month. Sorry. This just last month. Just October.

Yeah, just October. Okay. And with with this data in hand, we can go back and do more analysis, but at least we can get it here. And they also gave you a table. So Eastport Trump 77% of calls, sheriff's 10%, Pleasant.5%. I'm actually acco I think is animal control and I'm wondering if that's in which case we actually covered three more than we had here. I broke him out as a separate provider. Um uh that must be Wharton service mews. Oh yeah, we had a couple of deer things. That's what that was. And arguably, you know, that's main word is supposed to deal with that. So I could potentially potentially exclude those even if I want to play with numbers. And we don't know we don't know why there's a Canadian listed can is uh and we're going to hunt that one down. Um, you know, our floor for what we want for coverage is 67% cuz that's what we're budgeted at. I was actually hoping we hit more like 80 um what we got here. So, the next stage is to take a look at what our coverage is, who we've got on. Um, and you know, are we staffing where can we detect patterns that affect our staffing? Um, I'll tell you my guess right now is probably no. I think the number of calls is actually relatively low to get real strong patterns. It's going to be all over the place, but we're going to do it because we need to. Um, and this is again reproducible now. And Dan Don will have to spend an afternoon typing stuff in and typing stuff off his screen. So, that was that was today's big win for me at least day. Um, we are pursuing additional staffing at city hall. Um, I hope to have something to report concretely on that very shortly. Um, I want to thank everyone who helped with the election. It went very smoothly. Uh, and it was terrifying for me certainly going into election, but uh, Teresa put in a tremendous amount of time, our consultant, clerk, um, and, uh, thank everybody else out there that was very well person.

There was some problem with the ballots going into the machine. Yeah. And we had tested them the day before and they were fine. Now I I guess the thing is you basically may have to do a reset or something each time the numbers came out correctly. I don't exactly I can if you really want details on that I can go in and ask but um are we going to if there's like a big like next year governor's election

last year we had a big problem last year and they had to manually count. They were there until midnight last year. So the uh the trend is good. Um they were they were they weren't done by 9:30 uh on Monday. But yeah, we're going to have to look into that and see what happened. That's I think everything you need to hear from me. Again, I talked myself for so Thank you. Um item nine, council leazison updates and issues.

Council issue, I guess. So, in the past, I know you got a lot on your plate already, but in the past, we used to get monthly reports from everybody. Is there any way you could ask for those and then maybe they can be sent directly to us so you don't even have to do um those are important. You mean from the department heads? Yeah, because when you do the annual report, they're condensed so that at the end of the year, you know what each month happened and then you can put that in the annual report. You're right. Um, we haven't been doing it. And when's the last time we did an annual report? That's the other thing I'd like to Yeah. I

We should be able to start handing out um some more of these clerical tasks back off of my plate now and that will make things easier because I actually I had I neglected to call for monthly reports this this time around. So, at least, you know, at least you always got an airport report, right? I get hit this time because I didn't get it there. Um, we have a lot of that basic stuff to I mean I'm behind we're behind on on posting minutes. Um, I'm behind on posting ordinances. Um, I'm handing that stuff off to Hannah next week. I was putting that off because we were waiting for the website to move over, but the website company has stopped talking to us about the migration right now. So, I don't know where we are with that. We wrote that this week. So, yeah, I'm not happy. Um, I feel like I'm we're not doing a very good job generating and radiating the information I would like to. Um yeah, an annual report is actually not only is it required by the state, it's a real good thing to show certain things about this community we'd like to show. And um um I will I I've already put a thing in my calendar to make sure I'm at least reminding people and I'm going to be handing off a lot of this clerical stuff for this meeting because that's actually counting budget's been bad, but actually the clerical stuff for this meeting has been something that's probably eaten 3 or four hours a week out of my life. Um just trying to stay on top of everything, getting the ads out and paper on time, all that sort of stuff. And we'll be building out a Thank you for your patience.

I only have three. Um, excuse me. I was asked by a resident to read a letter to the members of the Eastport City Council. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Chief Mark Pisculin.

Yeah. I told him I'd get it wrong and he said it's fine. and officer Don Rice for their excellent service. I was recently facing a potential conflict that would have resulted in damage to my home. When I called the police, I was fortunate enough to speak to both the chief and officer Rice. They very patiently took my statement and told me to call them when the contractor arrived at my home. I did so, and they arrived within minutes. They diffused the situation and brought it to a peaceful conclusion. After all was said and done, I felt very secure in my home. So to those of you that pay the two gentlemen's salary, including her, I would say they are very well worth it. Thank you. I told her I'd do that. I did it. That's those are good things to hear about our police department and I'm pleased that that worked out well for that citizen. Um senior meeting was yesterday. Um, we had much discussion on the building. Um, you'll all be getting uh invitations. Try to keep December 7th wide open. 1 to 3 is the grand opening. The chamber will be bought Sunday Pearl Harbor Day. Yeah, that's a good way to remember it. Um, they have uh next Saturday they have the community Thanksgiving dinner. Um, the paper said 11:00, the meeting at 12:00. So, get there between 11 and 12. I thought it was I I think I don't know what time, but get there if you can. Um, and they are starting to fit in out there. They're trying to get the community involved in certain um aspects. they have some requests that they're working on right now from different community members, kids,

adults. Um, so and it's it's starting to take good shape out there. Um, I think if you haven't had a chance to get out there, I I would encourage anybody to go out during the day just to see what has happened. Um, it's quite a change. um airport meeting um hanger leases. Uh it was brought to my attention that did we ever get anything on the hanger leases. So I asked um haven't got a definitive answer, but I I do have the three new hangers have been paid. They have the receipts. They have when they paid them. They are also trying to Chris is also working with Brian and he's got to get back on to it about getting the older leases all in on January 1 and there's no billing. You know, you owe it, you pay it. Um that's one of the strong points that the committee wanted to get with the new hangers. Um, so I h I haven't double checked, but myself and and counselor Dana Cumins was there and we asked the treasur and we really didn't get a good solid answer like yes, we have got money. So where is it?

She said she hasn't. I thought that's what she said. She did. But they have receipts and they have the dates that the the check was put in and the dates the checks was deposited. So, um, and I don't know whether it's just a clarification of where they're putting the money when they deposit it into what account cuz it goes into our, um, our received funds for the count for the fiscal year, but I believe those three hanger leases were signed before 30 June. So, that's last year's budget. for this year's budget. I'm not aware of anybody having paid their hanger pieces.

Well, no, they wouldn't pay it until January 1. They can pay it at any time. The the city doesn't necessarily send out a bill to them. I know that Deb has brought hers in. I think Deb has brought hers in every year. I don't think any no one else has paid except Deb and the and the 32 hanger leases. The 32 the um the three new people have paid theirs for last year. So, we're still working now we're working on a new fiscal year, but it will go into our it was on our it was on our budget.

Yeah, I saw the the hang of lease, but I didn't see any any u amount paid it yet. Okay, that's why we didn't Okay, so maybe last year for and the uh the folks that are under old leases, they need to be changed to a square footage uh assessment. So, we don't know what their amount is instead of being a straight $240 or whatever it was that they were paying. Um so, we don't have an assessment of how much the uh leases should be. Right. time frame cuz we started talking about this 2 years ago and it's still we had the new leases, the square footage maybe almost 3 years ago now.

Yeah. And yeah, we did we need a time frame 23. We Yeah, we need to document this process. It it's just it when I came in this was kind of fuzzy. I still feel for me it's kind of fuzzy. I just I think I need to get Chris and Cammy together and just make clear we know I some of what you're saying is actually news to me but that's I've not been in it. It's um yeah um if Chris can I guess I'll make a note to that but we have to get him to talk with Cammy and be very clear on how we're keeping track of this because it's kind of it remains something of a mystery. What you you said who and Cammy Chris Chrome chair of the Why wouldn't you be talking to Peter? Peter is the employee. Chris has been has been handling that

and it is in his job description as you've sent to me and I did ask him and he said no he has nothing to do with that. So, I didn't argue the fact. I just um yeah, I just let it go because I I wanted to first follow up and see that they have been paid number one, but I guess it was last year and not this year's and if they're not due until January, but it if you read the job description that was posted, it's in the employees duties.

Fair enough. He's a 15-hour a week employee. I have not myself, to be very honest, I've not been sitting there trying to make sure I know what was going on there. I know there's a lot of stuff that has to be done out at the airport and I have at this point I don't know enough about it to be able to speak to what his workload is like. It's on my list of things to do. I have not had a chance to deal with it.

And I and I think it was very fair because um there was a lot of discussion about maintenance that was being laxed and um the committee was very adamant that from now on these things are going to get done and have the stuff available to do it right now. Um, so I I think that that that and I know in the past and I I don't know. I think Colleen may have been here, but there's been some talk about uh him wanting to put his hours up to 40 hours. And I I don't know whether the airport number one can sustain that right now. Um I think originally I I personally would like to see the airport be self sufficient bringing it in enough revenue to operate it is it existence. Um however I do believe that the airport's an asset to the city. So we need to keep that on the front plate too. Um I think the charter I mentioned the charter air service again. I I said I it really disturbs me that charter Cape Air is flying out of three different places in Maine but not Eastport. Seriously, I mean, what do we need to do to sign that up? Uh I think if we try it, I think it will work, but we can't say that we didn't try it if we don't do it. So, um I think it's ongoing, but I I I think um we need to kind of close in that loop a little on the the leases and um get some more clarification as to whose responsibility and um and I don't really know whether or not I I guess the job description is and I know Colleen worked on that committee um quite a bit more than I did in the beginning. Um, but who can who can change the job description and say,

"Well, there's not enough hours for that, so take it away." Who pays them? Said he does. Well, wouldn't that be the answer? We'll give Bri give it to Brian. He hasn't got enough to do. I have to look what the personnel policy says. I I believe you guys actually approve job descriptions, but I'd have to double check that. Yeah,

I bought a kid. C council did approve the job description and um when you have admin responsibilities and he doesn't supervise anybody but when you have admin responsibilities and you have work on the ground responsibilities as a committee and with Pete we've kind of agreed that we would take care of the administrative stuff plus volunteers and he would take care of the day-to-day on the ground kind of stuff. the leases. It's always been our assumption that the city is signing the lease with the lees. So that's not the airport uh supervisor, that's the city manager would sign those leases. So we still have to get those older lease people in and resign. We have a bunch of folks that don't have leases that they're just there and you can't bill them for something that they have not agreed to and they haven't signed yet.

So, city managers been underwater a lot and we've had two three city managers since we got that lease approved by city council and we're just not the highest of priorities for the city right now. We're not a problem. So, we kind of exist and as long as we're not a problem, uh, Brian can do other things.

Well, but I think it's it was a good discussion and I think we got to just continue it and stay on top of it. That's all. Um, but I was thankful that it was brought to my attention. Um, and I and I certainly will continue on with it. Um, and I guess uh Veterans Day ceremonies yesterday at the high school went very well. And then at 1:30, we went to the nursing home uh to continue it. I was at both sessions and very nicely done. Other than that, I have nothing else. So, we if nobody else has anything, we are on to item 10, executive session. This is where you shine. How do I always wind up doing this? 7:48. And I move that we go into executive session for personal matters title 1 MRSA456A for real estate property or economic development title 1 MRSA 4056C and for consultant with legal counsel title one MRSA456E.

I'll second that motion. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion hearing? None. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana, yes. Councelor Miranda, yes. Councelor Stevens, yes. Councelor V. Yes. Item 10A. A motion to come out of executive session. 8:21. I make that motion. A second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Dana Cummings. Yes. Council Rang. Yes. Councelor Stevens. Yes. Council. Yes. Item 11, action from executive session if there is any. There is none. Hearing none. Item 12.

I move to adjourn at 8:21. 841. I would have loved to get 821. Sorry. Dude, what are you doing for me? Move and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Roll call, please. Councelor Daniel Cummings. Yes. Council Morang. Yes. Councelor Booth. Yes. Councelor Councelor Stevenson. Yes.