City Council - Regular Meeting

Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Agenda item number three, rules of order. Ellsworth City Council has adopted the Robbins Rules of Order, and that's how we will proceed procedurally through the meeting this evening. Agenda item number four, adoption of the Ellsworth City Council minutes from the following meetings, May 18th, 2026 special meeting, May 18th, 2026 regular meeting, May 26th, 2026 special meeting, and June 1, 2026 special meeting. It's been a busy month. Do I have any councillors, any proposed motions?

My motion to approve the minutes.

I have a second. Second. Second. Second. Any further discussion from councillors? Seeing none, all those in favor? Anonymous. Agenda item number five, presentation of awards. three awards tonight and I understand only one of the recipients is here this evening, but nonetheless worthy of recognition. The City of Ellsworth proudly presents this certificate of service to Aline Taylor in recognition of 10 years of service to the Ellsworth Public Library. Her devotion to duty and loyalty to the community have contributed to the improvement of the City of Ellsworth. Presented this 15th day of June 2026. Thank you, Aline. Well, why roll all up? Why don't we just go for it? The City of Ellsworth proudly presents this certificate of service to Joanna Sands for recognition of five years of service to the Ellsworth Public Library. Devotion to duty and loyalty to the community have contributed to the improvement of the cities of Ellsworth. Thank you, Joanna. Last but not least, the City of Ellsworth proudly presents the certificate of service to Scott Guillereau in recognition of five years of service to the Fire Department. Scott's devotion to duty and loyalty to the community have contributed to the improvement of the City of Ellsworth. Agenda item number six, city manager's report.

Thank you, Chair Lyons, and thank you to Aline and Joanne for their incredible years of service to the city, and of course to Chief Guillereaux, who in addition to being a great fire chief, is also a good doorman, and was really adamant about fire code. It's kind of one of the things I want to talk about. It's been so great to see a lot more community engagement lately from everything from workshops to city council meetings, to even some of our kind of special projects that we like to do a lot of public engagement on. And sometimes it's sad. You set up all these events and nobody comes in. And I know it's sometimes the tenor of the conversation has been a little bit interesting, but I've really, really enjoyed getting to hear diversity of opinion on a variety of subjects in ways that my first year as a city manager, there just really wasn't a lot of dialogue on. I know, thinking of kind of the bright future of Ellsworth, we've, big thank you to Jason Ingles, our IT director, who also has a long history of his family in Ellsworth here, and the streetlight project he's been working on. The streetlights are getting replaced starting today. It's the LED project, so... That's not like the decorative ones. It's the other ones around, and we've got dozens and dozens that have been out for probably a decade. I know I've said it before, but we've got a lot of complaints about streetlights being out. I think we're probably going to start getting some complaints about streetlights being back on and people seeing a light near their house that they haven't seen on in a very long time so there is some level of dimming capacity and control so that should be the projects contractually obligated to be finished by the end of July but we're hoping to finish that a lot earlier another kind of general announcement we just got reached out to by the town of Winthrop Connecticut which in the homestead of Oliver Ellsworth on July 10th is They are doing a celebration to celebrate America's 250th and to celebrate Oliver Ellsworth as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They invited the city council and myself. I sent it along to you all. Unfortunately, I'm definitely going to try to see that homestead at some point. I have cousins that live nearby, but I've got a family vacation that will take me away from that. But really been thinking a lot about Oliver Ellsworth and his signing of the Declaration of Independence, but also I researched a bit more on this gentleman who kind of hovers over us. Never came to Ellsworth, but dedicated and just what an impressive figure, not just a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but a really key figure in the Constitutional Convention debates and brought forward the Connecticut Compromise which established that kind of representative democracy of the Senate in two seats and the House of Representatives being more representative of the people of a whole and all the debates and all the committees that he was on. And it's so similar now in so many ways. All the committees, like the system that we utilize now is... In many ways, a testament to that and how fiery and emotional and heated those debates. But also, he's one of the people that brought in that we're going to be the United States of America, not the national government, but the United States of America, and that there was a lot of disagreement, but that everybody's heart is in the right place trying to do the right thing that's best for people as a whole. We might not always agree on those types of things, but I know me personally, I've got to speak.

I don't think the Milliken family were able to make it inside for Friar Code. They might be upstairs.

Did ask permission to just talk a bit after they came to attend one of our workshops on the Village Partnership Initiative, which is potentially 30, could be $50 million investment in our downtown area, a nine to one state, federal to city match. to do things like replace all of the rusting decorative streetlights, redo all of the sidewalks, create a river walk between the marina and the downtown, which I have three different project plans going back to 1999 in the city manager's office. Improve connectivity to the Bridge Hill for pedestrians to walk up and down the Bridge Hill intersection. And they were pretty opposed to a lot of the ideas that the consultants prepared on that. Also, I really invite you to look at our website and our social media page. There's a link to the proposals. And these are very general in the first stages here with this project. And they had some really good points, some of which I agreed with on a lot of the bike lanes in these proposals. I'm not quite sure. that we're gonna have enough usage on a bike lane area to justify that kind of infrastructure changes. Some of the stuff like redoing the sidewalks, the street lamps, the Riverwalk, those are kind of once in generational nine to one. federal to city matches that do not come around very often, that the state is very much behind, that could be the beginnings of a build grant with the federal government, that could be incredible. And there's a lot of tough conversations and potential compromises, not as big and glamorous as the Constitutional Convention, but really will define the future of Ellsworth in many ways. that when this downtown and Main Street was first coming together. And so it literally could be as new looking as it did the 1930s when governments in this community came together to kind of rebuild this area and how thriving it's been now all the growth we're seeing got a few more developers that reached out recently we're just doing the final assessments on all the new valuation growth of the hotels the new tractor dealerships the new housing units that have been put together so it's an incredible amount of growth in the city but I think for a lot of folks that have been here for a long time, too, it's a lot of change. How do we honor the past and bring it into a new, shared, bright future? It's really exciting to be a part of that. I'm just thankful for everybody who's coming out and making their voice heard. That's it.

Thank you, Charlie. Agenda item number seven, committee reports. We have a The Recreation Commission is requesting the appointment of Mark Cook as a member of the Commission with a term expiring June 30, 2027. We have a memo here from Roddy, the Director of Parks, Recreation and Facilities, discussing how Rec Commissioner Chair Eric Marischal isn't seeking reappointment and that we greatly appreciate his service on the Recreation Commission. He's done some great work. He was going to come here tonight to discuss that. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to attend, so we'll have to table that until next month. But we have a recommendation for Mark Cook. It goes into a little bit about his background, his credentials. And so I don't know if I believe.

Yeah.

We're in a year on the commission. Yeah.

You want to make a motion that we're going to make a motion. I make a motion to approve Mark to appoint Mark Cook to a second term on the rec commission set term to expire on June 20, June 30th, 2028. Right.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Second. Any further discussion from Council? Council Halloran?

The agenda says expiring on the 27th.

I believe that's wrong, because if it's a two-year term, it should be the 28th. It's wrong. 2028.

It's 28?

Okay. So a two-year term running through June 30th, 2028. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Unanimous. Any other committee reports for this evening? Councilor Smith?

I can follow with some rec. So I believe there is what so one vacancy available on the rec commission. And if you are interested in that, there is a link where you can send a letter of interest. And I think just an exciting Nolten Park news. I believe the splash pad is now open, which I think will be, which people should very much enjoy in this summer that is coming and has arrived. And just on a more personal note, I am very happy to see that the harbor has come alive. I know every time I go to the farmer's market, I'm awed by just how many people are there enjoying the park and the farmer's market as well.

Great, thank you. Any other councilor committee reports? Seeing none, we'll move on. Agenda item number eight, citizen comments. This is the opportunity for citizens to provide public comment on city business that is not on the agenda tonight. We have a number of, I think we have eight public hearings tonight, so there will be plenty of opportunity for citizens to provide comment on the variety of matters on the agenda. So we ask that if a matter is on the agenda that you hold your comment for that point. But for general citizen public comments, again, we ask for three minutes or less. It's a very big agenda tonight, and we have a lot to get through. So if at all possible, folks that may need to get home early for family or medical reasons, we would invite them maybe to go first. But otherwise, we invite citizen comment, and we ask that you keep your comments to three minutes or less. So with that, and then when you approach the DS, please say your name and address for the record. And thank you very much.

Before you start, there's been several citizens that have expressed disappointment that number 10 is not a public hearing. And in the past, and just a moment ago, you said if it's on the agenda not to speak about that in the citizens' comments. I would ask that the citizens that want to speak, if you're not going to allow public input on number 10, I'll ask for an allowance to let them speak on number 8. Number 10 would be best if they could speak, but... I'm sorry?

8 is citizens' comment.

and ten is the bathroom.

So we had a public We had a public hearing on that matter last meeting. It was closed, and then the matter was tabled. So we've already had a public hearing on that. I'd like another one. Well, it's not noticed for that. So I would ask folks this evening, I know people have strong opinions and feelings on certain things, and I'm glad you're here to express them. But I would ask that folks in the audience not yell out. Under Robert's Rules of Order, You only speak to the council if you're addressed by the chair and you address that to the chair. So I would just ask that we be respectful this evening, allow us to get through the agenda with some order. If folks want to talk about the public restrooms, now is a good time to do it because agenda item number 10 It's not a public hearing because we've already had a public hearing on it. But if you'd like to speak on it now as part of your public comments, feel free. Again, I ask that you keep it to three minutes or less and that we're respectful and civil with one another. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm Casey Hansen. I'm a citizen of Ellsworth. I'm just up here to thank you all for all the work you've done. I especially remember how hard it is to get through budget season and how many really challenging and heart-wrenching decisions there are to be made. So I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the city staff as well. I've been at a workshop and also at a public meeting, and I learned some things about using... TIF districts to improve affordable housing and the village improvement program to get some state and federal money to fix some things that we've all known need to be fixed for a long time so I know that's the real actual hard work that the city staff are doing day in and day out and I very much appreciate that I know you guys have been getting a lot of hate lately and I am just here to give my love because I appreciate all the work you guys do thank you thank you

My name is Dorothy Francisca Riley, but everyone knows that because the U.S. Government federal agencies issued a false terrorist spy threat alert against me, which I've never been none of those, neither a militant of any kind. I have been lied about so extensively, and there's a genocidal propaganda campaign against me and a hate website, which the United States Government is afraid for me to see, and the federal agencies. because I can shut it down in a heartbeat. Horrible people I've known who have abused me are speaking on there against me. Psychologically coerced and trained people, bribed people. My foster mother of 34 years even admitted to being bribed. I'm not going to stand by and be silent. The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day, which is the FBI's COINTELPRO domestic and global terrorist program. I am a targeted individual of this program, and they are lying to the world about why I use Morse code and light language communications to communicate to law enforcement and military and to people to record what was being done to me. The truth is so utterly sadistic, it would shock the people. But for five years, the world has watched me be tortured in a human subject experimentation in brain-mind control. Sexual torture, biological, psychological, social, neurological. So let me repeat this. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Cities can be bought. We have the big tech billionaires of the world now doing AI data center mining. What do people think is going to happen to the future? We're talking about the transportation of cognition. We're talking about people's brains being stored on computers. Nanobiotechnology and brain to computer interface are weapons of mass destruction, and they work in concert with each other. What's going to happen when the population is nanobiotech? And Tracy at Inspire says she didn't believe me, but of course she was lying because she got paid off.

Ma'am, that's your three minutes.

She says she doesn't care if I'm innocent or guilty. I care.

Thank you, ma'am.

My statement is actually, does it work?

I'm Lucy leaf. I live in Ellsworth.

My statement is actually quite brief. I just want to say I support city council decisions, um, that are made as per our charter that the, uh, citizens of Ellsworth have, um, voted on long ago. Um, and I especially, uh, want to support any decisions, uh, in the past or in the future. that make the workplace a safe and non-intimidating place. Thank you. And I am a city, of course I'm a resident of Ellsworth.

Hi, Leanne Sullivan, resident of Ellsworth. I just wanted to commend the city council. This is the first meeting I've been able to attend since the workshop, and I really enjoyed getting to see the wide range of different topics that you guys cover and work for, and the incredible number of things that we are asking you to take positions on and have expertise on. is just mind blowing. And I particularly wanted to commend those city councilors that came forward with a conversation around a preemptive data center moratorium. For an unrelated work project this week, spent some time looking into data centers. And one of the things, just wanted to mention a couple of the things that I found. One of them is that 67% of planned data centers are coming up in rural communities right now. These are communities that look a lot like places like Ellsworth. 39% of those data centers are also coming up in places without existing data center infrastructure. So again, this makes our communities one where we might be looked at. These data centers are also often built in clusters. So once we open the door to one data center conversation, we open the door to a large number of them coming in. There also was information that I was able to find that in 2024, existing data centers in the United States used 4% of the country's total electricity. That is projected to grow by as much as 133% by 2030. So I have some very serious concerns about data centers that are emerging in Maine. But one of the things that I have since learned that is really interesting is that the companies and developers that are looking to move forward with data centers are bypassing communities with active citizen participation. If you are in a city where they are trying to use non-disclosure agreements to advance data centers without having to hold public hearings and then a public hearing is called, those developers will back out. So I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge how important it is that we're having this conversation, that I hope we continue to have this conversation, and that I would like to extend any support I can offer in holding space for public discussion around the topic of data centers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Zach Steele and my wife Paige. Hello. We live on Hancock Street, and we'd like to make a formal request to the city to remove the picnic table at Merrill Park. There's been a couple of park benches, I think, that have already been removed, and we've had discussions with Mr. Pierce about this. The picnic table is at the back of the park adjacent catty corner to our property, and it has become an attractive nuisance to a population of... individuals who spend most of their day there and have open containers. They're using marijuana and other substances, I assume sometimes, because when they're smoking marijuana, I can smell it. But there's other times I can tell they're smoking things that I can't quite smell. We've also had issues with public urination and defecation on the adjacent property, which is the Riverside Restaurants area. So we've been sort of being patient for the past two years. I know everyone's busy tonight, so whatever we need to do to move this on and have that table removed. If you want to put a couple of park benches out towards the street to still keep that inviting for folks, but the picnic table hidden in the back is just not working. Thank you.

And possibly some no smoking signs, if that is a park ordinance within the city, would be great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Roger Gillis, City Resident. I just recently see that there was a survey put across the city's website about changing the traffic pattern on Bridge Hill and everything else. Honestly, this is what I've been coming about and talking about, wasteful spending. If you're going to pay people for stupid ideas, there's a pile of people willing to line up. The one way on Bridge Hill is just absurd. The sixth or seventh time that they dug up the Baldwin Bridge Hill last summer, traffic was out past the school bus garage because Short Street fills up so fast. More traffic goes downtown than anything. You know, I think that instead of wasting the time on these surveys that, you know, don't really matter, it's just a waste of money. And we're all paying for it, and nobody wants to pay for stuff like that. Then I look at the whole housing that they want to do in town and fill town full of houses instead of businesses, which doesn't make much sense to me. But before we look into housing in town anymore, maybe we ought to find a restaurant that stays open past 7. That would be a good idea. If we're going to fill town up with houses, maybe they ought to have a place to work and not just sit on their low-income balconies and watch the closed businesses in town. That's it. Thanks.

John Linehan, lifelong resident of Ellsworth. I'm here for just really one reason. I want to make a point to the five councilors that are involved with the petition right now that I want to tell you personally, and I think I know some of you personally, that I am signing the petition. I'm trying to get signatures on it to have you removed because I'm concerned about what I consider excessive spending in the policies which you're voting on. It's not a personal issue with me. I would be happy to take any of you out for coffee anytime, but I am set on trying to reduce the taxes here in the city of Ellsworth. I think it's a bipartisan issue. I appreciate Tiffany Gaspard chairing up the Ellsworth Recall Committee, and I thank the hundreds of people that have signed it already. And I don't want it to be an animosity, a hate relationship. I heard hate was mentioned. I don't hate any of you up there. I can tell you that right now. I'm a Christian, a constitutionalist, I love people, but I'm standing up for what I believe is right. So I appreciate the signatures and the effort that's going into this so far, but I wanted to make sure for me personally that you know it's not a personal issue. Also, I'm also the chair of the Ellison Republican Committee, and I want to extend all the branch out to the Democrat Party. Right now we're having signature drives, a big massive blitz this coming Saturday and Sunday. We're going eight to eight. for two days in a row to sign signatures. It's not just a Republican thing. It's a bipartisan committee. We've had Democrats. We've had unenrolled sign up to do this. And I just want to make sure I would love to have a team go to the Democrat headquarters here in Ellsworth, like we have a group going out to the Maine Coast Mall right beside TJ Maxx. So I would come myself and I would bring two volunteers. And I believe the tax issue is a bipartisan issue. And it's my number one concern is the spending here in the city of Ellsworth. So I encourage everybody to thank you for Tiffany's leadership in this area. Thank you for the people that have signed up. And I hope it's done in a positive manner. I believe in the charter. It has a recall provision on how to do it. And what I'm trying to do is go exactly by the recall position. So I've signed it. I'm handing out petitions like on it. And I hope it's successful to do that. Thank you very much.

Hi, good evening. Tiffany Gasper, Ellsworth. Let's talk about the 2026 budget ending 5-31-26 that was reported online under your finance tab with another month to go to the end of this month. The fact that the numbers and formulas aren't correctly tallied and that you You really cannot distribute this kind of information without breaking it down into revenue and expenses per category. The numbers are way off. We are actually $3.3 plus million under in revenues for the fiscal year. That's just based off the first page, which it looks like this. It's a 27-page document that's on your website. And this still has to the end of this month to go. And Y on the line item was only $5,500 for bank fees budgeted, yet we have spent $53,413.02 so far this year as of 5-31. That's almost a $48,000 overage on a budgeted item. Concerning the fire department, and just four lines, payroll overtime, payroll overtime sick, payroll overtime holiday, payroll overtime vacation. Our budget amount with those four lines was $335,000, and yet we are at $540,061.40 as of May 31st. That's a difference of $205,061.40. This could have paid for at least one full-time and a part-time firefighter, if not two full-time ones. And then the Moore Center, you budgeted $52.60, and we are at $73,266.08 on an overage of $68,006.08. Another example is when the Recreation Department was established, you set a budget of $45,350 and ended up at $57,795. That's an overage of $11,654.95. And you had no budget for Demeyer Field Maintenance, and that was over budget by $10,872. These are just a few examples of how you have no business with budgets and no concept of budgeting. There are 27 pages of errors and this isn't even a standard operating budget. Our tax increases are a direct result of your inability to budget properly and prioritize. And I'm honestly mad seeing these numbers and these overages. And any resident that pays any money into this city should be mad about that. That's fiscal irresponsibility. And in regards to the bathroom discussion.

Ms. Gasper, you're at three minutes.

If you bring it off table, it becomes public discussion per Robert's rules.

Chuck Levitt. I live on Autumn Way. I got a question. I've watched you a couple of times on TV, and this is my first attendance, but I'm amazed that nobody answers a question. So maybe somebody could tell me why. I mean, you have taxpayers here. They come up and ask a question. The guy with the table a minute ago, is somebody going to do something about it, or are they just, just that's it? We come, make a comment, and then nobody does anything about it. It doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I was on the board. I was on the school board, Union 96 chairman. People came in. We have a discussion. Now, maybe you can put it on the agenda somewhere someday so people can come in and get an answer. Is somebody going to write the fellow on the table or somebody going to call him or somebody going to do something about it? Because people are just sitting here, and I have no idea what's going to happen. She just accused you guys of your budget being absolutely off. DID ANYBODY ANSWER THAT QUESTION? I'D LIKE TO KNOW IF IT'S THAT FAR OFF. Apparently, we're not going to get an answer.

Sir, I'll just note that public comment is just that, comment. It's not public discussion. This is a common practice for many municipalities. It's also advised.

It's not common.

It might be common in this town, but I've been to many town halls and people talk. The reason we don't do this is because then we get back and forth and it becomes unproductive. I know, but when do you get an answer?

My question is, when do you get an answer? You're the chairman. When do you get an answer?

I don't know if you've asked a question.

No, but she asked a question. The guy on the table asked a question.

We will provide question answers when we can. We have multiple avenues of doing so through email, through later on in this meeting if we're able to do so, sir. Public comment is just that, public comment. Thank you.

Bottom line is your people are being squelched, and I disagree with it. I think totally we should have involvement. When better time to have it than in a meeting. But this administration doesn't want your questions. They only want your money.

Any further public comment? If you'd like to be.

Robert C. Grant, Sr. I've been here before. I don't like it. The day after Memorial Day, I come into the city hall at 7 o'clock. That's when the doors open. I waited a few minutes early just for that reason. And 7 o'clock, I walked up to the door. At 7 o'clock, it was open. The girls at the front counter that take your money, they were there. The water department girl, sewer department girl, she was there. I asked where. This is this man's question. I asked where the door was that said question and answers. And all their faces just fell down. They didn't know what I was talking about. I said, I'm here to ask questions and get answers. They said, you'll have to talk to the city manager or the assistant. I know you don't like it, so you can swallow again, but I'm just telling you. I went to the city manager. They said, you'll have to talk to the city assistant or the city manager. And I went to, I said, yes, I would. And she said, she's available at 12 o'clock. And I said, fine. So I met with her. She's a very nice lady. She took my questions. She did answer me back. The first one that she answered me back on was the cannabis situation. Now, I asked, how come one company gets a ticket For $10,000, they can start business the day you open it up. One company. Anybody here representing the marijuana companies?

No.

I wish you'd listen. I wish you'd listen. One company gets a free ticket because it was in the zone that you folks picked. It was a nice-looking store, and I can't tell you it's not a nice-looking store. It's an absolutely beautiful-looking store. Looks like they serve green tea and vitamins. probably not the case however you i would like a show of hands here we go again i'd like to show a hand to see who voted who voted for that at the council level it was in it was in a not a city council afterwards it was a city council but before it wasn't when it was in discussion i'd like to know who voted for it anybody want to say they did or didn't No, because you're not transparent. And it's not fair to the other people. I want to tell you, I don't care if there's any canvas stores in the city of Ellsworth. It's just not fair. And if you can tell me, if you can sit there and tell me that's fair, I believe you're wrong. But anyways, I walked upstairs that day at 7 o'clock. I asked if there was anybody in the front offices. Nobody was in the front offices at 7 o'clock in the morning. We do a seven to six four-day work week. This is what you guys, as you tell me that, he's going to have to take me out of here because I'm here to tell you. So listen to me because I won't come back, only in November, and I'm going to take somebody's seat, I hope. Listen to me. I come here. There was not a person upstairs. The rooms was wide open. I could have rifled every desk up there. Rooms was wide open. There was nobody there 7 o'clock in the morning. Nobody. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Yes. It's been a pleasure. And I'll see you in November, everybody. Everybody in November.

Thank you.

My name is Gail Benek. I'm a resident and a taxpayer of Ellsworth, and I know that the restrooms are not up for debate tonight. You guys are going to cancel it, but these are some of my concerns. Where you have proposed is a very out-of-the-way area. If I'm at the sweet shop and I need to pee or my little boy needs to pee, there's no way I'm going to be able to find it up here. Why not keep the park at year-round, put it right there where it is actually downtown Ellsworth? Put it in front of City Hall so the people that work in City Hall can see what's going on. How often is this going to be cleaned? Who's going to clean it? Will the police ever police it? How much is it going to cost us each year to maintain it and to keep it updated? How about the electricity cost, the water cost? How much is that actually going to cost us? What is this project going to do for the average taxpayer living here in Ellsworth? Those are the concerns that I have. I also want to know, is it year-round open? Why should we have a public restroom open snowy January day when only half of the stores downtown are open anyways. A lot of the stores downtown do close January and February. It also should be closed by 6 p.m. The stores downtown are closed at 6 p.m. There's just restaurants open. Restaurants legally have to have restrooms for their people, their customers. There's also a public restroom in the library, and there's one here, actually, right here in City Hall that we can be sending people to. It's already here. So we should be really looking at this before you approve this project. I just think it's really going to cause a lot of trouble where it is and how it is going about. Thank you.

Ralph Jordan, citizen of Bayside. I want to make a couple observations and one question to begin with, which I know you're not going to answer, but I've got to ask. So on this bathroom issue, last month I don't think we ever came up with an actual price, did we? I read somewhere it was $45, but we never got an actual price on how much it would cost. So hopefully you address that tonight. I came here at night with my oldest brother, Steven. We grew up on the Bayside Road. We grew up with seven kids and, of course, our parents in a two-bedroom, tarred-papered shack with no running water, no toilet, an outhouse, and a piss pot. We grew most of our own food. The reason I say it was a two-bedroom house was because it was two by fours between the room upstairs, no sheetrock. The reason I mention this is it's part of the reason it's difficult to come here and listen to you people approve thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars for projects that we really don't have a great say about, like this bathroom. like the recreational director. Citizens of Ellsworth should have had a chance to vote because you people created a whole new department that's growing. We never had a chance to vote on that. It's difficult to come here when you know maybe you make $45,000 or $70,000 a year and you come here every month and we hear you people vote to spend $100,000 and you're thinking to yourself, wow, that's more than I make in a year. That's why the emotions are running so high. I had, in the last two weeks, read several articles and several papers, saw it on the news, reported what happened here last month. I don't, for a minute, believe that any of you hate Ellsworth. I really don't. but I'm not so sure you like it, citizens. My dad would take me by the hand, as he did with the rest of my brothers and my sister, and he would walk us across the field that we had been there for 300 years, and he would show us this hole in the ground, a few rocks, trees, that big ground. It was my family's original home in Ellsworth. It's on Jordan Family Preserve now. It's hard to look at that and think, what would those people think? What would those people think about the amount of money that you're spending and the condensation? When I look at you.

Mr. Jordan, you're past your three minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Hi, Toby Stevenson, citizen of Ellsworth. I want to actually commend the city for the hard work that they do. I've been up here before on that point. But I do want to note that I believe the citizenry of this town really appreciates hard work, and they appreciate fair and just execution of the laws. But everybody has become very busy with their lives, and the town has grown. The council hasn't. And the jobs that people have at the city have become more complex. Work has become harder, and the demands have become higher. But everybody wants the taxes and the cost of doing business to not go up. And for those of us that run businesses, it doesn't really make sense if you get upset about taxes because you can't spend money if you don't want to make money. You have to spend it to make it, and there seems to be a disconnect there. It's hard work. I know that you guys are doing everything you can to be fair and just about all of the work you do, but it's difficult to make ends meet. I know that you're doing what you can, and democracies are difficult, but Today, things have become really politicized, and people are getting pretty hurtful, erecting banners all over the place. I think it's childish work. I think rallying people for hate meetings and anger meetings to show up here is a bad idea, and it's bad for governance. The whole concept of removing councilors because we don't like what the taxes are doing or what they're doing with the taxes to me is just causing everybody to do even more work. And I really, we have our chance to vote and when that time comes, that's what we do. And I would like to make sure that the city knows my feelings about that. I think this recall is a waste of time. The town is growing, expenses are growing, and we have to work with that. If we need to grow the size of the government to make that work, to make the budgets, numbers work and everything, then that's what we have to do. I know people don't want to see things go up, but that's what is happening around us. The cost of living is going up, everything's going up. And I do not believe the burden of all of that falls fairly on your backs. I think that is the problem with the country that we're in and the economy that we're in. So thank you for your hard work. I know it's difficult. I know you're doing the best job you can. And all I can say is keep up with it.

Melinda Workman, Ellsworth, Maine. First of all, I went through your whole budget for 27, and that's quite a commendable job. That represents a lot of man hours and a lot of work, and I realize that. I've been a CPA for 30 years now, so I can commend you for the hard work. It was a lot of work. Then I went back to the 26th report that you just posted for May. And I really was trying to find what every taxpayer wants to know is, are we in a deficit or do we have an abundance? So when I went to the report, you're adding revenue and expenses to come to a total under the departments. and the revenue is not summarized, there is no way to get any meaningful information from that report. And at a minimum, you shouldn't add revenue in the departments and expenses together. What are you supposed to do with that report as a taxpayer? I mean, it is no meaning. And I'm going to make a recommendation. I saw you deferred the IT person on your current budget. You should hire that IT person. You should get co-pilot. You should take AI, and you should make that report meaningful. Because I don't think you'd have so much angst if people could make sense of what you post online. Your budget took 20 minutes for my computer to load. I have high speed internet, and I have a good computer. 20 minutes. The average taxpayer is not going to do that, and they're not going to be able to look at the multiple reports you put out, the one for May, because it makes no sense financially. And I do appreciate your hard work. I know that budget was a tremendous amount of man hours, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Any further public comment on matters not in the agenda?

I just want to mention the Bangor Daily News, the whole thing, I think you commented on it. I just want to make a point that I think that we all know that being a counselor is hard work. You're doing it in your extra time. It's not like your full-time job. You've got a life and things. So we can appreciate the work that you guys do. The recall, I used to consider myself a Democrat, but now I think there's people so far to the left, so far to the right, we need a happy medium. I've been to the second meeting. My first one was the night that the special counsel for Steve. I just came to listen. I have to tell you that I left I would have signed that petition because I don't think you guys work together. I think I saw a vote, and the first time that the person voted, someone else was, doesn't my vote override theirs? There's no cohesiveness with this council. Why don't you guys talk and work it out? Why don't you talk and work through what's right for the city, not just, oh, my vote's gonna outride. Work together, and then we wouldn't have this recall decision. Pay attention to the people. The people that were at that meeting were probably Republicans because they were supporting Steve. You people basically made me feel like no one here mattered. the way you acted. There was call out about Facebook. There were some things that just made me think, in my first meeting, I was embarrassed for you. I would have voted to recall all of you. Just saying.

Any further public comment on matters that are not on the agenda?

My name's Donna Levitt. I live here in Ellsworth, and I am a taxpayer, and we pay exorbitant taxes here. I can't believe it. I have a girlfriend that lives in Massachusetts, not far from Boston, who lives in a huge, huge home, and every neighborhood person is a professional, and their taxes are a quarter of ours. I just cannot believe what we're paying, and we get nothing. But yet they want to take High Street and shorten the amount of lanes that we have for a suicide lane. Why? We don't have the money. We have traffic lights we need down near the fish market, down near DeMaio Field where people pull out out of, they have no other choice but to cut people off and someone is going to get killed. I've attended a couple of funerals, not funerals, accidents myself. because people were hit. I just don't understand why the important things aren't being addressed. Now they want a dog park. They want all these luxurious recreational things when we live in a town where most of the people don't make enough money for that. But yet all of our taxes keep going way up. And, you know, I'm not here to say anything about you guys personally. I don't have any feelings negatively about you all. But I think you really need to not look at each individual town person as a number, and that is how much money they're going to pay in taxes. We have a name. We have a life. And there are so many people that are really struggling to stay in their home because they cannot afford taxes. And I just don't think that is fair. Okay.

Any further public comment on matters not on the agenda? Seeing none, I'm going to close the citizen comment. And we will move on to agenda item number nine. Counselor, comment. Manager Pierce?

In the past, just after... Folks, there's something that I know of. Do you have some answers? Yeah, just a few quick ones. I know there's been discussion in previous workshops on updating the council meeting procedures to MMA standards, and maybe that could be part of it moving forward is that aggregate questions. Again, you can have meetings with myself, the deputy city manager, or any of our staff on the subject matters they have. Email is the council. We have it on the contact website as well. Um, and a few things, just the, the, the high street, the suicide lane, the narrowing, like, as I've mentioned in so many public meetings now, I think this is a terrible idea. I'm not a traffic engineer. It was proposed by a consultant in a plan before a plan before a plan that wouldn't be more than 10 years out. Um, I know how things can kind of run wild into that. It's about to happen or that, uh, we've asked that it not be considered in future proposals. Um, I've said that multiple times. I doubt that the cat will ever get back in the bag on that one. But there is no plan for narrowing High Street. Another email from a citizen in Blue Hill who was concerned about that one. But so tell your friends, there's no high street narrowing. I thought it was a bad idea to begin with. I'm always happy to hear a bad idea. Going forward with one after multiple input sessions, that's a different story. Mrs. Workman, thank you so much for attending as always and for looking into things. I know I got in a lot of, I don't want to say trouble, but there was some pushback actually from a former city councilor on when I said, hey, we've got to publish all of the data month to month, what we've spent, year to date actuals, line by line by line by line by line. They said, well, you're going to have people coming and coming. I said, great. If I can get people from around the community that can find data or mistakes in the data and want questions, those are exactly what I want to hear. Because that's just crowdsourcing good input information. And it's really, really important. I think Ellsworth's probably one of the few places that actually Does that kind of work? Some of the things you mentioned, Mrs. Workman and I think it's Tiffany, are things we talked about, I think, the previous finance committee meeting about how I'm not too happy with the way the reports are set up and the data that's kind of in there. I think, Tiffany, some of the things you mentioned, I think off the top of my head it could be wrong, but the $5,500 for the bank fees, I think that's a revenue account, and they gained $52,000, but I could be wrong on that one. The fire department wasn't over. It's one of the things I found earlier on in the budget cycle when we started doing the year-to-dates. The city manager does have the authority to transfer money between the line items, but not to go over an allocated amount in a cost center. And you have to come before the city council if you want to transfer monies between cost centers. We talked a lot about that. That's a previous audit finding that probably hasn't been actually achieved by the city in four or five years. I just looked it up. One of the audit findings I thought was interesting was there was a public safety budget allocation increase in FY24 of $946,000 over budget in a single year. So it was a huge finding as the city council has been a part of these where we've had city staff come forward and say, hey, we need to transfer money from this to that account. Moving forward, it doesn't become an odd finding. Again, that's very important to me. We've given direction to all staff that you have to request a line-by-line item change. You're going to have to hold other lines. If you're going to go over your cost center, you have to come before the entire city council to do so. That's what the charter says. It hasn't been followed in a very long time, but it's very important to me. The transparency aspect is happy to go down on some of those. The Moore Center as well, it wasn't accounted for revenues this year when they did the contract change. That's why And there's increased costs, but there's also increased revenues in those areas. But always happy to talk more and more about those pieces. And then the citizen on the picnic table, I just followed up. I thought we'd, it was a donated picnic table. So we wanted to talk to the donor about relocating that picnic table, but I checked the email traffic. That's why I wasn't my, and I've emailed our parks and rec director to relocate that picnic table.

I've agreed with them for some time that we should change that, so.

Those are them there, but there's always other ways to contact myself and other city staffers and have it be as responsible and responsive as we can.

Great. Thank you, Charlie. Sure. Okay, with that, councilor comments? Similar councilors, I ask you to keep your comments to matters not on the agenda and to three minutes or less. Any councilor comments? Councilor Shea.

I got paid my stipend and I looked at it and I'm going, hmm. And I felt kind of very conflicted about it. And I remember when my father was on the city council and he turned around and wrote his check and turned it back in. I don't need the stipend, but I also added to it more because I'm not wearing a tie. I'm not going to wear a tie in the summertime. So can the city manager put that towards returning my stipend to put it to good use? Because I'm not doing the job because I need the money. I'm doing the job because I'm listening to you. I encourage you to call me, email me, or message me. I'm trying to do the best I can. Unfortunately, sometimes it's pretty slow getting stuff done. That's the way government works. Thankfully, it's a city, not a big army or the state of Maine. But we need to get things done. We need to get things that haven't been done or should have been done. And I encourage each and every one of you to keep coming here and keep holding specifically my feet to the fire. I can't speak for anybody else. I can only speak for myself. I wish I could sit here and have a little dialogue when you guys are up to the podium, but That could drag on a little bit. But after the meeting, come at me. We'll talk. Sometimes it's better off to find out more solutions and try to get the right thing instead of just jumping through and writing out the checks and money and spending this and spending that. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to say no on a lot of stuff. So, but I hear you and I'm watching out for you.

Thanks, Pat. Any other councilor comments? Councillor Haller.

I got elected in 2021 and I was shocked. And it was my first view at government that worked exactly backwards to anything I had ever seen. You had a whole group of people coming up with expenses and sending the bill to Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth. That's completely backwards in my world. But apparently that's how government seems to operate. They don't operate from revenue down. They operate from cost up. I find that extremely strange. One observation that I have seen is the growth of mid-management in our government. And it's sad. We have a lot of growth in Ellsworth in mid-management. When I got here, we had one city manager. Now we have a city manager, a deputy city manager, and a consultant that was a city manager of Bucksport. So I'm lost in this whole process. I thought a city manager was a city manager, not a government growth guy. I'm disappointed. I asked for this chart, organizational chart, and I got pushback big time. The pushback I got, well, you've got everybody's earnings. Yeah, that's not an organizational chart. This is an organizational chart that somebody spent a lot of time doing, and I'm greatly appreciative of this organizational chart. We've got too many people steering the boat and not enough people rowing the boat. This mid management, there needs to be big cuts in positions. I'm not talking about the people, I'm talking about the positions. There is no need for the growth that we have had of mid management. It shouldn't be here in Ellsworth. There are departments that are struggling. IT is one of them. There's two people that are involved in the IT department and they run the entire city. They're involved in every department. Every department, plus we just heard about the street lights. And they're not allowed to have another worker in this budget. We need to purge this mid-management positions. If you eliminate $500,000, you'll be better for it by a million. There's way too much of this going on in town. I don't believe government was ever supposed to be an industry.

As far as people- Steve, you're past your three minutes.

Is that right? So I'm gonna continue.

I just want to note that Councillor Shea and all the public adhered to their three minutes. I'd ask that you do the same.

I saw someone that didn't, and I'm not going to. I'm going to finish my sentence. Here's the problem. We need feedback, and we're not allowed to get it. When I first got here, there was plenty of opportunity for dialogue with a speaker. There wasn't the shut down, give me your money and not your mouth. I want information and there should be a dialogue. We need to change this system. There's only one chance for you to talk to the council. There should be, instead of three minutes, maybe six minutes, whatever dialogue, write down email addresses, what have you. There should be a chance for you to have representation with your dollars that you bring to City Hall. Thank you.

Any other councilor comments? Okay, moving on. Unfinished business. Agenda item number 10. Discussion and potential action on the request of the Economic Development Director for the proposed installation, construction, and operation of a public restroom facility.

I think Twyla's probably coming in. We wanted to leave as much room for citizen comment for the community, so we had staff watch on the team's link. So I think Twyla will be coming in to talk about this. Any second? But let me just go.

There we go.

Good evening, councillors. Twyla Fisher, economic development director.

According to Robert's rules, which you stated at the beginning of this meeting, you have this table. You have to go to untable it in accordance to Robert's rules. You have not done that. And then once it's untabled, it

want to proceed with the meeting thank you I'll ask our city solicitor if you'd like to provide any comment on that and ma'am I would ask you though to please stop interrupting the meeting Tim's behind you if you don't mind

Good evening, Tim Pease, City Attorney. I think, Chair, you are correct. You are the presiding officer in the Charter 209, Section B, and I think you are correct in having the staff report out and answer the questions that the council had, and then you can take action or not.

Thank you.

Thank you again. Good evening, Councilors, Council. Twyla Fisher, Economic Development Director. In response to the questions that you had last time and for which this was tabled, and as a quick recap of the May Council meeting, a proposal was made to Council at that time for the installation of a permanent climate controlled ADA accessible downtown public restroom facility in the City Hall Plaza parking lot. The project addressed a long-standing infrastructure need in the downtown by providing reliable year-round restroom access for residents, visitors, downtown employees, and attendees of public events and community activities. This investment represented a practical and strategic improvement to downtown public infrastructure that further supports economic development, tourism, accessibility, and quality of life while advancing the City of Ellsworth's comprehensive plan and economic development business attraction plan goals. So at the request of the council for more information to be gathered, the proposal was tabled until this meeting tonight, and then I took it to the June workshop, and there was further discussion, and at least one downtown business owner stressed their agreement with the Heart of Ellsworth, the report that was given at the May meeting about the need for providing public restrooms. Then the project was discussed at length internally with department heads to further examine feasibility, cost, timing, and process. And this resulted in several options that I'd like to present to the council tonight. And again, this is really just going to you all for what makes sense to do at this time. One would be just to continue seasonal use of the portable toilet for the FY27 summer-fall season, and that's approximately $1,500. The second would be to consider adding minor aesthetic improvements. What you'll see here is a picture of what they did in Blue Hill. It's simple, but it does kind of encase it looks a little more aesthetically pleasing. And if we did that, it would be under 3,000 or not to exceed 3,000. It probably could be done for less than 1,000. I don't know. We'd have to bid it out. But that structure could be stored and reused seasonally. Again, it's kind of more an aesthetic improvement. And then publicly bid the public restroom project using the existing design that was presented in the May meeting, which is here below. and then present that winning bid to council for implementation, if it were approved, for implementation in the spring of 2027. So again, this option is kind of like, let's just keep using what we have here for the summer, maybe add something a little more aesthetic, and then put the proposed project from the May meeting out to bid. The second one would be... Sorry. The second one would be to continue, again, the seasonal use of the portable toilet for this upcoming season, and then just put the public restroom project on hold for the foreseeable future. And then instead of that, just reevaluate, again, ongoing use of a portable toilet, again, with the recommended aesthetic improvements of option one. And then if that were approved to continue using it, then that's all we would have in our parking lot would be a seasonal portable toilet. And then the third one could be continuing to use a portable toilet through the end of this month. That was prepaid by the Heart of Ellsworth and discontinue it thereafter and then put the public restroom project on hold for the foreseeable future. And council may have other options, but those were three that I wanted to bring back to council after request for further consideration.

Thank you, Twyla. Any questions for Twyla? Councilor Shea?

So when we had the workshop, you had the public works director and the highway foreman. And the public works director, I recall saying, we talked with Rob Shay and he didn't have any problem. Really? I talked to Rob. And I communicated with text messages. He didn't meet with the public works director because the last time he talked to the public works director, he didn't like the answer about paving in April. Told him it wasn't a good idea. So he didn't talk to Rob about the restroom. Brian, on the other hand, later in the winter, near the late part of plowing and all that stuff, Brian approached and talked to Rob Shay, President of Yale Shay. And Rob said, it wouldn't impact my operation. But he wasn't for it. He doesn't see the need in it. He could only see that possibly it would be a financial burden and create extra work for either Brian's crew or somebody to take care of it and maintain it. And he questioned why we would need that. So I just thought maybe I'd set that right straight. So yeah, I'm kind of questioning integrity here. All right? Again, I also stated in the meeting and at the workshop, this is Ellsworth. I don't care what Bangor does. I don't care what Bar Harbor does. I don't care about Blue Hill. I care about Ellsworth. I don't like portable toilets. I try to do everything I possibly do while I'm working construction and I'm driving truck. I go use the restroom on the run and all these other places. I buy a soda, a coffee, and I use it. But that's me, okay? There's a lot of disrespectful people out there. So if you think that maybe this is a good idea, put something that people who don't visit and shop downtown, Who is going to clean it? Long-term cost. It costs money to build this stuff. Okay? Then you've got to take care of it. All right? And I don't think the prices are exactly reflecting building it. I've yet to see any blueprints. I can read blueprints. I can read spec sheets, too. Okay? So... I think you're way off on the price. And just because one downtown merchant says it's a great idea, what about the rest of them? I talk with them. They're not really keen on it. Just like residents aren't keen about over by Merrill Park, which really, it ain't big enough to be a park. Parking lot, yeah. But somebody's going to take care of that. So you already got a restroom down to the harbor. We got another one over to Milton Park. So, I mean, we pay somebody to take care of it and clean it. And then they have to go back and lock it up so no one sleeps in them. And I've seen that on job sites right across from my house. They had to put a lock on it because everybody was... I even caught a guy sleeping in there. That's really impressive. And when I asked for a police officer to come by and help keep him away, well, they don't have no trespassing sign.

Yeah, I think we're getting a little far.

So, really, the overall cost of putting that restroom there... It doesn't warrant it. The neighbors don't want it.

Thank you. I hear your concerns and I think that's why it's being brought back to council after it was tabled. There are options here that fit what you would like to see. It's up to the council to decide maybe what makes the most sense.

I would love to have a dialogue with council on this. I do have my concerns. That's why we brought it up in workshops. That's why we've had multiple meetings on it. Pat, you and I have exchanged a lot of Yeah. Conversations about this, even notes that it wasn't legal to have it out there, which we've now seen the guidance it is legal to have that piece out there. I'm not quite sure it's the right thing to do, but that's where we're at. I also just would remind council that robust debate on these issues is great and important, but questioning a staff member's integrity is against our personnel ordinance and should be brought forward only with the city manager outside of public session. I apologize. wrinkled yep and and the debate around it and statements that may have been made here by staff that you may think are inaccurate that's absolutely we can talk about that but some questions somebody's integrity without being given opportunity as a staff member it's not appropriate thank you I would make one comment to that which was And I should note, I don't want to get into that specific issue if that's what we're going to talk about. Let's not go there. Yeah, this is not. I apologize.

The simple question for him was just was it on his property or not. Everything after that is not related to any question that was being asked of him. We just wanted to know whose property the building was on. That was it. Everything he wanted to say after that is completely up to him. For me, the question was asked, is it on our property? That was the question that was relayed to him by Brian. That's the only piece of information we asked for.

Counselors, any other thoughts or questions on the public restroom discussion? Counselor White.

So I heard a citizen come up today and say and actually propose the idea of this bathroom for the parklet if it becomes a permanent fixture there, which I really liked that idea. And I know we haven't decided what we're going to do with Franklin. parklet anyway, but hearing that and how centered it would be in the town versus where it's sitting over here, I'm kind of leaning towards the porta-potties, maybe even dressing them up a little bit, maybe not, but the porta-potties and then kind of figuring out what we're going to do with this Franklin parklet and see if that's the better location for toilets if we decide to make that permanent. because it does make a lot of sense if you are shopping on the street that you kind of stay right there on the street. So those are my two cents.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Councilor Martineau?

Yeah, I agree. If you want people to spend money in your town and stay in your downtown, this is something that human beings need. If you've ever been a parent with one in the stroller, and one by the hand, and a bunch of packages, and a child needs to be changed. This is just a human need. It's not a luxury. It's something everybody needs to do. Where it goes, apparently, I think we could stand more discussion. I agree with you. I think maybe that part would be a better place. But I think it's a... I believe it's a necessity in some form. And I don't know about... I don't know. How would everybody feel about sending their 7-year-old into a port-a-potty alone while you stand outside with the one in the stroller? I mean, it's just... Keep your customers happy.

Any other thoughts from council on this? Councillor M. Smith.

My thought kind of goes back to the one in Bar Harbor, which is right next to the police station, completely connected to it, and just something of how that is an absolute necessity because it is a human need. And I do like the idea of it being in the parklet where people can still shop because the downtown bathroom in Bar Harbor, that is directly connected to downtown. You don't need to leave it in any way.

Okay. Councillor N. Smith.

Thank you. As much as I want to follow up on Councillor Shea, I'm not going to share how I manage these needs for the Over 10 years, I was a forester out in the woods all day. Over these 17 years, I was a farmer out in the field all day. Just to say that this is a basic need we all have to address and that a bathroom in Harbor Park or the bathroom in Nolte Park does not help the people who are downtown. And the downtown is central to the economic health of this community. And having heard from one of the business owners, you don't think of these things, the amount of money they spend in toilet paper for people who are not their customers. and how much it adds up. So I don't support option three of nevermind. I think we need to, change is hard, change sometimes comes slowly, and we need to look at that. I think, interesting conversation about Franklin Parklet, because we've gotta think through location, it's a balance of convenience and privacy. And if it is closer to the centers where it's more convenient, I think having that privacy screen that we had talked about at the workshop is an option. So I'm trying to look at the differences between option one and option two in your proposal in the packet. Can you clarify for me, they both seem to move forward with the first bullet being the same In option two, it's just don't look at the permanent project. Can you explain the differences between options one and two?

Sure. So option one does publicly bid the restroom project using design and specifications that can be properly bid and then it brings it back to council for a decision. to be implemented in the spring of 2027, but still in this coming fiscal year. Option two takes that off the table entirely and just says we're going to continue or agree on use of a portable toilet as a solution for now, but not talk anymore about a public restroom that would cost a lot of money, right, or beyond what a portable toilet costs. And then the third one is we do nothing after June 30 of this fiscal year.

Can I ask a question? What kind of aesthetics are we talking about? To me, that kind of sounds like putting lipstick on a pig. How do you gussy up a hornipotty?

I think folks have probably seen as they've traveled around, like I happened to see that one in Blue Hill. There's one at Woodlawn, which is even a little more simple around it, but there are attempts to make it look a little less of an eyesore, I would say, that don't cost a lot of money.

When you priced out the port-a-potty one, are you looking at the single one, the ones that are really small that provide no space inside? Or I don't know if anybody's shopped at, like, Plants Unlimited, but they have a port-a-potty there that actually has, like, room to... put your extra kid. With a changing table and stuff like that? I might have a changing table, but I don't know. Are there, like, have you looked at the other porta-potties? I didn't know there were big ones. Yeah. Oh, they're, yeah. They have all candy can accessible ones. They have party ones and, yeah.

Yeah. That's right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that could be part of option two is we look at a portable toilet, but maybe a different one. What I priced out is what we have currently. That was based on what we're currently paying.

Yeah.

Well, I think what I'm hearing from council is that, you know, there seems to be some folks that are in support, a majority of folks that are thinking that there needs to be something, which I agree. Many people have come up to me and said they'd like to have restrooms downtown, and I know many businesses throughout this conversation have said so as well. But as far as, and I don't think we want to just say we're done looking into this issue, but I do think we should look into if there is an option to have it closer to Franklin Street. I think that makes a ton of sense. Um, so as far as whether or not we gussy up the porta potty, honestly, I don't, I don't think we need to, I mean, people are just going to use a porta potty. It doesn't, you need to look fancy. Um, um, as far as where it's located, maybe we revisit that, but that's not a really decision for the council. Um, but as far as I think we don't want to just be done with this. So I think maybe I would propose, you know, something like take option two. but still look into, you know, having Public Works build something permanently, but maybe in a different location or see if there's other options. I know we've looked at, you know, that's not the first time people have thought about that, but I don't know if I'm overcomplicating things.

No, I think, you know, I was trying to read the tea leaves. I think it's also relative to the parklet discussion. You know, I've had a lot of folks that really support the parklet. I have a lot of folks that are concerned about the parking. I always think in government, we talk about the public policy triad, or just is it a good idea, is it capable, and is it authorized, and who authorized it? And your authorizing isn't just necessarily a four out of seven here, it's your community, it's the business owners, it's the citizens at large, it's the taxpayers. And you really have to create a process. And even on something as small as a toilet in the downtown is really, you know, people have a lot of feels about it one way or the other in the parklet as well. And, you know, so I feel like both of those kind of need a higher level of authorization or a broader level of authorization from the community, from, hey, where should it be? Yeah, the kind of gussying up, you know, we could cut some holes into the shack that's already out there and toss it in there. It might be 15% better than just having its portage on sitting in the middle of a parking lot, which, you know, is not ideal. So I feel like we probably need to create a process over the next year, try to target for next year on if this is something we should do or if not. I think, Twyla, your memo is excellent as well on putting together some of the cons. restricted funds, so they're tax increment funding funds that are restricted for economic development purposes, so we don't, it's not that we are taxing for this new, this tax revenue's gonna come in from this TIF district either way, but it is a big opportunity cost. We could use, let's say it's $40,000 for a downtown more permanent restroom that's not cut a couple holes into the shed and put a portage on in there. That $40,000 could go to other economic development activities. It could go towards the Bayside Road, which is a TIF eligible project to reconstruct, which our deputy city manager just helped secure a $750,000 matching grant from the state of Maine. so that we can construct the Bayside Road. There's the courthouse road redevelopment area. There's sidewalks that need to be repaired. So there is a big opportunity cost to choose this. This is something that business owners have been asking for for around 10 years, as we heard during one of the workshops. And there's a lot of support there, but I think we need a little more of a deep dive. You know, as much as I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but it's an important one. And I talked to, over a year ago now, I think his name was Toilet Tommy or something. He was like the head of the Downtown Portland Association.

Harry Tyson.

Oh, yeah. And he just said, you'll never, when I first started, he was like, you'll never, it's going to be very controversial. You think it won't be. They went through 16 different iterations and different committees and And they still, you know, they put something in there. You saw that in Bangor, too. They put something in, they take it out. So let's get a little better process here. And I agree. It seems like no to the gussied up Port-A-John, but a maybe to a more permanent option, but that has more community buy-in information. And we'll bring it back at some more workshops.

If that's the case, do we need to vote to do anything? I don't think so.

It might be helpful on my end, though, to hear that there is consensus to continue spending time on this, whether it's getting quotes or moving forward with other, not immediately, but if we're not going to take that off the table, it will take some time.

Quick straw poll of council, folks that would be in favor of continuing to look into this and entertain options?

Well, to which version? To the permanent or to the temporary solution?

To the permanent. I mean, to what Charlie just said, just not considering other options and continuing to bring it before council as we have relevant information instead of just, you know, not doing anything for the foreseeable future.

And with healthy public engagement on it as well.

Exactly.

I mean, I'm in support of that. So I don't know if there's others. Nancy?

Yep.

We've got a four and a half-ish. So that's technically a majority.

Could I? I want to address. I think for, I'm not clear if we've landed or given you guidance for this summer. I'm not talking about gussying up a porta potty. I think a privacy screen is incredibly important. You could put a pot of geraniums out if you want to, but I think a privacy screen wherever this is located is going to be helpful and handicap accessible if you're talking about two, not only does that address the needs of everyone? But it has a little bit more room in it. I haven't thought as far as a changing table, but at least having those options available appropriately for this season is going to be helpful.

And I don't think we need a vote on that. That falls within.

I'm not usually too pumped about straw poll kind of things.

I don't think it will go up too much more than that. Offering guidance versus a vote.

Yeah. I mean, so. That's all right. I think we'll, you know, we'll continue on this twilight. It's important to the community. We obviously have a lot of business owners that have requested this, too. So it's not even just necessarily the council, but we've got to get a better process for it. And the parklet as well. I think we need to kind of mix those two things together. This is the future of the parklet or not?

How about a motion to table it until we get more information? For a permanent solution.

I love that. So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor? Opposed? Six to one. So tabled and thank you.

Just to clarify, this year we'll move forward as we receive guidance. Portable toilet. Yes.

That's what I wanted to clarify as well. The more permanent one is tabled.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. We're on to page two of the agenda. Consent agenda council. Items on the consent agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion on these items unless a council member so requests. In which event, the item will be removed from the consent agenda and considered on its normal sequence of the agenda. We have two matters on the consent agenda. First, Council Order Number 062600, request of the Deputy City Clerk for the review and acceptance of the results of the June 9, 2026 City of Ellsworth School Budget Validation and Municipal Referendum Elections. And Council Order Number 062601, request of the tax collector to set the real estate and personal property due date. dates to September 10, 2026 and March 11, 2027 in an order of the municipal officers on the application of real estate and personal property tax payments. This order will allow for the tax collector and treasurer to apply tax payments against the oldest unpaid tax bills. Okay, do I have a motion to adopt the consent agenda? Councilor Shea.

Make a motion to accept the consent agenda.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Councilor M. Smith? All those in favor?

I'd like to talk about that if I could. I just have a question.

Sure.

It says dates due September 10th and March 11th. Since I've been here, there's always been drama about late bills and they're overdue when they come. What are we doing setting that when we don't even have a budget? That's just, I'm looking for clarity. I'm not against setting it, but it seems to always have been a mess and it seems that there's always postponements of the due dates because of the billing. I hate to continue that behavior where you set a due date and then send a bill to somebody and then find out that we can extend it 30 days because our billing is late. I think that's worthy of some consideration here.

Charlie? Yes. I guess the first one is like a functional point. the council, if they didn't pass the budget and we weren't ready to commit, we could come back in July and change the date. In fact, I think you probably have to in that scenario. And we've worked, obviously, I think this council part of the assessing kind of revamp that we've done this year. I think some of you have been for our budget presentations on where we're at in the project. I know I've I've been working with a consulting firm on this for some time. I don't think Ellsworth has sent out their tax bills on time at least five or six years. There's been a few times where we sent them out after they were due and interest was already accruing, which I've noted is like sending hate mail against yourself. And we had to have like an internal council meeting my first year here where it was, you know, okay, I've got to, like, We're not going to charge people interest. We'll post that on Facebook. When you get that letter, you didn't necessarily know that. Last year, we found out pretty late in the process that we were still struggling with commitment because there was so much new growth in the city and the team was pretty far behind on getting it to the finish line. Myself, the deputy city manager, the codes office, and others basically realigned our entire work schedule to have day-by-day meetings to get that out. We got it before. We changed the due date beforehand so we didn't have to send a hate mail against ourselves again, and that's what really triggered a lot of last year of deeper diving into the nature of the problem, the growth in the city. We've sent out all of our forms and processes a lot earlier. I've had two or three meetings. With those involved over this, we are going to be close to the full commence, at least data-wise. If the budget doesn't pass, then we'll have to hold that project, but July 1st is when we'll have all the information needed to commit, and then we'll have tax bills out Ideally or by an ideally but by August 10th a month before that September 10th So people have a full 30 days to do that. So that's something that we've all the assessing department Our assessor assistant assessor the consulting firms myself the deputy city manager Danielle our director of planning who's been meeting weekly with those folks and just full tilt on making this happen and Yeah, it's uh, I don't anticipate having to come back in July to ask for it. Obviously, I If that were the situation, it would be very transparent that we are not going to meet those deadlines, but I fully anticipate making them. And nobody will even know when they get their tax bill in time and say, wow, how many hundreds and hundreds of hours to revamp a system that was broken for six years that the team put into that. But that's just the blocking and tackling of government that needs to happen. And this will be the first year it happens in a while, and we'll continue that process moving forward.

Great. Thank you. So we had a motion and a second. All those in favor to adopt a consent agenda? Opposed? Motion carries, six to one. Okay, new business. Public hearing and action on the applications for renewal of the following licenses. Timothy Wedge, DBA, The Break Room, 248 State Street for renewal of a city class B license. particular liquor and amusement in renewal of a state restaurant class 1, 2, 3, and 4 liquor license and to 617 Bayside LLC DBA Homestead Motel 143 Bucksport Road for renewal of a city lodging license. This matter is a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing. If anyone would like to provide any comment on the two licenses that I mentioned, now is the time to do so. Seeing none, I will close the public hearing. The normal question I have for Ebony, were the applications in order and everything looked good to you guys? Okay, great. Any discussion from council? I have a question.

What's a class four liquor license?

It's like moonshine?

Yeah, I don't know what a class four liquor license is. Is that how? I think it has to do with the different types of liquor that is sold, but I really don't know. Oh, okay. I mean, it's the break room, so I think it's... A pretty full bar is what I'm going to go with.

Okay.

Whatever you want to drink. Bathtub gin? Yeah, bathtub gin. No, that's a good establishment. Oh, yeah, they've got gin. Oh, yeah, there we go.

Bathtub variety.

No, it's really beef feeders and, you know, top-notch stuff.

All right, Charlie?

Chad, GBT says Class IV liquor license is a beer-only on-premise license.

Oh, well, it hasn't been my experience there. Any further discussion from council on these two licenses? Seeing none, do I have a motion? Proposed motion from anyone? Councilor Shea.

Make a motion to accept, approve the applications for renewal for Timothy Wedge doing businesses break room. 248 State Street, renewal of the City Class B License for Liquor and Amusement, and renewal of the State Restaurant Class 1, 2, 3, and 4 Liquor License. And... 1617 Bayside Road, LLC, doing business at Homestead Hotel at 143 Bucksport Road for renewal of city lodging license. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the business licenses as presented. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Anonymous? Excellent. Agenda item number 14, public hearing and action on the applications for conditional approval for the following adult use cannabis licenses with full approval pending the lottery and council approval. Brothers Ellsworth LLC DBA Brothers Cannabis, Goose River Ellsworth LLC DBA Goose River Cannabis, Lighthouse Holdings II LLC DBA Lighthouse Cannabis Co., Lighthouse Holdings 4 LLC DBA Lighthouse Cannabis Co., Pine Cone Retail 4 LLC DBA Jar Cannabis Co., and Royal Leaf LLC DBA Royal Leaf Apothecary. So before we get into that, we have a memo from the clerk's office and Manager Pierce. I don't know if you want to set it up for us or the clerk wants to set it up for us.

Do you want me to do it? Yep, I think they had some long discussions about this, but all the applications are in order and had legal review as well. And the clerk's team are recommending that we move forward into placing each of the applicants into the lottery, that they meet the performance standards as presented to be so. I know there's one that has two names here that are the same. But they are different owners, different locations. That satisfies the requirements of the license. I'm not quite sure it's exactly in the spirit of it, but talk to legal and there's not like a legal differentiation there. So they will, even though they have the same name, they are two different owners. Two different locations that license wouldn't be transferable between owners So if one owner said well, we're actually gonna add that other owner on to this one and it'll be a joint ownership License goes back into the lottery does not renew so

So as I understand, we were at the process two years ago, or a little less, folks in Ellsworth voted to approve adult use cannabis retail stores. And since that time, we've updated our ordinances and licensing to have that process. We're at the step where anyone that was interested in obtaining a license applied and provided a certain amount of information to satisfy our performance standards. We've determined, the staff have determined that those applications do satisfy the performance standards. Now we're voting to conditionally approve those applications and it will then proceed to the lottery and then three of those applications will be drawn and those three will have 30 days or so to get to provide or they'll have a certain amount of So as it says, they'll find out next week and then they pay their licensing fee and prepare for their location for business. So that's the last step. Correct. Just the lottery and then... And they have to come back for a final approval from council.

And then code would say we've certified for code pieces, um, fire inspector, all the other performance standards have been met. All the other pieces that, yep, this, um, this lottery winner, uh, has met the performance standards and code enforcement and fire code and all other city pieces paid their fee. And then there'll be a recommendation from, um, just like any other business license that, uh, for the council to move forward or not if there is some issue with the license that felt like needed to be discussed. Okay.

And all these businesses have to be located in the overlay, the cannabis business, adult use cannabis overlay that we enacted a few months ago?

Correct. And it's been properly posted, thanks to Ray, as always, and to Danielle from our teams that got us all over the line. You know, there's an incredible amount of work that went into getting this here, a lot of workshops, a lot of discussion on people didn't want a ton, like in some other areas, areas of dozens and dozens of pot shops, and that would not match the character of the city. It was decided there was something that only wanted one, and there was settled on the three. For now, this council can always revisit and open it up to more if they'd like to. But to take kind of a take it slow approach to cannabis, recreational cannabis in Ellsworth is the general consensus from the workshops and the city council meetings. So that's kind of how we get to this point. So lottery will proceed forward through the overlay zone, all the other regulations that have put together the state regulatory piece. And then we'll come back post-lottery with a final decision from the council to approve or not approve that license.

Okay, great. Any other questions from council for staff before you open up the public hearing? Seeing none, this matter is a public hearing. I'm going to open it up. If anyone has comments on the six applications, licenses on the agenda, please approach the DS and provide your name and please provide your comments in three minutes or less.

Tiffany Gasper, Ellsworth. So I'm going to quote from your June packet that was provided online for this meeting, as given to you by your attorney. Based on the application submitted and review of corporate records, the city attorney found no evidence that the ownership interests overlap. Therefore, he does not believe there are grounds to disqualify either application provided that all ordinance requirements are met. And that's regarding the Lighthouse Holdings 2 and 4. It took me about two minutes to look online and they are both interconnected. AMS 1657 shows Summer Slate and then also LL Green as owners and then also AMS 1657 also shows Summer Slate and Colt Scott Slate as principal owners. So tell me how they are not related and overlapping. They are. They're all sharing emails. They're both partners in all of the Lighthouse holdings, all registered with the State of Maine. That's where that information came from, by the way, was the State of Maine website. So they obviously should not have two. They should have one. And then why are we allowing three recreational but limiting two medical in Ellsworth? That would be the other question. And where does Cure Relief come into this? Because at one of the meetings, there was talk about splitting up that space and having a recreational on one side, medical on the other.

Any other public comments on these applications?

So my name is Bonnie Devineau. I've attended quite a few of these meetings regarding cannabis. I'm the owner of Royal Leaf LLC. And I do have issues with some of the applicants. I was going to make the same comment that the gal before me made. Lighthouse Holdings. They have been in the adult-use cannabis business for one year, one year and one month. The only adult-use store that they have is in Brewer, Maine, and it is owned by both brother and sister, to my knowledge. And now they've found that they want to split. I've always wanted to be here, so I'm sorry I didn't think to do the same thing to increase my chances, because... That definitely does, and I don't see that it's justified. The other concern that I have here is, well, I'm going to step back. I spent a lot of time on applying in this application, probably longer than anything I've spent in an endeavor, and I was very surprised to see that these, the quality and the history of these businesses is so It's so very different. There are only three businesses here that actually have skin in the game in terms of proven business expertise from year to year. Only three out of those. And so that brings me to Goose River. Goose River Cannabis, correct me if I'm wrong, they have one store in Unity, Maine, and that is a medical store. So I do want to say that I think the members of the council should seriously consider whether or not this applicant is going to work on behalf of anybody. This is a different world. Adult use and everybody on this council, you know, has been briefed at the distinction between adult use and medical. just because you can thrive in medical. And there might be some people here, specifically somebody representing JAR. JAR is a stellar company, and JAR has been operating medical and adult use, and they would be very quick, I think, to support my point that Those are totally different businesses. And so to put somebody, to have somebody begin an adult use operation who's had no experience, I think it puts a limitation on them. And I think it also does a disservice to the people of the city. Because just metric alone, we have one person. And 50% of the full-time job deals with metric. I don't know.

Ma'am, that's your three minutes. If you could wrap up your comments, please. All right.

Well, so there are two that I don't even think are on a level playing field. And somebody can say, well, what's the benefit? Sure, I can selfishly say that it hinders my chances of winning the lottery, but I also honestly believe that it's not in the best interest of the people of Ellsworth. When you limit the choices to three, they should be three proven, sound businesses. So that's all.

Thomas LaJoy, live on Red Bridge Road. I'm opposed to recreational marijuana as an employer, it's very hard to find people who don't smoke weed. I think that it's unfair to limit a brand new company. All your companies were brand new at one time. That's my only comment. Thank you.

No, just in the future, please everyone direct your comments. Oh, I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Thank you very much. Any further public comment on this matter? Seeing none, I'm going to close the public hearing. There's the question regarding the two Lighthouse Cannabis Company applications. And I was hoping, we have our city solicitor here, maybe you could provide some clarity on that issue.

Sure. Tim Pease, city attorney. I was asked to look into the issue of whether Lighthouse Holdings 2 LLC and Lighthouse Holdings 4 LLC could submit applications. I looked at the application materials. I looked at the information online as well. As a matter of corporate law and the way your ordinance reads in terms of licensing in Chapter 14, you're looking at the ownership interest in that particular LLC. You're not looking upstream. If you want to look upstream, you know, you could put that in your ordinance, but strictly speaking, I stand by my opinion that Lighthouse Holdings 2 and Lighthouse Holdings 4, based on the information online and in the applications, could both submit applications under your current licensing scheme.

And I guess along those lines, while their brewer business may be held in co-ownership, the LLCs that have applied... As the materials we review, each LOC is held 100% by a different individual. So these are, was that part of your analysis, Tim?

Yes. Yeah.

I agree. It's not the spirit of what we were trying to do, but the language of the ordinance, they were clever enough to do it. I don't think we have the legal grounds to reject it. They're technically abiding by the requirements of the ordinances. I read it and our legal counsel has advised us.

There's nothing in the regulations in the ordinance that holds to a business must have so much expertise or a length of time, is there? No. So we can't put a de facto requirement on that now?

No, and I should note, you're a fairly new counselor, so we did have a ton of dialogue earlier on before your arrival on the council, and that was One of the discussions that was brought up was should we have like a scoring rubric like we do for a lot of RFPs that move forward on price and experience and other pieces. We're about to do so with a realtor RFP, but it was brought up that there could be some legal jeopardy on exactly who chose what and that other cities and towns that have gone forward with this have had that challenge. decided that a lottery would be the best way to keep the city out of the picket. You have performance standards. If you meet those performance standards, whether it's three, six, nine, they get to enter the lottery. I do agree with this spirit piece. My original hope was that it was going to be one license and we'd have those kind of scoring rubrics and just pick the one that was going to invest the most, and that would be it. But I understood that that would have left the teams open to internal staff essentially picking in very subjective categories as opposed to here are all the categories. If you meet them, you go into a lottery, and we won't have a role in picking winners and losers here. Councilor Halloran.

I've said some of this before, but I think it's worth saying again. November 24, the citizens of Ellsworth voted 55% in favor of recreational marijuana. I am totally against how this has come about. If I had my way, there wouldn't be pot shops here, but I don't have my way. They're here. It's part of life. I want to recognize that people voted in favor of it, therefore I'm in favor of it. 55% wanted it, then I vote to support recreational marijuana. However, I absolutely oppose this method of control by our government. People don't always agree with me. But you're interfering with the free market system, with this lottery system. If it was a free market system, there would maybe be 10 shops for two years, and then the survival of the fittest might be two, might be three. We wouldn't be in this $10,000 lottery business. City of Ellsworth should not be involved in setting this. We're not involved in how many banks we have. We're not involved in how many tire shops we have, how many hair salons we have. We certainly shouldn't be involved in some sort of lottery where someone's going to draw some name someplace and cause all this angst. This lottery system is completely off base. Let the free market system work. Again, I don't necessarily like it, but in two years' time, the survival of the fittest, you will have the right number in this town.

Counselors, any other comments from counselors on this? Counselor Smith?

Thank you. I think just to clarify, the A through F that we have here have legally qualified for this process, although there are things, whether it's experience or they own one together elsewhere, but they would own them individually here. And it sounds like there are safeguards in place so that any of these could not then merge ownership or change ownerships and maintain the license. So it seems...

I'll leave it to Council to click, but my discussions with them was that if there was a change of ownership from one and one to joint, that would trigger the license to be invalid. And it comes up upon renewal each year. And if that were to happen, we'll check the ownership structure. And that, yeah, would require going back into the lottery. But I don't know, Tim, if that would be the... Tim Pease, city attorney.

I think it's fairly common in a licensing situation. If you're relicensing, you want to make sure that they're still meeting the initial performance standards that they were required to comply with.

I would say given they have legally qualified, we don't have the option of disqualifying any of these for the various reasons that were brought forward. So I'm going to support the pending motion.

Okay. Do we have a pending motion?

Oh, sorry. Soon to be a pending motion.

Would you like to propose a motion?

I think I can if you give me a minute.

they don't have to be here no it's conditional okay so at the final first licensing they have to be here okay um nancy

Good clarification. I'll make the motion. I move to conditionally approve all six adult cannabis, adult use cannabis applications and authorize the city clerk's office to proceed with the lottery process.

Do I have a second to the motion? Second. Second. Councillor Martineau. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion's carried. Council Order Number 062603, presentation from Eric Marischal about the Recreation Commission. Eric reached out earlier today and said he was not going to be able to attend tonight's meeting, and he apologizes, but he'd like to be able to come back in July to talk about the Recreational Commission's work, which... Thanks. Sounds good to me. But considering that, would anyone like to provide a motion to table?

Move to table.

Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor? Tabled. All opposed? Tabled. Agenda item number 16, council order number 062604, request for the tax collector deputy treasurer to set the interest rate on overdue taxes at 5%.

Yeah, I'm taking this for Sue. She's off this week. But this is one of our yearly requirements. And this year, the state for 2026 dropped from 8.5 to 7.5. the state maximum for charging interest on overdue taxes and Sue is recommending that we drop from six to five percent in line with the state drop. We were a little lower than the state maximum last year and there's a table that has our maximums in there. I agree with the motion as presented by the tax collector and that's pretty much it.

Any questions from council? Councillor Smith?

I brought this up, I think it was last year, maybe it was just two years ago. Looking at the interest rate that we pay, or excuse me, that we charge to folks under this tax collector realm, compare it to the interest rate that we pay on for instance the tax anticipation note where we're borrowing money because we haven't gotten in the money yet and to be sure that there is some sort of an alignment that not to be punitive to the folks that are late with taxes but also if the state is if the city is borrowing money because we don't have the taxes in and I think is our interest rate like four point seven five on the tan and

Yeah, I think it's definitely lower than five. I was just looking for that order. Okay. Yeah, 4.72 was the lowest interest rate on the TAN, which is council.

All right, so in that case, I think the 5% is appropriate. Okay.

Any further questions or thoughts from council on this? Seeing none, would anyone like to entertain a motion on this matter?

I'll move to approve the request of the tax collector, Deputy Treasurer, to set the interest rate on overdue taxes at 5%.

Do I have a second? Second. Any further discussion from Council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Carries 6-1. Council Order Number 17, or Agenda Item Number 17, Council Order Number 062605, Discussion and Potential Action. on the request of the tax collector toward a contract for real estate services involving tax-acquired properties.

CHAIRMAN BRYANT LAWRENCE.

Thank you, Councillor Lyons. And I'd just like to first offer a big thanks to Councillor Shea on this subject. I know he's not necessarily a sponsor of the agenda item, but he's kind of, I think, ticking up the mantle of this issue since he arrived as a city councilor and has very rightly pushed this to the city needs to get these back on the tax rolls, and it's not going to save the budget, and it's not going to be a total game changer, but this just needs to be another one of those blocking and tackling as a government that we acquire property We need to get back on the tax rolls, should sit for a long time, and we need to avoid the mistakes of the past to be in line with not just the new Supreme Court guidance on how to handle tax-acquired properties, but to do so in a way that's fair and equitable to those folks who may find themselves in this position. So with all due speed, moving forward with this to comply with the new state laws on this matter, plus the new Supreme Court ruling, and have a pretty dedicated process to moving forward. This is one of, I think, the second or third that we've sent through the RFP, New Open Gov System, for scoring. We had a committee of three that had a variety of metrics they put on there. We didn't add all of the details to the open piece. Those would become public records, the applications upon completion. coming to terms with the agreement. But Better Home and Gardens Real Estate, the Masayo Group, won the scoring with a 92.3 as the top score here. And we look forward to once we go under contract. Or if not, we might come back and say, actually, we need to talk about the second place score here. At that point in time, after that, all the applications will become public record. But we're recommending moving forward to authorize myself to execute an agreement. And then next steps will likely be a bit of onboarding with this individual or this firm. And then coming back to city council probably in workshop format first. And then multiple council meetings on just this process, how many properties we have, what our own city, some of our own city outright that we may want to get back on the tax rolls. Some have foreclosed. There's going to be a process for that, the time frames for those things. So we want to make sure we'll do that very transparently and with council guidance and community guidance to the extent possible too.

Great.

Thank you.

Council, are there any questions for staff on this? Okay. I entertain a motion on this matter. Councilor Shea? Okay.

move to award the contract for real estate brokerage services for listing, marketing, and sale of municipal tax-acquired properties to Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, the Marciano Group, based upon the city's request for proposal process. Authorize city manager to execute agreement related documents necessary to implement the contract comply with the requirements of 36 MSIS section 943C.

So moved. Do I have a second? Second. I have a second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion from council? Councilor Halloran?

I'd just like to say that it's nice to see it hasn't happened yet, but it's nice to see us keep the business local. This is an Ellsworth office. There are people that work there that are taxpayers in Ellsworth, and it's nice to see the recommendation from Ellsworth to keep that money to taxpayers in Ellsworth. I have seen this go the other way too many times where the city has gone out of their way to go outside of town to do business. And for once, it looks like Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth may have a chance to do business with the city.

Any further comment from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Anonymous. Okay, council order, we're on agenda item number 18, council order number 062606, appointment of city officials by the city council. First we're up for reappointments. We have a memo here from Ebony with the suggested motion and some background. I don't know if Charlie or if you want any thought, provide us any background on this as far as charter requirements go.

No, not really. This is kind of our typical routines for the years for who's up for re-elections or for re-appointments. We reach out to the committees and commissions to see if there's any issues. I do think moving forward, these are council-approved boards and commissions. We have it on our project management team action item list on standardization of policies and procedures across the boards and commissions that I think... future council may look at on just how we want to standardize this process to to kind of uniform guidance across the organization's so I think in the future might want to do that but right now there's no no issues great thank you

And I just want to make sure the council, it's in the packet. It has all the names of different commissions. We've had the opportunity to review them. Are there any further questions? Are there any questions from council for staff or regardless on this agenda item?

Are we doing this as one meeting? Is it one per item?

No, we're going to do this as one. So for all the reappointments for city officials, that's one motion. And then the following agenda items for staff confirmation, that's one motion.

So when it's appropriate, I just want to speak for a minute to the Ellsworth Cemetery Commission.

Go for it.

So if you, it lists the members higher up in the agenda, but on page 42, you can see that the Cemetery Commission was brought back in 2025. And so all of the commissioners had, when they came on, had terms that end June 30th of this year. And you can see on 42, they're now shifting into the three-year, two-year, one-year terms so that it'll be ultimate moving forward. So I just want to thank Dottie, Terry, Teresa, Albert, Natasha, and Tiffany. for the work they've done over the last year a little bit more bringing structure and clarity to the city's role in caring for cemeteries across the city.

Great. Thank you, Nancy. Anything else from council on any of the committee appointments? Seeing none, I would entertain a motion from council on this. Councillor M. Smith?

So I can just read the suggested motion, not the entire thing?

Just the suggested motion.

Okay. I move to approve the appointments as presented, with the following modifications. The Harbor Commission's appointment of Jeff Gordon, as a full member in the Cemetery Commission's establishment of new term dates for the appointments going forward.

Thank you. Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a second. Motion to second. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Anonymous. Thank you. All right, page three. agenda item number nineteen council order number zero six two six zero seven approval of city managers appointments for staff confirmation similar to as i understand that similar to committee appointments this is a requirement that we do every year as part of our charter for those that have been here before we did the same thing last year Any questions or comments from council? Seeing none, do I have a suggestion? Anyone want to advance a motion on this?

I'll move to approve the confirmations as presented.

Second? Second. Any further discussion from council? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries, five to two. Okay, agenda item number 20, council order number 062608, public hearing and action on the budget resolution for FY2027. And our city manager provided us a memo on the budget and I'll turn it over to him.

Thank you, Chair Lyons. I know we've ended the entire city council, I know, and the entire staff. You know, this is, I think we did seven workshops, a couple hours long a piece. It's 14 hours. We received a lot of great input, line by line by line by line. I know it was mentioned earlier. We put up the draft version of the budget and prior year actuals. The pieces, that was things when I arrived that didn't exist, a prior year actual. I think I brought out, I should have brought it out. I'm not usually one for props, but I have a, binder in my office called the FY25 failed budget, abandoned on April 30th, 2025, because it was when I arrived six weeks into the budget cycle, you could tell there was no planning, no organization, no Excel sheets even. Some people were putting Microsoft Word documents together for budgets. Some people did have Excel sheets. There was no cover pages. I think city councilors, three of whom are still on the council, but Four of them were there, just probably saw it. Or you had to create your own binder every meeting. And we worked really hard as a team in the initial stages to get all that data digitized. But it takes a while, too. You've got to have longitudinal data to start tracking prior year actuals and moving forward. So each year, we've been updating the processes, getting better and better. And now that we have a lot more data, last year we were able to get to around 3%, 4% close to the inflationary increase after. But that was a long process. This year there was some misstated revenues from last year that didn't come in nearly as what we thought from the prior year to that. The actuals that were in the system from the prior year just weren't nearly what. actually came in. So this year we updated a lot of those. We're down, I think it's negative 5.9% on revenues on a lot of those pieces. And I have my memo titled Boom and Gloom because that's exactly where I feel at this moment with Ellsworth. There's an incredible growth in the city. You can see this map here. This goes all the way back to 2009. The solid green line is the taxable value of the entirety of the city. The dotted line is the mill rate or the tax rate of the city. And you can see in 2009 to 2021, really, it goes from about $1 billion to $1.1 billion over a 12-year period of time. That's an incredibly small growth rate for the economy of the city in terms of value. And city services during that time continue to cost more year by year by year. And when that happens is the tax rate starts climbing up, getting to almost the high point of 19 in 2019. 2021, and the valuation really starts to spike. You literally see a $700 million increase in the valuation of the city of Ellsworth over a three-, four-year period of time. That is a remarkable growth rate. Population rates also increased. When you look at 2000 to 2024, Ellsworth has a 36.5% population gain over that time period. That's one of the largest population gains, if not the largest in the entire state of Maine as a percent. In terms of real population, the population of Ellsworth has grown more than Bangor and Augusta combined over that period of time. So it's an enormous change that I think occurs at now. I think a lot of this growth also has been coming in valuation changes to the current property owners. And I think for a lot of folks, if you're looking to... to sell, that might be great that the valuation changed, but if your property value has increased dramatically and you have a multi-generational home or a camp that you're never looking to sell, that is not a great thing. That is a larger share of the tax revenue comes from the higher value properties as they increase in value, that number increases apace. I know the... The mill rate in Ellsworth is about 15.66. I think it's the second or third lowest of any of the big service centers, at least when we did the data from the Ellsworth American analysis from previous years. One of the lowest median taxable amounts. I think it was in the $3,400, $3,500 range per median income. And last year, you know, with the around inflationary 4% increase, you know, 75% of all the tax bills in Ellsworth actually went down. It wasn't by much. It was about by 20, 20 bucks, but 75% went down. But 24% went way up. I mean, skyrocketed up. A big reason for that was a huge valuation change. I always people say, like, what's going on? Like, why are my taxes going up? And I have to bring them in my office and I've had these conversations. I've actually gone out to people's homes and the values have changed a lot and I have to have like a 20 to 30 minute conversation about the 31% increase in the waterfront valuation change, the 18% increase. and residential, and the 16% increase in commercial. And when you blend that off of 4%, I think the school was around 7%, or maybe around 5% increase last year. And you blend those together, and that's when it's distributed. Some people in the waterfront areas saw a really big tax shift, and they're rightfully so furious about that tax change. Um, so it's really, um, this growth and then coming into this cycle, looking at the kind of revenue change.

No, I can just note that Charlie, the city council has no authority over the taxation rate over the valuation. That's all the assessor.

Correct. It's the, the assessing it's actually, um, against law in the charter to interfere with the assessor's change in evaluation. You'd think it's just a straightforward math equation. I know that a deputy city manager and I really had to deep dive into this category and get Um, probably, uh, more involved than most deputies and city managers have ever been involved in analyzing, assessing and weekly meetings where we add on the personal property or we had on a business equipment tax exemption status. We also uncovered that process. There was a multiple a hundred thousand dollar mistake in a previous assessment where they, um, put a printer. Instead of the year 2026, they timed it by 2026. That created a massive overpayment from the state for a reimbursement. that we ended up having to get clawed back. That's again one of the revenue issues for this year on where that's going. But no, the city council doesn't have, and it's important to keep your valuations to the state levels. If you don't hit these like 90% thresholds for certain areas, they can start not giving you your full reimbursements for some of the state revenue sharing that they bring back. So it's important that the city you know, keep up with those valuation changes. But it's one of the issues. I mean, $700 million valuation growth, I think in some ways the assessor was looking at it and like, is this real? Is this long-lasting? Yeah, and we've had a, you know, there is an abatement process. There have been a few that have been successful in saying, yep, this is my value. It didn't quite add up, but the vast majority have been in the category of, yeah, your home could sell for this amount. That's what the market rate is adding in this area. This budget cycle really, especially with better data, I mean, I know early on that's why I said no to backfilling a couple key roles in our parks and rec slash public works department that we just can't do it. And then seeing some of these when I got the initial budgets for the next year and some of the projections and revenue shifts. And even with that and saying no to every single new request, a lot of requests that never even came before the council because talking to staff and others that it really, we felt that this is not the year to add additional pieces to the city. And because a lot of just some general costs without adding any new public safety officers, firefighters, and that's a previous city decision to really go to a full EMS, advanced life support, ambulance-capable service for the fire department, and we're adding two per year in order to get to that full shift amount in the fire department. Last year was our kind of final year to do that, and then this year was about right-sizing the department to kind of what that actually costs us now. And then for the police department too, we think we had, and there was a half firefighter, Does it mean actually we're hiring a half firefighter? It means we budgeted half of the year, budgeted a police officer for half of the year, maybe a dispatcher for half of the year. But we're paying for that now as well. So even though this budget isn't adding FTEs, and we held back two FTEs, those other ones, the halves, are coming to full-time employment for this cycle. And just the loan, it was over $600,000 in the public safety through the collective bargaining agreements. Wage, area costs, that's not inclusive to actually the employee benefits of those pieces. That was over $500,000 in employee benefits. A parcel of that, and I'm sorry, I just haven't had enough time to really... fine-tune some of the data viz here. But I did note that the $200,000 for health insurance, that's how much that's up as part of the employee benefits. So of that $500,000 increase, $200,000 is an increase in health insurance. I believe that was up 17%. The state reimbursement corrections, that's costing us around $200,000 in lost revenue this year. Main state retirement was, again, part of that employee benefits. Also, the road debt service, we did about $2 million in roads. A lot of catch-up had to be done. In addition, I think it was $20 million in state roads and $2 million in in city roads last year. I know that was kind of the big complaint around this time of the year is why are they doing all these roads right now? But now the bills come in due, we structured that debt for a seven-year payback, which is around the lifetime of how much that road will probably not need any smaller repairs till. So that's hitting the budget cycle this time around. And just about everything across the board. Gas, we budgeted 25% more. I'm praying, I think a week ago, I didn't think that was going to be enough of an increase. And I say 25% more, like... EVEN AFTER ADDING MORE FOR THE NEXT YEAR, YOU KNOW, THREE WEEKS AGO IN THE BUDGET PROCESS, WE'RE LIKE, WE GOT TO ADD EVEN MORE BECAUSE THESE PRICES ARE INCREASING DRAMATICALLY. SALT'S UP 13% AND WE BUY $170,000 WITH THE SALT HERE. STEEL'S UP, THE PLOWS TO GREATER STEEL, LIQUID CALCIUM, A 15K, it's 100% increase. I know we talked to Councilor Shea last time around. I guess it's also not just the adding it to the salt to when it gets below freezing because the salt doesn't necessarily clear the ice of the roads at that point, but it's also for all of our dirt roads to keep dust down. They spray the liquid calcium over as well. That was a big part of it. We said no, like I said, just for everything, dashboard pest management. It's not that it's not needed. Council chamber AV upgrades, video conferencing, pretty much gutted the HR training and professional development. If it's not for your actual certification to keep you as a code officer, to keep you as a police officer certified, to keep all your assessing certifications, it got taken out of the budget. And I think towards the latter side of things, too, we saw, we came back, we did a big cut exercise with everybody, even the library department, which is the tightest budget of anyone every single year that comes in here. Even they found another $1,000. But the $100,000 or so we did as part of that exercise got wiped out when there was a potential leave in the fire department and couple leaves and we have to anticipate bringing in some part-timers to the fire department and just like the benefit cost alone of bringing in those firefighters exceeded all of the other cut exercise that we did in the general government side of things. Also just cutting, I know there's This cutting general government alone is not going to solve the problem. I think over the long term, this isn't a one year, what's the right political decision to make on exercise. But over the next five years, ten years, we're seeing massive increases in growth in the city of Ellsworth, massive service demand increases. You know, the smallest side of government, which is the general government side. You know, I know there was talk at the last finance committee meeting. I'm assuming there will be more talk of it tonight. Cut a couple middle manager positions, and it's going to be a tax paradise here. That won't cover the public safety increase and the collective bargaining increases that are already in there. And also, I'm not trying to pit general government versus public safety versus the school system. And that's not even talking about the school side, which just passed by a 2 to 1 margin. That's the $16 million of city taxes goes to the school. I think it's $13 million on the city side. So the school piece is around an 8% increase as well. The city piece is around 80% because they're a much bigger dollar figure. That will be where, and that's been every single year for the past few years as a school, and that's very needed too. Again, it's not, but the idea of cutting one side of government, which is also very stressed under enormous service pressures, and was when I arrived on the state, the verge of institutional collapse. is really not going to solve our issues over the long time. There's also deferred maintenance issues. A lot of the folks in general government are going to be best equipped to help deal with those deferred maintenance issues, finance the grants, work with the state, as they already have, to bring in additional capital into the city. We didn't have a capital plan for the city of Ellsworth for the last five years. Didn't even know how much the deferred maintenance. It's kind of nice sometimes when you don't know. Just, hey. We'll just, you know, it's who knows. And then, gosh, Pump House Point, the water department had to abandon that because it was falling down. unsafe to live in and they had to lease a building for four or five years at great expense and that's still a depreciated asset. There's $20 million in basically like year one deferred maintenance. These are big, big issues that we need to start being a lot more forward thinking as a city and other cities and towns that are getting more grants, that are getting more, but that alone isn't going to solve this.

You know, financial controls and modernization, we've talked about a bit of what we're getting there.

We've got a long way to go. I think we need more investment. I know there was discussion tonight about we've hired, like, a third city manager that we did not hire, the Bucksport town manager, who recently retired to be another city manager. We hired her to help us, who's one of the foremost municipal budgeting experts in Maine and is working with plenty of other counties, too. really deep dive and give us an honest look about where our finances are at, especially without a finance director for these last four or five months. We're going to have an announcement on that hopefully once background checks pass, probably in the next week. So I'm really excited to announce that person who's going to help us take it even further here. But Sue's helping us out on our final reconciliations of accounts to get back up to speed. We were three years behind on audits when I arrived. We've caught up to the year, but we're still about, I'd say, almost a year behind. We should have an audit before the previous year before we even go into the budget cycle, and that needs to be the standard moving forward every year. We should close out a budget cycle and then within a month or two months be able to send all of our data over to the auditors so it's super easy to move forward. Hasn't been a fun budget cycle, saying all these pieces, and I don't mean to be just such a guy with bad news here, but the council, I think, may need to look into additional revenue options. We've talked a bit about The downtown parking revenues, solid waste fee design, the city's losing about 400,000 a year that the general taxpayer is taking over. Those $5 stickers are not covering what it costs to pay Cassell, and the disposal fees and all those other pieces that still all the taxpayers are basically picking up an additional $400,000 of the fact that that account should be an enterprise account where the amount of fees you pay for trash pays for the use. But right now the heavier users are being subsidized by the lighter users in the city of Ellsworth. Also the seriousness about this piece, I think, you know, I used to work in Republican politics for 20 years and have used to great effect to just cut the waste and there's all this, and it's going to be a paradise around here. The idea of just tax the rich and we're going to be able to figure all this out. Those are simple solutions to really complex, hard problems. That's going to take not name calling, not this person's an enemy of this person. It's really just coming together in a compromise on some big issues. Yes, in general government. Yes, in public safety. Yes, in the school system. Yes, in all of these areas on how sustainable are these cost increases. how much growth are we having? How can we prioritize more growth? What this doesn't show is we did the latest analysis with the assessing firm, and I think we're looking at around $315,000 in just new stuff. So new hotels, new gas stations, new housing units, new businesses, things that didn't exist before. That's the 10, $12 million category, which would kick off an additional $300,000. So that can help offset this, but when you see this increase, that's not going to offset it enough. Valuation changes would be about 3% is what we're hearing might be targeted by the assessor this year. Again, that's their determination after the budget cycle. And even with all these challenges, like these are, to be in a rural part of America with this much economic growth and and you know and I know that the school system had to shut down a third grade class this year and had to also not add a couple or not backfill a few employees in that category but this to be able to keep the gas going on economic growth and people wanting to live in the city on valuation still increasing so the schools are here so that grandkids kids can keep coming here, want to come back here and have a job, I think is extremely important. We have just such great organizations, not just the city council or the community that's been kind enough to come out for a lot of these things and amazing staff who works their tails off every single day. I don't believe in the concept of just rowers and steers here. They are all rowers and steers. A lot of these people are departments of one that took a pay cut to come work for this organization. at a time of real struggle, people that are in this community that work so hard under so many pressures, some of which are expected in this city and some of which are council dramas that were totally unexpected and consume an amount of our time and resources that is very hard to look on the more forward-looking things like housing, like getting a new finance director onboarded, like establishing better policies and procedures in the organization so that we don't come back to where I arrived at, which was a state of pretty heavy dysfunction and close to organizational collapse. And so I'm so optimistic and happy about the process forward, but also Very cautious and concerned about increasing headwinds in this government. Our IT department needs somebody new. Our parks and rec and public works teams could use at least two more to really accomplish the amount of parks, rec, road maintenance that we need to do. The finance department really needs some additional consulting support services, I think, in a few key areas. But this wasn't... This is probably the most data I've had coming into a budget cycle, but some very strong headwinds, and that's kind of where we're at, a sense of boom and gloom.

Great. Thank you, Charlie. Yeah, that's a very comprehensive memo and a ton of work. I know we don't see... we see just a very small percentage of all the work that the staff puts into getting this budget together. And I would say, yeah, this has been the best year as far as data, as far as process, and so I know I'm super appreciative. Councillors, before we open the public hearing, any questions for Charlie or staff regarding the budget? Councillor Martineau?

I just want to make sure I understood you correctly. 75% of the tax bills in Ellsworth went down.

last year, but the overall increase is around 4% on the levy. And I should note, that was a one-year piece. And for the 25%, they went up a lot. The previous year, I believe it was 7%. Again, I was about halfway through a budget cycle. It really was getting the data in order. And the year before that, they were up, I think, 19%. And that was the year before. I don't know if any councilor was on that. Maybe Steve was on the council when that 19% one passed. And if you actually look back to 2021 and 2022, I don't think I have a data chart. They almost passed a 0% increase for 2021 and 2022. And so why is that strange? Like, wow, they must have done a great job in 2021 and 2022. Just nice, even budget, 0%. Like, those are the highest inflationary years in a generation. Like, there's no way that there was 0% increase in 21 and 22. Maybe it was 22 FY. So, you know, you could, and then you see it in the audit reports, as I mentioned, when you look back. There's a $900,000 overage on public safety. Their accounts were completely unreconciled, and they were spending on meetings on undesignated fund balances that didn't exist. I haven't come to the city council during my tenure saying, hey, we should spend off this undesignated fund balance because, to me, one doesn't exist yet. I hope to have that solved soon now that assessing – is in a much better path than the new finance directors coming on board. That is our North Star, is to be able to close out the months and move forward.

That's the base that we have to have.

But, yep, last year, which I know you weren't even elected when that budget was put forward, but, yeah, it was of the tax bills, I think there was only 4,000 unique property owners, but 75% of those were down a small amount. About 25% were way up.

Thank you. Any other questions for Manager Pierce or staff on the budget before we go to public hearing? Seeing none, I open the public hearing on the budget. If you have any public comments you'd like to provide, please approach the DSC, please provide your name and residency, and please provide your comments to three minutes or less.

Hi, I'm Laura Nason from North Ellsworth, and I feel terrible coming up here now after you said everything. I'm sure you worked very hard on this, but I have something negative to say about it. I want to say good evening to the council members and to Mr. Pierce. And like many residents of our city, I am increasingly concerned about the continued continued impact of rising property taxes on households that are already struggling to keep up with the cost of living. While I appreciate the council's efforts to improve and plan for Ellsworth's future, I believe there has not been enough consideration given to the ability of many residents to absorb another tax increase. In reviewing budget decisions, I would ask the council to consider whether additional opportunities exist to reduce costs before increasing the tax burden. For example, the council approved funding for an assistant to the city manager position, despite previous periods in which responsibilities were consolidated and managed with fewer personnel. Likewise, the city currently has one individual serving in dual leadership roles. I don't know if I'm allowed to say his name, but Mike Harris as both wastewater superintendent and public works director, which suggests there may be room to evaluate staffing, structures, and efficiencies across departments. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this one, but I'll say it. You can stop me. I also ask the council to consider public concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest. Specifically, I encourage review of whether affiliations of certain council members with Heart of Ellsworth and Grow Smart Maine could create either actual or perceived conflicts under Maine revised statutes, Title 30A, Section 2605, governing municipal conflicts of interest. My intent is not to question anyone's motive or service, but rather to encourage transparency and public confidence in the budget process. Additionally, while Heart of Ellsworth provides value to our community and supports local economic activity, I would ask the council to consider whether organizations of this nature should rely more directly funding from the merchants and businesses that receive the greatest benefit from their work rather than expanding reliance on municipal resources. I want to close by thanking the council for the time and effort each of you puts into serving our city. I hope you will take time to consider the perspective of average residents and property owners when voting on a budget that may substantially increase their financial burden. Thank you.

Tiffany Gasper, Ellsworth. I can appreciate a budget. I work in finance. I work in business growth. We're acting like we're city of 20,000 people and we're running like one based on the graph given to us earlier. That's a huge graph for a city that's roughly 9,000 residents. Really there should be no approval of this budget right now until 2026 gets finished out. We know those actual numbers because like as I demonstrated earlier, They're not based on the information that is on your website. They're skewed numbers. They're not being added correctly. We don't even know if bank fees are actually bank fees or revenue. They're bank fees most likely, but there's a lot of things that are significantly over budget that's not going to change until you just take a step back for a minute, reevaluate, and figure out what is a priority. Whenever you're over a budget, especially by millions of dollars, that's a failure, especially when it comes to taxpayers, because we're the ones footing that bill. You can call every grant you want, Grants still cost money, which was demonstrated on the May 18th meeting. There's somebody who has to write those grants. You know, there is stuff that goes into that. Not to mention, there's a line item in there for the 27 budget, and it's over $100,000 for nonprofits. If taxpayers wanted to donate to nonprofits, we would. We would write a check, give cash. The city should not be donating on behalf of the taxpayers, and that's where those funds are coming from. And in addition, there is a $1.9 million increase in the budget for 2027 which, like you just said, taxes will increase again. You can spend that any way you want. You can put a cherry on top of it to make it sound better. We have money coming in. We have a substantial amount of money coming in. It's just being mismanaged and not done correctly. It's not prioritizing anything. You keep talking about growth. But for every growth, as quickly as you say people are moving in, they're also moving out because they can't afford to live here. I've talked to several people over the last few weeks that have said that. They've bought land elsewhere because they don't want to live here because it's too expensive and it's just going up. You have to make cuts to be able to offset some of these things. It's never a cut. $200, $400, that doesn't count as a cut. You have to cut thousands of dollars. You're just not doing that. And high tax valuation is great when you want TANs or anything else, and that attributes to how much money you can take out using a TAN.

Ms. Gasper, that's your three minutes. Thank you. Any further public comment on the budget?

Roger Gilley, city resident. As we talk about taxes, we talk about the school department, how much money they get. So like I said before, the school department, they get a ton of money. We had a principal at the school get hurt over lack of maintenance at the school. Still to this day, the problem hasn't been fixed. Other people have tripped over it. There's been multiple problems like that. So when we think about these budgets and what we're going to spend money on, maybe we ought to think about how they're taking care of the community's property, you know, and how much should we keep spending if they can't, you know, take care of that stuff. We talk about taxes being high. I've said 100 times the school buses need to go back out to the city garage. The school department has money invested in additions onto the city highway garage. which was a multi-use building at one time for the school department. All of our buses, but the two buses that are propane would fit inside the building. They used to. They still would. We talk about taxes, needing more money, this, that. Look at all the coffee shops that we have in town. Based on the water that they're using to make coffee that they're passing out the window, we also base their wastewater off what's going in. That's a lot of money, I would assume, with all the coffee and the water going out the window and their wastewater being based on that. when they should have a meter on their wastewater. So maybe that extra money that we're charging them for their wastewater goes to the taxes. Or maybe we just be nice and have a way to justify how much wastewater is going back and save them money. Just kind of thoughts.

Thank you. Any further public comment? Seeing none, I'm going to... Public comment from the city manager?

Yeah, just on such a big issue. I would like to note just a few things. Thank you, Tiffany and Lauren. for discussion of the nonprofit piece. I know we also did cut, towards the latter stages, the external organizations by 10%. I know that was difficult as well. Again, I would also note that those pieces are not what's driving the major cost increases of the government. I think there's really good reasons not to. I believe some states don't allow local governments to invest in nonprofits. that it's basically just barred. It's a pretty common practice in Maine. I know it was kind of unique when I came here. I was like, huh. But I think I have a philosophical difference with that. If I had my druthers and were started from scratch, yeah, I would definitely probably not want to do that from a philosophical level. At the same time, I know from a staff level, person level, like the work that our social services, our general assistance folks do with those organizations, that a lot of that stuff would fall on them. And especially in this time of increasing uncertainty, these nonprofits are doing important work. It was hard for the 10% cut. And Lauren, I thought it was a really great explanation of your concerns and increasing your property taxes. And it's the worst thing about being a city manager, by far. I was talking recently or listening about something Ronald Reagan used to say when, I guess, California was the last state in the country to not withhold state taxes from paychecks. They passed a law to make that case, and Reagan, I think, vetoed it and said, I want it to hurt. Those property taxes, it hurts me. In Kasteen, I had a similar valuation thing where it doubled valuation at 12% increases in the taxes, and to see that bill come through was awful. They take it very, very seriously. Also, it's this kind of double piece, I think, in Ellsworth on taxes. Yes, 9,000 residents, but these enormous commercial centers, these 4 million people coming through, how the state does revenue sharing, the whole system itself. We have 1,000 Airbnbs potentially that popped up over the last four or five years. The state gets, I think, 10% of lodging tax on that, but we have to deal here in Ellsworth with the infrastructure costs on that. We don't get part of that 10%.

We're passing a

some recreational cannabis, the state gets, I think, 12% of the gross of those now. They don't have to deal with the local pressures of those pieces. So there's all these pieces of the way revenue sharing works, that really I think put communities and schools increases. We saw this, I mean a lot of the school budgets have passed this year. Last year there was a lot of schools that didn't even pass the budgets and they had to go back. One note I will say is just for me it's been kind of difficult coming into this organization and seeing like what had happened and like the state of, you know, when I arrived and asked for the org chart, which I'm putting up now, and I was handed three PowerPoint slides with the same person on the top of each one with 18 direct reports all reporting to the same person. And some people might say, that's a great cost efficiency. The city manager is also the police chief. And you're going to save so much money when you do that. And the whole thing was on the verge of collapse. I mean, there was no performance reviews for any. I take government really seriously. We've established. Very strong performance reviews, high levels of accountability, smart goal setting, I think for a lot of the staff when they came in and we started to go this route to really create a structure where people have roles, responsibilities, forward looking agendas, tier one, tier two, tier three priorities. And then also to hear a lot of it that just kind of, well, it's the deputy city manager. Like, that's just, you know, that is a cost. But it also used to exist in 2020 in the city. There used to be a deputy city manager here. And in that 2020 to 2025 time frame, that was seen as a cost savings. And the finance department, like, turnovers. This is a whole organization now. 50% of the entire organization turned over in a three-, four-year period of time. 50% in the high cost of turnover, institutional knowledge. Some of those folks have been here for decades. When people replaced them, it was just like, there is no org chart. There's no policy procedures. There's no job descriptions for anybody. It was just wild to understand the growth pressures the city was on and not having an organization. And when you have 18 reporting to one, You have nobody reporting to anybody. So we really worked, and I know Steve, you said this chart, like I worked on this chart. I've spent the last two years trying to create a functional government system that can manage the workflow, even under enormous stress pressures. And Lorena and Ebony and Sarah, have been big parts of multiple white boarding sessions on who can report, who can, and to me it's not rowers and steers in this organization. Reporting and being a supervisor is about holding people accountable to standards, but, you know, some of these are departments of one. Our economic development director is a department of one. The communications director, which was a hiring decision before I even arrived, and a recommendation for the comp plan is a department of one. The deputy city manager used to exist before I was here. Um, the executive assistant is now a slash city clerk. Um, our tax collector is a slash city clerk. Um, and as we've hit these growth pressures, if we don't have a system like the parks and rec department, we added one person that was also a recommendation of the comp plan. Uh, and we borrowed or essentially stole two people from public works. It's not like we built a massive parks and rec department. We're just having to find duties for those areas and it's not enough. They probably need two more in each of Public Works, Parks and Rec, to really accomplish the amount of just road and park maintenance that was here. So we don't have happen what was happening before I came here. Slides took two years to repair. The marina was looking like Beirut. It was falling apart so badly. Nobody could figure out how to do road projects. Turnover was just endemic in the organization. And the other big piece that I struggle with, too, is the... The areas we've added the most, by far, are in the public safety areas. So when you look at our org chart, and to be said, it's the middle managers that are doing this. And we need every single one of them in police and fire. These are our firefighters. administrative and supervisory support for these units. This is our police team. And they are the crackerjack team. Not one of them can we do without. We had a lot of overtime because every time we have a sickness or every time somebody has to go on leave, they have to be back filled with overtime. And we're not going to... not send an ambulance to somebody's house. We're not going to investigate a crime. We have to do those things. Our public works teams as well, this side of the area, are just flat out water, waste water. They didn't have a public works director when I arrived. The public works director left, and then they decided we'll give everybody a 10% stipend to be a joint public works director, or whatever that was. And then public works kind of fell apart until Mike Harris came. was upgraded and is still doing the wastewater job. I'm not quite sure he should do that because he's got to focus on this massive $20 million backlog that we have that's going to take a ton of work, a ton of time. Our library department is just, their service pressure increases are enormous and they're some of the lowest paying employees of the organization. I could go into the earnings chart now as well. You look at the earnings chart, we played police officer over $200,000 last year. I mean, that person's worth it. He does an incredible amount of overtime. I'm the third highest paid employee. Um, the first non union woman in the organization, um, is the 28th highest employee from 2025. Um, and that's the deputy city manager. But to cut the general government side, too, would be a massive decrease in the women in the organization's pay because the union sector side skews much more male dominant in the organization. And those are, if you look at the earnings reports, those are where all your six-figure salaries are. And they're extremely important and extremely high value, extremely hardworking people. But so is every single one of these people in the organization is working their tails off under enormous growth pressures and You know, the deputy city manager might seem like $170,000 cost savings with benefits in a single year, You know, at the expense of triggering a bunch more turnover and a bunch more budgets that never, like, have the data use so people can say, hey, this is what's wrong with this budget. I want to do more and more of that. We need to do more and more of that. But I do want to note this is a fairly lean organization considering the service demands that are being placed upon it. And we have some big cost pressures. that we need to address, but we also have to be pretty honest about where they're coming from too.

Thank you, Charlie. Okay, so we've closed the public hearing and now it is time for the council to deliberate on the budget. Councillor N. Smith.

Thank you, sir. A couple of points as we move forward with this. I want to thank staff. Charlie, you had the number of workshops, public budget workshops. I think it was seven budget workshops.

It's actually in the front of your budget books. It lists out all the dates. Eight.

Seven or eight. So numerous hours that we've spent on this to understand it, to work with it, to make it work for the people of Ellsworth. And we know that for every hour we've spent, there are 10 to 20 hours that staff have spent. So I want to start by thanking you with that. you all for that um secondly is to address there's a drumbeat of misinformation or misunderstanding i cannot understand about non-profits if you work for a non-profit or you volunteer on the board of a nonprofit you're somehow sullied now grossmart maine receives no money from the city of ellsworth grossmart maine receives no money from the city of ellsworth What I do is take the expertise I have from that work, bring it forward here, and sometimes staff have volunteered with the city to make the city a better place at no cost to the city. Grossmart does not receive any money from the city. It's described in the recall effort that in-kind donations of this expertise are a conflict. That would mean that Councillor Shea, with his expertise as a truck driver, when he talks about public works, that that's somehow a conflict of interest. So I'm at a loss for that and will continue, whether it comes in email, social media, or these meetings, to say Grow Smart does not receive any money from the city of Ellsworth. You get our expertise, mine and staff, for free. Because that's what Grow Smart does and that's part of what I bring. to the city as a counselor. Second point I want to raise is, I think, to highlight and make sure I heard correctly. Charlie, you said that it is looking like the valuation increase will be about 3% this year.

Yeah, but I'm cautious there, because I said 5% last year was the initial, and then it was a 31% in the water.

But this year, I- Is there any sense of what the deviation is from that?

Yeah, I really, to me it's hard to talk about that piece because I don't want to, like the budget is our budget and we've got to be as controlled as we possibly can.

And then how much valuation... That's the part of the equation we can control.

I could say the longitudinal data I've looked back over the last four or five years is around half a million dollars is what's new revenue coming into the city from new businesses being built. But some of that was lucky. We got the Versant power station. I think that was like a half million dollars. It was like a $55 million substation. I don't think most of us even know that that got constructed. And that kicked off a half a million dollars. So the service center for that is pretty good. But these new Hilton Humpa Suites, two new tractor dealerships, dozens of housing growth, and the fact that that's been happening pretty often, that's around half a million dollars a year that's just new broadening tax base. If you look at over the period of time, about a $700 million increase, but a lot of that's just that 3% across the board would be residential, waterfront, commercial is the valuation increase, and then about $315,000 in new taxes to $500,000 could be what comes into the system, but it's hard to, that will hedge some of the increase of this budget, but until the numbers are finalized, I hate to give, that's a very convoluted answer as I'm prone to give, but I'm sorry.

Okay. We'll work with that, I guess. And, you know, this will be my third budget. I don't remember fiscal year 25. Charlie, you described what a mess it was as we all started with not having enough information, and yet I think that was 7% increase at most. Last year, the city side was slightly negative with the way things worked out, but close to zero. This year, we're looking at around 7%, again. 8%. So when there's discussion about out-of-control spending, again, what makes a good talking point on social media doesn't reflect what I'm seeing. That said, I totally understand people are seeing increased property taxes, as are we, and we're doing everything we can to balance the needs of the present residents and business owners and the future. It's complicated. It's hard. And I think we're striking the right note. The final thing I want to raise as we're looking at what to do with the city budget is I watched very carefully last week with the school budget authorization to see how are the citizens broadly feeling about spending here in the city. It was a very high turnout for last week's June 9th vote and the school budget passed two to one and that tells me that people here understand the balance that the school board tried to make or the school board made that we then validated and moved forward for their vote and that we're making here in I'll go back again to I think what Lauren said trying to balance the needs of the present Ellsworth-onians with the future. So those are points reflecting on what I've heard here, what I see in emails from folks and conversations with people across the state as we're setting, preparing for this budget vote this evening. Thank you.

Okay. Any other councilor comments? Councilor Shea?

I'm still an advocate for not paying external organizations. And I don't have any problem with cutting the recreation budget $200,000. So that gives us $304,900. I don't have any problem with cutting legislative because we've already gone over at the budget at the finance meeting. It's already been identified. It's already went over on our budget last year. So we might as well tighten our belts since punishing the other departments. So why don't we knock another 10,000 off in that. Economic development, let's take 100,000 from that. communications, well, you know, each department head, city manager, deputy city manager can take care of that. We'll knock that down, knock off another $99,515. And I noticed We're not doing anything as far as funding capital improvements, so that kind of puts a big squash there. So why don't we take another 83, 285 off from outside facilities? At least it's some ways of a little bit of a start, take some of the edge and the proofs to the taxpayers and the residents that we really kind of are trying. As far as nonprofit organizations, look, I belong to a lot of them. We don't go to governments. municipalities and ask for donations. We do our own fundraising and we take care of it. And we also help out the communities. We help out people. Okay? So I don't need to be lectured by any non-profits. I really think non-profits can do a really great job. You need to depend on your volunteers a little bit more. And if, like Heart of Ellsworth and the Chamber of Commerce, you're supposed to help businesses go to the business owners and ask for help financially, okay? Everybody's got to tighten their belts. Sooner or later, the bubble's going to burst, and we just got to rein in some of the spending. If we break another piece of equipment, We might have to park it for a while. We've got to really reevaluate what we're doing and how we're doing it, okay? Yeah, recreation? Yeah, I'm sorry. That's... That doesn't have anything to do with the roads and infrastructure. That's a feel-good kind of thing. And that's why we have the YMCA. We have adult recreation groups. They donate. They work. They do the fundraising. Yay. Okay? But we've got to make some tough choices. And, yeah, there's probably a few positions that are probably going to be ended up getting eliminated. So... But those are areas that I wrote down. The two top ones that I don't have any problem with cutting is taking, I'm not cutting recreational totally, I just said let's take 200,000 there, take 104,092 away from outside non-profit organizations. Sorry, it's the way it's going to be. And, yes, I drive truck right now, but I also served in state government and federal government. And, yeah, I kind of take some of those little tricks in the tool bag and throw them out, okay? And, yeah, your staff has been working hard to do grants and stuff like that. But there's no such thing as free money, okay? You have to work for it. And if it comes from grants from the federal government or the state government, everybody here in this room pays taxes to them. So it's your money. Okay? Thank you.

Councillor M. Smith.

Coming into this budget process was rather daunting because I had been on the council for, I want to say, eight months now. I may be approaching nine. But part of what was really striking was the budget cycle helped cement how all of these are interconnected because there is a balance to be struck. Ellsworth has to provide critical services in a time of rising prices. This includes roads. This includes public safety. But we also need to make sure that Ellsworth is a place where people want to live. And this is where recreation comes in. Hiking is a great way to connect to your community. Getting, and there are so many little things that really make a place feel like home. And we need to ensure that Ellsworth strikes a balance of being fiscally responsible while investing in our community. And I, throughout this entire process, I've, in numerous workshops, going through a 700 page book, you, I got to see that balance being struck in a user-friendly and very transparent manner. And there was one funny moment when I was reading The Shining, just to give you an idea about how much my perspective shifted. And if you don't know, at the end of The Shining, Sidewinder loses a massive property tax source, which is the overview when it explodes. And my mind went, oh, the town lost so much property tax revenue. And then I also went to, like, okay, who maintains a road that leads up there? Because that is snow banked up entire season. Who helped maintain the infrastructure? Is that a safe road? And I realized the budget cycle just helped cement that and just in the quest of trying to find the right balance of critical services, investment in community, and actually getting grant dollars back to our community because those dollars can go anywhere else and we can help make sure they get back to Ellsworth.

Any further public or councilor comments on the budget? Councilor Martineau?

I find it a little ironic that my colleague, Councilor Shea, in one breath says that we need to cut from recreational budget because that's what the YMCA is for. YMCA is a nonprofit. First of all, there are memes that develop on social media and they're so damaging because people hear them and they sound good and they adopt them and they multiply and they circulate. No one bothers to actually look for solid information anymore. The kind of cuts that are being talked about now almost fit in that war cry of line by line, we're gonna go line by line and cut 10% of everything that we can cut. And if you, that didn't originate yesterday, this line by line cry comes up in municipalities across the country whenever you get in a situation where there's disagreement over budgeting. It always comes up. We're going to go line by line. And if you look at what happens to communities that try this line by line stuff, what you find out is it doesn't work for a million reasons. First of all, it can cripple a city. Second of all, you start having to take away from the very few funding lines that you can, because there are so many that you can't, you start cutting overly from the ones that you do have control of. It can throw your budget into the courts, because you start cutting against unionization negotiated salaries or things like that. Courts will inevitably turn the money. And another thing that happens is sometimes when this gets mandated by referendum, these line by line things, cities will find that they can't do it and they have to end up hiring consultants to do the line by line of the 720 page budget, which costs, of course, tens of thousands of dollars. It's careless. to think that we don't look at this line by line, because we do. We've spent the last six months looking at line by line. We've been listening to the people that are making these requests, and we're questioning them. But we cannot micromanage everyone's expertise. Nobody can. The figures that they give us We try to understand, we try to see if it's something that fits with the goals of the city and with the needs of the taxpayers and the residents. This chorus of, it's another meme, that comes to mind. Well, if we wanted to donate to nonprofits, we would. If you stop and very carefully analyze return on investment, let's just call it that, what the city gets for every dollar it donates to a nonprofit, what the children get, what the adults get, what needs these places fill, and to just casually say, well, they can just get their own funding and we'll profit from it because we'll still be using these non-profits. It's just unrealistic and it's just more misinformation circulating on social media that makes things, makes disagreements so difficult. so very difficult to resolve because they're believed.

Any other councillor comments on the budget? Councillor Halloran?

City of Ellsworth spends way too much time preparing and trying to get the budget refined. I dare say that departments have three months worth of work to come up with their budgets and push and shove and refine and claim to cut. That whole process shouldn't take three to four to five months. This is a crazy process here. I'll be the first to tell you, and you've all heard me say this, that We have too many people. You can't manage the paperclip closet and cut costs. You got to start from the top down. I'm not talking about the people. I'm talking about the positions. We could lean that out pretty easy and get by. We were getting by before. We don't need this big government in our town. We need a small government in our town. We're sitting in the best place ever. Bar Harbor attracts a lot of the people that come through here. We don't need this big government. I don't understand why we can't lean this out, reallocate some funds, and live within the Consumer Price Index. Whatever the Consumer Price Index is, at the end of April, I think it was 3.91, but do not hold me to that. Okay, so if you can live within that and reallocate some funds... I think it's passable because it's predictable and everybody knows. The problem with this budget process is you're passing a budget. You don't know where we were last year. We don't know what the valuation thing is. We don't know anything except this far right column of how much the city would like to send you a bill for. That's troubling to me. It needs to get thinned out.

I just want to go on record and say that I work side by side with a lot of staff here as a volunteer because our staff is so overwhelmed with the amount of work that Ellsworth has. I volunteer countless amount of hours to make sure that projects that I want to see done around the city are done. I don't see how cutting any of our managers. Our managers act like the workers that they are managing. they have to the work is that great here and cutting them would be detrimental to Ellsworth and as someone who went to school for forestry you have to plan for the future I am up here I'm going to pass the budget tonight hopefully for the future not just for right now and I know And I sympathize with people that, as myself, that have tax bills that have grown over the past, but that was because of mismanagement before. And that's why I'm sitting here, because I'm so upset about how our city was being managed. I support our staff. I support this budget. I hope that potentially our... I'm not sure if... We do this in the clerk's office or not, but there are many programs in Maine for people that are on fixed incomes. Also, I think there's a state rebate program for property taxes as well. And I don't know if Ellsworth actually promotes these kinds of things when the tax bills go out, but maybe that's something we might want to look into so that people understand the avenues that they have in order to help reduce... the impact of their tax bills to them, especially our elder community. But yeah, I hope to see some of the costs in our economy stabilize. Having to up fuel costs, it's awful. Having to replace a firefighter because he's going to war, awful. It just, there are so many things outside of what we can control here in Ellsworth that are driving this budget. And I just wish people could, especially the ones coming after us right now, just really take this whole picture and see how difficult it really is to do this. But, yeah, that's what I got.

Thanks. All right, well, I guess I'll go last. This is my last budget pass, at least for the foreseeable future.

Maybe our last budget.

Maybe a lot of our last budgets. Who knows? But, you know, each time we've gone through this budget process, the city's gotten better at it, and that's great. you know, in large part because of Charlie and then the team he's brought in or the people that are already here. And, yeah, it was a mess. I didn't realize how bad of a mess it was until, you know, it got real bad. And that also had to do with underinvesting in the city from not backfilling positions and, you know, poor management. And we're really lucky that Um, Charlie Pierce came here to be our city manager. Um, he's an excellent manager and he's brought on a team of excellent staff and he's kept really great people here. And that's just a really small little portion of this budget. The majority of our budget is public safety and public works, and all of it is so important. And to just say, hey, let's cut a couple thousand bucks here, a couple hundred thousand dollars there, and we're good to go. No, if we really want to cut, we're going to have to fire cops, we're going to have to fire firefighters, we're going to have to fire public works officers, and I'm not going to do that. When I ran for this council, I ran to have a safe, nurturing, and thriving community. safe with public safety, nurturing with strong schools, and thriving, supporting economic development. And this is what this budget does as best it can with not spending any more than it absolutely has to, short of firing a bunch of city staff. We have incredible headwinds that are out of our control because of tariffs and wars and just inflation, and we're doing the best we can with it. It's, and on top of all that, you know, and I still, I don't like 8%, you know, I don't like 8%, but the voters of Ellsworth just passed the school budget over 2 to 1 ratio for an 8% increase in the school budget. That tells me that a third of folks that voted didn't like that, but two-thirds did. To me, that shows that there's a lot of people in this community that want to invest in it. I understand the Huge cost facing all of us. It's facing my family, it's facing all our families, and it's really hard. But the great thing about this community is that we do come together. These last month plus has been really difficult. People attacking you based on misinformation and just, you know, but we can all, you know, there's from all that though so many people have reached out to me to support what we're doing. I felt incredible support in the community and it just reaffirmed why I love this city, why I ran for this council. It's a really special community and I'm so fortunate and just thankful that I've been able to work with you guys on this. I work with the community. I look forward to passing this budget and I look forward to hopefully serving out the rest of my term and keep moving Ellsworth forward. And so thank you. And with that, I'd entertain a motion regarding the budget. Not everyone at once.

I don't have a motion right here. Suggest a motion. Okay. I move to adopt the following budget for the fiscal year 2027, be it hereby resolved at the sum of $29,317,004, which constitutes the estimated requirements of the various city accounts for the fiscal year 2027, based upon the budget submitted by the city manager as provided by the charter, be raised assessments upon the inhabitants of the city of Ellsworth and upon the estates on non-resident property. within the city for the present municipal year and that the sums hereby appropriated in addition to sums as otherwise provided the amount for each purpose being specified as presented subject to ratification of the school budget voted on by the residents on June 9th, 2026. It is further resolved that the City of Ellsworth City Council approves the budgets for the following departments in the amount specified as presented, the total wastewater expenditures being $2,209,748, and the total water expenditures being $1,963,430. Do I have a second?

Second.

Second.

Sounds like you're about to get three of them.

Further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Opposed? Budget passes, five to two. Agenda item number 21, council order number 062609, public hearing in action on the request of the deputy finance director for authorization for tax anticipation borrowing of $3 million.

Hi, I'm Ashley Brown, Deputy Finance Director. Before we talk about the TAN, I do have some information on the bank fees. That's been a hot topic today. That was a clerical issue on my part that has since been fixed since those numbers have been released. The budget was $5,500 year-to-date as the end of May. We are at $4,871.38, and those are credit card fees. And that is an expenditure account, not a revenue account. So I just wanted to clarify that. And now we can talk about the TAN.

I knew we talked about that, Ashley. We did. I remember coming into your office about that.

Yeah, Charlie did. He was like, what is this? When we were going over the budget and I looked at it and it was a clerical issue on my part when I was doing the journal entries from the bank side. So that has since been corrected.

Yeah, and that's corrected in this budget right now. Bank fees are year-to-date 2026, $4,871 for the FY26 budget of $5,500. So that's online as in the final budget. I remember talking to you about that.

Yes, you did. Yeah. MS. All right. So we have the TAN. I put it out to bid. We had six banks respond to the bid via OpenGov. And the recommendation is to go with Bar Harbor Bank and Trust at an interest rate of 4.72 percent. MR.

Okay. Do we have any questions for Ashley, our Deputy Finance Director, Councillor Halloran?

I love how you've done this. You have given us all of the information of all of the banks that bid on this piece of business. And we can sit here tonight and make a decision on that. I like the fact that we're using local banks. I'd like to clarify for the notice for the public. This is a $3 million tax anticipation note. And I just want to verify that this is a credit line and it's not drawn immediately. It's only drawn as needed.

Correct. Yes, it is. It's to finance immediate cash flows because we anticipate revenue coming in once or twice a year, and that is when taxes are due. So yeah, this is just to help with cash flow until those taxes do come in when needed.

Thank you. Can we pay it off immediately once it's relatively quickly?

Yeah, we pay it off when we can. We paid off this past one in the beginning of June, end of May, beginning of June. I don't have the exact date, but we did pay that off, yes.

Yeah, I just note in general, this has been a very long standing practice for the city. I think there was a time when interest rates were extraordinarily low that it made sense for the city to do TANs like this. I think the interest rate environment, you know, hopeful that it'll go down, but it's not necessarily there. And I think it's also part and parcel of not having a true undesignated fund balance. So, you know, we may have, you know, it would be, good to have enough reserves on hands that we wouldn't have to rely on these TANs and the interest rates incorporated with them as, you know, the budget starts July 1st. Taxes, as we talked about today, won't be due until September 10th. There's a delta. The school is, like, every two weeks we distribute around $660,000 to the school system from the city accounts. So, you know, We got to get every two weeks 660 for the school and then all the city expenses starting July 1st, it gets re-upped and we still have that gap. But I'm hopeful that once the new finance director comes in, we can really talk a lot more about this piece and to maybe move in a different direction on the TANs if possible. But I think the new finance director will have a lot more to say about that. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions for finance director or city manager? Seeing none, this is... Notice is a public hearing. If anyone would like to provide public comment on the tax anticipation borrowing authorization, how's the opportunity to do so?

Tiffany Gasper, Ellsworth. There's been a lot of information shared tonight, a lot of long stories, a lot of, you know, this all ties in, obviously, to our budget, too, taking out a TAN. Regardless of, you know, what it is, if things were managed correctly, you wouldn't have to take out a tax anticipation note because we have a ton of money coming in. much despite some people up there have said tonight. Everything I've said up here tonight and the last meeting has been research, has been solid information provided by the city. And so, you know, numbers are black and white. You can't It's hard to dispute them when they're black and white. So taking that into consideration, the smallest amount of interest paid on this is $141,000, and that was Supah Harbor Bank. This just reinforces where people are coming from, and this isn't a new topic. You guys tonight, I've been noticing it, been saying, oh, you know, like, acting like you've heard us. This is not a new thing. People have been coming for over a year saying the same things, and they've been consistently ignored about a multitude of things. Nobody's doubting the budget process. It's hard. It sucks to make cuts. I do budgets, too, for a living. It sucks. But you shouldn't have to take out a line of credit if you've got millions of dollars coming in in taxpayer funds. That just increases every year. You cannot, people, it's like living off credit cards, right? Like, you pay interest on those credit cards every month. This is basic finance, you know, and there's a lot of moving pieces to municipal government. Trust me, I have done the research. I'm not coming in here and attacking people. I have nothing against anyone here personally. I just don't agree, and by based off facts and figures, with the way that it's being run here. And that's in fair... You know, that's in fairness. And people wouldn't have extreme tax rate increases, you know, assessor or not assessor, if there wasn't money to be made up. And you heard Charlie say earlier, you know, you have to come up with revenue streams. Obviously, we need revenue coming in because we do not have enough to cover what we already have going out. And so doing this, this just opens a door again. Like this is why we were saying, look at the budget better. Yeah, line by line, it sucks. Cutting some things, doing this, but this really pertains to that reason. There is millions of dollars coming in here. And, you know, other places manage to balance their budgets so they're not having to take out lines of credit to pay their bills. Why is it Ellsworth can't? And I am tired of hearing saying roads are being worked. They're not being worked on.

Miss Gasper, it's your three minutes.

Nothing is being worked on, so.

Any further public comment?

Hi, all. I'm I've been a resident of Ellsworth for almost 40 years now. I've seen a lot of these budget And I have to say, I think that you guys are doing a fantastic job with a very difficult, difficult topic. I have seen city councils over the years, Ellsworth city councilors, who have not done the things that needed to be done. And I think we are now having to dig out of many of the problems of past councils. So I just want to applaud you all. I know that this is very difficult. I think we all need to take a deep breath and really try to work together as a community. Thank you very much.

Any further public comment on the tan? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Would the council like to proceed?

I just want to clarify something. So the reason that we are doing this is because we don't have undesignated balance funds, because is that part of the reason?

Some cities and towns do that, even with an undesignated fund balance. But is it healthy enough so that you have $3 million in cash on hand so you don't have to? you know, to Tiffany's great point, pull out $178,000 in interest that could go into another program, or it could just reduce the budget. So if we get to an undesignated fund balance, but as we're building towards those reserves and we get our accounts fully reconciled, which we need to do, it's, you know, that we still have to rely on the stand. But even when they had, I think, 2019, 2020, before the former deputy city manager left, was really when the undesignated fund balance broke. As you can see, every budget that I've gone on, draft form online, budget here, the only budgets that exist in the past, they do not exist online.

You cannot find the data for the data.

You have audit reports, which have general findings, but Unless you dig, which I have, into all the previous hard copies of the budgets from 2020 to 2024, they are a disaster. 2019 was really the last time that I'd say Ellsworth had a truly undesignated fund balance. And if you actually talk to the IT folks, too, that was the last time they were closing out the accounts after the end of the month. So we're the finance team. And I think as anybody who's been on the council for a while can note, we've stabilized the ship They're in large measure. We have three people who have been there for three years now. There's not just crazy turnover. I hope a new finance director is really going to help us there. But the North Star needs to be that undesignated fund balance. And you also see other cities and towns that use their undesignated fund balance on a tough year where they're getting a lot of inflation to limit the tax impact increase. So there's other cities and towns where they'll talk about, well, we're using X amount in undesignated fund balance It's also a dangerous game, though. You really don't want to build it to spend it on a single year, but that's also another tool in addition to the TAN to be able to have to lessen the impact of a significantly difficult inflationary year.

Just more broadly on the TAN, like we're not the only community using the TAN. Multiple communities I work with, you know, they use TANs or, you know, especially in these times when, you know, you're waiting between, you're getting your tax dollars are coming in, two tranches per year and then those lulls. So this isn't some, we're not unique in, you know, using a TAN to finance operations in the short term.

Actually, it's estimated that 30 to 40% of small municipalities use tax anticipation.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't know about that number of a specific, but yeah, I see it frequently. Any further discussion from council or do I have a proposed motion?

I'll make a motion. I move to award the tax anticipation note, no bid to Bar Harbor Bank and Trust at an interest rate of 4.72%.

Second. Second. Further discussion? All those in favor? Anonymous. Council Order Number 0266, sorry, 062611, Public Hearing and Potential Action On the request of the Cemetery Commission for the appropriation of funds for the Cemetery General Reserve Fund for lawn care and grounds maintenance at Juniper and Beachland cemeteries. We have our, how many hats do you wear, Rowdy?

Roddy Erlenbach, Director of Parks, Recreation Facilities and the Harbormaster.

There we go.

One of our best plow guys.

Not as good as the city manager. What do you got for us, Roddy?

So the Cemetery Commission met in May. and scored some RFPs we had put out for cemetery maintenance, specifically to juniper in Beechland cemeteries. In the past years, maintenance there, which consisted of mowing the lawn, essentially, that work was performed by a member of the Cemetery Commission who indicated they would no longer be moving forward with that work. The Parks and Rec staff has not traditionally performed lawn care or lawn lawn maintenance at those cemeteries, and we simply don't have the capacity with the crew that we have to take that on. So the RFP was scored. We had three responsible bids that were submitted. They scored main pro property care at the highest. The total contract value, which would be May 1st to October 1st, came in at $16,000. The timeframe has moved along. We reached out to Maine Pro Property Care asking them to renegotiate the terms of the contract. They prorated the price down to $12,750 that would begin next week and carry through the end of September. And that would include not just lawn care but spring cleanup of any leaf debris, dead limbs that had fallen, basically. opening the cemetery up in the springtime and closing it back down in the fall would lead to removal as well. So basically we're looking tonight for authorization to enter a single year contract with Maine Pro Property Care for lawn care services at Beachland and Juniper cemeteries.

Any questions for Roddy from Council? Councilor Smith?

Not a question, but just to complete, I can see the motion in front of me, that that funding is going to be appropriated from the Cemetery General Fund, General Reserve Fund. And if I can speak to this, again, a shout out to the Cemetery Commission, also to Roddy, who is now staffing the commission. This RFP was put together with Roddy in the lead, but with the commission, the Cemetery Commission working with it, working with Dottie Bashaw and the chair. It's been a real collaboration between staff and the volunteers on the commission. And I'm really pleased to see this moving forward where we're gonna have consistent, stable maintenance for these two cemeteries, which are under the care of the Cemetery Commission for the city. Also wanted to do a shout out. I think at the last council meeting when it was the same day as the Cardbrook cleanup, the Cemetery Commission had their own cleanup where we went to Juniper Cemetery in Beachland and did the raking and the cleanup and found some Easter eggs, I guess you'd call them, of hidden cemetery stones that people are looking into to find out more. But that in part is why we were able to lower that final contract as the volunteer work of the commission. That said, it's a lot of work, and it'll be great to have this covered by professionals. One of the reasons we were able to do two cemeteries in that one day is Tiffany Tate, the member of the commission who did this last year, left Juniper Cemetery in really good shape. She did a lot of cleanup to keep it good for last year and then ready for this year. I think a chance to thank Roddy for his work and really collaborating with the Commission and to the members of the Commission to get us to this point where we're comfortable both with the work that needs to be done and with the Cemetery General Reserve Fund that this is an appropriate use of those funds.

Thank you.

One other just quick piece of information just to give you guys an idea of the size of the work. Juniper Cemetery alone is just over four acres. So mowing that on a weekly basis is no small task.

How big, Roddy?

Just over four acres.

Oh, my gosh. It almost sounded like 40, but it's more. It's four.

And that's in addition to Beachland Cemetery, which thankfully is much smaller. Together, you're probably looking at five and a half, five to five and a half acres of mining.

And it's not get on your machine and go. There is, there are provisions in the contract for care for the stones because they can be damaged, if you imagine, to all of this. So the commission has more work to do, but it's nice to have this handed on. With that, I'd love to make a motion.

Well, it's a public hearing. Okay.

I've practiced patience once again.

I'm going to open the public hearing. If anyone would like to comment. Provide public comment on the cemetery reserve fund usage. Now's the time. Seeing none. It's dead quiet.

Oh, man. You know what they say about cemeteries. People are dying to get in.

Four acres. That's kind of a small one. I took care of one that was 90.

Wow. It sounds like they could use a help pad. It's a lot of work.

There's a lot of weed whacking in it. for coming up to you. Where's my flowers?

Do I have a proposed motion? Go ahead, Steve.

Could we learn the other pricing that was provided? Maybe I missed it when I took a bathroom break.

The other two quotes that came in, or RFPs that came in, the second lowest was a company out of Wisconsin. I don't know how they had intended to do the work, but they came in at $23,000. And then there was another local gentleman who came in at $80,000.

So this is the lowest proposal that you received. Thank you.

Wisconsin?

Nancy, you were, uh, drones. I would move to authorize the city manager to enter into a single year contract with main pro property care for mowing and general maintenance services at Juniper and Beechlin cemeteries in the amount of $12,750 with funding to be, to be appropriated from the cemetery general reserve fund. Second.

Second. Any further discussion? You know those in favor? Thank you Rowdy.

Thank you.

Alright folks, we're getting there. Agenda item number 23, council order number 062611, public hearing potential action on the request of the public works director to send the grader for repairs.

Good evening everybody, Mike Harris, public works director. So what you have in What we're talking about right now is the city currently has one grader. And it's critical for us to be able to maintain the gravel roads that we have to maintain every year. And it is in rough shape. And so the thought process is before it actually gets to the point where we can't use it. After we get the spring grading and everything done, we would like to send it out and have it gone through and do a rebuild on it, which should give us probably another five to ten years of life for that grader. Because a new grader is currently for that same grader, I think we're looking at about $890,000. which is not a dead service that I think the city is interested in looking at right now. So, you know, we looked at the fact that we do have an equipment reserve fund that has enough money in it for us to be able to send it out and get it repaired. And, you know, it would be one less thing going forward that we would probably at some point have to look at doing a capital request for. So we can... get it back to where it's running the way it should be running, and it's used during the winter, it's used all summer. We have several gravel roads, the Nicollin Road, Phillips Way, we have many roads that we maintain, and most of them take multiple visits to keep them maintained during the course of the year. Um, just trying to be proactive and, um, keeping our equipment working order and not waiting for it to fail before we have to do anything with it.

Any questions for public works director on the greater repairs?

What model year is this greater? I'm not the expert. So I brought the expert with me.

Ryan, Moon Highway Department. 2007 Volvo G946. It's got 13,330 hours on it, which is about 65,230 whole miles. So it's 19 years old, and this says 12,000 hours, but you say 13? Yes, I would have read today. When we did the memo a while ago, we had, we've been using it.

What was that again?

For what? The hours. $13,330.

You know what the city paid for that grader?

I have no idea what they paid for it in 2007. That's before I started the deal.

What would it cost to hire someone to do the work that the grader does if this were to fail and we weren't to buy a new one?

You're probably $150, $200 an hour. We have five weeks grading these roads the first time.

$700 a year is what that would come out to be.

So is that old for a grater?

It is old, but I mean, the steel is still in good shape, and it'll still last. I mean, it was back when they built them. I mean, people are running now stuff that is 35 years old.

Yeah. Graters, if you take care of them, keep them shimmed upright, keep them greased.

That's the problem. The shims are all worn out. The pins are worn out. Yeah, you constantly have to. The ring gear needs work on it. Mm-hmm. There's a bearing gone, we think, in the tandem.

That's going to be a little pricey. How's the transmission?

Transmission's in good shape. Molding these injectors in it, but other than that, it's good.

Do you have to send...

It needs six tires on it, sorry.

Do you have to send the whole grater where the whole grater... Put it on a flatbed? Yep. Didn't think FedEx did that.

No. You left that part in the car.

It's only going to Bangalore, so.

Yeah, but it's still.

We can drive it. It'll take you about two hours.

No. 27 miles an hour.

I realize that. I've driven them.

Yeah, yeah.

On the freight charge of $2,000, now I know we move that greater around ourselves with a flatbed, correct? No.

No. We drive it to all our roads.

Really? Yeah, the freight charge is what the dealership is charging for all the parts.

I don't think it's going to be probably just a little bit less than $1,000 truck it up then, $1,000 truck it back. It was $750 when we had to have it towed from Winkapaw Road back to the garage because it blew the main hydraulic line on it. Jordan's towed it for us.

That's part of the estimated cost?

No. Yeah, you have 2,000 in freight charges. I didn't see the memo.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, I was asking. The freight charges are for the parts. When you have a large amount of parts and there's certain heavy pieces of those parts.

I think this freight charge is just for getting the greater to and from Bangor, correct? Because we can't do that.

I think. He is willing to drive it.

Yeah.

I mean, the answer to that question is we thought it was probably exactly what Pat was talking about. So if it is for the transportation, the transportation is included.

There's a lot of parts here. Yeah. And a lot of dealerships will. I've seen Milton Cat do the same thing. You've got a lot of. A lot of parts.

Whatever they don't have in stock, they're going to have to have shipped in.

Yeah.

Okay. Is this a public hearing? Before we do that, any further questions from council for Brian and Mike? All right. I'm going to open the public hearing on the greater upgrade. Any public comments?

I promise I'm not going to be a bad guy every time I come up here, okay? We all know who I am at this point. So obviously, current grader, we just went over. It's a Volvo G946 with now over 13,000 hours on it. and you're asking $158,000 to repair it. Obviously, we've got a great history in Ellsworth of not always upkeeping our machinery to the best of standards, and I did a little research on this and looked up all the specs on this machine and comparing it to other brands and values. I am going to differ with you, Mike, and I did find that that Case and John Deere both offer this size machine. Again, using all the same specs that this one currently is. And the price tags on those are $350,000 to $550,000. And again, through reputable dealers. And, you know, obviously if it was based on the 890, fixing it for $150,000, you know, plus would be a smart thing to do. But at this point, it's a 2007. It's obviously lived its life by the hours. It would be smarter to take advantage of, you know, doing the lease programs that they offer that you would get a new piece every three to four years. Maintenance would be less on it. So you wouldn't be off putting maintenance. You would be consistently taking care of which would mean less of a bill at the end of the day. And then you sell this current machine for, you know, what the market value is for it to reinvest into the newer machine at the leasing rate. And then, you know, because this, again, it's not broken down in the line item, but it does show a line item in the 26 budget where between plow, steel, and, this machine is at $31,899 as of May 31. So I don't know how much of that portion has gone into that already. I'm assuming there is some, correct? Yeah, in the Greater Lounge. The South Pass deal. So again, but it's been off-put maintenance, so it would make more sense really to invest in something new if it's used that much and that often and doing it in a lease program. And also, how much is in the Highway Department Reserve Fund?

Hang on, Mike, let's finish public comment. Any further public comment on the grader? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Mike, do you have any answers to the questions that were raised?

No, really, you know, we looked last year, it was $650,000 last year, and we're almost close to $7,000.

We had a quote a few years ago, five years ago, and at that point it was $700,000.

And so I'm not sure. I mean, I'd have to get the information from Tiffany as to where she got her information and what that would be. But our thought process was pretty straightforward. We have a challenging budget this year. We need to limit costs. This is a critical piece of equipment. We didn't feel like we would be able to add even $500,000. into the budget for a new machine, and if we could spend 150, 160, and have the machine last another 5 to 10 years, that would give us the time to properly capitalize it and have it in the capital improvement plan for an actual new replacement. We just didn't feel like this year was the year to try and push for, and assuming that what she found is correct, $500,000.

And that's the full cost, I want to say. It's not a leasing program. So that's the full cost and not the leasing program.

So, yeah, that was our motivation was we wanted to get the piece of equipment fixed. We didn't want to wait for it to break down. We knew we had a challenging budget year that we weren't likely to get big ticket items passed through. We did look and find out that we had a reserve account that had enough money to cover the repair. So we thought that's the best option for the city. You know, if the council wants to do something different, it's obviously your call. But we were just thinking in terms of making the machine last, getting it back in good shape, and giving us time to plan if we're going to do a full replacement of that grader.

Mike, have you looked into leasing of this type of equipment?

I'm very apprehensive about this whole leasing of equipment thing because a lot of times when we discuss leasing, we get a lot of pushback on it that it's not the way to go. And there's been other times where we've said, no, we shouldn't lease, we should buy. And so I'm really not clear on what... council's preferences we would have no problem looking at so for the loader and for the excavator we did seven year financing that's what we did with a local bank and we just didn't go through that exercise because we didn't think that we would be able to get that big of a ticket item into this year's budget we were basically told that capital improvements you know basically cut and And so it was we need to have this work done to it before it gets worse, and we need to figure out how to do it the most economically feasible way to do it that gives us some more life out of it and gives us time to properly plan for a full replacement. And this is the option that we're resigning to.

Council Martin.

I can understand your confusion because I'm not quite sure where council stands on it either because it seems to me not very long ago there was a heated meeting about leasing vehicles and how we shouldn't be doing that.

Yeah. This is our bad. I took a beating on that one.

Okay. Councillor, any further questions for public works director or motions? No. Question? Go ahead. Councillor Smith.

I can't look at this item without looking at the next item, which also relates to the, if I'm understanding it correctly, is also dealing with the reserve account.

That's wastewater. It's an enterprise reserve.

Okay. I did not know what CWC.

Clean Water SRF. It's Clean Water State Revolving. Okay.

So these are distinct and separate. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Any further questions for Mike?

Did you figure out what the, what we have in that reserve account and how does that, what does that leave us with for the year? Oh, okay. Just want to make sure there's room in there for more.

I'm going to just take a minute to stand up. It's been quite a meeting.

You guys want a break? No.

No, it's closed, but thank you.

Couldn't you make an exception while we're sitting here doing nothing to listen to this man?

I could. Try to apply the rules uniformly through every agenda item, but if Mr. Gilley would like to provide comment, I'd ask you to do it for three minutes or less.

So is it like $150,000 for the repair? $157,000. So $157,000. So if we could get $100,000 out of that, that would be half of the new one, so therefore the payment would be a lot less. So I mean... Would that be kind of doable? I'm guessing. I don't know. But it would upgrade us a long ways for the future. I'm just thinking if we spent $157,000 on something that's, you know, and we could sell it for $100,000, that would put us up to $257,000 for, you know, a $500,000 grader. Thank you.

I mean, if the city wants to buy a new grader, I'm not going to say no. I'm just being honest. I'm as confused as you are. Okay, but the numbers that we researched for buying a new one were much higher.

That's all.

There's about 100,000 in the capital reserve account, equipment reserve account, and about 50,000 in the highway equipment reserve account. which could generally cover this, but not enough. And I just looked at the, you know, I need to chat GPT something again on this tonight, but, you know, it was around 500,000 plus and I looked at a couple websites there. So I can't necessarily move forward with this item, knowing those capital equipment reserve account pieces and the discrepancy between those two. We need to recircle as a team, get some more information for council, and if it requires a special meeting because we really feel like it's going to break down or we need to look at another option, but I wouldn't be comfortable with that.

When we looked at it, that was not the case, so something's changed.

I think it's a good opportunity. This is important. We need to do something soon. I think we can table it here tonight. We've got some public provider good thoughts on potential leasing, investing. I'm not looking to spend half a million dollars on a grader, but if you're going to maybe come back, let's see if there's other options. I think that would be helpful. It's been a good conversation.

I want to look into the option that was mentioned tonight, too, on Contracting out.

I don't remember I mentioned that as well But you could do that on a short-term basis for a few of the roads But because it's gonna take a while to fix the fix the grade I've worked on I've worked on before and they six weeks to fix it is what they gave us Yeah, I don't know if it would be that cuz you know as well as I do I Sometimes there's a little bit of wiggle room.

Not only do we grade the roads with it too, but come the wintertime, we use it pushing the snow back. So like if you got up on Myrick Street, you got the windrow on the side of the road this high like that, we got the 11-foot wing on the grader that we use to push the snow back with. So it's used constantly in the wintertime. Downtown, we use it to clean sidewalks off, clean Main Street up when we clean up after every snowstorm.

Mm-hmm.

And if you happen to have ice build up in the road somewhere, we have to go scrape that out of the way. So it's a convenient.

It's a very useful tool.

It is.

Yeah. It is. It comes in handy for cutting the ice off the roads.

I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you tried to hire it out because it's going to cost you way much more money and they're not going to come when you're going to need it.

You could refine it for just grading the roads.

Right.

So if we do table tonight and we say give it a month, you guys can get more information and come back, are we okay? Yeah, no, we're okay.

It's just that we ought to do something this year. Okay.

Well, then that's helpful. Then I would move to table the discussion.

Can I make a motion that we table it?

Can I ask a question before we do that? Sure.

Oh, yeah.

Because now we're looking at doing something off budget. Like you just passed a budget. and a new grader was not in the budget.

100%, Mike. I think what maybe just... Mike, I think what we're looking at is maybe we just provide us... So we have the status quo proposal from the fund. Leasing, is that an option? Give us a quote on what it would cost to hire it out and give us a cost of what we'd have to do off-budget.

Yeah, I just didn't want to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Yeah. We may come back and just prove to fix it next month, but I think having more information would be helpful.

Sure. Yeah, I should note that it's not that we're doing no capital. We're going to have to do capital through a typical band bond cycle this year. And Sarah and the team, that's a big step. I hate to say it, but the council is going to go from budget process to a lot deeper dive into the the huge capital backlog that we have and what needs to move forward. And this could also be included potentially in that cycle in that project, the next round of roads that we're going to need to do. So this is not the end of, but that will likely be in a band bond cycle, not in the general taxation cycle this cycle.

So Laura, could you? I guess we're all on the same page.

Right here. Page number three.

The reason why I won the table is that If we have to come back for a special, that's okay. You know, it's just you've got to give everybody all the information they need. Oh, sure. No, I agree. To me, on the grand scheme of things, the grader's not that old. Graders, they get used a lot, they get taken care of a lot, and certain parts and pieces do wear out. So do you want to spend X number of dollars to fix it? to make it do for another four or five years, or do you want to go deep? Because on graders from the municipal, it's not just buying the grader. You've got to have the attachments for the weighing and everything else. So there's additional hydraulics beyond. And what fits on this grader, you put a bid out for a new machine Probably isn't going to fit on the next machine.

Yeah.

And the state of Maine found that out. And they stayed with John Deere and the new John Deere 670s for nothing like the old 670s. So they had to buy all new rigging to put on for the additional.

Now I know.

So I'd like to table it.

I have a motion for table. Do I have a second?

Second.

Second. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carries to table six to one. Thanks, Mike. Yep, absolutely. Send you with some homework. Yeah, no problem. Agenda item number 24, council order number 062612, public hearing, potential action on the request for the public works director to pay off municipal CWSRF loans and remove them from the FY27 budget. Mike.

Mike. Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. Just clean my glasses so I can read very quick. Okay. So, you know, as we were moving through the, as I was going through the wastewater, we had five debt service payments that we were making. And I looked at them, and I looked at the money that we have in reserve, and it just didn't make sense for me to continue to pay the payment plus the administration fee for the main municipal bond bank plus the interest. And so my recommendation is that we pay the bonds off early, we get them off the books, we get that money out of the wastewater budget, We reduce our debt load, which should increase our bond rating, should help our bond rating. And we save the city, you know, I mean, the main municipal bond bank fee on one of them is $447 a year. And then on the other one, it varies, but it's going down each year. So it's $190, and the interest on the 2012 at this point going forward would have been, it's paid twice a year, but it's $367 in the spring, and then there's another payment of $300 in the fall. So it just, to me it's a win-win scenario for the city, for the wastewater department. It gets debt service off our books, reduces our budget. We have enough money in the reserves to still be healthy, and we're funding the reserves still. And, you know, it would help us increase our bond rating. To me, it seems like it's a pretty straightforward thing to do.

So what do we have in the reserve fund?

In this particular fund, we have 406, and then we have another reserve account that has 492,000. Okay.

So that together would cover the 731,000, 39,900. This would be 279,896 dollars. Remaining after it's paid off? No.

If we pay it off, based on the remaining debt service schedules, retirement 2009-12 loans would eliminate approximately $279,896 in future debt service payments. Following the retirement of these obligations, the wastewater reserve fund is projected in that one fund to retain $146,942 in that fund. We have $35,000 going into that annually. And then we have another reserve account that has $492,000 in it. So we would take roughly $280,000 from the reserve to pay off the two pieces of debt service. We still have about $150,000 in that reserve with $35,000 since the budget's passed is going to be added to that. So it would be $180,000 roughly. And then we have another fund that has $496,000 or something like that in it. Thanks.

Any other questions from council for public works director? Councilor Halloran?

Sue is... What was the interest rate and when was the loan taken out? Was it on an amortization schedule?

Yeah, I provided the amortization schedule.

So most of this would be principal payment if it was amortization.

So it's 1% interest and then you have the main bond bank fee and the DEP administration fee is $1,044 a year.

So let's not be paying off 1% interest, especially when it's going to be mostly principal payments that you're paying off. If this is weaning down towards the end, there must be more to this like some other loan that you're thinking you may need or something?

No.

Why would we pay off a 1% loan when we're just talking about paying 4.72% on a tax anticipation loan.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not looking to take out another loan. I simply don't understand why we would continue to pay.

No, I think I'm in agreement with Steve on this one because effectively, you know, by not paying that back, we're getting 3.5% that they're paying us because inflation is over at that amount. So, yeah, because we're under principal. And I think it's a 1% the whole way through. Plus, a potential new finance director has a lot of experience in structuring debt. I think I'd like to have them discuss this a little more before we use cash funds, which are currently in interest-bearing accounts, which could be over this amount of debt service percentage. I think that's an excellent point, Steve. And we should table for a bit.

Councilor Shea. Make a motion to table this.

Well, it's noticed as a public hearing. Oh, sorry about that. I'm going to open the public hearing.

That's all right. You can share it. It's fine. So that was a little bit of a surprise about the secondary fund. I saw the one earlier that was listed in the packet that had 426, 830, 96 in it. I wasn't aware that there was two and they now total like 800 and something thousand. I don't know if a lot of people know what this is technically supposed to be used for, which is it's a specialized savings account managed by municipalities or utility districts. These funds are explicitly designated to pay for the future construction, repair, or major upgrades of public wastewater systems, such as treatment plants or sewer lines, preventing sudden tax or rate hikes for residents. We've been holding onto this money and it's not been using to manage our wastewater. So that's a lot of money to hold onto and not use it for projects that it's supposed to be going for. And again, even if you paid off the loans, you would still have repairs because we do have repairs that need to be made on our wastewater systems. It's not a new subject. for years now. And also, I do agree that it's the end of the line of their loans, so the interest rate doesn't make sense. We've paid all the interest on it already, for the most part. Like, that's the thing. If this was known years ago, halfway through, it'd be different. But we're at the last little bit of it. And having that much money in there, that should really be used for our infrastructure, like it's supposed to be.

Any additional public comment? Seeing none, I'll close the public comment. Council, how would you like to proceed? Councillor Smith?

Just a question, Mike. One of the things you said was that paying down the debt would improve the bond rating. Is that just for this enterprise account, but you're not looking at going into additional debt where that would have value for us?

No, I mean, it was brought to my attention during the audit a couple of years ago that our bond rating was being affected. And so I've always looked to try and figure out the best way to manage that and to increase our bond rating. And so retiring debt service, you know, getting debt service off the books that we're not carrying forward, helps do that. And yeah, the 1% interest is not a big interest, but the main bond bank fees we're paying carry forward. The DEP service fees that we're paying carry forward. And so I'm just kind of like boggled that this is not a good move for us.

I think I liked what Charlie you had mentioned. If we have a finance manager coming on who has a level of experience with this, that is going to be helpful for spreading that needle.

Just so for full transparency, I talked about this with Nate Moore before he left, and he agreed that it would be a good move. That's why I moved forward with it.

Yeah, I'm just, you know, again, we could run this one, but I'm looking at $739,000 and we put that into a money market account. It's going to require a lot more money than just the $1,500 in fees for the year. But, again, I want to talk a little bit more about to, you know, I want to structure this a little more. I'm not.

Well, I mean, in principle, it's a good idea. I like paying off debt. I guess in principle, a pun was not intended. But the fact that we do have the new finance manager coming in, and I think this is a significant amount of money to expend, and maybe he will recommend that we end up paying it off. But I think now that we have him coming in, or they, she, I don't know who they are, but coming in. Yeah. that will be, you know, I think it's maybe it's one of the first things we run by them.

And these are already baked into the budget in the rate system, is that correct? Mm-hmm. So the payment's already in there. And I do, actually, to Tiffany's point, too, on a number of previous conversations with Chair Beal on, you know, because the wastewater departments are by far the most capitalized asset in the city or department besides the... the cemeteries, which have a little over a million in reserves. But I believe in talking to her as well, a big part of the reason they structured this was you're trying to pay off a future wastewater. We have a new wastewater treatment plant, but you're trying to build reserves. I think $40,000 a year is what you put aside. $45,000 a year. Every year they put that aside to the reserve, but it's not necessarily... for this type of piece it's so that in you know that that um money put it away into the market starts accumulating more and more and then when the next wastewater treatment plant has to be completely replaced you've already socked away a substantial amount of that so that they were 739 is our debt it's not the money that we have no but the cash that we have is for that piece for the future

payoff of a new water treatment plant in the future.

Again, it's something I remember that conversation when Tiffany brought that up that I had with Chair Beal on why the wastewater plant was so much more capitalized than the other pieces. So I think these are good points of discussion and you'd have a further conversation about it. Sure. I apologize, Mike. I should have brought that up when we were mentioning it.

I make a motion that we table this and that way the Finance Committee can discuss it more and We should have a finance director on board. Second?

Second.

All those in favor? Opposed? Table. Thanks, Mike.

Thank you.

Okay. Council Order Number 062613, Public Hearing and Action on the Proposed Amendment to City Ordinances and Codes. Express.

All right, good evening, councillors. I appreciate we've all been here a long time. I also apologize that this particular item has 16 parts to vote on. I am so sorry. I know we've been here for a really long time, so I'll keep this as short as I possibly can because we've been discussing this for the past couple of months. Just some highlights for those in the room who aren't familiar with the project. As part of the strategic planning efforts, the city did adopt a new comp plan and housing needs assessment back in 2024. And these documents did identify several specific ordinance revisions that were necessary to implement for recommendations and policy priorities. And this included some zoning updates, process improvements, and regulatory streamlining. So this project, this ordinance review project had a couple of goals in mind to align with our comp plan, our housing needs assessment, and the business attraction plan, remove outdated or redundant language, streamline the development process, clarify regulations for staff, applicants, and the public, and comply with state statutes and land use law. So those last four that I just mentioned and are in your memo are the ones that phase one of this project we're really focusing on. I'll skip ahead a little bit in my memo. I do want to say that in September we did kick off the project. And since then, city staff has met with key stakeholders who regularly work within and with the chapters that were identified for amendment in this memo. And there were many. We also held several workshops outlining the process, including two city council workshops, a workshop with the planning board, and a public information session that described the project and provided opportunity for answering questions. We also have had questions from the public through email, through calls, and through drop bys, which is really great to have these conversations. So thank you to those who've done that. All the feedback from these meetings were discussed and shared with the consultants and then were incorporated where appropriate and aligned with phase one of the project. As I've mentioned, things that didn't Meet the Housekeeping Amendment focus of phase one have been recorded. We will be addressing that for discussion and potential incorporation as phase two of the project. And those public information sessions will start towards the end of the summer. The proposed amendments have been finalized, reviewed first and then finalized, and then were posted to the city's website and shared with city council members at the same time. This was done in two batches, the first on May 22nd and the second on May 27th. And then the list of proposed amendments are below in your memo. They're also in the summary document that is posted online and had been shared. as part of workshops, and so each part of this order addresses each individual chapter that had amendments proposed to it, and then the final one, part 16, are the recommendations to repeal chapters that are either incorporated as part of this process or are no longer serving us. There we go.

Well said. Questions for our planning director, Urban? Sorry. Director of Planning and Urban Development.

I'm so sorry. I did not introduce myself. Danielle Gift, Director of Planning and Urban Development. There you go.

If we don't have any questions now, I'm going to open the public hearing. The public would like to provide comments on the proposed amendments to the city ordinances and codes.

Roger Gilley, city resident. As I was looking down through this, you know, and I was listening one time when they were talking about that, they were talking about, you know, Article or Unified 56, and they were talking on there that pretty much it sounded like they were trying to do it with the appeals board. So basically, if... the city or somebody had a problem with the business or whatever, instead of going to somebody to the appeals board to talk about the problem that you were having and go that route, the lady that was on there talking online about it, they talked about taking the person or the business or whatever straight to court, which, you know, been through this a year and a half now, and I've talked to a judge, you know, probably fourteen times, which basically did the whole thing that the appeals board would do. So I would really recommend to maybe look through some of this stuff and figure it out before you go passing some of this because if that's the case, I mean, you know, if code enforcement, you know, if they have a problem they have to notify you three different times before they can even bother to take you to court. And then, you know, and if they do or whatever, you still have the right now to go to the appeals board to talk about the issue, which we just see with the business in town. The appeals board give the people back their money for their building permit because it wasn't, you know, their permits were pulled for not the right reasons. So the city had to eat the cost, give them back their money instead of just giving them a new license or permit to keep going. So I think there's a little more research and doing a lot of this stuff other than just start changing stuff because that's what some other town does or some other place does. Thanks.

Any other public comment? Seeing none I'll close the public hearing. Daniel, on the matter of the, in this proposal, what is the impact of the appeals board?

We kept it intact based on the conversation that we had at that first workshop where this was brought up initially. The reaction that we read in the room was that there was more research and information that needed to be gathered in order to make any sort of substantive changes. So that chapter does remain intact. It received the same housekeeping and kind of like haircut treatment that the rest of the chapters did that had no substantive changes. So if you read through that chapter, which has been up for about a month at this point and attended the other workshops, you'll see that we did not change that chapter.

Thank you. Council, how would you like to proceed?

I'm seeing a single motion for all 16 pieces. Is that correct? Okay, so not 16 motions.

I don't have to read all these. I don't think so. Okay. Lawyer says no, so.

I would be happy to make the one sentence motion.

Yes, please go ahead.

I would move to approve the request of the Planning and Urban Development Director to amend the City Codes and Ordinances as presented and having been online for the past month or so effective July 1st, 2026.

Second.

Second. No, double second. That's a good one. We have a motion and it is. And a second. Do we have any further discussion from Council? Council Lachey?

So the last item on my paper says P. So basically chapter 56, article 13 is not going to be repealed, right?

Oh, so yes, that article of Chapter 56 is being repealed because there is an existing chapter for the Board of Appeals. So anything that was in that article of Chapter 56 is incorporated into the Board of Appeals chapter.

Okay. Yeah. Good. To me, it looked...

Yes. You know what I mean? I'm glad you asked.

And I just wanted to make sure because... And we're still going to follow the unified building code.

Absolutely. We have no choice.

International. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Thank you. That clarified something. We're getting kind of muddy here.

I'm glad. It's a lot. I understand.

It is a lot. And well done getting it all together. It's a lot of work. Yeah.

You've done a good job.

So we have a motion to second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries six to one. Thank you. I'll get to work on the next phase. Good luck to that. Okay, we're on the last agenda item. Council Order Number 062614. Thank you all for coming. Discussion on updates to City Council governance procedures related to workplace complaints.

Yeah, if you could just keep passing this down. So I won't discuss long here. This is really actually for Council to take a look at and then... get back to myself or legal counsel with edits, if they so choose, or nothing, if they so choose.