AUBURN – With some Budget Committee members conceding Wednesday night that county government cannot function without a small tax increase, a 1.94 percent tax hike is expected.

Committee member Michael Bowie, a Lisbon selectman, led the charge for a 2005 budget with no tax hike. Several other committee members also called for no tax increase. With several committee members saying they would not gut public safety or necessary programs to keep from having a tax increase, a final budget was crafted with departmental expenditures at $9,284,669, an increase of $11,142 over 2004. Revenues at $2,655,717 are down 4.14 percent from last year. A total of $6,628,952 must be raised by taxation.

The Budget Committee rejected the first draft budget on Nov. 9 and sent it back to the County Commission with instructions to whittle a proposed 15.8 percent tax increase to zero. The commission came back with a $9.33 million budget calling for a 2.81 percent increase in the amount to be raised by taxation over the 2004 level. Bowie and other committee members called that number too high.

The Civil Process division of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department won a reprieve for another year from the Budget Committee. Funding had been tabled Dec. 8 with a request that Chief Deputy Guy Desjardin present the committee with details of how the division could become more profitable.

Bowie had questioned a line item calling for an expenditure of $175,948 to operate the program in 2005. Projected revenues were $154,000, a $21,948 deficit. He said that unless the division’s revenues equal its expenditures, the county should discontinue the project. “I’ll fight until I die for that kind of thing. We owe it to the taxpayers.”

Desjardin came back to the committee Wednesday with a proposal to add expedited process serving, in which the county could charge an additional $20 per paper to guarantee that papers would be immediately assigned to an officer for service. There would also be a new $1 postage and handling fee. With the elimination of the purchase of a computer, and a cut in office hours by two hours a day, he forecast a $1,200 savings, for projected expenditures at $174,748 and revenues at $175,000.

Expedited service and postage and handling are the only fees that could legally be set by the county. Most civil process fees are set by state statute.

On Dec. 8, the committee discussed the fact that several attempts by the Legislature to increase fees were killed by the Appropriations Committee because a considerable percentage of papers served originate from state agencies, particularly the Department of Health and Human Services.