KINGFIELD – With the much-anticipated Planning Board vote just days away, selectmen have been asked to consider a tax break for Poland Spring Water Co.’s proposed bottling plant.

Townspeople will have a chance to approve or deny the 50 percent tax incremental financing plan before it happens, First Selectman John Dill said Tuesday.

Selectmen still know relatively little about how the program works, Dill said, so the board has asked Eaton & Peabody consultant Greg Mitchell to help with the issue.

“We haven’t had any discussion about this at all,” Dill said Tuesday. “They requested it. We need some time to educate ourselves and inform the community – the community will have a chance to vote on it.”

As little as the board has considered a TIF until now, Dill said no one was surprised Poland Spring had requested it.

Typically under a TIF, a town agrees to reimburse a portion of the business owner’s property taxes for a set period of time. That money is then used by the company to help pay for improvements to the property, and sometimes public infrastructure, like sidewalks or streets.

That can work to benefit both the property owner and the town, Poland Spring representative Tom Brennan said.

While extra tax dollars are a good thing for communities, they do have some negative impacts – like increasing a community’s valuation and therefore raising the share of school funding it’s required to pay, for example. TIF reimbursements serve to “hide” some of the increased valuation for a time, which can help towns avoid heavy state, county, or school taxation.

Another version of the TIF agreement puts the reimbursements directly into improvements to public infrastructure, like roads or sidewalks.

Poland Spring officials aren’t sure what kind of TIF they’ll want, yet. The benefits of having them are changing, Brennan said, with changes in the way Maine taxes business equipment. Poland Spring certainly doesn’t need a TIF to build in Kingfield, Brennan said. “But I think it would be to everybody’s advantage to sort through this. It would be kind of silly (for Kingfield and Poland Spring) not to take advantage of opportunities that exist,” he said.

Selectmen meet with Mitchell on Nov. 6 for their first in-depth discussion on the matter, Dill said.