PARIS – Oxford County commissioners will meet with county department heads before enacting the final budget for 2009.

Commissioner David Duguay said Tuesday that a “perfect storm” of factors have contributed to 7 percent or more of the 8.7 percent increase in the county’s budget over last year.

“The fuel costs were a huge item this year,” Commissioner Steve Merrill said.

Other factors adding to the increase, he said, are a 53rd paycheck for county employees due to the way the 2009 calendar is structured; repairs to the Oxford County Regional Airport, which the county is bound by contract to maintain; and the sheriff’s salary coming entirely from the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office budget under the state’s new jail plan, where it was once split with the jail budget.

Revenue in the county’s two Registry of Deeds offices is also estimated to have fallen $88,000 this year.

The heads of the county’s different departments projected total expenditures of $5,241,878, along with a cap of $1,228,757 for the Oxford County Jail. Departments estimated revenues at $1,856,788.

Under the original requests, the amount of money to be raised by county taxes would have risen 10.86 percent, a jump from the 2008 budget’s 5.03 percent increase over the 2007 budget.

Commissioners recommended a net decrease of $42,900 to the budget in October, which included having the Sheriff’s Office buy three new cruisers instead of four and reducing the expenditures to the airport by $5,000.

The nine-member Budget Committee voted 8-1 in November to approve the reductions, as well as $46,780 from the reduction in insurance rates. The committee also voted to exceed the state’s LD 1 tax cap of 4.34 percent.

Chairman Caldwell Jackson said the county has kept its budget to “bare bones” aside from increases to the airport and fuel costs.

“The only other thing to do is cut positions,” said Jackson, adding that each full-time job would reduce the budget by only 1 percent.

The commissioners will next meet on Dec. 16.