MINOT – Voters will convene at 9 a.m. Saturday at Minot Consolidated School to set this year’s municipal budget and decide whether to fund further development of athletic fields and the Center Minot Cemetery.

Working with department heads, selectmen and the town Budget Committee have spent the past two months developing a set of funding recommendations that, if approved, will maintain the services the town provides without raising property taxes.

The funding recommendations in the 63-article town meeting warrant show the Budget Committee and selectmen in agreement on how to spend approximately $1.7 million.

Selectmen have said they will reduce the $295,000 requested for town salaries and benefits since their recent decision to merge the road manager and town administrator positions. The exact amount of the reduction will be made at the town meeting.

Town Administrator Arlan Saunders is expected to lower the $90,000 being requested for the purchase of a loader for the highway department to replace the 2001 John Deere backhoe.

Voters will be asked to continue development of the 17-acre addition to the Center Minot Cemetery that the town purchased a year ago and to continue development of athletic fields at Minot Memorial Park.

Selectmen and the Budget Committee support spending $22,000 for the cemetery and $35,000 for the athletic fields, suggesting the recreational committee scale back on fencing for now.

“We have been striving very hard for a flat budget and I think we have succeeded, but I’m a little concerned with what’s happening in Augusta with excise taxes,” Selectman Eda Tripp said.

Tripp noted that Minot, like most small towns, relies on vehicle excise taxes to keep local property taxes down. In 2008, the town collected about $2,250,000 in property taxes and more than $450,000 in vehicle excise taxes.

“Excise taxes are a significant amount of what we use to run the town and any cut in the excise taxes will directly affect the amount of property taxes we have to raise,” Tripp said.

Other issues to be decided include establishing a cable and Internet contract renewal committee, forming a public safety/public works infrastructure committee, accepting Pleasant Drive as a town road, and revising the community facilities impact fee program portion of the town’s land use code and adding a small wind energy system ordinance to the land use code.

Voting on school funding will occur in May or June in concert Poland and Mechanic Falls.