MEXICO — Selectmen set a special session to get an early start on the development of next year’s budget because of the anticipated state cuts to revenue sharing and other normally reimbursed costs to towns.

“We have to keep telling them they can’t keep doing this, to take another $12 million out of funding is wrong,” Town Manager John Madigan said at Wednesday’s board meeting. “We can’t not plow roads. The property tax is our only source of revenue.”

Madigan just learned from the Maine Municipal Association that Mexico may lose $100,226 from revenue sharing during the current fiscal year.

“This changes the rules in midstream,” he said.

A higher percentage of revenue sharing is expected to be lost during the 2010-11 fiscal year as well as the state tries to balance its budget and eliminate a $400 million budget shortfall.

A special workshop to begin discussions on the development of next year’s municipal budget was set for Feb. 4 at 6 p.m. in the town hall.

Not only is revenue sharing expected to be reduced, but also the amount of state reimbursements for the homestead exemption, tree growth, and general assistance to those in need.

Madigan said the current $2.4 million municipal budget will likely not be affected, despite the $100,000 revenue sharing reduction. What will be affected is the amount of carryover to apply to property taxes for next year, as well as the overall municipal budget, said Madigan.

During this year’s setting of the property tax rate, $100,000 from carryover was used, an action that reduced the tax rate by more than $1 per $1,000 valuation, resulting in a $19.80 per $1,000 assessment.

In a related tax matter, Western Foothills School District Superintendent Thomas Ward will meet with the boards of selectmen from the towns in the Mountain Valley region next Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Mexico Town Hall to discuss each town’s amount of school tax reimbursement they were to receive when the former SADs 43, 21 and 39 merged into Regional School Unit 10. Selectmen from Rumford, Byron, Mexico and Roxbury will hear Ward’s presentation. Mexico was scheduled to receive nearly $60,000.

Selectmen encouraged Madigan to attend public hearings in Augusta on the effect of reducing state funding to municipalities on Friday.

eadams@sunjournal.com