Brunswick and the redevelopment group were in the midst of negotiations to create two Tax Increment Financing districts on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station property that would have allowed the MRRA to keep a portion of its property tax payments to the town for various infrastructure improvements on the former base, according to Town Manager Gary Brown.

Though the exact terms had not been ironed out yet, Brown said early negotiations indicated that the TIFs could have involved about $12 million over the next 30 years that would have gone back to the MRRA as opposed to supporting the municipal budget.

Brown said Wednesday morning that the town’s dire financial situation and uncertainty about changes to Tax Increment Financing laws that are being considered in Augusta led to Tuesday night’s council vote.

“There were several reasons,” said Brown. “Because of a reduction in our revenues, particularly on the school side, the council felt they needed to do everything they could to take care of Brunswick’s situation. There’s also a degree of uncertainty of what the state will let us do. The council is going to take a wait-and-see attitude.”

MRRA Executive Director Steve Levesque said Wednesday morning that his organization had just heard of the vote and was exploring what exactly it means for the redevelopment effort.

“We’re in the process of fact-finding,” said Levesque. “We hadn’t finished with negotiations yet … but I thought we had reached an accord. If there’s not a TIF program with the town of Brunswick, we’ll have to find other sources of money.”

Levesque said the TIF dollars, which would have dispersed to the MRRA on a yearly basis at a rate that had not yet been determined, would have been used for infrastructure improvements and maintenance.

Brown said there were two TIFs proposed because of limits the state has on how large a TIF district can be. In general terms, he said, one of the TIFs involved hangars and other buildings associated with the airfield’s twin runways and the other would have encompassed most of the other buildings on the former base.

Brown said he was unsure of what changes to TIFs might in the works at the state level, but that “people close to the administration” have told the town that changes may be proposed in the next legislative session. On the budget front, according to Brown, the council faced a $2.2 million deficit in the school department alone for the current fiscal year, which began July 1.

“This is not a one-year phenomenon,” said Brown. “The position of the council is that there’s certainly a willingness to re-examine this issue in the future. This is a huge deal for the town of Brunswick to enter into an agreement like this with any organization.”

The lone vote against terminating the TIF agreements was cast by Councilor Benet Pols, who according to Brown was not comfortable supporting the move to rescind the deals because he had been unable to attend an executive session on the issue, which was held prior to Tuesday’s regular council meeting.

Brown said no one from the MRRA was at Tuesday night’s meeting.