LEWISTON — A proposed budget would increase the city’s tax rate by 5.74 percent for the 2014-15 fiscal year, boosting annual property taxes $197 on a $150,000 home.

“Even with an operating budget that’s smaller than it was four years ago, we are still facing an increase,” City Administrator Ed Barrett said.

Barrett presented his draft budget to city councilors at Tuesday’s meeting. Councilors will begin working their way through his proposal.

Barrett said the proposed budget would result in an estimated tax rate of $27.84 per $1,000 of property value, an increase of $1.40 per $1,000 of property value and about 5.3 percent more than the current year.

Municipal spending amounts to about 66 cents of that $1.40 increase. School spending accounts for the remaining 74 cents.

“This is not probably where we are going to end up,” Barrett said. “The proposed budget is a starting point and it will get a lot of scrutiny. I know that there is a lot of scrutiny on the school side already.”

Barrett said councilors are scheduled to meet with the School Committee on Monday and are expected to meet every Tuesday and Thursday night in April to review the budget, looking for cuts. He hopes to have them vote on an approved budget by May 6.

It’s going to be difficult work. Councilors faced a similarly tough budget last year, and ended up cutting city spending and increasing property taxes.

“Over the last four years, the thinking has been, things are going to get better, things are going to get better,” Barrett said. “Well, we have not seen much improvement over that period and I’m no longer sure we are going to see things picking up.”

Barrett pointed to the difference between budgets in 2010 and today. In 2010, the city had enjoyed four years of economic growth. Assessed city value increased 17.5 percent while the municipal spending increased 5.6 percent. That allowed the property tax rate to go down by 10.6 percent over those four years.

Since 2010, assessed value has grown by less than 3 percent while spending has stayed mostly level, decreasing less than 1 percent. Despite the slim budget, the tax rate has climbed steadily, up 8.6 percent compared to 2010.

“It seems like this is the situation until there are significant changes in the economy, until we see more jobs, more investments by business, more homes being built,” Barrett said.

Part of the blame is city revenues, other than property taxes, have dropped, especially state revenue-sharing. For the four years leading up to 2010, those revenues increased 2.5 percent. Since 2010, they’ve dropped 26.4 percent.

“A big chunk of that is obviously the cuts we’ve seen in revenue-sharing,” Barrett said. “Excise taxes have started to come back and that is a good sign. People are starting to buy vehicles.”

Barrett said the proposed budget does not lay off staff or cut services but does away with some capital equipment replacement and projects to trim expenses. That has added problems, however, as maintenance gets pushed back year after year.

“We are going to have to be very careful setting up our priorities, making sure of where we make investments and understanding what is going to be restricted,” Barrett said.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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