MECHANIC FALLS — The Town Council on Monday night approved a tax rate of $21.80 per $1,000 of property valuation, a decrease of 20 cents from last year.

In other matters, the council approved changing the start of their meetings on the first Monday of month from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Due to Labor Day, the September meeting will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 4.

The council also increased the Special Duty Rate for the police department from $45 to $55 per hour, effective immediately. Special police duty involves jobs for outside entities requiring police presence, such as traffic control.

Town Clerk Miranda Hinkley asked the council to consider a better method of shredding documents — either to purchase a more dependable commercial shredder or contract a mobile on-site shredder service.

Mechanic Falls resident Howard Siegel believes there is “a lot of misinformation” pertaining to the new fireworks ordinances. He said he realizes he should have read the permit more thoroughly. Siegel said for the past five years he has invited up to 40 people over to his home on Oak Street to celebrate July 4 with fireworks.

“And everybody in the neighborhood knows,” Siegel said, “so when the fireworks are ready to go off, we have excess of 100 people.”

He said he paid the $25 permit this year and contends “the police knew we were going to light off the fireworks at 9:30.”

Siegel said police arrived at 9:15 p.m. and told him to relocate the fireworks because his house that was less 150 feet away from another dwelling. Siegel asked why the police “couldn’t come at 5 o’clock and say we’re not going to do it?”

Siegel said the $3,000 worth of fireworks did go off at 10:30 p.m. at his daughter’s house

“We had to scramble,” he said. “It didn’t go off as planned,” and a number of people missed out on the event.