HALLOWELL — The City Council has approved a $6.6 million budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year that includes a $21.30 tax rate, marking a decrease in the city’s rate for the first time in several years.

Finance Committee Chairperson Maureen AuCoin provided an overview of the $6,642,988 expense budget before it was approved, explaining the work that went into creating the budget as well as differences from the prior year’s budget.

“I am really happy with this budget,” she said. “(City Treasurer) Dawna (Myrick) was amazing. Everyone worked together well with this budget.”

The $21.30 tax rate per $1,000 of property value would equal a tax bill of roughly $5,314 for a median valued home worth $249,500. Last year’s tax rate was $21.50, or $5,364 for a home of the same value, resulting in a nearly $50 decrease this year.

With approximately $1.3 million in revenues, the total amount to be raised through taxes is approximately $5.3 million.

Despite the savings, AuCoin explained that the budget includes numerous additions for the city, including increased funding for the Hubbard Free Library, a new fire truck with a seven-year payment plan of $91,000 a year, upgrades to the city website, $125,000 for road improvements, $25,000 for sidewalk improvements, and renovations to City Hall in order to increase accessibility.

“We managed to get all of those things in there,” said AuCoin, “and we still reduced the mill rate. So what came into play was a combination of factors. Revenue sharing from the state increased quite a bit, and that helped us dramatically. Hallowell’s local share for school funding actually decreased, and the state increased their funding a bit, so the school decided to pass those savings onto the taxpayers, which helped us tremendously.”

Additionally, AuCoin said the city was fairly conservative last year in terms of revenue projections, and anticipated that less revenue would come in due to the pandemic. In reality, however, the city ended the year in much better shape than expected.

She said that surplus funding, which is essentially savings for the city, needs to be kept between 10% and 15% of the city’s total expenditures. After consulting with the city auditor, AuCoin said the finance committee learned that it were actually over this threshold, which also helped with this year’s tax rate.

AuCoin commended the committee for its work in creating a budget that not only addresses city needs, but also results in a lower tax rate.

“We put a ton of work into this budget,” she said. “I went through and scrutinized every single line item, and we made adjustments that maybe were tiny adjustments, but they added up. We worked hard as a committee to really just scrutinize that budget, and I think it paid off.”

Councilors commended AuCoin and her fellow committee members, Councilors Michael Frett and Kate Dufour.

Councilor Patrick Wynne, while commending the budget committee’s work, questioned the decision to have a $200,000 line item in the budget for the fire truck, and suggested purchasing a less expensive vehicle so the item could be brought down to $60,000. The $200,000 cost would include some upfront expenses, in addition to the $91,000 a year for the truck.

He then motioned to bring the line item for a new fire engine down to $60,000; however, it failed due to a lack of a second.

All councilors but Wynne voted in favor of approving the expense budget. Councilors then unanimously voted in favor of approving the TIF budget and revenue budget.

The council then unanimously voted to set the tax due dates for the 2021-22 fiscal year to Sept. 1, 2021, and March 1, 2022, with interest beginning to accrue on Sept. 20, 2021, and March 2, 2022. They also voted unanimously to set the interest rate to 5% for delinquent taxes and to 3% for overpayment of taxes.

Mayor George LaPointe asked that councilors go to City Hall in person as soon as possible to sign the orders, as this is required to move the budget process forward.

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