Members of the Kennebec County Budget Committee listen in February to a presentation by Angela Molino, the county’s emergency management agency director, during budget deliberations in Augusta. Ethan Horton/Kennebec Journal file

AUGUSTA — Officials approved a 9.6% spending jump to the Kennebec County budget Wednesday after more than two hours of deliberation, sending the budget to county commissioners for final approval next week.

The budget committee, a group of municipal officials from across the county who have been meeting since mid-February, approved in a 6-1 vote, with Gardiner City Clerk Kathleen Cutler the lone vote against. Final approval for the budget to take effect requires the county commissioners’ unanimous approval during their meeting on April 1 .

The committee made two changes to the final $25.5 million budget Wednesday: A $17,000 reduction for an insurance invoice that was less than anticipated, and a $4,000 reduction in the cost of body cameras for the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office.

Larger cuts came during previous meetings, perhaps most notably the county’s MD3 program, which sends doctors as first responders to crime and crash scenes. In 2024, MD3 doctors responded to 211 calls for service in Kennebec County, during which they provided lifesaving care, and spent more than 200 hours educating paramedics and other first responders on techniques and diagnostic strategies.

The program, previously funded by federal COVID-19 pandemic grants that have since run dry, would have cost taxpayers $221,500 in the next fiscal year.

Even with the cutting of the MD3 program, though, total spending remained much the same from the draft the Kennebec County Commissioners sent to the committee in February. Over seven budget meetings, the group reduced spending by just $38,810 from the original proposal.

In the fiscal year that ended in June 2022, Kennebec County spent only $14.3 million. Since then, labor costs and unfunded state mandates have caused costs to balloon.

Those cost increases have meant large jumps in spending directly funded by property tax. Last year, the taxpayer-funded portion of the budget jumped by 28%. The new budget calls for a further 13.5% increase in taxpayer contribution for the upcoming fiscal year.

“We just can’t keep doing that,” Ferguson said.

Last year’s spending jump brought the ire of some municipal officials, who claimed the tax burden increase put towns and cities in a rough spot amid swelling school budgets and rising municipal needs.

Towns and cities are responsible for collecting taxes for the county budget, their school district’s budget and their own municipal budget. County requirements often make up a small portion of the total tax revenue collected by most cities and towns. In Augusta, county taxes went up 25% during the most recent budget cycle, but accounted for 6.6% of all taxes collected by the city. In Waterville, it was 5.7%.

Budget committee member and Oakland Town Council Chairman Mike Perkins began Wednesday’s meeting by acknowledging the more than $8 million increase in county spending over the past three fiscal years. He proposed cutting a pay raise for a human resources employee, bringing scheduled pay increases for nonbargaining county employees down to 2% from 4% and limiting a pay raise for Sheriff Ken Mason.

“We’ve been tasked with a job, whether you like it or not,” Perkins said. “We’ve been tasked with a job to into seeing where we can save the taxpayers’ dollars. We shouldn’t be adversaries. We should be working together.”

None of Perkins’ suggestions were taken up by the committee.