Amid the first property revaluation in 30 years, Oakland officials are proposing a spending plan that accounts for rising costs but keeps spending tight.

“It’s a good budget,” Oakland Town Manager Kelly Pinney-Michaud said. “But it’s bare bones.”

While the spending plan adds a new police officer and public safety costs rise, officials also plan to cut the paving budget by more than 50%.

Oakland’s Town Council signed a warrant article when proposing to spend $8,846,880. This is a 4.1% increase on the current budget.

Of this amount, $4,742,287 will come from property taxes, which is almost 20% more than the current budget, according to the town’s budget summary. Other costs are covered by the state’s revenue sharing and the town’s revenues, which come in part from licenses and permits, intergovernmental revenue, service fees, excise tax on vehicles and other sources.

Town officials estimate $500,000 will come from new valuation tax revenue, and $283,183 of the amount will be raised through taxation. The town’s property tax rate of $15.62 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, also known as a mill rate, would increase to $16.09 with this proposal.

However, the mill rate is expected to fall to about $9 or $10 with the new valuation, Pinney-Michaud said. Generally with a revaluation, Pinney-Michaud said residents can expect a third of houses to increase in value, a third to decrease and a third to stay the same.

Because of these uncertainties, the town kept increases minimal, with the net increase in spending for the municipal budget coming in at 1.6%, Pinney-Michaud said.

The new full-time patrol officer on the police force would mean a detective who currently spends half her time as a patrol officer could become a full-time detective. Michelle Fontaine, a member of the budget committee, said the committee was convinced that a new patrol officer was necessary, pointing out that balancing interviewing victims with running out to traffic stops is difficult.

“It was also causing a lot of overtime for everybody in that department,” Fontaine said.

Much of the money being paid out for overtime would pay for a new patrol officer. However, she said some people were upset that the need for a new officer came up only after the initial budget review was done.

The expected increase to the police department’s budget is just over $183,000, about 10%.

Other increases come from public safety costs, with Delta Ambulance costs increasing by $150,093. Last year, Delta’s cost rose from $25 to $35 per capita, and this year increased to $60 per capita.

Fontaine has served on the budget committee for two years, and has seen Delta’s costs increase rapidly as some towns create their own ambulance services. She said the town plans to put together a committee to compare Delta’s costs to the cost of starting an ambulance service, which currently is prohibitive and would require a tax increase.

“So we’re kind of watching for that tipping point and studying how much it’s going to cost to do all of that,” Fontaine said. “Once we hit the point that’s its going to cost us less to do all of that than it is to pay Delta, we’ll probably move that around in the budget and play with that idea a little bit further.”

This is part of what Fontaine calls growing pains.

“It’s difficult to know that we need more than what we have, but we just can’t get more right now unless we grow more,” she said. “We’re kind of in that teething stage.”

Fontaine said Oakland is on the brink of growing as it begins to develop more housing, and the revaluation is part of that. But she said the town is doing a great job of planning for big capital projects and saving money. Last year Oakland acquired three new plow trucks through a lease-purchase agreement, and Fontaine said having a public works department that can fix and maintain vehicles helps.

Both Pinney-Michaud and Fontaine said the Public Works and Sewer Department employees are extremely skilled, which helps the town save money.

“Just those two departments have saved the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Pinney-Michaud said.

To make up for cost increases, most cuts are coming from Oakland’s paving budget, which will decrease by 51.3%, although Pinney-Michaud said the town still plans to pave Rice Rips Road and Sacha Lane.

“Our roads are in fairly good shape,” Pinney-Michaud said. “The town roads, anyway.”

Because of the revaluation, Pinney-Michaud said the town is expected to finalize taxes at the end of August, a little later than usual.

The Town Council will vote on the budget at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, at Messalonskee High School’s performing arts center at 131 Messalonskee High Drive in Oakland. The school budget will go to a referendum vote June 9 at the fire station at 15 Fairfield St., in conjunction with the state’s primary election.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct how the town’s three plows were acquired.