By Nate Jones

Staff Writer 

After weeks of school board and finance committee workshops, the Cape Elizabeth Town Council received municipal and school budget recommendations on Monday. The Finance Committee report suggests the proposed school budget for 2009 be reduced by roughly $319,000, while the municipal budget could see little change. 

“I don’t see many areas where I can continue to cut that wouldn’t affect staff or students,” Superintendent Alan Hawkins said. 

The school board had approved a proposed 6 percent increase in the budget with a 4 to 3 vote on March 11. The town finance committee favored reducing that $19 million school budget by 1.4 percent at a final workshop on April 9. The recommendation was approved in a 4 to 3 vote after nearly four hours of deliberation. 

Councilor Sara Lennon opposed the finance committee’s 4.6 percent cap and favored the school board’s request for a 6 percent increase.

“Healthy societies invest in their youth,” she said. “It’s the difference between $45 and $60, which won’t even buy you dinner. It’s an absurd amount of money to put back in people’s pockets and think it will help them.”

Lennon said she believed Cape Elizabeth residents would view the increase in taxes as additional “leverage dollars” toward their investment in the town. Investing in schools could draw more families to the town in the future, possibly resulting in higher property values, Lennon said. 

She stood alone in her beliefs throughout the workshop.

“Based on that attitude there will never be an end to an increase in spending. It will always be ‘just another dollar,’” Councilor David Backer said. “We can’t guarantee by spending another $45 or $100 that [residents’] property value will go up.”

Other councilors said they believed residents would consider a $60 increase in their property taxes a high price to pay. 

Councilor James Rowe supported the lowest possible increase in the school budget and reminded other councilors that nearly 25 percent of the town voted for Maine’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), which would have limited spending even more.

Rowe said the average property value among elected officials in Cape Elizabeth is more than $500,000, almost twice the average property value in the community.

“We as elected officials not only live in different houses, but different worlds,” he said. “For some of us sitting at this table, property taxes are not hard to pay, but for other people they are, that’s why I’m staying at 4.3 percent.”

As required by the new state school consolidation law, the public will vote on the school budget in a public referendum scheduled for June 10.

Town Manager Michael McGovern said the council has yet to decid if the referendum will feature an advisory for ballots to assist residents in making the same decisions town officials wrestled with during the past few weeks.

The finance committee report also endorsed a proposed 4.88 percent increase in the nearly $9 million municipal budget. In his budget report, McGovern attributes approximately 98 percent of the $400,000 increase to higher costs for town payroll, debt services, gasoline and diesel and other miscellaneous operating expenditures.

According to the report, the proposed municipal budget includes no new municipal employee positions and no new programs for the town and reduces spending for Family Fun Day, capital outlay and debris removal. 

“Reducing the [municipal] budget further will require impacts that will be noticed,” McGovern said.

The town hopes to save nearly $50,000 in operating costs by privatizing the community fitness center. Community Services Director Suzanne Weatherbie said fitness center revenues have not been successful in subsidizing costs associated with the community pool since it was built in 1999.

“We were spending about $10,000 more than we were taking in,” she said. 

Both facilities will remain town property, although by leasing the fitness center to a private party the town hopes to turn the cost of running the fitness center into revenue, she said.  

The community services office is currently receiving letters from parties interested in leasing the fitness center from the town, Weatherbie said. As part of the selling agreement, the new owner will still be required to retain a contract with the town specifying fee limits and hours of operation in order to keep the center available to residents in the same capacity, she  said. 

Councilor chairman Mary Anne Lynch said she supported the concept.

“The same folks are going to be using it and we’re at no greater risk under privatizing than we already are now,” she said. 

Weatherbie said the town could enter into a lease agreement for the fitness center as soon as July 1.