By Kathy McCarty
Staff writer
An idea brought up at Presque Isle City Council’s Dec. 2 meeting to look into the possibility of asking neighboring communities to “buy into” the new Community Center, contributing a set amount toward the construction of the facility – based on population and valuation for each town – has representatives of at least two municipalities saying “thanks, but no thanks.” Officials outside of Presque Isle were unaware of the proposal, seeing it for the first time in an article in the Dec. 4 issue of The Star-Herald.
“We liked the fact Presque Isle considers us a neighbor, but that’s all we liked about the plan,” said Easton Town Manager Jim Gardner, speaking on behalf of the town’s board of selectmen.
Gardner said most Easton residents don’t use the facilities in Presque Isle, except for the pool program on occasion.
“We provide a bus to the pool (outdoor in summer, indoor pool in winter) and require our kids to pay their own way. There’s nothing there our residents would benefit from,” he said. “We have one of the finer rec departments in our own community, offering camps, field trips for children and senior citizens and more. We get people from Mapleton, Presque Isle and elsewhere for these activities and charge them the same fee our residents pay.”
Gardner said the $778,421 Presque Isle officials came up with is the equivalent of a 3 mil increase for Easton taxpayers.
“Our present mil rate is 16. It would boost it to 19. This would be totally against the principles of Easton government. We’re the fourth highest-valued community in Aroostook County; we just had to take care of about $778,000 in school subsidies that the state took away from us. We only had to raise the mil rate 1.5 to address that, because industry is growing here. But why would we want to take on more (debt)?” asked Gardner. “That $778,000 is enough to fund our rec center for more than 10 years.”
Gardner said he’s spoken with other municipal leaders from surrounding towns,” none of which were supportive to the idea.
“To see other community (Presque Isle) leaders supporting an idea that would increase taxes for outside communities is sad,” he said. “When you add up the amounts they’d seek as contributions from neighboring communities, it amounts to 61 percent of their $3.5 million fund-raising goal. That means only 39 percent would fall to Presque Isle citizens – the people who will benefit from the center the most.”
Ray Mersereau, Mars Hill’s interim manager, said he and his town council were also in the dark about the plan until reading the article. As proposed, Mars Hill’s portion would come to $479,816.
“We haven’t been approached by anyone from Presque Isle. We need a new town garage and that money would go a long way toward that. That much money’s hard to come by,” said Mersereau. “We appreciate being considered neighbors but support our own rec department.”
Mersereau said travel is a big issue and one of the main reasons Mars Hill residents don’t typically have children participating in Presque Isle programs.
“Working parents don’t have the time to drive their kids to PI events,” he said.
“If Mars Hill had the money, we’d be happy to do that (contribute) but funding isn’t available. But if we had that kind of money we’d likely put it into our own community center,” said Mersereau.
Mersereau said smaller communities like his tend to base a lot of activities at the local schools.
“We have a different relationship with our school system. Superintendent Roger Shaw is a super guy and helps coordinate functions at the schools. Schools in smaller towns often serve as the center for the community – thus the community center. We support our schools any way possible,” said Mersereau.
Gardner said Easton too uses the school for much more than educating students, with rec programs often taking place at either of the school buildings.
He said he’s not opposed to working with other municipalities, just not on something like this.
“We want to be good neighbors. If you see regional things we could do, we’re there. Combining purchasing power for needed items would be a start,” Gardner said.
Mapleton, Chapman and Castle Hill’s Town Manager Jon Frederick said he the three towns’ representatives were taking a “wait-and-see approach.” Under the proposal, Castle Hill’s portion would run $123,378, Chapman’s would be $14,558 and Mapleton’s would run $590,103.
“We haven’t been directly asked to contribute at this point. We’re aware of what they’re asking and know it has to go back to committee before the proposal is made to us. We have no formal opinion at this time,” said Frederick.
Unlike Easton and Mars Hill that don’t have many children using programs in Presque Isle, Frederick said East Chapman had some youth participation, as did Mapleton and Castle Hill. He noted, however, that his municipalities share a rec department that is currently doing well.
“We have our own summer rec program, including little league baseball. Jacob Graham was hired this summer as our new rec director and has gotten the soccer program up and running again; he’s doing basketball now with the school. We have a nice pool,” said Frederick.
Frederick said if nothing else, the proposal “gets conversations started.” The plan would, however, result in an increase in taxes for his communities, should the plan go through.
“As the proposal stands, if done over a 10-year period, it would be a little over 50 cents on the tax rate here in town (about half a mil). It’s a conversation starter, but our town representatives will wait to hear a formal proposal before responding,” said Frederick.
