Kittery budget proposal rises sharply. Here's why and what it means for taxes.

KITTERY, Maine — Town Manager Kendra Amaral proposed a $19.7 million municipal budget for fiscal year 2025, looking to add more full-time firefighters and citing inflationary pressures and anticipated collective bargaining pay increases.

The proposal would raise the budget nearly 10% over the current fiscal year, a $1,794,357 increase.

Kittery budget impact on taxpayers

The town's proposed budget, combined with a $22.5 million Kittery school district proposal, totals more than $42.2 million, a nearly 7.7% increase from the current fiscal year.

The total budget, if approved, would result in a tax rate of $14.07 per $1,000 of assessed property value, a nearly 3.4% increase.

The owner of a single-family home in Kittery last assessed at $500,000 would see their annual property tax bill increase by $232.23 if the budget is approved, for a total of $7,035 per year. Town tax bills are collected over three installments, with one at the end of September, another in late January and the final at the end of April.

Kittery residents with a single-family home valued at $750,000 can expect to see their tax bill rise by $348.34 if the proposed FY 2025 budget is approved.

"I wholly recognize that this is a substantial increase when the costs of everything else for our taxpayers is increasing," Amaral said in an interview this week. "Unfortunately we can’t meet the demands of the community and the council without having the resources to do that. It really is a decision of the council of what they want to focus on, but I recognize that this is a big number."

Reevaluation of town properties will likely be needed in 2025, Amaral reported.

“The town is currently projecting valuations will be below 80% of market value, meaning all property, except those undergoing permitted building improvements, is valued at less than 80% of what the current market price for the property would be if sold today,” her budget proposal states. “Rough calculations suggest a revaluation could reduce the tax rate by $4.20 per $1,000, bringing it back below $10 per $1,000.”

As of last month, Amaral noted the median price of a single-family home in Kittery was $710,000, a 29% year-over-year increase, according to Multiple Listing Service records. Amaral said the median price of a single-family residence in Kittery was around $285,000 in 2016 when she started as town manager.

Fire Dept. going full-time among cost drivers in Kittery

Town Council chairperson Judy Spiller said the move to add more full-time firefighters was an objective set by the council.

“For the past several years, we have been concerned about the ability of the fire department to marshal sufficient firefighters, particularly during the day,” she said. “We have, for many years, had an on-call fire department dependent on people living and working in the community, and (people) being young enough and hardy enough to fight a fire. Our volunteer, on-call firefighting staff is aging out. Many of them no longer work in Kittery. Their availability is limited and so (the) council several years ago said we wanted to move to a professional firefighting staff. We have done that gradually. That's a council objective. A council initiative. That's not the town manager.”

Amaral pointed to numerous cost drivers in presenting the budget to the Town Council last week.

“This is one of the harder budgets I’ve had to present,” Amaral said at the May 13 meeting. Nine aspects of the budget proposal make up 91% of the cost increases, she said.

Hiring four more full-time firefighters to bolster the department’s roster and become a daily, all-hours response team would cost $454,598, while $425,000 is outlined for anticipated wage increases in collective bargaining unit contracts. The town is also splitting a $248,000 bill with the town of Eliot for an ambulance contract, which Amaral called an “unheard of number,” about $700,000 lower than some other communities’ contracts for similar services, she said.

According to the proposal, $40,000 would be allocated towards the town’s comprehensive plan update, $88,440 would be set toward increased rates for municipal solid waste and household hazardous waste disposal, $292,500 would be for a capital funding increase, and $85,028 would be used for York County tax increases, among other items.

Department heads and members of the Kittery Fire Department sat in the audience as Amaral reminded attendees that the town takes a “zero-based” budgeting approach, meaning each annual proposed budget is built from the ground up rather than adding a percentage increase to the prior year.

“As I’ve said, this is a tough budget for me because I usually come in pretty low and pretty conservative, and this is uncharacteristic of the type of budget I usually put forward,” Amaral said during the meeting. “But I can’t accomplish the things that the council has identified for less than this.”

The Town Council scheduled its vote on the proposed municipal budget expenses for its May 29 meeting.

What is in the Kittery school district budget?

The Kittery school district has proposed a $22,510,769 budget for next fiscal year, which will be decided by town voters on a referendum in the June election. The proposal is a 5.96% increase from the current school budget of $21.2 million.

The school district is adding a new pre-kindergarten program next fiscal year, which the state is expected to help fund. Other positions and programs headlining the district's new budget requests for FY 2025 include funding for a STEM teacher, an education technician, a drug and alcohol addiction specialist, a speech and language pathologist, a technology and safety director, and a board certified behavior analyst, per the district's proposal.

Under the proposal, two teaching positions - one in first grade and the other in second grade - would be cut along with a human resources generalist and school nutrition program funding. Kittery school enrollment is down to 928 this year, down from 1,315 in 1991-92, the district's peak in the last 35 years.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kittery's new budget proposal rises sharply: What it means for taxes