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In response to these themes, you will find a concerted effort to retain staff with a proposed 5% pay increase, a recently adjusted pay scale for police staff, and a budget that is soft on most departmental and capital expenditures to help off-set these necessary adjustments. In fact, when one looks at the FY ’23 Budget Summary Sheet and sees the proposed “Net to be Raised” bottom line increase year over year at $92,279 with $43,000 of that coming in just 2 hard cost line items, combined with over $38,000 in wage increases, one quickly gets an understanding of this budget. I’ll take a moment to touch on capital expenditures. The FY ’23 proposed capital budget is $284,050 which is $50,500 less than the FY ’22 budget. It is a fact, that the easiest place to make up savings in the budget usually comes from capital. While, this year over year reduction concerns me, I will note that when is all said and done, the Town will have over $280,000 in ARPA funds to expend. On the revenue side… Good news! We will be receiving just under $128,000 more in State Revenue Sharing than the current year. Overall, revenues are forecasted to increase by a little better than $109,000. Not good news! This revenue increase will be off-set with a $55,000 reduction in applied fund balance for FY ’23. We will do our best to keep everyone informed and up to date with the latest and greatest information. I look forward to working with you on completing the Town of Mechanic Falls FY ’23 Budget.

Feel free to reach out anytime with any questions or concerns you may have.

Have a great day!

Vic Hodgkins

Town Manager

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