The Lisbon Reporter

WELCOME TO THE LISBON REPORTER. In an effort to keep our community informed of what is going on at local and Federal levels of government, we decided to create this on-line newspaper. It is our hope that this on-line newspaper will help you stay informed so that you can get involved and take action for the benefit of our ENTIRE community. Thank you for visiting and please check back frequently for information about what is happening in LISBON/LISBON FALLS, MAINE USA

Friday, May 13, 2016

THIS IS CALLED CREATIVE ACCOUNTING!!!

It is amazing how our taxes never seem to go down. That is because the town uses the old Russian tactic “two steps forward, one step back.” They start out with all the Department Heads budgeting EVERYTHING they want in their initial proposed budgets. Once this number has been established this is the starting point, instead of using last year’s approved departmental budgets as the starting point.

Here is the proof, look at the attachment and you will see for FY16 the approved budget was for $8,098,109.00 (yes that is over 8 million). Now, look at the initial FY17 proposed budget of $8,775,482.00 (yes that is over 8 million). The initial proposed FY17 was already an increase of $677,373.00 before you start cutting. So after the cuts, the town has it down to $8,604, 533.00 which is still an increase of $506,424.00 for next year.

To show you how crazy this is let’s look at the increase from FY15 to FY16. The approved budget for FY15 is $6,156,593.00 and the FY16 approved budget was $8,098,109.00 which according to my calculator is $1,941,516.00. This is close to a 2 million dollar increase in one year and for what? The town of Lisbon cannot afford to support these massive increases in operating cost every year.

When you add the increase on the municipal side of $506,424.00 with the School side increase of $482,058.00; the increase for this year will be $988,482.00. This is close to another million dollars in one year. Is there any doubt as to why your taxes go up every year? So how do we stop this insane tradition of spending? We need everyone to come to the Town Council meetings and tell the Council to put a stop to it. Call your Councilors and tell them this is not acceptable.

As you can see, the initial proposal is the two steps forward and the approved budget is the one step back. This is the reason your taxes are so high and are continuing to go up every year. In order to control the excessive spending, there should be a mandatory directive that these Department Heads on the municipal side have to cut 15% of their operating cost each year until there budget is at 6 million dollars like it was in FY15.

Larry Fillmore