AUBURN — Monday night was the first chance residents and councilors alike had to glimpse a new city planning and economic development structure.
According to Eric Cousens, the deputy director under the new structure, Auburn’s new Economic and Community Development Department would try to streamline city actions in three areas: planning and code enforcement, economic development and community development.
“With this change and bringing all three departments under it, we make sure there is a single set of priorities across the entire department,” Cousens said. “Having multiple plans in different departments interferes. One priority may be different from a priority in another department. So we aim to eliminate that.”
Part of Auburn’s efforts to stay under a council-mandated 0.7 percent tax increase, Cousens said the new system would also use a borrowing program with Community Concepts Finance Corp. to provide small loans to Auburn businesses, replacing the function served by the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council.
Councilors on Monday gave the plan high marks, but it didn’t stop supporters of regional development efforts to make their pitch to fund the old system, especially the Growth Council.
“Make sure we don’t lose in an area where we hold an advantage over other areas,” said Mark Adams, president and CEO of Sebago Technics and a former Auburn assistant city manager. “Our collaboration, our sophistication and the delivery of our economic development services has been often envied and copied but never duplicated.”
Councilors are working their way through the proposed fiscal year 2016-17 budget that would increase property taxes for city services by $157,096 — a 0.66 percent increase. Combined with a $966,974 increase in property taxes for the Auburn School Department and a $25,443 for Androscoggin County, property taxes would still increase $1.15 million — a 2.71 percent increase. It would set the tax rate at $21.88 per $1,000 of value, up from the current $21.25 tax rate — a $94.50 increase in taxes for a $150,000 home. Councilors would need a five-vote majority to approve the tax increase.
The overall budget is scheduled for a public hearing at the next meeting on Monday, May 16.
The driving factors for the municipal budget are keeping tax increases below the council’s 0.7 percent limit while putting money back into the city’s fund balances.
City Manager Howard Kroll released his $39.2 million budget last month that proposed the following changes:
• doing away with eight positions;
• combining five city departments into two;
• Police and Fire departments would become a single Public Safety Department;
• The Community Development, Economic Development and Planning and Code Enforcement departments would become one department
It also rewrites cooperative services with Lewiston.
Kroll’s budget eliminates Auburn’s payments to the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council and cuts $213,000 from the Lewiston-Auburn 911 system, $26,000 from the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments and $45,900 from the Auburn Public Library.
The new Economic and Community Development Department would try to replace some of those services.
Cousens said the new structure would let staff focus job-building efforts downtown.
“We are looking to shift our focus to place-based development, something we have been talking about for the last couple of years,” Cousens said. “Auburn has a lot to offer and really marketing the cultural, arts-related, historical resources in development and giving it a place that people recognize the treasures that are all around them.”
• Current Economic Development Director Michael Chammings would serve as director of the department with Cousens as his deputy;
• Community Development and the management of the federal Community Development Block Grant money would fall to a team of neighborhood services coordinators, downtown specialists and a development manager answering to Cousens; and
• The planning and inspection functions, currently Cousens’ department, would remain mostly unchanged.
• Some of the department services, about $60,000, would be funded with Block Grant and Tax Increment Finance money, taking those charges out of the city’s general fund.
• Another $100,000 in TIF revenue would go to Community Concepts Finance Corp. and would be paired with $100,000 from that organization. That $200,000 would become a loan fund for downtown and small Auburn businesses.
Adams argued against sacrificing the Growth Council and a regional economic development effort. Businesses in Maine simply want to invest in Portland more than they do Lewiston-Auburn and it’s going to take a combined effort to overcome that tendency, he said.
“We can only combat this perception and convince business that L-A is a great place to invest if we work together,” Adams said.
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