Tentative Sangerville special town meeting planned for Monday

SANGERVILLE — A special town meeting to set the due date for Sangerville’s property taxes may be held at 6 p.m. on Monday, July 28 at the Grace Bible Church Community Room, 40 Douty Hill Road. 

The special session schedule depends on how the SAD 4 budget referendum goes on Thursday, July 24.

Should residents across the six SAD 4 communities approve the $9,531,320 school budget, then the special town meeting will be held four days later. If the school budget is voted down then there will be no July 28 special town meeting.

“If they do pass it we need the special town meeting to change the interest date and the discount date,” Town Clerk Michell Nichols said during a July 16 select board meeting at the fire station.

“If the school piece isn’t passed then we just won’t have the special meeting on the 28th,” she said.

The select board signed the special town meeting warrant to have the document in place.

Sangerville residents would be asked to set a date when taxes on real estate and personal property shall be due and payable, and set a rate of interest to be charged on taxes unpaid after said date. The recommended due date is Sept. 30. 

The select board is recommending the maximum 7.5 percent be charged after Sept. 30 on unpaid taxes.

Citizens would also be asked to see if the town will allow a discount of 2 percent on taxes paid in full before 5 p.m. on Aug. 31 and vote to allow for payments received on taxes to be applied to the taxpayer’s oldest outstanding tax bill.

Once the property tax due dates and rates have been approved, the select board will need to meet again to set the 2025-26 mill rate. 

When asked, Nichols said tax bills can be prepared to be mailed out in one day.

A month after SAD 4 residents turned down a proposed 2025-26 budget of $9,752,463 — via a count of 282-187 on the ballot across its half dozen communities — a revised $9.5 million spending plan was approved at a district budget meeting on July 14.

On July 24 residents of Abbot, Cambridge, Guilford, Parkman, Sangerville and Wellington will head to the respective polls to vote on the $9.5 million figure in the second of the two-step budget approval process.

Sangerville tax bills were set to go out on July 1, per a vote at the annual town meeting in March. This date needs to be changed until after the passage of the SAD 4 budget, and the change in tax bills will need to be approved via a special town meeting vote.

Town Manager Brian Mullis previously checked and said there is cash flow to get through July and August.

Should there be some concerns with cash flow then a tax anticipation note could be used, as Androscoggin Bank Director of Government Banking John Simko — who is a former Sangerville town manager — explained. This is a busy time of year for municipal and county governments to take out tax anticipation notes.

“What a tax anticipation note is, in general is a cash flow assistance tool,” Simko said. “A public entity knows it needs X amount of money to meet all its needs and it budgets for that so it has revenue intended to equal its expenses throughout the year, but sometimes the expenses come before the revenue comes in.”

If a government entity anticipates a cash flow deficit then state law allows for a general obligation tax anticipation note. “You can borrow money against what that deficit is, draw it like a business line of credit to meet your needs and when your revenue comes in, in this case property taxes, you pay it back, you’re done,” Simko said.

Many county governments have taxes due on Oct. 31 so the cash flow may be lower in the months leading up to that date, Simko said.

A bond attorney will write the tax anticipation note after a cash flow analysis which takes several weeks. The associated legal fees are typically between $1,500 and $3,000, Simko said.

“If you don’t draw on it, it doesn’t cost you anything,” he said, saying money paid back would have an interest rate such as 5.5 percent.

Androscoggin Bank has a $500 nonutilization fee to be paid if no money is used. 

“If you did use something, the fee is waived,” Simko said.

In other business, the select board awarded snow plowing and sanding for the next three years to resident Orman Gray. 

Select Chair Jeff Peters opened four bids, two were from Sangerville businesses and two were from out of town, and Gray’s was the lowest at $190,000, $209,000 and $229,000 for years one, two and three of the agreement. Gray currently is contracted to mow in the community.

“We still need to answer to 1,300 people that pay taxes,” Peters said, about going with the low bidder.. “I think if we had them all in a group to raise their hand I think I know the choice they would make and we’re elected to represent them.”

The select board approved forest committee appointments with chair John Armstrong to serve for three years, Vice Chair Toby Hall for three years, Roy “Butch” Lemieux for two years,  Dennis Campbell for two years,  Blaine Nuite to be the planning board’s representative for one year and Cynthia Hall to be the alternate for a 1-year term.

The committee would like to hire a forester to bring town woodlots into the forestry plan. An account that could be used has about $14,000.

This item would be brought back to the select board after further discussion by the forest committee.