Greenville ballot to include $1M YES Project bond question

By Stuart Hedstrom Staff Writer

GREENVILLE — Two weeks after a request was made to the town of Greenville for $1 million to cover the remaining costs of the Yes Project community building, a non-binding advisory referendum question for the Nov. 4 ballot was approved by the select board during a Sept. 3 meeting.

Two weeks prior the idea of a special town meeting for the $1 million was mentioned. Since then many people have stopped by the town office or called, Town Manager Mike Roy said.

“We want to make sure that every taxpayer can chime in, if you will, on this decision,” he said. Later in the meeting a clarification was noted that all registered voters can have a say in the decision. 

Town officials also heard that not everyone is around at this time of year to attend an evening special town meeting.

Special town meeting voting cannot be done via absentee ballot, Town Clerk Tammy Firman said, as she checked with the Maine Municipal Association legal department about the referendum voting process. MMA recommended the question be a non-binding advisory vote to see if the town will seek up to a $1 million bond through the Maine Bonk Bank (which has a deadline of Aug. 1).

“If it’s going to be a referendum question for the ballot, we have to establish that 60 days before the election and as you know we’re right there on the deadline,” she said, with this date being Friday, Sept. 5. 

With the select board voting to go forward, Firman will submit the documentation to the state and the town will hold a public hearing on the referendum prior to Tuesday, Nov. 4.

Several years ago the Moosehead Caring for Kids Foundation received a federal grant of $1,561,000 to build a new facility on the school campus on Pritham Avenue. The new building would be located approximately where the former Nickerson Elementary once stood. The foundation designated the town of Greenville as the subrecipient of the grant, which means that the town will build the new facility and that the new building will be a municipal facility.

The foundation, town and school have been working together to plan and construct the building, which has yet to be named. The building will house three collaborative activities, a childcare center, public pre-school classrooms and a community recreation center.

The three collaborative teams have formed a committee, the YES Project (the acronym stands for youth, education and sport) to plan.

After negotiating with contractors, building costs were reduced to $4.1 to $4.6 million. To date the group has raised $3.3 million, but they feel there are not too many other non-municipal funding sources.

In other business, a special town meeting will be needed to clarify a recently passed amendment to the land use ordinance, Planning Board Chair John Contreni said. 

The language for the village district needs to be changed from no construction services to conditional use of construction services, he said.

Code Enforcement Officer Ron Sarol wrote the language for the amendment, he spoke with abutters who had no issues and the planning board endorsed the measure earlier in the evening.

The planning board would approve the conditional uses.

The select board approved a hanger lease policy and development policy standards for the Greenville Municipal Airport. 

Airport Advisory Committee Chair Steve Levesque said the group has spent a lot of time discussing how to make the airport more sustainable. 

“Obviously it’s a big asset for our community, it’s a doorway for a lot of people to come into our community,” Levesque said. Having a functional airport is also very important for safety as a rural town, he added.

The airport advisory committee has determined that hanger lease holders are significantly underpaying compared to other Maine airports. 

Existing lease holders would be grandfathered, but new agreements and leases being transferred would be subject to a rate of 16 cents per square foot for private hangers and a rate of 25 cents per square foot for commercial hangers. These rates are consistent with other rural Maine airports, Levesque said. Rents would also go up 3 percent annually to keep up with inflation.

For new hangers, a one-time fee of 50 cents per square feet would be part of the application. A 60- by 60-foot structure would have a cost of $1,800.

“I think it’s a good start to get us to the point where the airport can really start sustaining itself financially and we can generate more activities,” Levesque said

Town officials also discussed tax increment financing, doing so now to be ready for the start of 2026-27 budget preparations in early 2026. The deadline to apply to the state program is March 1.

TIF is a flexible finance tool used by municipalities, plantations and unorganized territories to leverage new property taxes generated by a specific project or projects within a defined geographic district. Any portion of the new taxes may be used to finance public or private projects for a defined statutorily allowable period of time, per the Maine Department of Economic & Community Development.

“I think you want to look where there’s going to be value generated in the community that you can shelter from the state valuation,” Levesque said. “It’s a tool that the state has established to encourage community investment that wouldn’t otherwise maybe be happening.”

Downtown improvements and new airport hangers were mentioned as examples. “But that doesn’t change the fact that those new activities will still have to pay their taxes at the same rate everyone else does, it’s just how you allocate those dollars,” Levesque said.

Last year the town budget had a $50,000 appropriation for the airport, and with a TIF this could instead come out of new revenues.

The select board also opted to have an agenda item on ATVs and riding times at the Wednesday, Sept. 17 meeting. Currently the timeline is 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and the idea of changing the end time to dusk was mentioned.

“In October, November 9 o’clock is too late to have them run down the roads, that’s my personal opinion,” Police Chief Jim Carr said, saying ATV riders will still have plenty of time in the fall.