Penobscot County Commissioners will vote next week on new budget
By Kasey Turman, Bangor Daily News Staff
Penobscot County Commissioners decided Tuesday to hold a vote on the last day of the year on the controversial $35.1 million county budget.
Commissioners Dave Marshall, Andre Cushing and Dan Tremble held a public hearing Tuesday on the budget, which was lowered by more than $1 million from its first proposed version, but didn’t vote on it. The commissioners said they will vote on the budget on Dec. 31, the last day it can be submitted to the state.
Commissioners came to the lower amount after the 15-person Budget Advisory Committee approved a $35.1 million budget on Dec. 11, leaving the commissioners to make specific cuts to decrease from the first proposed budget of $36.1 million. Marshall, Cushing and Tremble voted unanimously throughout the process this month to preserve their right to override the committee’s approved budget figure, if they wanted to, but still came to the same dollar amount.
This proposed budget would bring a roughly 16% increase in the county tax.
The initial budget saw a large increase from spending in 2025, mostly due to a $3.5 million shortfall at the beginning of the year. The shortfall began in 2021 when state support for the Penobscot County Jail was capped and unbalanced county costs created a $7.1 million budget crisis.
Tremble, Treasurer Glen Mower and former County Administrator Bill Collins brought up the jail budget again Tuesday. All three said the jail budget was the reason for the shortfall.
Mower and Collins said people should reach out to the state to request increased funding for the jail, which has been flat-funded by the state since 2021.
“We’ve used up all our fund balance to accommodate the boarding of inmates when necessary. So, I’d strongly urge anybody in Augusta to ratify this issue,” Mower said.
The proposed budget includes more than $850,000 in cuts and $150,000 in additional revenue.
The cuts came from 11 departments. More than $430,000 came from 10 county departments while more than $425,000 was taken out of the jail budget.
The additional $150,000 of revenue came from the registry of deeds.
The final budget figures are not yet available but could be “as early as” Wednesday, Finance Director Brenda Palmer said.
Without a vote yet to finalize the budget, minor changes may still occur but any large changes would require a new public hearing, Cushing said.
No possible changes were discussed at the meeting, but Tremble spoke briefly about a possible policy change that would keep an amount of funds in the fund balance and prevent the county from getting into the same situation again.
“I think we need to have a financial policy in place addressing our fund balance and what it should be set at because it should not have been depleted,” Tremble said about the county not having cash in hand like it has in previous years. “This situation should’ve never happened.”