Hello, and welcome to our Tuesday evening uh workshop.

We're kicking things off with a budget presentation.

We have Director Roy here, who will be uh joined uh shortly uh by administrator Kane Wrath.

And uh, if you two can please kick it off, that'd be great.

We're proceeding, please proceed.

Okay, good evening, mayor counselors, uh Brian Cameron, the administrator.

So we are here this evening to present the fiscal year twenty seven uh proposed budget.

So I will just say at the outset, this was a very uh difficult budget, and we are just beginning that process here with the council, but we faced uh a number of headwinds in seemingly in every direction this year, um, as we'll illustrate during this presentation.

So this was uh a very challenging budget, will be a very challenging budget going forward over the next few months.

Um, the city of Lewis is not alone in a lot of these challenges.

When you look at our neighboring communities and really communities across the country, uh, many are in the same position with regard to increasing costs really all over the place.

So uh to start out, our proposed municipal budget for twenty seven is seventy-three million seven fifty-seven and thirty-five dollars.

That is the municipal city uh side of things, not the school department.

We'll get to uh in a moment.

But you'll see the city operating budget uh is up 7.1 percent.

The county budget is up 20.5 percent, debt services up 13.3 percent.

These are uh really difficult numbers, and we'll dig more into that in a moment.

Um but the first big uh point I want to really stress is the numbers you see the 7.1 percent on the city operating.

That is after we've already taken from what was submitted to us from department budget requests.

We've already cut 4.1 million dollars uh from that just to get down to 7.1.

So there's already been uh a really you know uh quite a bit of work done uh on our side and with department heads to find cuts to find savings.

Our primary concern was not having to go to layoffs to make sure that positions that are currently occupied with people would continue to be funded uh for the next year.

Um we'll see at a moment though we are going to talk about freezing open positions.

But uh so that was one primary focus, um, but we've already found 4.1 million dollars in savings.

Um to be honest, we may have to find some more, but that brought us down to the 7.1%.

So these are some of the reductions.

I don't know if we'll have to go through all of these.

We can we're also gonna email this presentation to you all so you can look at it later also.

But um, we are proposing another uh almost a million dollars in freezing an additional six open positions.

There's a hundred thousand dollars in savings, electrical repairs to signals, fifty-eight thousand construction materials, hundred thousand dollars in highway and street line painting, forty-five thousand dollars in parks and open space, forty-two thousand for armory uh ongoing uh renovations, and also an informational sign that we're gonna place in the front.

250,000 out of uh the small business grant program, there's $58,000 in public art.

Some of these we looked at, and they already have some other funds they're able to use, so it's not completely decimating uh these budgets, but none of these cuts are easy.

None of them are fun, um, but we really got to the point of it's either people in seats or it's some of these other items.

Uh there's also 240,000 removed from the salary reserve fund.

So we also um went through capital.

Uh some of these have been shifted to the uh LCIP.

Um there's police vehicles, um, there's a port account machine at the fire department in public works.

There's a whole variety of things from guardrails to weight system replacement, um, waste disposal, roll-off containers, uh, parks and open spaces again, trees, dugouts, play equipment, municipal garage, there's vehicles, one point almost 1.7 million dollars uh in vehicles there that we had to take out, and also smaller items like $20,000 in office equipment uh citywide.

So some of the major budget drivers, you know, what has caused us to land uh in this place, uh, a number of things.

Uh, first of all, most of our workforce is uh under labor contracts, those contractual increases are something we grapple with every year, so that's number one.

Uh but there were other costs uh including workers' comp, uh rising health insurance rates, uh, retirement software maintenance and licensing.

That was another big one.

The county budget again this year at 20.5% uh increase, very significant, about a million dollars just on that.

Uh the police building, uh, lease payments.

We also saw this was significant.

There was a drop in uh state revenue sharing that communities are facing this year.

That was just over a million dollars this year, also.

We also had a heavy use of fund balance in the FY26 budget, and you'll see later in this presentation.

Um, we don't have that option, or it's not recommended this year that we're utilizing any fund balance at all in this budget, and that was uh over just over seven million dollars, correct, last year in the use of fund balance.

So that's 7 million.

We had you know this year is coming is coming home to roost also.

So continuing with our expenditures, uh personnel expenditures.

Again, we just mentioned all of those contractual obligations, about 1.2 million fringe benefits were up another um about $550,000.

So the proposed FY26 frozen uh positions are continuing for 27, those two police officers at $96,000 each, three Class C highway workers at $66,000 each, and one mechanic three at $95,000.

So this year for 27, we're we're proposing um additional frozen freezing uh open positions, including another police officer, $97,000 from public works, two Class C highway workers, one Class B highway worker, one mechanic, as well as one senior accountant uh in finance.

That brings our total frozen positions up to 12, which is significant.

So again, frozen positions, these are currently vacant positions that are budgeted.

We're proposing not filling them and freezing them for the current fiscal year.

So we're we're continuing to freeze the ones from 26.

We're adding on some more for 27.

That brings our total positions frozen to 12.

Continuing on our debt service, we saw an increase of just over a million dollars.

A lot of that was the police station lease, uh joint agencies, including transit and LA 911, another 344,000.

And we've seen higher costs with fuel, winter materials, building maintenance, equipment repairs, and on down the line.

There's about 260,000 in other increase in supplies, including fuel, oil, uh, some of that is the take-home vehicle program for the police department, winter supplies, uh increase in contractual services, uh, just over a million dollars.

So maintenance and licensing, as we mentioned for citywide software programs, repairs to buildings, uh, vehicle and outside rentals as well as solid waste disposal.

Fixed charges.

So we talked about the 20.5% increase from the county, uh, that's in there, as well as the debt service and the joint agencies, transit and um LA 911.

So that's just under $3 million of increases uh just in those three categories.

Uh turning to our city revenues, um, also not an overall great picture here.

Um, our excise tax is up, about $327,000.

General assistance aid uh is down about $100 due to decreased utilization uh of GA.

We have or reimbursed from the state 70% on that.

So it was just a lower utilization that caused $100,000 drop there.

Uh rent, small change, about $13,000 up.

Parking revenue, small change, about $10,000 down.

Uh we also saw investment earnings decline, $289,000.

That's not uncommon with what's happening out there.

And here's the big one.

This is the state revenue sharing, um, just over a million dollars uh lost this year in state revenue sharing, and that's another hole for us to cover in our budget.

So capital expenditures is only $50,000 in the operating budget.

Um fund balance, as I said, we're recommending zero uh utilization of fund balance.

We have about $24 uh million six hundred thousand um for bonds uh on the school side, about nine and a half million for bonds.

Fund balance.

So it just said a moment ago, we're not recommending any use of fund balance this year.

Last year, those about $7 million used.

So you see our um our current we're currently sitting at 10% for unassigned fund balance.

Um we have a ceiling, this is by ordinance of 12% and a floor of eight.

So that's $22 million, about $300,000 for a ceiling, uh, and a floor of $14, just about $15 million.

So we're currently sitting at $10.

Um we're not recommending any use of that this year.

It's it's close enough to eight to cause uh some concern.

Um this also impacts things like our bond rating, um, which is really important as we as we go um in that direction.

So uh we're currently seeing a 10, we're we're recommending no use of fund balance for this year.

Turning over to the school department, the school side of things.

So their uh overall budget, their expenditures are up 11%.

Uh their revenues are up uh just under that 10.9 carry forward fund balance, um $14,000, um, small point four percent.

But so uh again, city side, we're up seven percent, school we're up 11, county is up 20, so all of these numbers are are challenging.

Uh just of note, March 16th, we have our our workshop with the school committee, 5.30 p.m.

at the at the Green Little.

Assessed value.

As you know, uh by now we are undergoing our first citywide reval since the late 1980s.

Um this is resulting in a 90.1% increase in overall assessed value of about two uh billion dollars.

Uh I'll say again, an important point to remember here is this is not more revenue for the city.

This is a an equitable redistribution of the tax burden uh across the city.

So the city is not taking in more money through this process.

The tax burden is being redistributed and values are being placed accordingly and fairly, you know, and a big point is you know, we are at uh we are certified about I think it's 47% in the 40s assessed to market value.

State law requires you to be at 70 percent.

So we are well under that.

That is extremely under that.

So for anyone that asks why are we doing this reval now?

It is it is well overdue.

Um we are completely off uh the mark and where we we need to be by law.

Um and so it's it's important for for us to make sure these values are you know where they're where they should be.

Uh we have you know, everyone has a story, but so many properties around the city that you look at the city assessment, you look what they're currently selling for on the market, and they're not even they're not even close.

So um, but that's we're gonna we're seeing probably about another two billion dollars in assessed value um added through the reval process.

This is just a quick graph on to see where the county tax uh has been.

So for FY27, we're seeing a 20 for 20.5% increase.

But it's it's good to note that in 26 there was a 14.5 percent increase in 25, there was a 16 percent increase.

You look at just the last three years of increase, very significant.

The years before that, you have 18 to 24 up there.

You know, we're really talking about under six percent increases uh year over year.

So we've seen some definitely large increases on the county side the last three years, this year being the biggest of the three.

So we talked about our reval.

Um with the reval, we're gonna have uh definitely some changes in our mill rate or our tax rate.

So this is our current projected tax rate based on the budget as it is now, where it would go to fund that budget.

So our current tax rate or mill rate is uh we're at 3278 per thousand dollars of assessed value.

That is projected to drop 40 percent to $19.

Uh and sixty-eight cents, a 13 and 10 cent uh drop.

So that's again as the budget is presented now, what it would cost to fund that.

Um, but there will be undoubtedly future changes in the next month or two.

Moving to our enterprise funds.

So remember, enterprise funds are separate from the operating budget.

These are funded by user fees, so our water, sewer, and stormwater.

So you see our our revenues and expenditures um for the three categories.

Um you can see the revenues are uh less than the expenditures, which is um always something to take note of.

So you also see our projected 27 ending cash balances, which are all um positive.

So starting with water, um revenues are up about 12.2 percent, expenses were up 24.3 percent.

What's driving it?

Payroll and benefits, debt service, operating expenses, as well as capital.

So there is a recommended 10% rate increase uh for the water utility this year.

Moving to sewer, uh revenues are up about 9.7 percent, expenses up 8.7 percent.

Uh again, what's driving it payroll and benefits, debt operating the treatment plant as well as capital.

Uh, no rate increase recommended for sewer this year.

Stormwater revenues are up 7.3, expenses up 5.1.

Um, some of the same story payroll and benefits, debt operating and capital.

There's a recommended 7% increase uh in the stormwater utility this year.

So that is the the high level summary, of course, over the next couple of months.

We're gonna be digging a lot deeper into this.

We're gonna have departments here, we're gonna get into a lot more of the details.

I do want to say thank you to all the department heads, city staff, and everyone involved, uh, most notably our finance director, Tracy Roy.

Thank you for all of your your work on this.

This is not an easy budget.

Uh departments are absorbing a lot of cuts, they're absorbing frozen positions, um, and the outlook is generally um difficult.

Uh we will get through this.

Doesn't mean we won't get through this, but this budget um we have tried to do everything we can to make sure that current personnel are maintained and the future budget.

And again, we've already cut 4.1 million dollars uh just to get to this point, um, which is never easy.

These conversations are not easy.

Um it's not easy to continue to um you know maintain good morale uh and recruit the best and brightest workforce when we're also going through major budget challenges and keeping that morale up.

So this is this is tough.

Um, but I want to thank them for all of their cooperation, their understanding.

Um we are gonna put together a budget, uh, and I know we are that's going to be uh responsible, maintains good services, uh, but also is mindful of the tax rate and of the tax burden on the residents um and property owners for the city of Lewiston.

So uh I think we have a lot of work to do.

We've already done you know quite a bit of it, um, but this is gonna be uh a process over the next month or two.

So uh again, I will say that the city of Lewiston is not alone in in in facing budget challenges.

Uh you look at some of our neighbors around the state and around the country, and this is happening uh in a lot of places.

So um again, thank you to everyone involved in the budget thus far.

Um, and we look forward to the next month or two of workshops and getting this together uh and coming up with a final document that um you know obviously does the best job we can with some significant headwinds this year.

So thank you.

Uh thank you both.

Appreciate your help.

Yes, and thank you to all the staff.

Um, you know, uh budget should be a reflection of our values.

And so yeah, we will uh we have a lot of work to do.

I I think that goes without saying, and I appreciate the work that's already been done on the budget.

So thank you very much.

Um yes, I will entertain high-level questions uh at this point.

Uh uh.

But also asking the counselors to recognize that we do not have department heads, and I don't want to get into the weeds uh this evening.

Counselor Herman.

Thank you.

Um excuse me.

I'm just looking at page 14 in our binder, the revenue uh summary.

And I'm just wondering over the past couple of years, we've been close to 100 million in revenue.

And then it's proposed to be around less than a quarter of that this coming year.

And I'm just wondering what's accounting for that.

A large portion, as he mentioned, was in the revenue sharing.

So they have decreased their amount that's estimated.

Of course, it's the first estimate.

They usually come out with another estimate as they get closer.

Um that's the first state estimate.

So you will see that's decreased.

I'm only recommending taking 95 percent of that and not the full hundred percent.

May I follow up?

Please continue, Counselor.

So that only that's back on page 12.

That only accounts for about a million dollar decrease.

I'm looking at the 75 million dollar decrease.

Correct.

So we'll be going through that.

I believe Thursday night is revenues.

So we'll be going over um all the changes and all the differences and why there's those changes.

So a large portion too is also um we used to within solid waste, we used to put invoices and we're um changing that out a little bit more where the expense actually is in the expense and the revenues in the revenue.

So that affects it a little bit.

But as I mentioned, Thursday night we'll be going through revenue, so you'll I'll have a list of what's changed and why.

But this is this is over a 75 percent decrease in our total revenue as a city, which seems like a 10 alarm fire to me.

Are you looking at the approved?

Right.

So the approved column has the tax rate from last year.

It does not have the tax rate in this year.

That does not go in the budget book until you guys, so that's a a large portion.

If you look at the first page.

At the very top, you'll see the approved current real estate homestead, current personal property, and Betty are in the 2026 approved because those are now approved.

If you look in the 2027 recommended column, you do not see those numbers until they're um approved by council.

So that's a large portion of the difference.

If you're looking at the 2026 approved and the 2027 recommended Yes.

I'm yeah, I'm still trying to figure out why we've gone from 100 million dollars in revenue to just over 20 million dollars in one year.

I mean that that's over 75 percent of our cash in.

As I mentioned, you're looking at an amount of 76 million that are is not in the spreadsheet currently.

That will be once you guys approve it.

So that first sheet on page 11 at the very top in the column that says 2026 approved.

Those numbers are what was approved for the tax rate, the Betty, the better.

Once those are finalized, those will get added in here, but currently they are not finalized, they don't get added into the recommended.

So that's a large portion of 76 million that isn't in your total at the end.

Uh I I guess so.

I just don't know when when do we get that information.

On Thursday.

Once you find once you finalize the budget, then those numbers go into those columns for the real estate taxes, the personal property, the homestead, and the Betty.

That's when those numbers get in.

So those are the numbers that are on that tax rate sheet that's right behind the city administrators memo, that very last page.

So those are the numbers that will get filled in.

If you were to approve this budget as is, those numbers that you see would fill in on those spots.

Okay.

So the 86.6 million in total tax levy.

Correct.

So if you were to carry them over now, you would get a much better number.

Right.

So you would have the 86 million in the the real estate and personal property along with down below the estimated homestead and Betty are down at the end.

Those numbers would then get put into that column.

All right.

But until it gets approved, we usually do not put those in that recommended.

Okay.

I guess I'm just I'm still unsure of how to proceed with decisions on spending without knowing revenue.

Counselor, if I may, um Dr.

Roy has already mentioned that we'll be covering this on Thursday in depth.

And if we can just put a pin in it until then, uh that's literally two days away.

Uh I think that would be great.

Is there can we reasonably assume that if if we were to take this on page 10 and add it to the total the bottom line on page 14 that that's approximately down on the tax rate, you'll see where it says loss non-tax revenues, you'll see the city.

There's that $22 million that you see as the total of recommended.

That is non-tax revenue.

So that's where that matches.

So if you were to then go and add the tax levy amount along with the Betty and Better, that would bring it up to what's needed for taxes.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Was not uh parent at first.

Thank you.

Uh counselor uh Chitam, yes.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh thank you both.

This is not a fun budget to look at uh and I appreciate the overview.

Um you're recommending an increase in the water uh that's requiring PUC approval.

Uh when when would the PUC approval process start?

I believe that the water district uh the water division would need to start that process in April.

I can confirm that with um Kevin Gagnon, director.

Okay.

It's been a long time since I was involved in PUC, but it seems to me that's a long process and I wouldn't want to count on those revenues until they've been approved.

So I'm I'm eager to get that PUC approval process started as soon as we possibly can.

Um the other suggestion I have is that we're talking about uh a mill rate and a revaluation that has not yet, to my knowledge, been finalized.

It makes it very difficult to compare last year with this year if we use the new city valuation of uh almost double what it was last year and make projections as to what the mill rate would be.

I would much prefer that during the process of this budget negotiation and discussion, we continue to assume the old valuation so that we can compare the 33, 3278 mill rate that we have now with what the mill rate would be under that valuation.

I realize there is a um a benefit to saying, gee, we're gonna cut our mill rate from 33 down to 19, but in actual uh in actuality that's because we're changing the the uh numera uh the denominator of that fraction.

So would it be possible for us to presume during all of these discussions that we are going to be talking about at a $2.2 billion valuation of the city and compare the 33 tax rate that we have today with the 38 tax rate that would exist until the valuation drops and there's the revaluation.

Does that does that make sense or is it make things more difficult?

I I think you could use that as a reference point.

I mean, sure.

So we have actually calculated and we'll go over that with you in further budget discussions.

We've taken a pro three properties valued at what they were under the 3278 and what they would be valued at, and of course, remember these are estimated valuations per what has already started with the Tyler technologies and taken that and said, okay, so if this house was 100,000, it will be this with the reval to do that calculation of the 1968, and then we take the old valuation with the 3278, and we'll show you the difference of what their tax rate would be.

Uh okay.

When you say tax rate, do you mean tax?

Tax rate.

Well, their tax, sorry, they're their tax bill.

Because the tax rate looks very good.

But the tax bill is what people are worried about.

They don't care whether the mill rate is 10 or 500.

What they care about is I'm writing a check for $7,000 this year and last year it was $6,000 or $5500.

I think it would help people make the comparison better if we can use the consistency of last year's valuation and then at the 11th hour come out and say, yes, your tax rate would have been 35 or 36 mills, but now because of the reval, we're cutting it down to 1918.

I it would be lovely to have it at 16.

Um the final point I'd like to make is that there is a very distinct benefit in having a lower mill rate, uh, and that is when industries and businesses look at Lewiston and they see a 33 mil tax rate and they compare that because we're at 40 percent, 47 percent, and they compare that with the tax rate of a municipality that's assessed at 100 percent and its mill rate is uh 12.

Why would they come to Lewiston and pay 33?

Um they're gonna pay the same five hundred thousand dollars for the building here as they are in another municipality.

So it's the rate, the lower rate is gonna make it very attractive for us, uh very attractive for businesses to come here.

So that's the silver lining on this whole thing.

And I wanted to make make that point clear.

Again, thank you for all your work and I look forward to working with you and my fellow counselors in getting this as tight as we can.

Thank you.

And I think it will be important for us going forward to continue to stress that just because the tax rate or mill rate is going down, that does not mean tax bills are going down.

It's just a different assessment.

So we'll be doing more uh as far as public education uh on the reval as we get closer also.

I think uh you can't, I think get this out there too many times uh with this process and what's happening.

Excellent.

Uh counselor Nagene, did you have something?

I did.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um thank you both for the presentation.

Uh I know that everybody's been working hard in order to uh put forward something that's palatable.

I'm just gonna tell you right now that it's not palatable.

Um ultimately uh the taxpayers and that have reached out to me are really really upset on several different levels.

And I'm just gonna break down a couple of things that I'm concerned about.

Enterprise accounts.

Um I appreciate the fact that we're raising the price for stormwater as well as uh for city water.

Um always enterprise accounts uh should equal the cost of running them.

You know, so that's I think very good.

But if the taxes are going up, the actual amount paid is going up for single family to homeowners whose uh houses are undervalued at this moment, and um stormwater and uh and and and uh um city water are going up, um that's just like a quadruple lambing.

Um and so um I know it's gonna be tough, but we're gonna have to look at places where we can make substantial cuts.

Um one of the things I'd love to get a hold of as soon as possible is a breakdown of all of the nonprofits that the nonprofit parcels that exist in this community, what housing type it is, or if it's undeveloped land, whatever it might be, um, and the ownership.

Um I think that there may be cases where we have single family homes that are running businesses that are have somehow um made themselves nonprofits.

Um we need to be taxing those businesses.

Um I also need to understand where going forward talking about the trash issues, and we know that the trash expense is gonna be great.

Um these um group homes, uh residency homes, uh community living arrangements, and home health care um houses are all businesses.

Those are not single family homes, those are not duplexes, they should not be getting uh um trash service, much like unless they're paying into it, much like uh a small business would have to pay into it.

It's these small things that I think going forward.

If we can find ways to cut into, we can start to shift some of the balance between if the homeowner is carrying the vast burden of the tax at this moment.

Um we need to make sure that every homeowner or every home that or every building that looks like a home is paying.

And so that that's what I want to make sure is happening.

Um so the I guess the big thing that I would want to see immediately is um a list of all of the properties, parcels that are listed as nonprofits, who owns them and what uh what type of structure it is, if it's a structure at all.

Um so that if if the entire council could get that, maybe we can start to take a look and see just how much trouble we're in as far as non-tax paying entities.

Um that's basically all I have to say for right now, we'll go into the other parts later, but I can just tell you that you know, looking at from what I understand at a $19 mill rate, um a home that was paying that is undervalued at this moment that was paying like four thousand dollars in in property tax is now going to be paying somewhere around sixty, four hundred dollars in property tax, something along those lines, and that's a general statement based on the new home value of like two hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars, I believe.

So I can tell you there's some initial estimates.

If you take a hundred a current home assessed at 150,000 now, um the assessment's gonna be increasing to about $350,000.

It would result in about an eighteen hundred dollar increase in your tax bill.

Um that's that's initial rough estimates.

Um your points about the you know the exempt properties were about one-third of the city is tax exempt.

So it's it's significant.

Um that number compared to our peers isn't totally you know out of line when you look at some other you know, cities, um, but it is significant.

And just uh you know, another point on the the 4.1 million and cuts that have already been made.

Um we pretty much walked that all the way up to the line of having to impact current positions with people in them.

So that's except and this is what I wanted to mention one.

So we did include the the public health coordinator position that is included in this budget.

Uh the total cost for that, including benefits is about 100,000.

So if we are looking for some immediate savings with you know positions that are not filled, that's one.

So there is one new position uh included in this in this budget, and that is the requested public health coordinator position.

But um, you know, we can also I think potentially look for grant funds uh on that, and that may be um one place to start taking 100,000 off if we're willing to either delay it a year or um you know we direct staff, let's look for some grant funds.

Let's look for another way to fund this uh and take that off at the start.

But I just wanted to mention there is one new position in this budget, and that's the public health coordinator position.

Thank you.

Uh, did you have anything further, Counselor Nagy?

You just really quickly from what I saw we were freezing 12 total positions.

Correct.

So there are only 12 positions that are unfilled right now in the city.

Uh I believe that's well, there may be some that are currently in offer phase or Mr.

Mayor.

We have additional positions at the police department.

Um there's a um we've basically frozen everything else.

Right.

We did leave three at the police department open.

So one of our major initiatives is a recruitment at the police department.

And so we did freeze another officer on top of what is already frozen, but we did leave three open.

Um it seemed to be obviously you know a prudent thing to do to leave at least a few police officer positions open, since one of our big initiatives is public safety and is police recruitment.

So those three are open, but the rest have been frozen.

But every single other unfilled position in the city is currently frozen.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

Further thoughts from counselors who have not spoken.

Uh thank you.

All right.

Counselor Chiddham, did you have a final thought?

Yes, I did want to point out to be fair, we did ask you to put that public health position.

Yes.

That's why it's in there.

We we we could be asking him to take it back out at this point.

But yeah, we will save that conversation for another day.

Uh thank you both.

Thank you, counselors.

Uh we have uh real work to do.

That's uh an understatement of the year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We are now uh counselor.

Yes, we have another final thought.

No, may I ask for copies of your presentation to be distributed.

Emailed out to everyone.

Thank you.

Yeah, he said they'll be emailed.

Thank you.

Uh we are now moving forward to the review of options for amending the municipal charter, and we have uh uh our chief counsel here, Mr.

Mike Kerry, please join us.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Counselors proceed.

So my understanding is you wanted me to go over an outline of the charter revision and charter adoption process um coming out of some conversations earlier in the year.

So I think it's helpful to kind of first back up to understand why Lewiston has a charter.

So there's Lewison is one of 104 of this according to MMA's estimates, 104 municipalities that have a charter.

There's 483 total municipalities in the state.

So if you if you don't have a charter, if you're a municipality without a charter, the legislative body is town meeting rather than the council.

So the existence of the council is because the citizens of Lewiston have adopted the charter through referendum.

And there's a number of other things in there, including how what criteria into which offices municipal um officials have.

Without a charter, you're relying on state statute.

The so when one of those, what is it, 379 municipalities without a charter decides to have a charter, they there would be a action at town meeting to set up a charter commission.

The charter commission would get together, would spend about a year going through and deciding what the charter should read and then proposing that to the voters at at a referendum.

Then the community would have a charter and would act accordingly.

Lewiston obviously has one, so now the question is well, how do you change that?

There's two ways to change that.

You can either change it through an amendment or a revision.

Now those two most people, if you say what's the difference between an amendment and a revision, they probably couldn't tell you.

The legislature hasn't either.

There's no definition in statute for what is it of revision and what is an amendment.

There's two different processes that you would go through.

Um but there wasn't that wasn't wasn't defined.

Five years ago, there was a law court case that laid out kind of what revisions are and what amendments are, building largely on case law from other states.

Um that's the Fair Elections Portland case.

It's a um it's a very well-written um and readable case, um, but it's as it was in the memo, the critical question is whether the proposed change is significant enough to require a potentially years-long inquiry into all aspects of the municipality's government.

So if you think about kind of high school civics class and how the U.S.

Constitution is changed, there's you can either have a constitutional amendment, which is and there's a very specific process of how many state legislatures need to adopt it and then Congress.

That's one thing.

So there would be, you know, there is the um 11th Amendment, and there's the 19th Amendment, and so on and so forth.

When you go as a um as a state citizen to a to the ballot box or as a congressional representative to vote on that, you're voting on that question.

You can't vote on anything else.

The other way to change the Constitution is to have a constitutional convention.

And you go in and you sit down, and you might be called on one thing, you know, the people maybe have an uproar around this one particular issue, but once the convention is sat, they can consider anything.

That's the Charter Commission.

The Charter Commission is the is the corollary to the constitutional convention.

So the um the to kind of finish out the fair elections Portland case, well, what's the difference between an amendment versus uh versus the um revision?

It's it defaults to a revision, right?

It defaults to the more exhaustive process.

It can be an amendment if two things are meant.

If the s if the breadth of the change is near is sufficiently narrow and the depth is sufficiently shallow, I guess would be the thing.

Um so the breadth would be the amendment would not materially affect the municipality's implementation and the course of its operations of major charter provisions that are not mentioned in the proposed amendment.

So there was uh an example in another um another city, another state, excuse me, of a proposal to recall the city administrator, city manager in that case.

That that was determined that that was in Michigan, the state court, the state um one of the state courts determined that that was a revision because that would affect enough other things in city government.

Um that's the breadth.

The depth is an amendment would not, if enacted, make a profound and fundamental alteration in the essential character or core operations of municipal government.

Um that is both of those are legal standards, they haven't been most legal standards can be fairly broad and somewhat um the this is much more helpful than there was before.

So now in Maine we have a definition of what's a or standard for what's a amendment versus a revision.

But that's that's only a starting point.

One second.

Thank you.

Kurt, and maybe you can turn that mic off.

It there's no light on there.

Okay.

All right.

Sorry for interrupting.

Please continue, Mr.

Kerr.

So kind of turning to the process.

So the basics of the process are the same.

So the basics, I mean how it begins and how it ends.

It ends with a vote of the people.

And so it has to be in its bisector ballot at referendum.

It can begin in one of two ways, and both of them can begin in one of two ways.

So there either can be a petition by 20% of Lewiston registered voters, 20% of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election, or it can be a proposal from the council.

So that's the beginning of the process, and the end of the process is the actual change to the charter needs to be by referendum as well.

You can't do it alone.

Um the charter uh commission that would exist in another community that didn't have a charter.

And so there's the members are both as a mix of elected and appointed.

And so the the there's a couple different ways that you could do and you could choose.

There's a couple different ways that you could call for elections, um, but the people would choose.

There'd either be six or seven, depending on which way you chose.

Um they would be elected as uh at the ballot.

Once they're elected, you would appoint three people.

Um and the the appointments, only one of them may be a counselor or a member of the council.

Um so that then the charter commission kind of has a life of its own as uh outside of you and outside of of the people.

Um it has they holds a public hearing within a month, and then it has nine months to do a preliminary report, and which would include the proposed charter revision, uh, and then it has 12 months to have the final report, which would be the final language, changes from the existing charter, um, any minority report, and an attorney's opinion.

That would after that is the report comes to you, and you then call an election on that charter.

So if you don't like it, use your bully pulpit, go to the people, vote against it at the polls.

You don't have an ability here to change the charter commission's proposal that's going to go to referendum.

Um to finish out, I've got a couple of examples of in uh three different cases.

Um one is in Maine.

The charter revision, the the two things that were proposed, limiting the number of special town meetings on budget issues and limiting the manner of voting to referendum only.

Those were those were determined to be charter revisions.

And this was um this was a Maine decision.

Now, notably two things.

First, this was a superior court decision, and it was before the Fair Elections Portland case.

So you know, question whether or not that might change.

Um it does seem on its face to be make sense that it might be a revision.

Um I spoke about the Michigan case that was a charter revision of making the manager subject to recall.

Uh a case in charter for charter amendments was a case in Laconia, New Hampshire.

Uh they eliminated council seats but left the council manager form of government unchanged.

That was a charter amendment.

Um the court determined was a charter amendment.

Now these are all court cases, which means that somebody was unhappy and appealed the decision, and there is a provision to appeal the ref actions under here to Superior Court.

So that's what I got.

Happy to answer any questions.

So uh I I guess just to recap, so um citizens could force a charter commission by having you know 20% petition of the last gubernatorial, correct?

That is correct.

Uh there also is a um it's not clear in the statute, but there is a there's a so citizens could force it a charter commission by asking for one.

Right.

Yeah.

The citizens could also ask for a charter amendment.

And so if you look in, I think it's subsection 4 or 5 of 2104, it says that that citizens committee, so it's a group of five people, they come forward and say they can choose to give you the choice to instead put it on the ballot as a charter revision proposal rather than amendment.

That is in fact, according to the the fair election portland case, that you have that authority whether or not they choose to put that language on the ballot.

And that comes and the rationale for the the court was that this is a these ways of adopting a charter and changing the charter are part of the home rule statute.

And so the you're as they the court has held that home rule, you're the legislative body is sitting as a gatekeeping function so that the citizens of the town don't have to uh pay uh minute attention to the the goings on of the municipality.

And so it's important for you to have more than just a ministerial act when you get a uh proposal for an amendment.

You have to decide whether in fact it is narrow enough and shallow enough that is in fact an amendment, or if you determine that it is broad on advice of an attorney, broad or or deep, you can choose that that wouldn't be a revision and call and put on the ballot as a charter revision.

Um so there's there's two ways in which, to answer your question, Mayor.

There's two ways in which a voter petition can end up as a charter commission.

One by asking for one, the second one by asking for a charter amendment, which in fact is too is too broad or too deep that uh to be a charter amendment in this in the choice of this body.

Understood, thank you.

Councilor Chitham.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, we've had recent experience in this.

Uh has Brandon Isaacson reviewed uh well, I know the answer to the question, the amendments that were made in 2021.

Those were determined to be amendments as opposed to revisions.

Is that correct?

Okay.

So we have we have a sense of where some of these boundaries are.

As long as we're making effecting fewer changes or smaller changes than were done by the review committee, which was created by charter in 2021.

Uh, we would be safe in saying these are amendments as opposed to revisions.

Either way, they have to be approved by the public.

That's right.

Um I have a specific question for you.

We have already initiated one uh request from council.

It will be on the ballot in November, and that is to change some of the language that was over that was a missed uh oversight in 2021.

There's another element, and that is the change of one letter in the charter.

The charter refuse refers to a section, subsection E, or D, I think.

I'm not sure which way it goes.

Um there was an additional section inserted before that.

So the reference is now incorrect.

Uh I believe the reference is to Section D and it should be to Section E.

Changing the letter from D to E is a charter amendment.

There's no other way to affect that change.

Um I don't know.

Um the I don't know.

Because the because it's it's I take your point that it's then characterization that it's that it's a um that it's a narrow uh clerical change, even.

Um it's but I don't know without looking and comparing the two two provisions if there's a reading of the charter that is that where D has a has an unambiguous clear meaning that might be different than that that could be um it could be immaterial even though looking at the legislative history one might think that it was it was a clerical change.

So I don't I don't know on that account.

The other question which I don't know is but I suspect um that you'd have to go out to the people because it's the charter.

That you can't just there was a there was a uh a TV episode at one point about whether or not there was a comma in the Constitution in one particular place and how that might have changed the materially changed the meaning.

So um to you know it is it's not something that can just be kind of uh changed, but I haven't I haven't looked into need to do that before.

Um I have prepared an amend uh an amendment for council consideration to change the D to an E.

Um and I think perhaps the conservative safe and transparent way would be to go through the entire process.

Now I don't know what the cost of that is.

Our city clerk may have an idea.

Uh it will cost money, it will cost time and effort.

Um it seems rather silly to have to do that, but I think it's important that we do.

So I'm going to be submitting that to the council for action.

I think I'm not too late for next Tuesday, is that correct, madam clerk?

Correct.

Okay.

So it's all ready to go, and what it does is change the reference from subsection D to subsection E.

Um and we'll go through the whole process, and that can be put on the ballot then for the November referendum.

Uh those are all my questions.

I thank you for your memo.

And I think that the council has a strong interest in taking a look at the charter, whether we do that through a uh charter revision, uh I'm sorry, a charter review.

No, a charter revision commission, a charter commission.

Right.

Uh of elected and I'm learning tonight that there are some appointed members on this charter commissioners.

Well, thank you for that.

I did not realize that.

Or the process that we've used to make some of these corrections uh to the 2021 changes, which is council initiated, and there's no review body at all.

It's simply the council puts this on the uh on the ballot and then the folks vote on it presumably in November.

That's correct.

So we we have some decisions to make probably after we go through the budget.

Thank you.

Yeah, and if I may build on your your question, I think you pointed out a thing that I meant to include and didn't.

The charter does include the charter review committee language.

That is neither fish nor foul.

That is a kind of a separate committee that's created by you to report back on changes that may be needed whether or not they would be um revisions or amendments and so that's actually specified in the charter.

That's right.

Every year ending in one we're required to create a charter review committee, which may come back with hey, everything's fine.

That's right.

In 2021, it did not, and it made some changes and didn't make others.

Council Airman.

Thank you.

Um I just had a question on timing.

So do the typical standards for referendum questions apply to this, or is there a separate time frame as far as getting this kind of a question on the ballot for a referendum?

Um there are specific the the language in the statute in a couple places when it calls for refer referendum, says the next municipal referendum or next general election.

I think so there's there's specific elections that are described, and there are timelines um put out there.

Um it is so there are some timelines in here I wouldn't in the existing statute for the home rule.

You would need to add to those other timelines in the charter or really in Title 21A to make sure for things like oversee ballots, for example, which would probably be added into to these.

Okay, thank you.

Uh further questions, comments from the council?

Mr.

Kerry, any further thoughts from you?

No, thank you for your time.

We appreciate you very much.

Thank you so much.

And uh that concludes our Tuesday evening workshop.

You all have a wonderful evening.

Thank you, counselors, and thank you, staff.

Madam Clerk, thank you for being in the audience.