The Lewiston City Council held a combined budget workshop and regular meeting on March 17, 2026, starting with a workshop on the FY27 budget followed by a regular meeting that included a St. Patrick's Day proclamation, presentations from the Maine Resiliency Center and on the CDBG consolidated plan, and votes on several ordinances and licenses. The meeting lasted over five hours, concluding with an executive session.
Hello, and welcome to our Tuesday evening workshop. We're kicking this off with uh Director Roy, acting Director Blaze, and Administrator Cain Rough. This budget, as mentioned, the revenues will be adjusted when the tax rate is towards finalized. And at the end, we will adjust the TIFF budget and submit a new one before you approve in May. The revenues you'll see are increased. Those are from the CMP TIFF last year was not approved until after we approved our budget, so those weren't adjusted until afterwards. So you'll see that adjustment. The increases in salaries are the percentages for different wages that were requested on page 72. You will see the title of each salary and the percentage of what is going in the TIFF account for wages. And then on the LCIP at time, as I mentioned at our uh first meeting, the time to ask questions on the capital projects are the times that the department heads are here. I have LCIP originally I had put page 29, but it's not. I'm sorry for that confusion. It's 20 and 21 for the Continental Mill TIFF at million dollars and the Lowell Street development TIF at 850. And Director Um Blaze is here to ask answer any questions you have on this department. Counselors, do we have any questions? Councillor Chidam. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh yes, uh salary line increases of 11 and uh 11 percent. Can you talk to that briefly? Correct. That is for all of the percentages last year, if you remember during the budget season for fiscal year 26. We looked at all of the wages that could come out of the general fund and be um paid for by the TIFF when the CMP TIF came on. So that's what all these wages are. Okay, thank you. So this isn't a uh a salary increase as much as it is a shifting of expenditure from general fund to tax increment financing. And as I mentioned on page 72, you'll see the titles and the percentages of every individual that is in that TIFF. We have a lot of partial people. Right. Thank you. No other questions. We will move to economic development, which is on page 67. In prior years, we've requested 250 for the economic reserve and public arts for 58,000 was requested by the department. These two items were removed from the budget when the city administrator was reviewing the budget due to the amount of funds that are still available in that economic reserve. And on your page two that I gave you, has the projects and the balances that are left in all of those reserve. So if you look like the pilot business attraction still has 213,000 mill five environment, 435. So that gets you what is still available in that reserve from year to year for the projects. So the city administrators requested no more increase for this account to bring the tax rate down. Any questions on economic development? We talked about public art. Um there is if you notice still a balance for public art for them to accomplish some projects uh that you see there. So I just want to make it clear that we didn't completely uh gut funds for public art available. We really appreciate the work the committee does. Um public art is uh part of beautification and approving the city's image, and so there are still funds available for that. I just want that to be clear because we did talk about um cuts to public art in our initial presentation, but you'll see there are funds still available here for that purpose. Thank you. Further question, uh yes, counselor Chitum. Yes, the revenue for public art. Uh where did that come from? I I view that negative actual $6100 as a revenue.