Lewiston presents challenging FY27 budget with 7.1% operating increase

[3:25] Carl L. Sheline: Hello and welcome to our Tuesday evening workshop. We're kicking things off with the budget presentation. We have Director Roy here who will be joined shortly by Administrator Cain Rath, and if you two can please kick it off, that'd be great. We're proceeding, please proceed, okay. [3:57] Bryan Kaenrath: good evening mayor counselors brian cairns the administrator tracy roy finance director so we are here this evening to present the fiscal year 27 proposed budget so I will just say it at the outset this was a very difficult budget and we are just beginning that process here with the council but we faced a number of headwinds and seemingly in every direction this year as we'll illustrate during this presentation so this was a very challenging budget will be a very challenging budget going forward over the next few months. The city of Lewiston is not alone in a lot of these challenges. When you look at our neighboring communities and really communities across the country, many are in the same position with regard to increasing costs, really all over the place. So to start out, our proposed municipal budget for 27 is 73 million seven fifty seven and thirty five dollars. That is the municipal city side of things, not the school department. We'll get to in a moment, but you'll see the city operating budget is up seven point one percent. The county budget is up twenty point five percent. Debt services up thirteen point three percent. These are really difficult numbers, and we'll dig more into that in a moment, but the first big point I want to really stress is the numbers you see, the 7.1% of 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 from that just to get down to 7.1. So there's already been a really, you know, quite a bit of work done 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 for the next year. We'll see in a moment, though, we're going to talk about freezing open positions. So that was one primary focus, but we've already found $4.1 million in savings. To be honest, we may have to find some more, but that brought us down to 7.1%. So these are some of the reductions. I don't know if we have to go through all of these. We can, we're also going to email this presentation to you all so you can look at it later also. But we are proposing another 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 a highway and street line painting, forty five, $25,000 in parks and open space, 42,000 for armory ongoing renovations, and also an informational sign that we're going to place in the front, 250,000 out of the small business grant program, $58,000 in public art. Some of these we looked at and they already, they have some other funds they're able to use, so it's not completely decimating these budgets, but none of these cuts are easy. None of them are fun. But really got to the point of it's either people in seats or it's some of these other items. There's also two hundred forty thousand dollars removed from the salary reserve fund. So we also went through capital. Some of these have been shifted to the LC IP. There's police vehicles. There's a port-a-cal machine at the fire department in Public Works. There's a whole variety of things from guardrails to wait system replacement, waste disposal, roll-off containers, parks and open spaces again, trees, dugouts, play equipment, municipal garage. There's vehicles, almost $1.7 million in vehicles there that we had to take out, and also smaller items like $20,000 in office equipment citywide. So some of the major budget drivers, you know, what has caused us to land in this place, a number of things. First of all, most of our workforce is under labor contracts. Those contractual increases are something we grapple with every year, so that's number one. But there were other costs including workers comp, rising health insurance rates, retirement, software maintenance and licensing, that was another big one, the county budget again this year at twenty point five percent increase, very significant, about a million dollars just on that, the police building lease payments. We also saw this was significant, there was a drop in 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, 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 over, just over $7 million, correct, last year in the use of fund balance. So that's seven million. We had you know, this year is coming. It's coming home to roost also. So continuing on with our expenditures personnel expenditures again. We just mentioned all of those contractual obligations about 1.2 million fringe benefits were up another about. So the proposed FY 26 frozen 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 proposing additional frozen, freezing 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 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 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 that was the police station lease joint agencies including transit and la 9-1-1 another 344 thousand dollars and we've seen higher costs with fuel winter materials building maintenance equipment repairs 5% increase from the county. That's in there as well as the debt service and the joint agencies transit and LA 911. So that's just under $3 million of increases just in those three categories. Turning to our city revenues, also not an overall great picture here. Our excise tax is up about $327,000. General assistance aid is down about 100 due to decreased utilization of GA. We have we have reimbursed from the state 70% on that, so it was just a lower utilization that caused $100,000 drop there. Rent, small change, about $13,000 up. Parking revenue, small change, about $10,000 down. We also saw an investment earnings decline, $289,000. That's not uncommon, what's happening out there. And here's the big one. This is the state revenue sharing, just over a million dollars lost this year in state revenue sharing, and that's another hole for us to cover in our budget. So capital expenditures, there's only $50,000 in the operating budget. Fund balance, as I said, we're recommending zero utilization of fund balance. We have about $24,600,000 for bonds. On the school side, about $9.5 million for bonds. Fund balance, so just said a moment ago, we're not recommending any use of fund balance this year. Last year, there was about $7 million dollars used. So you see our current, we're currently sitting at 10% for unassigned fund balance. 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 and a floor of 14, just about 15 million. So we're currently sitting at 10. We're not recommending any use of that this year. It's close enough to eight to cause some concern. This also impacts things like our bond rating, which is really important as we as we go in that direction. So we're currently seeing a 10, we're recommending no use of fund balance for this year, turning over to the school department, the school side of things. So their overall budget, their expenditures are up 11 percent. The revenues are up just under that, 10.9, carry forward fund balance, $14,000, small 0.4%. But so, again, city side, we're up 7%. School, we're up 11. County is up 20. So all of these numbers are challenging. Just a note, March 16th, we have our workshop with the school committee, 5.30 p.m. at the Green Liddle. Assessed value. As you know, by now we are undergoing our first citywide reval since the late 1980s. This is resulting in a 90.1% increase in overall assessed value of about $2 billion. I'll say again, an important point to remember here is this is not more revenue for the city. This is an equitable redistribution of the tax burden across the city. So the city is not taking any 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 assert, we are certified about, I think it's 47, in the 40s, assessed to market value. State law requires you to be at 70, so we are well under that. It is extremely under that. So for anyone that asks why are we doing this reval now, it is, it is well overdue. We are completely off the mark and where we need to be by law. And so it's, it's important for us to make sure these values are, you know, where they're, where they should be. We have, you know, everyone has a story about 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, not even close. So but that's, we're gonna, we're seeing probably about another two billion dollars in assessed value added through the reval process. This is just a quick graph on to see what the county tax has been. So for FY 27, we're seeing a twenty point, twenty point five percent increase. But it's, it's good to note that in 26 there was a fourteen point five percent increase, in 25 there was a sixteen percent increase. You'll get 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 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 rebound with the reval. We're going to have 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 no rate, is we're at 32 78 per thousand dollars of assessed value. That is projected to drop 40% to $19 and 68 cents, a 13, $13.10 drop. So that's again as the budget is presented now, what it would cost to fund that. But there will be undoubtedly future changes in the next month or two. Moving to our enterprise funds, so remember enterprise PRIZE FUNDS ARE SEPARATE FROM THE OPERATING BUDGET. THESE ARE FUNDED BY USER FEES OR WATER SURE AND STORM WATER. SO YOU SEE OUR REVENUES AND EXPENDITURES FOR THE THREE CATEGORIES. YOU CAN SEE THE REVENUES ARE LESS THAN THE EXPENDITURES, WHICH IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO TAKE NOTE OF. SO YOU ALSO SEE OUR PROJECTED 27 ENDING CASH BALANCES, WHICH ARE ALL POSITIVE. So starting with water, revenues are up About 12.2 percent, expenses are up 24.3 percent. What's driving it? Payroll, benefits, debt service, operating expenses, as well as capital. So there is a recommended 10 percent rate increase for the water utility this year. Moving to sewer, revenues are up about 9.7 percent, expenses up 8.7 percent. Again, what's driving it? Payroll, benefits, debt, operating, treatment plant, as well as capital. No rate increase recommended for sewer this year. Stormwater, revenues are up 7.3, expenses up 5.1. Some of the same story, payroll, benefits, debt, operating, and capital. There's a recommended 7% increase in the stormwater utility this year. So that is the high level summary. Of course, over the next couple of months, we're going to be digging a lot deeper into this. We're going to have departments here. We're going to 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, most notably our finance director Tracy Roy. Thank you for all of your work on this is not an easy budget departments are absorbing a lot of cuts they're absorbing frozen positions and the outlook is generally difficult we will get through this. Doesn't mean we won't get through this, but this budget, 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 just to get to this point, which is never easy. These conversations are not easy. It's not easy to continue to maintain good morale 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. But I want to thank them for all of their cooperation and their understanding. We are going to put together a budget, and I know we are, that's going to be responsible, maintains good services, but also is mindful of the tax rate, of the tax burden on the residents and property owners for the city of Lewiston. So I think we have a lot of work to do. We've already done, you know, quite a bit of it, but this is gonna be a process over the next month or two. So again, I will say that the city of Lewiston is not alone in facing budget challenges. You look at some of our neighbors around the state, around the country, and this is happening in a lot of places. So again, thank you to everyone involved in the budget thus far, and we look forward to the next month or two of workshops and getting this together and coming up with a final document that you know obviously does the best job we can with some significant headwinds this year so thank you thank you both appreciate [20:24] Carl L. Sheline: your help yes and thank you to all the staff you know budget should be a reflection of our values and so yeah we will we have a lot of work to do i think that goes without saying and i appreciate the work that's already been done on the budget so thank you very much yes i will entertain high-level questions at this point but also asking the counselors to recognize that we do not have department heads and i don't want to get into the weeds this evening council [20:52] Scott A. Harriman: herman thank you excuse me i'm just looking at page 14 in our binder the revenue summary and i'm just wondering over the past couple 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 [21:14] Bryan Kaenrath: 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 so that's the first state estimate so you'll see that's decreased I'm only recommending taking 95% of that and not [21:42] Scott A. Harriman: 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 [21:57] Bryan Kaenrath: going through that I believe Thursday night is revenues so we'll be going over all the changes and all the differences and why there's those changes so a large portion to is also we used to within solid waste we used to put invoices and we're 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 [22:27] Scott A. Harriman: have a list of what's changed and why but this is this is over a 75 decrease in our total revenue as a city which seems like a 10 alarm fire to me are you looking at the approved 14 right so [22:44] Bryan Kaenrath: 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 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 approved by council. So that's a large portion of the difference if you're looking at the 2026 approved and the 2027 recommended. [23:33] Scott A. Harriman: Yes, I'm yeah, I'm still trying to figure out why we've gone from a hundred million dollars in revenue to just over twenty million dollars in one year and that 's over seventy five percent of our Cash in as [23:52] Bryan Kaenrath: I mentioned, you're looking at an amount of seventy six 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. Okay. [24:34] Scott A. Harriman: I'm saying, I guess so, I just don't know [24:37] Bryan Kaenrath: when do we get that information on Thursday? Once you find, once you finalize the budget, then those numbers go into those columns for their 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. [25:17] Scott A. Harriman: So the so that 86.6 million in total tax levy, correct, so if you were to carry them [25:25] Bryan Kaenrath: over now, you would get a much better number, right? So you would have the 86 million in 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 proved, we usually do not put those in that recommended. Okay. [25:52] Scott A. Harriman: I guess I'm just, I'm still unsure of how to proceed with decisions on spending without knowing revenue. [26:02] Carl L. Sheline: Councilor, if I may, Director Rory 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, that's literally two days away, I think that would be great. [26:16] Scott A. Harriman: Is there, can we reasonably assume that if we were to take this on page 10 and add it to the bottom line on page 14, [26:27] Bryan Kaenrath: that's approximately right, so if you look a little further 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 [26:54] Scott A. Harriman: needed for taxes, okay, all right, thank you, that was not apparent at first. [27:03] Carl L. Sheline: Thank you, Councillor Chittim, yes, Thank You Mr. Mayor, thank you both, this is not [27:11] David B. Chittim: a fun budget to look at, and I appreciate the overview, you're recommending an increase in the water that's requiring PUC approval, have, when would the [27:22] Bryan Kaenrath: PUC approval process start, I believe that the water district, the water division would need to start that process in April, I can confirm that with [27:33] David B. Chittim: 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 eager to get that PUC approval process started as soon as we possibly can, the other suggestion I have is that we're talking about 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 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 evaluation so that we can compare the 33, 32, 78 mill rate that we have now with what the mill rate would be under that valuation, I realize there is a benefit to saying gee, we're gonna cut our mill rate from 33 down to 19, but in actual, in actuality, that's because we're changing the numerator of 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 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 MAKE SENSE OR MAKE THINGS MORE DIFFICULT? I THINK YOU COULD USE THAT [29:10] Bryan Kaenrath: AS A REFERENCE POINT. 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 a hundred thousand, it'll be this with the reval. To do that calculation of the 1968 and then we take the old valuation with the 32 78 and we'll show you the difference of what their tax rate would be. [29:55] David B. Chittim: Okay, when you say tax rate, do you mean tax rate? Well, they're tax, sorry, they're, okay, 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 rates 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 5,500. 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 the reval we're cutting it down to 1918. I, it would be lovely to have it at 16. The final point I would like to make is that there is a very distinct benefit in having a lower mill rate, 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 a tax rate of a municipality that's assessed at a hundred percent and its mill rate is 12, why would they come to Lewiston and pay 33? 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 going to make it very attractive for us, very attractive for businesses to come here. So that's the silver lining on this whole thing, and I wanted to 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. [31:41] Bryan Kaenrath: 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. We're going to be doing more as far as public education on the reval as we get closer. I think you can't, I think, get this out there too many times with this process and what's [32:03] Carl L. Sheline: happening. Excellent. Councillor Nagine, did you have something? I did. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank [32:10] Joshua L. Nagine: you both for the presentation. I know that everybody's been working hard in order to put something that's palatable. I'm just going to tell you right now that it's not palatable ultimately the taxpayers and that have reached out to me are really upset on several different levels and I'm just going to break down a couple of things that I'm concerned about out. Enterprise accounts, I appreciate the fact that we're raising the price for stormwater as well as for city water. Always enterprise accounts should equal the cost of running them. So that's, I think, very good. But if the taxes are going up, the actual amount paid is going up for single family homeowners whose houses are undervalued at this moment and stormwater and city water are going up that's just like a quadruple whammy and so I know it's gonna be tough but we're gonna have to look at places where we can make substantial cuts one of the things I'd love to get a hold of as soon as possible is a breakdown of all of the non-profits that are non-profit parcels that exist in this community what housing type it is or if it's undeveloped land whatever it might be and the ownership I think that there may be cases where we have single-family homes that are running businesses that are that have somehow made themselves non-profits we need to be taxing those businesses I also need to understand where here going forward talking about the trash issues and we know that the trash expense is going to be great these group homes residency homes community living arrangements and home health care houses are all businesses those are not single family homes those are not duplexes they should not be getting trash service much like unless they're paying into it much like a small business would have to pay into it 's these small things that I think of 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 we need to make sure that every homeowner or every home or every building that looks like a home is paying and so like that 's what i want to make sure is happening and so i guess the big thing that i would want to see immediately is a list of all the properties parcels that are listed as non-profits who owns them and what type of structure it is if it's a structure at all so that 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 taxpaying entities and 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, a home that was paying, that is undervalued at this moment, that was paying like $4,000 and in property tax, is now going to be paying somewhere around $6,400 in property tax, something along those lines, and that's a general statement based on a new home value of like $255,000, I believe. [35:52] Bryan Kaenrath: So I can tell you there are some initial estimates. If you take a current home assessed at $150,000 now, the assessment's going to be increasing to about $350,000. It'll result in about an $1,800 increase in your tax bill. That's initial rough estimates. Your points about the exempt properties were about one-third of the city is tax exempt. So it's significant. That number compared to our peers isn't totally out of line when you look at some other cities, but it is significant. And just another point on the 4.1 million in cuts that have already been made. We pretty much walked them into the city. 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 public health coordinator position. That is included in this budget. 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's one new position included in this budget, and that is the requested public health coordinator position. But you know, we can also, I think, potentially look for grant funds on that, and that may be one place to start taking a hundred thousand dollars off, if we're willing to either delay it a year or, you know, we direct staff, let's look for some grant funds, let's look for another way to fund this, and take that off at the start. But I just wanted to mention there is one new position in this budget, and that's that public health coordinator position. Thank you. Did you [37:31] Joshua L. Nagine: anything further, counseling aging? 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. [37:41] Bryan Kaenrath: I believe that's, well, there may be some that are currently in offer phase or, yeah. [37:50] David B. Chittim: Mr. Mayor, we have additional positions at the police department. There's a, we've basically frozen [37:56] Bryan Kaenrath: everything else, right? We did leave three at the police department open, so one of our major initiatives as 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. 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 it's police recruitment. So those three are open, but the rest have been frozen. [38:24] Joshua L. Nagine: But every single other unfilled position in the city is currently frozen. Yes. [38:31] Carl L. Sheline: Yes, okay. Further thoughts from counselors who have not spoken? Thank you. All right, counselor [38:42] David B. Chittim: Chittum, did you have a final thought? Yes, I did want to point out, to be fair, we did ask you to [38:46] Carl L. Sheline: put that public health position, yes, that's why it's in there. We could be asking him to take it back out at this point, but yeah, we will save that conversation for another day. Thank you both. Thank you, councilors. we have real work to do. That's an understatement of the year. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We are now councilor Tridem. Yes, may I ask, no, may I ask for [39:11] David B. Chittim: copies of your presentation to be distributed, emailed out to everyone? Thank you. Yeah, he said [39:15] Carl L. Sheline: they'll be emailed. Thank you. we are now moving forward to the review of options for amending a municipal charter, and we have our chief counsel here, Mr. Mike Terry. Please join us. Thank [39:41] Unidentified speaker: you, mayor. Thank you. Yeah, [39:48] Carl L. Sheline: no, please proceed. So my [39:51] Unidentified speaker: Understanding is you wanted me to go over an outline of the charter revision and charter adoption process 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, Lewiston 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 officials have. Without a charter, you're relying on state statute. So when, if one of those, what is it, 379 municipalities without a charter decides to have a charter, 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 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, to most people, if you say what's the difference between an amendment and revision, they probably couldn't tell you. The legislature hasn't either. There's no definition in statute for what is it a revision and what is an amendment. There's two different processes that you would go through and 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. And so that's the Fair Elections Portland case. It's a, it's a very well written and readable case, but 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 municipalities government. So if you think about kind of high school civics class and how the US Constitution has changed, there's, you can either have a constitutional amendment, which is, and there's a very specific process of how many state legislation need to adopt it in Congress, that's one thing. So there would be, you know, there's the 11th amendment and there's the 19th amendment and so on and so forth. When you go as a, as a, as a state citizen 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're going 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 to kind of finish out the fair elections Portland case well what's the difference between an amendment versus the revision, it defaults to a revision, right? It defaults to the more exhaustive process. It can be an amendment if two things are met. If the breadth of the change is sufficiently narrow and the depth is sufficiently shallow, I guess would be the thing. And so the breadth would be the amendment would not materially affect the municipality's implementation in the course of its operations of major charter provisions that are not mentioned in the proposed amendment so there was a an example in another city another state excuse me of a proposal to recall the city administrator city manager in that case that was determined that was in Michigan the state the state one of the state courts determined that was a revision because that would affect enough other things in city government. So 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. So that is, both of those are legal standards. They haven't been, most legal standards can be fairly broad and somewhat, this is much more helpful than it was before so now in Maine we have a definition of what's a standard for what's a amendment versus a revision but that's that's only a starting point one [45:08] Carl L. Sheline: second can you move the other mic further away because I think we're getting some feedback thank you Kurt and maybe you can turn that mic off it's there's no light on there all right sorry for interrupting please no mr. [45:23] Unidentified speaker: 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 bi-secret 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, There's 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. The difference is there's the charter, in the revision process, the charter commission comes in. in so it's the same charter the Charter 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 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 but the people would choose there either be six or seven depending on which way you chose they would be elected as at the ballot once they're elected you would appoint three people and the appointments only one of them may be a counselor or a member of the council so that then the Charter Commission kind of has a life of its own as outside of you and outside of the people it has they hold 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 and then it has 12 months to have the final report which would be the final language changes from the existing Charter 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 so to finish out I've got a couple of examples of and in three different cases, one is in Maine. The charter revision, 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 determined to be charter revisions. And 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 it does seem on its face to be make sense it might be revision I spoke about the Michigan case that was a charter revision of making the manager subject to recall a case in charter for charter amendments was a case in Laconia New Hampshire they eliminated council seats but left the council manager form of government unchanged that was a charter amendment the court determined was a charter amendment now these are These are all court cases, Which means that somebody was unhappy and appealed the decision and there is a provision to appeal the actions under here to superior court. That's what I got. Happy to answer any questions. [49:18] Carl L. Sheline: I guess just to recap, citizens could force a charter commission by having 20% petition of the last gubernatorial, correct? That is correct. [49:30] Unidentified speaker: Correct. There also is a, 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 four or five of 2104, it says 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 fair elections Portland case that you have that authority whether or not they choose to put that language on the ballot and that comes in the rationale for the court was that this is a these ways of adopting a charter and changing a charter are part of the home rule statute and so the you as they the court has held That home rule, your the legislative body is sitting as a gatekeeping function so that the citizens of the town don't have to pay minute attention to 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 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 deep, you can choose that would be a revision and call and put on the ballot as a charter revision. 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 to be a charter amendment in this in the choice of this body. Understood, thank you. [51:28] David B. Chittim: Councillor Chittim. Thank you Mr. Mayor. We've had recent experience in this. Has Brandon Isaacson reviewed, 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, 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. I have a specific question for you. We have already initiated one 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 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 and there was an additional section inserted before that, so the reference is now incorrect. 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. I [52:56] Unidentified speaker: don't know the I don't know because that because it's it's I take your point that it's the in characterization that it's that it's a that's a narrow clerical change even it's but I don't know without looking and comparing the to two provisions if there's a reading of the Charter that is that where D has a has a unambiguous clear meaning that might be different than that could be 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 in that account the other question which I don't know is I suspect that you'd have to go out to the people because it's the Charter, you can't just, there was a, there was 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 to, you know, it is, it's not something that can just be kind of changed, but I haven't [54:00] David B. Chittim: haven't looked and it would need to do that before I have prepared an amendment, an amendment for council consideration to change the D to an E. 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. It will cost money. It will cost time and effort. 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? Okay, so it's all ready to go and what it does is change the reference from subsection D to subsection e and we'll go through the whole process and that can be put on the ballot then for the November referendum. Those are all my questions. I thank you for your memo, it's very clear and I think that the council has a strong interest in taking a look at the Charter, whether we do that through a Charter Revision, I'm sorry, a Charter Review, no Charter Revision Commission, Charter Commission, right, of elected and I'm learning tonight that there are some appointed members on this Charter Commission as well. Thank you for that, I did not realize that or the process that we've used to make some of these corrections 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 on the ballot and the folks vote on it presumably in november. That's correct. So we have some decisions to make probably after we go [55:39] Unidentified speaker: through the budget. Thank you. Yeah and if i may build on your question 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 revisions [56:02] David B. Chittim: or amendments. And so that's actually specified in the charter. That's right every year ending in one. That's right 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. [56:22] Scott A. Harriman: Council chairman thank you. 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 [56:37] Unidentified speaker: kind of question on the ballot for a referendum. There are specific the language in the statute in a couple places when it calls for refer referendum says the next municipal referendum or our next general election I think. So there's there's specific elections that are described and there are timelines put out there. 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 21 a to make sure for things like oversee ballots and for example which would probably be added into to these. Okay thank you. Further [57:21] Carl L. Sheline: questions comments from the council. Mr. Carry any further thoughts from you. No thank you for your time we appreciate you very much. Thank you so much and that concludes our Tuesday evening workshop. You all have a wonderful evening. Thank you counselors. Thank you Stan I'm Clark thank you for being in the audience.