At their regular meeting on June 23, the Nobleboro Board of Selectmen set the 2010 tax rate at 10.1 mils, the same as the tax rate last year.
Though the tax rate will remain the same, taxes for some Nobleboro residents will go up slightly, due a decrease in the state’s funding for homestead exemptions, said Dick Spear, chairman of the selectmen.
This year, the state is only granting $10,000 per household that receives a homestead exemption instead of the $13,000 it granted last year. This means that for about 400 households in Nobleboro that receive the exemption, their taxes will increase by about $30 per household, Spear said.
Nobleboro residents can expect to receive their tax bills by July 2, Town Clerk Mary Ellen Anderson said.
Gallagher replaced former chief Woodbury McLean, who was voted out of his position by the department on June 14. The department will elect a permanent chief at their next regular meeting, scheduled for early July, Gallagher said.
“[The selectmen] will support whatever the department chooses to do,” Spear told Gallagher at the meeting. “You can remain as acting chief for as long as you need to, to get things settled down.”
Gallagher said that in the near future he wants to host a few fire department fundraisers and other events to reconnect the department with the community.
“We want to get back to where the department was a few years ago,” Gallagher said after the meeting. “It’s going to be difficult, but we’re trying to rebuild.”
The board voted 2 to 1, with Selectman Deb Wilson opposed, to set the fee for sign permits at $30, and the minimum fee for building permit applications at $30.
Sign permits do not apply to road signs, but only to signs on businesses, Spear told the rest of the board at the meeting.
Prior to this vote, there was no minimum fee for building permit applications. The decision to change both of these fees came at the recommendation of Code Enforcement Officer Stanley Waltz, the board said.
Wilson opposed the fees because she argued that they needed to be slightly higher in order to adequately cover the cost of processing the applications, she said.
“I don’t want to see taxpayer dollars paying for people’s applications,” Wilson said at the meeting.
For every application, Waltz has to go to the property and inspect it, and the town office has to process the paperwork, both of which involve costs to the town.
Both of these fees are in line with the fees levied by other Lincoln County Towns, the board said.
