The “honeymoon cabin” Donald Jewett and Kristina Ryberg built overlooking Bucksport’s Thurston Pond represents their life together — and years of hard work.
The property is one of three the couple own in town, along with 40 acres next door where they once ran a cabin rental business, and a home.
Though their retirement savings are limited from years of self-employment, Jewett, 71, a logger, and Ryberg, 62, a former teacher, have been able to pay their property taxes on time in the past despite increases that have raised the bill for their home alone by almost $5,000 in three years.
But now, they can’t afford it, and hope paying portions each month will keep the town from filing a tax lien. Their taxes rose sharply and unexpectedly this summer, and they aren’t the only ones.
The couple believes the troubles boil down to the fact that the town hasn’t faced reality.
“We cannot live like a mill town and not have a mill,” Jewett said.
For a decade, Bucksport kept property taxes down using about $8 million it saved to prepare for the 2014 closing of the Verso Paper mill, which had made up more than 40 percent of its tax base.
After the closure, local government maintained services, invested in infrastructure and courted new industry while attempting to shelter residents from rising costs that have hit Maine communities in recent years. Officials have said their decisions were in line with the priorities of local elected leaders and necessary to help the town bounce back. Voters also approved more expensive projects.
Now, Bucksport has spent almost all of that cushion and is entering new territory as it looks to make spending cuts. Other Maine communities that have lost major employers and taxpayers have faced similar challenges, but Bucksport’s new turbulence stands out given how well it has otherwise defied the image of a down-on-its-heels former mill town.
Bucksport’s most recent audit revealed the town has abruptly come close to running out of savings that aren’t already committed to specific uses, which municipalities are advised to keep on hand for unexpected expenses. The town spent about $2 million of such savings in the last three years to deflate property taxes, according to Ron Smith, who represents its auditing firm.
He warned councilors earlier this month that they need to “take a look in the mirror” and hit a “hard reset” on their financial strategy.
The balances can likely be rebuilt in two budget years, according to Smith, and town finances are otherwise healthy.
But his warning indicates the end of an era for taxpayers and of the town’s strategy for responding to the mill’s closure, which local leaders and outside observers have viewed as a success for years. Among other things, Main Street is mostly full, local property values are up and the tax rate has remained lower than it was in 2015.
Yet those numbers are cold comfort to people like Jewett, who had assumed the town would steeply cut services and expenses after the mill shuttered. Instead, he’s working long hours and selling more timber to cover his taxes and additional interest he expects to accrue from late payments.
“We worked all of our lives to get something so that when we retire, we can just maybe not work so hard,” he said. “…I don’t mind working, but I don’t want to work and go underwater all the time, and every step I take, the town is grabbing.”
He and Ryberg are particularly concerned about the number of older residents in town who live on fixed incomes.
“It’s time for people to speak up. We’ve had enough,” Jewett said. “I’ve had enough.”
Susan Lessard, who retired in June after managing the town for a decade, said Bucksport made its best effort to move forward after the “crushing blow” of the mill closure and provide the community services it needed, along with creating a path forward by attracting new businesses and residents.
“Neither of which would happen if the town rolled up the sidewalks, made no investments in its infrastructure, and eliminated public safety or recreation or other services that people relied on in as low tax impact [of a] way as possible,” she said.
A mix of businesses now populate Bucksport’s downtown and industrial park, and it is generally viewed as having successfully redefined itself among former mill towns. That was a priority for many in 2014, when efforts sprang up to beautify and promote Main Street.
Officials have stressed the importance of not becoming reliant on another large taxpayer, though much-celebrated plans announced seven years ago for a land-based fish farm on part of the mill site have failed to materialize and were recently cut down by 85 percent. The site also houses a power plant and Maine Maritime Academy training facility, and a local church bought mill buildings across the street.
If the Whole Oceans fish farm had gone as planned, it was expected to pay at least $1 million a year in equipment taxes by 2021, according to Lessard. A tax-increment financing district on the site was additionally predicted to provide another $4.27 million across 20 years.
Throughout her tenure, the town worked to keep costs down while facing a need for increased public safety staffing, Lessard said. Things looked good through 2019. But when the pandemic brought new, unexpected financial and social challenges, much of the rainy-day savings had already been used.
In 2021, Bucksport had about 90 days worth of its operating budget on hand, the recommended amount for Maine municipalities, according to Smith’s audits. Last June, that dropped to 60 days, and by June 30 of this year was down to 30 days.
In the fall of last year, Lessard said that Bucksport still had a couple million left to keep taxes down. More recently, during the Aug. 7 audit review meeting, Councilor Steve Bishop said that he’d recently been told more than a million dollars remained.
But the 2024 audit showed the town’s unassigned general fund balance had dropped by more than 80 percent that fiscal year, from roughly $1.6 million to $312,153. The town policy governing fund balance is also out of date and has provisions that are no longer relevant.
Lessard said that she had not seen the recent audit, which wasn’t available until after her retirement, but noted that nearly a million dollars had been spent to match grants for major projects the town committed to before the pandemic.
That money was originally meant to be borrowed instead of spent from savings, she said.
Now, property owners have grown worried and in some cases suspicious of officials, packing into the Town Council’s Aug. 14 meeting to describe the challenges they face and ask for spending to be cut.
Jane Cirillo, who owns a building on Main Street, said she’s behind on last year’s taxes because of illness and won’t be able to catch up unless the town waives late fees and interest. She was critical of the use of funds for downtown improvement projects such as replacing retaining walls instead of keeping taxes down.
A younger resident, Ryan Messinger, bought his first home in Bucksport five years ago thinking it would be affordable but had to leave his job and start his own business to keep up with taxes, he said.
Councilor Paul Rabs argued at the meeting that voter complacency has caused the situation. He placed the blame on small numbers of voters approving school budget hikes and expensive projects such as a $9 million downtown improvement design that requires a $1 million local match.
That project, through the state’s Village Partnership Initiative, is in question because it primarily relies on federal funds. If it does move ahead, the town would now have to borrow its $1 million contribution. The town would also have to take on debt for any major projects in the future.
Rising education costs have also added to the budget crunch, according to current Town Manager Jacob Gran, who noted that Bucksport’s share of the RSU 25 budget has increased by $1.2 million in three years.
Two years of budgeting without the use of surplus funds should put the town back in a healthy position, according to Smith.
“The town certainly will be able to bounce back from this,” Gran said. “We’re going to need to evaluate some of the services we provide and look into all avenues…the biggest piece of this is going to be input from residents, in terms of what are priorities to them.”
Residents have argued for reducing town staff, ending downtown improvement efforts, regionalizing emergency dispatch and privatizing other services such as waste management.
Council members additionally discussed leasing municipal equipment instead of buying. They also may consider adjusting operations at the town marina, which consistently loses money.
But some fear the damage has been done for residents who were already struggling to make ends meet. Ryberg warned Bucksport will become a “ghost town.”
“If it goes up again next year, like it has been, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Jewett said.
