LISBON, Maine — Five years after running for Congress, former state Rep. Dale Crafts was back in front of a crowd to propose a major change to his town’s form of government.
“Unfortunately … four people on a seven-person town council can decide a majority vote on our destiny,” he said. “Four people!”
Crafts was describing what he sees as the failures of the Lisbon Town Council that he’s now running to join. But he was also describing a strategy that he and three longtime friends are using to try to take over the town council before potentially dismantling it.
The former Republican lawmaker is the face of one of the hottest property tax revolts in Maine. His Androscoggin County town of nearly 10,000 residents weathered a 20% property tax bump that was crafted to fill a multi-million dollar budget hole caused by a clerical error, years of inflation and high spending.
Town councilors approved that $13.9 million budget in July. Since then, Crafts and other conservatives in the town have focused on opposing the school budget, the only one that residents control. Lisbon has voted the exact same school budget down twice. A slightly slimmed-down version will be on the ballot for a third time alongside the town council race.
This happened in large part due to Crafts. Using his pre-existing political action committee, he purchased mailers arguing for no votes on the school budget. The 66-year-old said he thought he had retired from politics after losing to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District in 2020, but the tax revolt brought him back in.
“I’ve worked hard all my life and I wasn’t planning on being up here,” he said at a candidate forum at Lisbon Community School on Tuesday. “I’m here to try to make a difference. I feel compelled by God to do this.”
Crafts’ message that longtime Lisbon residents may be priced out of their homes by rising property taxes has resonated. While most of the nine candidates for council expressed an openness to making cuts and looking for ways to reduce property tax increases, Crafts is campaigning most stridently on austerity and riding a wave of anger at the town budget.
His political group has spent $16,000 this year, with much of that going toward the school and municipal elections. He is promoting a trio of longtime friends, Roger Bickford, Greg Garnett and Eric Metivier, with matching lawn signs. With four open council seats, that slate alone could elect the next council chair and control the flow of business.
Crafts is running against three political newcomers for a two-year term on the council. For the other three open seats, his allies are taking on incumbent Jo-Jean Keller and Charlie Turgeon, another candidate drawn in by the ongoing budget crisis.
Turgeon, a project manager on military projects, is running a more moderate campaign than Crafts, saying he rejected his opponents’ “cut, cut, cut regime.” But he has promised to examine the scope of government and find ways to reduce future budgets by outsourcing and privatizing some services.
Turgeon became involved earlier this year when he organized a petition to require the town to hold referendums on town budgets going forward. That eventually resulted in the town council asking voters whether they want to establish a charter commission, which would be tasked with revising Lisbon’s governing document. In addition to four council seats and the school budget, that question will also be on the November ballot.
If voters approve a charter commission in November, it would kick off a long process of review that could change how Lisbon functions, including possibly reverting to a town meeting form of government in which voters would decide the local budget. The council would hold no direct power to disband itself, but its members could hold sway with a future commission.
If elected, it would not be Crafts’ first time on the council. He served on the town’s very first council after its creation by the town’s current charter, made in 2006. He says he’s longed to return to town meeting budgeting since then.
“After I served on the first town council form of government, I said to myself, ‘this isn’t good,’” he told residents last week. “And look where we’re at.”
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
