Wiscasset selectmen on Sept. 17 put the tax rate at $17.77 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation — a 4.24% hike and the one Town Manager Dennis Simmons recommended. 

In an email to selectboard leadership the day before, Simmons noted Maine Yankee’s  assessment was still to be determined. “Remember, if we settle on anything less than their current assessment, the difference … will come from the fund balance and affect future tax rates. We maxed out the overlay last year. (We are allowed 5% of the commitment by statute). Having a healthy fund will help ease the blow of having to accept a lower (Maine Yankee) evaluation.”

Simmons had Wiscasset’s assessors’ agent Ellery Bane draft options with different overlay and state revenue sharing amounts. He explained in the Sept. 16 email, which Selectmen’s Chair Sarah Whitfield read aloud to the board: “During the last five years state revenue sharing has exceeded their own estimates. I am always leery, what the state giveth, the state can taketh away. Revenue sharing numbers are running strong for the first two months. The election could take things in a different direction, but today I feel comfortable recommending” the most overlay the state allows — 5% of the commitment — and figuring in an increase in revenue sharing, for the $17.77 rate.

Last year’s was $17.047.

Whitfield concurred with Simmons about preparing for a possibly lower assessment for Maine Yankee. “I’d like to make sure we’re covered with whatever happens with (that). And if it all works out great, then we can have that happy problem.”

“Do we have any reason to be optimistic,” Selectman Terry Heller asked.

“I don’t want to get into that discussion publicly yet,” Simmons said.

The $17.77 rate passed 5-0. 

Other options presented Sept. 17 were the maximum overlay but with no revenue sharing increase, for an $18.077 rate, which would have been 6.04% higher than 2024’s; half the allowed overlay and no revenue sharing increase, for a $17.65 rate, which would have been a 3.53% hike from 2024’s; and half the allowed overlay but with a revenue sharing increase, for a $17.35 rate, or a 1.77% hike. 

Simmons included some neighboring towns’ latest, single year rate hikes, ranging from Alna’s 9.5% to Edgecomb’s 31%.

From 2020 to 2024, Wiscasset’s rate rose a total of 9.65%, he said.

Also Sept. 17, Wiscasset Ambulance Service Director Erin Bean recognized members of Wiscasset’s police, fire and ambulance departments and Woolwich’s fire and emergency medical services departments for their response to and help at Dresden’s fatal car crash Sept. 2. “I cannot stress how appreciative I am that we have a wonderful working relationship with our Wiscasset Fire Department and the mutual aid partners …” Wiscasset Patrol Officer Jonathan Barnes “stepped up” at the scene and, at her request, served as incident commander, Bean said. 

The board tabled JAR Cannabis Co.’s business license request. Simmons said rental space the business had proposed at Marketplace Plaza was too near a church to meet the town’s marijuana rules. But it turned out JAR wants to amend its application anyway because the business has found a property to buy, Simmons said.