NEWRY — The Board of Selectmen has raised the property tax rate to $8.50 per $1,000, an increase of 15 cents.

“We are very lucky to have Sunday River Skiway,” Town Administrator Loretta Powers. “The assessor said other towns are going up 7 to 12%,” she told Selectmen Tink Conkright and Mandy Berry, and Deputy Clerk Amy Henley at the Aug. 15 meeting at the Town Office. Chairman Gary Wight was absent.

Powers said assessors suggest raising the rate from $8.35 to $8.50 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

The total taxable real estate valuation went from $611.49 million to $632.48 million.

The town will need to raise $5.58 million from taxes.

The Oxford County assessment is $634, 391 and the Maine School Administrative District 44 assessment is $3.57 million.

In a discussion to consider revising the 2005 comprehensive plan, Planning Board member Ted Baker said because the town has development districts the state requires an updated plan. He said not having one could create a problem if a builder wanted to challenge the Planning Board. The plan would also help the town with getting grants.

Code Enforcement Officer Joelle Corey said plans can take from 18 months to two years to develop. Just adjusting the tables for population, growth and deaths took her over a year, she said.

Powers said they have $8,782 left from previous years that could be used. They decided to get an estimate and discuss it at a future meeting.

Corey also spoke about nuisance alarms, an issue that arose in the past few years with an increase in short-term rentals.

“The short-term renter doesn’t know how to silence the alarm, doesn’t have the code to tell the alarm company when they call, ‘hey we just burned toast. OK give us the code’ They don’t have that. So the fire department gets called.”

She said the fire chief and Fire Department volunteers have responded to the same alarms as often as two times in one night.

Corey read part of a proposed ordinance she worked on with the fire chief and which the department approved. She said the fine for a 911-initiated alarm three times in a calendar year is $250; more than four in that time would be $500 for each additional nuisance alarm.

She said nuisance alarm is defined by law in the state statute.

The ordinance will go to a public hearing.

In another Fire Department issue, Powers said there is $37,000 from the town’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act. A generator for the Sunday River Fire Station would cost $5,500 and heat pumps are $14,000. She will get an estimate for installation. Turnout gear for firefighters is another consideration.

Powers was authorized to order signs for cemeteries directing people to the sexton or the Town Office to record death and burial plots.

Conkright said because people are bypassing funeral services the town has no record of where ashes or sometimes bodies are located. Selectmen will meet with the cemetery committee.

Powers said she met with representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency regarding Winter Storm Elliott on Dec. 23 and 24, 2022, and the town should be getting $4,271 from FEMA and $854 from the Maine Emergency Management Agency in the next few months.