Voters in Washington County are being asked to approve an $8 million bond to fund an emergency budget shortfall in county government. Residents said they're shocked by the number, and how this could have happened. But county officials said after years of poor accounting practices, it's the only way to pay off the county's debt and keep critical operations running.
In Machias, Helen's Restaurant owner Julie Barker said there's a lot of talk about Washington County finances, and the $8 million bond on the ballot that will be decided in less than two weeks.
"So I say, just try and get it done," she said. "I hate to see people have to pay a little extra."
Barker said it’s hard to grasp how the budget issues grew to create such a problem, but she doesn’t see a way out other than the bond.
"The amount still has to be paid regardless," she said. "So we're going to be paying for it regardless of if it doesn't pass."
She's not the only one who feels that way. Other area residents and county officials agree it's a bad situation, but the bond seems the only responsible solution.
But some residents said they won't vote for the bond and shouldn't be responsible for fixing the county's accounting mess. And at a press conference with county officials Thursday, some residents questioned why the public wasn't informed of the problem sooner
"At first, people are very angry, they don't understand how this happened," said county manager Renée Gray. "Who do we hold accountable? Well, the long and short of that is this all happened through public process."
Gray said at the root of the issue is past accounting practices that failed to verify that the expenses matched the actual money in the budget accounts. She said that lead commissioners to unknowingly spend down the county's reserve funds. The problems were discovered last year when the auditor worked on the 2021 audit and were linked to accounting deficiencies as far back as 2020.
"We didn't know what to do," Gray said. "Basically nobody knew what to do. And so this plan has come out from teamwork, from our delegates, from our commissioners, from our budget committee, from our department heads. Everybody has been all hands on deck with this, and that's what they're deciding."
The county has always borrowed money to fund operations- since its budget starts in January but tax bills aren't due until September. But this year the county has no way to pay back the roughly $8 million it borrowed.
That debt payment is due Dec. 31. If the county just doesn't pay the bill, Gray said it won't be able to get a loan for 2026 operations. And she expects the county would run out of money in February.
"And so essentially, the county could run out of cash to fund the payments that we have going out, including payroll, and people don't work for free," she said.
But it can't just terminate operations, state law requires the county to offer certain services. So if the bond question is rejected, the money will have to be found somewhere.
And the majority of the county's costs are for the sheriff's office, emergency dispatch and the jail. Washington County has no other emergency dispatch center. The state police no longer patrols the county, and many towns don't have their own police departments.
"It's a terrible combination of things, we knew this was going to be very, very painful," said Brian Schuth, the chair of the county's budget advisory committee and Eastport city manager.
"It's ugly," he said. "We're not in a position, really, to comfortably be able to take that on. We don't have a lot of financial resiliency in this county, but we owe the money and it's going to have to be paid."
He said the bond would allow the county to pay off the debt and continue to operate while giving towns the flexibility to pay it back over ten years. Without it, the only option is to put the entire $8 million in the 2026 budget.
"We understand people are very angry, and there's people who want to vote no just to punish the county," Schuth said. "But in the county is us. It doesn't matter who you're mad at. You're punching yourself in the face."
Maine law does not allow counties to declare bankruptcy. State Sen. Marianne Moore proposed a bill seeking a state bailout should the bond effort fail, but it was not accepted by the legislative council. Moore and others have reached out to the governor's office.
