Audra Caler’s response to my recent column about the need for greater creativity in the provision of municipal services did a surprisingly good job making my case for me. Indeed, she confirmed much of what I have been arguing for a number of months.

First, and most importantly, Ms. Caler confirmed that our towns are led by people who do not see any problem with the staggering increases in municipal spending that we’ve all been made to endure in recent years. 

Camden’s municipal spending (not counting county fees or school spending) has increased by an average of 10.9 percent a year for 10 years straight. The town spent $7.3 million in Fiscal Year 2017 and is budgeted to spend an eye-watering $15.3 million this year. Rockport’s spending has risen by an average of 13 percent per year over that same time period, skyrocketing from $5.4 million in Fiscal Year 2017 to $12.6 million in Fiscal Year 26, a 131 percent increase.

The two towns combined went from spending $12.7 million in FY 17 to $27.9 million this year. 

Yet, Ms. Caler has the nerve to suggest that this is somehow a revenue problem, not a spending problem. What we need, she argues, is more and higher taxes, not less spending.

She doesn’t say this directly, of course, she uses slippery politician-speak instead, saying that we need the tax code to “better capture” certain type of commerce, that we should “revisit” tax exemptions that she thinks “no longer serve a clear public purpose,” and that we should expand “locally optional” revenue “tools”, such as lodging taxes. 

What she is being careful not to say here is that in her mind, the thing that no longer serves “a clear public purpose” is you keeping more of your own money. She would very much like to spend that money for you, but unfortunately for her, the public seems to be getting quite angsty about this — "resistance to municipal budgets,” she notes, is “growing.”

But what of the argument I made that maybe we could regionalize in order to provide these services at lower cost?

Ms. Caler disagrees, arguing that regionalization of any kind amounts to a cut in services. To her way of thinking, there is zero efficiency to be gained though regionalization, which invariably results in “fewer services, slower response times, or higher long-term costs.” 

The services that Camden now provides to its overtaxed citizens simply cannot be provided in any other way, she argues, without “degrading public services.” Those town lines laid down in 1891 simply cannot be crossed, no matter what the cost to taxpayers.

Ms. Caler offers zero evidence to support any of this, of course, so let me suggest a way to test her assertion by casting our eye further south, to the town of Freeport. 

Freeport, all by itself, has about the same population (8,737) as Camden and Rockport combined (8,876), and is about the same size graphically (34.7 square miles, compared to a combined 39 square miles for Camden and Rockport). Freeport has a higher median household income than our towns do, but we have far higher combined property values.

Way back in 2020, when our two towns combined were spending $14.4 million on municipal government, Freeport was spending $10.4 million to provide a nearly identical set of services over a similarly sized area for a population the same size as ours. 

This year, while Camden and Rockport are busily not working together to spend a combined $27.9 million for these same services — a 90 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2020 — Freeport will spend $15.6 million. While their municipal spending has risen 51 percent since 2020, ours has nearly doubled.

Ms. Caler would have you believe that Freeport’s more reasonable level of spending growth has nothing to do with the fact that it is able to achieve economies of scale in the same way Camden and Rockport might if we had the kind of creative approach to municipal governance that I suggested and that Ms. Caler so clearly distains.

But how does it make sense for Camden and Rockport to each build a new Public Works building in the years ahead (Rockport anticipates theirs alone will cost a whopping $10 million), rather than share those services and split the costs for buildings and equipment across the two towns?

Freeport, by the way, will spend $3.1 million on Public Works this year, while Camden and Rockport will spend a combined $5.6 million. And somehow this is a revenue problem?

If you don’t like Freeport as a comparison, how about Skowhegan? Same population as our two towns but nearly twice the size. Their spending is up 54 percent since FY 20 compared to the 90% increase we’ve seen here.

Maybe Yarmouth? It’s smaller, but almost exactly our same combined population, and is a loverly coastal enclave a property valuation that is nearly as high as our two towns combined. Its municipal spending is up only 45% since FY20, half what we have seen here.

How about Topsham? Slightly smaller than our two towns combined but nearly a thousand more people. Their budget is up only 11 percent since FY 20.

Rockland is a lot closer to home, and while it is smaller geographically and has 1,700 fewer people than our two towns, their municipal budget is up only 50 percent since FY 20—it increased less than 1 percent just last year. Mysteriously, they are part of the same Knox County that Ms. Caler blames for recent property tax increases. How can that be?

We don’t even need to look outside our own towns to see that regionalization contains spending growth. Spending by Midcoast Solid Waste is up 52% since 2020, and spending by Camden Rockport Schools is up only 40%. Camden’s municipal spending grew at twice that rate.

No, Ms. Caler is trying to change the subject here—trying to make a spending problem into a revenue problem—because she simply doesn’t want to regionalize any services. Period. And she doesn’t feel any pressure to do so, it appears, because the Select Board that employs her obviously shares her view that spending people out of their homes is not a problem that they need to address in any substantive way.

It is good to hear that, as Ms. Caler observes, pressure from taxpayers is starting to be felt. There is little evidence to date that the leadership of either town intends to do anything meaningful in response (I’d welcome members of either Select Board to describe a single step any of them has taken to address exploding town spending in a significant way), but municipal budgets are being developed as we speak, and we’ll soon find out whether they have heard us.

And if it turns out that they haven’t, then we all get to go to the polls in June (both towns, it should be noted, got rid of in-person town meetings right around the time that town spending started to skyrocket—just a coincidence, I’m sure) and make our own voices heard by finally voting “no” on out-of-control town budgets and, more importantly, by putting a new generation of leaders into office who aren’t trying to use 18th century thinking to meet the needs of 21st century towns.

Steve Bowen lives in Rockport