Bath approves $24.8 million budget, taxes set to rise 5.4%

Bath City Council unanimously adopted a $24.8 million municipal budget Wednesday, locking in a spending plan that will push the combined city, school and county tax bill on a $300,000 home up by about $260. City officials said the full package translates to an overall property tax increase of about 5.4%, a figure that will land directly in household budgets across Bath.

The biggest pressures in the city budget came from personnel costs, benefit costs and facility improvements, the same drivers Bath City Manager Marc Meyers identified when he rolled out a $24.7 million proposal in April. That earlier plan was about $2.4 million, or 11%, higher than the previous year. It also added two positions, a recreation program director and a police officer, and initially pointed to a 1.69% city-side tax increase, or about $30 on a $300,000 home, before the wider school and county impact was folded in.

For residents, the difference between the city number and the final tax bill is where the squeeze becomes most visible. The council’s vote gives Bath departments, vendors and school partners a spending framework for the next fiscal year, but the bill homeowners receive will still reflect the cost of keeping local government running, maintaining facilities and staffing core services. The unanimous vote showed broad agreement on the city’s direction, even as the final tax impact remains significant.

The school budget will play a major role in that total. Regional School Unit 1’s budget totals $47.7 million, and Bath, Woolwich, Phippsburg and Arrowsic were scheduled to vote on it June 9. That means the tax burden Bath households see will depend not only on the city budget approved Wednesday, but also on decisions made across the school district and county level.

The new numbers also come after a year in which Meyers said Bath’s fiscal year 2026 property tax increase was 3.01%, making the latest 5.4% combined increase a sharper climb for homeowners. Bath voters approved a $24.6 million sewer bond in 2023 to upgrade aging infrastructure, and the city says it has made progress reducing pollution and sewage overflows into the Kennebec River. Those long-term investments, along with staffing and facility costs, are now part of the same household equation as the tax bill itself.