RAYMOND – At the June 3 town meeting, Raymond voters will have a chance to weigh in on a proposed budget that increases property taxes 2.67 percent, an $885,000 capital improvements bond, and a $50,000 appropriation toward a 347-acre community forest project along Conesca Road.

Facing a revenue shortfall, Raymond officials hope to make up the gap and also fund new capital improvements through the property tax hike and substantial surplus spending. Last year, the town sold an easement on a cell tower on Patricia Avenue, and used $705,000 from the sale as one-time revenue.

Facing a sharp decline in revenue, this year’s proposed budget would use $428,500 from the town’s nearly $2.2 million surplus account, increase spending $51,695, or 1.2 percent, and raise the property tax rate by 30 cents per $1,000 of valuation, according to Town Manager Don Willard. The size of the proposed budget is $4,377,307.

This year, the municipal budget is responsible for $2.42 of the $11.25 property tax rate. School and county taxes made up the remainder.

In mid-May, the Raymond Board of Selectmen scrapped the town warrant’s final article – Article 45 – a 10-year $817,000 bond issue that would have potentially allowed the military to construct a 19-acre recreation complex on Farwell Drive off Egypt Road. The selectmen removed the article after a Sebago Technics soil scientist found an abundance of wetlands, vernal pools, frog eggs, salamanders, tadpoles and beaver dams on the proposed complex site.

The surviving $885,000 bond issue, attached to Article 44, would fund a new $600,000, 5,000-yard sand and salt storage facility, and partially fund a $425,000 replacement fire engine. The interest costs on the 10-year bond would amount to approximately $104,000 over the life of the loan.

According to Selectman Mike Reynolds, Fire Engine 2, the truck slotted for replacement, is more than 20 years old.

“This fire truck probably should have been replaced by now,” Reynolds said. “It’s a 1992 fire truck, and it’s tired.”

Reynolds said that the town stores sand outside during the winter. The new storage shed, which would supplement the existing shed, would allow the town to store sand, salt and equipment indoors.

“The other half of the current sand-salt building will be used to get equipment currently living outside to be covered during inclement weather,” he said.

Warrant Article 10 would appropriate $50,000 toward the potential purchase of 347 acres of forest in North Raymond that stretches from the cliffs of Pismire Mountain to just beyond the shores of Crescent Lake. The town would appropriate $30,000 from the Open Space Fund and $20,000 from the Timber Harvest Funds to provide matching funds toward the purchase. The land, which has been owned by the Hancock Land Co. since the 1950s, would be converted through a conservation easement into a permanent community forest, according to John Rand, chairman of the Raymond Conservation Commission, which is lobbying for the purchase.

“The community forest model is a project that conserves land for recreation for a community, namely hiking and skiing and biking and recreational trails and other traditional uses of natural undeveloped land, and it includes the ability for the property to be managed for timber to provide income and to provide the forest industry with raw material, namely wood,” Rand said.

For three years, the commission has been working with the Loon Echo Land Trust in an effort to create a community forest in town. According to Rand, the fair market value of the property is roughly $600,000. But Hancock has offered the trust an option to purchase the property for $506,000 before the end of the year. The commission and the trust have applied for grants to fund the purchase from the Land for Maine’s Future Program, the U.S. Forest Service, the Hancock Charitable Trust and the Portland Water District. The trust and the commission also aim to raise private funds toward the project, Rand said, in order to supplement any federal, state and municipal contributions.

According to Loon Echo Executive Director Carrie Walia, the town’s contribution is a key factor in the grant process.

“The state and federal funders typically require that $1 be matched to every $1 they contribute in grants,” Walia wrote in an email. “So funds have to be raised locally, and having the town contribute is essential to attracting other funders to the project. If the town doesn’t support it financially, it’s very hard to convince others that they should.”

Rand said that if voters reject Article 10, the trust would likely not be able to purchase the 347 acres.

“The whole thing won’t happen if we don’t approve this first authorization step, and that’s what we’re doing in Article 10 at town meeting,” he said. “If we didn’t pass this next Tuesday then it would likely make our grant application null and void. The project would most likely not go forward.”