Making Haggett’s Garage a parking lot would lose future taxes on the property and give Wiscasset more to plow, Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blagden and member John Merry said Nov. 10. Prepping for the new budget season, members touched on the state’s downtown improvement project and some other items they said could impact expenses in the years ahead.

Maine Department of Transportation’s project manager Ernie Martin has said no decision has been made on where to put a new parking lot but that Haggett’s Garage on Water Street has been eyed. Coastal Enterprises put the century-old building on the market as part of the nonprofit’s move to Brunswick. Thursday night, Blagden said the expanded waterfront parking that is also planned ought to provide enough spaces without a new lot on Water Street.

Regarding a tax loss if the building is leveled, member John Merry said, “The price keeps going up.”

The former garage’s interior now looks like a law office, and the property is near the waterfront, so it could produce good property taxes in private hands, Blagden said. He said he wished the traffic changes could be made without some of the other parts of the plan.

As for some citizens’ recent surprise at learning the town would bear maintenance costs following the project, member Lonnie Kennedy-Patterson said the state has always been clear about that.

Also, Blagden weighed in on the ambulance service’s new subscription program. For a yearly fee, subscribers are spared ambulance costs not covered by their insurance. Blagden described the program as insurance, which he said is a leap of faith on the town’s part because some users might need an ambulance several times a year.

It’s not insurance, committee member Kristin Draper, an emergency medical technician for the ambulance service, said. If a subscriber needs an ambulance while in Damariscotta, another ambulance service would respond, at no cost to Wiscasset, Draper explained. Ambulance services across the country offer subscriptions, she added. “It’s far-reaching.”

The panel took its first look at spreadsheets member Fred Quivey compiled on departments’ budgets dating to 2014. The information and other documents it refers to by number will help in budget work, Quivey said. ”There isn’t a line item that we couldn’t go and look at in a fairly good level of detail. We can literally do it in minutes.”

Quivey also suggested sending department heads an advance list of questions to address when they present budgets to the committee and selectmen. Members discussed possibly asking selectmen for workshops over a course of night meetings rather than the usual daylong one on a Saturday.

Speaking on town spending as a whole, members emphasized the importance of maintenance to avoid bigger costs later. Better to fix things than replace them, Blagden said. And, where possible, better to make repairs in-house than farm them out, he added.

Putting off addressing facilities’ needs doesn’t save on taxes in the long run, Draper agreed. “It sets us up for failure. I don’t want to pay a huge increase because multiple departments are having multiple catastrophic failures.”

The committee meets next at 6 p.m. Dec. 8, at the municipal building.