Wiscasset Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blagden said Friday night, after a 14 percent property tax hike in 2016, this isn’t a good time to be adding jobs.

“Hiring new people turns me off,” Blagden said in the panel’s first meeting since getting the 2017-18 budget draft. Members wondered if some jobs could go, including some at the transfer station, and some of the proposed new ones department heads are seeking.

Member Bryan Buck said it looked to him that department heads had an easy time keeping their budgets flat for next year. He maintained, for them to be able to do that, this year’s budget must have had room to spare.

Wiscasset has long been over-budgeted, Blagden said. But he and others said the mix of duties within and between departments makes it hard to pinpoint which, if any, positions to change or drop.

The town should have departments evaluated for their efficiency, member Kristin Draper said. “That’s the only way you’re going to be able to get a handle on where the excess is.”

That’s never a bad idea, Blagden said.

Draper noted consultants evaluated the police and ambulance departments in recent years; that should be done with all the departments, she said.

Among questions members compiled for town officials, the panel wants to hear more about a proposed seven percent raise for the public works director. Other department heads were getting two percent, they said. They recalled from a budget presentation Feb. 25, town officials saying the public works director’s raise was to bring the pay in line with other department heads’ pay.

Committee members said a raise that high should be based on duties being added to a job, or a higher level of education being attained; and they said paying all department heads the same wouldn’t make sense; the job skills and duties differ, they said.

On a proposed new police officer for harbor master, animal control, shellfish warden and other duties, members voiced a two-fold concern about the prospect of parking revenue helping to cover the cost. They said if the state’s downtown project doesn’t happen, the parking revenue might not, either. And committee secretary Fred Quivey said a proposed new job should stand on its own merits.

Selectmen and budget committee members plan to review capital improvement at 5 p.m. March 13. A budget workshop is set for 5 p.m. March 14. Both sessions are at the municipal building.