Bob Mills — a former city councilor and York County treasurer who resigned both positions in April 2024, after being summonsed on OUI charges by the Biddeford Police Department –lost his 2025 bid to return to his Ward Four council seat and is now again running to recapture his county treasurer seat and is also running to represent Ward 4 on the city’s Charter Review Commission.
Here, Mills offers Gazette readers his thoughts regarding local social service organizations and their city funding requests
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Editor:
I am not discounting any organization or member, at all.
We’ve had to tackle the social service budget and all the years I was on the city council, and it’s always been a struggle on who to fund and who not to fund.
So just to put a little reasoning in your thought process while in this budget session.
We are not dealing with free money. This is the taxpayers money.
Many taxpayers don’t want money going to some of these organizations so I think that’s often left out in the thought process. It’s no different than getting a fundraiser email or something in the mail you could choose to donate to it or not.
So, asking for $4 million plus in a budget for social service funding is totally unreasonable. It doesn’t matter what organization that you stand for or you believe in not everyone believes in it so taxpayers money as a whole shouldn’t be used to fund the budget of social service agencies.
People can choose to donate individually to these organizations. One of the things I struggled with as a city counselor was funding organizations where the executive Director was making millions of dollars and pay when they were asking for donations to our social service fund. I want to stress to everyone that taxpayers money should be used discreetly and responsibly for funding our services such as police fire and roads, there are our upmost importance in any community.
Bob Mills | Biddeford
BIDDEFORD GAZETTE 