HOULTON, Maine — Houlton has depleted its 2025 legal budget handling Freedom of Access Act requests from residents and defending itself against related legal actions, town officials say.

In a recent letter to town councilors, Town Manager Cameron Clark pointed to those FOAA lawsuits as the “overarching reason” for the increased spending on legal costs this year.

In a pie chart prepared for Monday night’s Town Council meeting, he noted that two-thirds — about $49,402 — of the total legal expenditures for the town came from generic costs.

The remaining one-third of the expenditures, $15,799, paid for services related to legal actions by two specific residents, whose names were listed on the pie chart. According to Clark, those additional costs were what exhausted the remainder of the budg

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