Government

Budget Q&A session sheds light on warrant format, issues

| Joanne Cole, NGX |

With no town meeting this year and absentee voting getting under way, the select board held a Q&A session on June 22 for the community to learn more about the budget and how warrant articles will appear on the ballot. Questions about the form of the warrant and what will happen if citizens vote down one or more articles dominated the two-hour session, along with advocacy for keeping the assistant librarian position at its current 36 hours with benefits.

Select board chair Linda Chase opened the meeting by encouraging citizens to request absentee ballots for the July 14 election and budget vote. She then proceeded to read each of the forty warrant articles in turn—a sample ballot can be viewed here—and inviting questions on it. Some 25 citizens attended remotely via Zoom.

The form of the warrant was a particular focus of discussion and concern. The ballot will run to eight single-sided stapled pages, deputy clerk Sharlene Myers said, with each article presented as a Yes or No choice, most often for a single, stand-alone town account. For example, Article 8 of the warrant covers only Fire/Rescue account 117 from the budget, and Article 9 is Public Works’s account 116. In this way, citizens can signal approval or disapproval precisely.

Voters will not have the option of choosing the budget committee’s recommended amount where it differs from the select board’s recommendation, Myers and Chase explained. They can at a town meeting, but not on this ballot. On advice of the Maine Municipal Association, the warrant articles offer voters only a Yes/No on the select board’s recommended budget amounts. So although the text of each warrant article notes the budget committee’s dollar recommendation, the actual vote is only on the select board’s figure.

Residents expressed dismay. Voters might think that voting No on the select board’s recommendation will count as voting for the budget committee’s alternative recommendation. (It won’t.) “People are going to be confused,” resident Kathleen Potter said. “Give them a spot to say yes or no for the budget committee number.” Chase explained that the board’s hands were tied: the warrant-by-ballot design decision “came straight from Augusta.”

What if one or more warrant articles are voted down? residents wanted to know. The select board would get 60 days to address anything that fails, Chase said. “We would have to begin the process again” with a special town meeting, or more likely another written ballot, she said, given Covid-related restrictions. Any affected department would continue under its current budget. What if a revised amount isn’t adopted within 60 days, resident Peter Bragdon asked. “We’d have trouble,” town manager Fox-Howard said.

Article after article whipped by, including the budget’s largest proposed expenditures, without audience comment. All momentum ceased, however, when Chase reached Article 13, the library budget. The select board has proposed $87,860 for library operations, with the library director at 36 hours per week and assistant librarian at 20 hours. The budget committee has recommended $91,140 with the assistant at 24 hours, but only the select board’s number will go to voters for approval or rejection.

Neither recommendation maintains the position’s current 36 hours and benefits, as residents once again requested, and as they had in calls, emails, and comments at other public meetings. Board member Joe Davis explained that “bringing back some of the hours” for an assistant librarian “was better than none” and the board was trying to keep taxes down. Board member Tammy Donovan noted that the added cost of fully funding the position—“a paltry $27,000, as one resident put it—would have minimal impact on the mil rate. Donovan described the community turnout for the library as “astounding.”

Resident Ellie Fellers commented that “it seems disrespectful to the community” for the board to ignore the strong public sentiment. Fellers predicted citizens would vote down the library budget; board member Donovan explicitly encouraged them to.

For her part, town manager Brenda Fox-Howard had shared her view that the library doesn’t currently function “as a modern library.” It’s time to reevaluate the library and consider “a change and a new model,” perhaps as part of a five-year plan with library trustees. Residents speaking made clear that they want to library to continue at full strength while any planning initiatives go forward.

As Fox-Howard noted, voters will have their say on library staffing at the ballot box. Whether the July 14 vote—and absentee ballots—will finally resolve the budget for the library and everything else, remains to be seen.

To view the video of the June 22 Q&A session, click here. To review a sample warrant, click here. For information about how to request an absentee ballot, click here.