Winterport vote eliminates police

WINTERPORT — Town Manager Arthur Ellingwood came away from Tuesday night’s town meeting bruised by the loss of almost $15,000 of administrative funding but vowing, Wednesday, to continue business as usual at the Town Office.

Ellingwood commented on the cut from the proposed $135,338 administrative budget that “it hurt — that’s an understatement.”

The cut, down to $220,000, could have been worse. Selectman Roland Ginn had proposed that the administrative account be cut to $110,000 and that would have resulted at least in reduced work hours at the office, Ellingwood said, possibly a layoff of a staff member.

Also cut Tuesday was the town’s proposed police department. Wednesday, Ellingwood said he sat down with the same part-time officer, who had waited in his cruiser in the rain Tuesday night outside the crowded Leroy Smith School, and told the officer his services would no longer be needed.

Voters had been presented funding choices of as much as $67,000 for the department but voted, instead, to appropriate $5,000. “They knew that we had spent $3,100 and the rest would go for the (school) crossing guard, so the police officer is out of business,” Ellingwood said. “He knew it was coming,” Ellingwood said of the officer. Wednesday, there was $611 left in the budget, he said.

“People last night just did not want a police department,” Ellingwood said of the large majority who voted for the much-reduced funding.

Among the services lost also will be an animal control officer, Ellingwood said.

There were some areas where voters appropriated more money than was asked. Voters approved $35,000 for an addition to the fire station. Only $7,000 had been requested to begin a capital reserve account for that purpose, Ellingwood said.

Cuts in the administrative account will be in postage, training, seminar attendance and other “tangible” areas, Ellingwood said, but not in hours worked. “It’s going to be very difficult,” Ellingwood said of the work that must be done on a reduced budget, but he vowed to continue the same services in the Town Office as were offered in 1989.