Voters to consider alewives at annual meeting

MEDDYBEMPS — When voters attend the annual town meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, March 30, they will have to deal with 37 articles on the warrant.

The first order of business will be the election of town officials. Vacancies to be filled this year are: town clerk and treasurer, for a one-year term; one selectman, for a three-year term; three overseers of the poor, one-year terms; three assessors, one-year terms; and one school director, three-year term. The tax collector, road supervisor, town constable, health officer and members of the town’s Planning Board also will be selected.

The business portion of the meeting will begin with Article 16, “to see if the town will vote that alewife fishing in all waters in the town of Meddybemps shall be operated by the town (and) the selectmen (shall) provide for regulations to govern the time and manner in which alewives shall be taken. The selectmen shall handle the business for the town or appoint a committee to handle it for them and to issue permits.”

Voters will decide if the selectmen should appoint a cemetery committee and if they should explore the possibility of joining with other communities to establish a regional landfill and raise $266 as a membership fee.

Voters will decide if the town should raise or appropriate $1,000 to be set aside for repairs or maintenance to the town hall; consider raising $5,000 for the town dump and appropriating $2,000 from surplus for the town dock.

They will consider appropriating $12,000 for administration, an amount which town officials recommended be taken from the excise tax account, and $300 for updating town tax maps, an amount that would be taken from surplus.

The voters will decide if $24,000 should be raised or appropriated for snow removal and sanding.

Several other articles will be considered for the operation of town functions.

Voters also will be asked to appropriate the following third-party requests: $100 for the Sunrise County Children’s Task Force; $100 for the Eastern Area Agency on Aging; $15 for United Cerebral Palsy; $100 for Washington County Association of Retarded Citizens; $150 for the Community Health and Counseling Service; $50 for the American Red Cross; $150 for the Washington County Children’s Program; $130 for the Washington-Hancock Community Agency; $150 for Woman Kind Inc.; and $80 for the Northeast Maine Homemaker Service.

An appropriation of $5,000, to be added to the escrow account for the eventual closure of the town dump, also will be considered by voters.