ISLAND FALLS – Residents voted at their annual town meeting Monday night to approve the town’s ambulance budget as recommended, and wait to see if more will be needed later.

Also at the meeting, voters decided not to accept a gift of almost $13,000 from the Island Falls Water Co. to be used to renovate the town office, which is used by the company.

During municipal elections held earlier in the day, Robert Porter received 80 votes to be elected to a three-year term on the Board of Selectmen, defeating James D’Angelo, who picked up 34 votes.

For the CSD 9 school committee, Gregory Ryan was re-elected to a three-year term with 81 votes. A second seat was not filled, as there was no formal candidate. The post will be filled from people who received write-in votes.

Full funding for the year for Katahdin Ambulance Service remained up in the air, despite the fact that voters approved taking $37,951 from surplus and excise taxes to run the service.

Should Crystal and Dyer Brook contract with ambulances from other towns, as anticipated, Island Falls taxpayers will have to pick up the cost of the lost contracts from those towns. Town Clerk Cheryl McNally said that would come to an additional $53,245.

In recent years, the service has been under financial strains as costs have risen and the number of money-generating runs has continued to decline.

Last year, the service responded to 88 calls, down from 118 in 1999 and 150 in 1998.

To offset that, town officials increased the per capita rate from $15 to $37.85, a 250 percent increase.

So, officials in Crystal are recommending that residents at the annual town meeting on March 19 approve a contract with Patten to cover that town, at a per capita cost of $17. Patten now covers half the town of 303 people and Island Falls covers the other half.

Dyer Brook is seeking a contract from Houlton for its 243 residents, at a cost of $19.09 per capita. The Houlton Town Council approved the deal at its meeting Monday night. The matter now will go to Dyer Brook voters on March 19 at the annual town meeting.

The Island Falls-based ambulance made three runs each to Crystal and Dyer Brook last year, according to the Island Falls town report.

Mary Grant, director of the Katahdin Ambulance Service, said Monday night that one of the problems the ambulance service has is that federal Medicare reimburses the town only 80 percent of what it costs to carry a patient, leaving the town to pick up the remainder of the cost.

“We’ve always absorbed it,” she said, noting that other services bill the patients’ insurance companies to recover the difference.

The 45 residents who attended the meeting felt strongly that the town should not let the ambulance service die, and they expressed willingness to come back to a special town meeting to raise what extra was needed, if Crystal and Dyer Brook take their business elsewhere.

Noting that having an ambulance service in town was a matter of life and death, Reneva Smith said, “I don’t think we can put a price tag on that.”

Patrick Hunt predicted that Crystal and Dyer Brook eventually would come back to Island Falls, because, “tragically, there’s going to be a tragedy,” because Patten and Houlton were each covering too much area, he said.

Also at the meeting, voters overwhelmingly decided not to accept a gift of $12,978 from the Island Falls Water Co. to be used for renovations to the town office. The company is owned and managed by the town.

Outgoing Selectman Darrell Hartin explained that town officials thought that having the water company pay for the work with excess funds on hand would be a good way to get it done at no cost to taxpayers.

James Odgers, one of the roughly 225 customers of the water company, questioned why money from the ratepayers was being used to pay for town office renovations that would benefit all residents and nonresidents.

“The ratepayers are the only ones paying for this,” he said. “I think it should be spread out among all taxpayers.

“If you have that much money, lower the rates, ” he said.

John Fowler, who made the motion not to accept the money, echoed that point. He noted that the water company had more than $120,000 in cash available to it at the end of 2000, according to the town report.

“They’re raising more money that they could possibly need at this point,” he said, adding that the money should be used to lower water rates rather than renovate the town office.

Acceptance of the gift was rejected 23-7.