Machiasport voters to elect selectman

MACHIASPORT – Voters will consider a 27-article warrant and elect a selectman and a school board member during the annual town meeting on Monday, July 23.

Town Clerk Margaret Flaherty said the polls at Fort O’Brien Elementary School will be open from 3 to 6:45 p.m. and the business meeting will convene at 7 p.m.

Doug Campbell, the current chairman of the Board of Selectmen, is running for another three-year term and incumbent Elaine Wood is seeking re-election to the town school board.

Flaherty said Campbell and Wood are both running unopposed.

The clerk said she didn’t expect the warrant to generate controversy. Most department budgets remain the same as this year, with the exception of highway maintenance and paving, she said.

The warrant asks for $90,000 to pave the Kennebec Road, $40,000 for Corn Hill and $35,000 for the Birch Point Road, she said.

“We haven’t kept up with maintenance on those roads over the past few years and we’ve got to do something before they get so bad that we won’t be able to afford the work,” Flaherty said.

The town is seeking $8,000 in local funds for the town’s share of improvements to the commercial pier. Flaherty said Machiasport has received a $32,000 public infrastructure grant for the project from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development and must raise local match.

The project includes a waste holding tank for town fishermen, she said.

The town is also asking voters for $35,000 in local funds for the town’s share of the purchase of Pettegrow Beach.

Flaherty said the Pettegrow heirs want to sell the beach and Machiasport has received $215,000 toward the purchase from the Land for Maine’s Future Board.