Blue Hill residents to vote on moving town meeting date

BLUE HILL – The town meeting could come a little later next year if voters approve a proposal at this year’s annual town meeting Saturday.

Municipal elections will be held from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, March 16, at the town hall. There are no contested races this year. Discussion of the warrant articles will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 17, at the consolidated school.

One article asks if voters will agree to move the dates for the elections and town meeting to the first Friday and Saturday of April. The meeting is now set at the third Friday and Saturday of March.

The selectmen recommended the shift to accommodate changes in accounting practices. It would allow a little more time for selectmen to prepare the town budget and warrant articles based on a more accurate accounting of the previous year’s expenditures, according to Selectman John Bannister.

Law enforcement also will be on the table for voters again this year. Last year, the selectmen ended the contract with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department that provided an in-town officer. Voters will be asked to approve $25,000 for additional law enforcement activities.

According to Bannister, the funds will give the town the option of seeking additional coverage from the Sheriff’s Department or the State Police when an additional officer is available.

“We might spend more on a constable, but the main idea is to give us an option to go with the sheriff or the state police,” he said.

Such an arrangement will make it unlikely that the town will need the cruiser it purchased as part of the previous contract with the Sheriff’s Department, Bannister said. So a separate article on the warrant asks voters to authorize selectmen to sell the cruiser, if they deem it is not necessary.

Voters also will be asked to instruct the school committee to appoint a study group to assess the advisability and feasibility of initiating a school-based preschool effort in Blue Hill.

The selectmen included the article at the request of a group of residents, but the school committee last year rejected a preschool proposal presented by the local Head Start program and the Episcopal Church. According to Ben Wooten, chairman of the school committee, the proposal was not well defined and it was unclear how it would fit in with the existing program at the elementary school.

“It was not clear to us that the town wants us to lead the charge toward expanding beyond the current 13 years of paid-for schooling,” he said.

The committee voted against including funding for the program in the proposed budget that will be presented to voters at the town meeting.

The budget that will be proposed on Saturday will be about $30,000 less than the one that appears in the town report, Wooten said. That decrease reflects the school health insurance costs that came in lower than anticipated.

The revised budget will be about $4,159,017.45, an increase of 5.7 percent or approximately $225,000. Most of that amount reflects increases in the instruction accounts for secondary and elementary programs, due mainly to cost of living increases, an increase in the number of students attending high school, and an increase in the number of special education students in the system.