DEER ISLE – Residents could find themselves without a road commissioner after they leave the polls at the annual town meeting Monday.

The incumbent road commissioner, Paul Gray, chose not to seek re-election, and no one has taken out papers for the post.

“There’s nobody on the ballot for road commissioner,” First Selectmen Neville Hardy said recently. “I don’t know what’s going to take place on Monday.”

The selectmen have proposed increasing the hourly wage rate for road commissioner from $12.50 to $16. The increase has to be approved at Monday’s town meeting, but Hardy said selectmen are hoping that might be an incentive for someone to take on the job.

Voting for town officers will take place between 7:30 and 11:30 a.m. Monday at town offices. The town meeting to act on the warrant articles will begin there at 2 p.m.

The proposed municipal budget this year totals $894,005, an increase of $31,107 from last year. The key factor in the increase is a $22,000 request for funds for the town equipment account.

According to Hardy, although the account has existed for almost 30 years, this is the first time the town has requested funding for it.

The account was established when the town purchased its first truck in 1976, Hardy said. The town paid itself whenever that town truck was used for road work or snowplowing from those town accounts.

“All the money the truck earned, we put in the bank,” Hardy said. “We used it to buy equipment when we needed it.”

Over the years, that fund has provided the money to purchase additional town equipment. Last year, however, the town had some additional equipment needs that depleted that account, Hardy said.

The town plans to continue to work on the park area around the former elementary school and is asking voters to provide $20,000, a decrease of $6,000 from last year. Work planned for this year includes paving, installing picnic tables and benches and painting the playground equipment.

The old boiler has been removed from the former school building and a new heating system should be in place this year. The town’s fire department plans to convert that building for training and for a chief’s office.

If all articles are approved as proposed, the amount to be raised from taxes will be $287,555, a decrease of $12,343 from last year.

In the only contested election, three people are seeking to fill two seats on the CSD school committee: incumbent Lawrence “Skip” Greenlaw, Joseph Babbit and Linda Greenlaw. School committee members are elected by a joint vote of the towns of Deer Isle and Stonington.