by Mary Grow

China selectmen held April 26 public hearings on two pieces of the June 8 town business meeting warrant, the amendment to the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Program that is Art. 16 and the warrant as a whole. While the first drew no public comments, several people zoomed in to discuss other articles.

Tiffany Glidden and Fred Glidden both had questions about the funding for town boards and committees in Art. 5.

To the general question about why voters should allocate $1,000 to most committees, Selectboard Chairman Ronald Breton and Town Manager Becky Hapgood replied that since committee members were volunteers, they should have opportunities for training, workshops and other related activities. Some boards also need to pay for secretarial services.

To the specific question about funding for a proposed building in the Town Forest behind China Primary School, they said the committee that oversees the forest requested it. At a selectboard meeting earlier in the year, Anita Smith and Elaine Philbrook described the building as partly for storage, mostly for a classroom for nature education for children and adults.

Fred Glidden suggested using the nearby school building instead, and Tiffany Glidden would have preferred the building funds as a separate article. She feared inclusion of the building money might lead voters to reject the entire article.

Should voters reject that or any other spending article for 2021-22, Art. 26 (if it is approved) provides one remedy, Hapgood said. Art. 26 says if any proposed 2021-22 expenditure article is not approved, the amount appropriated in the current fiscal year shall become the budget for next year.

If an expenditure is not approved, selectmen can call a new vote to fund the same purpose. But, Hapgood said, organizing a new vote takes more than two months, with public notice requirements, ballot printing and the rest of the preparations. With town meeting on June 8 and the new fiscal year beginning July 1, there is not time for a revote before money is needed.

Each Glidden also questioned an item in Art. 4, administration and related costs. Fred Glidden wanted to know about building maintenance and plans. Hapgood detailed some of the needed repairs in the town office complex and said that the planned addition to the town office building was to provide secure storage for documents the state requires towns to keep.

Tiffany Glidden asked why town employees are slated for a three percent raise when many private-sector employees have had wages or hours reduced or have lost jobs entirely. Selectmen gave her two replies. Wayne Chadwick and Blane Casey, both contractors, said finding and keeping employees is not easy at present – it took five months to fill a public works position, Hapgood interjected. Janet Preston added the selectmen’s intention to show appreciation to staff members.

Copies of the town business meeting warrant are in the 2020 town report, now available at the town office and many other public locations in town, and on the website, china.govoffice.com. The complete TIF Second Amendment is on the website and is posted with warrant copies in local post offices.

Voters will decide questions by written ballot, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the former portable classroom behind the town office. Absentee ballots will be available beginning May 10.

Breton expressed appreciation for the interest people showed at the hearing, but wished they had offered suggestions earlier, before it was too late to change the warrant. Selectmen started town meeting preparations last fall and discussed articles at most meetings in January and February; anyone can watch the meetings on line.

Breton invited more questions. Residents may submit them by email, telephone or mail for discussion at future selectmen’s meetings. The next two meetings are scheduled for 6:30 p.m., on Monday, May 10, and Monday, May 24.

The April 26 hearing was followed by a brief selectmen’s meeting, at which selectmen approved, after discussion, Hapgood’s request to take up to $10,000 from the selectmen’s discretionary fund to cover assessing costs, as needed. The manager explained that due to Covid-19, field work scheduled to be done and paid for in the 2019-20 fiscal year was postponed to July 2020, leaving too little money in the current 2020-21 budget to cover the remainder of this year’s work.

Provide reliable, high-speed broadband service to all China residents

by Mary Grow

China Broadband Committee (CBC) members spent most of a two-hour April 22 meeting wordsmithing the document they plan to share with selectmen on April 29, with assistance from consultants James Dougherty and Mark Van Loan, from Mission Broadband, and Selectboard Chairman Ronald Breton.

The document is to explain what the CBC has been doing and what committee members would like the selectboard to do to further its goal.

The goal is to provide reliable, high-speed broadband service to all China residents at an affordable price. Committee members have been negotiating with Machias-based Axiom Technologies to achieve the goal.

Their proposal is that Axiom will oversee construction of a fiberoptic network in China that the town will own. Axiom will also, under contract, be the service provider for China residents, running the network and taking care of maintenance, repairs, billing and customer service.

Project construction costs are now estimated at between $4.25 million and $5.5 million, depending on how many houses are connected. How many houses are connected depends to a great extent on how many people sign up as customers.

Paying for the project comes in at least two parts – committee members hope three parts. They intend to ask selectmen to issue a 20-year bond to provide up-front money for construction; customers’ monthly fees will repay the bond and pay for Axiom’s services; and federal grants might cover up to 10% of the cost, depending on how the government authorizes money to be used.

Since their April 15 meeting, committee members had worked individually on a shared on-line document that they reviewed and clarified as they discussed it together, with Selectman Breton’s questions suggesting some of the changes.

They decided to meet again at 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 27, to make final adjustments. The time was chosen to avoid a China Planning Board meeting scheduled for 6:30 p.m. April 27. Breton said if the selectmen have the document Wednesday morning, April 28, they should be ready to talk about it by 7 p.m., Thursday, April 29.

by Mary Grow

China Planning Board members held a short virtual meeting April 13, at which they expressed their frustration with virtual meetings and, they hope, resolved one of the annoying issues.

The agenda called for continued discussion of the two draft ordinances board members are working on, a shoreland stabilization ordinance and a solar ordinance. The former is intended to describe what lakeshore residents can and cannot do to prevent erosion into the lake. The latter is to provide specific regulations for future solar developments, so board members won’t need to continue adapting other ordinance provisions.

The documents are on a site that members can theoretically share, but not everyone has been able to access it. Several are also unhappy with reading documents and changes on line; they want paper copies.

Codes Officer Jaime Hanson said he would immediately see about having copies made at the town office for board members to pick up.

This offer led to the next question, from board member Toni Wall: when can we go back to in-person meetings?

Hanson said he would ask the town manager.

With Scott Rollins, one of the two computer-savvy board members, absent, the four who were connected briefly discussed the shoreland stabilization ordinance, referring back to their March 23 meeting (see The Town Line, April 1, p. 3). Chairman Randall Downer again advocated reviewing Maine and New Hampshire documents that he thinks contain helpful ideas.

An important issue is where China Lake (and Three Mile Pond and other water bodies) get their water from – inflowing streams and their sources, direct rainfall and rainfall run-off, underwater springs. No one knew of a map of springs in China Lake.

Hanson reported issuing an increasing number of building and plumbing permits. China is seeing “a lot of real estate action, too,” he said.

The next regular China Planning Board member is scheduled for Tuesday evening, April 27, and is unlikely to be in person.

by Mary Grow

China Broadband Committee members continued discussion of their proposal to continue working with Machias-based Axiom Technologies to provide a town-owned network that would extend improved internet service throughout the town.

Before the April 15 committee meeting, Chairman Robert O’Connor had received more information from Spectrum Community Solutions, the company that provides internet and other services to a majority of China households. Axiom and Spectrum both responded to the committee’s request for proposals at the beginning of the year.

Committee members found nothing new in the latest Spectrum communication. They agreed Spectrum should remain “on the shelf” – to be considered only if negotiations with Axiom fail and the committee returns to square one.

A major problem Spectrum still did not address, committee member Tod Detre said, is the legal one: as presently proposed, financing the project requires issuing a bond; towns can issue bonds only for tangible projects like a new building; but Spectrum does not plan to accept town ownership of the network infrastructure.

Committee members have previously insisted on the value of town ownership, because it ensures local control. The present assumption is that Axiom would subcontract building the network and would run it (or possibly subcontract operations, too). If operations were unsatisfactory, the town could replace Axiom with a new service provider.

Committee members plan to explain these issues and others to China selectmen at their Thursday, April 29, meeting, to which the selectboard is invited. O’Connor said consultants Mark Van Loan and John Dougherty, of Mission Broadband, are expected to attend the (virtual) meeting, and he hopes Axiom President Mark Ouellette will be available.

Committee members are preparing an information summary to share with selectmen, covering financial and technical issues, possibilities of sharing the project with other towns and plans for community outreach. The draft is on a shared site on line so each member can suggest changes.

The committee will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 22, to review the summary. After the April 29 meeting, committee members hope selectmen will endorse their plan and approve continuing to hire Mission Broadband’s services. The committee’s goal is a question on the Nov. 2 local ballot asking voters to approve the project and authorize a bond issue to finance it.

by Mary Grow

China Transfer Station Committee members are considering advocating for a regional trash collection system based in China, if the new owners of what was the Fiberight facility in Hampden don’t get their act together soon.

The plant, owned by Coastal Resources, closed in May 2020. On Jan. 19, 2021, the Municipal Review Committee (MRC), the group representing 115 municipalities that used the facility, announced that Pennsylvania-based Delta Thermo Energy (DTE) was buying the plant.

The MRC notice said closing the deal was expected to take up to 70 days, and after closing DTE would need four to six weeks to start operating.

At the April 13 China Transfer Station Committee meeting, Selectman and Transfer Station Committee member Irene Belanger, who represents China on the MRC, said the arrangement is not yet final, and after weeks of almost daily reports she had heard nothing for two weeks.

Transfer Station Committee Chairman Larry Sikora called MRC meetings “non-informational,” mostly in executive session (not open to public viewing). He also believes DTE “padded their resume.” A knowledgeable German friend denied DTE’s claim to have a recycling facility in Dresden, Germany, Sikora said.

Committee member Mark Davis suggested exploring whether other municipalities would be interested in a non-MRC arrangement. Or, he said, maybe China’s transfer station, which already takes Palermo’s trash, could become a regional center, adding, for example, Vassalboro, to save that town the cost of proposed transfer station improvements.

Town Manager Becky Hapgood suggested partnering with Albion instead, given the distance from northwestern and southwestern Vassalboro to Alder Park Road, in China. She wondered whether too many new users would inconvenience China residents.

Committee members left the regionalization issue to be reconsidered if the Hampden facility does not reopen.

The rest of the April 13 committee discussion focused on the local transfer station: hours, recycling and the currently closed Free for the Taking (FFT) building.

Committee member Ashley Farrington had prepared a chart of hour-by-hour Saturday attendance, showing few people came in between 6:30 and 7 a.m.; 10 to 11 a.m. was the busiest hour; and a fair number of people used the transfer station from 1 p.m. to the 3 p.m. closing.

The lack of early-morning users led Sikora and Davis to propose opening at 7 a.m. instead of 6:30 p.m. and closing at 4 p.m. instead of 3 p.m. With the change, Davis argued, people doing waste-generating Saturday projects would have another hour before they had to rush to the transfer station.

Farrington, who worked at the transfer station before moving to the town office staff, said the early-morning Saturday hours are important to most of the people who stop in then, because they’re on the way to Saturday jobs and cannot come later.

Transfer Station Manager Ronald Marois opposed staying open until 4 p.m. Whatever the closing time, he said, people come at the last minute with big loads, and he and his staff continue working well after the gates close. Since many families schedule Saturday late-afternoon celebrations, he would prefer a 3 p.m. closing.

Hapgood pointed out that use varies seasonally, leading committee members Karen Hatch and Davis to suggest different hours summer and winter. Then everyone would need to adjust to fall and spring changes, Hapgood objected.

Committee members will try to get more statistics on times of use and revisit the topic at a later meeting.

“Nothing will make everybody happy,” Farrington concluded.

Farrington had submitted China’s biennial report to the state Department of Environmental Protection. By her figures, China’s 2020 recycling rate was 52.85 percent, lower than 2019’s rate of 67.69 percent, but still, Sikora said, very good.

Robert Kurek, Palermo’s representative on the committee, pointed out that eliminating plastics numbered three through seven (due to lack of markets) had reduced recycling rates.

The FFT building has been closed due to Covid. Committee members are looking for alternative ways to share reusable items and are considering ways to reopen the building safely. They made no decisions.

One problem is that, according to Selectman Ronald Breton at the April 12 selectmen’s meeting, transfer station users are ignoring the requirement to wear masks when outside their vehicles.

Other regulations are also ignored. For example, when employees are busy non-residents without China RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags slip in and dispose illegally; and trash is left in wrong areas.

Marois said staff has worked successfully at reducing problems. People don’t like the regulations, he said; but cheating costs China taxpayers money, and, Sikora observed, “nobody likes paying taxes, either.”

Committee members scheduled their next meeting for 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 11, according to the calendar on the Town of China website.