China select board members worried aloud about the future of ambulance service in the town, and groused about the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), during their Sept. 22 meeting.
The meeting was less than a week after the first of two explanatory meetings in China, and the evening before the second one. (See related stories, p. 3) At the meetings, Delta Ambulance’s Executive Director, Chris Mitchell, explained why the annual fee the service charges its member towns will keep increasing.
Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood said Delta’s fee this year is $35 for every person in town. Mitchell expects an increase of at least $55 for 2026.
His projection assumes all of the current 13 towns continue to use Delta. Should towns drop out, the fee for the remaining towns will jump, to cover the loss.
Board members wondered if townspeople are aware of the ambulance service’s funding challenges, or if they assume their insurance covers costs. It doesn’t, because insurance reimbursement rates are too low, and if an ambulance comes to a China patient but the patient is not transported, insurance pays nothing.
The alternative to using Delta’s regional service is establishing a local ambulance service, or one shared with a neighboring town. Select board members expressed dismay at the potential cost of either option.
Hapgood said she has participated in many conversations about alternatives and their costs, and anticipates more. Board member Ed Bailey said perhaps, given the lives potentially at risk, the question asked should be not whether China can afford ambulance service, but how it can afford not to provide it.
Board chairman Wayne Chadwick said it may become necessary to stop funding optional programs and projects in order to fund essential ones without an overwhelming tax increase.
The discussion will continue.
China officials have three beefs with DEP, two related to China Lake and one related to the transfer station.
Hapgood said she received complaints about the Causeway Road boat launch at the north end of China Lake: the gravel that should be at the end of the ramp is missing, and there is a heap of gravel farther out in the lake.
Knowledgeable board members said the cause is people power loading their boats, that is, using the boat’s engine to drive it onto the trailer for the trip home, instead of winching it up.
When Hapgood talked with a DEP staff member, she was told the town has two options: use hand-held rakes to move the gravel back where it belongs, or apply for a permit to “pave” the launch area. Board member Thomas Rumpf interpreted the second option as extending the ramp farther into the lake.
Rumpf and others did not think either method was practical. They concluded there is nothing the town can do at this point.
Hapgood raised the second issue: last fall, she said, the town office got an anonymous complaint that a skid steer was in China Lake off Fire Road 61. She and Codes Officer Nicholas French found the report was accurate, located the owner of the skid steer and reported what she calls “an egregious violation” of water quality laws to DEP.
Over the winter, Hapgood followed up repeatedly. She recently learned that DEP has required the offender to take a class on erosion and sedimentation control, a penalty she considers totally inadequate.
Board members agreed. They wondered why they were being so fussy about trying to fix the boat launch properly, if DEP cared so little.
The third gripe, raised briefly by Rumpf with Hapgood’s agreement, is the DEP requirement that China add a gravel or similar pad under the brush pile at the transfer station, supposedly to prevent contamination from the brush.
The Sept. 22 meeting included the annual public hearing on amendments to the appendices to the town’s General Assistance Ordinance, adding the state’s new financial limits. There was no public comment, and the changes were unanimously adopted.
In other business, by unanimous votes board members appointed Carol Thibodeau to the China for a Lifetime Committee, and renewed the town’s membership in the Kennebec Valley Council of Governments Community Resilience Partnership.
Hapgood reported that because the Maine Department of Transportation is short-staffed, speed limit recommendations have not yet been made for China’s Danforth, Dutton and Pleasant View Ridge roads.
China’s new public works truck, on which the town paid a $3,000 tariff, should arrive within the next few days, Hapgood said. An older truck has been sold.
The manager’s list of upcoming events included, in October, select board meetings the evenings of Oct. 6 and Oct. 20; an appeals board hearing on Thursday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m., on Timothy Theriault’s variance appeal; closure of all town departments for Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday, Oct. 13; and a drug take-back day at the transfer station on Saturday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Nov. 4 state and local voting will be held in the portable building behind the town office, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
To the editor:
To the editor: