To celebrate their last session together this week, a group of students enrolled in Kate Coseo’s Environmental Science class took a trip to the Olde Mill, in Vassalboro, to admire the alewives that are making their journey upstream through the Kennebec. Pictured from left to right, Kat Mitchell, Cassie Flye, Delia Billings and Stasha Wells observing the many fish within Outlet Stream. (contributed photo)
by Mary GrowVassalboro Cemetery Committee members are satisfied with their plans for summer maintenance work.
Four members who met May 19 expect the annual professional help from Grave Stone Matters, in Hoosick Falls, New York, from July 10 to 14. Joseph Ferrannini is scheduled to repair stones in the large North Vassalboro Village cemetery, committee chair Savannah Clark said.
Clark said Town Manager Aaron Miller has arranged insurance for local volunteers, who can begin work when the weather permits.
Tree removal is scheduled for the Nelson Road cemetery, near the south end of Nelson Road, and the Farwell-Brown cemetery, on Riverside Drive not far north of the Augusta city line. Bids to do the work are due at the town office by 3:30 p.m. Monday, June 16, according to the town website.
Committee members settled two issues discussed previously.
The document titled “Trees and Stones: A Balancing Act in Vassalboro Cemeteries”, is now on the Vassalboro website, for public information. It is under the heading Cemeteries, the second item under “Rules for Vassalboro Cemeteries.”
This statement, approved by the town select board, makes it clear that the cemetery committee is responsible for trees in cemeteries, including removing those that are potential hazards to stones, fences or other structures.
In a related matter, David Jenney found a 2010 town ordinance, repeated in December 2023 cemetery rules, forbidding planting trees or invasive plants in any Vassalboro cemetery.
The second issue, raised at the committee’s April 28 meeting, was how deep cremains should be buried in cemeteries. Committee members’ research had found no law or other firm requirement. They decided to stay with what seems to be consensus: three feet deep preferred when feasible, but not a strict requirement.
Committee member Jane Aiudi had two more concerns.
Referring to a state law she found saying municipal authorities are responsible for marking veterans’ graves for Memorial Day, she asked what arrangements town officials have made to make sure the graves are properly marked.
Clark said later that currently, Vassalboro volunteer fire department member Don Breton (who served on the select board some years ago) has assumed the task.
Also, Aiudi was concerned with the reach of right-to-know laws. Committee members are aware that if three (or more) meet outside a meeting (at the supermarket, for instance), they cannot legally talk committee business: such discussions can only be held in a properly announced meeting.
Aiudi, citing a conversation with Miller, feared her telephone calls might be subject to right-to-know laws if she mentioned committee issues to anyone. Members also wondered whether, when they are working together on cemetery repairs, they can discuss what they’re doing.
Jody Kundreskas suggested they could talk about the work they were doing, but not about policy matters. Clark reminded the group that last year, at least some of their work days were publicized in advance for anyone who wanted to come.
The next regular Vassalboro Cemetery Committee meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday, June 16.
by Mary GrowVassalboro’s annual town meeting for 2025 will be in two sessions, eight days apart and in two different locations.
On Monday, June 2, voters will assemble in the Vassalboro Community School gymnasium, at 6:30 p.m., to talk about and vote on articles number one through 41. On Tuesday, June 10, polls will be open at the town office for written-ballot voting on Articles 42 and 43.
The open meeting decisions cover the 2025-26 budgets for the town and the school and a variety of policy issues. At the polls, voter will decide whether to affirm the 2025-26 school budget approved June 2; and they will elect municipal officials: one select board member, two school board members and five members of the Vassalboro Sanitary District board of trustees.
Vassalboro’s annual town meeting for 2025 will be in two sessions, eight days apart and in two different locations.
The town meeting warrant is on the town website, vassalboro.net. The list of candidates for local offices is also on the website, under the heading absentee ballots.
At the June 2 open meeting, the first article asks voters to elect a moderator to run the meeting. Richard Thompson, who has moderated Vassalboro’s meetings for years, has retired. Town Manager Aaron Miller said in April he has arranged for Jeff Frankel, from Windsor, to be available.
Art. 2 calls for election of five members of the budget committee. According to the website, current members whose terms end at this meeting are William Browne, Donald Breton, Dallas Smedberg, Peggy Schaffer, and Phillip Landry. Those elected last year and continuing in office to June 2026 are Frank Richards, Nate Gray, Douglas Phillips, Laura Jones and Richard Bradstreet.
Voters are then asked to approve 2025-26 tax due dates (Art. 3) and more than $2 million in non-tax revenues (Art. 4). Requests for expenditures begin with Art. 5, asking for more than $2.9 million to run town departments next year, and continue at intervals through many other articles.
Select board members began discussing expenditures in February. They and budget committee members held many long meetings, some including discussions with town employees and people requesting funds for organizations or otherwise affected by budget recommendations.
The two committees’ recommendations for capital reserve funds (Art. 6) disagree substantially. The budget committee majority does not recommend any funds be set aside for transfer station equipment or to replace plow truck #2; the select board recommends $53,738 and $50,000, respectively. For replacing truck #6, the select board recommends $78,000, the budget committee $50,000.
At their May 15 meeting, select board members made plans to amend Art. 6 and Art. 7 from the meeting floor. They plan to ask voters to take $125,000 to be used for the Mill Hill bridge (under Art. 7), if it fails before repairs are organized, from unexpended fund balance, not raise the money from taxes under Art. 6.
Select board and budget committee members also disagree on their recommendations for outside agencies (Art. 25) and Delta Ambulance (Art. 26).
Art. 25 includes $4,000 for the Window Dressers program, endorsed by the select board and not the budget committee. For ambulance service, select board members recommend voters appropriate the full bill, $154,665. Budget committee members recommend taking advantage of the early-payment discount, and therefore appropriating $146,932.
School board members reduced the first budget they sent to the budget committee by $75,000. The result is that both boards recommend the 2025-26 school budget totaling $10,414,498.24 (in Articles 28 through 41).
New this year is Art. 13, asking voters to approve amendments to the charter of the Vassalboro Sanitary District. This article is the result of months of discussion among town and sanitary district officials and several lawyers.
Other articles Town Manager Miller included in the meeting warrant ask voters to allow select board members to sign contracts, accept insurance settlements, grants and gifts and carry out other appropriate actions during the year.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), in Manchester, New Hampshire, congratulates the following students on being named to the Spring 2025 dean’s list. The spring terms run from January to May.
Rebecca Cherish, of Vassalboro, Misty Ray, of Montville, and Ivette Hernandez Cortez, of Augusta.
Vassalboro Community School (contributed photo)
With their 2025-26 budget recommendations in final form and forwarded to the town office, Vassalboro School Board members had time to catch up on other business at their May 13 meeting.
A main item was updating the Vassalboro Consolidated School building, opened in 1992. Tom Seekins, from Portland-based Energy Management Consultants, was invited to continue discussions started in January and February.
Seekins and board members developed a set of priorities, which Seekins had organized into four options. He estimated the cost of each, considering both prices of equipment and labor and projected savings from energy efficiency.
Timing was another element. Seekins discussed how long it should take to get various components, and how to schedule work to minimize interference with summer activities and fall classes.
Board members voted unanimously to authorize Energy Management Consultants to proceed with the first option. Seekins listed the following seven projects, which he called “critical upgrades to aging systems that impact energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and long-term facility resiliency.”
— A ventilation upgrade, consisting of replacing two 34-year-old air handlers with modern Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV) units that will improve indoor air quality and save energy.
— Terminal equipment replacement, specifically replacing deteriorated, unreliable “cabinet unit heaters,” mostly in the corridors, with high-efficiency units.
— Installation of a modern – digital, instead of pneumatic (relying on compressed air) – building-wide Energy Management System (EMS) for better control and monitoring.
— Weatherization, especially, but not merely, replacing deteriorated exterior doors.
— Installation of a Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system on the second floor, to provide, efficiently, year-round comfortable temperatures in rooms that now get too warm in summer.
— Adding modern lighting, easier to control and more efficient.
— Doing two indoor jobs: replacing the first-floor suspended ceilings and “targeted concrete repairs in the lower level.”
The company will prepare final plans, seek competitive bids and oversee work. The first payment from Vassalboro will be due as part of the 2026-2027 budget, not next year, Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer commended school board members for making the decision to go ahead with the work, calling them “good stewards of the building” who are trying to solve its aging problems before they turn into disasters.
Also pending, Pfeiffer said, are summer maintenance work, to include a lot of painting; installation of school zone lights on Webber Pond Road, according to recent information from the Maine Department of Transportation; and, with assistance from the town public works department, actions to reduce congestion on roads by the school as parents pick up children at the end of the school day.
Pfeiffer said later in the week he is consulting with others to develop a plan to improve the traffic situation. No decisions have yet been made.
Board member Jessica Clark, tracking relevant Maine legislative actions through her membership on the Maine School Boards Association legislative committee, reported that a bill to make the November election day a Maine holiday is “looking good” this year.
Town officials have talked of holding state elections in the VCS gymnasium. If they do, and if school is closed for the day, another day (like snow days) will have to be made up in June; and board members have discussed other complications (see the April 17 issue of “The Town Line”, p. 2). Having school closed for a state holiday would be simpler.
Pfeiffer reported for Finance Director Paula Pooler that the school system is still within its 2024-25 budget, and should be okay, narrowly, at the end of June.
Board members acted on numerous appointments as new teachers moved from probationary status onward.
The next Vassalboro School Board meeting will be postponed from Tuesday, June 10 (Election Day), to 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 11, so that board members will know whether voters have approved the 2025-26 school budget.
Vassalboro voters have the school budget on the warrant for their Monday, June 2, open meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m. in the VCS gym. On June 10, when polls are open for written-ballot voting from 8 a.m.
by Mary GrowVassalboro select board members got satisfactory news about town finances at their May 15 meeting.
Auditor Ron Smith, head of RHR Smith, Auditors, in Buxton, said the audit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023, is done, and the audit for the year that ended June 30, 2024, will be shared in draft form within a week.
Vassalboro’s surplus account, about $1.7 million as of June 30, 2024, meets recommended standards; it would keep the town running for 90 days in a financial emergency. The Vassalboro school system’s separate surplus is also adequate, Smith said.
Smith was followed by Matt Weaver, from Damariscotta-based First National Wealth Management, who reported that Vassalboro’s investments are doing well so far this year, despite financial uncertainties.
“Overall, we’re please with how the portfolio’s performed,” he summarized.
Weaver recommended no changes in Vassalboro’s conservative financial strategy.
Much of the May 15 meeting was spent re-discussing the draft personnel policy with three town employees. Select board members heard their comments and answered their questions.
In other business, the public works crew was complimented on one project and authorized to go ahead with another.
Select board member Michael Poulin and Town Manager Aaron Miller praised the almost-finished pavilion at Eagle Park, on Route 32 (Main Street), just north of East Vassalboro Village. Public works employee Shawn Bragg said while the crew was working on the roof, a group of bicyclists stopped and had lunch there.
Conservation Commission members plan to add picnic tables made at Vassalboro’s Maine Adirondack Chairs, on Holman Day Road.
Miller said the school department had asked to have the public works crew help with a to-be-planned project to lessen congestion when parents pick up students at the end of the school day. Select board members authorized use of town employees’ time and town materials, if the work is approved by relevant state departments (transportation and, board member Chris French suggested, environmental protection).
Miller proposed taking advantage of an offer of a 150-hour summer intern to help in the town office, from the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. The only cost to the town, he said, would be to send the person to an August workshop. Select board members approved by consensus.
French said a resident asked about mooring a boat in China Lake, near the East Vassalboro landing. Miller advised talking with Kennebec Water District officials, who are concerned about protecting the lake that is their water source.
French raised three issues for future discussion: updating town ordinances, updating the town’s TIF (Tax Increment Financing) document and enlarging the select board. He has repeatedly recommended a five-person select board; perhaps, he suggested, the question could be put to voters in November.
The next regular Vassalboro select board meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 29. The preceding Monday, May 26, town functions will be closed for the Memorial Day holiday.
VCS counselors Jamie Routhier and Gina Davis. (The Town Line file photo)
(Click here to read part 1 of this story!)
Vassalboro Community School (VCS) counselors Jamie Routhier and Gina Davis share responsibility for assisting any among the school’s approximately 420 students who need support with social or academic (or both) problems, and teachers and administrators who need advice in challenging situations.
In addition, the two counselors oversee a variety of programs run wholly or partly by outside groups, programs they imported – or created – to meet a perceived need.
One program Routhier and Davis mention with pride is called Colby Cares About Kids (CCAK): a collaboration with Colby College, in Waterville, to match Colby students as mentors to VCS students in grades two through eight.
In the spring of 2025, the two reported, there are 22 Colby mentors, seven young men and 15 young women, working with an equal number of students, half of them boys and half girls.
Mentors are trained in the fall and spring. They visit weekly and engage in varied activities with the students – reading together, walking on the trails around VCS, just talking.
Each mentor stays with his or her student until the mentor graduates or leaves the CCAK program. Each year’s program ends with a celebration at Colby, in May.
Another program is titled Hardy Girls/Healthy Women, created in Maine in 2000. Its website lists four characteristics it promotes for girls and nonbinary young people: curiosity, critical thinking, coalition-building and challenging the status quo.
A newly introduced program for students in grades five through eight is titled Sources of Strength and comes through the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Routhier says it is aimed at showing student leaders personal (physical and mental health) and social (family support, positive friendships) resources to get through hard times.
Body safety lessons, involving experts from the state department of education and the Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, teach students how to cope with sexual abuse. Routhier cited a state law requiring all Maine K-5 schools to have “a written policy for child sexual abuse prevention, education and response.”
Another safety program is the Maine State Police’s Online Safety Presentation, designed to help students better understand the risks associated with online sharing.
The two programs that take the most time for the counselors are the FoodBag program and the Cares Closet, which distribute food and clothing/household supplies, respectively. Both are in constant use, therefore in need of constant restocking.
Anyone considering a donation to the FoodBag or the Cares Closet, or seeking more information about any of these VCS programs, is invited to email Jamie Routhier, jrouthier@vcsvikings.org or Gina Davis, gdavis@vcsvikings.org.
The number of Vassalboro families using one or both programs varies; Routhier said it is typically 20-plus. Routhier and Davis created a needs assessment form and invite families to sign up at the beginning of each academic year, but new enrollments during the year – and withdrawals if a situation improves – are welcome.
The FoodBag operates with assistance from Good Shepherd Food Bank, the Vassalboro Parent-Teacher Organization and the school’s JMG (Jobs for Maine Graduates) program. Food is organized and distributed to meet each family’s needs.
Distributions are monthly, usually before a long weekend or vacation week, including a bag at the end of the school year. In the 2024-25 school year there were two November distributions, as the PTO helped send complete Thanksgiving meals to 24 families.
The Cares Closet provides needy students with “hygiene products, clothing, winter items, shoes and boots.” Its mission includes the program formerly called Christmas magic, giving families what Routhier calls “winter survival supplies” like warm clothes, books, games and craft supplies.
Routhier expressed gratitude to Vassalboro resident Amy Davidoff for her organizing help. Keeping clothing donations sorted by type, size, sex and season is time-consuming.
Routhier and Davis encourage teachers to refer any student they think could use anything in the closet. “We would rather be searching to replenish our supply than have it sit there when a family is in need,” Routhier said.
One more program, called the Civil Rights Team, was suspended for the 2024-25 academic year. Routhier said there is “a lot of student excitement” in favor of restarting it in the fall of 2025. As the title suggests, its goal is to empower students to understand civil rights and share their knowledge.
A yard and plant sale will be held at the Vassalboro United Methodist Church, at 614 Main Street, on Saturday, June 7. Two antique church pews like the ones pictured here will be among the items for sale. (contributed photo)
The Vassalboro United Methodist Church (VUMC) is holding a “Yard and Plants Sale” on Saturday, June 7, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m., on the same day as the Vassalboro town-wide yard sales. Good quality items of all kinds will be available, including two church pews removed from the sanctuary earlier this year. The antique pews were moved in 1988 from the old East Vassalboro Methodist Church, on Bog Road, to the VUMC Methodist church, at 614 Main Street.
There will be indoor and outdoor/garden plants for sale as well as some gardening items and more! Donations of perennials and annuals for the plant sale would be appreciated, as would yard sale items except no clothing is needed. PLEASE do not drop off anything at the VUMC without pre-arranging by calling (207) 873-5564 or email info.vumc@gmail.com. Lunches including a grilled hot dog, chips and a drink will be available for as long as supplies last for a suggested donation of $5.
Guided tours of the church sanctuary will also be available, which holds many historic items from the 19th century North and East Vassalboro churches – including the pews in use and seven stained glass windows. This is also an opportunity to see the newly installed VUMC lift/elevator.
Follow this and other services and events on the Vassalboro United Methodist Church Facebook page.
by Mary GrowVassalboro Planning Board members approved the only application on their agenda at a brief May 6 meeting.
Keith and Lise Marlowe had applied for an addition on the back of their cottage, at 148 Park Lane, in the Three Mile Pond shoreland zone. Architect Tobias Gabranski, from Bath, and builder David Tyrol, from Vassalboro, explained the plans.
The only other topic was a brief discussion of the junkyard on Riverside Drive (Route 201), in which the property is in violation of conditions past planning boards imposed.
The three board members present – acting chairman Paul Mitnik, Douglas Phillips and Marianne Stevens – found the application met ordinance requirements and unanimously approved the permit.
The only other topic was a brief discussion of the junkyard on Riverside Drive (Route 201), licensed and operated by Olin Charette and/or his son. Mitnik and Stevens pointed out ways in which the property is in violation of conditions past planning boards imposed.
The most serious violation, in Stevens’ opinion, is lack of adequate access for fire engines, which are supposed to be able to use either of two gates and to drive around the entire inside area.
Codes Officer Eric Currie intends to consult Fire Chief Walker Thompson and to review files on the Charette property.
The next regular Vassalboro Planning Board meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 3.
by Mary GrowVassalboro town clerk Cathy Coyne reports the following candidates for elective office have qualified for the June 10 local ballot.
For one three-year position on the select board, incumbent Frederick “Rick” Denico, Jr.
For two three-year positions on the school board, incumbents Jessica Clark and Amy French.
For a one-year term on the Sanitary District board of trustees, Ericka Roy.
For two two-year terms on the Sanitary District board of trustees, Lisa Miller and Donna Daviau.
Vassalboro local elections will be held Tuesday, June 10, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., in the town office building, at 682 Main Street, between East and North Vassalboro.