Lois Bulger, of Vassalboro.
VASSALBORO, ME — Lois Bulger, Vassalboro’s oldest citizen, was feted recently by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, on the occasion of her 100th birthday.
She was born in Oakland on April 24, 1922. She has lived most of her adult life in Vassalboro where she and her husband raised their family, raised horses and later owned and operated a small antique shop.
Drizzle, left, and Fritter, at the Kitten Korner. (photos by Chris Choyce)
Entering into the apartment of Justin Saragosa and Chris Choyce you’ll most likely hear tiny meows coming from a certain corner.
Justin Saragosa and Chris Choyce
In the summer of 2018 the young couple was facing increasing rent prices in Portland and decided to move up to central Maine, where Justin is from. When the pandemic hit they were temporarily furloughed. This newfound time inspired them to begin something they’d wanted to do: foster animals! The in-law apartment they’d moved to had a little extra space, an empty corner to be specific. The Kitten Korner was born on Easter Sunday 2020, becoming a temporary home to their first foster kittens.
Over the last two years, The Kitten Korner has provided a home for 70 cats and two dogs with support from the Humane Society Waterville Area. Many animal shelters don’t receive funding from their town or state and rely on donations from local folks.
Fostering animals serves an important role in the community. Instead of an animal growing up in a shelter or becoming a neighborhood stray, fostering provides cats and dogs with a warm, nourishing, and loving home. Most of the costs associated with caring for animals are out of pocket, so the couple set up a Facebook page for the small operation. The Kitten Korner posts photos of the cute creatures, shares animal care tips, and promotes shelter events. Additionally, people from the community have connected with The Kitten Korner when encountering stray animals in their neighborhoods and to donate pet food, litter, toys, or make financial contributions.
While always having tiny bundles of fur roaming your home might sound like fun, Justin and Chris say the last two years have had their ups and downs. To anyone interested in fostering, Chris offers a few words of advice: “Compassion fatigue is a real thing – be sure to give yourself a break now and then.”
Once kittens are old enough for adoption, they are returned to the shelter. They have found it difficult to return animals they have nurtured, yet rewarding to watch them grow. It is also a lesson in understanding the importance of spaying or neutering pets and making sure they don’t get lost or wander off.
The Kitten Korner looks forward to a future where they have an entire room devoted to the care of foster animals. Possibly expanding to “pocket pets” like guinea pigs or rabbits, and working with other local shelters.
For more information about the operation please visit: https://www.facebook.com/thekittenkorner/photos/.
by Mary GrowVASSALBORO, ME — Vassalboro residents will have three candidates for three open local positions on their June 14 election ballot.
Town Clerk Catherine Coyne reported that Frederick L. “Rick” Denico II is the only candidate who filed nomination papers for a seat on the select board. Robert Browne, whose term ends this year, is not seeking re-election.
The two candidates for two seats on the school board are incumbent Jessica Clark and Amy M. French. School board chairman Kevin Levasseur is not running for another term.
Polls will be open for Vassalboro’s June 14 election from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the town office.
The open town meeting at which voters set the 2022-23 municipal and school budgets and decide town policy issues is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m., Monday, June 6, at Vassalboro Community School. The June 14 voting will include acceptance or rejection of the school budget that is approved at the June 6 meeting.
Kennebec Water District treatment plant in Vassalboro. (Internet photo)
VASSALBORO, ME — Vassalboro Planning Board members quickly and without dissent approved a minor exterior change at the Kennebec Water District (KWD) treatment plant at 462 Main Street (Route 32), between East and North Vassalboro.
KWD Water Quality Manager Robbie Bickford said the plant was opened in 1993 and is due for upgrades, both to replace aging equipment and to meet current requirements, like updated earthquake standards and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.
The pending project is to replace the chemical feed system, including two 18-foot-diameter tanks inside the building. The building was built around the tanks, Bickford said. To get them out and new tanks in, KWD needs to add a door and to pave a small area that is now grass so heavy equipment can go over it.
There will be no other external changes, Bickford said, except a temporary sign during construction acknowledging financial support from the state Drinking Water Program’s revolving fund.
Planning board members had questions about disposal of chemicals and other safety and environmental issues. Satisfied with Bickford’s replies, they granted the permit.
Bickford said this project, like so many others, is delayed by supply chain hang-ups. He expects work to start in late summer or fall 2022; once started, it should be finished within 180 days, he said.
KWD has no plans to expand the Vassalboro treatment plant, he said. In the 1990s, KWD supplied water to large mills in Waterville; now that its customer base is mainly residential, it operates at about one-third capacity.
The ban on swimming in China Lake’s west basin is to protect water quality. Asked why motor boats are allowed, Bickford had a triple answer.
KWD officials want to accommodate recreational activities as much as possible, he said; and since petroleum products tend to float and KWD’s intake pipe is at the bottom of the lake, it is unlikely that any gas or oil would reach the treatment plant; and if any did, it would be mixed with so much lake water as to be insignificant.
“The solution to pollution is dilution,” he quoted.
The battleship USS Maine.
The wars on which this series has provided information so far began with fighting against the European power that once claimed the United States and continued with the 1861-1865 war between two parts of the United States.
Ongoing were a third category, wars the United States’ founders fought to establish and expand its land area. From their first arrival in the 1600s, Europeans pushed aside the Native Americans, from the eastern seaboard first and the rest of the continent later.
(Consequences of those years persist as Natives reclaim parts of their historic home. See, for example, here in Maine the restoration to the Passamaquoddy tribe of 140 acres of the 150-acre Kuwesuwi Monihq, Pine Island [or White’s Island], in Big Lake.)
Starting with 13 states facing the Atlantic Ocean, the country reached to the Pacific with the 1850 admission of California. Adding Utah in 1896 brought the number of states in the continental United States to 45 by the end of the 19th century. Oklahoma was added in 1907, Arizona and New Mexico in 1912.
Alaska went from a territory to state in January 1959. Hawaii became the 50th state in August of the same year.
Two formally declared wars were part of 19th century growth, one with Mexico (April 25, 1846 – February 2, 1848) that added land in the southwest and one with Spain (April 21 – December 10, 1898) that gave the United States its first overseas territories.
(Liberia, in west Africa, was settled beginning in 1820 by former slaves from the United States, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society [ACS]. The historical consensus is that it was never a United States colony or possession; in fact, Wikipedia says, “The United States government declined to act upon requests from the ACS to make Liberia an American colony or to establish a formal protectorate over Liberia, but it did exercise a ‘moral protectorate’ over Liberia, intervening when threats manifested towards Liberian territorial expansion or sovereignty.” Liberia became an independent country on July 26, 1847.)
* * * * * *
Wikipedia explains that the prelude to the war between the United States and Mexico was the declaration of independence by residents of part of northern Mexico in 1836. The Battle of the Alamo in late February and early March 1836 was part of that struggle.
Mexico did not recognize Texas as an independent republic. The United States (and Britain and France) did. Most Texans, Wikipedia says, were willing to join the United States, and after political maneuvering, Texas became a state on Dec. 29, 1845.
In the spring of 1846, President James Polk sent United States military forces into the new state. Mexican forces resisted, leading to battles in April and May followed by a May 13 United States declaration of war.
A series of battles stretching as far west as present-day California led to United States occupation of major Mexican cities, including in September 1847 Mexico City. The war was officially ended by the Feb. 2, 1848, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico gave up the area that, Wikipedia says, became “the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.”
* * * * * *
The proximate case of the Spanish-American War was the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898. Built at the navy yard in Brooklyn, at a cost of almost $4.7 million, and commissioned Sept. 17, 1895, she was the first ship named in honor of the State of Maine.
Wikipedia says the Maine had been sent to protect United States interests as Cubans fought for independence from Spain. Later in 1898, a naval inquiry concluded a bomb had been the cause; but, Wikipedia says, some naval officers suggested instead an internal explosion in a coal bunker. A 1974 re-investigation supported their theory. Wikipedia says the cause of the sinking “remains a subject of debate.”
Meanwhile, however, United States opinion had settled immediately on Spain as the villain. With “Remember the Maine!” as its battle cry, Congress approved a declaration of war on April 21, 1898. Fighting in Cuba and in the Spanish possessions of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines was over by August. On Dec. 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and gave the United States the former Spanish territories.
* * * * * *
The effects of the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War in Maine were slight. Exceptions would be the few families with members who served, who had connections with the affected areas or were otherwise involved on a personal level.
In his history of the State of Maine, Louis Hatch didn’t mention the Mexican War. About the Spanish-American War, he wrote that in response to President William McKinley’s call for volunteers, Maine sent “one regiment of infantry, four batteries of heavy artillery and a signal corps, amounting in all to 1,717 non-commissioned officers and men.”
Other Maine men volunteered, and Portland’s and Bath’s “volunteer naval reserve associations” were “mustered into United States service,” Hatch wrote. The troops assembled in Augusta. He said nothing about casualties.
The 1898 Maine Adjutant General’s report, found on line, has long lists of Kennebec Valley volunteers.
Most local historians omit any mention of either war. Two exceptions are Alma Pierce Robbins, in her Vassalboro history, and General Isaac Bangs, in the military history chapter of Edwin Whittemore’s Waterville history.
Robbins wrote that when the “off and on” Mexican border dispute led to the United States declaration of war in 1846, not many people in Vassalboro cared. “Those who had gone west and those who were ‘tired of farming’ did go,” she wrote.
In the 1890s, as tension with Spain mounted preceding the Spanish-American War, Vassalboro was involved in national military exercises.
“Encampments and ‘war games’ were encouraged everywhere,” Robbins wrote. Massachusetts troops came “to compete with Maine men to demonstrate proficiencies in military techniques, with official sanction.”
Some of the encampments were on Horace Sturgis’ River Road farm. Robbins’ history includes a photograph of then-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt’s mounted Rough Riders in front of Sam Mitchell’s house on the River Road at Riverside in 1897, as they recruited area volunteers.
About the actual war Robbins was silent. But, she said, names of Vassalboro residents who died in the Spanish-American War and World War I share a bronze plaque on the bridge at North Vassalboro.
The plaque has been moved since Robbins’ history was published in 1971 and is now on the larger of the two stones in the memorial on Main Street, in North Vassalboro. The memorial sits in front of the large building that used to be the North Vassalboro schoolhouse, then the town office and later a health clinic.
The names from 1898 are Prince Bessey, John O. Brown, Alton M. Lord, Andrew Peterson, Agra Pooler (state military records list his name as Ogra), Fred Pooler, Bert J. Priest, Charles H. Priest, Charles H. Simpson, David Simpson and William J. Surman.
Prince Manter Bessey
Robbins erred when she wrote that all these men died in the Spanish-American war; your writer has found post-war information about several of them.
On-line sources say Prince M. Bessey was born Sept. 14, 1879, in China, Maine. On May 17, 1898, he enlisted from Augusta as a private in Battery A, Maine Volunteer Artillery Battalion; he was discharged May 31, 1899, in Savannah, Georgia.
After the war Bessey lived in North Vassalboro from 1907 to 1911. He worked as a salesman in several places, including Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he met and married Nora Smith in 1920. After he retired from Gimbel’s Department Store in 1948, the couple moved to Nora’s home town, Ceredo, West Virginia, where he died.
Charles Henry Priest was born July 12, 1881, in East Vassalboro, and died June 27, 1960. He is buried in Priest Hill Cemetery.
Peterson and Fred Pooler were privates in Battery A; each was 19 when he enlisted. Both Poolers were reportedly born in Waterville. Ogra or Agra Pooler, who enlisted at 21, was a North Vassalboro resident.
David Simpson, a Waterville native, was 24 when he enlisted. Surman was 27; his birthplace is listed as Dover, England.
Most Battery A men were from Lewiston or Auburn. In addition to those from Vassalboro, an on-line list includes First Lieutenant and Assistant Surgeon Robert J. Martin and Privates Harvey J. Libby, Nathan T. Shaw, of Augusta. Bangs’ chapter in Whittemore’s history gives names of a dozen privates from Waterville in Battery A, including Joseph Butler, who enlisted May 17, 1898, and deserted at Fort Popham July 16, and another deserter named Edward Lessor.
Battery C included 21 more Waterville men and smaller numbers from Augusta and Fairfield.
Bangs added a list of a dozen Waterville men who served in the First Maine Infantry in the Spanish-American War. William J. Surman is one of them. In the Maine Adjutant-General’s Report for the year 1901, Ogra Pooler, Charles H. Priest and William J. Surman are listed among Company D men who received $22 each in “Extra Pay of Maine Volunteers.”
The war with Spain continued until 1902 in what some historians call the Philippine-American War, as the United States consolidated its power over those islands. It was an appropriate introduction to the 20th – and 21st – centuries, as one country or ideology after another used – and uses – force against others.
Update from Brown Memorial Library in Clinton
The Dec. 2, 2021, article in this series talked about the Brown Memorial Library in Clinton, named in honor of William Wentworth Brown (April 19, 1821 – Oct. 22, 1911). The article said that Brown gave the library a portrait of himself by Frederic (or Frederick) Porter Vinton (Jan. 29, 1846 – May 19, 1911); in November 2021, the portrait had been sent away for cleaning.
William Wentworth Brown
It is now back on the wall, and assistant library director Cindy Lowell says she and Director Cheryl Dickey-Whitish are very pleased. Mr. Brown is “holding a pair of red gloves you couldn’t even see before,” she said. The head of his cane is visible and his hair and beard have turned from salt-and-pepper to almost pure white.
The following information is copied from the March-April 2022 issue of the Clinton Community Newsletter.
“The Trustees of the Brown Memorial Library recently had Mr. Brown’s very large 100-year-old portrait sent to a professional art restoration company for cleaning. Last week the portrait was returned to its place of honor displaying new details that were previously hidden by layers of coal dust!”
The newsletter has a color picture of the portrait and invites area residents to stop in to see it, an invitation Lowell seconds.
Brown Memorial Library is at 53 Railroad Street, in Clinton, on the east side of the street a block north of Main Street (Route 100).
Hatch, Louis Clinton, ed., Maine: A History 1919 ((facsimile, 1974)
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971)
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902)
Websites, miscellaneous
by Mary GrowVASSALBORO, ME — Vassalboro Budget Committee members made their recommendations on the 2022-23 municipal budget at their March 31 meeting. Not all votes were unanimous, and because the school budget is still unknown, committee members did not guarantee their recommendations are final.
Members had varying attitudes toward the school budget. Optimists said the school, like the town, should have enough extra federal revenue so that the proposed 2022-23 budget will not be significantly higher than the current year’s.
If the optimists are wrong, some budget committee members would revisit the municipal budget with the goal of lowering their recommendations, so that the two budgets combined would not increase taxes.
Chairman Rick Denico, Jr., quoted former select board member Lauchlin Titus’s advice: don’t base budget decisions on the mil rate, don’t penalize either the school or the town for the other.
Member William Browne said if the school budget does provide a surprise, anyone on the budget committee who voted in favor of an item can move to reconsider it.
And the final decisions will be up to the voters who attend the June 6 open town meeting, where they will have the option of disregarding any recommendations.
A longer-range pending issue is whether the Vassalboro Select Board will adopt a salary schedule for town employees, following up on a study they commissioned (see The Town Line, March 10, p. 3, and March 24, p. 3).
After discussion of potential costs, and despite Select Board Chairman Robert Browne’s reminder that the select board decides policy issues, Denico called a straw poll and announced that eight of the 10 budget committee members supported the estimated $37,000 additional cost in 2022-23. That figure includes one-time larger raises for employees below scale.
Committee members then proceeded to review Town Manager Mary Sabins’ draft budget and draft warrant for the June 6 part of the annual town meeting item by item. They discussed two articles.
Article 5 in the draft asks voters how much they want to raise and appropriate to support 14 individually-listed town departments or services totaling $2,582,004. Individual figures range from $3,000 for general assistance to $593,925 for public works.
Public works brought concern from budget committee members about paving costs and a question about a recently-announced federal grant to the Maine Department of Transportation, from which $800,000 has been allocated for about three-quarters of a mile of Route 32, in Vassalboro.
Road Foreman Gene Field, from the audience, said he budgeted assuming paving material will cost $85 a ton. That is not a firm price. The large grant, he said, is for road and sidewalk improvements in North Vassalboro in 2024.
The amount proposed for recreation in 2022-23 is $44,327, and for the library, $60,500. Both are significant increases over the current year and both include personnel: Sabins recommends hiring a half-time recreation director, and library trustees want to add hours for the library director, to open the library one more day a week and for programming (see The Town Line, March 24, p. 3).
Sabins told budget committee members she expects the two positions would complement each other, not overlap or compete. The recreation director would organize sports programs on the ballfields and she hopes could also write grants, do long-range planning and help the town in other ways. She is working on a job description for select board review.
Library programs would be intended for residents of all ages, Sabins said.
A motion to recommend a lower library budget was defeated by a one-vote margin.
Draft warrant Article 6 has three fund requests: $20,000 for streamside park development (parking, picnic tables and perhaps other improvements at the town-acquired lot on Outlet Stream and Route 32 between East and North Vassalboro); $25,000 to demolish a dangerous building (the former church on Priest Hill Road in North Vassalboro); and $106,000 for roadside mowing equipment (if obtainable, Field’s recommended attachment for the loader).
Budget committee members endorsed all three, the mowing equipment by a one-vote margin. Field has been renting mowing equipment. He expects rental to cost around $16,000 for two mowings. Omitting a fall cutting one year let roadside grass grow high enough to block visibility some places, he told select board members at their Feb. 24 meeting.
The proposed April 5 budget committee meeting is canceled. As of April 5, committee members expected to hear on April 6 whether the 2022-23 school budget would be ready for review at an April 7 meeting. Residents who want to know whether the budget committee will meet the evening of April 7 should contact school Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer at apfeiffer@vcsvikings.org.
Town meeting to be in two parts
The first part of Vassalboro’s two-part 2022 town meeting is the open meeting, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 6, at Vassalboro Community School. Voters will assemble in person to act on funding and policy issues for 2022-23.
Written-ballot elections and the written referendum on the school budget adopted June 6 are scheduled for Tuesday, June 14, with polls open at the town office from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Local officials to be chosen are one select board member and two school board members. Signed nomination papers must be returned to the town office by noon Friday, April 8, for candidates’ names to appear on the June 14 ballot.
by Mary GrowThe Vassalboro Budget Committee meets at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in the town office – not at Vassalboro Community School as previously planned – to make recommendations on the proposed 2022-23 municipal budget. The school budget will not be ready for review by March 31, committee chairman Rick Denico reported on March 28.
Vassalboro Community School (contributed photo)
VASSALBORO, ME — Vassalboro School Board members began reviewing sections of the 2022-23 school budget at their March 22 meeting, hearing proposals for funding technology, health, ELL (English Language Learners’ programs), certification and maintenance.
They got updates on the lunch program, the pandemic and pre-kindergarten registration, and accepted the resignation of Principal Megan Allen.
The lunch program drew criticism from a parent in the audience. Her children refused most of the menu items, she said, adding, “half of them I don’t even know what they are.”
Food Director John Hersey said he is developing a survey, to be distributed electronically, asking what kinds of food students would like to see on the school lunch menu. He hopes to have the survey ready in a week or two, he said.
The Vassalboro Community School (VCS) breakfast and lunch menus are posted by the month on the school website, vcsvikings. Students opting for the school meal Thursday, March 31 (an early release day), should expect a bologna and cheese sandwich, coleslaw, orange wedges and milk.
Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer reported three weeks of negative pool testing for coronavirus. Pool testing will continue for another few weeks, he said.
Pfeiffer said currently 27 students are signed up for pre-kindergarten at VCS in the fall. Thirty students are the minimum needed to open a second pre-kindergarten class, supported by a state expansion grant, he said.
A student must be four years old by Oct. 15, 2022, to enroll in pre-kindergarten.
Allen is resigning to pursue other opportunities, Pfeiffer said.
Turning to the partial budget review, Pfeiffer said he did not yet have figures for other sections of the budget, nor could he predict when he would have them.
Finance Director Paula Pooler offered one date for more information: she expected Anthem Blue Cross to provide the maximum insurance increase for schools on March 24, and to give each school its specific increase by the second week in April. Meanwhile, she said, her placeholder recommendation is for a 10 percent increase.
Maintenance Director Shelley Phillips’ presentation drew the most questions, about both interior and grounds work.
Phillips said residents should expect increasing building maintenance costs, because, in addition to inflation in fuel, materials and labor, VCS “is not a new building any more.” It is time to upgrade lighting, she said, and to replace things that have worn out.
Having the building designated a Red Cross emergency shelter requires new showers and upgraded toilets for the locker rooms adjoining the gymnasium, at an estimated cost of more than $22,000. No, Phillips said, the Red Cross will not pay the bill.
Plowing and sanding, in early years done by the Vassalboro Public Works crew, is now contracted, because the road crew hasn’t the time. High gasoline prices will increase the cost. Phillips added that when she has a minor need, like a little sand, Road Foreman Gene Field will help out – “The town is very good to us.”
Grounds maintenance was in-house in the early days, but the custodian who had to abandon indoor jobs to mow the extensive lawn also ran into a time crunch, and that job is contracted. Phillips is pleased with the quality of the work.
Audience members were concerned about tick control, especially with a child care program at the school in the summer. Phillips said the work is done thoroughly and safely.
Technology coordinator Will Backman told board members his recommended 2022-23 budget is $1,837.59 below the current year’s budget, and explained the changes.
Pfeiffer summarized contents of the health budget: salary and benefits for the school nurse, supplies, record-keeping software and a contracted physician’s services, the doctor shared with Waterville and Winslow schools.
Pfeiffer is not aware of a need for an ELL program in 2022-23, although there has been one at VCS in the past, he said. He did not discuss the state-required appropriation for staff certifications, since board members have no control over it.
As the budget discussion ended, Pfeiffer reminded board members they still have major areas – tuition, regular and special education, transportation – to discuss. Since he could give no date when he would have sufficient information, board members postponed scheduling a budget workshop meeting.
by Mary GrowVASSALBORO, ME — The Kennebec Water District (KWD) is asking the Vassalboro Planning Board’s approval to make changes at its water treatment plant at 462 Main Street (Route 32), a little north of East Vassalboro Village. Planning board members will hear the application at their Tuesday, April 5, meeting, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the town office meeting room.
A letter from KWD Water Quality Manager Robbie Bickford said the project includes “replacement of equipment that has reached the end of its useful life, addition of an access door into the chemical storage area of the plant, and expansion (approximately 300 sq. ft.) of the existing driveway.”
“The primary function and general aesthetic of the Water Treatment Plant will remain unchanged,” Bickford continued.
He invited people with questions to email www.kennebecwater.org/contact.
by Mary GrowVASSALBORO, ME — Vassalboro Budget Committee members continued their pre-town-meeting work at a March 15 meeting. They reviewed the third draft of the proposed municipal budget, and heard more details about the Vassalboro Public Library trustees’ plans.
Town Manager Mary Sabins had amended the earlier budget proposal by increasing recommended amounts for heating and vehicle fuel, and adding $25,000 to demolish the former church on Priest Hill Road, in North Vassalboro, designated a dangerous building.
Sabins had also increased the expected income from state revenue sharing, based on a revised estimate from the state that she said is still not final.
Librarian Brian Stanley and library trustees Susan Taylor and Liz McMahon explained plans to expand library hours and services.
The library on Bog Road is currently open 24 hours a week, from noon to 6 p.m. Mondays and Fridays and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Weekly programs for children and home-schoolers are listed on the library’s website.
The trustees recommend adding another six hours, opening either Sundays or Thursdays, and expanding program offerings. They propose paying Stanley for an additional 12 hours a week, half for another day at the check-out desk and half for program planning.
They would like to present additional programs for residents of all ages, when possible in cooperation with Vassalboro Community School staff and other town groups.
“There’s so much more we could be doing that doesn’t rely on people checking out books,” Taylor said.
Town funds pay staff salaries, she said. Trustees do fundraising and seek grants for building maintenance, programs and all other expenses.
Budget committee members asked many questions. They were not ready to make decisions.
The library presentation was followed by another discussion of employee compensation, another topic on which conclusions would be premature.
Budget committee member Douglas Phillips raised objections to the employees’ salary scale select board members are considering (see The Town Line, March 10, p. 3), sparking discussion that covered the need for financial flexibility, employees’ expectations and the competitiveness of Vassalboro’s employee compensation package compared to other towns’.
Lacking information on the 2022-23 school budget, budget committee members canceled a meeting scheduled for March 17, hoping to have more to talk about the following week. The Vassalboro School Board was scheduled to meet Tuesday evening, March 22.
Sabins told committee members the final deadline for making their recommendations to the select board is Tuesday, April 12. Select board members are scheduled to review the town meeting warrant at their April 14 meeting.
Vassalboro’s annual town meeting will be in two parts as usual, an open meeting beginning at 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 6, and written-ballot elections and perhaps other questions on Tuesday, June 14. Polls are scheduled to be open from 8 a.m.to 8 p.m. June 14.
Nomination papers for local elective office are available at the town office. They must be returned with at least 25 registered voters’ signatures by noon, Friday, April 8, for a candidate’s name to be on the June 14 ballot. Positions to be filled are one seat on the select board and two seats on the school board.
