CHINA NEWS: Selectmen review and approve most of warrant

by Mary Grow

China selectmen spent most of a long Feb. 6 meeting reviewing and approving a good part of the warrant for the March 25 town business meeting, to have it ready for budget committee action. The budget committee is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, in the town office.
Selectmen also:

• Voted unanimously to support Rep. Tim Theriault’s LD 55, a proposed law which, if enacted, would charge Kennebec Water District water users a China Lake clean-up fee.
• Appointed Thomas Michaud as the new at-large member of the planning board, succeeding Frank Soares.
• Asked Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux to notify Marie Michaud that, acting on Maine Municipal Association advice, they have determined the petition she submitted last summer is invalid; they will neither act on it themselves nor send it to voters in March. The petition asked for a moratorium on commercial development until land use districts are established.

The town meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday, March 25, at China Middle School. The warrant contains the usual municipal spending requests, including numerous requested appropriations from the TIF (Tax Increment Finance) fund, known formally as the Development Program Fund, and related items, like setting tax due dates; a repeat of several requests voters rejected Nov. 8, 2016; and two new items.

The first new item is a request for up to $40,000 to compensate emergency services personnel (firefighters and medical first responders), under a policy to be developed by selectmen. Town Manager Daniel L’Heureux presented information from Albion, Vassalboro and Windsor, which all compensate their volunteers in different ways.

After a long discussion, a majority of the board voted to include the article and recommend its passage, with Ronald Breton abstaining and Joann Austin opposed. Breton said he supports the concept, but wants a policy in place before funding it; Austin objected to having no time to digest the information from other towns.

The other new proposal, from L’Heureux, is to establish a designated unemployment account in the town’s reserve fund and put $10,000 in it to fund unemployment claims. The manager explained that having the fund would eliminate the need to appropriate money for unemployment insurance annually and put it back into reserve when it is not needed.

Items repeated from the Nov. 8 local ballot include the manager’s request for more money for the capital equipment reserve fund, two amended solid waste ordinances and the planning board’s proposed amendments to the Land Use Ordinance. Planning board members were scheduled to decide at their Feb. 7 meeting whether to present their amendments as a single document or to divide them into separate articles.

The next regular China selectmen’s meeting would have been on the Presidents’ Day holiday; it is rescheduled to 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 23.