Vassalboro town meeting will be held in two sessions

by Mary Grow

Vassalboro’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.