Referendum set for June 14 following annual town meeting

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

DOVER-FOXCROFT — A dozen articles were approved at the 2016 annual town meeting on April 30 at the Morton Avenue Municipal Building, with these items now moving to the June 14 referendum ballot to join the election of a pair of municipal officers, two seats on the school board as well as a question concerning the 2017 RSU 68 budget.

The total proposed municipal budget is $4,585,075, just over $346,000 more or 8.17 percent, than for the current fiscal year. The spending plan includes a little more than $1.9 million in non-tax revenues — 0.81 percent less than in 2015-16 — for a net amount of $2,660,365 to be raised through property taxes. The difference in the amount to be raised is $361,954 more than in 2016.

An article on the June 14 ballot asks if state funds, an anticipated $90,000, along with $310,000 raised and appropriated shall be used for local road improvements. A question during the town meeting inquired about the benefit of using the $400,000 on town travelways at the present time instead of in the future.

“With pavement there’s a critical time period,” said Will Haskell of Gorrill Palmer, a firm that conducted a paving management plan for Dover-Foxcroft. “Basically pavement deteriorates over time,” he said, saying once roads reach a need for reconstruction the costs increase exponentially.

Haskell said nearly 14.5 miles of the town’s 34 miles of paved roads are in critical need of preventative maintenance, with another 9.1 miles having fallen into rehabilitation/reconstruction status. “It’s $1.6 million if you delay spending money now, you are going to end up paying a lot more in the long run,” he said.

Town Manager Jack Clukey said putting $400,000 toward roads instead of the previous amount of $100,00 over the next decade will result in $1,570,000 being saved over these 10 years. “The immediate need is to make sure we don’t get any more roads into a reconstruction category than we already have,” he said, with travelways currently in this condition being addressed in three years per the pavement management plan.

Should citizens approve the question on local roads, they will also have to vote to increase the property tax limit — currently at about $2,536,850 — established for the community by the state law of LD1.

Selectperson Gail D’Agostino said LD1 can be “a difficult, confusing concept to understand” as in the past articles for town projects have been approved but the ensuing requests to increase the property tax levy limit were voted down. “If roads are important to you it’s important to vote ‘yes’ on Article 7,” she said.

Another referendum article concerns the long-term future of solid waste disposal as residents will be asked if the town should continue as a member of the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) and sign a municipal joinder agreement concerning a waste disposal facility being developed by Fiberight, LLC in Hampden.

Clukey said since the formation of the MRC in the early 1990s, the organization’s 187 members have sent waste to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC) in Orrington, where the trash has been incinerated with PERC selling the electricity produced to Emera at an above-market rate. “The PERC contract that we all have expires in 2018,” Clukey said.

He said over the last decade the MRC has looked at various options for post-2018 and has opted for the Fiberight proposal. “We feel we have a very cost-effective and environmentally-sound proposal moving forward,” Clukey said.

“This, after today, goes to the June ballot and then it empowers the board of selectmen to sign the municipal joinder agreement sometime in June,” he said.

Next month’s ballot asks if the town will authorize the selectmen to sell, lease or otherwise convey the police station at 182 East Main Street, with proceeds being used for capital improvements at the town office. A resident asked why this is still being pursued if the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office is no longer interested in pursuing a purchase of the property.

“Right now they are exploring other options with no timetable to come back to this one,” Clukey said. He said should the article be approved then town officials could proceed with a transaction of the police building with any interested party.

“Right now there’s no active discussion but there’s discussion that could happen in the future,” Clukey added.

The last item approved on Saturday morning asked if a land use ordinance amendment on the keeping of domesticated chickens shall be adopted, with the maximum number of hens allowed in the residential and village zones being doubled from six to 12. Roosters are not permitted in these sections of town.

Code Enforcement Officer Connie Sands said Pleasant Street resident Owen Sherman, who recently turned 10, came to her with the request. Sherman has a flock of four hens but the birds can only be purchased in multiples of six and a count of 10 would be above the limit for in-town Dover-Foxcroft.

Select Vice Chair Cindy Freeman Cyr said she wanted to comment on Sherman’s initiative to bring his request forward, having met with Sands and then presenting to the planning board. “It’s a great example of how he has used the democratic process to move forward what I think is a reasonable request,” she said.