Somerville Annual Town Meeting June 12 and 13

Somerville voters will decide on a $411,744 annual budget for fiscal year 2015-2016 and contested races for first selectman and road commissioner at annual town meeting on June 12 and 13.

Elections will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. on Friday, June 12 at the Somerville Town Office at 72 Sand Hill Rd.; the open meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 13 at the Somerville Elementary School at 665 Patricktown Rd.

Two races for office in Somerville are contested this year, one for a three-year term for first selectman, and the other for a two-year term for road commissioner.

First Selectman Susan Greer has served three consecutive one-year terms on the select board and hopes to be elected to her first three-year term.

Greer moved to Somerville about 10 years ago, having retired after 23 years (the most recent 12 years were full-time) in the Army National Guard in California.

According to Greer, she moved to Somerville hoping to become a part of the community, and soon thereafter joined the Somerville Volunteer Fire Department’s Ladies Auxiliary and the Whitefield Lions Club.

Greer, who had worked for the National Guard in a center that did emergency disaster preparedness training, took on the role of Somerville’s emergency management director.

Greer continued in the role remotely during a four-year tour in Baghdad, Iraq, with the U.S. Department of State from 2007-2011, she said.

After returning to Somerville, Greer was first elected to the select board in spring 2012.

If re-elected, Greer said she will continue focusing on town roads, furthering the town’s comprehensive plan process, and bringing broadband internet to Somerville.

“We’ve started our revaluation for taxes, [and] that’s anticipated to be done in April 2017. That has been really a major goal of mine, to see our property tax records cleaned up and made right,” Greer said.

Greer also hopes to review whether the town’s current solid waste provider, Tri-County Solid Waste Management Organization in Union, is the best option for the town. The town’s contract with the group is up in 2016, she said.

Greer feels Somerville should be looking at how to provide more ways to bring the townspeople together, an issue brought up at a recent town forum, she said.

“We’re small. We only have 500 people here, so I think it would be nice to have events, opportunities, that more people can be involved in,” she said.

Selectman candidate Lance Willis and road commissioner candidates incumbent Jesse Turner, Stephen Childs, and Bryce DeMerchant, did not return calls requesting interviews.

Road commissioner candidate Daryl Horak declined to be interviewed.

Incumbent Chris Johnson is running unopposed for a three-year term on the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit 12 Board of Directors.

A budget of $412,069 was unanimously voted forward by the town’s budget committee in April, though some members opposed the biggest increase in the budget: a $15,800 or 37.8 percent increase in funding for the fire department.

The department’s request has since been amended to $57,600, and would instead represent an increase of $14,650 or 35 percent.

Though some of the fire department’s equipment was replaced in the current budget, other equipment including turnout gear and air packs is worn out and needs to be replaced to meet Department of Labor requirements, according to Fire Chief Mike Dostie.

The fire department is working to get on a five-year replacement plan, but if the equipment is n0t replaced, the fire department could face fines and still be required to replace it, Dostie said in April.

The department’s request also includes funding for improvements to the department’s north station to reduce heating costs, a fire prevention education program, generator repairs at the south station, roof and wall repairs at one of the stations, and the installation of two hydrants, Dostie said at the time.

In addition to the fire department amending its request, the selectmen amended the overall budget to include $875 for mowing and, according to Greer, a $50 line item for grant-related costs was eliminated because any of those costs would be funded out of grants received.

Much of the proposed budget would be flat-funded; and most of the remaining lines would either increase or decrease by $1,000 or less.

One relatively substantial change in the budget is a decrease of just over $6,000 in two supply lines in the administration category.

The lines were over-budgeted in the current year, and a contingency for a software purchase was also removed, Greer said previously.

The road maintenance repair line is proposed at $50,000, a decrease of $4,120 or 7.6 percent.

Some of the work normally funded under the line will be taken care of during reserve account-funded reconstruction work planned for this year, and the budget committee felt comfortable lowering the request because the full budget wasn’t used in the current year, according to Greer.

In addition to the budget, warrant articles ask voters to authorize: the selectmen to appropriate up to $20,000 from surplus for contingencies; the use of $10,000 from the general fund to reduce taxes; and to raise and/or appropriate $10,000 for possible use as matching funds for grants.

One article asks to authorize the selectmen to transfer up to $10,000 to the revaluation reserve and up to $50,000 to the capital road construction reserve from funds received from the sale of tax-acquired property; another asks to authorize the selectmen to transfer up to $20,000 from the general fund to the revaluation reserve.

The town meeting warrant includes an article for a replacement flood plain ordinance, which received no comments at a public hearing in April, according to Greer.

“By passing [the ordinance] it allows people in town to take advantage of the National Flood Insurance Program,” Greer said. “If it doesn’t pass then no one can get federal flood insurance, so it’s definitely a benefit to the town to have that [in place].”

The town received a draft of the ordinance at a county-wide meeting and “we went back and checked that against our land use and our shoreland zoning ordinances to make sure everything matched,” Greer said.