EUSTIS — Voters at town meeting on Saturday spent about two hours working through a 25-article warrant, raising a budget of $1 million.
“We’re still in the black and we’re doing good,” former Selectman Jane Wilkinson said on Saturday evening. “It was a really long meeting — almost two hours.”
Eustis town meetings usually last less than an hour to an hour.
Wilkinson, who served 17 years as a selectman, didn’t seek re-election this month when her term expired. “It was time to let new blood come on board,” she said. “I encouraged some of the others to run.”
Selectman Jay Wyman, who served for about 38 years, left the board in January, Wilkinson said. The only remaining board member from the original three-person board that went to five this month was Selectman John Caldwell. He will join four newcomers who were elected Friday night at town meeting polls. They are Stephan St. Jean for a three-year term, Daphne Harp and Brandi Farnsworth for two-year terms and James Brochu for a one-year term.
Also winning re-election Friday night as Flagstaff Regional School Board directors were Susan Fotter and David Richards for three-year terms and Casey Cote for a one-year term.
The only article that was defeated was a request to raise and/or appropriate $2,500 for a request from Larry Warren to construct a section of hiking trail around Eustis, Wilkinson said.
Warren is the Maine Huts and Trails director. He is seeking funds for a trail from Kingfield to the Canadian border to tie the Maine Huts and Trails and the Appalachian Trail into the decades-old proposed International Loop Trail following Benedict Arnold’s journey from the Dead River (which is now Flagstaff Lake) to the Canadian border where it would connect to the Sentiers Frontaliers in Quebec. The Sentiers Frontaliers is an about 84-mile hiking trail network that links the Chartierville and Saint-Augustin-de-Woburn border crossings.
“There was a lot of discussion, but people were tired of spending money by then,” Wilkinson said of the article’s placement on the warrant.
An article that Wilkinson said generated “a huge discussion” involved a requested appropriation of $97,169.90 from surplus to cover a 2014 overdraft in the plowing contract for the particularly challenging winter road maintenance. It was approved.
Voter turnout was lower than usual this year.
Randall and Sandra Scribner were presented with a commissioned watercolor painting by Claudia Diller depicting the life of the two women. Wilkinson said the painting had a lot of Stratton buildings in it.
Edited: Corrected incorrect name in last paragraph, Randall and Sandra were presented with the painting.
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