04/20/2018
Local Newspaper Story...
FRANKFORT — Voters bumped a three-term selectman for a newcomer to town politics and rejected by a single vote a $1 million bond for road repairs and plow trucks.
In elections March 29, Vaughan Littlefield defeated three-term selectman Joseph Watson by a vote of 147-93.
Littlefield, a 37-year-old Frankfort native and father of four, said he ran with an eye on the future, including better internet access for the rural town. In his campaign literature, he encouraged long-range planning so the town could be less reactive when changes inevitably come.
"I just wanted to have a say in some of the stuff going on," he said Friday night.
Watson, the ousted selectman, had served nine years on the board. On Friday night, he said he wasn't surprised that he lost. He chalked it up to a contingent of residents that has long distrusted the selectmen.
"A special group in the town," he said. "They had their way. It will happen again next year."
Town politics is not as heated as it was a few years back, but Thursday's election results and the debates at the town meeting Friday hinted that there are still entrenched factions.
A pair of ballot questions went down on nearly dead-even votes. The first was to bond $750,000 for road repairs. The second would have allowed the town to borrow $250,000 to buy one new and one used plow truck. Both failed, 122-123.
Selectman Steve Imondi said town officials were late in providing details of the road work to be done with the $750,000 bond.
Voters on Friday night approved a backup request to the failed road bond, authorizing the selectmen to borrow $100,000 for new culverts and other repairs on Treat Point Road. They also approved raising the usual $100,000 for hot-topping around town.
The plow truck fleet didn't fare as well after its own failed bond request.
As with the road bond, selectmen included a backup request for $100,000 for plow trucks on the town meeting warrant. But voters balked at the wording of the article, which would have locked the town into buying two used vehicles rather than having the flexibility to use the money for repairs, a single used vehicle or some combination of the two.
Last year the town spent $58,000 on repairs to its three trucks, the newest of which is 10 years old. Former Road Commissioner Earl Anderson Jr. argued that $50,000 — the amount the town would have for each used truck if the backup article were approved — would just get the town another 2008 truck. Anderson said the amount spent last year on repairs should hold the town over for a couple years.
Residents voted the question down with some wanting to revisit it at a special town meeting.
Road Commissioner Shawn Stone cautioned that the delay of scheduling a new town meeting to get approval for funding might be too long to hold any given deal.
Townspeople previously rejected using a private service to plow town roads. Stone said he was surprised that the $250,000 bond request failed at the polls. He acknowledged that the wording of backup request was "too rigid," but said the town would have to reckon with its old fleet, or the snow, at some point.
"We have a shovel factory in town," he said, laughing. It was a reference to Mount Waldo Plastics. "Maybe we'll just have everybody buy shovels and shovel in front of their house."
Stone was re-elected as road commissioner. Earl Anderson Jr. was elected by write-in vote to a vacant seat on the Planning Board, and Albert Colson Sr. was re-elected as emergency management director.
Voters at the town meeting authorized selectmen to enter agreements totaling 20 years with Freshwater Stone to remove loose granite from Mt. Waldo quarry. They appropriated $2,500 from a town account to fix the town's clock over objections from one resident who said almost everyone has a phone with a clock on it now. And they bucked the selectmen's recommendation to pay outside social service agencies a third of their requested amounts, instead giving them 75 percent.
Roughly 80 people attended the annual town meeting, which was held at Leroy H. Smith School in Winterport.
