Jun. 17—Windham held one of its longest town meetings in recent history on Saturday, June 14. Running for nearly 4 1/2 hours, the meeting saw the town polarized by the cost of multiple capital improvements, and the meeting extending past the final warrant article to resolve the issue of the general government budget.
Early in the meeting, the town narrowly voted down Article 7, which would have authorized a total municipal budget of $39,941,225, and led to the town voting for different departments individually. The first of them, Article 8, would have authorized a budget of $8,954,000 for general government, an 11.39% increase from last year.
According to Town Manager Barry Tibbetts, the item covered town management, human resources, collection and registration, boards and commissions, and the town clerk’s office, among other Town Hall functions. If voted down, the town would have to come back with a new budget with short notice. At first, this item was voted down by members of the town due to the steep cost and increase.
The matter of the government budget came up again after the remaining line items had been voted on when Tibbetts asked the town to reconsider the issue, and made clear what the consequences would be. If the town did not have an operating budget by July 1, he said, the government would essentially shut down, disrupting municipal and social functions such as police benefits.
This further divided those in attendance, with some residents praising the lengthy and transparent process the town council went through in approving the budget, while others thought that it should have been explained while the original article was being voted on, and said that the discussion would be unfair to the several attendees who had left after the last warrant article.
After voting down both an amendment that would have lowered the amount of money being voted on and a motion to adjourn, the town eventually passed Article 8, allowing operations at Town Hall to continue into the next fiscal year.
The other main source of debate was around capital projects. One of the projects, a new Public Safety building to be built in North Windham, was noted by moderator Gary Plummer to be the longest discussion for a single article since he started attending town meetings back in 1962. The project was covered by Article 22, which authorized the issue of $6.5 million in general obligation bonds, and Article 23, which appropriated $2.4 million from the unassigned fund balance.
Tibbetts said the town had looked at several items about a year ago, including the aging current Public Safety building, which they decided would not be able to accommodate fire and police services. The new building, which will be located in the North Windham business district, will improve emergency service call times by anywhere between 30 seconds to one minute. Tibbetts said the numbers the town came up with, which total about $10 million for the whole project, were based on the costs of similar projects in other southern Maine communities. The building and the connecting road are expected to be completed by 2028, and neither the town government nor MaineDOT expect any significant delays.
A resident asked if the town owned the land, to which Tibbetts responded that, while the town did not own the land, this was not a concern, as it currently has access to the land through Franklin Drive. Other residents expressed their feelings that the town should not plan to build on land it doesn’t own, while the former fire chief urged residents to support the article, recalling the countless times that the Fire Department had been forced to wait to get onto Route 302 while responding to emergencies. After a lengthy discussion, both articles were approved.
Another capital project that would have appropriated a total of $3 million to finance the cost of improvements to Gambo Park, including three playing fields, a boat launch and a food stand, also divided the town. Article 24, which would have authorized the issuance of $1.5 million in general obligation bonds, and Article 25, which would have appropriated $1.5 million in unassigned funds, failed by eight and seven votes, respectively, after hand recounts.
A resident who said he has been coaching soccer teams at the park said the project would benefit the community, and that it was important for the town to make improvements for the sake of kids involved in local sports teams. He said it felt wrong for a town of 22,000 to only have one field for children that was not owned by the school district.
Another resident expressed concern about the impact that the projects were having on the town’s tax burden, saying that senior citizens had been forced to move out of the town to avoid being overtaxed, and brought up how the town’s baseball field had been built with money raised by individual contributors.
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