AUGUSTA — City voters on Tuesday selected Linda Conti to fill a vacancy on the city council and gave the go-ahead to a new fire station and allowing the superintendent of schools to live outside the city.

Conti garnered 935 votes, emerging comfortably from a three-way race to represent Ward 1, which consists largely of the southwest part of the city. Former councilors Stanley Koski and Mary Mayo-Wescott earned 321 and 342 votes respectively, in unofficial vote totals.

Conti, 54, an attorney with the state attorney general’s office who has been an appointed member of the Planning Board since 2007, said she wants to get more involved in the city and can bring common sense and a fresh perspective to the council.

“I”m thrilled,” Conti said Tuesday evening. “I’m very grateful for all the support, for the support I’ve received from my volunteers and the citizens of Ward 1.”

Voters also agreed by a vote of 4,372 to 3,129 to remove the city charter requirement that required the superintendent of schools to live in the city. The charter amendment, proposed by the Board of Education, removes the requirement that the superintendent live in Augusta in order to have the job.

Board members said the requirement greatly hampered their ability to attract an adequate pool of candidates for the job when former Superintendent Cornelia Brown left it in January 2013. And while they have since filled the superintendent’s position, they were concerned it could hurt future searches.

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Augusta was one of only a handful of Maine municipalities that require superintendents to live in the community where their school systems are located.

After Brown left, the board agreed to hire James Anastasio, a former Cony High School principal, to become interim superintendent. Anastasio lives in Gardiner.

The board later extended Anastasio’s “interim” stint until June 2015. Since then, it has selected Anastasio as its regular superintendent, voting this year to remove the “interim” tag from his title starting in June 2015.

Anastasio said before the vote that he would move from Gardiner to Augusta if the charter change was rejected.

Voters also approved three bond proposals that will allow the city to borrow more than $8.1 million combined to build a fire station in north Augusta and buy a new firetruck without forcing a tax increase, officials said.

One of the bonds, which passed by a vote of 5,136 to 2,429, will provide $3.6 million to build a fire station on city-owned land near the intersection of Anthony Avenue and Leighton Road to serve the burgeoning north Augusta area, and $1 million to buy a new multipurpose firetruck to replace the city’s 20-year-old ladder truck.

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In addition to the Fire Department-related bond question, voters also approved, by a vote of 4,172 to 3,380, a plan to borrow $1.9 million for repairs and energy-efficiency upgrades at the city-owned Augusta Civic Center. Another bond, which passed by a vote of 5,377 to 1,564 will provide $1.6 million for street and sidewalk improvements, including work on School Street, Townsend Road, Northern Avenue and Bond Brook Road.

All those bonds would be paid back with money collected from commercial development in the area that would be served by the new station. The funds would be repaid with money to be collected in multiple city tax increment financing accounts. Most of those sheltered funds came from new revenue from commercial development in the area, such as the Marketplace at Augusta, the Central Maine Commerce Center, and expansions at J.S. McCarthy and NRF Distributors. State rules allow the city to retain a portion of tax revenue generated from new development in designated districts, and to spend that money on qualified projects.

That should allow the city, according to Ralph St. Pierre, finance director and assistant city manager, to pay back the borrowed money with tax increment funds rather than by increasing the property tax rate.

Another, even larger bond proposal on the local ballot asked voters if they approved of borrowing $21 million. However, St. Pierre noted the proposal would simply refinance existing debt to take advantage of a lower interest rate. He said the refinancing would save a total of about $1 million over the life of the bonds, with the state receiving about 85 percent of the savings, and the city the rest. It passed by a vote of 5,072 to 2,409.

Staff writer Keith Edwards contributed to this report.

Craig Crosby — 621-5642

ccrosby@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @CraigCrosby4


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