WILTON — Selectmen have accused Central Maine Power Co. of intentionally ramping up its installation of wireless electricity meters in town to keep them from passing a moratorium to temporarily ban the project.

They made the claim after discovering the power company installed 1,900 “smart meters” in Wilton in the two weeks after selectmen voted to draft the ordinance on Oct. 4. Before the vote, 100 of the meters had been installed in town.

Selectmen Tom Saviello described the sudden spike as a calculated decision that pulled extra utility crews off of jobs in other communities, descending on a town that wanted to give residents more time to ask questions about the project.

He directed the allegation at John Carroll, a CMP spokesman, during a meeting Tuesday night, when selectmen had planned to vote on the moratorium but backed off after learning about the additional meter installations.

Carroll responded by telling selectmen that the added meters got installed on a normal schedule as part of the company’s plan to install 620,000 smart meters statewide by January.

Saviello countered that he spoke with workers who had a different take on the effort in Wilton, a town of about 4,100 residents in northern Franklin County.

“The Carrabassett Valley guys made it clear they were pulled from a job and told to go to Wilton and get it done,” Saviello said.

“Let’s make it clear that you put the full-court press on,” he said.

The Board of Selectmen had been following the example set by the Bath City Council, the only other Maine community to pass an ordinance that makes changes to the statewide opt-out plan for residents who want to keep their old meters.

Saviello, who is also a Republican state senator for Wilton, made the initial motion to draft a town ordinance, which on top of the temporary ban could have required CMP to get permission from residents to make the switch.

The ordinances counter the state Public Utilities Commission’s decision to allow people to opt out of the program but require them to pay for alternatives. Among the commission-approved options, customers who want to keep old meters have to pay $40 up front and $12 a month.

Selectmen had planned to decide at the meeting Tuesday whether to call a special town meeting to ask voters to consider passing the ordinance. Saviello and other selectmen said they had to end the effort because of the large number of meters install by CMP before the meeting.

More legal hurdles and expenses arise if the work is already done and an ordinance attempts to get the meters removed or banned retroactively, selectmen and town manager Rhonda Irish said.

CMP plans to install a total of around 2,300 meters in town and officials said the project is 87 percent complete.

Selectman Russell Black said three meters were installed at his Wilton residence and barn last week. He also got a flood of calls from residents who were confused by the utility crews showing up at their homes despite the possible moratorium, he said Wednesday.

“As soon as we began talking about (a moratorium), CMP dumped as many workers as it could here, and to tell me that they didn’t put the push on, I find that hard to believe,” he said.

Black is worried that some residents may have refused to have the smart meters installed because of confusion about the issue. Residents told him that they didn’t want to opt out but refused the meters because they wanted to wait for a decision on the ordinance, he said.

He asked Carroll to review the list of about 40 residents who opted out of the project, hoping to avoid having anyone face the charges because of the confusion, he said.

Black, who is also a Republican state representative for Wilton, received a lot of complaints about the way the meters were installed. Some residents, including Black, didn’t get a knock on the door or note from the company after the work had been done, he said.

“A truck shows up, they don’t tell you what they’re going to do, and they just do it,” he said.

During a phone interview, Carroll said Wednesday that he planned to review the opt-out list. He also plans to look into the claims that crews didn’t knock on doors or leave notes behind, which is supposed to be done during each installation.

Carroll said his company did not adjust its schedule because of the possible moratorium.

Carroll didn’t know how many crews were working in Wilton over the past two weeks. He said installations started in the town about a week before the meeting on Oct. 4, and the process followed all of the state-approved steps to notify the town and residents of the work.

CMP also provided an informational meeting for residents in the town, which is something it has done in 150 other communities, Carroll said.

He said it was incidental that 100 meters got installed in the week before the meeting and 1,900 were finished in the following two weeks.

Almost 2,000 smart meters per day are being installed statewide. He said it takes about three to five minutes to install a single meter, he said.

Carroll said the project tracks its progress along routes separated into geographic regions and couldn’t say whether there were a comparable amount of installations of the same time period in other communities.

“We don’t gauge installations based on towns but rather geographic areas,” he said.

The amount of work in Wilton does not stand out from the effort to install in other regions, he said.

“It’s not unusual that 1,900 meters would have been installed in a two-week period in a given area,” he said.

Carroll denied Saviello’s claim that workers were intentionally pulled from other communities to work in Wilton.

“It was based on a comment from one installer and I’m not sure what the installer was talking about,” Carroll said.

CMP has subcontracted the installation work to VSI Meter Services, which is an independent subcontractor that establishes its own daily plan where to install the meters. Carroll said he didn’t issue an order for VSI crews to go to Wilton and he doesn’t know of any other CMP official who would have.

A message was not returned Wednesday by VSI Meter Services. The company also goes by the name Grid One Solutions, according to its website.

Some residents have raised questions about health effects from the radio frequency network that allows power companies to monitor electricity consumption remotely and at intervals, Saviello said during the meeting.

State health officials don’t support some of those concerns, but the moratorium would have given residents a chance to ask those experts themselves, he said.

Saviello also said that he supports the smart meters as a way to lower energy rates.

Residents may soon be able to lower their bills by learning what time of day that energy costs are the cheapest because of fewer people using energy, he said, which is one of the goals of the smart meter project.

Selectman Paul Gooch said Wednesday that he has no problem with the technology, but his concern is about the way CMP handled residents’ concerns and confusion about the project.

He said that CMP said customers getting installations were more hostile in Wilton than kin most places.

“Well that’s probably why, because people in town thought we were going to go forward with a moratorium,” he said.

David Robinson — 861-9287

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