BELGRADE — Voters face some big-ticket decisions at the annual Town Meeting Saturday, March 17.

Those requests include spending $100,000 for repairs to the community center roof, first-year payments on two new firetrucks and setting aside $50,000 to build a new Town Office.

The meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Belgrade Community Center for All Seasons.

Town Manager Gregory Gill said the proposed municipal budget is up $360,041 from last year, primarily because of capital project expenses. The increase shouldn’t have much of an effect on the current tax rate of $14.1 per $1,000 of property value, he said.

“It’s all being appropriated out of capital reserve accounts,” he said of this year’s budget requests.

Gill said most of the municipal accounts, including general government, public safety, and social services, are less than last year.

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He said the cost of fuel oil is up. Last year, he said the town paid $3.33 a gallon and this heating season it will be close to $4 a gallon.

Gill said town debt payments increased because of the first annual payments on a $425,000 bond to build the sand and salt shed and buy two firetrucks, he said.

Voters will also be asked to:

* use $30,704 from the fire capital reserve account for the first-year payments on the firetrucks and $19,630 from the public works road maintenance and paving capital reserve account for the first-year payment on the sand and salt shed;

* spend $1,500 for a streetscape project to rebuild Main Street through Belgrade Lakes Village;

* lease the Old Town House building on Cemetery Road to the Belgrade Historical Society to display its collection an hold activities;

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* buy waterfront property owned by the Dalton family adjacent to the Center For All Seasons, which includes a house and three-car garage with an apartment on 1.3 acres, to give the town ownership of a 25-foot right-of-way through the center’s property;

* establish a Town Office reserve account and close the community capital reserve account, moving its $28,959 balance into the new account to buy land, building and equipment for the new Town Office; and

* raise and appropriate an additional $50,000 for the Town Office reserve account.

Gill said the town voted down a request to build a Town Office complex two years ago that would have included a library.

Now the proposal is for simply a Town Office, although it may also have the food bank in it, he said.

Mechele Cooper — 621-5663

mcooper@centralmaine.com


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