SMITHFIELD — Voters at the annual Town Meeting Saturday night breezed through the 63-article town warrant after electing a new member to the Board of Selectmen and agreeing to raise $500 toward future leap year celebrations. Smithfield is Maine’s only leap year town, incorporated on Feb. 29, 1840.
Smithfield First Selectman Richard Moore said the vote to raise the $500 was overwhelmingly approved.
“It’s fun,” Moore said of the idea of the town having a birthday every four years. He said the town likely will continue raising money over the next few years for its next birthday in 2020. Smithfield was incorporated from parts of Dearborn to the south, Mercer to the west and East Pond Plantation to the north and east.
In the only contested race this year, Molly Gould Chapman unseated incumbent Second Selectman Dale Bud Churchill by a vote of 110-75. Moore said he remembered the voting tally Sunday because the election “was the highlight of the Town Meeting.”
The proposed town budget of $808,081 was approved by the approximately 80 residents attending the Saturday night Town Meeting, according to Moore. The budget is up about $9,000 from last year’s approved $799,634 municipal budget.
“It was a pretty cut and dried Town Meeting,” Moore said by phone Sunday.
He said after some discussion, proposed changes to five town ordinances were approved by voters, including a stipulation added to three ordinances requiring the Board of Selectmen to hold a public hearing before setting or amending fee schedules. The stipulations are for the building notice ordinance, the mobile home park ordinance and the subdivision ordinance. It is already part of the shoreland zoning ordinance and the wireless facilities ordinance.
Changes also were approved for the Commercial-Industrial Site Plan Review Ordinance, requiring stricter regulations on filing applications for site plan reviews and an expansion of the minimum lot size ordinance to include properties that do not have a dwelling or commercial building on them, as well as those that do.
Major items approved by voters Saturday night included $127,779 for salaries of town officials and employees, $60,000 for waste management, $159,273 for winter road maintenance and $34,500 for Fire Department operations.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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