Children play baseball in spring 2024 at the Carl R. Wright Baseball Complex, behind the Skowhegan Community Center. A long-planned expansion project for an athletic facility at 39 Poulin Drive includes two sports fields, pickleball and tennis courts, a concession stand, new Little League field dugouts and a maintenance garage. Town officials are now worried about the project’s financing. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel file

SKOWHEGAN — Between mixed signals from the Trump administration about federal funding and ongoing engineering costs, the long-planned Skowhegan Community Center athletic complex project could be in trouble, town officials said.

A funding shortfall, however, is likely not imminent, according to those overseeing the project.

The project’s potential financial issues came up at Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting, as the board debated whether to approve paying two invoices to Plymouth Engineering Inc. of Newport. The board ultimately approved the bills 2-1, with Chairman Paul York voting against it, but discussed at length whether the town should — and could — pay them.

“I’m not really sure where we stand,” York said during the discussion. “And I’m not really sure how we can approve any money until we know exactly what’s going to come in.”

Funding in hand has come from the $1.9 million sale of Memorial Field to Maine School Administrative District 54, a $200,000 donation from New Balance and appropriations approved at town meetings, officials said.

According to financial information presented by Denise LeBlanc, the director of Skowhegan Parks & Recreation, the town has money available in its capital reserve accounts to pay for most current expenses, but is projecting a shortfall in some areas, based on current allocations and pending expenses.

As of Tuesday, there was about $805,00 designated for the work at and around the existing community center, such as a concession stand, parking lot, new dugouts and other infrastructure. Three pending payments set to come out of that designation would leave a total of about $525,000, LeBlanc said.

For the construction of the portion of the project including new fields, there was about $858,000 as of Tuesday. Three pending payments set to come out of that designation would put it $429,000 in the red, though the overall department capital reserve account would still have money under other designations, according to financial records.

A large pending payment that results in the projected negative balance in that designation is to Ranger Construction Corp., the contractor that is building the new sod baseball field and other related infrastructure as part of the athletic complex expansion. Ranger was awarded a $2.3 million contract in September.

LeBlanc said Ranger’s work, which began in October, is expected to stop this week for the winter, so the town will likely not need to pay bills from the company for several months.

Meanwhile, town officials are waiting to see what will happen with two expected sources of funding from federal agencies.

The first is a matching grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund of the National Park Service, which would reimburse up to $330,000 for certain work around the existing community center, such as a concession stand, parking lot, stormwater system and Little League field dugouts. A maintenance garage planned as part of that work is not eligible for reimbursement, LeBlanc said.

The second source of funding is $3 million in congressionally directed spending to be administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

Town officials were already unsure of how much of the $3 million they are actually going to receive, in part because of concerns over the impact of changes to the baseball field’s playing surface and a delay in getting a finalized master plan from the town’s contracted engineering firm. The congressional appropriations bill designated the $3 million for a “Community Center Complex” for the town of Skowhegan, and the town has to submit details to HUD as part of a grant administration process.

And now, the recent federal funding freeze that President Donald Trump’s administration ordered has raised further confusion.

“We have no idea when we’re going to get it, if we’re ever to going to get it or what’s going to happen with that,” York, the chairman, said.

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum Monday calling for a halt to federal spending, though the scope of programs to which it applied was not entirely clear. A federal judge temporarily halted the order Tuesday, and the budget office rescinded the memorandum Wednesday, according to reports.

“It is what it is,” LeBlanc said Tuesday, before the memorandum was rescinded. “Everybody is going to have to deal with it.”

LeBlanc has said she intends to seek other sources of funding, public or private, but first needs a finalized master plan for the project. She has also been waiting for that master plan to complete the HUD process.

Selectman Steven Govoni, whose engineering firm Wentworth Partners & Associates of Skowhegan is contracted as clerk of works to oversee aspects of the project, said he received three pages of drawings earlier this month from Plymouth Engineering.

Govoni said he is “utterly disappointed” with Plymouth Engineering’s work on the project.

“I am processing in my head whether I’m going to be standing in front of this board in two or three weeks and saying that my recommendation is that they’re fired,” Govoni told the Board of Selectmen, speaking from the audience in his capacity as clerk of works, rather than as an elected official.

“I feel they’re not giving us what we’re asking for, and it has been a process that has been painful. We’re meeting them twice a week and trying to get stuff out of them. And every single time, we’re the ones finding problems on their drawings. We’re the ones correcting stuff on their drawings that don’t get us to the next phase.”

Overall plans for the community center expansion project at 39 Poulin Drive, for which planning began in 2006, include two sports fields, tennis and pickleball courts, a concession stand, new Little League field dugouts, a maintenance garage and other infrastructure.

Some residents and selectmen became frustrated with the project last winter, in part because the new facility is supposed to replace the previous homes of Skowhegan’s baseball and tennis teams at Memorial Field on Heselton Street. Those teams played without home facilities last spring because Memorial Field had been sold to MSAD 54 for construction of its new elementary school.

While some work has begun on various aspects of the overall project, funding has been an ongoing concern for town officials over the past year.