BLUE HILL, Maine — Voters will get a chance to increase the size of the town’s Board of Selectmen from three to five members.
Although petitioners still have to attend to a few official details, the town clerk has determined they have gathered the required number of signatures to send the issue to a town vote.
Win Turner, who spearheaded the petition drive, said 147 signatures have been collected. Some could not be counted, but the town clerk has indicated there were more than the 135 required signatures on the petitions.
The petition drive began as an upshot of the town’s revaluation, which saw property values and taxes on property in the Salt Pond area increase dramatically compared to the rest of the town. Although the property tax issue fueled the petition drive, Turner said, it was not the main focus of the move to increase the size of the board.
“It was certainly a catalyst, but it was not the sole motivation,” he said.
Turner said he had been observing the operations of the Board of Selectmen and noticed the workload seemed to be getting larger.
“I felt there was a need for more membership,” he said.
Others agreed, and the petition drive began.
“There are a lot of people interested in representative government,” Turner said. “A little more diversity on the board would be beneficial.”
The petition itself notes that one of the selectmen, Jim Schatz, serves as a state representative and, as such, is barred from decisions on certain assessing matters. Effectively, Turner said, the town on those occasions has the services of just two assessors.
The selectmen recently appointed former Selectman Gordon Emerson to serve as assessor when Schatz could not.
Since the town hires a professional assessing service, the selectmen do very little assessing work, Schatz said Monday.
“It amounts to a couple of hours a year,” he said.
Still, given the large tax increase in one area of town, the selectmen’s assessing duties did raise an issue in some minds, Turner said.
The petitioners still have to certify those who circulated the petition, so the selectmen have not formally received the petitions yet. They have discussed the issue informally, according to Schatz, and will likely schedule a vote on the issue in January.
State law stipulates the selectmen must act on the petition when the next warrant is prepared or at the annual town meeting. According to Schatz, the selectmen already have scheduled a special town meeting for Jan. 27 to act on the school consolidation proposal and could include the petition issue on that warrant.
“We haven’t discussed it in detail yet, but we’re leaning in that direction,” he said.
The Jan. 27 date is after the deadline for submitting nomination papers for municipal elections at the annual town meeting in April. So if the measure were passed in January, voters would not be able to elect the additional selectmen until the 2010 town meeting.
The petition had asked that the vote take place at least 90 days before the annual town meeting in order to make the increase effective for the coming year.
“We’d hoped to do it earlier than that,” Turner said. “We didn’t want to wait another year.”
Schatz said the selectmen plan an informational meeting to discuss the school consolidation issue, and likely will do the same to discuss the proposal to increase the membership on the Board of Selectmen. The hearing on consolidation is set for Jan. 15.