SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — Residents will consider filling vacancies on the town’s school and selectmen boards and will vote on possible easements and a water tower project in local elections next week.
Polls in Southwest Harbor elections will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, at the fire station on Main Street .
The vacancies on the school board and Board of Selectmen were created when members of each board resigned earlier this year before their terms had expired. Dan Norwood and Edward Davis are running for the selectman’s seat formerly held by Dorr “Skip” Wilson. Susan Allen and Michael Sawyer are competing to fill the school board seat vacated by Amy Young.
According to Town Clerk Beatrice Grinnell, both people who win the special elections on Nov. 8 will serve until next June. New elections for the same positions will be held at Southwest Harbor’s annual town meeting next May, she said.
Voters also will decide whether to use $15,000 from the town’s unexpected surplus on an engineering study of a new water tower, according to Grinnell.
She said the town’s tower on Freeman Ridge Road keeps leaking and needs to be replaced.
“We keep plugging it and the plugs keep coming out,” she said.
How much a new tower might cost will be determined with the study, she said. When a new tower might be built is undecided, she added, but likely would be done as soon as possible.
Also on the ballot next week will be a question about whether the town should accept easements associated with two infrastructure projects. Grinnell said that accepting the easements will not cost the town anything.
One easement would be for a dry hydrant on Ronald Sanborn’s property on Seal Cove Road. Two other easements would be on abutting properties owned by Sandra Johnson and Mark Fisichetta on Wesley Avenue for a catch basin and a drainage culvert.
The local elections will be held in conjunction with the statewide election, which consists of four referendum questions about voter registration deadlines, gambling proposals in Biddeford, Lewiston and Washington County, and deadlines for redistricting electoral districts in Maine.
