WOOLWICH — With every seat full, Woolwich residents stood two-deep along the garage bay doors at the fire station Wednesday evening, raising yellow cards nearly unanimously to approve most of the 43-article warrant at the 2012 town meeting.

Voters approved a 2012-13 municipal budget of nearly $1.5 million, endorsing every proposed expenditure but one, after Woolwich Fire Chief Dana Lindsey withdrew a request for $3,000 to fund paramedic training. Lindsey told voters he’d secured grant funding to pay for the training.

Only a few items generated much debate, including whether voters should fund a $49,203 request from Patten Free Library — they did, by a wide margin — and discussion about a recent vote by the Regional School Unit 1 board of directors to change the district’s cost-sharing formula.

RSU 1

Early during the meeting, Board of Selectmen chairman David King took the podium to ask the crowd if they wanted to hear about the “RSU 1 fiasco.”

They did.

King explained that when RSU 1 provided its five communities — Arrowsic, Bath, Phippsburg, West Bath and Woolwich — with their expected share of the school district’s 2013 budget, Woolwich saw a large increase over last year, but “we couldn’t get the numbers to come out right,” King said.

Selectmen then realized they were figuring the costsharing using LD 910, unique legislation that formed RSU 1, although the RSU 1 board had adhered to one of two conflicting legal opinions in 2008 and applied the “one-third” formula to local-only costsharing.

King said that RSU 1 board chairman Tim Harkins “has been honest, up front and (told us) everything we asked,” but he also noted that the attorney who provided RSU 1 with the legal opinion the school board approved was Bath City Solicitor Roger Therriault, “and it turns out his opinion saved Bath $1.6 million … One town has saved every year (since the creation of the RSU): Bath. One town has overpaid every year: West Bath.”

Patten Free Library

Voters also approved a $49,203 request from Patten Free Library, only a week after Phippsburg residents said “no” to the library’s request from that town, essentially ending, as of July 1, Phippsburg residents’ ability to borrow books without paying a nonresident fee.

David Miller, a Woolwich resident and member of the Patten Free board, said to applause on Wednesday, “I believe that free access to library services for all citizens is an essential service, and it is more essential for the disadvantaged.”

But another voter stood to argue, “When I’m paying $49,000 and change, the word ‘free’ (doesn’t) come to mind.”

This year marks the first in five in which the library has asked Woolwich for increased funding (up from $43,696 last year), library corporator and trustee Spencer Gray said, noting, “We are a very-closeto the-bone financial organization.”

With a hand vote, residents passed the library funding 135-38.

Voters supported allowing King to make a brief presentation about a proposed addition to the town office building, and he said that during recent public meetings about the proposal, “it became apparent that we moved too fast and too far” with the idea.

Instead, he suggested creation of a nine-person committee to “step back and start over, and from the back of the room, Bill Longley called for a show of hands — and most were raised — for “supporting further investigation” of the idea.

Voters also approved allocating $5,000 for the “Fields for our Future” project at McMann Field in Bath, although King asked, “With Bath threatening to pull out of the RSU,” how project supporters could ask Woolwich for funding for a Bath facility.

But Brandon Howell said, “About anything we do that we put into the kids, we receive benefits for … I’d like to see us be a leader (and) make other communities follow us.”

Budget

Along with the municipal budget of nearly $1.5 million, Woolwich’s share of the proposed $7.6 million Sagadahoc County budget is slated to be $651,265 — up $35,801, according to Town Administrator Lynette Eastman.

And the town is scheduled to pay just more than $3.1 million to RSU 1. Voters approved drawing up to $800,000 from the town’s surplus funds — the same amount as in 2011 — to reduce the tax commitment.

Due to increases in the county and school budgets, the current property tax rate of $12.57 per $1,000 valuation will increase regardless of any change in townwide valuation, Eastman said Monday, but the final rate for next year won’t be finalized until September when the town’s valuation is completed.

bbrogan@timesrecord.com