RICHMOND

The three candidates running for the vacated Senate District 19 seat battled a late August heat spell during a meet-thecandidates event Wednesday night at the Enterprise Grange.

The special election will take place Tuesday, Aug. 27, to fill the seat vacated in July by Seth Goodall, D-Richmond, who accepted a position as the administrator for the New England region of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

One of approximately 40 people in attendance, Richmond Selectman Peter Warner stood and told candidates the town just went through its budget process, made compromises and is looking at a property tax rate increase, “because Augusta is going to give us less.”

“After we went to town meeting, we still don’t get the funding we were promised for schools. We lost some revenue sharing. We’re funding teacher retirements now. How do we stop that burden from coming back to us?” he asked.

Republican candidate Paula Benoit said Warner’s question raises a serious concern.

“I live on the water. I pay a huge amount of taxes,” Benoit said. “In my community, there are people who are third- or fourth-generation that live in that community on the water, a fishing village, and they’re on a fixed income. … They are land and house rich, and financially poor by all standards. So it is a serious concern. It affects people in ways we don’t really know.”

Going door to door, “you really see how people live,” Benoit added. “You see the needs that are there. The problem that I see, is that financially, our finances are just stretched so far. If you could just imagine a rubber band that has just lost all of its elasticity. There is no place to bounce back, and people that have money are leaving the state, and we have more people coming in that are enrolling in programs that are costing all of the citizenry money.”

Benoit said as she went door to door, she would sometimes find people home in their pajamas at 1 in the afternoon, watching TV. “Why are they not working, when you’ve got an elderly person that lives right down the street the could easily lose her farm? There has to be a balance. We have to stop spending more than we’re taking in, and until we do that, it’s going to be very difficult to get money out of Augusta, because there isn’t any money to get out of Augusta.”

Daniel Stromgren, a Green Independent, shot back that he wouldn’t prejudge the person home at 1 p.m. in their pajamas smoking a cigarette as “there’s a variety of reasons that that may be and it’s not my place to put that judgment there.”

“I believe that development begins at the community level and one of the things that we need to do is communicate better with our communities,” Stromgren said.

If elected, he said he has committed to hold town hall style forums in each of the Senate District 19 towns on a rotating basis, “and reconnecting the citizenry with its representation, and I think that’s where it starts, with the dialogue.”

Stromgren said he’s heard district residents say “I’m willing to pay my taxes, if they’re spent right.”

Cutting programs isn’t always the answer, he said, but rather, “cutting bureaucracy out of bureaucracy is the answer.”

“So what you find is the unusual Green candidate who’s going to tell you that I believe in smaller government that’s more efficient, and that we can regain some of our losses that way.”

Stromgren also talked of a constituent’s concern about housing foreclosures and said, “We need to hold the banks accountable for the foreclosures that they’re creating, for the people they’re putting out on the streets but also for maintaining those properties.”

Eloise Vitelli, the Democrat, said property taxes is one of the major issues people raise and she argued, “It’s important the state keeps to its promises and I think we need to recognize that the revenue sharing would have been a lot worse,” had Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed budget passed.

The state has not yet reached the 55 percent of funding for education as mandated by a citizen-initiated referendum in 2004, “but it’s been set up and it’s a goal and it’s one of the ways that towns can look to keep their costs down and keep their schools going.”

Vitelli said she agreed there are still efficiencies at all levels to be found to reduce costs of government, and she said towns have done well at this effort, including looking at regional partnerships to cut costs.

The election is Tuesday, Aug. 27.

A second election forum is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday at the Topsham Municipal Building, 100 Main St.

Senate District 19 includes all towns in Sagadahoc County and the town of Dresden in Lincoln County.

dmoore@timesrecord.com