NORWAY – The Recreation Department budget passed at Monday’s town meeting includes money for two part-time rangers at Pennesseewassee Park and a raise for the director.

It also will fund tennis court repairs, ball field improvements and garden plantings.

The $61,541 operating budget will provide full-time Recreation Director Deb Partridge with a pay increase of $5,750, giving her an annual salary of $30,000.

Voters appropriated $55,800 from taxes and agreed to take $5,741 from the Laura S. Sanborn Trust Fund. The sum of $3,241 from the fund will pay for repairing ball fields and $2,500 will be used for plantings in town flower gardens.

Another $13,000 from the trust fund will finance repairs to the town’s tennis courts as part of a capital improvement project.

Partridge said the town hopes to have another ball field ready for service this summer in the area below the town’s transfer station on the banks of the Little Androscoggin River.

Voters agreed to spend the $18,000 received from stumpage sale of wood at Pennesseewassee Park for repairs and improvements there.

The recreation budget also includes funds for a second year of an after-school program for at-risk youth. Partridge said the first year went well, and she would like to see it continue.

Voters also agreed to use this year’s estimated $4,000 in boat excise taxes for maintenance of boat landings, parks and dams. Selectman Bill Damon said repair work was especially needed at the North Pond Dam.

ggeraghty@sunjournal.com