DIXFIELD – Trustees attending Tuesday morning’s meeting in Ludden Memorial Library’s new Community Room were pleased with how the new tile floor looked after being waxed.

They paid $250 from the Bartlett Fund for the floor in the newly expanded library.

On Thursday, Sept. 4, new carpeting will be laid down on the other side of the Community Room in the Genealogy Room.

And, by a 4-0 vote, trustees agreed to spend $1,192 to buy four oak chairs and an oak table from a firm in Worcester, Mass., for the library’s new Dennett Reading Room.

But, what neither trustees nor Town Manager Nanci Allard could agree upon was the current status of the Irene Dennett Memorial Fund.

Allard said trustees in 1999 placed the $2,280 Dennett Fund into a collective account called the Expansion Fund along with hundreds of thousands of dollars from grants, donations, gifts, etc.

Allard said that this month’s audit, requested by selectmen, will reveal that the money in the Dennett Fund was absorbed when placed into the Expansion Fund since they were not recorded in subsequent Town Reports after 1999.

Trustees, however, claim that $2,280 of the Expansion Fund’s current balance of $3,400 is actually Dennett Fund money.

“In the world of audits, it doesn’t work that way,” Allard said.

Trustee Patti Jones disagreed.

“It wasn’t absorbed. It was there in June,” Jones argued.

Trustees Chairman Shirley Austin disputed Allard’s statement that the Dennett Fund was absorbed because it wasn’t reported in Town Reports after 1999. Austin said the board’s past treasurer Sheila Schoolcraft reported the Dennett Fund to selectmen.

But there is no mention of the Dennett Fund account in the trustees report from Dixfield’s 2001 Town Report book.

“It was earmarked for something else and not spent,” Austin said.

“The Dennett family gave that money to us to buy a table and chairs and now you’re saying we can’t spend it?” Jones asked.

Allard reiterated what she told them earlier, “In the world of auditors, you’ve got an Expansion Fund balance of $3,400.” In her mind, there is no Dennett Fund.

But according to the trustees treasurer’s report for July, there is a Dennett/Expansion account showing a balance of $2,842. After trustees took $600 from the account to buy a new circulation desk, the account shows a balance of $1,600.

It may later be reduced to $1,100 because Allard told trustees they would get a $500 bill from the auditor for his audit of the library, but a trustee said the town should pay for it since selectmen requested it.

In other business, Allard said she had received a check made out to the library for $265 from Dead River that was an apparent refund for a March 2001 credit when the library switched from using oil to propane.

“Someone told Dead River to send the check to the library, but it should have gone to the town when that money was paid out of the general fund,” she added.

Allard also told the board that a Central Maine Power crew would soon be installing a new power transformer because of electricity fluctuations between the town office and library whenever something in either building is switched on.

“Last Saturday morning, the alarm in the hallway kept going off and I was told by CMP that it was from the blackout in New York,” she added after saying that whenever the new library elevator is used, some electrically powered items in the town office don’t work right.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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