SABATTUS – Selectmen unanimously voted to take $17,000 from general surplus to finance welfare payments the rest of this heating season.
“We are so much in the hole right now, and seeing the state General Assistance lost its supervisor everyone is going for reimbursements through one person,” Sabattus General Assistance Administrator Gino Camardese told the board. “Hopefully this move will carry me until it warms up and the oil issue comes to an end.”
The state requires towns to allocate money for those who need help paying for heat, food and electricity, and reimburses towns for it.
“We act as the circuit breaker between state welfare and families losing their homes,” Camardese said. “However, without our state reimbursement checks we are forced to dip into our surplus funds because legally I cannot turn away those in need.”
The state sets guidelines for distribution, he explained.
“For example the state says that for the month of February the maximum amount of oil I could pass out to families was 225 gallons. I have been giving 100 gallons; that’s not much especially for this cold winter. I’m just making the minimum.”
The amount raised for general assistance this year fell substantially short of needs.
“The price of fuel has skyrocketed; how were we to plan for that?” Camardese asked. “The state owes us for June 2004 to this last February.”
Camardese said he is meeting with state General Assistance Manager Cindy Boyd this month and hopes to walk away with some answers.
“Who knows when we will get our state reimbursement check,” he said. “I think next year we will need to appropriate $25,000 just to keep up.”
According to his figures the town pays out $4,000 to assist about 15 families a month. “That’s a lot of money for a town our size.”
The board also agreed to dip into general funds for $10,000 and combine that with $6,050 in the copier fund to buy the town’s copier in full from Canon Financial. By doing this Sabattus avoids heavy lawyer fees in a complicated lawsuit entangled with Skelton, Taintor & Abbott. The issue dates back several months with the replacement of a copier done by Mainely Copiers, which has since gone out of business. The paperwork tracing the copier’s return and the copier itself has been lost.
Town Administrator Tracy Frabrizo told selectmen that it could put down the money to pay for a lawyer to go out of state and fight the issue with no guarantee it would walk away with its current copier, or it could simply end the issue by paying the amount needed to buy the printer outright and be done with the matter. The board voted to buy the copier and believes it has chosen the cheapest way out.
After 15 years of service to the town of Sabattus, selectmen Chairman Rudy Gayton will be stepping down Friday after the votes to fill her position are tallied. The town presented Gayton with a plaque and thanked her for her years of service.
“It has been a long and very interesting time,” she said. “I can’t say that I will never run again, but right now I just want to relax a little more and have time for my 11 grandchildren.” Gayton has lived in Sabattus since 1954.
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