NEW GLOUCESTER – Selectmen are grappling with an expected $62,411 overdraft in the highway department budget caused by extreme winter weather and higher fuel costs.

All departments have been asked to cut spending to a minimum, board Chairwoman Lenora Conger wrote recently.

Public Works Department Director Ted Shane projected a $62,411 deficit in the highway department by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Selectman Steve Libby said options before the board are limited. First, the money to pay for department supplies and manpower can be requested from the undesignated fund balance with voter approval at the May 5 annual town meeting. Or, he said, it could come from transfers from other accounts.

The board will be updated on the overdraft by April 28.

In other business, the board tabled a request by Bath Middle School’s seventh-graders to plant linden trees and place a plaque in honor of the banished African-American Malaga Island residents who are buried at the Pineland Cemetery. The request needs the input of the New Gloucester Cemetery Association for approval, the board said.

The association has a policy that trees cannot be planted in the town’s cemeteries, Libby advised.

The project, Propagating the Past, centers around a large linden tree in the coastal town of Phippsburg and is on the American Forest National Registry. The tree has a provenance that dates back to the 1700s. It was in existence during the time that Maine banished black residents from Malaga Island near Phippsburg. The people of Malaga Island were sent to a home for the “feeble minded” known as Pineland, in Pownal, where many are buried today.

Marci Clark, a language arts teacher from the Bath Middle School, said, “This was not a proud moment in Maine’s history. To honor those residents and to help right the wrong that was done to them, 75 seventh-graders will work with an arborist to propagate cuttings from the linden tree.

When the trees mature, some will be planted in Bath, and the proposal is to plan a cutting for each for the displaced Malaga residents in the Pineland Cemetery.

Officials from SAD 15 presented a draft budget for 2008-09 that totals $21,041,712. The increase of $1,351,409 includes the first bond payment of $765,394 for the renovation project for the district’s five schools.

The budget increase for supporting schools is 2.97 percent or $586,015.

Board Chairman Alan Rich said the final state subsidy figure is estimated to be $9,293,546.

The budget is to be finalized by the end of the month then go to voters at a meeting, followed three days later by a referendum.