HARRISON — Faced with the prospect of their local government shutting down this Thursday due to no funding, voters turned out at Harrison Elementary School for a special town meeting Friday night and finally approved five amended articles to pass the town’s 2022-23 municipal budget.

More than 170 residents filed into the school’s gymnasium in a line that wrapped around to the front entrance. The start of the meeting was delayed by more than 20 minutes as voters were checked in and provided their voting tickets.

When the amended articles were presented, the administration budget passed with 156 yes votes Friday. Selectmen recommended voters fund it at $662,498, almost $78,000 less than the original article. The code enforcement and assessing budget of $196,166 passed with 142 votes and no dollar reduction, as did the article to raise and appropriate $150,000 for Harrison’s comprehensive capital reserve account.

Article 27, asking voters to approve a $3.4 million dollar bond to finance building a new town garage at a rate of 3.99% over a term of 15 years with Androscoggin Bank, had failed June 14 but passed Friday with a vote of 102 to 55. Friday was the third time residents voted on the building project; it passed during last November’s election but the language had to be revised and required a revote that was rejected on June 14.

Article 25, on whether to hire a full-time fire chief and two per diem EMT/firefighters, caused confusion as a yes or no vote essentially would lead to the same result to not establish a paid employee department.

Last winter longtime volunteer Fire Chief Dana Laplante presented a plan to the Select Board that would shore up Harrison’s public safety and lessen its dependence on neighboring towns’ fire departments. The proposed expense of putting a fire chief on payroll full-time and hiring per diem staff would have come at a cost of $306,054.

That article failed to pass on June 14. Following an emergency public hearing held June 17 about that and the other four rejected budget items, Harrison’s Board of Selectmen amended the article to the following: “Shall the Town vote to raise and appropriate $0 for a Full time Fire Chief and two per diem FF/EMT to enable Fire and EMS coverage 7 days a week.” Selectmen recommended a yes vote on the revised article.

The choice presented to voters was to either approve the article for a zero-funded department, or vote down the article to be funded at an unknown, to-be-determined amount.

But since all articles presented at the special town meeting called for an up or down vote with no allowance to discuss or amend the revised article, the result would be the same — Harrison will not establish a paid fire department staff in the next fiscal year.

Town Manager Cass Newell said that selectmen had agreed to phrase the article that way based on recommendations from Maine Municipal Association’s legal advisors as well as Harrison’s own town lawyer.

Even the meeting’s Moderator John Wentworth struggled to tell residents what they were voting on.

“I’ll try and clarify this,” Wentworth told the crowd. “Regardless how  you vote on this article, the end result is the same. You can vote yes, you want to appropriate zero dollars. Or  you can vote no, to appropriate some other amount than zero dollars but you can’t change it from zero.

“I’m trying to explain it and there is no explanation for it.”

There was confusion about the plan to hire fire department employees from its inception, Newell acknowledged.

Many Harrison voters assumed that Dana Laplante would be automatically appointed as the paid chief and questioned if Select Board Chairman Raymond Laplante’s support of the proposed position was a conflict of interest. Raymond Laplante is Dana Laplante’s father.

But according to Newell, the position would have been posted publicly; while Dana Laplante could apply for it he would have had to compete with other applicants.

There were 100 yes votes to appropriate $0 and 46 no votes to not appropriate $0.

Funding the fire department’s operations was a separate article and approved June 14 by a vote of 295 to 242.

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