The long-delayed project to build a one-bay fire station in East Livermore village in Livermore Falls won’t move forward this year.

The Select Board on Oct. 7 voted 3-2 to table the issue until 2026 after all bids for the project came in at $600,000 or more, far more than the $420,000 authorized by residents in 2024, Town Manager Carrie Castonguay said Tuesday.

Other options need to be explored, she said, but the project is not dead.

Selectmen Ernie Souther, Bruce Peary and John Barbioni voted to delay the discussion, while Chairman Will Kenniston and Jeff Bryant were opposed.

In addition, Maine Municipal Association’s legal counsel wrote in a letter to Castonguay in September that the 2024 vote authorizing the town to borrow for the project was in effect only until the next annual meeting.

The town has spent $48,500 so far for the project, including land purchase, engineering surveys and blueprints for the station, Castonguay said.

The proposal came about after several fires struck the East Livermore area 2016-20. Some residents who were victims of fire were uninsured.

The East Livermore village is more than 5 miles from the fire station on state Route 133, has no fire hydrant system and is closer to Leeds and Wayne than the downtown area.

Former Fire Rescue Chief Eward Hastings IV told residents in 2018 that when people try to insure their homes, insurance companies notice when dwellings are more than 5 miles from a fire station, and it is reflected in owners’ insurance premiums. Many of the older mobile homes at the time in that area were not insured.

Sheila Scanlan, a resident of the East Livermore area, told selectmen in 2020 that most fires in town are in the mobile home park off routes 133 and 106 in East Livermore. There is no hydrant system in the area and the town Fire Rescue Station is several miles from the Pine Ridge Loop park.

Residents submitted a petition in September 2020, with signatures of 110 registered voters. It asked residents if they would authorize building a one-bay station within a mile of the intersections of state routes 133 and 106. The plan was to finance $20,000 a year through taxation and pay for it in 20 years. It was approved at the polls that November.

The town bought just over an acre in 2022 on state Route 106 for $12,000 from a local resident to build the station.

In 2023, the Select Board realized that a treasurer’s note needed to actually borrow the money to build the station was missing from the 2020 article. In 2024, residents voted 130-85 to authorize borrowing of up $420,000 to build a one-bay fire station. Other plans to use a town-foreclosed on property or to build the station on the Barker family property on state Route 106 did not work out.

Carole Barker of the East Livermore area told selectmen during public comment Oct. 7 that the people who live in that area are very disappointed that a station is not being built.