GREENE — Voters in Greene will weigh the 2013 budget, elect a pair of selectmen and decide the fate of a controversial ordinance this weekend.
On Friday, a referendum scheduled for 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Town Office will include the ordinance issue and the selectmen ballot.
Incumbent Selectmen Ronald Grant and Donald Bedford are facing challenges from Glenn Chateauvert and Robert Stevens. Terms on the five-member board are for three years.
Chateauvert currently serves with the Greene Youth Athletic Association, and Stevens is employed as a member of the town’s Highway Department.
Bedford is running for his second full term in office after spending years televising meetings for Greene’s public access TV channel. Grant, the board chairman, has served several terms in office.
The referendum ballot also will ask voters whether they wish to overturn a two-year-old ordinance that was created to make flea markets follow the same rules as other businesses regarding such details as signs, safe exits and parking.
The annulment effort is being led by George Stanley, the only person who has asked for a flea market license.
Stanley owns and operates a business at 1316 Route 202. He has twice applied for a license and was twice denied because he has too many signs and they are too big. Rules limit flea market owners to no more than two signs with a total area of no more than 6 square feet.
Stanley has sued the town over the matter, which remains unresolved.
On Saturday, Greene will hold its annual town meeting beginning at 9 .m. at the Greene Central School gymnasium.
A total of 55 warrant articles, focusing mainly on money issues, will be considered.
If voters approve the budget as recommended by selectmen, municipal spending would increase over 2012’s $2.1 million budget by just over $61,000. Its effect on the tax rate, now $13.58 per $1,000 of assessed value, is uncertain.
“I’m looking at about a quarter-mill increase for the municipal budget,” Town Manager Charles Noonan said Wednesday. A deciding factor will be whether voters follow the selectmen’s plan to maintain the current 5 percent discount for early tax payment or reduce it to 1 percent, as recommended by the Budget Committee.
Other proposed expenses include modest raises for town employees — Noonan’s salary would rise from $64,575 in 2012 to $66,512 in 2013 — and $7,350 for local charities, including the American Red Cross, SeniorsPlus and Community Concepts. Selectman support the expenses. The Budget Committee does not.
The town must also pay $8,700 this year in fees to Androscoggin County for answering 911 calls and $10,875 to the town of Lisbon for rescue and fire dispatching.
Noonan said the biggest changes to the budget would be up to the state, both in the form of state aid to education and in proposals before the Maine Legislature that would suspend municipal revenue-sharing.
“The school budget we haven’t even dealt with and that’s 65 percent of our budget,” Noonan said.
Digital copies of the town meeting warrant and the annual report are available online at www.townofgreene.net.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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