DIXFIELD — The Board of Selectmen will meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 6, to appoint members to the Regional School Unit 10 Withdrawal Committee.
A municipal officer, a member from the general public and a member of the group that filed the withdrawal petition will be appointed.
Residents voted 542-201 on June 9 to appropriate $50,000 for the withdrawal effort.
Previously, the former School Administrative District 21 towns of Dixfield, Canton, Peru and Carthage circulated petitions asking for a vote to form a four-member committee to work on withdrawal negotiations and to appropriate money to fund the cost of negotiations, research and analysis of withdrawal agreements.
The goal of each town was to withdraw from RSU 10 and form a new district from the former SAD 21 towns.
On June 9, Peru and Canton voters approved using $10,000 from surplus accounts to begin the withdrawal process.
On June 23, Carthage residents voted 85-15 to spend $8,000 from surplus to join Dixfield, Canton and Peru in withdrawing from RSU 10.
Belfast lawyer Kristin Collins said in an email to Town Manager Carlo Puiia that there was “no legal reason” why the town had to wait to receive notification from the state Department of Education to appoint members to the Withdrawal Committee.
Since the statute requires the RSU board chairman to call a meeting of the Withdrawal Committee within 30 days of the clerk’s notice of the vote, Collins wrote, “waiting for the DOE letter . . . might otherwise cut too far into the time allotted. In order to be 100 percent compliant with the statutory procedure, the board could simply vote, once it receives the letter from DOE, to confirm the appointments already made.”
Other towns in RSU 10 are Buckfield, Hartford, Sumner, Mexico, Rumford, Byron, Roxbury and Hanover. Byron is well into the process of withdrawing from RSU 10.
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