Alna will join several other towns in using the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office’s animal control services. Contracting with the county will avoid gaps in service when the town is between animal control officers, as it is now, selectmen said May 20.

Selectmen had expressed initial support for signing on when Sheriff Todd Brackett met with them on May 6. Board members said they wanted to give residents time to respond to the idea. At the board’s May 20 meeting, Town Clerk Amy Warner said a couple of people had expressed an interest in serving as an animal control officer, but that was the only feedback.

Under the arrangement with the sheriff’s office, towns’ animal control officers become county employees who serve along with other animal control officers the county hires, Brackett has said. Damariscotta, Whitefield, Bristol, Waldoboro, Bremen and Jefferson use the county’s services. Towns share training costs. An officer’s services to a town cost $15 an hour and come out of that town’s local animal control funds.

Alna has been paying $12 an hour, up to $1,500 a year for animal control. Last year, the town had nine calls and spent $500, including training costs, Warner has said.

Selectmen’s vote to pick up the county’s services was unanimous. They still need to obtain the contract and sign it, First Selectman David Abbott said later. The contract would need county commissioners’ approval, Brackett has said. 

Following up on IRS issues

Selectmen praised Interim Treasurer Honora Jordan’s ongoing efforts to sort out the town’s payroll tax issues. Weeks after Jordan came aboard following Aaron Miller’s resignation as treasurer, she told the board it still was not clear how much the town faces in total losses due to problems with payments to the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS has removed some penalties and may remove more, Jordan said. Selectmen discussed possibly having a board member join Jordan for a meeting with the IRS.

“It’s such a mess that one of us ought to go also so we can try to understand it,” Third Selectman Doug Baston said.

“This must be a nightmare, or an Easter egg hunt. I don’t know what to call it,” Baston said after Jordan reviewed information on tax periods when the town missed making reports or payments.

Account transcripts from the IRS list penalties and interest totaling hundreds of dollars for the first three quarters of 2014; some of the fines were lowered or removed in January and February 2015, according to the documents.

“I’d just like to know the bottom line. How much money did we lose,” Baston asked. Jordan said she was not sure yet what the penalties will total.

Board members told her she was doing a good job.

Miller, who took office in March 2014, had cited problems using the town’s software; in a January 2015 letter, Miller apologized to the IRS for assuming that quarterly payments met the town’s obligations to the federal government. The payments were supposed to be made monthly, he said in an interview.

Miller resigned, citing personal reasons, in a letter he gave selectmen on April 22. The board had just turned down his request for help learning how to carry out payroll tax payments, and had decided to wait on releasing stipends while the tax issues were pending.

Jordan was treasurer before Miller. On May 20, she told selectmen she should have helped make payments around the time her service ended, but that she was not sure why the taxes continued to be a problem as Miller’s service continued.

CMP valuation

In other business, the board signed a $2,000 contract hiring William Van Tunein of Madison to do valuations on Central Maine Power’s property in town; decided to see if the town can get better interest rates for any of its reserve accounts; and asked Fire Chief Mike Trask to get a written estimate on repairs to the generator he said was damaged when Hagar Enterprises was moving snow last winter.

Hagar Enterprises co-owner Seth Hagar has said Trask did not inform the Damariscotta firm of the generator’s location, and that it was not visible to a worker for the firm.