The same thing happens every May, Edgecomb Budget Committee member Chet Clark said.

Town meeting voters debate how much money to give two area libraries, and then give less than what the libraries requested.

“How much time do you want to waste on this?” Clark asked fellow committee members and selectmen March 18. They were discussing selectmen’s recommendation that the committee propose the town give the Wiscasset Public Library $2,000 of its $8,938 request, and the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library $2,000 of the $4,000 it’s seeking.

The committee made no decision on what it will propose at town meeting. Members will decide that after they’ve finished meeting with all town departments, they said.

However, some committee members expressed their reluctance so far to support full funding.

“I think $2,000 is a fair figure,” Clark said about a funding level for each of the two libraries.

Member Karen Potter and Committee Chairman Nort Fowler praised Skidompha Library in Damariscotta, for the services it offers without requesting funding at town meeting.

Selectmen’s Chairman Jessica Chubbuck reiterated her stance that the whole town shouldn’t have to fund the Wiscasset and Boothbay Harbor libraries, just those residents who use them.

Tom Boudin is holding out hope the budget committee will recommend full funding. The Edgecomb man is a trustee for the Wiscasset library, and has been Edgecomb’s leading advocate for the library in recent years.

“It’s not a huge amount of money we need, compared to education or plowing,” Boudin said in an interview March 19.

Committee members Monday night brought up last year’s anonymous, $7,000 donation that made up the difference between the $2,000 the town gave the Wiscasset library and the nearly $9,000 the library had sought.

Boudin doesn’t expect to have that luck again this year, however. “I think I’d fall over if that happened,” he said.

Without full funding, the library will charge Edgecomb residents a pro-rated, non-residents’ fee, as it did in 2011, Boudin said.

Boudin believes his best shot at full funding is if the more than 100 voters, who favored it on his informal petition last November, show up at town meeting.

He blamed past years’ underfunding on low voter turnout and vocal opposition by a few speakers. “When people are loud, that’s why people don’t go to town meeting,” he said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.