Take a million dollars, or take a $10 million bond package and pay back $9 million. That is the question Wiscasset Town Manager Dennis Simmons shared with selectmen June 17. He said the town sought funding from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF), toward the sewer plant's move and upgrading two pump stations. The Fund turned down the request on the station upgrades and, on the plant's move, offered a $10 million bond package with a 30-year term at 2.5%, Simmons said. He said $1 million is forgivable, making it more like a grant; and the town can choose to take only the $1 million, not the bond package with Maine Bond Bank, he said.

He wasn't asking for an answer that night, he told selectmen. He just wanted them to be thinking about it and forming questions for the next meeting, he said.

"Nine million is a lot of money to borrow. And it certainly could not go on the backs of just the ratepayers ... That would push rates out of sight for everybody. So it would certainly have to be a town-wide, tax-supported package, if we decided to go that route, which, again, we don't have to do."

Simmons reminded the board he has said the plant's move will take grants, loans and town funds. "Nothing is going to fund this 100%," he said of the projected $40 million project. If the town took the $10 million package, that would get the town to about the halfway mark, he said.

Of the 2.5% rate, he said, "That was one selling point ... because they did say they didn't expect any future bond offerings to be for an interest rate that low." The 30-year term would have the town paying almost $400,000 a year, Simmons said. 

"We have until July 18 to let them know whether you want to go forward with this bond package or not. But I think we should certainly take the million dollars," Simmons said.

"Well, that's what my knee jerk reaction is — 'Give us the million dollars and see ya,'" Selectman Pam Dunning said.

As for the pump stations' upgrades, Simmons said the town will keep looking for funding. The town could tap the $5 million in Congressionally directed spending for sewer improvements because that funding is not confined to the plant's move, he said.

"But if we do that, we have to come up with a 20% match ... whereas if we use the entire $5 million for the relocation, the $4 million that we received from the state infrastructure fund, because that is state money, can be used against that so we wouldn't have to come up with anything."

Also June 17, in the first meeting since Dunning's reelection and Alissa Eason's election, the board kept Sarah Whitfield as chair and Dunning as vice chair, nodded a liquor license for Jolie Rogers, 8 Railroad Ave. and a special amusement permit for live music on special event days through October for Maine Tasting Center, 506 Old Bath Road; heard Maine Art Galllery's thanks to voters for the help on the cupola; and agreed to accept a $19,328 EMS Sustainability Grant from Maine Department of Public Safety for training equipment.

Simmons said Maine Department of Transportation told him the signs naming the Main Street railroad crossing for James Weldon Johnson have been installed and are covered in case there is an unveiling ceremony. Plans are underway, possibly for June 26, the anniversary of Johnson's death there in a car-train crash, according to the discussion in the board meeting. Officials hoped the ceremony will be after the addition of the James Weldon Johnson bench that has been on the common.