Following an idea Town Manager Dennis Simmons received Monday from Wiscasset Ambulance Service Director Erin Bean, selectmen Monday night pulled from the draft June 11 ballot a question on selling Scout Hall.

Residents in a straw vote last June supported selling it, 374-260, according to Wiscasset Newspaper files. Selectman William “Bill” Maloney proposed last year’s vote and this one. Monday, as the board finalized the warrant, he and fellow members kept the latest question off it. If the building’s possible new use – for training Wiscasset’s and maybe other towns’ emergency medical services workers, and maybe also for training other town staff  – does not pan out, the sale question can go on the November ballot, Simmons said. 

“(The building) needs some dressing up,” possibly with grants, to serve as a classroom and meeting space, Bean said. “It needs a little bit of lipstick. She’s been left to kind of go unpretty but ... we could bring her back to something, and make it another nice part of this town,” she told the board.

“What a wonderful way to keep the legacy of that old fire hall alive ...,” Selectman Terry Heller said. “I am thrilled that you thought of this.”

Simmons said the research is still to come. A training center there might make some money to help offset the ambulance service department, he said. He added, Bean “did just kind of spring this on me today, and I can’t come up with figures ... in that period of time and come to a meeting tonight and say, ‘I think we should or shouldn’t do this.’” But he said he called Maloney, who agreed, if the rest of the board did, to put off the sale question. “It’s not like anything’s going to really happen to the building in the next few months, anyways,” Simmons said. 

Also Monday, the board reviewed the police department’s and school resource officer’s proposed 2024-25 budgets and nodded them for the warrants. Those were the last two budgets due to police union contract talks ongoing through budget season. Simmons said the proposed $836,595 department budget would be a nearly 20% hike from this year’s. The proposal figures in the anticipated contract, and cruisers’ being leased instead of bought from capital reserve, Simmons said. He added, a one-time cost this year will be the “cages” and any other equipment the new cruisers need, due to their being a different size.

Anything the department can reuse on the new ones, it will, Police Chief Lawrence Hesseltine said. On a question from Selectman Pamela Dunning, he said no one would buy the old equipment.

The SRO budget is down due to Sgt. Perry Hatch’s having returned to SRO duties and not taking health insurance, Simmons said. He noted, if Hatch stopped being SRO, the job might need to go vacant “for a while” unless the board called a town meeting for more funds. On a question from Wiscasset Newspaper, Hesseltine explained Officer Jonathan Barnes has stepped down as SRO and is still with the department.

According to the draft warrant, the school department would pay half the $63,553 for the SRO. Superintendent of Schools Kim Andersson has said grant funds for the SRO have ended.