Wiscasset’s school committee on May 15 agreed to hire the district the town is leaving, Regional School Unit 12, for its payroll and other business tasks.

The vote in the Wiscasset High School library Thursday night ran 4-0. Vice Chairman Steve Smith was not there.

Committee member Sharon Nichols said using RSU 12 isn’t what she had wanted, because the town has chosen to withdraw from the district. “I don’t think we have much choice. I think we’re backed into a corner ... because of time,” she said.

“We don’t have any choice,” fellow committee member Eugene Stover said.

Interim Superintendent of Schools Wayne Dorr made the recommendation to hire the district for a year; he has been, and continues to be in, talks with Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) 98 about taking on the services. But that now looks like it would take several months to fall into place, for multiple reasons, Dorr said.

AOS 98 may need to add as much as $35,000 in space to carry out the services, and there would be other considerations, like the additional supervising Superintendent Eileen King would have to do for staff doing the work, Dorr said. And there are liability questions, he added.

Dorr acknowledged some people may question why the town would enter into a new arrangement with RSU 12. “The people on the street may say, why in God’s name are you doing that?

“It’s very pragmatic, what we’re doing,” Dorr said. The district already has the data to do the work, and hiring the work out will save the town money over setting up its own business office, he said.

“Do not recreate the wheel,” Committee Chairman Glen Craig agreed.

Dorr did not yet have a cost for the contract.