Alna residents have no one on the Friday, March 17 ballot to vote onto the Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit 12 board, but now they have an announced write-in candidate to consider.

Lifelong resident Spencer Bailey, 30, of Lothrop Road confirmed at the March 1 selectmen’s meeting, he is running as a write-in. Attendees said Bailey’s addition to the district board would lower the average age of that board’s members, and that his membership in the Alna Fire Department has lowered firefighters’ average age.

In a phone interview Sunday night, the former Wiscasset firefighter said when he was a student at Wiscasset High School, he had a drinking problem and didn’t see the value of school. 

He graduated in 2005 and later got clean and sober, he said. Now reading – mostly personal development books — is a hobby, along with hiking and exercise. Bailey graduated Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in exercise science; his studies had a  pre-medical emphasis, he said. He isn’t sure what is next but would like to go to graduate school, in a field yet to be determined. He likes helping in the community, he said.

Bailey worked for the Wiscasset Public Works Department from 2009 to 2013. Now he works at the Wiscasset Transfer Station and Sarah’s Cafe. Both jobs have him talking to a lot of people a day. That adds to his understanding of people’s concerns and viewpoints. He expects that his experience as a resident assistant at college will help him in his service on the board.

If elected, he intends to take outgoing board member Ralph Hilton up on his suggestion at the selectmen’s meeting, to attend district board meetings before starting in the seat this summer. “Absolutely,” Bailey said in Sunday’s interview. He thinks it will help him get familiar with the budget process and other workings.

This would be his first elective seat. Asked why he’s running, Bailey said, “I feel like education is very undervalued in our rural settings, and it’s not prioritized as much as it should be.” He goes in with no agenda, and would tend toward a “practical balance” of taxpayers’ and students’ needs, he said. “I want to make decisions based on what’s best for the most people ... I would probably lean toward what’s best for students,” because that isn’t valued as much in a county with an older population, Bailey added.

Commenting further on wanting to serve on an educational board, the candidate said he learned in college, “We’re all teachers, at some point, whether at home, work, or the gym, really.” The drastic turn he said his life has had, from not valuing education to valuing it, adds to his perspective, he said. “I didn’t read a book from front to back until I was 20 years old. So I can see (education) from both ends of the spectrum.”

Polls are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the fire station on Route 218. Second Selectman Melissa Spinney, Third Selectman Doug Baston and Road Commissioner Jeff Verney are all unopposed on the ballot for new terms. Town meeting follows on Saturday, March 18 at 10 a.m. at the fire station.