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SUSAN JOHNS
File photo
Wiscasset voters take up a proposed $6,116,034 municipal budget Tuesday, June 8. The sum is $249,575 higher than the 2020-21 budget, Town Manager Dennis Simmons said in a May 28 email response to questions.
Simmons said leading factors in the increase include the 2.5% wage hike for all employees except the police department, whose union contract is not yet settled. “We are also requesting the addition of one full-time police officer, though we are applying for a grant to pay for 75% of the wages and fringe benefits.”
The town saw an increase in water rates and hydrant rentals, Simmons continued; and selectmen are requesting an increase in their contingency from $30,000 to $50,000.
SUSAN JOHNS
Wiscasset municipal building. File photo
Selectmen and other residents debated Tuesday night over a proposed plaque honoring a poet-civil rights advocate who died in a 1938 Wiscasset car-train crash. The board voted 3-2 to have resident Lucia Droby get the board a cost to consider giving voters to decide in an already anticipated special town meeting this summer.
“(James Weldon Johnson) was doing his work during the Jim Crow era (when) it was very dangerous to be a person of color, particularly a black man, and he devoted his life to serving his arts but also to struggling for racial justice, and we’re in a moment that values that effort,” Droby said in the Zoom meeting.
Engineers work to stabilize Wiscasset building after brick collapse
The old Wawenock Block building has stood solidly on Wiscasset s main street for more than 160 years. Author: Don Carrigan Updated: 8:49 PM EDT April 8, 2021
WISCASSET, Maine It was Saturday afternoon, and inside the “In The Clover” women’s clothing store Kate Stanech and her coworkers saw a woman on the sidewalk, clearly agitated.
“She had been walking by and some bricks fell in front of her,” Stanech said.
She had pointed to the historic Wawenock Block building a short distance away. Stanech said she could see the front wall bowed outward, and knew it wasn’t good.
SUSAN JOHNS Wed, 04/07/2021 - 8:45am
Wiscasset Art Walk can hang banners on Main Street railings and, on Middle Street, have bistro tables and possible performances, selectmen decided 4-0 Tuesday night, April 6. Making the requests, organizer Lucia Droby said WAW will be mostly outside this year, have musicians, family activities, restaurants selling “picnics to go,” might have arts vendors and, if she can find them, dancers.
It will be “almost a normal” WAW, Droby said. “We want to bring joy, we want to bring liveliness to the village, some brightness and something to look forward to . experience small town neighborliness . art education . self-expression . and of course we want to attract visitors to Wiscasset.” Last year, with the pandemic, a Walk Around Wiscasset series had attendees waving to one another, dressing in themes and writing on sticky notes what brings them joy.