CHELSEA — Continuing transportation options for students to attend multiple high schools and selling the town’s cell tower lease are among the issues selectmen will discuss tonight.

The meeting is 6:30 p.m. at Chelsea Elementary School.

The town pays about $30,000 a year to bus students who have elected to attend area high schools that are closer to town, instead of sending them to Regional School Unit 12’s Wiscasset High School about a half-hour’s drive away.

“We’re still trying to decide whether the school bus transportation for high school is cost-effective,” said Town Manager Scott Tilton.

When Chelsea joined the school district in 2009, it was the only town in the unit receiving district-funded, in-town transportation through previous contracts. At that time, Chelsea had tuition contracts for secondary students with Cony High School in Augusta and Hall-Dale High School in Farmingdale that included transportation.

The contract with Hall-Dale ends June 30 and the contract with Cony continues until June 30, 2013.

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Superintendent Gregory Potter said the school district has no intention of renewing those contracts.

RSU 12, which includes Alna, Wiscasset, Westport Island, Palermo, Somerville, Whitefield, Windsor and Chelsea, declined to include the cost of transporting Chelsea’s high school students in its 2010 budget.

So Chelsea selectmen asked residents at their June 2010 annual town meeting if they wanted to pay to continue transporting high school students to Cony and Hall-Dale. Voters agreed at that time to spend $31,200 for such student transportation.

Potter said the school board agreed it would provide the driver, buses and fuel if the town continued to pay for the full cost of that service.

The buses take students who attend Cony and Hall-Dale from their homes to the Chelsea Market. From there, they are picked up by Cony and Hall-Dale buses.

Potter said at the time that other high schools Chelsea students attended — including Gardiner and Erskine Academy in South China — did not provide any transportation. He said those students have had to find other means of getting to school.

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“The cost of that is just over $30,000 a year,” Potter said. “They’ve (the town) funded it for two consecutive years. If they continue to desire the service, the district would provide it. If the town doesn’t pay for it, we would eliminate it.”

Chelsea residents have said they want a choice of high schools and have fought to maintain that over the years. Area high schools that Chelsea students attend include Cony, Hall-Dale, Gardiner and Erskine.

On the cell tower matter, Tilton said AP Wireless Infrastructure Partners in San Diego will pay the town $78,000 for a 25-year lease. The US Cellular cell tower is on town-owned property at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Togus Road.

He said the deal would give the town a lump sum payment instead of the $710 a month it gets from US Cellular. US Cellular would then lease the tower from AP Wireless. He said AP Wireless would also look for other companies interested in leasing the tower to bring in new revenue. The town would get a percentage of that, he said.

“Their job would be to market that tower for us,” he said.

He said the $78,000 could be used for projects like a townwide revaluation or road repair.

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In other business Wednesday:

* Selectmen will consider a request from artist Joyce Acheson to support a sidewalk art show. Tilton said the town doesn’t have many sidewalks, but there might be a location where local artists could display their work.

* Selectmen must nominate two people for the Maine Municipal Association’s Legislative Policy Committee.

* Selectmen will consider a $1,200 request from the Youth League. “It’s quite a sizable amount of money,” Tilton said. “In the past it’s been used by the soccer program. The board was thinking maybe it could be used for other programs like a summer baseball program or field hockey.”

* Tilton said a street light study completed two months ago has determined that some lights in town must be moved. Officials had hoped to get rid of a few of them to save money, but Tilton said the study showed the town still needs the same amount, but they need to be in different locations. The town pays more than $3,000 a year for streetlights, he said.

“We’re not going to receive any significant savings, but we will see an improvement in public safety,” he said.

* Selectmen will look at proposed warrant articles for the annual town meeting on June 21.

Mechele Cooper — 621-5663

mcooper@centralmaine.com


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