The Monday, Sept. 25 Boothbay Harbor Board of Selectmen meeting featured vice chair Denise Griffin with the gavel as both chair Wendy Wolf and board member Russ Hoffman were absent.

Board member Mike Tomko spoke about the Camoin Associates and JEDC master plan workshop that will be held on the second floor of the Boothbay Fire Department at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 12.

“We had interviews several weeks ago with 73 members of the community in key sectors,” Tomko said. “This encompassed the entire range from Edgecomb down to Southport.”

The interviews concerned community perspectives on manufacturing, housing, walkability, livability, community leaders, planning boards and select boards. In addition to the interviews, Camoin Associates has also formed an infrastructure inventory assessment and a preliminary zoning operations assessment. Tomko added that the Camoin team has done a thorough job of taking the information and synthesizing it.

“They'll take the information that was gathered from all the previous plans and work that into this presentation where they try out and kick out ideas ... for short-, intermediate-, and long-term steps.”

Tomko said Camoin Associates was also able to gather economic information from various sources to create a 45-page regional economics report. He said a final draft is in the works and will be available to every JEDC member and anyone who is interested in seeing it. “It gives a better road map of where we are economically, and leads with some key recommendations as to where we can go.”

At the workshop, there will be two select board members from Boothbay, one each from Southport and Edgecomb, and Tomko and Wolf from Boothbay Harbor. The workshop has only 60 spots available and RSVP's expired on Tuesday, Sept. 26.

Financial officer Julia Latter shared the bi-weekly financials. Revenue and expenditures, year to date, are $4,104,764 and $1,305,321, respectively. The bank balance is $4,392,214.73, accounts payable are $210,992.10, and the final payment on the fire truck loan will happen this month.

Griffin reminded residents there will be five warrants on the November ballot.  “We hope that people will come out to vote, although the warrants are written in the language of ‘ordinance prohibiting’ ... I think I can go on record that, to the best of my knowledge, a majority of the selectmen will be voting ‘yes’ on this and we hope that residents do the same. Of course, it is a democratic process and everybody’s entitled to vote the way they like.”

Town Manager Tom Woodin announced that the next board meeting is Tuesday, Oct. 10 because Monday, Oct. 9 is Columbus Day.