Wiscasset has some hard decisions to make if people are going to be able to keep paying their taxes, departing selectman William Curtis said.

The town should cut its workforce through attrition, stop pouring money into its older vehicles, and consider closing a school, Curtis said.

“I'd hate to lay people off but by the same token … we have an astronomically high tax rate,” he said.

The retired aeronautical systems engineer (who helped design America's first deep-space reconnaissance satellite) wraps up his service on the board in June. He decided not to seek reelection after serving for five of the last six years.

“It's a very time-consuming job,” he said.

In an interview May 14, Curtis discussed the progress he's been a part of and his thoughts on Wiscasset's future.

Among the gains during his selectman years, the town moved to single-stream recycling. It's good for the environment and the town coffers, in having less solid waste to to pay to get rid of, he said.

Bringing Laurie Smith aboard as town manager has been very beneficial, Curtis said. He praised Smith for her efforts to move Wiscasset forward. “She has done more in the first three years she's been here than all of our past town managers,” he said. “She's very thorough.”

Interviewed separately, Smith also had praise for Curtis. He has strongly supported emergency management and public safety, she said.

“He's been very diligent,” Smith said.

Curtis took a job as the corporate safety director at Bath Iron Works in 1977. He and wife Dorothy Curtis moved to Wiscasset because its schools were ranked third in the state, he recalled. The town's current membership in Regional School Unit 12 has been hard on the local schools, he said.

Withdrawal will drive the town's tax rate higher initially, Curtis predicted. “But we've got to get out,” he said. The town is paying too much per student and being in the district is dragging down the schools' academic standing, he said.

Putting together a school committee whose members have experience in business and education will help the town have a successful transition away from the RSU, he said.

Curtis said residents he's heard from have ideas that make sense to him, for changes to the town's schools. He favors paying tuition to send high school students to other towns; putting Kindergarten through eighth grades in the high school; moving police, ambulance and municipal services to the primary school; selling the middle school; and turning the municipal building into a fire station.

“I have a passion for public safety, and my super-passion is the fire department. These are risky professions. Other towns are upgrading and we're not,” he said.

An emergency medical technician for about 28 years, Curtis served as deputy director and later as director of the Wiscasset Ambulance Service.

Earlier this year, he recommended the selectmen have a committee spend three to five years looking into building a fire station. Fellow board members concluded this is not the time.

He also would like to see changes in how the town tracks its spending. “I'm a stickler for a tight fiscal control system, and we don't have that.”

Expenses should be graphed out in detail, he said; he supports “zero-based budgeting” for each department, starting from scratch to look at the next year's needs rather than starting with last year's budget figures.

Curtis' last meeting as a selectmen is June 4. When he's done on the board, he plans to head to camp.

Dorothy Curtis, his wife of 56 years, asked him how long he'll be gone, he said. Till the money runs out, he told her.

“She said, 'Oh. You'll be home the next day then.'”

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.