Westport Island Deputy Emergency Management Agency Director Gaye Wagner said Monday night, the town must respond by Feb. 26 to Lincoln County’s survey, part of a county-wide update to planning for natural hazards. Pandemics and drought are new for this five-year update, Wagner told selectmen in a typed summary and in Monday’s UberConference call meeting.

Hazardous mitigation plans keep towns eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for projects, Wagner said. And she said unlike when the last plan was done in 2016, now FEMA might also help fund projects’ engineering. “(That) could be very beneficial to us,” possibly for work at the West Shore Road causeway, she said. The town’s new comprehensive plan will help in responding to the survey, as will consulting the fire chief, road commissioner, select and planning boards and comprehensive plan committee, she added.

“We want to have as many minds looking at it as we can, to make sure that we have things on the board that if ... monies should become available and we were ready to do something, that we’d be in a position to do so.”

Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission will get the survey results and, by June, hopes to have a draft plan for towns’ approval, Wagner said. The plan needs local, county and Maine Emergency Management Agency approval and then, by Jan. 13, 2022, FEMA’s, she said.

Also Monday, Jeff Tarbox said Friends of Westport Island History proposes paying 55% of Wright House’s electric bill, and Helping Hands food pantry, the rest. “That’s pretty good of them to step up,” Third Selectman Ross Norton said. The town-owned building houses the pantry and the history center. The town has been paying the electric bill, First Selectman George Richardson said.

Richardson asked Tarbox to get the town an agreement in writing, and signed by the pantry and Friends.

The select board has signed the letter of support to seek ConnectME Authority funds to expand broadband access, Richardson said.