BUCKFIELD — Positions at the Rescue Department will either be eliminated or have hours cut unless voters restore about $52,000 removed from the budget, according to the Chief Lisa Bennett. 

On Wednesday, Bennett said the cuts leave her with little option in an already “bare-bones” budget.

“There’s no padding in my budget for a $52,000 cut. To get to that dollar amount, it will have to come from staff,” she said.

Voters at the annual town meeting in June slashed $51,585 from the department budget.

Most of the 25 department personnel are paid $2 per hour to be on call throughout the week and weekend. The department has two part-time employees whose hours are split with the Fire Department, and one full-time employee, Bennett. 

Since the vote, town officials have been mulling plans on how to operate the department. On July 1, they requested Bennett devise a proposal on how the budget cut would affect the department. 

Bennett and Town Manager Cynthia Dunn recommended eliminating the town’s night and weekend emergency coverage and outsourcing those duties to other providers. The plan also called for cutting medical supplies on-hand by half, eliminating a third of all training, and reducing Bennett’s salary by $1 per hour. 

Selectmen on July 15 rejected those proposals. In a back-and-forth series of decisions, selectmen voted to hold a special town meeting Saturday, Aug. 16, to ask voters to restore funding.

A week later, they reversed that decision at a special selectmen meeting and scheduled a workshop for Wednesday, Aug. 6, to hammer out a new plan that didn’t require reducing services.

At the same time, a petition signed by 134 residents to hold a special town meeting on Aug. 27, effectively overruling selectmen’s decision to cancel the Aug. 16 special town meeting, was submitted to the town. 

According to Bennett, if Buckfield cancels night and weekend coverage, the town will be forced to have another service cover those times.

However, local emergency services appear unable to fill the potential gap in coverage. While the town has received estimates of between $275,000 and $500,000 for taking over all emergency services, no agency has expressed willingness to pick up weekend and night shifts, she said. 

Lucille Allen, the petition’s organizer, said she felt compelled to act when she saw voters had removed money from an already “bare-bones” budget.

“I don’t think people realized that the budget was cut before it was ever presented at town meeting. There isn’t a person in the town who can predict when there will be an accident,” Allen said.

In a telephone interview Tuesday night, Selectman Scott Violette said he was committed to finding an alternative solution that didn’t jeopardize safety.