WEST PARIS — Eager baseball players will have to wait a little longer to play ball on Harold Perham Field after Thursday night’s Board of Selectmen meeting.

Just two weeks ago, the board decided to try to help the project along for completion this fall. Now, it looks as though the field reconstruction won’t begin until spring.

Voters will still have an opportunity to show their support for the project at a special town meeting on Sept. 21 at 6:30 p.m. in the Agnes Gray School gymnasium, where they will vote on whether to move $8,105 from the the Old Home Days fund balance to the recreation fund with the intention of using it for the baseball field maintenance project.

Two factors play into the decision to push the project to spring.

First, the town is still waiting for the Maine Department of Environmental Services to decide on a permit by rule for the project. With no way to know if and when the permit will be approved, and with the time for planting the field waning, too little time will remain to schedule contractors and volunteers. It might have been possible if the town had received the permit before Thursday’s meeting.

Second, confusion over the amount of donations received for ball field construction is causing the town to have to resend special town meeting notices. While resending the notices to residents might not have delayed the special town meeting or the project, a change in the figures townspeople would vote on at the meeting posed a problem.

The original mailing noted a total project cost of $30,850. The actual cost is budgeted at $35,500. Also, the notice stated that the group had managed to raise $8,755 in donations to date. That amount was, before the Thursday night meeting, just $4,900.

“I don’t know where those numbers came from because they’re not in my numbers,” said Andrew Merrill, chairman of the West Paris Athletic Association. “We’re currently working on more donations, I just don’t have those locked.”

The confusion stemmed from a document that Merrill presented at the Aug. 27 Selectmen’s meeting. The document was set up as sort of a spreadsheet showing the total project cost at the top of the sheet, then itemizing costs and donations, subtracting from the total cost and ending up with an unmet need shown at the bottom of the page. Because of how the balance was shown as a running total in the last column, it appears that somehow the wrong number was placed onto the special town meeting notification.

The wrong numbers translated to an approximately $8,500 deficit from what the West Paris Athletic Association needed to complete the project. Merrill asked the selectmen if they would consider adding a request to the special town meeting for that amount from the town’s undesignated fund.

“I just want to make sure that we have a project that’s covered,” Merrill said. “We need to be very transparent about this, but we also need to use the numbers we have. I don’t want people to think the association is doing anything behind people’s backs.”

The selectmen discussed the issue, going back and forth between wanting to make sure the project had funding, but being unsure how the townspeople would react to a request for money from the undesignated fund.

“I’m thinking that asking for undesignated funds is not going to fly. We’d be better off asking locals for donations of (time, equipment and labor),” Board of Selectmen Chairman Randall Jones said.

Merrill said that if the selectmen were unwilling to ask for the funds at the special town meeting, then he was unsure where to find the funds or make cuts to the budget, though he was committed to pursuing more donations for the project.

“I’m thinking if we don’t fund it, it’s not going to happen. I don’t have the expertise to know where we can cut, because I’m a school teacher, not a road builder,” Merrill said. “I see we have two options: We go and ask for the funding or we wait until spring.”

The board opted to wait until spring, which would give Merrill and the West Paris Athletic Association through the winter to try and close as much of the gap in funding as possible. Before the meeting was over, they already managed to lessen the amount they needed by $500, thanks to an audience member’s donation.

Skip Mowatt, who was present at the meeting to discuss emergency management with the board, told Merrill to count him in for $500, bringing the organization’s total number of donations to $5,400 and decreasing their need to $7,955.

“I’ve watched that field for many years,” Mowatt said. “It’s well worth it for that ballfield. I’ve seen it in its good days, I’ve seen it in its bad days. It’s a well-used field, that’s for sure.”

Merrill said the association would continue to pursue their options through the winter.

“I’d love to get it done this fall, but I understand,” he said.

Voters will also vote on whether to appropriate $10,473 from the town’s building fund for energy conservation improvements for the town garage, town office and fire station.

Town Manager John White said the town should see a return in the energy conservation in about three years with the current price of oil.

The special town meeting happens to fall on White’s birthday, and the town selectmen have promised to bring him cake. Whether they will share with the townspeople is unclear at this time, but it might be another reason to show up and vote.

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