Orford Town Meeting will start at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, in the gymnasium of Rivendell Academy off Route 25A. Voters will consider 17 warrant articles. Ballot voting for Selectboard, Planning Board and town treasurer runs from 4 to 9 p.m.

ORFORD — Along with two contested races for the Selectboard, voters on Town Meeting Day will weigh whether to combine the duties of town clerk and tax collector.

If the fifth article on the warrant wins approval, the person elected town clerk and tax collector at the 2020 Town Meeting would serve a three-year term and receive a salary set each year at Town Meeting. Under the current arrangement, the town clerk is paid by the hour while the tax collector receives a percentage of the taxes paid to the town.

Debbie Hadlock, who won election to both positions in 2017, said this week that she “was concerned when I first heard the idea come up. I had some reservations about it, and I still do.”

Over the past two fiscal years, Hadlock has earned about $17,000 a year in wages as clerk and between $20,000 and $25,000 in her role as tax collector. She said it is unclear whether the single salary would match the two jobs’ annual income.

“I really enjoy the two roles,” she said. “It’s gone really well, but I obviously don’t want to take a cut in pay.”

Among the residents campaigning for Selectboard, longtime town Budget Committee member Ruth Hook and former Selectman Tom Steketee are challenging incumbent David Smith, a native of the town and a member of the volunteer fire department.

Meanwhile, Jim McGoff, who in 2018 was appointed to serve the second year of a three-year term from which the incumbent had resigned, is vying with Fred Kidder II for the right to complete the final year of that term.

While Steketee said that his Town Meeting vote on the clerk-tax collector article will depend on whether the new job would include health insurance and other employee benefits, Hook and McGoff both oppose the creation of the combined position.

“For one thing, (Hadlock) is doing a good job, and she doesn’t want this to happen,” said McGoff, a 1974 graduate of the former Orford High School. “If you get somebody else, they may not want it, either. Most towns don’t have this. Like my dad always told me, ‘if something ain’t broke, don’t change it.’ It’s working.”

Hook, a 1969 graduate of Orford High, said that the way a majority of the Selectboard put the proposal on the warrant demonstrates a gap in communication among town officials, as well as between the town and its residents, that Hook is pledging to bridge.

“It wasn’t presented to her until just before the public hearing,” said Hook, whom Hadlock out polled in the election for both posts in 2017. “There was no documentation for what they were doing. With the lack of information about what it would achieve, and whether other towns do it, I don’t agree with it.”

The budget advisory committee, Hook added, voted 6-1 against the proposal.

Steketee, a 66-year-old builder carpenter, last served on the Selectboard between 2008 and 2015. In 2018, he completed a term on the Planning Board and did not seek re-election.

“During those years, we walked through a lot of the issues we were considering well before we took our votes, and they were generally unanimous. It was a better way to run things,” he said.

Voters at Town Meeting also will consider the town’s proposal to spend $1,005,249 on day-to-day municipal operations, down from 2018 by more than $28,000.

“We took some good, hard looks at some of the department budgets,” current Selectboard Chairman John Adams said. “Some people feel it’s artificially low. It was driven down in part by the usual momentum from the budget advisory committee.”

The current municipal rate of property taxes in Orford is $4.81 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.