GOULDSBORO — Residents may soon have improved waterfront access, thanks to some flexible thinking on the part of state and town officials.

At a June 12 town meeting, residents voted to provide partial funding to build a new pier on the shorefront site of a demolished barge.

In a creative move, town officials asked for just $60,000 of the total estimated $150,000 cost for building the pier. Officials decided to break up how much money to ask from voters to make the price more manageable, said Selectman Roger Bowen. The town will ask for an additional $60,000 next year and $30,000 in 2015.

“What we’re trying to do is spread the pain over three years,” Bowen said.

He is confident voters will agree to fund the project in total. He worried about asking for all the money upfront with the uncertainty surrounding the state budget. At the same meeting, voters approved measures to set aside $160,000 from town surplus funds to keep property taxes flat in 2014. 

The proposed pier will measure 108 feet long and include a ramp and float which can be used by both commercial and recreational fishermen. Also designed to be a breakwater, the pier will replace a barge that had been demolished at the same location in October. The privately owned barge, which had long served as a breakwater, had deteriorated so badly that it was spilling into the bay, said Gouldsboro harbor committee member Brad Vassey.

“It was spreading out beyond the boundaries of the original footprint,” Vassey said.

Efforts to stabilize the barge with granite blocks ran afoul of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The barge’s owner instead donated the property and the barge to the town.

Gouldsboro officials and DEP struck a deal whereby Gouldsboro would remove the barge and gain a window of time to erect a new structure in the barge’s footprint. The town has until October 2014 to begin construction of the pier and 2016 to complete construction, minus some finishing touches, according to Bowen and John Cullen, an environmental specialist with Maine DEP.

Construction of the new pier and breakwater can’t come soon enough for commercial fishermen who use a private pier just south of where the breakwater once stood. With the barge gone, it’s been difficult to do business on that pier, said Vassey.

“The wind and the waves come directly to that pier and it can be quite heavy at times,” Vassey said.