About 80 people turned out for a town hall meeting in Chuckatuck on Tuesday night.

Various citizens asked about issues including bus service, education funding, traffic safety, truant students, village initiatives and more.

“I think it went pretty good,” Councilman Mike Duman said, adding he would probably try to make it an annual event. “I was very pleased with the turnout.”

Duman organized the event at Oakland Elementary School to receive feedback from citizens, he said.

The first hour of the meeting included a video of various city accomplishments and presentations by five city departments on Chuckatuck-area projects in the works. After that, citizens were able to ask questions on a variety of topics.

The majority concern was education funding, about which three speakers expressed concern.

“Do we foresee your total support for our children?” asked Helen Wylie, who identified herself as an Oakland teacher and Chuckatuck resident. “We don’t want to see increased class sizes.”

Oakland principal Chris Phillips and Chuckatuck School Board representative Linda Bouchard also said they are concerned about the school system’s budget.

“We are possibly going to lose $6 million because of the state cutting our budget,” Bouchard said.

City Manager Selena Cuffee-Glenn said she is working closely with the schools superintendent.

“I certainly look forward to supporting the schools,” she said. “But there are limited resources.”

Another concern brought up was about the village initiative plan for Crittenden and Eclipse, which originally called for a multi-use trail that has yet to come to fruition.

Cuffee-Glenn said cost and the need to acquire property have stood in the way of commencing that project.

The original village initiative plans, she said, had “grandiose ideas and concepts” with no cost attached to them, so the public was never told how much they would drain the tax coffers. She said a multi-use trail in that neighborhood would require taking too much property.

Another citizen inquired about how to deal with truant children in his neighborhood. He said he had called police dispatch and told to call the school, only to be told when he called the school that nobody was avialalbe to come look for the students.

“We see a lot of kids walking around,” he said, asking why school resource officers could not find the children and take them to school.

Police Chief Thomas Bennett said the school resource officers are supposed to stay in the school and that the dispatchers should send street-level officers to look for the children.

“If you see them tomorrow, call dispatch again,” Bennett said. “I think you will get a different answer.”