Grants roll in, project work begins

FALLS VILLAGE — First Selectman Pat Mechare reported to the Board of Selectmen that the town just received the first grant payment for the downtown streetscape project.

The board met for the first time in 2015 on Monday, Jan. 12.

Mechare said she was pleasantly surprised to receive a payment of $310,355, three weeks after submitting the paperwork to the state.

The new year will be a busy one in terms of construction in town. Bid packages for the new emergency services center on Route 7 are available. Mechare said there have already been eight inquiries.

She added that the bid packages for the joint project with Salisbury to replace the Amesville iron bridge should be ready later this month, and the work should begin in the spring.

And there is still some work to finish up at the D.M. Hunt Library. Mechare said she is waiting on a final approval from the state before that can move forward.

The restoration of the South Canaan Meeting House, yet another state project, will move forward in a modified form. The steeple will be repaired, the bathrooms fixed and the ceiling reinforced but the wheelchair lift in the rear of the building has been taken out of the plan for budgetary reasons.

Mechare reported that Reverse Polarity will begin work on a technology upgrade at Town Hall in the next couple of weeks. Last month the Board of Finance voted  to move $11,000 from the town’s environmental account to the computer account, and to recommend to town meeting the expenditure of up to $16,000 for a computer system upgrade at Town Hall.

The discussion of selling a parcel of town-owned land on Page Road continued. There is some confusion about where exactly the parcel is, but Highway Department chief Tim Downs did take a look at what seems to be the right spot, Mechare said, and found a large hole that could conceivably be the remnants of a foundation. It was hard to tell, because the hole was full of water.

Mechare said that Lou Timolat remembered a 1980s law about building lots that wind up being in areas subsequently classified as wetlands (and subject to inland wetlands regulations and protections). She said there might be a time limit after which such a lot cannot be developed.

She said she would find the law because, “If that’s true our decision will be a lot easier.”

On another town-owned parcel, this one a landlocked piece on Canaan Mountain,  she said that someone (through an attorney) has expressed interest in buying the parcel. Mechare said she would prefer that people who want to buy a piece of town property come directly to the board, and Selectmen Chuck Lewis and Greg Marlowe agreed.

The board set three dates for budget meetings: Wednesday, Jan. 28, 10 a.m.; Wednesday, Feb. 4, 10 a.m.; and Wednesday, Feb. 11, 10 a.m. (all at Town Hall). These will be warned as special meetings of the Board of Selectmen.

The board unanimously passed a set of resolutions relating to the roof repair project at the Lee H. Kellogg School (LHK). Mechare said the resolutions (to authorize the school board to apply for and accept a grant; to form a building committee; and to authorize creation of project plans) might not be necessary, and if they are not, “no harm, no foul.”

The members of the roof repair building committee are Mechare, school board chair Lara Hafner, Lou Timolat and Karen Lindquist, with LHK Principal Jennifer Law, Region One Business Manager Sam Herrick, and Kellogg Custodian Bill Beebe as ex officio members.

The board appointed Yaakov Reef to the Recreation Commission. Mechare said that Reef, a rabbi and the program director at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, came to Town Hall and said he wanted to get involved in town government in some way. 

“That’s good enough for me,” Mechare said.