LIVERMORE FALLS – Selectmen want to name a committee to study the dispatch situation but had a hard time Monday night to agree on who should serve.

Selectman Clayton Putnam suggested a committee of five or six that would include no employees or their relatives. They would be charged with the responsibility of completing a study by Dec. 1 on changes to the present system, any potential savings, the cost of equipment and modifications to the building.

Selectwoman Doreen Maheux shot down his ideas, saying she already had several people interested in a six-to-eight-member committee. “It’s ludicrous to think you can cut out Ernie (Steward Jr., chief of police and dispatch) and the entire crew,” she said.

Selectman Bernal Lake agreed. “Clayton wants five of him,” he noted.

“Everyone should be represented,” said the chief. His suggestion was to have someone from each department using dispatch – to include police, fire, highway and ambulance – and also have four citizens.

A motion to that effect by Maheux was approved, but the issue of who will serve will wait until the Aug. 4 meeting. In the meantime, those wishing to serve should add their names to those already received by Town Manager Alan Gove, Putnam and Maheux.

Gove will prepare a list for the board, which will choose the four.

In other business, the board appointed Elaine Smith to the three-year position on the SAD 36 Board of Directors. Her appointment is good only until the next election when she would need to run for the remaining two years.

Putnam argued that Jim Collins should have been the one named because he’d applied for it first. The town has always followed a first come, first served policy, Demaray noted, but he and Putnam were overruled by Maheux, Lake and Jacques.

The former Leclerc store/home property at 90 Main St. was reluctantly awarded to Thomas Harville of Skowhegan for $8,656, as it was commented that just the land should be worth more than that.

It had become town-owned due to nonpayment of taxes.

The board also agreed to sign a quit-claim deed for Parkview Hill Associates as soon as all the real estate and sewer taxes due on it are received. That amounts to $68,000, Gove said.

Approval was given to the Downtown Project fair housing and equal opportunity employer resolution, for a catering permit at Murray Hall and for games of chance at the Legion.

Copy the Story Link