FARMINGTON – Selectmen voted unanimously to approve the request of a resident to discontinue a road Tuesday. The issue will be put to voters to ratify at a special town meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. July 18 at the Community Center.
Paul Ripa owns a farm at 156 Smiley Road off Knowlton Corner Road and asked selectmen to approve the discontinuance to allow him to renovate a barn there to accommodate horses. The discontinuance will permit him to do so without setback issues. The town will retain a public easement on the road. Neighbors and abutters had no concerns, nor did Mitch Boulette of the Public Works Department, according to Town Manager Richard Davis.
“We bought this farm to retire,” Ripa said to selectmen before they voted. To retrofit these buildings would be significantly more expensive without this action, he said.
“We plan to keep this farm for generations to come,” he added.
In other business, selectmen discussed a list of 26 properties for which tax bills are overdue and 11 others the town currently owns from foreclosures.
Unpaid tax bills range from just over $9 to more than $7,400 and are in various states of collection. Some property owners are making a good faith effort to pay their bills, according to Treasurer Diana Young. She said she felt comfortable with allowing them to continue their efforts to pay.
Others, however, either abandoned property or hadn’t paid in years. Frank Underkuffler, the town’s attorney, suggested selectmen take these property owners to small claims court to try to collect, according to Young.
Young also suggested they put the town-owned parcels out to bid, but selectmen wanted more details about the properties than she had provided on her report. They had voted at their last meeting to deny a request to sell town-owned property abutting Prescott Field to a private landowner, citing its recreational value. Davis will research the other properties and report back at a future meeting.
After the meeting selectmen also inspected the Fire Department’s newly refurbished squad truck.
The 1989 Ford had been out of service since the end of April due to various structural issues. Selectmen approved purchasing a 1992 truck at a cost of about $50,000 at the end of last year, but the department failed to win the bid from a Pennsylvania fire department.
A team of firefighters repaired the old truck, putting it back into service two weeks ago, although some work still needs to be completed on it. Fire Chief Terry Bell said Tim Hardy Jr., Tim Hardy Sr., Scott Baxter and Jon Alexander replaced the truck’s brakes, springs, wiring and did a lot of body work on it.
“It was suffering from a major rust problem,” said Stephan Bunker, a firefighter and selectman. “It was getting tired,” he added.
The gleaming repainted truck had coats of red paint applied over two weekends at a painting booth at Nichols Welding in Wilton, according to Tim Hardy Jr. The booth was provided free, he said.
The cost of refurbishing the truck will be less than $10,000, said Bell.
The department also purchased from Nichols a new equipment trailer that can be hitched to the squad truck at a cost of $5,700, he said.
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