WILTON – Selectmen unanimously voted Tuesday to spend $3,380 from a bridge repair account to temporarily fix Goodspeed Bridge. Replacing the bridge to the public library will cost more than $38,000.
According to a state Department of Transportation engineer, temporary repairs done with surplus steel donated by the DOT will get the bridge back to a 10- to 11-ton load limit, which would be enough to support an oil delivery truck or other large vehicles that may need to go to the library or Ron Aseltine’s law office on the other side of the stream.
However, according to Vaughan Gagne, library director, Webber Oil, the library’s heating fuel supplier, would not drive its trucks over the bridge without a guarantee, which Town Manager Peter Nielsen said they could not get. The company has already purchased extra hose to get to the library’s fuel tank, and selectmen agreed to pay $283 for half the company’s cost.
Selectman Rodney Hall was concerned that the board had set a precedent by paying the hose bill, though he hesitatingly voted for it to support the library when he saw he would be the only dissenting vote, he said.
A written engineering report on the bridge from the DOT is expected soon. Nielsen plans to recommend allocating the necessary funding to replace the bridge for next year’s budget. There is $31,000 in the town’s bridge repair account, $20,000 of which was designated for the Goodspeed Bridge.
Selectmen also voted 3-2 not to change the Fire Department’s alcohol policy, with Keith Swett and Rodney Hall dissenting without comment. Current policy would not prevent a firefighter with alcohol on his or her breath from responding to a call. However, that firefighter would not be permitted to work around patients or emergency medical personnel.
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