PERU – Selectmen voted to award a contract to prepare the site and build a sand and salt shed to low bidder David Trask for $274,000, but hope to still negotiate the price.
The vote came after selectmen questioned Road Commissioner David Gammon how the town could save money by doing the site preparation in house.
The bid would be approximately $72,000 less if the town did the work.
Gammon thought he could contract out for the site preparation, but after long deliberation, he admitted that he didn’t know what would be under the ground and how much blasting would be necessary. It was finally agreed to go with the whole package for the building and site preparation.
Before Selectman Bill Hine would approve last week’s minutes, he questioned if the minutes needed to be so long. He said he had sent selectmen’s secretary Kathy Hussey a rewritten first paragraph. She had included Hine’s comments on the back of the original minutes.
Selectman Norman DeRoche countered that they didn’t want anything omitted because of keeping accurate records.
Hine said the town only needed to include business and actions taken in the minutes.
Hussey said she could make them shorter, but she didn’t like to have the minutes “butchered.”
Board Chairman Andre St. Pierre said they could mention things they wanted put into the minutes that were pertinent to the focus of discussion.
Code Enforcement Officer Jack Plumley reported he was making progress on coming to terms with Paul Bickford on his problems with shoreland zoning at his property on Worthley Pond. DeRoche said people were watching what was happening on the Bickford site and would be observing how the town followed through on the ordinances.
Plumley said he had just received the revised shoreland zoning rules and had not had time to become familiar with them, but there were significant changes.
In other actions the board:
• approved a permit for Bernard Elfring to stabilize the camp on Irish Farm Road;
• approved a permit for Anna Touchette to replace an existing mobile home with another on Green Woods Road; and
• issued a weapons permit.
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