NEW GLOUCESTER – Selectmen on Monday approved a letter of intent that paves the way for a grant to inventory the town’s arts and cultural resources.

The board also authorized spending up to $7,500 from Pineland Tax Increment Financing funds to pay the town’s share of the Discovery Research Grant.

The inventory would begin in April 2007 and end in March 2008.

Residents Debra Smith, Betty Wurtz and Judith Coggeshall volunteered to write the grant request for the town.

New Gloucester’s cultural resources include the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community, Pineland Farms and Fiddlehead Center for the Arts, as well as annual music festivals and other events. Several building sites and neighborhoods are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. New Gloucester is home to many traditional and contemporary visual and performing artists and other creative workers, according to the grant request.

A steering committee includes traditional and contemporary visual and performing artists, business people involved in traditional arts and industries such as lumbering and farming, and educators and representatives from key cultural and arts organizations.

Based on an initial budget, the total cost for the project is $48,280. In-kind support totals $32,280 from volunteer coordinators, steering committee members and administrative support and data management.

In other business, resident Nancy Wilcox told selectmen transportation services for elderly residents to get to appointments is sorely lacking. She requested a committee be formed to consider some options, such as purchasing a vehicle or having one donated, and using volunteer drivers. Wilcox suggested the possibility of using the town’s insurance to bond the vehicles and drivers.

She said a church group, for example, can take on the mission, if insurance for vehicles can come under the town’s policy.

The elderly make up about 7 percent of the town’s 5,000 residents.

Because the town is in Androscoggin County but is linked to the Southern Maine Area on Aging in Portland in Cumberland County, selectmen said they will bring the issue to Cumberland County government officials in the future.