JAY – Selectmen voted to award a contract for the installation of two concrete pads at the transfer station to a Livermore company and authorized the purchase of an ejection trailer for solid waste for $48,750.

They also agreed to find out how other towns are handling the need for a building inspector, and they accepted with regret the resignation of budget and recreation committees member Tom Fortier on Monday night.

Board members thanked Fortier for his service and asked him why he was leaving.

Fortier cited personal reasons including taking on more responsibility at work with a promotion and also his children getting busier as they grow older and the inability to make a recommendation on the school budget.

He said he received a letter from the Budget Committee chairperson informing him that after someone had questioned whether he had a conflict of interest serving on the panel due to his wife, Kellee, being a Jay Middle School math teacher, the town manager looked into it and it was determined there was. The issue had also been looked into five years ago, he said.

Fortier said he didn’t see it as a conflict because the committee does not vote on the budget, only gives a recommendation as a whole to voters.

“I’m not going to spend a lot of time researching the budget when I cannot make a recommendation, so I chose to resign,” Fortier said. He could still make a recommendation on the municipal budget.

He said that now that he’s not on the committee, he’ll be able to speak his mind after biting his tongue many times before and crumpling letters to the editor and throwing them away.

“I think I can do as much good from this side of the table, maybe not,” Fortier said.

“I think you’ve done a very good job on the Budget Committee and Recreation Committee,” Selectman Steve McCourt said. It was echoed by other board members.

In other business, selectmen awarded the contract for concrete pads at the transfer station to low bidder Livermore Concrete for $2,600 to address safety regulations. The other bid was from Webster Mini Excavation for $3,138.

The board also agreed to transfer station and recycling coordinator Bob Sanders’ request to buy a Steco ejection trailer for the station to replace a 1991 trailer with moving floor boards like a conveyor to move trash forward. That trailer will be going out to bid, Sanders said.

The $48,750 for the new trailer will come out of an equipment reserve account that has $155,023.49 in it, he said.

Environmental Code Enforcement Officer Shiloh Ring said she had a person from the Maine Office of the Fire Marshal investigating a complaint come to visit the building inspector.

The town does not have a building inspector, Chairman Bill Harlow said, but needs one because the board was informed that a town with more than 2,000 people is required to have one.

Ring said that whoever fills the position needs to know how to determine when a building is safe in regards to fire.

Selectmen said they would look at possibilities to fill the position and see how other towns are doing it.