NORWAY – Selectmen and town employees have finally agreed on a policy governing weapons in the work place following several months of disagreement over the wording of the proposed rule.

“We had some real good dialogue. No one got upset,” Selectman Les Flanders said of the roundtable discussions he and Town Manager David Holt had with town employee representatives in an attempt to iron out remaining issues in the ongoing disagreement.

Last month, selectmen agreed to revisit its town employee weapons policy following concern by highway department workers that their constitutional right to carry firearms was being breached. The board agreed to sit down with some of the employees to try to hash out another version of the policy.

The new policy restricts any town employee except a police officer from bringing a weapon onto town property unless the firearm and ammunition are separately locked in the employees vehicle. Town employees are prohibited from bringing a firearm into any town building regardless of whether they are licensed to carry a firearm.

About a half-dozen highway department employees told the board in April that they were also concerned about being able to have guns in their vehicles while at work – many of them are hunters – and being prohibited from going on town property with their guns.

The new policy states that town employees will have the same off-hour hunting privileges on town land as other citizens.

Under the new policy, probationary employees may be subject to immediate termination and nonprobationary employees may be subject to termination after a notice and hearing.

The original policy, which banned employees from bringing weapons onto any town-owned property, was enacted in March as a result of an incident in the town garage when a .45-caliber automatic handgun was found in the side compartment of an employee’s car door after a complaint was lodged warning town officials that the gun owner might be dangerous.

The owner of the gun told the Sun Journal at the time that he usually carried the gun, with a concealed weapons permit, and normally left it in his locked car rather than leave it at his residence where there were small children. Because the highway department required his car to be unlocked when it is housed inside the garage, he conceded the gun was occasionally left accessible.

Holt, who proposed the policy originally to ensure the safety of town employees, said that employees had differing opinions on the policy but were able to come to a consensus.