MINOT – Selectmen voted to offer L & L Timber of Livermore the contract to begin development of the expansion to the Center Minot Hill cemetery.

Lukeus Flagg of L & L Timber submitted a bid to cut, stump, chip and clear the 3-acre expansion at no cost to the town.

“He’ll be making his money on the chips, selling them to a bio-mass plant,” town administer Arlan Saunders explained.

Selectmen directed Saunders to make sure the contractor had proper insurance and equipment that won’t tear up the land.

Saunders must also receive assurance that the work can be completed in two weeks, and if Flagg can’t, Saunders is to proceed with the next lowest bidder.

Selectmen had originally put the cemetery clearing project out to bid last December, and in January had awarded the work to Glenn Luce of Turner at a low bid of $3,300.

About three weeks ago, selectmen discovered Luce had never signed and returned the contract. When they approached Luce about the matter, he told them he had too many projects in hand just now and would like to withdraw his bid.

At their April 6 meeting, selectmen decided to rebid the project and received 11 responses – seven of which were lower than Luce’s $3,300.

Dwight Nichols of D.R. Nichols Excavation in Minot, one of the three who submitted bids in January, took selectmen to task Tuesday night.

“I should have gotten the work as second lowest bidder,” Nichols told the board just before it opened the new round of bids.

Nichols, who bid $3,235 this time, argued that he’d been treated unfairly and that the town lost an opportunity.

“Had the work been given to me, I would have had it done already,” he said.

Selectmen explained that with former town administrator Rhonda Irish leaving to take a similar position in Wilton at that time, they lost track of the status of Luce’s contract.

“We weren’t quick enough to get the contract signed. Usually you can ask someone to hold a bid for 30 days but we were going on 90 days,” Selectman Steve French said.

“We made a mistake,” Selectman Dan Callahan added.

In other business, Saunders told selectmen that he had inspected the Indian Brook culvert under Shaw Hill Road with a Federal Emergency Management Agency engineer and the engineer determined that the project does not qualify for FEMA’s flood-hazard-mitigation grant program.

Saunders explained that the FEMA official thought that the two new pipes the town had recently installed could handle the surplus flow and was of the opinion that a downstream beaver dam was contributing to problems with clearing water from the area.

Selectmen suggested the town purchase a 5-foot-diameter plastic culvert for the day when the present main culvert under Shaw Hill Road fails.

French told the board the Minot Fire Department had received a $2,500 grant from the Maine Energy Management Agency for a new generator. The old emergency generator, which serves the town office and Central Fire Station, quit a couple months ago and French hopes to use the grant to replace it with a new 6,500 watt generator.