MINOT – A member of the Budget Committee asked selectmen Monday night whether they had been asked to pay any bills for work being done on a bathroom at the Minot Consolidated School.

Budget Committee member Emily Tuttle said she had heard that earlier in the day workers were ripping out the floor in a bathroom at the school as part of a job that she had been told costs $30,000. Furthermore, she noted, it appeared that there was nothing wrong with the floor, unless the floor was the “wrong color.”

“What irritated me,” Tuttle said, “was there’s nothing wrong with the floor. That’s what the contractor said.”

Selectmen said they also just learned of the project earlier in the day when they received, as part of the school warrant, an $8,000 plumber’s bill which they figured may have been an advance to pay for fixtures.

“I called School Committee Chairman Steve Holbrook,” Selectman Eda Tripp said. “He said they had extra money and the bathroom needed to be repaired.”

Tuttle questioned why the money isn’t going into surplus, this being the end of the school’s fiscal year.

Tripp wondered why the town was putting money into a school that was being given away to the new regional school unit.

Selectman Dean Campbell said he couldn’t recall any talk of redoing bathrooms during the winter Budget Committee meetings that led up to the March town meeting.

“There was nothing in the budget request,” Campbell said.

Tuttle said the Budget Committee had approved money for asbestos removal, but the project didn’t appear to be about that.

Selectmen directed Town Administrator Arlan Saunders to find out what the scope of the work was and who authorized it.

In other business, selectmen met with Shaw Hill Road resident Reginald Garrison, who is under an order to replace his failed septic system by June 30.

Garrison complained of hardship, poor weather and the fact that he is still trying to line up money for the work, but selectmen pointed out the septic system has been in failure since 2005 and that his neighbors should not have to endure the stench another summer.

Selectmen agreed to extend the deadline to July 15, and told Garrison that if the work isn’t completed by that date, his house will be condemned and he will be evicted on the 16th.

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