CHESTERVILLE — Road Foreman Conley “Bud” Gould III informed selectmen at Thursday’s meeting that he was resigning, effective Dec. 29, to take another job.

With Gould’s resignation, the town is left with two employees working at the highway department. One of them just started there.

“We have a new employee. My concern is getting him trained,” Chairman David Archer said.

“The longer you spend with the new guy, the better,” Selectman Paul Caldwell said.

Gould said he had already done some training with the new employee.

Selectmen said they would advertise the position.

In other business, the board was told there may be an opportunity to get federal funding for a larger culvert on Sandy River Road.

“We think the culvert on the Sandy River Road at the outlet of David Pond is a good candidate for this funding,” Lidie Robbins, executive director of the 30 Mile River Watershed Association, said. She said the town wouldn’t have to come up with a match for the grant.

Chesterville resident Bill Swan, a member of the 30 Mile River Watershed Association board, said when there’s a lot of rain, a large delta forms as water comes out of the culvert.

“It’s a huge culvert,” Swan said. “What it does is it’s meant to mimic what the natural streambed would look like.”

30 Mile River Watershed Association board member Bill Dunham, also a Chesterville resident, said he was concerned with sand and salt from the road washing into the pond. When the material accumulates in the pond, it takes away a spawning ground for smelts, he said.

Robbins said an engineer had looked at the culvert and said a 15-foot diameter open arched culvert would work best.

“Right now, we don’t have the natural stream flow you would have because of the undersized culvert,” she said. “It’s a swampy area.”

The request for grant proposals has not been announced yet, Robbins said. Part of the work would involve an engineering study, she said.

Selectmen pointed out that another advantage of having a new culvert would the ability to widen the road there and have more room for cars and trucks to travel.

“I think we should do it,” Selectman Guy Iverson, throwing his support behind the grant effort. “We need help with our roads.”

The board reviewed the first draft of a series of policies that Iverson had written. They included a Freedom of Access policy, which lays out written steps for how the town’s Freedom of Access Officer and selectmen deal with citizen requests for meeting minutes, tapes, or town records.

Iverson said he also came up with a recall ordinance for elected town officials.

“I think you need a way to protect your town, and if the people you elected aren’t doing their job, you need to have a way to get rid of them,” he said.

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“We have a new employee. My concern is getting him trained.” — Chairman David Archer.