ANDOVER — Selectmen on Tuesday approved an Oxford County contract for winter road work in the unorganized territories for 2020.

Selectmen Mark Thurston, Brian Mills and Joe Luce voted to contract $6,500 to $7,000 per month for winter road work, to pay wages of $45 an hour and to use of the town’s one-ton pickup truck at $55 an hour. The contract is subject to the approval of the Oxford County commissioners.

In other business, the Select Board voted to obtain by eminent domain the Andover Hook and Ladder property on Elm Street. Mills noted that the reason the town can obtain the building by eminent domain is because of “the judgment of the municipality (that the building) contributes to blight; the result is a continued lack of care, maintenance or security,” Mills read from a legal statute.

“We need to get it cleaned up one way or another because we had a complaint last week and if we sit here and do nothing and the building catches on fire” the town could be responsible for it, he said.

Also on Tuesday, Thurston told the Select Board that the town library will need some notice to close the library before about 45 trees are removed from the area. The trees were deemed a safety hazard and removal will likely begin in July or August.

Also, repair work on the town clock to update it with an electronic time control will begin next week. Townspeople voted at town meeting in June to repair the clock using an electronic time control rather than to repair its original working fixtures.

Planning Board Chairwoman Donna Libby told the board that she had received a complaint about the noise at night at Lone Mountain Riverfront campground. “The new campground gets loud at night and (the sound) carries downriver,” she said.

She said she wasn’t sure from the complaint whether the noise was coming from the campground, which has quiet time beginning at 10 p.m., or from people boating on the Ellis River nearby.

Selectmen told Libby that she should make the campground owners aware of the complaint but also that they “really haven’t verified that (the noise) came from their campground.”

mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net

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