CANTON — Selectmen on Monday accepted a bid of $12,500 from Dave Bowen Construction of Canton to build a lean-to at the highway garage on Jewett Hill Road.
It will store a bucket loader and backhoe. The construction is estimated to take two to three weeks.
In other business at the meeting, held via the internet, it was announced the Town Office is closed to the public until further notice because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, office staff will be available for phone calls Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The phone number is 597-2920. Real estate and sewer payments can be dropped off in the black drop box outside the Town Office entrance door.
In another matter, Selectman Carole Robbins said she requested a $30,000 grant last week from the Northern Forest Destination Development Initiative to purchase playground equipment and exercise station equipment for the town playground near the ball field on School Street.
If granted, some of the money would also be used to repair parts of the trail system that begins beside Cross Street and runs about one and a half miles to the end of School Street, Robbins said.
Selectmen plan to hold a workshop Tuesday to discuss whether to approve a federal grant application to repair erosion and culverts, and other environmental work on the Canton side of Lake Anasagunticook. The application is due by the end of the month, and a $10,000 town match is required.
Lake Anasagunticook Association member Diane Ray asked the board if the town would help fund the matching grant through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. She said she and other association members are working with a consultant to apply for the grant to assist towns in mitigating risks to water quality.
“Last summer we got help from the (Department of Environmental Protection) to do a watershed survey (and we) identified sites in the watershed where there are runoff issues and culverts that aren’t doing their job,” Ray said.
Besides culverts that are not working correctly, Ray said the land erosion has “kind of eaten up all of the vegetation (causing) amazing runoff (into the lake).”
The cost to fix most of the environmental problems surrounding the lake “is roughly $49,000,” Ray said, but the group is asking the town for $10,000 “to really focus on the things that are quasi-municipal like the Water District (area problems near the lake) and the one really big town road problem,” Ray said.
In other business, the board appointed Olaf Johnson, Kristi Carrier and Sherri Vaughan to the Appeals Board, all for three-year terms.
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