JAY – Selectmen voted Tuesday to award a two-year contract for propane at the new town office to Group Adams Propane Services of Livermore Falls.

Town Manager Ruth Marden said it is projected the town will use about 3,000 gallons.

Group Adams bid $2.895 per gallon for the first year. The town will pay $240 a year to lease the tanks, $100 to install them, $771 for setting up piping and tubing and $80 for pressure testing.

The vote was 3-0 with Selectman Rick Simoneau abstaining because he is a customer of Group Adams.

Other companies bidding were Fabian and Amerigas.

The board also voted unanimously to put fees of $275 per burial and $100 per cremation into the Building and Grounds capital reserve account.

Selectmen also agreed to allow the use of money in a cemetery reserve fund for expenses related to cemetery maintenance such as buying a lawn mower, if the need arises. There is $54,343 in the account that has not been touched since 2001.

The riding lawnmower being used for the cemetery is a 1996 model, said Larry Wright, town building and grounds custodian, animal control officer and cemetery sexton. The money could also be used to make improvements at cemeteries, he said.

The truck Wright is using for town business is dying and will also need to be replaced in the future.

Marden and Wright plan to review state surplus equipment and trucks in June to see if they could find something Wright could use.

Selectman Warren Bryant said if they’re going to take money from a cemetery account it should be designated for cemetery purposes.

Marden said half the money for a vehicle could come from building and grounds capital reserve and the rest from the cemetery reserve fund.

“I don’t want you to think we’re going to be willy-nilly with the money,” Marden said. “The money is there for those purposes.”

In another matter, resident Mike Williams said he was not on the public sewer system but is being taxed for it. He wanted to know if he could be reimbursed for his septic tank being pumped out.

It’s been a contention for years, Chairman Bill Harlow said. Most selectmen also have septic systems

“I hear what you’re saying, but there are no funds there for reimbursement,” Harlow said.

“Why should we have to pay for people in town on sewer when we get no benefit from it?” Williams’ father, Maynard Williams, asked.

Bryant said selectmen are starting to shift costs gradually over to sewer users. The board raised sewer fees earlier this year by $40 to make them $250 per unit for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

A survey done by another town indicated raising fees would impact those who could least afford it, Bryant said.

Simoneau said it was going to cost people on sewer about $750 a year, if they had to pick up the cost for the entire year instead of having some of it subsidized by taxation.