JAY – Selectmen voted Monday to use $2,500 from a recreation account as matching funds for a $5,000 grant for a school-based service project on town recreation land.

The money will come from the cell tower lease fund used for development of recreation land and recreation purposes, Town Manager Marden said. The fund has $23,506.20, she said.

Resident and teacher Rob Taylor asked selectmen earlier this month to use money from the fund to provide matching dollars for a Green Works Project Learning Tree grant to develop a Jay Outdoor Education Project.

“The mission of the project is to provide the youth of Jay with outdoor learning and community service opportunities by utilizing and developing resources within the community. Students will be an integral part of the planning, development and maintenance,” according to Taylor’s draft grant application.

“The ultimate goal is to develop the property into a sustainable forest and outdoor education and recreation facility,” he wrote in the grant application.

Some of the projects in the proposal are paper-making lessons, life in the forest and trail values, Selectman Amy Pineau Gould said.

“I think it’s a great thing,” Selectman Rick Simoneau said, adding that he has been waiting for something to happen on the recreation land behind the high school since he was a kid.

Selectman Warren Bryant agreed, saying Taylor had done a good job, and his efforts have benefited the children and the community.

Marden said the town bought the more than 100 acres in 1967 for $31,000.

In other matters, selectmen appointed Noel Brown of Jay, a network specialist with Hammond Lumber Co. in Belgrade, as the town’s emergency management director.

The board also voted to make the street that goes from Main Street to Tiger Drive in front of the Head Start center, one way. It is not a town road.

Head Start officials asked that the road be changed to the one-way designation going from Main Street up to Tiger Drive. The preschool center is the only building on the road.

Simoneau suggested that people be encouraged to turn right once they meet Tiger Drive to go to Community Way instead of toward the elementary school. Community Way is where the high and middle schools are located and when traffic backs up there, Simoneau said, people are cutting across and going down the road in front of Head Start.

Selectmen also asked to find out what vote the state is paying for in regards to the state-mandated voting on school issues this year before they decide when to set the municipal budget referendum.

The new school reorganization law requires school systems to have a town meeting vote on school budgets and within 10 days from that vote to have a one question referendum to validate that vote beginning in 2008.

Jay traditionally holds its school and municipal referendum vote in April.