PERU – Residents will have the opportunity to decide the fate of the Town Office and the Rockemeka Grange Hall at a special town meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the old Peru Elementary School on Main Street.

“We’re hoping to get a good turnout,” Selectman James Pulsifer said at Monday’s selectmen’s meeting. “There’s some important issues to be decided here.”

The warrant articles include asking voters to authorize selectmen to heat the large building at the old Peru school during the upcoming winter, with funds to be taken from surplus. Selectmen have been discussing moving the town office down to the old school building, and closing the existing town office.

Voters will get a chance to address what to do with the town office and Grange hall in two separate warrant articles. Other articles on the warrant include asking citizens to approve building setback and building permit ordinances.

Dixfield fire Chief Scott Dennett was at Monday’s board meeting to discuss gaps in the Maine Municipal Association’s workers’ compensation coverage for firefighters. Dennett, who is an insurance agent as well, had researched accident and illness policies pertaining to fire department volunteers at Peru fire Chief William Hussey’s request.

He pointed out that only on-call accidents were covered under the MMA policy. Examples of incidents that would not be covered could include a heart attack while cleaning the fire station, blood-borne pathogens that firefighters could be exposed to outside of on-call duties but related to their work, and suffering an accident of some sort while trying to get to a public road after being called to a fire.

Dennett, who noted that he approached the research from a firefighter’s perspective rather than an insurance agent’s, said that if towns implemented policies that filled those gaps, it would benefit them in terms of recruiting and retaining firefighters. “It’s getting tougher and tougher to find volunteers,” he said.

“I have a little reservation about covering them on workers’ compensation on their own property,” Pulsifer said. He explained that the property owner, not the town, should be responsible for maintenance on their own land and that the town could create problems for itself if it approved a policy covering accidents on private property.

“They wouldn’t have been doing that if it weren’t for the tone going off,” Dennett responded, pointing out that the “gap” policy would only apply to a firefighter’s duties in their line of work.

“I have a lot of respect for firefighters and volunteers that do the work. They do us a heck of a service,” Pulsifer added.

Resident Wayne Moore asked the board several questions about delineating his property boundaries. He explained that he wanted to put a stone wall, plant a tree buffer, and erect a wooden snow fence on his Route 108 land, and that he had three storage containers to protect on the property.

Moore asked if the wall and fence would be considered structures requiring a permit. “The stone wall, as long as it’s out of the way, should be allowed,” said Pulsifer, adding that the fence also would be permissible.

“I wouldn’t consider it (the fence) a structure, and planting trees is your own right,” added Pulsifer. Moore mentioned that he wanted to put in a second driveway on the property leading to Route 108, and Pulsifer said that he would need to seek permission from the Maine Department of Transportation to do that.