LIVERMORE FALLS — The town’s highway foreman is getting estimates for costs to demolish a condemned house at 1 Birch St., Town Manager Jim Chaousis told selectmen Monday.

A judge ordered Roger LaPlante and his son to vacate the property by June 4 and to remove all personal property by June 11, he said.

The judge also ordered that nothing attached to the building could be removed, Chaousis said.

Selectmen voted in May to declare the house a dangerous building after a structural engineer determined it was structurally unsound.

LaPlante was given 30 days in April to improve the property to make it safe and to clean it up. If he had made significant improvement, selectmen said they would give LaPlante more time to work on the building. However, the engineer went in and declared it unsafe.

Chaousis said they would like to get demolition started as soon as June 14.

The project will not go out to bid because of the time frame, Chaousis said. Instead Highway Foreman Bill Nichols is calling local contractors to get prices. The low bidder will get the bid for the project, he said.

Voters will be asked Tuesday if they want to transfer $30,000 from the undesignated fund to deal with dangerous buildings.

Resident Val Nichols said LaPlante has more than $2,000 in roofing on the building. He asked to be able to remove the roofing, Nichols said.

LaPlante went and took out a $2,500 loan to fix the place up after he was ordered to do so, Nichols said.

Chaousis said the judge said no materials could be removed.

Val Nichols also said selectmen originally said they would need to find a place for LaPlante to stay but that wasn’t the case.

“As a town, we should be ashamed,” Val Nichols said.

Chaousis said no requests from LaPlante have come in for temporary housing.

“This is not something we took lightly,” Select Board Chairwoman Louise Chabot said.

He is optimistic, Chaousis said, that people will recognize the need to take the building down and agree to transfer the money. Otherwise they will have to find the money elsewhere.

LaPlante will still own the land but if he rebuilds, he would need to repay the town for legal and demolition costs, Chabot said.

In other business, selectmen voted 4-1, with Selectman Alphonso Barker opposed, to rescind the Chaousis’ disciplinary action against the Police Department.

The board took the action out of executive session but forgot to open the doors to the room to see if any public was still out there.

Chaousis apologized for that, saying he had other things on his mind, including the birth of a daughter 20 days early over the weekend.

Police Chief Ernest Steward Jr. declined comment on the session.

Outside the selectmen’s meeting, selectman’s candidate Mellette Pepin said she intends to fully pursue a three-year term on the board. She is challenging incumbent Selectman Jim Collins for the seat on Tuesday.

Pepin told the Sun Journal last week that she may not be able to go through with it because of personal reasons. She had an emergency family matter that day, she said Monday, but has since resolved it.

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