DIXFIELD — The Board of Selectmen and the town manager discussed repairs needed at the town maintenance garage at Monday’s board meeting at the Ludden Memorial Library.
Town Manager Linda Pagels-Wentworth told the board that she and Code Enforcement Officer Calvin Beaumier visited the garage on Friday.
“We went to the third floor and it was pretty obvious that water was coming in from the front edge of the building,” she said. “Calvin looked at the insulation where the roof panel meets the girder from the outside front wall and there was condensation there. It’s eroding so much that you can stick a pen knife through the roof.”
“I can stick my whole finger through the roof,” Beaumier added, “but I didn’t think that was a good idea.”
Pagels-Wentworth said she called engineer Al Hodsdon of A.E. Hodsdon Engineers in Waterville, along with a representative from the Sheridan Corp., a construction firm with offices in Portland and Fairfield. She asked them to inspect the building to see how to address the situation.
Later in the meeting, Beaumier mentioned that many of the beams in the building are connected by four bolts, and in many places the bolts are in disrepair.
“Some of them only have a few threads left in the bolt, some of the bolts are completely gone,” he said.
“There are some where the nut has warped all the way out to the end of the bolt,” Pagels-Wentworth said. “Also, some of the building’s guy-wires are loose.”
Beaumier said, “They have to be inspected. This is not one of those things that you can just leave alone.”
Selectman Bob Withrow agreed.
Police Chief Richard Pickett said that “any significant money being put into that building is money being put into a dead horse. It’s in pretty rough shape.”
The board decided to wait until Hodsdon and the representative from the Sheridan Corp. inspect it before deciding what to do.
mdaigle@sunjournal.com
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