NEWRY — Selectmen decided late Tuesday afternoon to revisit the Letter S road project timeline at the board’s budget meeting at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the Town Office.
Last month, officials sent out engineering requests for proposals to a list of identified firms to reconstruct a 1,200-foot section of the Sunday River Road in the Nordic Knoll Road and Letter S swimming hole area. The deadline to return them was Tuesday, Feb. 18.
However, Administrator Loretta Powers said Tuesday that town officials had received several complaints from firms.
“They said the time frame is too close,” Selectman Brooks Morton said.
Powers said there is still so much ice and snow on the ground that officials had trouble finding culverts and couldn’t even see one culvert.
She said the Feb. 18 date is no longer valid. At town meeting on March 3, selectmen plan to propose up to $400,000 for the road fix. The work will be awarded pending approval of the expenditure.
In other business, the board discussed replacing the battery backup in the generator at the Bear River Grange Hall and learned what’s to be done about the Grafton Township library books.
Grafton gave up its town charter in 1919, according to “Grafton, Maine: A Historical Sketch” by Margaret Joy Tibbetts.
Powers said Oxford County, which owns the collection of a few hundred books, has decided to leave the books at the Newry Town Office.
“These are the books that were at Bessie Learned’s house,” Anita Clark, deputy clerk, said.
The collection was also kept for a time at the Sunday River Schoolhouse before being moved into the Newry Town Office, Powers said.
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- Oxford County commissioners decided in January that these few hundred books from the former town of Grafton’s public lending library will remain at the Newry Town Office. Selectmen learned of the decision at Tuesday’s board meeting.
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- Many of the books from the former Grafton Library date from the late 1800s and are still protected by brown paper covers. Grafton gave up its town charter in 1919, leaving the collection to Oxford County. The county decided to continue to have the collection of more than 200 titles kept at the Newry Town Office.
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