ANDOVER — Fire Chief Justin Tibbetts told selectmen this week that the fire station’s 32-year-old furnace will need more repairs this spring and they should consider the cost of replacing it.
“As long as we keep up the maintenance, it should keep going,” he said Tuesday night. “If we get through repairs this winter, it will get us through the springtime, but this spring (the town) should at least look at a cost to replace (it) eventually.”
The furnace was installed in 1985, Assistant Fire Chief Ken Dixon said.
Some repairs, including to the furnace pump, were made this winter, Tibbetts said. He said the furnace has shut down twice, so a red light will be ordered and installed outside the station to alert passers-by of a shutdown.
“If (the furnace) drops below a certain temperature, that red light will come on so people in town can see (that the furnace is out),” the chief said.
In other business:
* Selectmen discussed three unpaid bills by residents who owe for disposal of items at the transfer station. Such items include tires and TVs. Town Clerk Melinda Averill said letters were sent to residents with outstanding transfer station bills last August. Some have paid up, she said.
Selectmen voted to enact a policy that 30 days after notification, residents who owe disposal fees would not be allowed to drop anything off at the station until their bill is paid.
* The Cemetery Committee presented five articles for selectmen to review for the annual town meeting warrant in March.
Committee Chairwoman Donna Libby said she wanted townspeople to realize that most of the articles the committee have prepared “are already state law.” For example, the committee’s first article asking to set up a Designated Cemetery Perpetual Care Account is required by Maine law, she said.
Committee member Judy Tabb said a lawyer working with the committee told members that the principal from the Perpetual Care Account could never be spent but the interest could. “That’s why we decided to open up a separate Perpetual Care Account to meet the state regulations,” she said.
Libby also said the committee is preparing an ordinance for cemetery policies, but Selectman Jane Rich said a public hearing is required at least 90 days before the town meeting.
“So that (ordinance vote) probably isn’t going to happen until March 2018,” Rich said.
mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net
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