CANTON — The Select Board decided Thursday to postpone a special Town Meeting to Nov. 28 to vote on on using undesignated funds to offset the amount needed from 2023-24 property taxes to operate the town.
The meeting is at 6 p.m. at the Town Office meeting room.
Originally scheduled for Oct. 26, it was postponed because of the mass shootings in Lewiston on Oct. 25. The meeting was rescheduled for Nov. 2, but selectmen did not post the meeting warrant the required seven days beforehand.
Last October, residents approved allocating $75,000 from undesignated funds to offset the amount needed from property taxes to operate the town. The tax rate was $17.75, a 25-cent increase from the previous year.
In other business, Selectwoman Michelle Larrivee said the Fire Department received its long-awaited firetruck, a 2007 Pierce International pumper tanker, Thursday morning.
The Canton Fire Department received its long-awaited 2007 Pierce International pumper tanker on Thursday morning. The town approved the 2,100-gallon tanker for $230,000 in June 2022. Submitted photo
Fire Chief Jason Vaughan said Friday that the town voted to approve the 2,100-gallon tanker for $230,000 during a town meeting in June 2022.
The tanker truck was previously owned by Manlius Village, New York. The village “was waiting on their new truck to come in but with supply chain issues their truck kept getting delayed so we had to wait,” Vaughan said.
During the June 2022 annual Town Meeting Vaughan said, “For those that don’t know, (our current tanker is) a 1989 that we bought probably seven years ago now. That truck was $30,000 when we bought it. We’ve had several issues with it over the last two or three years that were kind of pricey; most recently electrical issues.”
In another matter, the board voted to allow five days of paid sick leave per year for full-time town employees and two days paid sick leave a year for part-time employees.
Full-time employment for town employees is 32 hours or more. The cap for the paid sick leave accumulated will be two years.
In other issues, Julie Hausman, executive director of Morning Mercy Outreach of Turner, attended Thursday’s meeting to ask if the town would consider donating the now defunct school building on School Street to her nonprofit organization as a foster home for mothers and their children when the children are at risk of being placed in foster care. The organization is committed to developing strong children, families and communities while working to prevent child abuse and neglect, Hausman said.
Chairman Brian Keene said, “The problem with the building is the building itself is falling in; the building itself is very unsafe, it’s full of asbestos, the roof is caving in and it’s been empty so long.”
Selectwoman Kristi Carrier said testing revealed everything “needs to be handled in a certain way” because of asbestos.
Larrivee said officials are in the process of finding grants to tear the building down in an appropriate way. “The problem is that once that happens nothing else can get built there unless it gets raised to be out of the flood plain,” she said.
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