DIXFIELD — The Board of Selectmen on Monday approved a three-year contract for Town Manager Carlo Puiia and officially signed papers for two Planning Board members.
“I’ve been here 11 months to date, and while we met at a prior session to negotiate, (Monday) night, the selectmen voted to approve the three-year contract,” Puiia said Tuesday.
Puiia said Ricky Davis was appointed as a full-time member of the Planning Board and Jeff Knight as an associate member at the April 27 selectmen meeting.
Davis had been an associate member.
“That left a vacancy in the associate position, which Jeff Knight filled,” Puiia said.
In other business, selectmen agreed to send a list of questions about the town’s proposed Wind Energy Facility Ordinance to attorney Kristen Collins.
“Apparently, there was some uncertainty about what attorney Kristen Collins may or may not have recommended to the Planning Board,” Puiia said. “The board agreed that they would send her a list of questions that they had, along with their own questions, about the legalities of the wind ordinance.
“They more or less wanted to get an update on what she thinks about the ordinance, as far as sound standards, because the wind developer made the claim that wind development would not be possible with the sound standards in the ordinance,” Puiia said. “If residents have questions they want to send to Collins, they should submit them to me or to the Town Office.”
Patriot Renewables LLC of Quincy, Mass., approached Dixfield officials three years ago about constructing wind turbines on the Colonel Holman Mountain ridge.
The town’s original ordinance passed in November 2012; a revised ordinance was rejected in November 2014 by a vote of 553-567. In February, selectmen voted to put the original ordinance on the June 9 ballot.
Tom Carroll, project coordinator for Patriot Renewables, said at the board’s April 13 meeting that the ordinance’s nighttime decibel limit of 35 would likely prohibit wind development in Dixfield.
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