STRONG — Selectmen met Tuesday night to set the warrant for a special town meeting Tuesday, June 19.
At the meeting, scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Forster Memorial Building. Voters will act on two warrant articles.
One seeks a decision on whether to keep or sell the town’s tennis court. Although voters tabled a request to raise $3,000 at the March town meeting, selectmen agreed a decision needs to be made before the tennis court surface and surrounding area become unsafe and possibly irreparable.
“We need to throw it out there and have people vote on it,” Selectman Rodney Spiller said.
If voters do not want to pay to maintain the property, voters can authorize selectmen to sell it.
Board Chairman Dick Worthley said the tennis court lot is 200 feet along Burbank Hill Road and 280 feet along Valley Brook. It is 280-feet deep, according to the town’s tax map.
The lot would have to be surveyed to determine its fair-market value.
The second article revisits a proposal to pave a section of the Pond Road. The paving would start at Beanie’s Beach Road and go about a mile to Storybook Lane.
Selectmen have received private donation offers of $20,000 each from two families on the Pond Road to offset the paving costs. With the $40,000 in donations, selectmen will ask voters to authorize a $170,000 bank loan to cover the remaining cost of the paving.
The private donations are contingent on voters approving the project and the bank loan. If voters approve the project, the first payment of $40,000 would be due March 1, 2019. The second payment of $80,000 would be due March 1, 2020. The final payment of $50,000, plus the estimated interest of $12,880, would be paid March 1, 2021.
Selectman Mike Pond said he would prepare a presentation of the paving project’s financial details for the board’s 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday, June 12.
Since voters will vote that day on Regional School Unit 58’s proposed budget for 2018-19, selectmen plan to have paving information available at the polls.
Selectmen encouraged residents to attend next week’s meeting to learn more about the two warrant articles.
Absentee ballots for the June 12 vote will be available in advance at the Town Office. There will be no absentee voting for the July 19 town meeting.
Selectmen also approved allowing Duayne Boyd, the highway department foreman, to rent an excavator to start removing stumps along the Pond Road.
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