Good afternoon,
The Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance met last night to recommend to a town meeting, that the town appropriate $1.266 million for the purchase of the radio frequency and dispatch upgrade for police and fire radios and infrastructure from the undesignated fund. The radio project has a total cost of $3.1 million. The Board of Finance decided to use the ARPA money in the amount of $1.8 million to avoid any danger of losing use of the funds which needed to be committed sometime in the next three months. This question will be put to a special town meeting on September 30, at 6:00 PM at Samuel Staples Elementary School, and then adjourned to a referendum to be held on October 8, from noon to 8:00 PM at Samuel Staples Elementary School. The undesignated fund is our rainy-day fund which has a balance of $7,387,435 presently. As our outside consultants told us, this project is critical for the safety of our emergency service workers and our citizens. Nonetheless, it has been approximately 20 years in the making.
There will be a second town meeting and referendum for the funding of the EMS building renovation in December when the actual cost is known. There is currently approximately $1 million of Local Community Improvement Project (LOCIP) money from the state which is available to the town, in addition to $700,000 being contributed to by the EMS foundation (thanks to all those who attended the awesome fireworks show last Saturday) and $396,000 of funds from another state grant for the exterior work at the new building, including septic, parking, and landscaping. In committing the LOCIP money to EMS, the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen sent a strong message of their commitment to the EMS renovation as well. …