Lee to hold special Town Meeting

LEE – The town’s board of selectmen has approved the agenda for a special Town Meeting.

It will be held on Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. at Lee Middle and High School.

The warrant, approved by the selectmen at their Sept. 18 meeting, contains eight articles. These articles consist of operating budget corrections for the sewer department and collector; property/liability/auto insurance supplemental appropriations for general use, the ambulance service, sewer department and water department; approving funds for the purchase of dam downstream liability insurance; and transferring funds for the purchase of a new fire truck.

All articles come recommended by the Lee Finance Committee, with the exception of Article 7, which would raise and appropriate $36,700 for the purchase of dam downstream liability insurance.

The complete warrant can be found on the Town of Lee’s website.

The primary reason for the select board’s calling of this special Town Meeting was to get approval for the purchase of a new fire truck, through the transfer of $447,000 from the Fire Engine Special Stabilization Fund. Such an approval will require a two-thirds vote.

Other business

Also at the Sept. 18 meeting, the select board approved a bid for the fire truck contract from KME Fire Apparatus, subject to Town Meeting appropriation, upon the recommendation of Lee Fire Chief Alan Sparks.

The bid, for $446,984, was actually the second-lowest that the Town of Lee received, but the lowest bid didn’t meet some of the specifications required by the department, so KME’s was the one selected.

“We really cannot find any….major thing wrong with the bid,” said Chief Sparks, referring to KME’s bid, when asking the select board to approve it.

KME also provided the last fire truck Lee purchased.

“We really don’t have a problem with it at all,” said Chief Sparks, when asked by The Beacon about the KME truck already in service.

If the new truck is purchased, it will be replacing Engine 7, which has been in service for over 25 years. Everything required to equip the new truck, such as air packs, face masks and voice amplifiers, were also included in the bid.

Nine companies took out specs for the bid, and there were five bidders, something Chief Sparks says is very unusual.

“Usually you might get two or three [bidders],” said Chief Sparks, adding, despite these multiple bids, the prices were not lower than expected.

Posted by Bera B. Dunau on September 27, 2012. Filed under Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry