By Ruth Melville

Richard Byrne, the town’s emergency management director, came to the May 4 Board of Selectmen (BoS) meeting to present a memorandum of understanding, proposed by the Red Cross, that needed an official signature from the town. Byrne suggested one change to the proposed document: the Red Cross wanted Norfolk to promise to support the Red Cross’s community blood drives, but the Lions Club and the Immaculate Conception Church already run blood drives in town. With that stipulation deleted, Byrne and First Selectman Matt Riiska both signed the memorandum.

The BoS voted to approve increases in fees for both Tobey Pond and the transfer station. The price of a sticker for Tobey Pond will go up to from $70 to $85, from $50 to $60 for people over 65 and from $100 to $125 for the transferable pass offered to town inns for the use of their guests. At the transfer station, the new fees will be $90 per car, $75 for a second sticker, $40 for bulky waste and $5 per tire. 

Riiska presented a brief overview of the ongoing construction on the Mountain Road and River Place bridges and on the status of the solar field at the town landfill. Once the solar field project has been approved by the Inland Wetlands Agency, the Conservation Commission and Planning and Zoning, it will have to go before the Connecticut Siting Council. Riiska expects to have a town meeting on the project in June.

With the summer season approaching, Jen Munch, the lifeguard supervisor at Tobey Pond, was invited to attend the meeting to discuss the hours, wages and duties of the lifeguards. There are currently 18 lifeguards who work a varied number of hours each week. In general, more senior guards have more shifts. Munch said that she has an app to track the guards’ schedules, and no changes to the schedule can be made without her approval. She is always on call when the beach is open, and the guards participate in a drill every other week. The selectmen noted that Tobey Pond has an excellent safety record, and they praised Munch for keeping costs under control.