Board of Selectmen Discuss Fire District Proposal and Closing Old Colony Road

By Ruth Melville

With no items to be voted on this month, First Selectman Matt Riiska devoted the Aug. 6 meeting of the Board of Selectmen to a quick rundown of ongoing town projects.

Riiska acknowledged that it was a concern that the bids for the new firehouse came in way over budget and said the Firehouse Committee is working hard to get the price down. Bidding was reopened on four items, and a new bid for plumbing brought the cost down by $230,000. The committee is continuing to work with the architects to decide which features could be eliminated, including the roof monitor, the hose tower and the three-bay garage. The garage could be built later with a local builder at a lower cost.
There will be a meeting to choose the engineering company to oversee the work on the Mountain Road bridge at Westside Road. The two choices are M & J Engineering and WMC Consulting Engineers. Both the Old Goshen and the permanent Smith Road bridges are still in the design phase, with the design for the Smith Road bridge virtually complete.

So many drivers have been using Old Colony Road to avoid the wall project on Route 44 that it has been decided to close the road to through traffic. At the Route 272 end, only local traffic will be allowed. A gate will be installed near the Route 44 end, so that fire trucks and other emergency services coming from Canaan can access the road. K2 Construction will build a turnaround area, so that if cars do start to go up, they can get back down. The Department of Transportation is in favor of this plan and will help with signage. Riiska hopes to have this in place within a few weeks, and updates will be posted on the town website.

Riiska and Michael Sconyers, chair of the Board of Finance, have been discussing the idea of creating a fire district in town. This would spread the cost of emergency services—both the fire department and the ambulance—over everyone in town, including the nonprofits. Riiska hopes that the proposal can go before a town meeting in September.

The town has switched to QuickBooks and is looking into using a cloud-based system so that Town Hall employees can share information.

Milling and chip sealing on Doolittle Drive, from Pond Town cemetery to Wheeler Road and from Shantry Road to the cemetery, is scheduled to begin Aug. 26. In the center of town, once Aquarion is finished replacing the water mains on Shepard Road, they are responsible for paving and putting in curbing, but the town will pay for milling and paving the five-corner intersection.