Weston board OK’s paving bid for Lawrence Hill, Chester Mountain roads

By Bruce Frauman
©2020 Telegraph Publishing LLC

The Weston Select Board on Tuesday, April 14 approved a bid of $290,539 from Fuller Sand and Gravel of Danby pending review and approval of Road Foreman Almon Crandall. The bid is almost $50,000 under the next lowest bid, according to board member Jim Linville. The bid is for paving and some swale work along Lawrence Hill and Chester Mountain roads.

The board also voted to hire Natalie Bell Boston as its administrative assistant after a four-month search for a replacement for retiring administrative assistant Cheryl Barker.

Concerning roads, Crandall told the board that “mud season has been quiet this year, because there has not been much traffic.” To keep in line with a new state regulation on Covid-19, Crandall said the road crew cannot work on any projects unless they are an emergency.

During a discussion and approval of excess weight permits, Board member Ann Fuji’i told the board that the Trout Club would be taking deliveries of trout in the coming weeks and hoped that the weight issue would not be a problem along the culvert on Trout Club Road. Crandall asked Fuji’i to let him know when the deliveries would take place and he would check the culvert.

After a long discussion about requesting a sign that flashes vehicle speeds along Route 100 north of the village, Board members Charles Goodwin and Bruce Downer agreed to do more research about the availability and cost of such a sign to bring to the next board meeting.

A resident had complained of the high speed of vehicles entering town from the north, a problem that Downer said did witness. Linville said a speed study by the Department of Transportation last September indicated that only 30 cars of 3,300 were traveling above 50 mph. Goodwin said it could be that with less traffic during the Covid-19 crisis, people are driving faster than usual. Fuji’i thought now is a “weird time” to set up a speed counter, but will go along with whatever the rest of the board wants.

Board chair Denis Benson said he heard that a family from New York State comes to Weston on weekends, possibly bringing Covid-19 with them. Benson said, “let the government deal with it.”

Linville and Fuji’i said they would like to see landscape companies be able to work in town to start their spring clean up, even if it is a crew of one instead of three. On Friday, Gov. Phil Scott announced that landscapers could return to work if they did so in small groups, observed strict social distancing and wear cotton masks.

Linville said he will submit the updated Local Emergency Management Plan to the Windham Regional Commission and leave some spaces blank because the Select Board administrative assistant position has not yet been filled.

Finally, the board agreed to a contract with Santec to test water at the Little School for the upcoming year, with a total cost not to exceed $1,000.

The board went into an executive session in a separate Zoom session at the end of the meeting to discuss candidates and compensation for the open administrative assistant position. It later voted to hire Natalie Bell Boston as the new administration assistant as soon as she can start.  The board also voted to increase the salary of assistant Town Clerk Deb Moser to the same level.