Rochester’s Select Board Monday voted to recommend all seven money-spending articles on the January 27 Special Town Meeting warrant and most of its non-monetary proposals.
With the help of recommendations from the Finance Committee, the board endorsed two articles that will come out of the Capital Improvement Planning budget and five others that will get its money from available town funds. From the capital account, the town will propose spending $3,225 for the town’s share of the Plumb Library’s plan to purchase a new state-of-the-art library book depository and $26,500 to fund costs related to post-closure landfill engineering, monitoring, and surveying work.
Town Administrator Cameron Durant explained the Friends of the Library is donating 50-percent of the $6,500 cost for a new book drop off box with a spring-loaded floor that will rise up, so the book spines don’t break as they do now when they are dropped to the floor of the current box. Facilities Manager Andrew Daniels added the current drop box also needs to be replaced because it is not as watertight as it should be.
Durant said the landfill engineering and monitoring expenses will modernize the property into a more useful transfer station. That is one goal of that funding, he said. The other is to install additional well monitoring around the landfill to detect PFAS toxins that can be released into the ground water from some discarded recyclables.
The select board also recommended for the January 27 warrant spending $120,000 for new, safer sliding cell room doors, $175,000 to renovate the station’s second floor to create additional office, meeting and storage space, $30,000 to install new commercial grade kitchen flooring and replace the deteriorating in-floor grease trap at the senior center, $100,000 to replace the 1999 Highway Department sander truck with a used model that Highway Surveyor Jeff Eldridge said he will outfit himself to make it more usable and $55,000 for site work at the former Rochester Country Fair grounds on Pine St. where the new fire station will be built.
The board then voted to recommend warrant proposals to change the Town Clerk from an elected to an appointed position and enact a major revision of the town’s Personnel Bylaw. Durant explained the former is needed because the job of town clerk has gotten more complicated of late, and it takes a full two-year term for a new town clerk to do his or her job. Selectman Chair Adam Murphy added that this is about the position, not the person occupying it currently. Personnel Board Chair Kristen Nash said the bylaw revisions’ biggest focus was to shift the responsibilities of the town’s personnel matters and decision away from her board to the town’s CEO, the town administrator.
The board also endorsed article proposals to exempt town municipal buildings from a new law requiring that no gun, even a legally licensed one, be brought legally into such facilities. Police Chief Michael Assad explained this with the scenario that a person fleeing into the police station with a legally carried gun would be in violation of a new law banning the practice. This is where that law becomes unfair.
Proposals to amend zoning bylaws regarding battery energy storage, visual screening of solar arrays, short-term rentals, and accessory dwelling units were also approved for the warrant. But the board stopped two articles shy of the complete warrant after learning not all of the warrant has been posted online. It tabled reviewing these until its next meeting, January 6.
In other action, the board appointed Rochester resident Justin Melo, 25, as a new full-time Rochester police officer. Chief Michael Assad explained his recommendation that Melo be hired by noting his recent experience as a student officer with the Plymouth Police Academy.
Selectman Paul Ciaburri announced Harvey Industries recently donated 10 bicycles to the town for needy residents, and the town has found a home for each one.
Durant announced Police Captain Don Kemmet has announced his retirement, effective mid-January, and the town has already posting for a new officer.
The next meeting of the Rochester Select Board is scheduled for Monday, January 6 at 6:00 pm at 1 Constitution Way.
Rochester Select Board
By Michael J. DeCicco