Warrant signed for April 30 town meeting

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

DOVER-FOXCROFT — The selectmen signed a 12-article warrant for the annual town meeting on Saturday, April 30 at 9 a.m. in the gym at the Morton Avenue Municipal Building complex, during an April 11 meeting.

Observer photo/Stuart Hedstrom

MILL SMOKESTACK — The area below the smokestack on the Mill campus in downtown Dover-Foxcroft has been marked off after several bricks have fallen off the top of the structure. Repairs are planned with any future work to be conducted in accordance with historic preservation guidelines.

“This will look a lot like the last draft that you saw but this one here does include the article to establish the charter commission,” Town Manager Jack Clukey. The 11th item on the warrant asks if the charter commission will be established for the purpose of either revising the municipal charter or establishing a new municipal charter.

In addition to the financial articles, on April 30 residents will vote on the long-term disposal of municipal solid waste as a member of the Municipal Review Committee, a potential sale of the police station and an amendment to the land use ordinance with the maximum number of chickens allowed per lot in the residential and village zones doubling from six to 12 birds.

Items approved on April 30 will then be moved to the referendum ballot for Tuesday, June 14. A public hearing on the ballot is scheduled for the selectmen’s May 23 meeting.

In other business, Clukey presented several items in this report.

“You may have noticed the smokestack at the Mill is missing a few bricks at the top,” he said. Clukey said the complex owner has marked off the area below the structure and he is having an engineer and several contractors look at the smokestack for possible repairs.

The column serves no function for the redeveloped property, but the smokestack was kept as part of the parcel’s historic tax credit process. Any future work would be done in accordance with historical preservation guidelines.

Clukey said the town planned some work for later in the week at the transfer station demo wood and brush storage areas. He said in the future crews may need to try and keep the material cleaner for disposal, and this will likely require putting down a surface where materials are unloaded and stored.

The comprehensive planning committee is nearing a deadline to submit its documentation to the state by May 1, Clukey said. He said the comprehensive plan should be on the November referendum.