Franconia Town Meeting

It ran long, long , long. Started at 7PM and we didn't get out til 11. Those cheapy folding chairs get hard and uncomfy after four hours. It was packed, Town Hall upstairs filled up, and the overflow was routed downstairs and could only hear from the loudspeakers. Someone from the building dept had posted a sign explaining that 114 people were the maximum safe for the upstairs. Next year they plan to move town meeting to the school gym.
Rich Mcleod was re-elected and John Lachapelle was elected to fill the remainder of Carl Belz's term. Carl's health has gone downhill and he had to resign before his term expired. Carleen Quinn is the third member of the board of selectmen.
There was an hour or more of discussion of the Franconia water project. An effort to place the entire cost of the project on the users water bills was defeated. About a quarter of the cost will go on the real estate tax, meaning that the large proportion of the town that is on wells will contribute to the water project. The final written vote was overwhelmingly in favor. The project will break ground this summer.
Next big discussion item was the emergency service. Right now the volunteer life squad ($50K plus $150K new truck last year) handles the 911 calls. Apparently they missed a call or two last year. There was a motion from the floor to let a $10K contract to Ross Ambulance for coverage. After a lot of discussion the motion was defeated, but I daresay the Life Squad is going to feel the pressure for the rest of the year.
It was 10PM when the budget (Article 3) passed, and we still had 20 more articles to go. Looking grim. Fortunately the rest of the articles were un controversial and we sailed thru them with little discussion. We appropriated $24K to pay off legal fees from the Christopher King suit, $94K for a new truck. I resisted the impulse to ask what the mileage on the old truck (a 2004 Ford) was. We voted to give a tax
break to solar electric/hot water systems, but voted against giving the same tax break to wood fired furnaces. Something like 20 out of 23 warrant articles were approved. Lesson learned, if the selectmen will put it on a warrant article it will most likely get approved at town meeting.