Androscoggin CountyMainePopulation 4,262Sourced from U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2013-2024
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Select Board Meeting ~ March 10, 2015

2015-03-10 · Select Board · 36:36 · watch on YouTube →

A Select Board meeting three weeks before the 2015 annual town meeting, with four of the five selectmen present. The board granted another extension to the buyer of the tax-acquired Gunther property on Route 9, allowed a quilt raffle table and the fire department's food concession at town meeting, authorised an open-ended advertisement for a road commissioner, and posted the roads from March 11th to May 1st. Two longer discussions took up most of the evening: the road commissioner's proposal that the fire department set up its own road closed signs, which the deputy fire chief rejected as impractical for anything beyond a short closure, and the code enforcement officer's report that the board of appeals has no chairperson, has not met in years and sits under an ordinance whose own wording on membership is self-contradictory. The deputy fire chief also raised trash tags for the fire station and reported on two grant applications. The recording ends with the board voting into its first executive session; the town's minutes record two further sessions after it, the last closing at 8:14 p.m. with no action taken.

Who was there. The town's written minutes record these people present: Jeffrey Wakeman (Chairman), Sarah Hall (Selectman), Mark Blake (Selectman), Michael Stewart (Selectman), Ruth Glaeser (AA/TA), Paul Baines (Official), Keith Russell (Deputy Fire Chief), Jill Toher (Secretary). Recorded absent: Joshua Libby, William St. Michel. Names in this summary are checked against that list.

What was discussed

  1. 0:01
    Call to order

    The chair opened the meeting with four of the five selectmen present and the pledge of allegiance. The recording begins with a few minutes of unrelated conversation about a maple syrup sale before the meeting starts.

  2. 0:01
    Amendments to the agenda

    Two items were added: 6C, an advertisement for a road commissioner, and 6D, posting of the roads.

  3. 0:01
    Consent agenda

    The consent agenda was taken up and approved as presented, with no discussion.

  4. 0:01
    Tax-acquired Gunther property on Route 9

    The property was put out to bid the previous year and the town has been granting extensions so that the successful bidder can get a loan, which requires clear title. The last extension expired February 28th, two heirs still have not been reached, and the town was to meet the buyer's lawyer that Friday; the lawyer believed he had another option for closing the matter out. Selectmen (?) said the title was the only hangup on the financing.

  5. 0:01
    Quilt raffle table at town meeting

    A resident had asked the office whether she could sell quilt raffle tickets at town meeting for a student scholarship fund, whose name is garbled in the recording. The board compared it with the fire department auxiliary's long-standing fundraising table in the hallway and saw no conflict, while noting she may also need the school's permission to set up inside.

  6. 0:01
    Advertisement for a road commissioner

    No draft advertisement existed yet, but the board confirmed a decision from the previous week to leave it open-ended with no closing date and to start reviewing applications as they arrive.

  7. 5:12
    Where to place the advertisement

    The board had agreed to run it through MMA and the Tri-Town first and hold off on other papers for a couple of weeks to see what response came in. Rather than bring a draft back to the full board, the board agreed the wording could be signed off by the chairs, and the draft was also to go to Scott so the other board could look at it.

  8. 5:12
    Posting the roads

    The chair said it was that time of year. Posting was to begin the next day, March 11th, with an end date of May 1st that a selectman noted had already been established.

  9. 5:12
    Administrator's report

    Ruth Glaeser reported she had little to add beyond having sent the annual report to the printers, so the town is now waiting on it.

  10. 5:12
    Road commissioner on fire department road closures

    The road commissioner described a situation a couple of weeks earlier when power lines were knocked down and he had to call a man in to bring two signs, an expense to the taxpayers. He proposed giving the fire department a couple of the town's stands and road closed signs so they could set up a closure themselves rather than having him called in. It was confirmed the fire department still needs the road commissioner's permission to actually close a road.

  11. 10:26
    Deputy fire chief's objection

    Keith Russell, identifying himself as deputy fire chief, said the department has discussed and tried this before and cannot carry that equipment on its fire trucks, and that if a personal vehicle is used it should be a town vehicle rather than a firefighter's own, which raises liability questions. He said the department closes roads for short periods routinely using personnel and apparatus, but for something running eight hours it will not post people at both ends of a scene, and that is what public works is for.

  12. 10:26
    Where the discussion landed

    A selectman confirmed with Keith Russell that he was speaking only about long closures, not short ones, and observed that for an extended closure it is probably cheaper to call in someone from public works than to post firefighters and apparatus. It was also noted that in the incident in question CMP brought its own flaggers. The road commissioner had understood it to be a matter of putting a sign up and going about the day, and said he had misunderstood.

  13. 10:26
    Road conditions

    The road commissioner said work had been done that day on a hill road, heard in the recording as Bowie Hill, and that the crew was now working on the ice there. He flagged drainage running down through a field as an issue that has to be addressed in the summer, and a pipe that had been expected to be replaced.

  14. 10:26
    Board of appeals housekeeping

    The code enforcement officer, Paul Baines (?), reported an email received that morning about a conditional use permit recently granted by the planning board. No appeal application has been filed, but he thought the town should get the board of appeals in order quickly. Through Ruth Glaeser he had reached Barbara Snyder, a member of the board; of five members four appear still active, but there is no chairperson and the board has not met in several years, the former chairman having moved to Portland.

  15. 10:26
    Appeals board terms and appeal paperwork

    The terms were described as five years, with three members appointed through 2020 and one through 2018. The code officer said he could find no historical paperwork in the office on how an appeal is administered; the ordinance says an appeal is filed at the office of the selectmen, who then notify everyone else, and he assumed the process starts with a written notice of intent within the legal timeframe.

  16. 15:30
    Whether the town has a de novo or appellate board

    The code officer explained that under Maine law there are two kinds of appellate structure. An appellate board reviews only whether the planning board or code officer followed the process correctly, on the evidence already in the record. If the ordinance does not specifically say that, the town's board is automatically a de novo board, which rehears the entire application and can take new evidence, a much more complicated process. He said Durham's ordinance does not define which it is and that this is worth a discussion going forward.

  17. 15:30
    Contradictory ordinance wording on membership

    The ordinance says the board shall consist of five members plus one alternate appointed by the select board, and then that the selectmen shall appoint two associate members to serve in the absence of regular members, which reads as six or eight rather than five. The board and the code officer concluded that the section had probably been cut and pasted from the planning board provisions. A minimum of four members is needed to adjudicate a hearing, and no alternates or associates appear to exist.

  18. 15:30
    Recruiting appeals board members

    A selectman asked for a notice on the town channel and the website that the town is looking for members. Barbara Snyder had said she would be happy to talk to anyone who came forward, describing it as a light form of public service that only requires a short period of time every few years and much less burdensome than other volunteer positions in town.

  19. 15:30
    Concrete inspection dispute

    The code officer had circulated a letter he sent about a project in town where he could not sign off on concrete work, because he cannot determine whether it was protected properly against freezing and is not a concrete engineer. Both the general contractor and the concrete contractor maintain it was handled correctly; temperatures on several nights had gone well below zero.

  20. 20:47
    The options given to the contractor

    Because freezing concrete early enough in the process stops it gaining further strength, he offered two ways to keep the project on track: have an engineer do a site analysis and sign off that it meets the standard, which he will accept, or have a concrete engineering firm take a core and do a break test. He described this as how he tries to handle work where he cannot make a determination, so the applicant always has a way out.

  21. 20:47
    How the situation arose

    He had inspected the rebar before the pour, as required, but had asked that the foundation not be backfilled until he could reinspect the drainage and waterproofing. It was backfilled anyway, and so soon after the pour that it could not have been blanketed and protected from frost. Some was later dug back out for additional drainage and he was able to get in that day and see the filter fabric down.

  22. 20:47
    Why this project is being held tighter

    The code officer explained the house is essentially a spec house, with the builder as both applicant and owner. Normally he would ask an owner whether they trust their contractor and accept their word, but here there is no eventual owner to ask, and what goes into the structure is not known to whoever will end up buying it.

  23. 20:47
    Cold weather concrete standards

    He cited a 250 degree-day set, meaning five days at 50 degrees, as the point at which concrete has reached a high enough percentage of design strength that freezing will not disrupt its finished strength, and 500 pounds of hydration before freezing as another threshold. Batch plants heat the mix water to 180 degrees and add calcium and other additives but do not heat the aggregate, so the concrete arrives at about 50 degrees; he said that when nights drop below 20 degrees the maths gets marginal.

  24. 25:56
    Local practice and the board's response

    The code officer said some standards he is used to are not done here, that he has never backfilled a foundation without a deck on it but everyone does locally, and that he is not willing to buck the trend too hard although he will hold tighter on some things. He asked the board to say if it wanted his approach amended. A selectman said that as long as he follows the standards the town has adopted he saw no reason he could not continue.

  25. 25:56
    Fire department report

    Keith Russell again identified himself as deputy fire chief and said he is filling in because the chief is dealing with personal issues. The board thanked him for stepping in while holding down another full-time job.

  26. 25:56
    Food concessions at town meeting

    The department asked permission to run food concessions at town meeting again this year. The board gave what permission it can and advised him to call the school the next day about anything it requires.

  27. 25:56
    Trash tags for the fire station

    The station generates about two bags a week and tags cost $7 apiece. The department had understood it could collect tags as needed but was recently told otherwise, and was reluctantly given eight tags, the reasoning being that this would cover it through town meeting. A selectman worked through the arithmetic: a standard allotment is 26 tags, but two bags a week comes to roughly 108 a year.

  28. 31:01
    How trash should be handled going forward

    Options (?) raised included giving the department the tags while tracking the volume, or having the department use the public works dumpster, which is emptied monthly and comes back fairly full since recreation and Runaround Pond waste goes there too. The board agreed to look into it, noting there is no budget line for trash, that charging departments would only move money from one side to the other, and that any change should wait for a new budget season. A selectman said tracking the volume matters because someone will ask on the town meeting floor whether people are bringing household trash to the fire station.

  29. 31:01
    SAFER grant

    Keith Russell reported the town was in the middle of an acceptance for the SAFER grant the previous year when it was denied at the last minute, and that the department reapplied before the deadline the previous Friday. He described it as fully funded, around $20,000 a year and $80,000 over four years, to pay for another part-time person. He said another member of the department, whose name is garbled in the recording, took the lead on it and he could not answer detailed questions.

  30. 31:01
    Leftover fiscal 2013 grant money

    A separate application Joanne Potvin had been working on covers money left over from fiscal year 2013. Fifty-five communities were eligible, which would have worked out at about $550 each had they all applied, but only 11 did, so Durham stands to receive $2,722.14. The department hopes to apply it to the addition to the radio tower to offset the town's cost.

  31. 31:01
    Selectman's comments

    The chair passed on thanks from election warden Jill Toher for the opportunity to attend an elections training that week, which she reported was very good and covered a good deal she had not known.

  32. 31:01
    Upcoming meetings and town meeting dates

    Regular select board meetings were announced for March 24th, 2015 and April 7th, both at 6:30 p.m. The annual town meeting is Saturday April 4th, 2015, with the town meeting portion starting at 9:00 a.m. at the Durham Community School, and elections the day before on April 3rd from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the same school.

  33. 31:01
    Executive session

    The chair moved into executive session on personnel matters. The recording ends at this point. The town's minutes record the session as beginning at 7:09 p.m., followed by a second session on real estate and a third on personnel, the last ending at 8:14 p.m. with no action taken.

What was decided

An outcome reads "unclear" where the recording does not state it plainly. The recogniser drops short words, and "the motion does not carry" is one missing word from its opposite.

Motions the minutes record

The town's own written account of what was decided, taken from bosmins2015_3-10.txt. It owes nothing to the recording or to a model: the clerk typed it, with the vote. Where the summary above claims a decision this list does not carry, the summary is the part to doubt.

Worth knowing

Motion language found in the transcript

Located by pattern matching, with no model involved: "I move that", "I'll second", "all those in favour". This is an independent check on the summary above: 2 passages of motion language, against 11 decisions summarised.

Show the 2 passages

Elsewhere

← 2015-03-03 Select Board2015-03-24 Select Board →All meetings

Source & method

Town of Durham meeting recordings, YouTube auto-captions, and the town's written minutes
Captions cleaned into timestamped transcripts; topics and motions found by pattern matching; summaries written by a language model and required to cite the second each item begins. Every name attached to speech is checked against the attendance list in the minutes, and marked (?) where no record confirms it
https://www.youtube.com/@durhammaine/videos
Summary written by claude-opus-5. Attendance from bosmins2015_3-10.txt.
Data as of 25 August 2026 (the date of the newest recorded meeting in the index); retrieved 2 September 2026.