WARE – The Board of Selectmen met to discuss a variety of agenda items including the public hearing on the National Grid/Verizon pole petition and allocation of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds at their May 17 meeting.

The public hearing was to discuss the new poles potentially being put up on Coffey Hill Road, Sherman Hill Road, Sczygiel Road and Webster Road to upgrade circuits and build new circuits to interconnect with the solar farm that is going up. National Grid will be putting up these poles.

The board wanted to clarify if new poles would have streetlights on them and that if National Grid took a pole with an existing light on it down, they would replace it. A representative from National Grid said this is most likely.

Residents also came out to the hearing to voice their concern that these new poles could be put up on their property and in their yards. The representative did not have an answer for this.

Due to the board wanting more concrete information and specifics on where poles will be going, they voted to continue the hearing at their next meeting on June 7.

The board also discussed the allocation of ARPA funds. According to the Town Manager Stuart Beckley, Ware has been saving some of their ARPA funds in case they couldn’t receive the State Revolving Fund grant to fix their sewer plant.

The State Revolving Fund is a grant that offers affordable loan options to cities and towns to improve their water supply infrastructure and drinking water safety.

Beckley said that the first round of State Revolving Funds won’t be available to Ware until the spring of 2024 and then again in the spring of 2025.

“Therefore, since the design of the screen improvement at the plant is moving right along and should be also done mid-summer, we don’t see that the State’s Revolving Fund is a good fit for grant funds for that screen of the sewer plant,” he said.

Beckley recommended that they use ARPA funds for this project. The board decided that they will wait to take an official vote on this until all members are present at a future meeting.

Chair of the Board of Selectmen John Morrin then spoke on how he has received letters from residents complaining about the cost of living increases in the town, inflation, high taxes and how hard it is to live in Ware.

He posed the question of whether they could use some of the ARPA funds to help these individuals.

Beckley said that they cannot use ARPA funds to pay people’s taxes, but that allocating funds to individuals could be possible.

The board said that this will require a lot of further discussion and planning. Their main questions revolved around how they will find the citizens who need this money and who will qualify. They voiced the idea of sending out surveys in the future, but it is still unknown.
“This would be a huge project, but it’s not saying we couldn’t do it,” said Morrin.

The board gave Beckley the task of beginning to figure out logistics with this and making preliminary plans. Going further with this plan would require the board to figure out exactly what they want to do, who will help them do it, if and when they would post a public hearing and more.

Those interested in viewing the Board of Selectmen meeting in its entirety are encouraged to visit the WareTV page.