Council OKs mower bids

By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    HOULTON — The town will soon have a pair of new mowers for its Cemetery and Public Works departments. Councilors approved the purchases at their Monday night meeting.
    The town received only one bid from Lionel Therieault Inc. of Houlton for the two mowers. Councilors accepted the bids of $9,240.53 for a John Deere Z910A mower for the Cemetery Department and $17,045.15 for a John Deere 1545 Series II commercial front mower for the Parks and Recreation Department.
    Town Manager Doug Hazlett said the funds were built into the current fiscal year budget and the bids were consistent with what the town’s expectations were for the items.
    In other agenda items, the council authorized the town manager to write-off back taxes due to the town by Little Rock Express. According to Hazlett, the former North Road trucking company, which went bankrupt, owed the town personal property taxes and costs totaling nearly $1,792 for unpaid taxes from 2008 and 2009.
    “We don’t have much of a choice on this,” Hazlett told councilors. “Once it comes out of bankruptcy proceedings, we were ordered to discharge these funds.”
    Following the regular council meeting, the group re-convened under its title of the Shiretown Development Corporation to transfer a parcel of land at the Houlton International Airport to AKTEM.
    “This brings to a conclusion a long-running issue we have had with this land and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration],” Hazlett said. “When we sold the Houlton International building several years ago, we discovered after the fact, that at some point in the 1970s a wing was added onto the building that was built beyond the footprint of the land.”
    He explained that a portion of the building sat on federally owned land and needed to be released by the FAA in order for the property to have a clean title.
    “After several years of negotiations, the [the FAA] agreed to do that,” Hazlett said.
    As a stipulation of the release, the FAA required the town to place $8,000 — the “fair market value” of the land — into its Airport Improvement account. Hazlett said there was “ample funds” in the SDC account to cover this transfer.
    “It brings everything under one clean title,” Hazlett said. “It’s a good thing because this building has gone from a huge financial drain to being back on the tax rolls and increasing in valuation.”
    The council’s next regular meeting is set for Monday, June 13, at 6:30 p.m. in the council chambers.