By Meghan McPhillips-Jones

DPW Director Jack Rodriquenz reported during Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting that although the storm cleanup is finally underway, the original amount of the roadside debris has almost tripled since the original estimate.
    “The original estimate has almost doubled to $250,000 because of that,” he said. “People may be using this opportunity to clean their yards of more than just debris from the storm, but they need to realize that this is not a free service.  This will be coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets for us to clean it up,” he said.
    There is still the opportunity to be reimbursed by FEMA, but that assurance has not come in to Lunenburg yet.
    “Some people took this as the chance to clean up their entire yards for the taxpayers to pay for. People did not vote on this expense, but they will be voting with the debris outside of their yards. There has been and will be dissatisfaction all around, but we have to get it cleared up and out of the roads. With any luck, FEMA will come through and I guess we will have to deal with what’s left at a Town Meeting,” said Chairman Dave Matthews.

In Other News
    David Blatt from the Green Community Task Force came to the Board of Selectman to inquire as to the aim of the GCTF now that the Stretch Code has been nixed  by the town.
    “I think people still have questions on the Stretch Code and I think with more awareness to the town it can pass,” said Matthews.
    “I don’t think the presentations by the Task Force were well attended, and we should look at other venues to advise people to answer those questions that came up last night at the Town Meeting and bring it forward again at the Spring Meeting,” said Selectman Ernie Sund. “My feeling is the task force should remain at least until all those questions are answered. I don’t think there were more than 60 people at the meeting, and we barely made a quorum, and with a full town meeting we could have more interest and awareness with the Stretch Code.”

    Kerry Speidel said she was extremely happy over a joint conference call that occurred on Monday among herself, Superintendent Loxi-Jo Calmes and the MSBA.
    “We were advised that the MSBA is ready to work with us on our building renovations and projects, whatever those turn out to be,” said Speidel. “They identified a few items that have to be completed like paperwork, and we will need to ask at a town meeting for authorization on a [engineering and designs plan study]. They indicated to us that we are at a point to go ahead. Its very encouraging that we got their attention.”

    Finally, Lunenburg has received approval for their municipal aggregated electricity petition. Two bids have already been received, the first by Consolidated Edison of New York at $7.41 cents per kilowatt, and Jet Energy of Massachusetts at $7.5 cents per kilowatt [$7.5 is not the locked in price at this time]. Both are for a 12-month period.
    “Unitil recently procured a bid of $8.71 cents per kilowatt, which doesn’t seem like much but that equals out to about seven dollars of savings per month to each household,” said Speidel.
    This information will be available on the town’s Web site by the end of the week.