Temple voters approved additional funds for the ambulance at Town Meeting on Saturday – enough to support a contract with Peterborough ambulance service, but pointedly not enough to cover the amount asked for by its current service, Wilton.
In one of several amendments to the budget made at Town Meeting, voters approved adding $15,000 to the ambulance budget. Though the Select Board would not confirm specifically what their next step would be in securing ambulance services for the town, tellingly, the amount raised was the projected amount to jump from Wilton ambulance to Peterborough, and fell short of the $17,000 the budget would have needed in order to meet the proposed cost for Wilton.
After the meeting, Selectman Ken Caisse said the next step for Temple, in terms of its ambulance, is to contact its town counsel.
That wasn’t the only amendment to the budget offered and accepted Saturday. Voters approved a $10,000 increase to the welfare line, and amended the purpose of a line item for emergency management cost for fighting wildfires to be a general emergency management budget, both moves to prepare the town for a potential outbreak of COVID-19.
In total, the budget was amended to $1,226,668, an amount the voters passed unanimously.
The coronavirus appeared high in the minds of those present at the meeting, as after the budget was passed, resident Gail Cromwell moved to table the remaining articles until a date in mid-April, and reconvene the meeting then, to allow those who had stayed at home for fear of exposure to participate. The issue was highly debated, with others offering compromises, such as running the meeting until noon, or addressing the five articles the Select Board felt would have to be addressed at some point to continue running the town. However, ultimately, the voters who were present voted in a majority to continue the meeting until it was finished.
For the majority of articles after that, the meeting moved swiftly along, with voters often calling the question with no input or questions, passing $45,000 for paving, $140,000 to the highway expendable trust for future improvements to West Road, a new mower and payment on the town’s backhoe and thermal imager for the fire department at lightning speed.
The town approved two new charitable contributions, approving an article to support the ConVal End 68 Hours of Hunger program, and even increasing the amount requested from $75 to $1,000, and a $500 donation to the Cornucopia Project.
Things got messy, however, when it came to a proposal by the Historical Society to use land next to the town’s historic school house to build a museum to house Temple artifacts, currently stored in Wilton. The building, which Historical Society member Honey Hastings said would be “modest” would be paid for by the Historical Society, except perhaps a contribution by the town, if the town wished to store documents in a temperature controlled room in the museum.
Residents gave mixed reviews on the idea, suggesting they supported the idea of a museum, but perhaps not the location. One amendment added language that the project would have to be approved by the Planning Board, and the location and external design would have to be approved by the Select Board after a public hearing, and a second amendment added that it would require town meeting approval. A third amendment changed the article to be less specific on the location, with residents suggesting a survey of town owned property – approved earlier in the meeting – should be taken as an opportunity to judge whether other properties might be suitable.
In the only warrant article to fail on Saturday, residents said no to putting up two fixed speed radar signs on West Road. The article, brought by petition, would have purchased and installed two solar powered radar signs for a total of $6,800.