MILLINOCKET – Wanted: a construction firm that can repair 300 to 400 feet of hairline cracks in a community pool by July 1.

Town Manager Eugene Conlogue and Town Council member David Cyr told the council during a meeting Thursday night that the community pool leaks 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water a day and is in dire need of repair for it to be ready for its July 1 opening date.

Cyr, owner of Cyr and Sons, a town-based construction company, for more than 30 years, estimated that he could complete the repair job by deadline for $2,840.

Councilor Gail Fanjoy didn’t question Cyr’s qualifications, but she did question Conlogue’s determination absent a bidding process or advertising that Cyr’s firm is a sole provider of this pool repair service.

She said that with Conlogue and Cyr political allies, Conlogue’s acceptance of Cyr’s bid package “smacks of backroom politics,” especially because Cyr voted on the town’s recreation department budget for 2005-06, from which the funding for the work could conceivably come.

“It puts Mr. Cyr, the town manager and the council in a difficult spot,” Fanjoy said. “I think it would be better if you [Conlogue] could say definitively that there was a bid or advertisement process, but you didn’t do that. I am sorry. I don’t agree with that.”

Cyr reminded councilors that his only work on the pool had been as an adviser to the two Public Works Department workers who began work late last week tearing up old pool patches. He has yet to be paid or awarded the job, he said.

Conlogue acknowledged the possibility of impropriety but said that with the July 1 deadline pressing, the apparent lack of qualified construction companies in the area and the nature of the work itself, going with Cyr seemed logical and reasonable.

The job will also be paid for out of the capital projects line in this year’s budget, Conlogue said.

Cyr invited the council to find other companies to do the work.

“I don’t need the work, and I don’t need the conflict,” he said after the meeting.

“The problem isn’t with you doing the work, the problem is with the way it unfolded,” Fanjoy said to Cyr during the meeting. “It was not a process. There was no process to it. I think that puts you and this council in a bad position. … I don’t want see that happen.”

Councilor Jimmy Busque said Cyr should be commended for volunteering his advice to Conlogue and the workers.

Conlogue agreed with councilors that he should seek other construction companies before any work is awarded. Any firm interested in seeking the work is asked to call him at 723-7000.

After the meeting, Cyr questioned how he could face such scrutiny without similar examination being made of Councilor Matthew Polstein, whose business and the snowmobiling club he formed as part of it gets a $72,000 annual grant as a snowtrail groomer for the town’s snowmobile trails.

Polstein and Conlogue agreed that Polstein was awarded that reimbursement but only after other bidders turned it down. Polstein said that his outdoor recreation business benefits from the trail cleaning but that expenses for the work itself typically exceed the grant.

Polstein and Cyr are frequently at odds during council meetings.