Newport shunned on business assistance grant

NEWPORT – A very brief selectmen’s meeting in Newport on Wednesday night featured both bad news and good.

The bad news was that Newport was unsuccessful in its bid for a state-funded $100,000 business assistance grant to allow Newport Industrial Fabrication to expand.

The town would have been the vehicle for the grant, which would have required NIF to create four new jobs in the next two years.

Town Manager James Ricker said the company will continue with its plans if private financing is available. Ricker said the town scored high on most of the grant application but its chances were hurt because it does not have a high number of low-income families. The manager said he plans to resubmit the grant in the next round of funding in 2006.

The good news coming out of the meeting was that water quality is so high in Sebasticook Lake that lakeside owners and recreational users are raving about its clarity, which was a deciding factor in pushing the annual drawdown date to Sept. 19.

For the past two decades, the 5,000-acre lake has been emptied beginning each Labor Day to allow dead algae to flush downstream, and not fall to the lake bottom to become food for new algae.

But last year the lake’s drawdown was put off until Sept. 10, said Ricker, and this year it will begin on the 19th. Ricker said the lake will be lowered one to two inches a day for the first five days and then the dam gate on North Street will be fully extended to allow the lake to empty.

Because water quality was so high, Ricker said, many lakeside owners wanted to squeeze a few extra weeks of good weather in before the lake level falls.

The selectmen were disappointed to learn that Route 7, from the Triangle business section to Corinna, will be repaved next year, rather than Route 2.

Ricker called Route 2 “an experiment gone awry,” referring to its concrete construction in 1932 that has since been covered with dozens of layers of asphalt. Some sections of Route 2 are completely deteriorated, Ricker said, yet the highway is not on the list for upcoming improvements.

In other business, the selectmen approved:

. Placement of a bench in Riverside Cemetery in memory of former Public Works Director Jack Wilson. The 4-foot-long granite bench will be donated by family members.

. A new liquor license for Cervesas, owned by Kyle and Roxanne Russell, which will open on Route 2 across from The Concourse as a Mexican style restaurant. After extensive remodeling, the restaurant is planned to open Nov. 1.

. A renewal liquor license for Newport Entertainment Center in the Triangle Plaza.