November 22, 2024
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Lincoln approves funds for firetruck, fireworks

LINCOLN – Fireworks, a firetruck and a house are among the things the town will be buying soon.

In successive motions the Town Council voted Monday night to authorize purchase of those items for a total of $150,000. The first two were approved by 6-0 votes; the last by a 5-1 vote, with Councilor Rod Carr voting no.

. The fireworks display will cost $5,000. Blue Hill Pyrotechnics of Hampden will put on a show for the 2006 Homecoming in July.

The 20-year-old celebration highlights summer in Lincoln, with events ranging from yard sales to art gallery openings to basketball tournaments to a fireworks show.

It runs over four days and also includes golf tournaments in town and West Enfield, plus dinners, concerts and barbecues. Several thousand people typically attend.

. About $85,000 from a private library endowment fund controlled by the Town Council will pay for the Corro house, a 11/2-story Cape that sits on a half-acre lot, said Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development assistant and a zoning enforcement officer.

It is about 1,500 square feet and is in good shape.

The house purchase is part of a plan eventually to expand the Lincoln Municipal Library. The plan entails using the MacGregor Fund to buy a property adjoining the library at 29 West Broadway for $85,000.

Once the sale is complete, the town will hire a property management firm to oversee renting the Corro house to a business or tenant and putting the rent proceeds back into the fund.

That way, the property, which has been vacant for years, will be maintained and the endowment fund can grow enough to eventually pay for another library expansion onto that property. A library expansion could cost as much as $800,000, and the fund has about $220,000.

Mr. and Mrs. Roderick J. MacGregor of Lincoln established the fund in the 1940s to help maintain and expand library operations. The fund paid for the library’s last expansion in 1966.

. Another $60,000 will pay for a used firetruck. The truck purchase will be bonded.


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