In a mild winter, trading tree stumps for snow

CORNWALL — Stump grinding traded for snow plowing. It’s been that kind of a winter. For anyone dealing with a town snow removal budget, it’s all good. Before the light snow late last week, only about $16,500 of Cornwall’s $75,000 snow budget had been spent, it was reported at the Feb. 21 Board of Selectmen’s meeting. Most of that was spent on road salt, but there was still a pretty good-sized pile of that left.The board approved transferring and spending $10,000 of that line item on the removal of a portion of a very large pile of tree stumps and logs from the town gravel pit.“It has been accumulating almost since the [1989] tornado,” First Selectman Gordon Ridgway said. “It’s taking up so much of the gravel pit we really can’t do anything else there.”Three bids were submitted, for $10,000, $12,000 and $14,000. The low bid came from (and the job was awarded to) Philip Ocain of Goshen. For that amount of money, he will remove about half of the pile. It will be chipped off-site.“If the snow budget still holds, we’ll do the rest,” Ridgway said.Other businessAppointments were made to fill vacancies on two commissions. Appointed by unanimous vote to the Agricultural Commission were Donna Larson, Brian Saccardi, Susan Saccardi and Huntington Williams.Barton Jones was approved to serve as alternate town representative on the Housatonic River Commission. The commission serves in an advisory capacity on development and other issues with potential impact on the Housatonic River. Meetings are held at 7:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month in the Cornwall Consolidated School library.

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