Council receives budget
BY ELIZABETH PRATA SALVETTI

Gray--At the March 4 Gray Town Council meeting, several Councilors expressed concern that Yarmouth Lumber was continuing to spill small amounts of petroleum at the fueling station at their facility on Route 100 near the Cumberland line. Yarmouth Lumber is a trucking company that fuels large trucks at their facility. The Department of Environmental Protection has been working with the company ever since a large spill was discovered to have contaminated the groundwater in and around the facility. Several neighboring presidential wells are now unusable. Bottled drinking water is being supplied to those affected residences.

Constant monitoring of the petroleum spill situation by the DEP has indicated that although the groundwater table is improving, Yarmouth Lumber is displaying a "certain level of a cavalier approach to not responding to small spills that are typical at the fueling station," said Town Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz. The DEP noticed a sheen developing, which will again leach into the groundwater if not dealt with just as quickly as mitigation of the large spill, detected over a year ago by the DEP.

Councilor Jerry Grant asked if Yarmouth Lumber has a plan or procedure in place to clean up the small spills and if so, if they are following it. Berkowitz said that one option for the Council is that they can revisit the Planning Board's decision to permit pumping at the site. He asked if the Council wanted him to bring that up the next time he discusses the situation with Yarmouth Lumber's General Manager, John Rearick. Councilor Dick Barter's response was that, "What do we really hope to gain other than to threaten them that we might want the Planning Board to review it? I'm not in favor of Council threatening businesses unless we have hard evidence that they are failing to comply." Barter thought that the sloppiness of the occasional driver at Yarmouth Lumber was no different than the sloppiness of a driver who lets gasoline run at the pump.

In other matters, Berkowitz reported that although citizens may not see visible evidence of progress with the Turnpike By-pass project, that the Department of Transportation still plans to break ground in the spring of 2003. A public hearing will be scheduled for early April. The bypass will take exiting Turnpike traffic out of Gray center and place it directly on Route 26, just north of the overpass bridge, bypassing the center of town entirely.

The Council voted to approve several accounts for capital improvements: $37,472 for software, $38,000 for the old Post Office building renovation (if approved by voters in June), and $121,000 for improvements to buildings and grounds, bridge repair and replacement, technology replacement, and sidewalk improvement plans.

The Council voted to accept the Manager's Budget Letter of Transmittal. The year 2000 revisions to the town Charter were that the Council is now required to provide a draft budget to the citizens no later than 90 days prior to Town Meeting in June. The Council officially accepted the budget from the Manager and invited citizens to pick up a copy at town office. The letter of transmittal is also available on-line at www.graymaine.org, click on Virtual Town Hall. The budget sets a tax rate of $22.56 per $1000 of valuation, up $2.06 over last year. The gross municipal budget is $4,010,511.