INDUSTRY — A deliberate omission from the Town Meeting warrant on Saturday brings a long-standing local tradition — one of the area’s largest Fourth of July celebrations — to an end.
The town’s well-known but time-consuming fireworks display, conducted by Industry Fire and Rescue, was held for the final time last summer because of the amount of work it takes to hold the event, First Selectman Lee Ireland said.
“If you participated and witnessed last year’s fireworks, you witnessed the end of an era,” Ireland told the room of 30 voters gathered Saturday in the Town Office.
Ireland said years from now, area residents who attended the fireworks will probably find themselves recalling the event in its heyday.
“It’s run its course,” he said.
The Fourth of July event was the last municipal topic discussed Saturday during an hourlong Town Meeting, during which voters approved a $421,999 budget, up less than 1 percent from the year before.
While most budget items remained flat-funded or saw decreases in their budget, the summer and winter roads budgets were increased by a total of $25,000, for a combined $150,000 to be spent on the work this year.
Last year the voters had to reconvene in August to approve an extra $15,000 for roads because severe weather had damaged roads such as Federal Row heavily.
This year, selectmen requested increasing summer road maintenance from $65,000 to $75,000 and increasing winter road maintenance from $59,502 to $75,000.
“You figure its going to be a better year next year?” resident Mark Prentiss said.
“Gosh, we’re hoping so,” Ireland said.
Ireland said the goal is not to do just regular maintenance, but also upkeep work on recently rebuilt roads to keep the recent work from falling into disrepair.
“Hopefully we can go back and start preserving roads built in the past years,” Ireland said. “Our anticipation with this $75,000 is that we can do more than just maintenance.”
Voters also elected incumbent Robert Geisser as second selectman with 22 votes. He was opposed by a half dozen write-in candidates. Dovey L. Balsam, with 46 votes, was elected third selectman, against only write-in candidates. Edwin Parker was elected unopposed to the Mt. Blue School District board.
Kaitlin Schroeder — 861-9252
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