There were two interesting discussions during the Windham Town Council meeting of Aug. 11 about money and after that the similarity ends. First, Councilor Muir questioned Windham Town Manager Tony Plante if he had hired an attendant at the Windham Skate Park as directed in the town’s budget for this year. I was surprised to hear that the answer was no and then the town manager commenced with a dog and pony show as to why that didn’t happen. It seems like he wanted to hire, in his own words, a roving park ranger instead of an attendant at the skate park. That caused Councilor Muir to respond that he was given a directive to hire that attendant so why didn’t that happen to which the manager responded with a song and dance around the issue.

To his credit, the town manager did respond that a summer hire was probably hard to find after the beginning of the summer season. However, I was surprised that not one councilor asked if the skate park position had been advertised as directed by the town councilors. I haven’t worked in government for quite some time so maybe it takes several months to create a job description and get it into newspapers in order to interview and then hire someone. Kind of funny because I know of several people looking for a job, even if it is a temporary one. I might be mistaken once again as I do not know how many have a criminal history or whatever to prevent them from being hired to watch kids play at the skate park. Again, all I can ask is, did the attendant position at the Windham Skate Park get advertised yet?

At the end of the meeting, the councilors discussed floating a bond somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 million for replacing the present Windham Public Works garage area. What scares me here is that Windham has already budgeted millions for the new South Windham Fire Station and reconfiguring the intersection of Anglers Road and Route 302, which for me should have been something the state of Maine Department of Transportation should have been doing in the first place, although I figured out that MDOT probably has so many engineers overseeing the River Road repaving project that they had none left for the Anglers Road project.

I have a feeling that the town councilors are scared that the RSU 14 school committee will be sending a bond issue to the voters proposing a new Windham Middle School.

I must first state that I believe the Windham Publics Works area next to the Pleasant River off of Windham Center Road should have never been there in the first place but that’s only hindsight. We know that the old sand and salt pile contaminated local wells in the area but I fear there’s more contamination than that going right into the river just because of the close proximity of the river to the garage area. It is easy enough to observe contaminants like salt and other chlorides running directly toward the river. As a matter of fact the other day I saw soapy water from a school bus being washed that ultimately was heading toward the river as well.

Amazingly the new proposed draft of upgrading facilities at the site includes moving the temporary leaf and brush pile closer to the river, best I can tell.

It is my personal feeling that by putting a bond issue for a new Public Works facility on the ballot for this coming November is really rushing things too fast. Like I stated, I feel that the councilors want to beat the school committee on a bond issue, which may result in a new facility that might not meet the future needs of Windham. We always seem to plan for growth but when that growth occurs those future needs are not met and schools are a perfect example.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham believes that an intelligent discussion on another bond needs to happen.