Boothbay Harbor selectmen recapped a Nov. 23 footbridge meeting with renovation project consultants from Gartley and Dorsky Dec. 13. The meeting set some of the criteria for a bid package document which will go out to engineering and design firms for recommendations and cost estimates.

The meeting covered aesthetics, bridge width and materials and height. Selectmen echoed the community’s consensus the bridge maintain the historic-type look with a wooden deck and preservation of swingspan elements. They also supported a width increase from 7’2” to 8’.

Chair Mike Tomko said the increase corresponds with commonly available material and costs significantly less than anything wider. The wider the footbridge, the greater the need to alter the length of the cap, the footbridge-house area and the hardpoints where the footbridge lands on either side, he said.

Tomko read from Gartley and Dorsky's note on bridge height: “The prior decision to rehabilitate the bridge without replacing the piles severely limits the option to elevate the structure or improve resiliency. The new deck structure cannot be practically designed to make the whole assembly capable of withstanding the forces associated with the 100-year flood or potentially even lesser events due to the extent of the existing structure to remain.”

If the town wants a bridge that will last 50-75 years through Federal Emergency Management Agency flood standards, it will need to be elevated significantly and it will not be a renovation, said Tomko. “It will be a complete replacement.”

Tomko said the town will need to understand a renovation runs the risk of significant damage in any weather event of note. “I think having a new bridge deck with new caps, with modern ways of anchoring and securing the materials together, it's reasonable to think we will have something that will survive a good amount of storms. But I think that's the best we can do considering the amount of money we're willing to spend and what we have been told by the town to do.”

Town Manager Julia Latter said Boothbay Harbor Police Department was awarded $25,000 by the Mildred H. McEvoy Foundation for an electronic fingerprinting station and cell phone analysis equipment. The town has already budgeted $10,000 for the equipment and was going to need to budget another $10,000 next year before the grant, she said.

“Great news on that and we thank the Mildred H.McEvoy Foundation. We're very excited and look forward to being able to purchase that equipment.”

Public Works hired Robert Fallon as heavy equipment operator pending preemployment testing and he will begin as soon as the results come in. Latter also said advertisements for a new harbormaster will come down on Jan. 6 and the town has already received one application. The application can be found on the municipal website and Facebook page and the ad in the Boothbay Register.

Latter said past plans for lumping the harbormaster in with the police department are on hold as the hiring process continues. New harbormasters take training in Castine in the spring, Police Chief Bob Hasch is fully engaged and though Public Works Foreman Nick Upham said he and his crew could take on pump-out boat duties, everyone including the new-hire will have “a full day’s worth of work.”

“It's going to take more than a couple months of planning for that … It's definitely something we'll further discuss, but at this point I'd like to just get a harbormaster in so we don't go into busy boating season without somebody at the helm.”