Casco Town Hall walls to go up later this month

By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

CASCO — Now is the lull before the storm of activity.

Both the electrician and the plumber have done what work they could before the Casco Town Hall structure takes shape.

“The materials will be there sometime next week, and NEAL-CO will be starting work” on Monday, July 18, according to Casco Town Manager Dave Morton.

NEAL-CO is a general contractor company owned by Seth Neal and based in Wilton, according to the business website.

“It’s a Lake Region company,” Morton said.

“The electrician and plumber have been doing work, running conduits, pulling some wires. That’s on hold now until the building gets erected,” Morton said.

The groundbreaking occurred on May 9, when R.N. Willey and Sons Excavation began the earth work.

With the future town hall being built on the same property as the existing town hall, it has been easy for Morton and town employees to monitor the progress on a daily basis.

But, that progress is at a short-term standstill.

“The first coat of pavement is done. The ground work is done except for loaming and seeding, and the landscaping,” Morton said, adding that those details will be taken care of once the structure is completed.

The Town of Casco is acting as the general contractor during the town hall construction project. The expenditure of up to $600,000 for the town office construction was approved at Town Meeting in 2015.

According to Morton, the project cost has been running about 15 to 20 percent less than predicted.

During this year’s Town Meeting, residents approved the purchase of 11 acres adjacent to the town land off Meadow Road. The new acreage also has waterfront access to Parker Pond.

However, people might want to hold off on planning a beach day there. The parcel is not yet public land.

“We actually haven’t purchased. We won’t own the property until September or October,” Morton said.

“We still have to borrow the money for the purchase,” he said.

According to Morton, the property owner, Lucy Jackson, wanted to honor her rental obligations and give her tenants a few months to move out of the homes located on the parcel that is being sold, Morton said.

“We don’t have a plan for using the waterfront until we go forward with the purchase,” he said. “We are delaying the purchase until September.”

Meanwhile, property owners in the Town of Casco will not be taxed until 2017 for the land purchase and the infrastructure bond that were approved at Town Meeting.

“You won’t see the impact from the bonds until 2017,” he said.

The tax bills are mailed out in late August or early September; and those bills are due in two payments in October and in April. So, the 10-year bond payments won’t appear on the tax bills until August 2017, Morton said.