Naples compares Apples to Androids

By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — The local selectmen have been comparing Apples to Androids.

Or, they will be soon.

Naples Town Manager Ephrem Paraschak entertained the idea of buying brand new mobile computers for the selectmen on Monday.

“Come July 1, would you be opposed to using an Android or another product?” Paraschak asked.

“Personally, I don’t like Apple products,” he said.

Newly-seated Selectman Jim Turpin asked if the PCs that were being used were an Apple product. He followed that with the question of whether Paraschak used or liked IBM.

“I am pretty good with a computer, but this is…,” Turpin said.

He did not find the right word to describe the compact Apples sitting open on the board table before someone else chimed in on its inadequacies.

Selectman Bob Caron II said, “I don’t get e-mails.”

Turpin said, “I received e-mails But, I cannot forward them.”

Someone else said they had issues forwarding e-mails or even opening them.

Paraschak said that by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, he would order Chromebooks or tablets for the board.

Selectmen Kevin Rogers — who had been behaving in a contrary manner all evening — was the only person who had praises for the current PCs.

“My phone was stolen,” Rogers said. “This computer has been reading my phone, and it had been reading my phone and saved all these notes. So, it saved me.”

“That is because the town is bugging your phone,” Chairman Jim Grattelo joked.

Speaking of phones, selectmen might want to have theirs handy in case their vehicles fall into a pot hole while checking out some of the roads on the paving list.

“I invite the board to drive the roads. They are in pretty rough shape,” Paraschak said.

The paving bid goes public this week, he announced.

“We need a price on Wiley Road off Horace Falls and Flagg Mill Road — a half-mile section in that same area. On deck is Tassletop Acres Road, a tiny spur off Horace Falls,” he said.

“We are going out to bid on ditch work, too,” he said.

“The problem I am having now is all the contractors are busy because the economy is good,” he said.

For the little jobs that the town needs done, most contractors don’t want to break away from a higher-paying job to do them, he said.

“What do you need from us? Usually, Naples businesses get the project. Do you need permission from us to go outside the area,” Caron II said.

The town manager answered the question.

“It is following the Naples tradition to” hire local, Parsachak said. “It may be Shaw Brothers that comes in. In any case, you will have prices from major companies.”

“We could easily spend a half-million to three-quarter million on paving,” he said.