NAUGATUCK — The Board of Mayor and Burgesses voted last week to purchase six capital items using the roughly $100,000 left in a special account for fees collected by the town clerk.
The purchases will not affect the budget or the tax rate.
The board voted to spend no more than $20,000 to buy an irrigation system for the town Green, $4,800 for a public address system, $5,280 for a leaf blower attachment for a lawn mower, $4,900 for new signs at the entrances to the industrial park, $1,500 for two security cameras to catch litterers and $9,000 for a floor scrubber for the Naugatuck Event Center.
Sandra Lucas-Ribeiro, assistant to the director of Public Works, said the leaf blower will save labor when cutting grass alongside roads because the borough won’t need a second person to follow and clean up the clippings.
The borough is looking at buying an almost new push scrubber from a local pawnshop for $8,000 without a warranty or a demo ride-on scrubber with a full warranty for $8,999.
It would take about three hours to clean the event center with the ride-on and eight to 12 hours to clean it with the push scrubber, according to Robert Butler, Jr, the borough’s purchasing and financial analyst.
Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess said a local musician will help the borough piece together a high quality PA system by fixing some equipment the borough already owns at a fraction of the cost of buying a new system.
The new motion-activated security cameras will be installed in high-litter areas, including Candee Road and the industrial park, in an attempt to enforce the borough’s litter laws more strictly, Hess said. Police will be able to read the license plate numbers of offenders and send them a ticket, he said.
Although not included in the spending vote, the borough is considering what to do about the scoreboard for the turf field at Naugatuck High School. The scoreboard is broken. Fixing it would cost around $9,000 while replacing it could cost between $18,000 and $25,000, Hess said.
He said it won’t be working for the big Thanksgiving football game against Ansonia.
The board is more than 15 years old, Burgess Robert Neth said.
