- Details
- Category: Past Issues
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM --- After emotional pleas on both sides of the issue, voters Sept. 19 overwhelming approved authorizing the Board of Selectmen to sell an industrial park lot to Robert Fournier, owner of Gilman and Valade Funeral Homes, to build a crematory.
Mayor Bob Viens, following the highly charged meeting, said Town Counsel William St.Onge would draw up a deed for the transfer of the 2-acre lot to Fournier. The selling price is $45,000. Viens estimated it could take a few months for the transfer to be complete.
Some industrial park tenants in the industrial park claimed they were not properly notified, although at the beginning of the process, the legal notice for the Zoning Board of Appeals variance to build a crematory in an industrial zone ran in the Putnam Town Crier & Northeast Ledger July 6.
Owners of New England Plasma, said their employees were uncomfortable with the idea of a crematory across the street. They also criticized the sale of the lot to a business that would have only two employees. Some questioned the air quality.
Yet others who spoke talked about how a local business should be supported and an industrial park was the perfect place for a crematory.