Adams Selectmen Recognize Retiring Fire Chief Goyette
Christine Hoyt attended the meeting as the newest member of the Board of Selectmen.
Goyette, who was asked to attend the meeting Wednesday to discuss fire code issues, was met with a room full of applauding residents thanking him for his service on the Fire Department.
"We are recognizing him for his 37 years of service to the force and to this community. He is an outstanding chief and he has dedicated a lot of long nights and hard work to the town of Adams," Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco said. "Thirty-seven years as a volunteer fire firefighter is absolutely incredible."
Goyette, who joined the Alert Hose Company in 1983 and was elected chief in 2011, has decided not to run for re-election and will step down from the fire company.
Selectman Joseph Nowak also thanked Goyette.
"You are in the line of many good fire chiefs that we have had," he said. "We are fortunate to have in this community a volunteer fire department that is as just as good as any paid groups."
Goyette said it has been an honor serving Adams and thanked his fellow firefighters
"I thank you, and I had some great mentors throughout the years," he said. "I had the opportunity to work with some wonderful people."
He noted before receiving his award that just last week, the department received a report of a car on fire at the 7-Eleven convenience store.
"We had water on that car and were out in out in 6 minutes and I don't think there is any other department in the area that could have done any better," he said.
The board also welcomed new member Christina Hoyt, who was elected on Monday. She takes the place of former Chairman Jeffrey Snoonian, who did not run for re-election.
"Congratulation to you and all who ran," Selectman John Duval said. "It is a difficult choice to run for political office."
Nowak said he was amazed by Hoyt's campaign.
"It was an outstanding campaign you ran and I haven't seen anything like it in this town and I have been here a long time," he said.
Hoyt won a blowout victory May 1 and took more than 80 percent of the votes against two other candidates. She thanked her supporters and the selectmen for their kind words.
"I just wanted to thank everyone for welcoming me to this board," she said. "I appreciate that."
The board also reorganized and Duval will now serve as chairman and Richard Blanchard as vice chairman
In other business, the Selectmen voted to close the 2017 annual town meeting warrant with the last-minute addition of a citizens' petition article that would ask Adams to vote on an emergency amendment to the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District agreement, The amendment would allow Cheshire to increase its allocation without proportionally increasing the Adams allocation.
The article comes from efforts of Cheshire residents to raise funds to keep Cheshire Elementary School open one more year. The same article was placed on the Cheshire annual town meeting warrant.
This article needs to pass both town meetings. The school was voted to close this year by the regional school committee.
Mazzucco said after reviewing the article with town counsel, outside counsel and district counsel, he found that the article would really only act as a nonbinding resolution because according to the regional school district agreement, any such article would have to come from the School Committee.
"What these folks want to achieve here is great but this is not the mechanism to do this," he said. "So this is technically a non-binding resolution that the town can approve or not approve ... our agreement outlines a certain process that has to take place for this to happen and this process has not happened."
According to the agreement, there are two processes on how this can take place: the School Committee can send an article to the towns on a two-thirds vote or a petition can be presented with 10 percent of the registered voters in either Cheshire or Adams to the School Committee, which can then agree to send it to the towns.
Although Cheshire has a petition with more than 230 signatures, which is 10 percent of registered voters in Cheshire, the articles came from a citizens petition not through the School Committee.
Tags: adams alerts, cheshire school, fire chief, recognition event, town meeting 2017,
