Dalton Select Board Supports Beautification Project
DALTON, Mass. — A small piece of town will be adorned with work from a local artist.
The Select Board voted in favor of artwork for a traffic control box outside of Town Hall. Dalton resident Dorothy Sabean created a colorful image that features three embracing foxes surrounded by balloons.
The project still has to be approved by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. It has also received letters of support from Town Manager Tom Hutcheson and Chief of Police Deanna Strout.
Sabean has training in street art, making this project a perfect fit. Her work was brought to the board from the town's beautification commission, a grassroots volunteer group established in 2001 to enhance physical beauty in well-traveled areas to improve residents' quality of life.
The foxes' positioning is inspired by The Three Graces, a 19th-century neoclassical sculpture by Antonio Canova. Sabean said she replaced the young ladies in the original work with a native species and added the balloons just for fun.
"From my street painting experience, I know that people react very positively to round shapes and bright colors," she said. "So that's pretty much how we come up with a with a pop art and figure."
Chairman Joe Diver thanked Sabean for volunteering her time talent.
MassDOT plans on replacing the box in a couple of years but the board has to use a grant for painting it within the year.
Sabean is OK with this.
"That's the nature of street art, street art comes and goes," she said.
In other news, the town is pausing a request for proposals process to assume operational control of the transfer station currently operated by Casella Waste Systems.
"Work with the transfer station has shifted from seeking out a broad look at various haulers to developing a more limited contract with Casella at least for the next contract cycle as we develop our capacity for running the operation," Hutcheson reported.
"We may not be able to bring the down users' costs as quickly as we'd hoped, but we still hope that we'll be able to do so during fiscal year 2023 and perhaps about three years after that substantially lower the cost of using the transfer station while providing more services and not requiring additional town investment through taxes."
The board also accepted $1,805,367 in American Rescue Plan Act funds under the final rule exemption for revenue loss and five allocations.
Hutcheson explained that the board has already approved the strategy of using the money for infrastructure improvements and some of the projects have already been approved but the town's auditor found it helpful for the board to take formal votes now that the final rule is in place.
Some $71,400 was approved for a highway excavator, $53,815.35 for a Police Department repeater, $2,880 for COVID-19 tests, $9,400 for road engineering, and $12,700 for a highway trailer.
