CONWAY — Special Town Meeting voters approved the purchase of a new ambulance, increases in health insurance rates and over $193,000 worth of projects aimed to repair town properties Saturday morning.
About 70 residents filled the Conway Grammar School gym, swiftly passing all 14 articles in 45 minutes.
In a 64-5 vote, with one voter abstaining, residents agreed to transfer of $537,857 to the general fund for the purchase of a new, customized ambulance and Stryker Power-Load System for lifting stretchers into the ambulance.
During a joint Selectboard and Finance Committee meeting on Nov. 17, ambulance director Gemma Vanderheld said the purchase will include a $30,000 cushion for “any unforeseen price increase.” She expects the ambulance to arrive in early 2027, replacing a 10-year-old ambulance, according to the voter guide.
Voters also passed the use of $125,000 from free cash to cover the 20% hike in health insurance costs, which came after the town had already budgeted for an initial 18% increase heading into fiscal year 2026.
Voters also approved Article 5, which corrects an error Town Administrator Véronique Blanchard recently caught when reviewing the town’s budget. Blanchard said the town has been underpaying a town employee’s stipend for 10 years while budgeting the expense of the full stipend. Voters OK’d transferring $23,636 from free cash to the general fund to pay the employee, whom she did not name.
“What we’re trying to do is do the right thing and make the payments that were supposed to have been made,” Blanchard replied after Michelle Harris requested clarity on the article.
Town properties
Residents also passed a slew of projects aimed to repair town properties, including reallocating $104,801 to replace the roof of the Public Safety Building garage, reallocating $9,338 for improvements to the Conway Mall, transferring $7,211 from free cash to replace fencing around the ballfield on Whately Road and purchasing the public streetlights with $3,500 from free cash to upgrade them with lower wattage LED lights.
Article 12 asked voters to consider appropriating or reserving for later appropriation $69,000 from the Community Preservation Fund to remove seven trees threatening gravestones in the Howland Cemetery. The proposed project sparked the most discussion of any warrant articles as residents expressed concerns for the environmental impact of cutting down the trees.
John Cordes said he has family connections to the cemetery.
“It’s a very important cemetery for multiple reasons, obviously the historic gravestones that were mentioned,” Cordes said. “My concern as a climate activist is that the white pines that are in that cemetery also have historic value.”
He mentioned the 163.2-foot white pine in the Mohawk Trail State Forest, the tallest tree in Massachusetts, according to the New England Historical Society, and stressed that older trees store more carbon than younger trees.
Cordes, along with Julia Washburn, asked if the Conway Cemetery Association had explored alternatives to cutting down the trees.
“[The trees are] threatening the graves, [they have] already destroyed multiple graves,” Michelle Harris, a member of the Conway Cemetery Association and neighbor of Howland Cemetery. “There is mass destruction over there of these graves.”
Harris said the association plans to plant “smaller, friendlier, non-destructive trees” in place of the removed trees and place whiskey barrels with flowers on the stumps of the removed trees.
When Washburn asked about cutting tree limbs instead of cutting entire trees, Harris replied, “That would probably involve just about every limb in the tree, and then, instead of having a 10-foot stump, you’d have a 100-foot stump.”
Yulia Stone raised the concern of the tree removal and remaining roots damaging soil and nearby roads, asking if the association hired or plans to hire a consultant to protect the impact on the soil.
Harris said hiring a consultant would likely “cost a lot of money we don’t have.” She added, “We’re trying to get this project done sooner rather than later because every year more graves are destroyed.”
“Those trees are dying rapidly,” said Ken Ouimette, a longtime member of the Conway Cemetery Association who helps clean up the Howland Cemetery twice a year. “The big pines, you can walk right up to them, you can peel the 1-inch-thick bark right off of them… There is no saving those trees.”
Howland Cemetery neighbor and Cemtery Commission member John Harrison described the extent of the trees damage of gravestones.
“They are not just knocked over — they are turned into little tiny smithereens and are obliterated,” Harrison said.
After a call to question, the article passed with a 62-14 vote and three voters abstaining.
To prepare for future town projects, residents approved the transfer of $24,321 from free cash to fund an assessment of town properties’ compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a report that will open up grant opportunities for the town, Blanchard told voters. Selectboard member Christopher Waldo added that the assessment helps lay the groundwork for the “long-term goal” of installing a LULA elevator in the town hall after the Public Safety Building renovations are complete.
“The town is looking at itself and all of its different facilities and things, including the website, to come up with a plan for how to make sure that all the town properties are accessible,” Blanchard explained.
Residents also passed the transfer of $38,025 from free cash to upgrade computers in the town offices and install two firewalls, a necessary change for the computers to access the Microsoft cloud, Blanchard and Selectboard Chair Erica Goleman explained during the Nov. 17 meeting. Other approved articles covered the reallocation of $3,000 to purchase Right to Farm signs and the transfer of $7,000 from free cash to cover the additional cost of hiring an accounting firm to work February through June as town accountant Mike Koceila plans to resign.
The final article proposed amending the town bylaw for town reports. Instead of the town mailing reports to every household, the amendment suggested making town reports only available on the town website with print copies at several town buildings and mailed if requested, cutting the $3,000 annual cost of mailing the reports, according to the voter guide.
“If you want to save trees, here’s your chance,” Waldo said.
After a resident asked about the option to receive the town report by email, voters passed an amendment to the article stating that the town report would both be “mailed or emailed upon request.”
Before residents left the gym, moderator Jimmy Recore informed them that Conway Grammar School sixth graders volunteered to set up the seven rows of chairs for the meeting, prompting applause from residents.