ANDOVER — Selectmen are looking for the person who donated an organ some 40 years ago for use at the Town Hall.
The town doesn’t use it and would like to return it, officials said.
Selectmen’s secretary Hope Peterson said Tuesday night that Alyssa Thibodeau of Andover asked that selectmen either return it to whomever donated it or sell it.
Thibodeau is head of the Town Hall Restoration Committee, which has been making improvements to the building. Town officials estimate the organ has been in the Town Hall about 40 years.
Selectmen discussed getting the word out, hoping to find the donor, until Selectman Jane Rich said that if the organ is indeed 40 or more years old, the donor may have passed away. Or, she said, it could have been donated by an estate.
Additionally, no one could recall what was decided or if anything was decided when selectmen addressed the matter a few years ago.
In other business, Andover General Store & Diner owner Norman Gagnon and his brother, Marc Gagnon, applied to the town for an on-premise liquor license for the Main Street business.
Norman Gagnon went to great lengths to describe what they have to do to the interior of the store to get an on-premise liquor license from the Maine Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages.
He handed each selectman drawings of the work to be done to remodel the store and deli’s interior, and went over it with the board. He said he must isolate the serving areas from the liquor he sells in the store and move his alcohol coolers so that someone being served alcohol can’t reach into a cooler for more or get to other parts of the store.
Norman Gagnon said he has been in business for 16 years and wants to serve alcohol in the dining room and at the lunch bar.
Board of Selectmen Chairman Jim Adler said the board will have to schedule a public hearing on the matter. He advised the Gagnons to meet with the Planning Board to learn if it needs something from that board to remodel the interiors.
“We can approve part of it, but the state approves the dynamics of it,” Selectman Keith Farrington said.
Town Clerk Melinda Averill said an applicant has 60 days to attain approval of a liquor license.
Adler said selectmen will schedule a public hearing “to give citizens a chance to weigh in.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story