MIDDLEBURY — At their meeting on Tuesday Members heard a presentation about a proposal to repair and expand Ilsley Library (see Page 1A), wrote a letter defending their plan for dealing with downtown railroad bridges, and elected leadership.
In other business, the selectboard:
•  Heard via email sewer station operator Bob Wells’s explanation of a Feb. 25 Weybridge Street nighttime pump station overflow. Wells wrote the overflow, between 9:30 and 10:25 p.m., was “due to excessive rains and a frozen ground which would not allow the rain to saturate into the soils.” He added town employees have already done “extensive work in this drainage area,” and that increased wet well and pump capacity would be the next steps to take. Most of the overflow was water, he said.
•  Interviewed four candidates for a one-year vacancy on the board, former Selectmen Gary Baker and Travis Forbes and potential newcomers Jennifer Molineaux and Farhad Kahn. An article detailing the interviews is planned for the March 27 edition of the Independent, and the selectboard plans to decide among the candidates at its next meeting, on March 28.
•  Reviewed town meeting poll results and feedback. Fifty-nine percent of 201 responders said they preferred to be  informed on town news via “ newspaper,” followed by Front Porch Forum (38 percent) and town listserv (36 percent).
Forty-nine percent of respondents said they wanted to learn more about the upcoming rail bridges replacement project and proposed Ilsley Library expansion; next on the list was the town plan update at 36 percent.
According to the handout, “most were satisfied or had no response” about town meeting in the Middlebury Union High School auditorium. But some criticized the length of the meeting and the difficulty of access to microphones for those not sitting near aisles; some of those residents suggested hand-held microphones or a return to a gym setting.