Selectmen restructure and roll up their sleeves

Apr 25, 2017

Elections are over in Rochester, and now the work begins.

Never was that more true than for Woody Hartley, sitting in his first Selectmen meeting. He wasted no time diving into proceedings.

After a structural shakeup, which left Brad Morse as the new Chair, former Chair Naida Parker as Clerk, and Hartley as Vice-Chair, the Selectmen rolled up their sleeves to discuss improvements to the town and board.

Hartley brought up several new matters of business, ideas which he hoped would make life easier and more efficient for the board in the future.

It turns out that Hartley and Parker are both fed up with Rochester's town website, which is long since out of date, an apparently difficult to update.

Hartley professed irritation at the wealth of now-inaccurate knowledge on certain pages. "Is anything posted on there? Any agendas?" he asked.

"We sometimes try to post information - weather related - on weekends," said Parker, "but it takes so long to post that by the time it's available, it's Monday and the weekend is over anyway." She agreed that the website was outdated and needed some help.

Hartley also expressed concern regarding what he termed a "misunderstanding" of the Rochester Council on Aging transportation vans. Those vans, he emphasized, are available to any town resident for transportation, regardless of age or ability.

"We need to make it clear that the transportation is available to everyone, especially people with disabilities - it's important," he noted.