The Rochester Select Board Monday focused on important police appointments, Council on Aging donations, and accepting a plaque honoring the town’s long list of Eagle scouts.
The board emerged from contract negotiations in executive session to sign the contract for and appoint Zachary Dupere as a Police Department lieutenant. Dupere is being promoted from the position of sergeant. Then, as relatives and loved ones stood in the back of the meeting room to observe, the board appointed Ms. Cailin White, formerly a resident of Barnstable, as a new full-time Rochester Police Department officer, and, as with Dupere, she was immediately sworn in by Town Clerk Marjorie Barrows.
The Select Board’s next center of attention came from a $150,000 check. COA Board of Directors member Mike Daniel presented the board with a poster-sized facsimile of the check, as he announced the council has now raised that amount through its public fundraising effort toward building an addition to the town’s Senior Center on Dexter Lane. Daniel said such a plan has been a COA priority for years, and many volunteers have made it all possible; proceeds from the daily Senior Center breakfasts are a major contributor to that fund. He said the goal is to raise more, but this is the first such donation the COA wanted deposited in its town account.
Without hesitation, the board accepted the check “with gratitude.” Town Administrator Cameron Durant told board members that what remains from what is raised for the renovations will be set aside for a partition wall for that addition.
After the vote, Durant noted the breakfasts are continuing and more public donations are welcome.
Next, the board approved Scout Troop 31 leader Kevin Thompson’s proposal to post plaques listing those in town who have earned their Eagle Scout badge on the walls at Town Hall.
Thompson held two of these plaques. He said one honors Calvin Taggart, who started the local troop in 1961, for his Eagle Scout mentorship. Another lists town scouts who have earned their Eagle badge up to the year 2009. Thompson said, until now, the plaques were in a box at scout headquarters and that he would like to see them hung on the bare wall by the Treasurer’s office. “There’s a lot of success here for the children of Rochester,” he said. “And it was just sitting in a box.”
Thompson told The Wanderer after the vote that he has yet to complete research on how many total Eagle Scouts Rochester has produced, but there have been a lot of them. “I expect as many as six more plaques,” he said, “and we’ll keep adding to them.”
In other action, the board appointed Gayle Lawrence to the COA Board of Directors and noted remembrance of late COA Board of Directors member Dr. Andrew Revell, who recently passed away.
The Select Board did not set a future meeting before adjourning.
Rochester Select Board
By Michael J. DeCicco