Belmont Heritgage group wants new street lamps to look like old street lamps

BELMONT — After getting a suggestion from the Heritage Commission that the new streetlights in the village revitalization area look like the ones near the Belmont Mill, selectmen learned the additional expense could be as much as $34,000.

Selectman Chair Jon Pike wanted to know what kind of polices were including in the original specification from Busby Construction and learned that the company didn't specify any fixtures.

Selectman Ron Cormier, who sits on the Heritage Committee, said the original specs called for straight black poles while the poles in the Belmont Mill area have fluted bottoms and the poles are scalloped.

Selectmen Ruth Mooney said she thought the additional $34,000 was "a lot of money" and wanted to know if people would really notice the differences in the bases.

"They are a lot different" said Wallace Rhodes the town's historian and one of the members of the Heritage Commission.

Rhodes said if the town were to stay with the some company it can provide Belmont with fixtures that mimic the 1928 models that were pulled out of Belmont in the 1950s.

Mooney said she wanted to be cautious because she installed a certain type of light poles in Briarcrest Estates only 26 years ago and is already having problems finding replacement parts.

Cormier told Beaudin to called the engineer of the project and get some estimates of poles that would be acceptable matches to those installed in the mill area.

He also said that, so far, there is $131,248 in contingency and there has been only one change order for $17,104 leaving about $114,000 in the fund, making it a possible source of the funding for the vintage looking street lamps.