RENSSELAERVILLE — The highway department is inching closer to repairing its roads. A report from Superintendent G. Jon Chase, read aloud by Supervisor Jost Nickelsberg at the June town board meeting, outlined recent work, and work still to be done. Chase was absent from the meeting.

The long-planned Pearson Road culvert project is still in its early stages, Chase said this week.

“We’ve been cutting brush, getting it ready for the contractor,” he said of Dan’s Hauling and Demolition Inc., which placed a $298,000 bid that was unanimously accepted by the town board at its Jan. 8 meeting. Dan’s Hauling is set to undertake the project, but has not yet started its work there.

At the June meeting, the town board voted to appropriate $1,400 for excavation as part of the Pearson Road culvert project.

Chase went into a bit of detail this week on work to be done on other town roads in the near future, including Kenyon Road and Gifford Hollow Road, as well as further work on Pearson Road.

“With Pearson Hill, we’re going to pave the whole road,” Chase said this week. “On Kenyon, we’re basically getting it widened out, and raising the road. On Gifford Hollow Road, we got a few culverts to finish up, and then putting a top on it.”

Chase doesn’t yet know what material will be used in “putting a top” on Gifford Hollow Road, as he is looking at prices, he said. “We’ll see in another month or so.”

In addition, the highway department has finished putting oil and stone tops on Bates Hollow Road, King Lane, Tanglewood Road, and Engle Road, he said.

“So, we’re ahead by two months,” said Chase. “We had the culverts and all the drainage and everything done last year.”

Chase’s report also informed the board that the highway department is renting a front loader from Abele Equipment, at a rate of $2,500 a month. It is comparable in size to the town’s front loader, currently being repaired by Milton Caterpillar, the report said.

Other estimates obtained by Chase for front loader rentals include Milton Caterpillar, which would have charged a rental fee of $5,900 a month, and Anderson Equipment, which would have charged $6,000 a month.

Shared bus

Also at its June meeting, the town board accepted the following terms for a shared-service agreement, drawn up by Attorney Joseph Catalano, to share the town’s senior bus with Westerlo: Bus services for Westerlo are limited to seniors and disabled persons, as they are defined in the Social Services Law, and their aides.

Title 6 and Title 7 of the Social Services Law both make reference to the elderly as being 65 or older.

Westerlo will reimburse Rensselaerville for 53 cents per mile for Rensselaerville’s regularly scheduled shopping trips on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and for any other joint uses. For trips involving only Westerlo residents, Westerlo will reimburse Rensselaerville $1.06 per mile. These figures are subject to change in January of 2010.

Finally, the town of Westerlo will limit bus use to $5,000 in reimbursements — about 4717 miles — for the fiscal year, and will be billed on a monthly basis.

The board also authorized Nickelsberg to sign the shared-service agreement, but these terms have not yet been voted upon by Westerlo’s town board.

Other business

In other business in June, the town board:

— Heard from Supervisor Nickelsberg a listing of amounts of money in town accounts: General fund, $469,114; trust and agency, $38,874; highway fund, $582,483; dispersement account, $20,277; tax collector, $3,268; sewer district number $1,882; water rent, $508; town clerk, $1,692; senior youth bus fund, $2,054; general capital certificate of deposit (CD), $43,608; general fund audit CD, $21,641; Bayard Elsbree Park, $1,411; FEMA (for Pearson Road project) $445,972; lighting district, $4,161; water district number 1, $18,069; sewer district number 1 CD, $105,523; general equipment CD, $25,716; equipment reserve, $58,137; highway reserve 2 CD, $177,970; and sewer reserve CD, $154,500;

— Voted, upon maturity of the sewer district number 1 CD, to put $100,000 into the town’s general fund.

“We are owed that money by the sewer district,” Nickelsberg said this week. “We had to loan town money to the district many moons ago, and it’s been sitting there ever since, so, we are going to take it back”;

— Voted unanimously to accept Zena Higgins into the Medusa Fire Department;

— Authorized Supervisor Nickelsberg to sign an advanced life support agreement;

— Hired Erika Catalano to clean town hall, twice a month, June through August, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at a rate of $12 an hour; and

— Heard from Councilwoman Marie Dermody that upwards of $200 dollars would be saved by the new telephone contract with CornerStone.