CAMDEN — The Select Board will convene Tuesday evening, Sept. 9, at 6:30 p.m. in the French Conference Room for a regularly scheduled meeting whose agenda includes a public hearing on personnel policy amendments; consideration of a beer festival permit for Lyman Morse Boatbuilding; an appointment to the Library Board of Trustees; and an executive session that involves a personnel matter.

The meeting will be streamed live on Camden's Youtube channel and participants hoping to join via Zoom are to go here.

The personnel policy amendments are two-fold: one is to change the payroll day to Friday, and the other is to adjust the calculations for overtime given that the Camden Fire Department has now switched from 12-hourt shifts to 24-hour shifts.

In a premeeting memo to the Select Board, Town Manager Audra Caler wrote:

"Changing the pay day to Fridays will ensure that all payrolls can be processed after the work week has officially closed, including when there is a holiday. (see Page 15 of the Personnel Policy in the packet for the proposed change.) The current personnel policy also stipulates the method of calculating and using compensatory time and overtime, including as it relates to Camden's firefighters. Historically, the firefighters have worked 12-hour shifts, configured as 4 consecutive days on and 4 days off. The department is moving to provide 24-hour coverage, prompting necessary changes in the personnel policy to provide guidance on accepted work schedules, working hours, holidays and overtime calculations."

The Camden Beer Festival is an initiative of Lyman Morse Boatbuilders, which has scheduled its first such festival for Sept. 21 from 1 to 4 p.m. at its facility on the north east side of Camden Harbor. The festival is to feature tastings from top craft breweries across Maine and New England, live music, and food. The businesses at Lyman Morse all have current established liquor licenses to serve outdoors and the appropriate application reviews have been made by the code enforcement, Caler said.

Camden's Select Board will be asked to reappoint resident Silvio Calabi to the library's Board of Trustees. Calabi was a trustee for the library from 2017 to 2023.

The Board will also be asked to expend up to $330,000 from the Camden Dams Reserve Fund to contract with Knowles Industrial Services for spillway resurfacing of the Seabright Dam. 

A 2025 inspection of Camden’s dams by Kleinschmidt Associates identified significant deterioration of Seabright's center spillway, with the outer concrete layer eroding and exposing underlying aggregate and steel reinforcement, Caler said in a memo to the Board.

"This condition accelerates corrosion and, if not addressed, could compromise the stability of the spillway and ultimately threaten the dam’s ability to safely pass flows," Caler said. "The engineers recommended resurfacing the spillway within the next two years (by 2027) to prevent further degradation and ensure continued dam safety."

The Select Board's agenda also includes a request to spend $30,000 for six solar-powered speed limit display boards with integrated traffic analysis capability from Stalker Radar / Applied Concepts, Inc.

Citizens have been raising the alarm on various Camden roads about excessive speeding.

"Speed display boards are an effective traffic-calming measure, as they provide immediate feedback to drivers and have been shown to reduce average vehicle speeds," said Caler.

The display boards also have the ability to collect data on vehicle counts, speed, and time-of-day trends. The boards are solar-powered and mobile, allowing them to be relocated to areas of concern as needed. Funding for them is to derive equally from the Police Department Reserve Fund and the Town Contingency Fund."