A dozen Bremen residents voted to authorize the town to borrow $190,000 to go into the roads and bridges reserve account and eventually pay for the replacement of the Heath Road bridge during a special town meeting on Thursday, March 3.
The article stipulated that the loan for the Heath Road bridge is to be combined with a loan for the Hay property.
Selectman Hank Nevins said the reason the town was voting on the matter in a special meeting instead of the annual town meeting on March 26 was to finish negotiating the loan in order to prevent the interest rate from going up.
“I got us a great rate and I don’t want to lose it,” Nevins said.
He said the current interest rate on the loan is 2.5 percent and combining the two projects can save the town money.
“We’re locked in. We can save good money and we’ll get that bridge up,” Nevins said.
The purchase of the Hay property was approved by Bremen voters in April 2013.
The town brought an engineer to a January meeting to discuss replacing the single-lane bridge with a two-lane bridge.
Due to the positive environmental impact of the proposed bridge design on the smelt fishery in Smelts Brook, the town of Bremen received a $95,000 grant from the state toward the construction of the new bridge.
