Bow selectmen are still uncertain which path they will choose when it comes to the potential development plans along Route 3A.

During a Thursday, Oct. 23, meeting, board members received input from Bill Klubben, director of Community Development, and Stephen Heavener, executive director of Capitol Region Development Council, on the best way for the town to handle the decision.

Selectmen Chairman Leon Kenison said the meeting was helpful for board members, but no decision was made.

“We didn’t bring anything to a conclusion as far as voting is concerned,” said Kenison. “Primarily, for a few reasons, one of them being that we like to have a full board at a meeting when we make decisions such as this.”

Board member Harry Judd was unable to attend the meeting. The town had approved a $12 million water and sewer bond in 2002, and officials are weighing whether to go forward with the project without any developers lined up. Voters, however, had told selectmen not to build unless there was an identified developer lined up. Residents also voted down a petition asking them to tell selectmen to ignore the previous warrant article and go forward with the project.

“Really, we have a couple of choices as far as I’m concerned,” said Kenison. “Number one, forget about it, and number two is to encourage the staff to have the engineering board to go forward with the plans.”

Kenison said if the board chooses the latter, officials could go forward in seeking out bidders and then reassess the state of the economy as the project moves forward.

The chairman also said he believes selectmen will discuss the issue again at its next meeting, which is Wednesday, Nov. 5.

Tax rate

When arriving at the 2009 tax rate of $22.53, Bow town officials used $300,000 of unused surplus funds to save the taxpayers money.

Town Manager Jim Pitts said that for every $100,000 applied to the amount, there is a savings of about 8 cents, so residents were saved about 24 cents for every $1,000 of property tax.

Had the surplus not been used on the rate, the total would have been $22.77, which would have been an increase of $1.75 over last year’s rate of $21.02. Instead, residents saw a total increase of $1.51 per $1,000 assessed property value.