Melrose Select Board Approves Security Upgrades and Downtown Development Deal

MELROSE — May 18, 2023 — Melrose Select Board approved a $45,421 security contract and a raft of personnel and development items at its May 18 meeting. The board voted unanimously to hire Arvig for City Center security upgrades — including key fob access, panic buttons, and new front doors — beating out a competing $48,437 quote from Heartland and coming in under the city's $50,000 budget for the building; the Utilities Commission had previously approved its matching share of $22,711. City Planner Sheila Hellermann was formally retitled Community Development Director and placed at Step One on a new wage scale pending a six-month review. The board also amended its development agreement with Riverside Development Group LLC, setting a May 22 groundbreaking and a July 31, 2024, substantial completion date for a long-stalled downtown housing and retail project on a site that sat vacant after a 1989 plant fire. A separate unresolved dispute — an $11,000 Stearns County invoice for pavement laid outside RDB dam project limits, with contractor and engineer WSB both declining liability — was tabled to the June 15 full council meeting, with the city administrator warning the outstanding bill risks straining a key intergovernmental relationship ahead of two major joint projects.