Blenheim Receives Bridge Gift

BLENHEIM - On Wednesday last week, the Blenheim Town Board was delighted to receive an anonymous donation depicting the famed Blenheim Bridge.

The gift, a wooden art piece with individual slats painted and arranged like a portrait, features the bridge standing over the creek, nestled between Blenheim’s hills under a cloudy white sky.

While the donator did not provide their name for the public or much history on the piece and where it came from at this time, members were incredibly thrilled to receive it.

“Thank you so much to the donator,” said Town Supervisor Don Airey. “We’re going to find a really nice place to hang this and show it off.”

In other news, beautification is coming to the Town. RARE, the Rural Area Revitalization Effort, recently held their annual meeting and began talking about the Blenheim Honor Roll sign.

The sign holds the names of Blenheim natives that fought in every major war dating from World War I back to the Revolutionary War, standing as a memorial to their sacrifice and commitment.

However, that noble goal has been disrupted by the weather and environment taking its toll on the sign, and RARE thought to bring it to the Board’s attention.

Discussing the matter on Wednesday, members decided that the sign needed to be taken care of. They decided on a scope of work that includes scraping and staining the frame, then creating a small roof to protect it from the elements, for a total of around $2700.

With everyone in agreement, the Board passed a motion to allocate those funds for hiring a painter.

Speaking of painting, the Town also fielded a quote to redo the interior of the Hitchcock building, which once functioned as the prevailing town hall but now serves as an EMS outpost.

The quote comes out to around $5700, and while the members noted the need for the work to be done, no motion was passed just yet. 

Finally, Town Historian Cynthia Young brought up the suggestion of starting a Facebook page for the Town of Blenheim.

She would be the volunteer to run the page, posting about events while also moderating the comments that people leave so that misinformation cannot be spread. In essence, the page would act as tight-knit community news, reaching out to residents that otherwise would not know about things going on in the Town.

With Supervisor Airey and the rest of the Board seeing no drawbacks to saying yes but also seeing the need for some policies to be put in place, they gave tentative approval to Historian Young to begin setting up the page.