HUDSON – Voters on Tuesday shot down five proposed contracts, denied raises to the town clerk and non-union workers, defeated the proposed operating budget – but at long last, approved a senior citizens center.
Voters also didn’t make it easy to tally the results in town races, as 569 write-ins delayed voting officials from announcing most of those results until after The Telegraph’s deadline. Officials did announce that incumbents Roger Coutu and Richard Maddox held onto their seats on the board of selectmen.
The write-ins were mostly for the single budget committee seat, as not one candidate appeared on the printed ballot.
Some of the several dozen people gathered at the community center sighed in dismay as the contract votes were announced about 9:30 p.m., but broke out in applause when the senior center vote was announced.
The combined center and cable TV facility was approved 1,766 to 1,418.
“I applauded myself,” said Selectman Roger Coutu, who was up for re-election. “We worked on this for so many years, and now we can finally put this behind us.”
He said a shovel can be put in the ground to begin construction this summer, with a projected opening date of July 1, 2014.
Hudson has more than 4,000 senior citizens and is the ninth largest community in the state, Coutu said. No other community of its size lacks a senior center, he said.
Coutu credited the hard work of volunteers and a funding package that included money saved for the center and the cable facility.![]()
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