In the recent extreme cold, TextMyGov announced the warming center at Wiscasset Community Center for people and pets. The new texting service is free, and the town would like more signups, Town Manager Dennis Simmons said Feb. 7.

Simmons told selectmen the service is working as intended, including receiving messages; automated responses continue to be added, he said. “People are sending in questions that we didn’t anticipate, so we have to build that database of responses as we go. We’re getting there.” And he said Administrative Assistant Robin Plourde is running around town to businesses daily with flyers to try to get more subscribers.

To sign up, visit wiscasset.org

Also in the meeting at the town office and over Zoom and YouTube, selectmen nodded Wiscasset Art Walk coordinator Lucia Droby’s request to close Water Street along the block that has Sylvan Gallery, during next September’s art walk, the last art walk of the season. Droby explained, a block party is planned to celebrate the walk’s 10th year, and to try to compensate for the darkness that sets in during the September walk.

Eric McIntyre, owner of Village Handcraft, 52 Water St., voiced support. “It’s exciting to know that it’s the 10th year.  (A block party) would be a good way to cap it all off.” Droby shared tentative plans for a food truck and a tent with a dance band.

“I love it,” Selectman Terry Heller said.

Simmons praised Wiscasset Ambulance Service’s work on a recent Dresden call involving a person hit by a vehicle. The patient needed intubating, which Simmons, past chief of the ambulance service, said is “very difficult” in the field and harder still when the patient has serious facial injuries, but the crew was able to, in the ambulance, on the first try, Simmons said. “These guys did a great job.”

The board nodded a business license for Stephen Kent’s Wheeler Hill International, 326 Bath Road. According to the meeting and the application, the firm does light residential construction and has been in business 20 years.

Selectmen approved Heller and Jan and Larry Flowers for the appearance of the town committee; Jacqueline Lowell, planning board; and Don Oyster, ordinance review committee.