Council adopts Standard Oil ordinance and votes to submit Bowdoin Utilities franchise to voters

At the April 7, 1930 meeting the Town Council introduced and, after suspending rules, adopted Ordinance No. 56, which grants the Standard Oil Company permission to erect and maintain warehouse tanks and other buildings for storing illuminating oils, naphtha, gasoline and other mineral oils within town limits. The ordinance passed on a unanimous recorded vote of the aldermen present.

Later in the year, on Dec. 1, 1930, the council adopted Resolution No. 55 to submit to the qualified resident freeholders the question of granting a distribution-franchise to the Bowdoin Utilities Company. The resolution, as recorded, instructs the town clerk to give notice, prepare ballot language for the annual municipal election set for April 6, 1931, and conduct the election on whether to grant the franchise as described in the application on file with the clerk.

The minutes record the council’s procedural steps — adopting the ordinance after readings and suspending rules, and directing the clerk to give legal notice and provide ballots for the franchise question. The record does not include the full text of the proposed franchise in the minutes; the resolution directs that the franchise application on file in the clerk’s office be the document submitted to voters.