okay welcome everyone I'm going to call to order the town of Andover Board of Selectmen meeting for Monday June 10th 2024 and we're going to start the meeting at 7:02 the first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we'll move on to U public speak and we'll start with Mike pazi before you you take another bite Mike oh you can see me no I'm all set thank you all right Kathy nothing other than I want to say very nice agenda this evening thank you for that okay all right Linda fish all set thank you all right Louise Goodwin I'm all set but Joe King is here and find this thing he may have something to hold on ask hang on I had
I had noticed that in the River East that one of the towns had an ordinance I believe to keep the advertising signs that you see stuck on right ways and I don't know do we have any ordinance like like that Eric Jeff I don't you guys know anything about that not for that specific issue I know there's signage ordinance out there but we can look at that Joe Joe you sit there and you put something forward we can look at it mean like I propose that we have ordinance Banning those RightWay signs put in by private companies they're in the way for Jay as well to do his okay so you do that anything else Noe that's it okay Diane grer not working yet you're good okay all right someone let's try to go through this and see who's causing us back issues I think somebody just muted themselves so that's good thank you okay think you skipped Linda fish I did not I asked Linda fish oh sorry she was good Eric I'm gonna ask then I know Jeff Murray brought it up but can you please make sure that the town of the the selectman minutes meetings are not special meetings they're regular meetings can we get that out of there for the next time it's happened twice and both times we've not included ads and deletes and I apologize for not catching that Jeff Murray nice catch on the special meeting so we're gonna add and delete something pretty quick I'm gonna make a a motion that Eric where is which is the one item you want to
move so I'm gonna suggest that you move executive session to pretty early in the meeting agenda to discuss Union and just leave it as Union negotiations and go from there and invite my sh myself and Cheryl into the meeting okay and is there an item 15 currently no I I know that I know that's executive session but is there an item on the agenda other than the executive session that we need to move for Cheryl you could also move what is item number 10 the treasures report up and make that right after the executive session okay so I make a motion that we move executive session up to item 2A and we move item 10 treasurers report up to 2B anybody want to second that for us second it okay is there anything else Eric that we should move related to Cheryl so we can get her on and off as quick as possible no I think that should be it okay anybody have anything they'd like to add or delete
do we want to discuss the ordinance the minor ordinance down at the ball fields for the dogs yes why not yeah we need to add that was we'll add that to new business 8i is that acceptable Jeff yes that's fine right 8 I I just saw there was a lot of complaints online and and in social media and so we should we should address it at this meeting right all right so you're making a motion to move a dog ordinance discussion ball I I'd like to menend that dog ordinance and littering ordinance disc ussion I don't think it's it needs to be added I don't 8i dog and litter ordinance okay I'll second so Jeff Murray made that motion Paul a second did so we now have three items to move anything else okay all those in favor of moving executive session to 2A the treasurers report 2B and the adding a dog and litter ordinance discussion on 8i all those in
favor I okay so Linda Mike and Kathy and Diane and Community voice and now Joanne Ebert we're going to put you guys all into the waiting room and we're going to go into executive session and have our discussion about the union issues and it will come out as quickly as we can so apologize for this but it's how we're going to do it so I make a motion that we go into executive session item 2A a second all right all those in favor I will presume recording all right I'll make a motion that we come out of executive session second first done all right let's move on we're moving on to item 2B the treasurers report so Cheryl if you can review the report the documentation that you provided yes in our packet yes in your packet well when when I send all the items over to Kate there is a PDF of your budget actual there is also an Excel format of the budget to actual the board had financed several members had requested that I send over it in that format so they could change up the font and be able to read it a little bit better your report has a lot of pages and it's a little bit difficult sometimes to read you also this time have a balance
sheet within your report and the reason we have a balance sheet now is the Auditors had released the audited financial statements all of the journal entries have been made so that means that the report that you are receiving currently although it's marked as an intrum because it's the new 2324 you will receive a balance sheet currently while we are getting ready again to have another audit all entries have been made all of the do too froms have been included and we're still we have a few items that were overspent in the budget but that's not unusual we normally by the next two weeks I know Eric and I are meeting tomorrow potentially to look over some of our requests for transfer that I will give to the board of Finance at their meeting at the end of the month I will be attending that one to request we have notified Department all bills have to be submitted to the treasurer's office for payment for the 23 24 year no later than August 15 unless permission is given or there's an an extreme reason why the bills could not be presented any bills presented after that date will go to the board of Finance for their decision on whether it's going to be in the 23 24 year or the 2425 year everything looks good we've gotten a lovely amount of interest income if you guys have all managed to see that from placing our funds in the stiff account
so Eric and I look at that on a monthly basis and we move whatever we can potentially move over to the stiff from our current banking institution and move it back as needed to pay current operating expenses Cheryl one one thing I'm looking at your ballot sheet just a quick question other communities do they move all of their funds into the stiff account I mean right now we have you're at least reporting that there's $1.5 million sitting in the AAS operating fund operating account is that accurate no it is not because I I get their documents about a month after so the documents that you have there I don't get all of their I can't see everything that's clearing or everything that's being affected into their AES checking until I get the bank statement which Eric had been obtaining for me and then when we get Eric ass signed check runs for them I we do enter them in but we certainly are not I do not have all the information for the 23 24 year I did meet with the Finance director for the school about two weeks ago and we have a plan to align our books before the audit and review our numbers to make sure what they have is what I have and then we have spoken about trying to come up with a plan between she and I to attempt to reconcile on a monthly basis but we're still working on a potential procedure for that okay understood but can you at some point in time get us even though it might not match the financial statements can you get us the most recent reconciled balance just so we can understand
because what I'm what I have in my head is you know there's 2.5 or $2.8 million of money that's still not collecting interest and if it can be shifted even somewhat that's a significant more portion of Interest so I I understand we are their budget they receive and please correct me Eric if I'm wrong whatever their budget amount as approved and adop opted by the citizens they receive over 10 month period is that is that right Eric that is correct so I can't I can't you know I can't say that you've got $600,000 sitting in your bank account so no I'm not going to give you your three or 400,000 I I don't know how I would be able to to tell that to the school that I'm going to invest it for you and only give it to you when when I think you need it I the board has some suggestions I'm I'm willing but I can't make them give it back to me understand understood but what I'm saying is it's it's something that we have to look at as a community to sit there and especially where the interest rates are where they're at and try to maximize what we're doing so we can't make any decisions or talk in any educated manner until we understand what the balance was at the last time they reconciled so if you can just provide us the balance at the last time they reconciled and then we can all look and
just say hey maybe our apportionment of our funding is not accurate and we can do it in a better way it has nothing to in my head has nothing to do with the budgeted amount or do they get their money or not get their money it's it's timing and if we as a town can sit there and keep more money in an interest earning account we're all better off so we just need a balance number so we can understand like maybe a list of whatever monthly reconciliations they've provided you and S sit there and just tell us the number like 400,000 600,000 a million whatever it is it would just help yes when I I will be in the office on Wednesday morning I will go through my folders and see I'm pretty sure the last one that I received from them is March but I am not 100% sure I certainly will look and whichever one I have I will scan it I'll have it scanned and I will email it to you Jeff for your distribution okay no problem all right any other questions anybody has okay if we don't have any other questions then I think we can allow Cheryl to to leave us anybody going once going twice no thank you Cheryl all right thanks you're welcome thank you very much thank you I will talk to everyone later thank youbye all right so now we're going to move on to item three board and commission presentations the library board of directors is that on by mistake I actually don't know the answer to that okay but if none of directors are here to speak then I would say yes I did get
something from Kathy saying the final contract for the bathroom renovation is ready to sign I have not reviewed it she did email that to me today I will get to that at some point in the next couple of days okay and I'm on the board Library board of directors and I think that that item was from last month when Jeff Ballard was going to talk about the burnap brook the Bap clock and he's not in here and we're not prepared for anything else okay I will say that the library threw a wonderful retirement function for and I'm gonna say the name because Kathy camp Camp Kathy camping was very nice 25 years as the children's librarian it was very nice so Eric attended she's going to be hard to replace Lisa Curts is going to be
filling in that position she's already done it for a while and it's gonna do that for the summer anyway all right all right we'll move on to that Eric item four appointments anything as far as I know there aren't any appointments next month you will have a series of appointments to make for the advisory committees for the senior center director okay those July one yep item five resignations yes I was Jim hsy told me verbally that he would submit a letter of resignation but he's willing to stay on until we can find his replacement which is a big help you know again I think I'm asking for the maximum amount of flexibility and trying to find that replacement because they're very hard positions to find and fill today so we're going to go after advertising it directly locally and then also pursue potentially hiring Tai Chi to provide that person to us as a service so I don't know how that's going to work yet we're basically going to try all approaches we can because I
anticipate based on problems other towns have had that that would be a difficult position to fill okay do whatever you need to do if you okay we'll move on to item it six town administrator's report okay so I gave you all my report individually I apologize for not making it in the packet I will give it to Kate so she can put it or no it did make the packet no it did not make the packet sorry so what I'm gonna tell you is I'm just gonna kind of summarize what was in the packet so that you have it the first thing is under Town Hall operations Willie and Susan are going to start reglazing and Rec scraping the windows on the museum Oldtown Hall that project is going to start very quickly in the next week or two just as a reminder I will be on vacation the weeks of June 17th to the 21st in June 24th through the 28th although unfortunately now I do have a funding meet that's mandatory for one of the grants so I will probably briefly be in on the 27th or or at least call into that in terms of that I'll make sure this Friday before I go that I've updated all the payroll so so that portion will be done from my perspective Jeff I'm going to give your phone number directly to to
Chris so she can call you when she need checks signed so there'll be at least one check run during that possibly two during that week so hopefully you will be around because right now the only three signers are you myself and the superintendent Val so the other things I've got going you know as we discussed previously we did get the grant award for for the lsip for Route 316 the connectivity prodject I finally got a quoteback to get us to the 60% design phase using the existing funds from the legislative award so when we get to that in the budget I would just like a motion from the board to authorize me to sign a contract to spend the rest of the legislative funds to get us up through the 60% design phase and since we since the original RFP was a competitive bid I don't think we need to rebid it because you know we're going to use the engineering firm that started the work
and already done part of the surve I also had a meeting at kog with Rob aloise who's one on the kog planning staff to talk about how the funding and the timelines for that project Works and I was kind of wrong because I know as a as a kog board member you know we were we were allocating funding out to the 2627 budget year but what Rob said is they have kind of rolling funding because most projects don't get through the design phase all that fast so the long and the short of it is as soon as we can get that design it fully designed and approved by do and get the rightaway stuff in place we'll have the money for construction so that's kind of encouraging as you as I sent you we did get funded the grant submission for the D wck Trails program so that's the fourth time I've applied direct trails and the first time I got funded so persistence pays off I was kind of happy with that I still haven't heard anything back from the Congressional as far as the Congressional appropriation I know we did the paperwork correctly and and we received acknowledgement that we submitted it but we're not going to get anything back till at least October on that and that is the grant that would fund the the generator that would cover the town hall the fire department and the community Center as well as finish off improvements on the community center the propane tanks and gas piping are into the town hall and the community center and the new
two new 1,000 gallon tanks are in all the conduit is in for the future generator project so everything's pretty well prepped for that project we just got to get the money to actually buy the generator and the stuff HVAC and heating system upgrades for the town hall will be completed within the next one to two days all the duckus split systems work in the building all the brick repair has been done the system's functioning well they're just working on on converting the burners to propane from oil right now so that should be done and they're already starting to work on the fire department HVAC upgrades that's been a kind of sore subject with the fire department who haven't liked not having an air conditioned building which I don't blame them so we did finally get a proposal back from Aztec engineering for the Mechanical ecal plumbing evaluation for AES I'll discuss that later in the project came out of a little higher than I was expecting but not a lot higher you all got the information I sent you on the Freedom of Information Act request there was also an incident at
Andover Pizza in which an individual ended up assaulting two other individuals that were both seniors so he's been arrested and dealt with it's not certainly is not his first violent felony apparently so he's still in jail both of the victims were you know are recovering and are expected to recover so it's very unfortunate but fortunately it it nobody was killed and the the bar/ pizza parlor has good camera coverage so the state police have kind of a pretty full record of of what occurred and where and what so that's all I have to say about that unless there's something else you want on it you also asked me last month to give you an update on what Diane Grenier was concerned with regarding the natural gas pipeline and potential modifications in centry so I did talk to coventry's town engineer Todd Penny pretty extensively about that and basically what they have is there is an existing pumping station in centry basically I assume it's just a series of fans which accelerate the gas so keep the flow rate of the existing natural gas and the pipes High what they're talking about doing is putting in different fans than the one they have now so it's not anything that's going to involve Trucking there would be a construction phase but likely they would be going up hop River Road not Andover town roads anyway so it should have zero impact to the town of Andover Community Center update the community center is coming along pretty well I think we should probably discuss that there is an agenda
item later to potentially set a date for a grand opening I would discuss anything else with that so the we did select a company called SLR to provide construction monitoring and inspection for the Bunker Hill Bridge Project that project is still slated to begin on February I think it's 16th actually there is a issue that has come up right now that the department of the Federal Department of Wildlife and natural resources has added another bat to the threatened species list for all eight counties in Connecticut and they put a very restrictive ruling in on the limit of the time of year in which you can do what's called clearing and Dr grubbing I.E cutting down trees and taking away the debris so we're trying to figure out how to work around that now the last time they did that was about 10 years ago and D ended up or do ended up pretty much all of their Bridge projects took an extra year to do to deal with that Federal requirement so we're going to actually talk to the land owners right now we don't have the RightWay easements established although we have them surveyed so I'm going to talk to the land owners and with their permission we're going to do the tree cutting like right now like in July and not do it as part of the Federal grant it means we'll have to cut the trees you know probably on the town side and not get rebated for that but since the whole rest of the bridge is being paid for you know that as far as I can tell right now is the only thing that will keep us away from that
being a two-year project not a one-year project so for the cost of taking down those trees it seems an awful lot smarter to do that and there's only three land owners involved so I don't think it's going to be a big deal but that was a little bombshell the federal government dropped on the do about a week ago so we're working through that is all I have unless you have questions about anything specific for me anybody have any questions for Eric no good good call on the trees though Eric and are you going to remind us about the bridge meeting yeah so there there's actually two Bridge meetings we're having a meeting at the Bunker Hill Bridge with myself and Jay and the design engineer and possibly do to talk about you know what limits what we actually have to cut down you know like right now before the the federal law actually is you know enacted enacted so I have no doubt we're going to be able to do that and to say the this has got everybody freaked out I know I've had a couple meetings one with do over one with the East Coast Greenway folks because that's they've got a bunch of federally funded programs so everybody's you know in a little bit of a dizzy about it U because what happens is the the federal government notifies all the states that this is in effect and they have to put the Restriction in all their grants and all the construction documents but they don't actually know what the seasonality of these things are they don't know where exactly in the state these bats
are present they just know they're endangered they're found in the state and therefore they have this blanket restriction and it'll take a couple years to work out the specifics of it so it's kind of a you know it's kind of an unfortunate thing not bad is it you know Brown something B large brown bat small brown bat okay anything else not for my report okay everybody's good okay we're going to move on to item seven old business business and we're going to start with 7A Community Center construction update so today Eric Sanders sent me a construction punch list of everything for the interior of the building I review that Scott did I forward that to you or not thought I will forward that to you I was going to go over it walk the building with it and look through that and see what else needed to be on that Bunch list for the interior portion
of the building U then Scott and I have scheduled some time tomorrow to start going over because for the two weeks I'm gone Scott will be taking over for me doing the construction Administration stuff from ourn we're pretty close to to completion the fact that we've gotten to the punch list portion means we're pretty far along most of you have probably seen that it's paved and curbed now so the electrician's been in working leading edges guys have been in working and you know it's it's pretty close to to final completion so we're getting there I know some changes have been made to the exterior [Music] the there's some rip wrap put in Eric
please make sure you get with Scott on that and and the one thing that I'm going to suggest and in as much as possible this is a public facility and we make it appear the best possible way we can the driveway looks great I would let you already told you that Eric it looks great the building looks great let to make sure the rounds maintain the same level that we all expect across everything all right anybody else related to the community center okay all business B is there anything to discuss on the blight and the level of involvement no at this point other than we're going to need a new zoning enforcement officer who is the blight enforcement officer so B and C I don't really have anything to talk about at this meeting oh I'm gonna question ebike loner program anybody have any questions or issues okay D advisory boards for the senior community center I know we've gotten some replies back I've asked the town clerk to collate them they were due July one so at our next at the next Board of selecting meeting I hope to have a good candidate pool for you to select the
members for okay item 7e senior community Cent director so the advertisement has gone out today we advertised River East we advertised locally we had several locals that have expressed interest to it so we sent them the notifications directly we also advertised on CCM and indeed to try to get as wide a candidate pool as we could for that position I did ask the I think our official title is like director of community programming at centry so centry instead of having one person as the Director they have a head of their senior center and a head of a community center and a head of recreation and then they have one person that sits over those three so I had a good conversation with her and asked her whether she would be willing to sit in on the interviews when we hire our director and she said she would be happy to so I would assume it will be myself and her and probably at least one or two members of the board of Selectmen my goal is as soon as I come back around July 1st to colay all the responses we've had and start setting up interviews so Jeff I know you had said you wanted to be on that if there other board of selectman members that want to be in on on that interview panel please let me know all right we're we're going to move on to item eight new business 8A is it says a charter revision draft but it should State Charter revision draft extension the charter revision commission is
and I'm going to make the motion but is looking for some additional time we have a July 3rd deadline to present the draft to the board of Selectmen it come earlier but they would like U an extension so I'm going to make a motion that we Grant an extension for the first draft to be presented to the board of Selectmen till July 22nd I'll second down right any further discussion on the extension of time what it will mean for us is that we may be required to have a special meeting so my what I'm going to request from the charter revision committee and is get you get a draft much earlier than than it has to be presented depending upon what feedback we can provide before the draft is there I'm not sure but hopefully we'll get it in advance of the 22nd and then have a meeting on the
22nd and decide what we're going to do whether we approve or reject any of the the items so that's it any other questions related to the extension sure all those in favor I I I okay five nothing let's move on to 8B motion to approve payment to U line for Community Center Furniture so youall got a note from Cheryl so I had ordered the stuff for the community center after a discussion last month where you said I was okay to tap contingency given the position we're in right now overall with the budget Cheryl felt it was a large enough order that that really needed a motion before the board of Selectmen that she thought that would come up as an audit flag so we would be smarter to have the board formally motion the
approval of that what's the amount of the Uline bills is like 11,000 12,000 15,000 somewhere in that ballpark it's 12,266 36 I'm sorry I hit something 30 what cents 12 6636 I make a motion that we approve the Uline bills for Community Center furniture that total $2,266 36 Cents I'll second all right further discussion on that approval this is just for inside furniture only right this is not the external Furniture like the polywood stuff any of that I did not buy the polywood stuff I did buy the two metal picnic tables okay because I did find some vendors that had it for much cheaper than you had on your sheet so we should probably discuss that before any of that's purchased okay any other issues points of discussion all those in favor I I okay item 8 C select a date for Community Center Grand Opening what's your what's your recommended recommendation Eric when do you want to do it pick a day well it it's not when I want to do it it's when you guys wanted to do how about you give us the week or the two weeks that you think we should be doing it and then we'll come up with a date I mean at this point I think we're probably looking at putting it off till sometime very early in August and it's going to kind of depend on what exactly you want at the Grand Opening how
formal and who all you want to invite in what do you want to have do you want to have wine and cheese do you want to have a band what is it that you want do you just want to cut a ribbon and Pat each other on the back and go home tell me what you want and then that has some bearing on how long it's going to take us to put it together I never thought of Handover as a wine and cheese place I was just gonna say beer and nachos cupcakes cupcakes and a band I don't know yeah why don't we make it a potluck I I think more Andor potluck standup picnic and bring our own food and maybe have some hot dogs and hamburgers but I I think it should be something where we invite the community to at least go and see what they're going to have the opportunity to utilize so if you want to do it in the beginning of August let's just can we can we coordinate this with a a senior or lunch in well the if you do it that way then it excludes the people that are working during the day on a Friday yeah okay so what we doing on Saturday that's the first questions what you want to do it on a Saturday if you did it on a Saturday you could probably pick like I think August 3 that's the first Saturday or August 10th either of those would probably work all right does anybody have any issue with August 3 we'll start there should we talk to the Recreation Commission too because I saw there was a concert coming up I saw a sign at the school road so well
why don't want to book a concert or something that night or something it's just do in conjunction with the hot dogs and hamburgers they may they want to do something for that so two dates why don't we pick two dates to talk to them about because if you're going to if you're trying to book a band you want to make sure that you have a couple of dates in mind because you have to find out if they're available okay so yeah my thing is if they're doing a if they're going to do a concert or something anyways let's do it let's do it all on the same day so are you think that there's a concert already booked would it be on the calendar the Tom calendar it's not on the calendar I saw a sign for a concert coming up so I don't know yeah but that that's on the this month yeah I'm just saying I don't know I don't know what's booked out into August so we should probably check with them and see what they're planning on doing too and and engage them as a part of the process does anyone have does anyone have a problem with either the third or their 10th as being the dates to investigate I have no problem with either one of the days no all right so so Eric if you can can you get with the recreation committee commission and see if they have any anything scheduled for either one of those days and if they do we'll try to put it on that date so if they have a
potential concert we'll sit there and kind of coordinate it together and Okay then if this if all of us would like to work together to figure out what we would like to include in let's try to make this as Community oriented as we can and get as many people as we can there are we gonna in go ahead Paul I was gonna say we should probably invite Steve we people you know and we can invite any of our Representatives it would be no problem oh and by the way Steve we made the library was very nice yeah do we W to I mean I don't know what what we're thinking about for that day but maybe do we want to have a little entertainment for the younger younger generation like a well let's get the date and then we'll figure all the rest of that out yeah I think the rec commission can really help with that CU I like I I second your your your suggestion Paul like the balance house and I mean even get Jeff balard and like the the community garden and stuff because people could check out the garden and all the things we have going on so I think it be I think it'd be kind of
a good thing just to kind of bring everything together and they can give tours we can do stuff with the fire department well with Eric being away for two weeks I just feel like we have to jump on this but he's also G he also has to close in on some stuff while he's way so Eric I'll work with you on this to keep the ball rolling okay okay and the wreck commission does have a meeting tomorrow night so I can try to ask that question of of Carol and get her seeing whether they have a commitment on either of those days and figure out what that would be okay anybody else have any other issues related to this grand opening figure we all work together and make it'll make it work yeah and we can also Diane granier
has a note in our chat we can also work with the library committee and we can also work with the town Scott yans and open up the museum for that day maybe and sit there and see what we can do okay I think that'll be excellent we all work together on that one okay so at this point you want some sort of barbecue slash cookout do what would be your preference in terms of time like four o'clock noon what is it do you want to do lunchtime do you want to do more dinner time what is it that you want to do well why don't we plan on doing the opening and the shovel turns at noon and then let people come and go during the day especially if we have the bounce house and you have different things and then if you're GNA have a concert you're gonna have the concert all up four o'clock five o'clock six o'clock yeah let's let's talk to recommission and figure out what they want to do first because I my my ideal times would probably be like 4 to8 or 3 to S something like that that's fine y let's find the date need to get the seniors involved in this somehow find something for them not sure what yet but let find the date first yeah they would they would probably enjoy the band I would think yeah yeah it's the number of come depends what kind of band you get you get death metal probably not listen don't you never know they you know they they are very open-minded our seniors I know that the one they have the library sponsored concerts that those
are good a lot of seniors are out that those are the ones I've gone to I know yeah I mean is is that what you want or do you wantan a like a jazz Trio well I was gonna say wine and cheese and then have like a jazz Trio playing in the the community the big room of the building but I'm thinking I'm thinking of fiddle like some blue grass maybe we could get James Taylor if you really if you're serious about Blu grass Amy or lamasi will she can hook us up with some blue grass bands if that's the way you want to go I don't have a problem with that I like blue
brass let's get a date and then we'll all figure out what we can do so and and Jeff Murray is 100% right have the rec commission sit there and you know communicate and we'll talk to the seniors and we'll talk to the library and we'll try to get everybody involved and participate in this and Paulie you're in charge of the music my recommendation was only a recommendation right and it the only thing I will say we're not doing is we're not do well I would do jazz but we we we'll have a little wine and cheese for you Eric if that's okay all right I'll Supply my own wine I I wine plenty so that's not a problem there you go okay let's move on to item 8D Board of selectman future goal meeting can we do that at our next Board of selectman problem we can but that could end up being a pretty big time suck that might not be a bad
thing to do as a standalone meeting if you were going to do it as part of a regular Board of Select meeting one of my suggestions would be that every Board of Selectmen member comes with one idea they want to see implemented in the next two years and start with that as the basis of your meeting well let's get some input from everybody else would you like to do a special meeting would you like to do this separately would you like to have wine and cheese at my house and have the meeting I mean what are we doing related to I I think it should be I think it should be a separate meeting so we don't feel rushed to get on to the rest of the agenda I think if we dedicate a solid hour to it or hour and a half in person somewhere then that we just don't feel inclined to rush through it to get get on to the of our business why don't we schedule it for August in the new community center okay I mean I would like to see some emails from everybody to say you know maybe we're all on the same page you know like maybe we just send a note to each other saying our top three priori is like something we'd want to work on and then we can just align all those and see what you know I mean we may be all alined on our
priorities okay so hob up before the next meeting Jeff we all sit there and shoot a a copy all or send an email to everybody about what we'd like to see the the town tackle and get accomplished yeah we can roll that up and then we'll hit them one by one and we'll decide what our priorities are all right so before our our let let's do this before our July meeting we all shoot an email to each other and then at our July meeting we'll set a timeline or time for an in-person meeting because I do think Paul it would be good for us to have this as a in-person meeting I think it would be good for us to have it at the new building think it would be positive okay okay anybody else have any other issues on that or want to further discuss that okay okay let's move on to AE discussion regarding the route 316 design Eric what do you got okay so I apologize I did not get it to you
earlier I only got this thing about one o'clock this afternoon but Barton and Le Judas finally gave me back proposal for just the to get us to basically 60% design phase piggyback on the existing RFB this would cover full-blown land surveying the wetlands delineation and spend the bulk of the money on site development in other words design of the actual getting to a more finalized engineered design of the trail that uses up the remaining grant money that we had in our our Congressional not congal legislative appropriation it will still leave us short of final design but it gets us a long way towards it and it's probably you know five or six months work and gets us to the point where it goes to do for full-blown
doot review so that's what I'm shooting for at this point and then probably six months down the road we're going to have to figure out where we pull funding for to get us to 100% design because while we have two and a half or $2.9 million in construction funding lsip doesn't cover design so a lot of the design is covered via the the legislative appropriation but there will be probably some money Town money and we can talk about that in the future whether we tap Lo siip for that or what how we get there so but what I would like now if you're guys are okay with it is a motion to allow me to sign a engineering contract with Barton and ludus to spend the last $42,500 of our legislative appropriation to get that project to the 60% design phase and just so we understand it it is a significant amount of money there's a contract with Barton Le Judith that we're not going to run a all of our purchasing guidelines we shouldn't because we basically we went to RFP to hire an engineering firm to get us through this process so the the first phase of it essentially was get us to the grant writing stage get a preliminary design proposal pick a root understand the m major issues and do initial survey work and then this is the second phase of that which is we've now got the construction Grant now we have to get a finalized esign as long as you're telling me that we're good on the purchasing policy yes
we're good on our purchasing policy up through this point all right talk about that again when we have to actually start spending taxpayer dollars which might occur in six months but we can talk about the timing of that and you know whether we wait and budget for it fiscally or whether we go after one of our existing pots a month but there's nothing we're we're doing as far as this that violates our purchase policy okay anybody El any other questions for Eric related to this okay so I'll make a motion that we how do you want to phrase Derek that we pay or that we I mean you've already I would just motion to authorize me to sign you know a phase two contract with Barton and Le Judas so I make a motion that we authorize the Town Administrator to sign a contract for designed services to get designed services to 60% on the Route 16 route 316 design project project that wased terrible I really screwed that one up but thank you for seconding that bad motion Paul all right anything else on this motion all those in favor by by okay let's move on 8f public information meeting for the lon Hill Road Bridge right I sent this to you separately and we did put an invite up on the I think the town's Facebook page there will be a public informational meeting on the L Hill Road Bridge Project and I also sent to the the PDFs in the slide deck U for that presentation so it would be nice if a
couple Board of selectman members came but not strictly necessary what's the date Eric again really good tough I think you're right but I'm not positive on the top got it packet so basically at this the company will go over the proposal the Reps from the Connecticut do will be there and after that we will select you know kind of based on their guidance unless there's a major objection to it they have a preferred construction type based out based on cost and Longevity long-term maintenance which is what was included in the packet in in that slide deck so they present that they get feedback from the public it's one of the requirements and after that do will sign off on the bridge type for that project and that
will essentially be the 30% design phase for that project then there'll be several on-site Mee ings and everybody will from the utility company on down will provide additional information as well all the various different Departments of do and then it will be assigned to a company to do the actual bridge design so that's kind of where we are in the process for that bridge but the public meeting is the next part okay anybody else have any other questions related to that item okay we're going to move on to 8G wck Trail Grant award so at this point this is just a notification to all of you that we did receive the wreck Trails Grant which I was kind of stoked at I did not
think I was going to get it because I had had some conversations with Bruce Donald who is one of the people that's on the selection panel and this program gets an enormous number of applications so I was quite happy that they were willing to fund the design portion and the way this works is typically if they fund the design they will come back a couple years later and fund the actual construction there are a couple other programs we can look to for funding for this once we've got a full-fledged design but you know that's it's nice that we were able to fund this because the design would have been expensive enough I wouldn't have I wouldn't have tried to do that with just Town dollars so that's all I got on that unless you have other questions regarding that no congratulations great job it is something I Jeff Murray had some an interesting email and some interesting ideas we should sit there and all think about things that potentially could happen back there I mean it is Big property and you know I know you're thinking of it just the trail but might as well thank big Eric and see if there's any other things that can happen with it all right we're going to move on to item 8h discussion of the Bunker Hill Bridge construction so the only thing I really wanted to say is that the
town has recommended to the Department of Transportation that SLR be retained for the construction inspection and construction management for the bridge project we did interview four you know four firms and it took a while to get that together because the do had to actually approve the interview panel to make sure that we had good enough interview ease to make a decision that they would be happy with so we did do that we had nine applications of which we interviewed for and we picked SLR primarily because the Chief Inspector they have assigned to the project has a really good track record of getting things these things done you know relatively quickly and and they keep the paperwork straight so we we had the review panel we recommended SLR the Department of Transportation said that's fine so now we're we had the first scheduling meeting with
SLR between SLR close Jensen and Miller and the do and myself and now we're waiting on SLR to get the the paperwork back before they can be officially hired we are looking at advertising this probably you know in October time frame again for a February 16th or 15th start date so that project is on track the only thing that is a concern is that even though it is fully funded from both the federal and state dollars there is going to be a time frame between when the State dollars and federal dollars are applied for and when they when we get reimbursed so we are going to have to front the money for
various different stages of this project and we have to anticipate you know at some points fronting up to a million dollars so Cheryl and I have talked about that Cheryl really thinks we want a line of credit at a bank to do that as opposed to just trying to take it out of the you know the essentially unexpended fund balance so that's going to be a conversation she's going to be having with the board of Finance about you know the possibility for doing that and we've got plenty of time you know it's it's a long way off at this point questions on that okay hearing none let's Mo on to our next item nine approval of the meeting minutes for our May 13 2024 meeting yeah yeah for the Park Dog issues sorry you're right I did miss that 8i dog and litter ordinance this is something we talked about last meeting that we wanted to add and and discuss about doing a minor ordinance about the dogs on the field so I thought we might want to include it for some discussion today I'm assuming they're dog there's still dogs down there we're still getting complaints from yeah I just I saw a post today somebody had her doged out on it was actually on the the softball
field they were in the fenon area on the softball field so I don't know what's a good solution to this but we should probably have a quick discussion and decide what we want to do we also have a littering issue down there people are dumping all kinds of garbage down there apparently yeah but that that's been going on for years I know but I just wonder if we should put some teeth into it and then actually put some cameras up there that can record this the activity so well the question is I'm I'm all for it the question is what is the enforcement of it like what is the fine what are we going to try to do and we should think about that Jeff I'm all for it whatever I mean what's an acceptable fine the 100,000 $250 yeah probably something like that two yeah well let's find out if that's acceptable on a minor ordinance standpoint for the total dollars but I listen I what whatever it is it's just it's just how the enforcement policy of it goes forward I mean that's really key I just think we like dumping or littering we probably should put something in place too because I mean we've had issues with people dumping things and if we can find out who dumps
it and we can enforce you know some sort of fine then I think I mean it would at least cover the cost of Public Works having to go clean up tires and other kind of things that are dumped along sides of the roadway like especially where the rail trail is so so why don't we Eric you and I can get with attorney O'Brien between now and our next meeting and try to draft something that would be potentially acceptable to everybody and let's talk to him about what the maximum and minimum amount of fees would be so we have him draft it and then we plug in the fees that we feel are appropriate so that we can ticket someone yeah we just put signs
down thing like ordinance blah blah blah $250 fine for littering or you know dogs on the field and the signs up and they break it and you know the the trooper has some teeth I do think though that one of that is not what Dennis would consider a minor ordinance I know basically said anytime there's a fine involved that's not a minor ordinance so that would have to go to public meeting to approve and I don't have a problem with that I'm just I don't have a problem with it either because I think the public at large is probably in support of this so I I don't think we have a problem getting that past this is what we're attempting to
do well it's something that's on the radar so the issue ends up being when do we want to go to public meeting with something like this and is it the only item that we're going to public meeting with so let let's get Dennis to draft it and Dennis does have an issue of minor and major ordinances and what would be currently required to go to town meeting but yes we should be doing things like this so let's let's get the draft have Dennis advise us what he thinks we should do and if we have to go to a town meeting to get this passed then we'll we'll try to schedule it I think I think there's enough people in town that
are for it that we would get enough support to pass it so I think we should just do it and get it get it drafted let's just move ahead now were you talking specifically on the field are you talking townwide or what's your range I mean I think I think I think the thing for the dogs should be you know I mean would we ENC incor Encompass the school Community Center area because I I don't know if we're going to allow dogs to just I mean if people are going to be using the community center area in Recreation then I think it should probably be Town property I mean a town like we should probably designate you know the ball fields and probably the school proper Town Hall complex I mean because I don't
have any problem with people taking dogs on the trails on Town property but I mean any place we have grass or a lawn or people playing sports it's there should probably be no dogs in the area and the littering I think it should be townwide like a dumping or a a dumping or a littering ordinance would probably be acceptable to me any I I took a picture of a sign that's in Windom you know leash curb clean up your dog it's required by law maximum five $99 fine ordinance and you know sections blah blah blah so they have it in place down there Scott could you send that to to Dennis so because I'm sure Dennis would probably be familiar with that so he could probably use that as a the benchmark he probably drew that up yep so it' be
something we could Benchmark off of it's a nice picture I should send it to all of you it's a picture of a dog and you know the owner cleaning up after the dog okay yeah CC Dennis too so he knows all right I did notice I did take a walk around the ball field with the athletic fields the other day and I did notice on the outside of fents on the perimeter alongside the river at least four instances of dog excrement that was on the ground so well but I'd rather it on the outside than the inside but yeah I just don't want it on the playing the playing area where there's you know there's people going to be playing soccer and you know softball and other I mean the picture I saw today on Facebook had the dog was right in the softball complex so we need we need to address it okay and that but I'm not sure we have the authority to address that because that's not our property but aren't we don't we have a use agreement yeah but the use agreement doesn't allow dogs on it yeah but we should probably I mean we could probably talk to hop River Homes and and work you know I'm sure they don't want to see dogs on the property either so they would probably be supportive of anything that we put up or an ordance they don't
want anybody over there but the girls yep period so I I think they would be supportive of whatever we did regarding dogs okay any other issues related to this item no I just want to get the ball rolling on it that's all let's go I item N9 approval of meeting minutes from 5113 2024 I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of May 13 2024 I'll second Scott seconded further discussion all those in favor I I okay the treasurer's report we did that item item 11 the tax collector's report I would tell you I liked the information on the top delinquent
report very enlightening yeah there's a lot of money to go after okay okay anybody have any other questions related to Tax Collector's yeah like almost a million with all the fees extra re there any refunds that we have to approve Eric I thought there was one I'm going down through it hang on a sec I guess I I do not see it so let's say no okay item 12 the departmental reports cessor report anybody have any questions related to any of the individual reports Eric did we ever get with the assessor on a list of the largest taxpayers for Motor Vehicles I did not I did ask him for that but I don't have so that's on me for not following them we get that for the next meeting anybody have any other questions on any other reports that were provided okay I was I was at the transfer station on Wednesday are are we having any issues at the transfer station even though I know it's not on this departmental report are we good with coverage Eric are you happy with where you're at yeah we are good with coverage Dominic's supposed to be coming off is I gotta get a release from him for we don't need he he's at the end of his period when so he's technically cleared by his doctor understood we don't need to talk about that stuff I just want to know that you're good with coverage yeah I'm good with coverage the one thing I do have to do is I have to get off my ARs and sign the contract for the renewal the transfer station
contract renewal because that's coming up as of July one so have there been any significant increases in the Tipping fees or anything I mean I'm assuming that's the contract you're talking about yeah I I mean there the the biggest thing that is up significantly is the cost to dispose of recycling because the recycling Market is basically tank and that's kind of why we went to the separate compactor or the separate dumpster for cardboard because they're taking cardboard away essentially for free so it doesn't count for J onri Recycling so with that I think we're keeping our costs down fairly reasonably there are some escalators built into there to to the contract which I'm not really happy about but they were all negotiated with the waste management Consortium that were part of which is mid neok so I don't think we're going to do any better and our cost per tonnage to get rid of stuff is still lower than most of the municipalities in Connecticut in other words that contract through cassella is still better then I think we would get if we started pursuing other options so okay anybody have any other questions related to any of the Departments all right we'll move on to item 133 correspondence any correspondence no okay let's move on to item 14 public speak we have Diane grer is our loone survivor there I am can you hear me now we can oh good I don't really have anything to say except the good meeting you guys conduct a very good meeting I'm always impressed with how you keep it to the point you don't get
sidetracked very professional and makes us proud thank you very much good job thank you thank you Diane I would I would like to a little shout out to the residents who are trying to make some little parts of our town a little prettier there's some flowers that hopefully will Bloom and and look very nicely and I think the picture that I took what did it say one second oh here it is picture said this Garden was created by volunteers for the enjoyment of all and Diane thank you very much oh I understand from what I hear there were there were 16 volunteers that planted that Garden in an hour and a half it would they did a really good job
and we are now currently looking for somebody to volunteer to mulch it donate Mulch and spread the mulch on the on the Over the Garden so they say it be a thing of beauty next year for sure hey Dian I just have a quick question for you did does anybody contact the dot to make sure that they don't mow that section it looks like a freaking Garden if they they well from I just people just do crazy stuff and and then they're I just want to make sure that they don't mow it okay accident I I I heard that it was being mowed by the neighbor across the street is who had been doing the mowing on that that piece of property because it wasn't being mowed properly okay I just don't want to make sure that somebody doesn't destroy your hard work that's all just it wasn't my hard work because I didn't I don't you you were the organizer so I don't get my hand dirty I don't get my hands dirty the organizer I just sure nobody destroys anybody's hard work I want it to be I want it to be known that I did not sit there and single out Diane as as one of the volunteers just make Point Clear we don't want get we don't want to get anyone in trouble we want to support Good Deeds by our volunteers and Eric if you could please make sure that the state allows the flowers to bloom it would be appreciated and make sure that our own intern group doesn't you know let's see what it looks like yeah
because if it's a town I just wonder if it's a Town Road and it's forking right there is that town property or is that State Property I think that was the basic original question yeah that's why I'm just I'm not sure that's why I was wondering the is the issue was is that state right away or town right away and to ask permission was way too hard for either one of those two groups so it's from what I understand it's called gorilla gardening where you plant a garden on property you don't own and there were many people in town there were 10 more people who said they were going to come and didn't show up that day so we were going to have 26 people there planting that little strip it it was a wonderful thing PE people really took to that and I've had lots of suggestions on where I should be planting other gorilla Gardens and that's not going to happen so I I would just say if you're going to
be planting around other Town buildings before you do it check in with the beautification commission because I don't want to get in another case where somebody does something really nice for the community and then the beautification commission gets all pissed off rips out everything they've done and redid it their own way which has happened now twice so I appreciate everything you've done done it looks fabulous and I'm all for it but just I'm not the one you have to worry about pissing off with the beautification committee I understand the beautification committee was on board and notified about this so they were yes and I have been asked to plant blackeyed Susan's down at the Monument Park right over here by this little thing it would look no like I say I'm not a gardener my my garden skills go to you dig in the dirt till you find a worm and then you go fishing that's I don't guard the other things I was going to say you should consider is that several of the manufacturers make a wildflower mix that was suggested and that's one good way to get a wildflower
patch established the problem is over time like it looks really good the first three or four years and then more and more we weeds keep getting so it's like but for a short term for a couple of years you can make something look really fantastic that way in the future okay one of the places that was pointed out to me which I'm not going to do is in front of the public works department where the the big orange plow is there's sidewalks and there's some funky little it's like two foot piece of grass that gets m i mean it's very small and which would be a great place to Garden on but I think what why is that little grassy area there why isn't it this sidewalk you know that's a very good question and I've asked myself that question numerous times I've been grouped by it all right Diane thank you very much for that enlightening public speak it was wonderful okay thank thank you all for all you do and thank you for having the zoom meetings so that I am able to catch up on all the good things that are happening in our town thank you you're welcome I don't think there's anyone else for public speak so if there's no one else whoops my phone decided it didn't want to work with me so we are now on to and and Eric that's whole just as a side thing the whole state document in our agenda package the legislative actions very very helpful interesting to read just as a side note so we're moving on to item 16 adjournment motion I move toj all right before we leave I just want to say I
think I sent an email out that I won't be around next month I'll be in Iceland in the Wilds of the middle of Iceland and I'm not going to be able to zoom in from there no so it won't be around next month all right appreciate that and yes we did I did see that so no problem have fun an don't the volcano no no we're going into the center of the country the volcano is way off on the western edge make sure you go to the Blue Lagoon or go to a hot spring we're gonna go to Hot Springs just not the Blue Lagoon but go to to commercial you got it okay who seconded the adjournment I'll second it Jeff muray did okay all right all those in favor I I very much enjoy your evening you too cheers yep