okay all right thank you Eric I'm going to call to order the town of Andover Board of selectman regular meeting for Monday September 9th we're going to get started at 7:02 PM and our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the IT stand One Nation God all right thank you very much one second okay and I know we have a big crowd today I'm gonna make this announcement at the beginning of this meeting I know we have resignation of Paula King from the board I do not intend to appoint anyone at this meeting
this is our first meeting it's only been you know 20 some odd days since she submitted the res resignation we're going to continue to take applications and we will sit there and have a more robust discussion next meeting allow everyone who put their their name in to give a five minute overview or whatever they choose to do and we will vote on the replacement at our next meeting so I'm just making everyone aware that before we get started so that we don't have any confusion right so now we're going to move on to it's public speak really should be first so we're going to move to public speak number three and we're gonna start with Kathy and Mike pazi good evening I submitted my last Board of slman report on transportation for this meeting and I want to thank the board of slman for their past support greatly appreciated all these years the seniors had their first cheer yoga today and it was an
excellent turnout our teacher is local and she's extremely knowledgeable and told us all the things we were doing wrong and all the things we could improve on so it was really a fun day so I also wanted to say that while people in general have commented on how lovely the new building is the top question seems to be will there be an electronic door opener from the outside door to get in it seems that their complaint was it's difficult for the seniors using Walkers and those with canes understanding was all municipal buildings had to be Ada accessible that's the American with Disability Act and The Lost state that local governments new build or when you're altering any facility they must make them accessible for any disabled individual so perhaps you can think about that I mean then maybe there was no money or something the other thing is I've received complaints about today about residential noise level with regards to decimals too loud for neighbors and the exposure to 85 decimal points is supposed to be considered damaging to human hearing and any noise exceeding 70 decimal points considered disturbing for a neighborhood so the perhaps the border of sment might consider this information to help seniors in the future I think that the question is is this particular strategy and I do hope that I have the opportunity to speak to Eric on this because I think he's aware of this and I do believe that the senior can be appeased with just a simple phone call the other thing is oh the seniors have met and they would like the bard of selectman to
consider assigning an CR as our liaison since Paula was our liaison and has resigned and lastly the end over Republican Town committee have endorsed Stephen King to be the new representative on the board of Selectmen replacing Paul King thank you right thank you Mike I just checking you got anything no that's enough Mike that's perfect thank you Rachel Bowman yes you have anything for public speak no I do not okay Steve Willard yeah thanks Jeff I'm just just wanted to I I don't know if this is the the time yet or it's going to be the next meeting I just wanted to endorse Joe Godwin for appointment to the board of Selectmen I've known him for a while yet and he's got kids in the school wife works at the school and he's seems like he'd probably be the next best fit all right thank you very much thanks St Dave huitt no Jee I don't have any comment at this time okay Joe Godwin y good evening everybody Joe Godwin Board of selectman thank you just want to and Joe just so we know like if you're gonna give a speech for the position let's do it next week if you just have absolutely absolutely that's not what this is going to be just a quick introduction to to who I am and you know ask people you know this is
an appointment and I and I understand the the gravity with that so if people want to reach out to me between now and that meeting you know feel free to do that my cell phone number and email should be in the the packet so that's all thank you all right Joe appreciate it thank you Stephen oh Stephen King I'm sorry yeah first of all I'd like to thank the RTC for the endorsement really I greatly appreciate that greatly appreciate the opportunity like to point out that the Optics really don't look good when somebody steps up as an unaffiliated candidate unaffiliated is not a party okay I'd
like to just remind everybody that we have minority rules that need to be adhered to and I hope everybody understands that unaffiliated is definitely not a party so thank you again I appreciate it my contact information is available again in the packet and if anybody wants to contact me please feel free to do so and I look forward to working with the team in the future all right thank you Linda fish all set okay Susan camarado hello thank you for allowing me to speak I just want to bring briefly bring up the Reese across America initiative I had submitted a letter to you guys the board of Selectmen in early August and you approved that so I applied for and was approved to be the location coordinator for the town of Andover I submitted for the three cemeteries that we have in our area so I have put in a notice to the River East for our first volunteer meeting that will be held on September 26th in the town hall community room because I need a screen and a video to play some videos I am hoping that a lot of the people in the town will come out to support this event we have three months well till December 14th is the day that the of the Rees day so we have a few months to coordinate this get some volunteers to help do some fundraising lay of the Reese spreading the word and this of course
if nobody knows about what Reese across America means I should have started there I apologize it's an initiative to lay wath on the gravestones of veterans in all across the country and the world actually to honor them during the holiday season so if you anybody has any questions or wants to show call me or show up at my meeting on September 26 I would really appreciate it and also in for the future there is a full ceremony that we will hold at the Veterans Park on December 14th at noon so I will be asking for the bard of selectman to help support that as well and come out
and give a little speech if you would like and more details to follow thank you right thank you very much Shannon lot I'm only here to look for hopefully support for the tri board policy that Robert England and I have spent many months working on and it looked like it was on your agenda for possible consideration tonight so thank you thank you Jonathan Wright no no comment at this time okay Wayne C Wayne I'm sorry Wayne K I'm just here to listen in to what you guys are talking about I'm particularly interested in the minority representation question and if you got anything to say about the revisions to the town Charter okay Chad on the iPhone Perez good evening first lman and everyone else hope everyone's having a good night I just wanted to I heard a lot of commotion going on over the last couple of days so I wanted to actually get involved and and watch how this process was going to happen posist of being tabled at this time I just hope everybody has a good night all right thank youcome Nick Hutchinson yes I I don't know if this is going to come up anyway later on in your
agenda my item is now that the senior center senior and Community Center Director is in place is the senior advisory committee going to be convened okay Dave ganian nothing for me thanks Kimberly pan nothing for me tonight thank you okay Dennis O'Brien I'll leave you alone you don't need to talk right now I would assume okay so let's move on to item two additions in deletions to the agenda anyone can I speak please if I if if I still may there's a page too Jeff oh page two I apologize let's move to page two I have Matt excuse me Jeff yeah excuse me Jeff yeah hi I'm sorry this is a li latch resident here in town I when I logged in my I got logged in
under the name of owner so my name isn't really showing up here I can put my video up can you see me now yes I just wanted to thank you all for all you do and I would like to express my concern for keeping an appropriate balance on the board of Selectmen and as a result sending my endorsement for Stephen King all right thank you Matt Hart good evening everyone Matt Hart with the Capal region Council governments I work closely with Eric Anderson on a number of topics I look forward to making a presentation to you at some point in the future and tonight I'm just listening in thank you for all you do serving your community and and our region thank you Georgette gross hi there I'm just here to listen thank you okay I have a phone number that ends in 5475 if you unmute can you just state your name and where you live that's me lean no won skip you all right Carol Lee I think you're on twice but I have two carols all set Jeff okay you got it Joanne Ebert thank you Jeff I wasn't sure if you could see me because I did join a little bit late I'm so glad I was able to join in after getting home from
work I haven't been able to keep up with what is said I'm imagining that it has to do with electing a new board of selectman member so I was just going to add my two cents after I heard a comment from one of the candidates or one of the persons coming forward I was and I'm still proud to have been elected to serve on the board of Finance you know I had to hit the ground running and kind of make myself known and people on the current Board of Selectmen namely Adrien he wouldn't mind had said it's so great that like someone that wasn't even known got elected well you have to kind of put work into it and I probably was a little bit more known maybe 10 years prior when my kids were in the school and I was a little bit more involved at that time but that being said I just wanted to mention that I'm still proud of the fact that I did get elected as an
unaffiliated candidate I just believe in listening to every issue as they come out that's how I live my own life too that's how I've served the last three years on the board of Finance I know that everyone is going to have their own opinion but I just needed to say I wasn't planning on saying anything I was just going to listen but when that comment came up I just wanted to make it known I I understand that everybody has their feelings on politics or whatever I'm proud to have been elected as an unaffiliated had to get my face back out there again get my little brochures out there get my feelings known touch base with like the seniors the people at the school the people you know that are involved in everything so there you go I mean I just look for the
best candidate so I can't wait to hear them the night that they come on and talk about their things thank you George Jed I'm gonna come back to you because I see you're unmuted yes I finally unmuted I just wanted to support Stephen King and I'm interested in what's going to be changed in the charter but thank you for all the work you people do all right thank you and then I think the last one I have here is Marcy and I believe Marcy Miner hi no I don't have anything to say thank you very much okay all right and I I'll ask like I should have done
the first time I gotten everybody does anybody else have anything they'd like to say in public speak I think I got Miss Jeff Diane grer Diane granier how could I do that I don't know there well and you're unmuted as well so that's a good thing okay yeah high-tech I got it I I just wanted to thank whoever is responsible for having the Charter printed in the River East with all the things that are going in and taken out I hope everybody gets to read that it was a whole page in River East and it was very informative and I appreciate seeing it there and I thank whoever made that happen I think it's important that the residents read that and understand it so they're informed voters when it comes to November so that was it thank you okay we need to give Carol Lee and attorney Dennis O'Brien props on that okay Jeff I just want to me Jeff I just want to mention one thing there
were some things that Joan Hebert said when you run for an election and you're endorsed by a party either the Democrat or Republican party even if you're unaffiliated you get seated as a member of that party so it's much different than an appointment because we have kayln Greenhouse she was endorsed by the Democratic party she was seated as a Democrat and Joanne was endorsed by the Republican party and seated as a republican just to make that clear okay thank you anybody else okay so we're going to move on to item two on the agenda additions and JS do any of the members of the board of Selectmen have anything they'd like to add or take
away yes I'd like to add an executive session today before public speak to discuss Personnel that I'll second it well well do it all at one we let's do it right now I'll second it all those in favor I I I have nothing just because I don't know who that other voice was you don't have to vote this is now just the members of the board of Selectmen so appreciate it if you can all mute all mute yourselves that would be great go ahead Eric so I'd like to add 11d which is local traffic Authority discussion of the moving the stop sign to Shad else okay so I'll make a motion that we add 11d local traffic Authority Shad below stop sign I'll second that right all those second that I just might want to say that it's the stop sign on woodfern not on Shad it's right now it's on woodfern and then we want to move it same same area so it's the same spot right one discussion about one stop sign it's one discussion right it's just all right all those in favor I five nothing okay so four nothing or nothing I missed Paula already okay so executive session will be we'll put it as 17A executive session after public speak we'll let everybody speak and let them go home okay let's move on we have item four planning discussion regarding goal settings review list of current projects and grants and determine priorities for the next 3 five years
Eric would you like to lead that sure so I asked or we discussed at the last Board of Select meeting and each board member was supposed to supply one idea or one of their basically their top priority for the near-term three to fiveyear term I received one response back from an cre who indicated that she thought it would be appropriate for us to pursue a community solar project that was the only I got back in terms of feedback from the board in I sent to you directly and then put in the packet a project summary as of August 2024 of both the construction projects and building projects that are in some form either underway or just complete so that is in your project or your your packet and I also put in the packet directly following that a list of what grants that we have right now that that we are working for so what obviously we've got a lot of projects going and we have a fair amount of grant money that we've received that we're you know either spending or waiting on spending till we get a little further along so my question for the board is of those projects what are your greatest priorities and what do you want me to focus on the most because the reality is if I put a little time into all of them you know all of them are going to proceed slowly if there's any of those projects that you know are most important to you
that will be my focus area so that that's all I'm just looking for a little guidance back from the board on what things that you want me to focus on well if I look at that I mean we're already so far with Bunker Hill and so far with Long Hill so those are projects that are going to continue to move down the path with the engineering correct bunker Hill's done but just needs to get built and you put a start date of February of 2025 so we can move forward with that right correct listen you're you're only one the one that I always sit there and come back to because it's it's out there and it's not moving forward is the the building on the Old Town firehouse and I keep coming back to that one because it will add some value for us in being able to store our equipment there and if built and designed correctly will allow us to have some storage that the town desperately needs so you said there was an update on that Eric so there is an update on that I did finally get bug shipo enough that the State Historical preservation office agreed to the document the documentation we provided for the building so they have signed that off I went out and got it printed it's a little bit of a pain in the butt because it has to be
archival paper and archival ink but but I satisfied the state's requirement for that and and three copies are on the way to shipo so we basically got shipo approval for tearing that down at this point we are also doing the second part of that approval which is you know addressing the windows at where the endover historical society is which is the the museum building so that is back working I did put an inquiry into the engineer who gave us the original design for the foundation and asked him whether that Foundation would still be sufficient if we added a full Second Story to the building there they said it was I was planning on going back to the company we were planning on buying the build package from and asking for redesign for you know essential Frontage or frontal access to the building I'm guessing that is going to add considerably to the cost but if it's a priority increase storage there then that may be an expense that's well worth it so I am back working on that project is it frontal access or rear access rear access right depends where you're standing if you're in the upper parking lot do you want to call that rear axis yeah you could call that rear access that's probably a better m Eric can you put that list up on the screen so we can go over oh yeah just leave the just leave that list up okay you don't have to go through all of your details that you that's in the
package if anyone on on the meeting wants to go look at the package it's all there it's all in detail but let's just talk about the individual items Eric and where we're at and what we can do differently on any of them okay so I'll sit there and I'll go through after I read it and I I'm obviously you know the top three are long-term projects they need to be handled one at a time because we can't be shutting down any of our major roads anytime alt together at once and it doesn't make any sense run the projects finish them out so Bunker Hills first that's a 2025 project Long Hill bridge what's your expectation on that so everybody knows 2026 estimated that's probably 2027 is more realistic given the rate at which the state is moving and how many projects are in the pipeline for the state right now all right Biza Road the Culver Biza Road should be at substantial design completion by October or November of this year and then we start in on you know state and federal permitting and it's not clear to me how long that will take but I don't expect it to be you know short term you know a couple months I expect that to be six months to a year to get all the permits
in place all right so maybe on this project summary which we can put up in future meetings we just put the expected date of potential construction or start of construction so you're assuming the bazula Culvert 2028 2029 I mean I mean I know it's 2024 but how long actually I think the Biza Culver I don't think we're going to get to that in the 2025 Construction season but I think that will be done in the 2026 construction season that's probably only a three-month project it's not a real long project because it's quite a bit small the 985 th000 is the total project cost on that right that's the total project cost to the town that's half of the total that's with a state local bridge grant that will cover half the cost of the replacement and hopefully in the meantime SC that the state figures out their issues related to funding of those types of projects for small raw communities like ours and does something different because we don't have the money that has been expressed to both our Representatives as to assistance on that front so the road workor projects are just as we go Eric so those are each budget cycle right correct the multi-use pathway on Route 316 obviously we have a grant we have we you're working through the design aspect of this and then there's a lot more interaction related to the property owners and everything else that would need to go on what your what's your ballpark so everybody is aware of timing on that potentially so the issue with the multi-use pathway way is that we're going to have funding that we used from the State Legislative
appropriation that will get us to approximately the 60% design stage and then the question that we have outstanding with do is whether the dot will allow essentially a a canned Bridge package for The Pedestrian crosswalks or do we need to have an engineered plan for that so the at some point and and I think we're eight months to a year from needing to to do that the town is going to have to cover the difference in the design the design only because we have construction funding but cover the cost between what we had in the legislative appropriation and the the cost to complete the Des design and I honestly don't have a good feel for what that's going to be because it depends significantly on decisions made by the do as to what options they want for that so at some point when we're at the 60% phase and we've gotten you know more feedback back from the state we'll have to be talking about a supplemental appropriation for that probably but I don't know what that's going to look like at this point the construction's at least two years out Percy cook Trail Improvement so we're just waiting for the de to get back to us and complete paperwork and complete the agreement on that that went to town meeting and we approved the town contribution and then I need to know from do whether we can use our existing engineer who essentially designed the the phase one or the conceptual portion of that and just utilize them for the design since we already know what
their cost estimate is for doing it or whether that has to go out to RFP so at this point that is just waiting on the the de for the next step and then the ases parking lot or we should just sit there and say Town parking lot improvements because it's in it's includes the remainder of the parking lot in the town hall what's your plan on that one we G put that so at this point the reason why I put it just the ades parking lot Improvement is that the the school board still very much wants to redo the upper lot at AES we know from the previous bid as of last year that was roughly $135,000 you know cost proposal right now there would be the money set aside to do that but the school board has prioritized doing the internal work Plumbing work to restore the bathrooms that have failed in the upper part of the building so I think that's going to be funding dependent that work could be done essentially at any time you we could schedule that for next spring but we just have to make sure that we have the funding to pay for it building projects obviously we can go through each one of these but you you have Community Center upgrades we definitely want to sit there and get on the agenda I know those are funding dependent at this point in time related to some federal and state but mostly the federal funding that you're looking for is there anything on that list of anything that we need to get done what what do the athletic field upgrades mean is that the project that we're working on that's Grant funded correct that is the Steep Grant to do the pickle ball
courts in the playground and various lighting upgrades at the field okay and Scott I know you're on that committee have you gotten I mean have you guys finalized your your wish list and your designs we're trying to get the engineer to finalize the drawing okay but most of most of everything is very close to being final yes we need some some good documentation how much square footage we have for every different facet of that area right so the the big question we're trying to work through with that right now is do we hire a general contractor to do the whole project or do we act as the general contractor as the town and essentially use Public Works to do the excavation and then hire the subs directly it is possible to do that both Chris and the finance office and myself are going to be sitting through the the chro training the contractor training portion because although I've gone through the training twice for administrate administering the contractors I haven't I don't know what is involved in that in the construction management portion if we go to do that there is an awful lot of
paperwork involved it will absolutely be a prevailing wage job and it will have to we will have to do the the hire the correct percentage or assign the correct percentage to work for a minority or slash woman-owned business contractor as well as small business contractors so if we do it ourselves it's probably considerably cheaper however there is an awful lot of administrative burden and I want Chris and the treasurer on board before we think about committing to doing that he submission on that is not it's not that significant I wouldn't I know you got to get with the treasurer and but I wouldn't worry about that and it's not it's following a form and submitting it to the state to get reimbursed so that project once we settle on the design could get started and done because we already have the funding for that entire project correct and we've approved the money that the town would need to commit to that and then you would also be able to if you were the general contractor you would also be able to use the town the work
being done by public works as an offset so that is correct and that's what our intention is Our intention is to use public works as part of the town's offset anyway you know it's just a question of do we do what the town can do first and have the GC do the rest or do we pick off greater portions of it so that we're still working through right now well so so now you're considering doing being the GC yourself then Eric I'm considering it I know that's what the the group really wants because they don't want to spend the extra money and they want to get as much out of it as they can right I just need to make sure we can handle the administrative load to do that and you have the bandwidth to do it you said you didn't before well that's why I'm saying I'm willing to go through the shipo training or not the shipo the chro training the contractor portal training and figure out what's actually involved in doing it I mean so far our luck with contractors being able to successfully do the paperwork for that hasn't been too great
either so I'm not sure we're going to do any worse than most of the contractors we hire so so yeah I'm considering it okay the other ones that are on the bottom other than the Public Works fuel delivery system upgrade which needs to be discussed and it should probably be discussed at another meeting simply because that cost is not in the budget and we have to determine what its value really is but the other ones have been obviously the a plumbing one hasn't done but the a bleacher repair is completed correct the sanding of the floor has been completed correct the fan upgrade is is waiting where is it correct when is that planed to be done I don't have a date I'm gonna have to come back to the board on that one
because the cost of the electrical work required to do that puts it in the realm where we really should be putting it out to RFP which I have not done so we have to think about that one a little bit I think that's probably outside the scope of this meeting okay I would like to be part of that discussion because I would like to look at the electrical controls and see what's see what's required okay I just I just want to make sure that we're doing the right thing that's all okay does anyone else any of the other members of the board have anything they want to discuss related to these projects I just like to try to get that fan upgrade done as soon as possible because it will be a huge Energy savings especially in the winter months I agree it would make basketball practice more comfortable so let's go okay we're gonna move on to I mean do we really want it do we we'll move on to 4B determine priorities for next three to five years but we really just reviewed all those things I mean there's not anything more significant that needs to be discussed well the question was really what are
your priorities not you know I've given you a list of what we're doing right now well Eric if we sit there and we utilize the funding that that we've already gotten from the other parcels and actually execute those programs as quickly as possible I think we'd be doing a huge benefit for the community if you know as far as building projects that we that I mean there's there are there are Improvement projects that that I personally would like to see I would like to sit there and see us have a a state on understanding with the state like what the town can do and what the state will fund for the town to do to maintain the area along Route 6 which you know I've been complaining about for years because it looks like heck and I don't I don't like it there's certain things that we can do but it's not our property it just makes the town look poor look poorly it's not a good reflection on the town and what we stand for so but I don't have anything other than putting a sewer down Route Six that I would love to sit there and see and if we were going to put a sewer down Route Six it would have to be totally state funded and then it would be a whole other issue so that would be my big big wish for the town because it would open us up for some potential additional Economic Development it's not probably going to happen but I did share that with
the state representative and the state senator and other state representatives and state senators that might sit there and think of considering doing a project between Manchester and Windam but no Eric I think you're doing a great job I think that the programs and the projects are are progressing would we all love them to go faster sure you need to tell us what you need to be able to get them executed faster and then we can sit there and decide if we can spend the money and and give you the resources to do that I would also ask you to talk to no my God he worked Central I can't remember his name I'm sorry and Isley yes meeting with him tomorrow morning what you want me to discuss with listen what what what resources he can bring to the
to to assist and also what he can sit there and do to potentially bring you know some internships or interns to assist in some of these these projects because obviously he has he has all of the construction and Engineering background but he also has the interaction with the university with Central at least and potentially with Yukon so maybe there's some resources that we can bring because the biggest issue is we we sure I'd love to do all of it but it's not like we're going to throw a significant amount of additional money at any of these projects you know as an offset set so if we can find some resources that are available let's take advantage of it so Ed would be my the one person I would tell you to reach out to and see if he can direct us to an appropriate vehicle or individuals that might be able to assist you and get some of these projects moving and get some of the the basic work done without having you have to do all that detail work so that would be my recommendation but as far as projects go that's a
prettyy long list it's pretty well funded by grant money you know for what we're trying to do yeah now if you ask me the project I want dealt with it would be related to you know how the the state property that is running through the middle of our community looks and and looks terrible okay and anybody else have any other issues related to the projects or anything else that they would like Eric to look at okay let's move on to item five Charter revision the status of the questions as 5A Dennis just so we're aware Dennis O'Brien Tom attorney those questions have been submitted to the Secretary of State or for approval probably not not yet I don't know they're due not due till the 20th
of this month but I know I talked to Carol and Carol was going to do it early so I'm not sure whether they've been submitted or not I think last late last week Carol was working on putting the you know the draft report into the River East which was successfully done actually it's two pages not just one and you know we we both worked pretty hard on that last several weeks so car I see Carol is on the on the line here they have been submitted and approved oh terrific so the SEC news I'm glad I came to the meeting okay so Carol while you're still here the secretary estate approved the the questions and they've already positioned it on the ballot is that accurate yes excellent do you have a draft of you know without all of the names positioned that you can show the board
at our next meeting I probably would be able to print that off of the EMS okay that would be great just so we could sit there and see I mean the concern the concern my concern was always the number of questions you know attorney O'Brien worked took input from Jeff Murray and and myself and the rest of the board members to sit there and try to simplify the questions and make each one of the questions a little bit U a little bit easier to understand because there's going to be a significant number of questions as people go into The Ballot Box to deal with all of these issues so I would love to sit there and see how it looks and do you think Carol that it will be scannable versus will it be scannable Charter revision Item B discuss and act upon a resolution per General statute section to authorize the Town Clerk and town attorney to prare prepare timely or timely prepare and approve explanatory comments pertaining to the Charter revision ballot questions to be considered and voted upon by the electors of the town during the president presidential election be held on November 5th 2024 so je yes Dennis I just I just wanted to make a slight amendment to that I did that in in a hurry to made a deadline last week and I just gotten
back from a doctor's appointment in Rockville and I did leave out a couple of words if I could insert them or you could move to amend or somebody could move to amend it's very simple I just want to make I it's probably covered by the statute but I just want to make sure it's in in there and the second line where it says timely prepare and approve print and disseminate I would add print and disseminate explanatory comments and most of that's going to be done by our town clerk but I have the I have the authority to approve the questions and they have to be U neutral just to inform the voters you know what we didn't say in the questions just so they'll understand them better yeah what was the other what what else did you want to change is that it that that's it if you got that it was to add print and disseminate after prepare and approve with a comma in there somewhere okay so I'll get this started I'll make a motion to that we pass a resolution per General statute section 9- 369b to authorize the Town Clerk and the town attorney to timely prepare approve print and disseminate explanatory comments explanatory comments pertaining to the Charter revision ballot questions to be
considered and voted upon by the electors of the town during the presidential election to be held on November 5th 2024 someone want a second that second okay Scott person seconded that so discussion on this this is so that we prepare a detailed summary of the questions which are smaller and shorter questions so that the voters who would like to in advance review the documentation they can sit there and make up their decision whether to vote Yes or vote no so anybody have any further discussion or questions related to that okay all those in favor I I all right four nothing okay thank you thanks Dennis thanks Dennis item six a library board
directors I mean these are all have been outstanding do we need to deal with these do we have anybody that's here to talk about them Eric so at the last meeting the board had decided that they were going to in the community room and decide whether they felt whether you all felt it was appropriate because we don't have any other location for that so if you've done that then you can make a decision tonight if you haven't done that my personal feeling is that that room really isn't appropriate for the the the clock because there's no real Security in the building and you know there's so many keys that get into that side of the building that it would be difficult to maintain secure around an expensive fragile clock has anyone gone I mean listen I know from that space I don't think a clock like that fits in that building or fits in that spot I mean if it was going to fit someplace it would fit in you know I wouldn't I would go in the town hall on the way up but it's there's no place for it there's no spot for it doesn't really work I mean does anybody have any real need to want to put that clock
somewhere we gonna talk about go ahead yeah I I was thinking it could after being in the new community center I would think it'd be better in there either in that front hallway area or maybe in the that smaller room that has the pouches and such in it okay so an what what I would ask that you do if you could is if you could get the measurements and just look at where that clock might fit and how far out it would extend if you have that Jeff Ballard should be able to get them for us okay right Community guard solar panel and water pump I know Jeff Ballard has sat there and had a discussion on that I'm I mean I'm not ready to sit there and and discuss that today unless anybody else really is and wants to discuss that would you like to table that or take it off the agenda for the next meeting you can take it off the agenda for the next meeting because you can push it till later in the you know early in the spring next year to discuss that because he's not going to need any water and solar because the growing season is pretty much over and then there has to be that community garden needs to be handled by the director from the
community center from a standpoint of she test should get the information from the group running the gardens and then come back and appropriately budget for that because this has happened basically every year with Jeff Ballard coming to us with a project and asking us to do a supplemental appropriation related to the community garden and while I appreciate the good work that they do and the vegetables that they donate to the to the food pantry I would appreciate if they would sit there and get this done and Advance during a budget cycle so it can be brought to the rest of the community so since it doesn't need to be done now because the growing season is basically over and he's already got his water tank from the hose from the community center let's just move it till later in maybe even included in next year's budget cycle right okay seven appointments well we really should do resignations before we do appointments but we'll do appointments first I know in the packet there was included
the RTC letter endorsing Stephen King and there was also the letter from Joe Goodwin related to his potential his potential for that position as well I would ask did Eric did we get anything else I because I know it was just in the paper on Tuesday have we received any other letters from any other residents that would be a question for Carol I don't know of any okay Carol no we haven't no we haven't okay all right so we're going to deal with appointing the a the individual next next month to the board so obviously we as a board received Paula's resignation after our last meeting on a personal note I I want to thank Paula king she was also appointed to this board she did a phenomenal job she was very committed to it and I can only wish her the best because she was u a a great member of this board for the six years or five years that she was involved in it and
I I would like to recommend that everyone who sees her says thank you for everything she did for the town also at the same time we also received two other resignations one from the board of finance and one from the board of education so Steven fuss Steven fuss actually resigned from the board of fin Board of Education and Brian Briggs resign from the board of Finance so those are also two additional positions that need to be filled they do not come in front of us though Eric according to anything I mean so that's just for informational purposes there you go okay anybody have any of the issues related to the appointments or the resignations we'll combine them as two kay I should say that I'm Jeff I'm working on an issue pertaining to the interpretation of the minority representa minority representation rules and the state statutes the charter and a lot of details regarding the board of Selectmen and the the other two boards Board of Finance Board of Education and I've done I've completed my legal research today after several hours and I will be writing an opinion very soon okay if you can do that that would be great yep thank you item nine Town
administrator's report I did not put a written report in your packet I kind of tried to concentrate on bringing the project summaries up to date for the board as well as the current Grant List but I'm happy to answer any questions that the board has about any anything the town is doing where's Public Works and what have they got going and since they're our biggest project performers what do you got sure so Public Works just finished fixing what's been kind of a longstanding problem on Aspen Drive we've had a really significant water seat coming out of the M middle of the road that showed up about four or five years ago so they spent a bunch of time investigating that it turns out there was an existing drain pipe running under that road that at some point when the state widened Route Six it looks like they terminated the end of the pipe and when they redid the catch basins they didn't move any of the Town structures into that catch Basin so Public Works dug it up they replaced the pipe they put a su there for the water to drain into and that got repaved yesterday so that part should be addressed they there will be a the next major problem to tackle is there is a covert that runs under Gilead Road that's been causing us problems for about 10 years or so a because the Culver's too small and B because it has a big sag in the middle basic
basically the old Culvert failed and they didn't have time to fix it properly so they shoved a smaller diameter pipe up through the middle of it and it's been like that for about 10 years so the next big thing will be to shut Gilead Road down a half at a time and repair that drainage because that's that floods out the road very considerably every time we get a heavy rainfall so that's kind of next in the priority to address at the same time Abby which is a Paving Company is repaving the area behind the town hall replacing the curbing that was taken out when we ran the conduit for the new generator
and the Propane Supply to the new community center in town hall so that will be finished Paving tomorrow so those are the two bigger scale Pro projects that are going on right now and then the hope is after that to get them back working on over fixing drainage on hendy road and get back to the hendy road issues where's the Culvert on it's past the intersection of Cone Road yeah if you're coming from 316 it's past where Cone Road intersects I can't tell you exactly where on there I mean I know what it looks like but it's before you really start going downhill on Gilead all right thank you anybody have any other questions for Eric okay item 10 old business Community Center construction update and the signage discussion so the last major step that had to be done before we could go from a conditional Co to a final Co for that building was installation of the exterior lighting the exterior lighting went in oh about a week ago I went out there after dark on two occasions and took pictures of it I didn't use a light meter but I think I demonstrated to the satisfaction of the zoning commission chair and the zoning agent that there was sufficient Lighting in all the walkable areas along that so I don't think either of them has any issues with that if you remember we agreed the town agreed that once the lighting was actually in if necessary we would readjust the the large overhead lights that illuminate the front parking at the Town Hall so that has that does not seem like it's going to be necessary there does seem to be plenty of light intensity there so that's
all I have other than I would like to have a quick discussion so we had kind of decided that the sign that was proposed by Leading Edge really wasn't something that we were overly happy with so we will be working to back that out of the final cost of the building and settling the final you know we we still owe them the 5% retainage for the job so I had worked out with Paulo what I thought was an appropriate look for that sign some a little bit more modern than what Leading Edge was proposing but since Paula is not no longer a selectman what I wanted to do is show you and this is this is does not say Andover or anything like that
but what I was suggesting was that we do a simple laser cut you know stainless steel sign and attach that to the wall and I'll show you a picture if you want to see it of basically what I'm proposing but I don't feel like I want the final say in this and I don't know how you want to go about picking who's gonna design the sign or what you're going to do with that or what we're going to do with that you want me to show you the image may as well show us the image y so that was basically what I was looking at just a relief cut sign saying and over community and Senior Center I think it'd be fine I think you might want to sit there and do something you know and dimensionally but yes I have no problem with that concept do we have a sign company that can execute that for us I mean I I would find one but what do you want to do do you want who do you want designing or picking the sign how do you want to proceed with the project do you want me to just try to bring you back proofs or no what are you gonna put for a border on it Eric let's let's sit there and and Scott by email we'll sit there and we'll do what the how the text would work and then once we're all comfortable and we're all good with the the font and how it what it's saying which is pretty simple but we'll then give that to Eric and Eric can go to a sign company and the Sign Company can give us some additional functionality like do we
want a frame on this a border on this and how do we want it shaped out and so on so but I have no problem with that concept but quick question quick question y is is there electrical power nearby for the sign that we could eliminate it there is an outlet nearby because I've SE some really cool things where you can put plexiglass behind this and and put embedded LEDs in it so it actually like light up the the text and then you get like a halo around the outside of it it looks really sharp that's a very modern look all right so let let's actually do that and then Jeff that might be something that I would assume we'd have to sit there and get an electrician in because you'd want to hide all those cords so let let's sit
there agree we could do a little voltage and then just do a light sensor so it comes on at night yeah I I I like the idea it looks really sharp when you do it that way I think let's yeah I will sit there and have someone I work with do the a few graphic representations and then you can sit there and everybody can pick the one they like the best and then we'll shrink it down we'll give it to Eric to get sit there and go get a sign put on it because something like this would look nice on that building and lit would even look nicer all right okay anybody else okay 10B discussion of blight and level of involvement I know Eric put in the package a significant amount of information on the blight current status anybody got any issues related to that information no like most of it has been taken care of which is good can somebody let me know what
the status is of the house up on the top of long hill and hendy the one that was demolished and there's just a stone foundation left is that a building permit or what's going on with that property because it's been like that for months I mean I rode by there the other day and the guy was out weed whacking out front and doing yard work but I don't have any I don't know what the status is that's I think 244 Long Hill yeah is there an active permit for that is I I just it just looks like they gutted it and they just kind of left it and it's been like that for at least six months now now he's he's tearing all the bushes and trees out of there I saw this weekend yeah what's the plan is the plan to rebuild the house or demolish it I mean just seems like it's kind of in question I don't I did not recognize that on the list of permits for 2023 2024 that were in our packet that's why I'm asking the question I mean I know I don't know what the status is so can you get it to us for next next month and Eric the same thing goes with 12 Center Street I saw that there was a permit applied for but it looks like it was in a not in an approved status so where is 12 Center Street what are they doing the Old
Market far is that I mean it's demolished so they don't have to do anything relative to blight we did have a couple blight enforcement actions against it but that's been addressed so and I know he had building plans but I don't think it's gone anywhere but I don't know specific details on it so you want to know about 12 Center Street and you want to know about 243 Long Hill okay wouldn't he have had to get a demo permit to demo 243 yeah that Foundation doesn't look like it you could use it for a new house I I would say there's a building permit in the draft that's like the two the two build the two permits that I was looking at were 12 Center Street and 243 Long Hill they're both in draft status so it doesn't look like they were approved and I don't see a demolition permit for either one of them but I'm assuming 12 Center Street was demolished prior to that fiscal year right 12 Center Street was demolished several years ago so that wouldn't be it certainly wouldn't be on any current forms he also he did get a demo
permit for that yes he did yeah okay all right let's move on so we have a 10c certificate of adoption of the hazard mitigation plan that was in our package from who was it Eric was such a nice fancy plan correct it's about it the resolution is on page 30 so you have to make a resolution as a board to adopt the plan or the plan created so this plan was basically created by crog through another organization so they hired ired a different they collaborated with a different organization to produce a natural Hazard mitigation plan for all of the 38 towns in the kog region so we are obligated as a town to have a plan but we don't really have the resources to draft and come up with a full-blown plan so the the capital region essentially in in collaboration with cir produces the plan at the last meeting I sent you a or after the last meeting I sent you a copy of the plan as well as the appendix for Andover to review so now unless you have any other questions you could make you could pass the resolution and then we could submit anybody have any issues related to the
the plan any [Music] questions okay I'll make a motion that we approve the resolution to adopt the hazard mitigation plan provided by kog to the town of Andover for the town of Andover I'll second that okay any further questions or any more discussion related to the the plan no all those in favor I okay new business Jeff I'll have a copy of that probably tomorrow for you to sign and then Carol can witness and put the town cler seal on it and we'll be done with that thank you all right new business item a building department cost analysis listen I I reviewed those items and I'd like to know how many new houses were built in the town of Andover in that cycle any ideas Eric
three to five maybe I I don't know I don't know that's fine because if I do the math on this and my math is The Bu building no not pretty good the building cost analysis if you took out the school which is in here a couple times it will be lower than this but the the average cost that someone comes in and provides to the Community to town to be have their permited fees on is 28,258 that includes the school transactions which were fairly large so there were only two it appears like two houses like some some reason we get to like there's a $950,000 project for the school that they permitted estimated cost do we know what that was Eric no idea okay so if you take out the estimated cost and you took out that $950,000 and they had another one in there for the school I'd like to know what that $950,000 was that permit and I just I wasn't the roof we did the roof before I'd like to I would like to know that but what I was doing was I wasn't looking for that per se I was just
trying to take the total estimated costs for all the B building permits which was $3.8 million and divided it by the number of permits which is 136 and you get you know 28,258 so that's basically saying that every project in the community started and permitted that's what they paid their fees on so I I've always been you know I I know that that's problematic because it's a volunteer system I did like the information at the back of the packet that everybody got that this is always how I want to I I thought should do it it's on page 79 of the presentation which basically gives you know a a cost per square foot for what type of project being done and gives a a building fee for it so if you're going to build a new house it would be you know $150 a square foot and that's what you would pay your permits on it would make that department much more pay for play and be able to
support itself than it currently is doing and I I absolutely believe that that's where the direction that we should go in is to sit there and set up just a a a template and make it easy because you know the last time I started looking at this I'll just tell you I was going through a plan and and they put the square footage down one of the one of the permits was a square footage on a on a house to be built and they failed to include the second floor and they decided that their cost was X and because we don't have a structure for those types of costs no one fights back no one no one fights for the town's interest and the cost related to the town so I definitely think that the item on page 81 we should sit there and put that into place as soon as possible right we don't have to do it at this meeting but we should be doing this right the problem is that that's expensive for us because we cannot do that with permit link so if we do that we are talking about going to to the more expensive permitting software which in the past you have not been willing to do let's so this is what we tried to do
in permit link right from the beginning and we were told that basically we cannot so short of we could make the building official go through this for every single project but then we're going to start potentially running into more hours with the build okay can you for our next meeting do like an ROI analysis on what the cost of this upgraded software would be because you know if I'm looking at this and I'm going hey you know a new house the old fee would be $2,800 and the new fee would be N900 9,355 that's A7 $6,500 increase in the permitted cost which is really accurate because that's the cost that they're going to put into the building not what they're estimating and giving to the the building enforcement officer so right there
you're you're making X and I'd like to understand what the software cost is but so this was the original analysis we did that was now roughly five years ago when we were putting the software in to begin with so what we did was basically obligated the contractor to put down the correct amount and had the building official review it to decide whether it's correct or not and how many times in your knowledge has the building official sat there and and corrected an estimate I don't know that's not a question I've ever asked so so what I'm asking is that you sit there and get us the cost of the software upgrade that would be required for us to sit there to go to this type of pering fee structure and then we can sit there and decide what we do at our next meeting right okay so you're unwilling to cons consider either of the options that I put in there which just increase the fee basis for reach permit which would accomplish what you were trying to do I still think what you end up with is you end up with a a voluntary system for people estimating costs and if you sit there and give them a higher fee they're going to try to estimate their cost lower it's just it's just human nature it's not anything other than that so I'm asking you to sit there and give us the cost of the software because I've always been a believer that if you just
charge by the square foot then the only analysis that someone's doing is looking at the plan and and trying to verify that their their house plan square footage is right or their deck plan square footage was right and you know so on and so forth so let let's talk about that at our next meeting just one point had a question on a minute ago about what they spent 980,000 on 25 School Road that's the community Senior Center so Eric we put in a permit for that and zero cost of course oh so I was on the wrong address and there you go so Eric has been putting permits in and I had the wrong address so we are what what is our School Road address well I put 25 into Google map and it came up with the the empty lot there that's now the community Senior Center Elementary School is 35 school is 35 yeah the community center is 25 25 in the town hall is 25 school grad no the town hall is 17 school grad 17 School Road I can't get my School Road addresses together so that is a town that is a town permit that's okay Town permit for $950,000 to take out of our total $3 million so okay let me do the math for everybody so it's gets gets worse so 3843 161 minus 950 calculated didn't like it anyway it's not good so the cost the
cost per project in our town is being estimated in an extremely low number right we're wasting money every day every time a permit is done we're lost 20 $1,430 is the cost of a project in our town to sit there and do it it just seems seems awful low to me and I know Eric I I I had this discussion with the previous you know when I first got on the board with the building in you know oh my God it's so difficult to do I I just last we knew the bu Bolton building inspector was going to get together and re-evaluate all the fees the last which is what Eric is doing in providing all this information which is very helpful if you looked on page 75 that was Rich's recommendation for what the fee structure should be yeah he he was upping the building he basically uses that when he reviews to decide whether the cost basis is reasonable or not for what they put into permit link okay so I I would just like you to sit there and provide
the I'd like you to provide the cost of the software upgrade that we would need so that way we can make a a reasonable decision as to what we're doing okay 11b the tri board policy on the a capital projects so I know I had talked and i' had heard about this coming through I definitely want to read this in a little bit more detail and understand what it's trying to say I understand the basis of it I want to get with the town attorney and understand what it's doing related to the board of Selectmen and how the monies are being and the capital projects are being approved because we do have a capital project program that's in place and the board of education is on that Capital Improvement board so I'd like to read this and understand it and obviously the Board of Education and the board of Finance were driving this and so it's now on the board of selectman's desk and I'd like to table it and move it to next meeting so we can sit there and and vote on that or decide what we ask them to refine anybody else have any problem with that no kay item 11c the king property lot line agreement Eric where are you related to all of these components obviously this came to us in August I think Dennis could probably answer that better than I at the point it's a legal issue coming up making sure you have the descriptions right in that
that's not an Eric thing that's a dentist thing I think all right well it is now Eric but I'm hoping that you know as I said to you before that you and I could sit down and work on it together because I am not a meets and Bounds guy and you know you are and I would like to sit down with you and go over it and then respond to Mr King's attorney Mr Tom McDermot who sent me those papers so I'd like I could I could find some time soon unless you're off busy studying to be a general contractor I'm trying to be funny sorry that wasn't funny I can do better than that but I'm but I'm but I'm gonna I'm gonna stop okay so anyway so can the two of you guys get together and sit there and respond to attorney McDermot so that we can sit there and have this wrapped up I'm ready okay pretty soon so Eric please organize that with attorney O'Brien so we can get that done and if we need to move that to
attorney brance or something else let's talk about the costs related to that and get that if it has to go that direction let's move that forward right okay anybody have any other issues on any of those items no okay let's move on to item 12 the approval of the minute how to do D Shad blow traffic oh I am so sorry 11 D local traffic Authority and the shablo and and what is the other Street woodfern woodfern stop sign there we go Eric what do you got so so you asked me to put it back on the agenda after the last meeting after one of the the neighbors indicated that he had an issue with moving the stop sign so I did put it back on I did drive it multiple times from each Direction and I wrote it in each direction from my bicycle and I walked across the crosswalk so I mean honestly I think there no right or wrong answer there I can tell you that there's zero data in the crash Conneticut crash repository indicating that there have been any accidents at that location under the current configuration we have just chip
sealed the road so there is no Stop Bar so now would be the ideal time to do it if we were going to change the location the only thing I would suggest is that one of the ways that you can make it make it obvious which is the burden side the sign with the stop sign is to do a center line through the intersection and just not include that leg that makes it fairly clear when you're driving you know who's got right away over who so I would suggest doing that and I would also suggest just just actually right now it's a an unmarked crosswalk I would convert that to a marked crosswalk since you know that just gives it a little extra visibility both both ways broon I thought last time we talked about this we're gonna put another stop sign in well so originally you were going to move the stop sign and then you wanted to talk about whether you should move it or whether you should add an additional one so that's you know I'm the local traffic Authority design you guys are the local traffic Authority so the only thing I can give you is what I gave you in that that letter I sent you and was correct I had the roads backwards I just reordered the slides in correctly so the the first one shows the existing stop sign and the next picture shows the the sight line coming from the other
directions and then the last couple show the crosswalk itself so at this point you know it's just a question of you guys at the last meeting indicated that you were going to go drive it or walk it and look at it so it's it's up for your discussion I can give you my thoughts if you want you live there let's go I took I took a good look at this and I agree with Eric I think we need to Mark the crosswalk going across we replace the stop sign on woodfern with a yield to pedestrian sign coming up dogwig up to the crosswalk we put a yield to pedestrian sign Shad blow coming up to the intersection we put a stop sign and I think that'd be problem solved because that that that road going it's it's basically Dogwood to Shad Dogwood the wood Fern is basically a continuous Street and I think if we just Mark the crosswalk with yield to pedestrians and we put a stop sign on Shad blow I think it would be I think that's probably the best thing to do just from looking at it and from my standpoint right and you live there are you okay with that yes that sounds good Scott anys oh I went up there that sounds like it'll work yep okay it's similar to what we did
down at the lake where with lake was it was it Lakeside Drive Right that crosswalk there and you got the signs and or Island Street yeah whatever that street is where we have the crosswalk go to go over to the racks for The Kayaks just do something similar to that you'd be fine Eric did you write that down so you want yield pedestrian signs on Dog Wood and wood wood Fern so just marking the crosswalk and wood firm and then we just put a stop sign on Shad B coming up so we allow FL FL traffic along dog with the wood Fern and that vice versa going straight then we just put the stop sign on Shadow we just move the stop sign is that where people come from
because to me it seems like why would somebody drive all the way around if they're going to Wood Fern why would they go up Dogwood to get to woodern you know if the majority of traffic is coming directly up from Route Six it seems like they're gonna take the first road to get it not the second well take the first road just hit the stop sign that's it I mean at the top yeah you just I mean it's a T intersection right you figure it's a T intersection yeah it's a T intersection so the top you know when I go there I don't really see it as a T intersection it feels like kind of a why I mean I see what you're saying but I see the majority of traffic you know that's going to Wood Fern you know is coming up Shad blow not dog but I may be wrong I don't live there you know no honestly when I come home from work from East Harford I go up Hy and then I come down I go up Dogwood
right St through but listen I'm I'm I'm not I'm not a resident of that street but those two Dogwood and woodfern run into each other right they're yeah it's basically the one road I mean I don't even know how they that's why I'm saying just Do the yield of pedestrians on that just like we do on the rail trail Crossings anything else I would just treat that is a contigous road so somebody somebody want to make the motion to get that done are you gonna make me repeat that Mo I'll make a motion to put a stop sign on the end of Shad blow and a yield for pedestrians coming up Dogwood with a pedestrian crosswalk on Dogwood that good at Jeff m that's fine with me if that gets this problem solved and gets it off our agenda it isn't I don't know doesn't look like a y to me looks like a t it's a t it's a t it's a t it's a it's a t Okay so it was seconded by Ann further discussion all those in favor I okay let's move on so now we're going to move on to item 12 approval of minute meetings I'll make a motion that we approve the 81 2024 special minute meetings 81 2024 public hearing Minutes 81224 special Town minute meeting minutes the 81224 regular meeting minutes and the 923 2024 special meeting minutes I'll second that all right any
discussion any changes anybody wants to make to those minutes okay all those in favor I I the treasurers report was included in our packet anybody have any questions related to any of the information through August 2024 so I do have one thing related to the treasurer report I apologize it did not get in the packet and that is the treasur asked that both the board and of Selectmen and board of Finance be explicitly on board with her working remotely for the period of time when she normally goes to Florida for the winter the board of Finance unanimously agreed that that that they were fine with it they didn't have any objection to that I did want to raise that same point with the board of Selectmen to make sure she just wanted to make sure you all didn't have any issues and you were aware that she intended to do that again I'll make a motion that we allow the treasurer to work remotely During the period of her Florida vacation or her time in Florida no I'll revise that I'm just going to make a motion the town treasur can work remotely as approved by the Town Administrator second that right further discussion all those in favor I okay so at at the last meeting you asked me to verify that the payments to Spring were in fact the insurance and I did and it is so I think that was the the question you had open out outstanding from the last meeting okay so from the transactions
that were done in July spring was a large amount and you were telling us it was insurance and in fact it was Insurance correct okay I'm going to give you on the balance sheet for August it's on page 111 the stiff account sits at 4 million 366 correct has there been any discussion between the town Treasurer and the board of I'll talk to Celeste obviously that's a lot it would be very beneficial if if some additional funds were pushed over to the stiff account to generate as much interest as we possibly can before the FED cuts the rates and it starts to decrease but it's still better than nothing so I'll sit there and I'll address that separately okay anybody have any questions related to the treasurers report so related to the stiff account we do what the treasur is trying to do is basically keep roughly $800,000 somewhere in that in our you know the the checking account we actually use and put everything else she has the authority of in stiff so we are on a monthly or a weekly basis transferring money back and forth between the town in stiff to maximize
the amount that's in there and minimize the amount that's kept in MN and maybe you'll know this and maybe you won't but there were two checks for Andover Elementary in August was that because July was not cut Timely that would probably be the case where do you see that you're looking in the check register yeah you have a transaction on 85 yep a transaction on 8:14 so I would just like clarification on that and if if the amounts aren't being paid timely they need to be paid timely and if they're if we've moved more money than we should over there I would like to sit there and move it to the stiff
account I I believe it was not paid in July they waited it was in August they got two months worth okay in August Eric if you can sit there and verify that and there's someone waiting to be let in if you can let them in that would be great and and I would assume just for everybody's knowledge so like if we move move to this tax collector report you know on page 120 it shows that we collected $275,000 in the month of August but if we went to the month of July we probably collected upwards of $2.5 million collecting all of the real estate property taxes and all the car taxes so July is always our biggest month and I'm assuming the majority of those dollars when available were moved into the stiff account to start earning interest correct okay so we seem to hover somewhere between 2 million and 4 million in the step account depending on where we are in the tax collection cycle and so at some point in time in the month of July we had returned checks from residents to the total of 9,392 N4 okay so that lowered our $284,000 to $275,000 and I'm assuming that that got added back into our receivables so that we know where we're at okay anybody else have any questions on the tax collector's report or any of the information provided by the tax collector I'll ask one question have we decided anything Eric on delinquent taxes and where the tax collector is at with that I don't have an answer for you right now so the answer would be now I
don't know the answer to that okay ou saw on page 147 there are one five six a total of seven tax refunds for a total of $495 and3 so I'll make a motion that we approve the tax refunds for a total of 400 $953 dated 95 2024 I'll second that okay any further discussion all those in favor I okay I'm sorry did everybody vote I was looking at the paperwork everybody good all four four nothing excellent okay Department reports senior Transportation Kathy pazi thank you very much she's not even on anymore she's left for the she left she left the building again anyone that sees Kathy blousy should thank her for all the hard work and everything she's done for the community for all these years it's her her level of volunteerism and and her her husband mics is is greatly appreciated so make sure you say thank you to them when you see him all right assessor's office transportation anybody have any questions on anything related to this the the building department anybody have any questions on the Department of Public Works information provided in the one thing I do have Jeff and I want to mention is it seems like these these sales of of surplus equipment at the Public Works buildings are not going through the town clerk for bids they're going to Public Works in Eric which they should be going
to the town clerk I feel that's the proper protocol that we should be following and for some reason we're not doing that for the sale of the tractor and believe the truck Eric where are those bids I don't believe we've actually received a bid yet so I think it's kind of irrelevant that's not irrelevant because they should be going to the town clerk like all of je we haven't received any so that's that's no problem if we when we get them can we make sure that they get to the town clerk's office and at least get recorded in because at least that way they can get stamped and dated and and everybody can be happy that they're all good yes Jay and I are both on board with that and we have every intention of doing excellent thank you all right the library report anybody questions related to the library no okay
it's very nice to sit there and see Tess is the community center director senior senator I love all of the documentation that she's providing and hopefully she's getting that out how are you assisting her Eric to make sure that she gets this out to all the residents as best we can Facebook email so you know we're kind of still discussing the best way to do that we've sat down and had G gone through webinars and gotten proposals from two vendors for essentially automating a lot of the processes of checkin and schedu so as you know we use Civic for our communications platform and our website they have a a package that will give us most of the functionality we want for the senior center and the rec center and to manage the senior Transportation it's pretty expensive we've also looked at what the majority of of senior centers in the area use which is a program called my senior center that's probably what we're going to recommend to the board I don't think we've made a final
determination yet and then the question becomes if we do recommend that what what I would suggest is we use their so they have two options they have one option that's completely free of advertising and they have another option that we allow them to place advertising on the main login screen at the senior center that lowers our costs by about 4,000 the first year and then so so basic basically if we did that we would be looking at about a $4,000 upfront cost to implement this and about a $2,000 cost per year to maintain this and this seems to be the package that the majority of senior centers are using and I suspect that's going to be our recommendation okay that's a that's a something different from what I'm after Diane graner you're on you're on the phone call you're on the phone call you're on the meeting can you
sit there and take some time and spend with Tess to share potentially ways to get the email addresses for you know your your dear Diane letter was a huge hit and it really did help get information out to a lot of the community back before you gave it up when you thought we got a little bit better with our town website but these things that Tess is sitting there doing the yoga the chair and the different events if you could sit there and work with her potentially to distribute that to as many of our neighbors as possible to get as many people participating in these types of events that would be greatly appreciated right be happy to do that thank you appreciate that thanks Diane tell me what what are her hours is she at the Town Hall 8 to five or what's
community center community figure you can get her between 9 and 3 roughly most days at the community center okay right and that would be great toan because the distribution of those types of activities to improve participation by all of our residents would be great and and and it's something that I need to get with Tess and also get Tess to get with u an this is something that you might be able to do to get with PTA and the school to allow her to sit there and access the parents as much as possible to get children to participate in all the different types of activities that are available whether they're available within Andover they're available within Hein and and the Ram Community we just need to do a better job of of getting that information out so an if you could sit there also work with her on on the school side that would be great because you know I'm a big believer that that some of it is that people don't know about and some of it is that they just need to continuously be reminded I mean it's just the same thing of doing you know little kid basketball and just trying to
get them to come together I mean we have a growing School population we should get as many of those children to participate as we possibly can it only commun you might want to also check with the library they do a lot of okay programs and things that would be great if we could consolidate as many of the groups within the community as possible to allow Tess to reach out through those those entities it would just help us build more Community involvement is she doing stuff with kids too that what you're talking she she's assisting within the recreation department her job is to assist within the recreation programs to sit there and get people to participate and to organize those and she's she she's responsible for the field she's responsible for the scheduling of the the gymnasium and working with the principal and the superintendent on those items but yeah her job is crosses not only the seniors and what they're doing but she crosses over into Youth Sports and youth activities and you know we finally have someone that is going to focus on it and what we need to do is get them as much of the information to reach out to the community as possible Right but I also want to say that what I ask test to do is to focus
number one on senior transportation and make sure that transitions smoothly number two work on the senior programming and get as much of that up and running as we can and then transition to adding community community events and Recreation I don't think we can expect her to do everything right out of the gate I think that's going to be a you know a few months down the line I kind of disagree with that Eric in a sense that she's doing all of these great flyers and I don't care for what event it should go out to everybody what I'm asking is to have the rest of the community get involved to build the database of the email addresses to sit there and try to allow people to understand what is up because not everybody walks into the town Hall and looks on the board or walks into the community center and looks on the board for those types of activities and I'm just recommending that we use resources like Diane and resources like the PTA and resources like the library to sit there and give Tess the vehicle even if it's just an email Eric even if it's just an email database to sit there and execute Hey listen we're doing yoga and we have 40 open spots come fill them and it would it's just it's not I'm not asking for her to do a lot of extra e effort she's
already done all these beautiful Flyers I'm asking for a ways to execute and get them out to the community so I mean the first thing would be to just continue to get people to sign up for the community alerts because anybody that's willing to sign up for the community alerts we can get information too but the majority of town residents do not ever sign up and don't really have any interest in signing up that's that's the problem well that's in community emails are different issue I have a question about all this information that's in the packet that maybe teth put in she did she develop these herself or did she like poach them from other towns I found a lot of conflicts in them when I was reading through them she's using templates and she's probably just creating them off of a template so if there's there's text issues then you should communicate directly to her I mean yeah I mean I found the town of Ellington listed in here yeah I mean look nobody creates everything from Whole cloth I mean everybody Nicks forms from other towns so if you have are where they're Eric it's okay an I appreciate that if you find in some issues please reach out to Tess and ask her to sit there and do that I don't even know if these have gone out I mean the only one I know that I know that's gone out is the yoga one because Kathy pazi sat there and said she did it so and if you have issues if you have issues with any yeah one big
thing she's got a thing in here about covid that about executive orders that took place in 2020 that only were good for six months you know that's a major one that she needs to take out all right you most of these forms haven't gone out to the public yet that's good what she wanted to do was get your feedback and certainly the waiver and all that stuff has to go to the town's attorney before it goes but right now Dennis is kind of overloaded so I'm waiting on submitting some of that stuff to denst well point out my things yeah that' be great and then Diane when you get a chance that would be great thank you okay I would just one thing I would suggest if you look at Hein when I lived in Rocky Hill they used to just put out a like a spring calendar or like a catalog of all the activities that were going on in the spring you got a summer a fall and a winter and you just put it out on the website with everything on
there and who to contact for each activity and and just doing that in a PDF format it's like eight or 10 pages that works better than these individual Flyers because they're going to get lost if it's just a master catalog Master flyer works much better okay let's let's work toward that if I can just comment on that when we went from the this and that which was you know email right into your inbox versus the website the big complaint was they have to go do something now they have to go to the website and they have to click those buttons where with the this and that what they liked was the email came right to their inbox they didn't have to do anything and people are basically lazy so you have to spoon feed them and so putting it on the website it's a it's a good place it should be everywhere but I think into their email is the best way to get to people directly I'll talk to Tess thank you but we also don't I mean as a town we typically only email blast those people who have actually signed up to get the information like I know if somebody sends me unsolicited stuff I send them back nasty grams and say please take me off your list that's what happens when you're cranky true listen I'm not this is not a final group of of decisions it's just these are these are ideas way to sit there and help test be as as productive in her job as we possibly can it's a new position any of the help is is is positive Diane please just go talk to her it would be greatly appreciated by me personally because I know the value that you can
sit there and bring to her and her job and an you feel free to go talk to her and talk to her about any of the information that's in there just one last comment the this and that list had 700 email addresses on it and they were all you had to contact me to get on the list they were not unsolicited but people knew you talk to me you talk to me after and we'll sit there and and try to sit there and see what we can do we'll work it out yes right we'll just work together so anybody else on any of the other issues that are here other that was it so she was the Tess was the last one that was in here okay is that accurate Eric or did I miss any of the other reports because when I look through them no I mean I guess the question is you know an said there
were some specific things she wanted changed or had concern about she can directly she can deal directly with Tess don't not important to go through in the meeting okay anybody have any other issues on there any the department right Eric any correspondence nope nothing significant let's let's do public speak so that we can sit there and move forward so Rachel Bowman yes I do endorse Stephen King as a representative for the board Selectmen all right thank you very much Diane grer thank you okay I'm all set thank you all right Steve Willard all set thanks Jeff Joseph [Music] Godwin just real quick I did submit a PDF version of the Town Charter I know there's a lot of revisions that are looking to be made in November and one thing I noticed was
getting into the website was kind of hard to to navigate through the town Charter so I went through the document refreshed it with hyperlinks and just making it easier to navigate and that's something that you know I want to look at trying to do for some of the other documents for the town and again this is separate from from anything else so if you guys have feedback for me and if I can be helpful with that just let me know thank you all right thank you Stephen King I just want to thank everyone for the endorsements I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this and thank Joe Godwin for his service and if there's anything it related that I can help with as well that's what I do that's what I've done for the past 40 Years be happy to help out in any way I can right thank you Shannon Laden thanks everyone I just wanted to say that while you're also speaking to Dennis if you have any questions about the tri board policy I've spent months drafting it and redrafting it so please ask me the questions two things I know Eric pointed out many questions to the board of Finance they've now addressed that and hopefully
we'll be considering the policy themselves at their September meeting meeting the board of education has already passed the policy so then we would pass it along for the board of selectman hopeful final consideration the only thing I'll say is that the policy was came out of the ideas from the tri board meeting and the whole purpose is to avoid in the future having any issues with capital projects at Andover Elementary School and the surrounding property so it is a compromise in that I believe that the board of education is giving up our legal rights and Eric pointed out to the board of finance that they would be giving up some of their rights pursuant to the Charter and whatnot but again it's a compromise so that hopefully all three boards are working together so we don't in the future have any of those issues thanks right thank you Wayne casses yeah I just like to throw my support to Stephen King and I know this isn't this isn't the Forum but I do have concerns about the modifications to the Town Charter and
what appears to be a power grab by the selectman thank you all right Leanne Hutchinson nothing thank you all right the individual listed as owner yeah that's that's me Jeff it's Liz low catch I'm I'm all set thank you so much okay phone number ending in 5479 it's lean again that's probably me 5475 yep it is yes okay thank you Carol do you have anything you want to add all set thank you right Joan Ebert thank you Jeff yep I have a couple comments that I want to make after listening I just wanted to clarify my public speak from earlier so thank you Jeff Murray for pointing it out I was definitely thrilled to be endorsed after I put my you know came to meetings got my face out there did a lot of things and and obviously tried to be a candidate on board of finance and was endorsed by the Republican party which I loved I loved all their support everything was great with that but I just wanted to point out that I was an
unaffiliated voter who started going to meetings again after being very involved in the town you know 10 years prior when we moved here then I took a little lapse so it was kind of funny when Adrien said that I you know was an unknown and I'm like well I'd been involved so anyways moving on from that just want to make that perfectly clear from my mouth the other thing that I wanted to publicly do for this person because she has been present at many many meetings that I've been involved in or watched is Shannon Lowden and she just kind of spoke to it herself but I want her to get the credit that is due for all the time and effort and really a lot of attention to detail coming to meetings answering questions and being available to answer questions at various meetings I know we didn't take advantage of asking her the questions during an important part you know that kind of hurts my feelings for her because we will ask certain people but not others but that's been observed in the town I have no hard feelings about that either but Shannon deserves her her flowers on this one cuz she's been everywhere so I want that to be said the other thing is you all were just talking about ideas that we can use to get the word out and you
know emails or different things with our new so proud of our new community and Senior Center where I work Manchester public schools we a while ago changed our whole email system to Gmail in the Google system which has been great for us and I think you know however you want to do it I know that the town of Andover has Outlook which we previously had but once we came on board with Gmail and Google it allowed so many things to happen and I would personally be in happy to anybody that doesn't know how it operates as far as sharing documents getting documents out there signing up creating documents having other people be able to edit the document it's just been a great thing I was really opposed at the beginning just because everybody at work gets used to things I think it could work wonders for what you're trying to do I think it'll involve you know tests reaching out to people to to gather those email addresses I know that Eric and this is you know the way that he operates and this is his personality that I've observed you know he doesn't like those
emails but people do like receiving emails because they do not have to go out for the information such as Jeff said so Google Gmail would work great for the town people could sign up things could be shared there could be groups made I mean I'd be all over that to help out if if it's ever needed so thank you right thank you very much ber lenir nothing for me at this time thank all right did I miss anyone did I not give anyone a opportunity to speak okay all right everybody thank you very much I make a a motion on item 17A executive session I'll make a motion that we move into executive session and Jeff I'm assuming do we have anyone that
we need to invite into executive session i' the board of selectman members and the town attorney present please thank you okay all right so the motion is executive session with the members of the board of Selectmen and the town attorney I'm a second that I'll second okay all those in favor I Eric can you can you transfer the ownership of this to me so as far as I know you are a co-host yeah so but I certainly can waiting L just because I'm over 80 okay we're coming out of executive session at 950 I don't believe there's any business in front of us except item 18 so I make a motion to adjourn second Jeff Mur Jeff Murray seconded all those hi hi hi all right thank you very much so we're leaving our meeting at 9:50 I'll let Eric me all right thank you guys good night good night you y bye bye