Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
December 13, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Board of Sorry about that, Amanda. We're going to call to order the Tom Andover Board of Selectment meeting for Monday, 12/13/2021. And we are going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay. Hey, Santa. You joined us. Very nice. So let's get started with public speak. We will start with Kurt Dolling. Okay, we'll move on and Joanne Ebert. All set Jeff. Okay great thank you. All set. Okay Louise Goodwin. All set thanks. Diane Choquette. Okay. All set. Thank you. S. Fern? Okay, and Jerry Wright. I'm here.
Anything to say, Jerry? You want to join? No? Well, said
everybody's great. Okay. I sent the paperwork off to all the selectmen, including yourself, Jeff, and did anybody have any questions on what I sent? I tried to update everything we're doing in the park and we're probably out of standstill now till spring. And I did check with the monument people out in Minnesota and he has put the battlefield cross has been casted. And they're going to hold off welding it until they get a confirmed date when the black granite will be available. And he thinks it's probably more towards the spring, which is fine with me. Was looking forward to going out to Minnesota in the end of February. So if it's not until March or April, that'd be fine. And I'll update you as I as I get it. Thank you very much. And Kathy and Mike Blasey.
Yes. I have a couple things this evening. I wanted to let you know that on Friday, this past Friday, we had the children at the senior at the AES school for lunch, and that the kids from the sixth grade waited on us. It was really a great fun day. And what happened was took photos, and of course the principal was there, he had okayed it. We wanted to put that information the photos into the River East. This past Friday well ended up I wrote a letter, but I, they did not allow us to put in an article or a picture because I would not give them the last name of the children, which is the rule of the Aes officials the principal and the superintendent that they do not give out their last names for children. So I was disappointed but they they had the letter so I hope the kids are.
And also, I wanted to let you know that the seniors went last Thursday Torrential Field to see the lights enjoyed it very much great great fun. We only had to take one bus. And we're joining with the local senior center centers and closing our see some of our senior activities until the new year, just to keep ourselves safe because there are that I think you all know we're on an uprise here and, and I want to just feel that we're safe I think we all want to feel that way. We would like to be together we would like to do things. And, and we're still just feeling a little uncomfortable with the increase that we have in Andover right now. Also, the bus drivers will be delivering turkeys and hams to our seniors on Friday. So that didn't change, and they'll be delivering food pantry and food chair next week. So they'll, they'll have everything they need. And the grant that I put in in the summer for the bus for a new bus has been approved by the Connecticut dot, and we will be receiving that in May 2022. I forwarded paperwork today to Eric to sign off on. And I wanted to thank Jay title. He who contacted the right people to check out our three fire extinguishers which was due for December, and three are working well, two are working one was not The one they replaced, he said, was a little bit bigger than the housing that we need to have. So they ordered the right size, and and we will get that replaced.
But there's one now. There's another one there on a loaner basis. So we're in good shape for that. And, also, the maintenance on the 2017 bus needed new tires, so and winterizing. So that's been done. I did not put it in my monthly report because it happened effect. And that's it. Okay. Mike, you got anything? No. Okay. Alright. I think we're all good on public speak.
So, additions and deletions to the agenda. Anyone? Okay. Hearing none, let's move on to item four, assessor's report by John Shaponis. Status of the revaluation and overall trends in the grant list. John?
Good evening. Can you guys hear me? Yep. Yes. Great. I'm gonna begin by providing a little overview and background information on the entire project, and then wrap it up with where we are today. And over released our RFP a request for proposals for the 2021 townwide revaluation nearly two years ago in January 2020. In February 2020 the town awarded the bid to vision Government Solutions Incorporated, who I will refer to as vision from this point on. There are only a handful of companies that are certified to perform revaluations in Connecticut and vision is one of the premier companies having performed hundreds of revaluations throughout New England and as far south as Virginia in just the last decade. Vision's also intimately familiar with Andover having completed our last five revaluations including this one. Andover this time around was incredibly fortunate as we were awarded senior staffing on this project. I was very pleased to get Steven Ferreira, who I've known for more than three decades as my project manager. Steve is on the line with us tonight.
Steve began his career for ten years as a residential and commercial fee appraisal appraiser, and for the last thirty eight years, he served as the Eastern New England district manager for Vision. As you can imagine, forty eight years in the business provides incredible knowledge and experience, and Steve has been accepted to testify in court as an expert witness in the state of Massachusetts, Rhode Island. He's obtained his revaluation certificate supervisor certification from the state of Connecticut and has completed revaluations for some of the most challenging communities, including Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, and several municipalities on Cape Cod. I worked hand in hand with Steve on this project as we drove down every street and drove down every long driveway and setting the final values on all parcels. Mimi Mackie performed much of our data entry and sales research. Mimi is a state certified appraiser who began her career in 1989 as a residential staff appraiser working directly for banks and fleet mortgage. In 2008, she went to work for Vision where she currently serves as a project manager. Andover was extremely lucky as it's highly unusual to have two project managers working firsthand on one project. Lastly, rounding out our staff was Jim Williams who performed all of our commercial appraisals. Jim began his career in '94 working in appraisal and assessment field in Arkansas,
later moved to Connecticut and began working in the municipal revaluation field here in 2000. He worked his way up to senior commercial appraiser and has been in that position for the last twelve years. It's almost hard to believe that these three employees assigned to my project in Andover this year have just shy of one hundred years experience in appraisal and municipal revaluations amongst them. Moving back to our project, as the board of selectman knows right out of the gate, just after we signed the contract, we ran into issues with the full inspection process due to the onset of COVID nineteen. In October 2020, the town modified the existing contract with an amendment that dealt with putting off the full inspections and moving
You might post your CV on this website, l I or
In October 2020, the town modified the existing contract with an amendment that dealt with putting off the full interior inspections and moving forward with a full exterior inspection. Those exterior inspections were completed between the fall of two thousand and February 2021. In March in April 2021, a callback letter was sent out to all property owners requesting opportunity to inspect the interior of the their property if they were so willing. Those those that were willing had the interiors of their property inspected. In August 2021, sales review was completed by Steve and myself. From September through October, final field review was completed by Steve Ferrer and myself. And from September to November, data entry in the final valuation phase was completed. Jim Williams began commercial valuation in June 2021 with sales analysis and exterior inspections. Commercial field review was completed by the July 2021, as well as the review of all income and expense reports that had been filed by commercial property owners over the last five years. The commercial valuation process was completed from August till September with final values being completed on 09/28/2021. The real estate grand list grew by 13.7% overall. Residential's up 15% and commercial was up 6%. And further breaking down the residential, waterfront went up 43%, whereas nonwaterfront increased by 11%. This brings us to the final phase of the project. Impact notices for all properties were mailed out on 11/22/2021, and the informal hearing schedule was created. Informal hearings were offered both live in person and tele hearings over the telephone.
In person Mary's in person meetings were scheduled in the meeting room at town hall with mandatory masks being required. Our residents were split fifty fifty as to which platform they preferred with almost exactly half requesting tele hearings over the phone. Historically, in the past, only 5% would request tele hearings. A total of 53 property owners participated in the informal hearing process, which was completed last week. After it was completed, we received, I believe, four or five telephone calls from people who got notices late because they might have been in Florida or had an issue with the mail. We're arranging for those people to to get an opportunity to have an informal hearing.
During the next two to three weeks, the properties who came in for informal hearings or raised specific concerns will be researched and or scheduled for full interior inspections. I think we have eight inspections taking place on Thursday of this week, and, some more will take place over the next couple of weeks. Once all the research and inspections have been completed, any changes, that will be made will be data entered by vision, and then the second final notices containing the informal hearing results will be mailed in mid to late January. After which, any property property owners who feel aggrieved by the assessment process have the legal right to file an appeal with the board of assessment appeals no later than 01/20/2022. Applications for the BAA can be found on the town website on the BAA homepage. The reevaluation only consists of the real estate portion of the grand list. While real estate has increased 13.7% overall since last year, our office is still working on valuing the motor vehicle grand list that was just received from the Department of Motor Vehicles last week. Additionally, we're still reviewing, reconciling, and performing the data entry on all of our personal property declarations as well.
Once we have finalized the personal property and motor vehicle valuations, we can determine what the overall increase to the $20.21 grand list turns out to be. At this point, it's still our goal to certify the grand list by the end of January and not require an extension. Once the grand list is 100% completed, I send out a memo to the town administrator and copy the board of selectmen and the board of finance. You also asked about overall trends in the grand list, and it is being reported across the state of Connecticut that all towns are seeing increase increased increases in motor vehicle valuation on used cars. I think we've all seen what's taking place with the price of new cars and used cars, and they are going up. So we certainly expect the motor vehicle portion of the grant list to to grow as well. As mentioned earlier, Steve Ferrara is on the call with us, and I just would love to give him the floor for two two minutes just to chime in and say hello. Steve, are you with us? You have to unmute yourself. Or does he have to be unmuted by the administrator? There.
All right. Thank you. Oh, there he is. Yep. I'm here. Good evening, everyone. What I'd like to do is just give you kind of a brief overview of the numbers that we worked with, because a revaluation, a mass appraisal revaluation is tested by statistics. We do the statistics based on what the International Association of Assessing Offices recommend, and we do statistics that the Office of Policy and Management with the State of Connecticut requires us to do. First of all, there were about 53 sales of single family homes in Andover, and that represents about 4.2% of the actual homes in town. And that's a historically high number. Typically, we would see it somewhere in the two to 3% range in a year that was as less vibrant as this one is in the real estate field. And when we measure the validity of a revaluation, as I said, we use statistics. And one of the major statistics we use is the median ratio or median value. And the median is the middle ground between the highest and lowest
of any data that we're analyzing. And for this town, the median ratio, and that ratio is the selling price versus our opinion of market value, our median is 95% of that market value. And that's typically where we try to be, so that we're not strictly right at 100%, because that 100% number tends to push too many properties over the selling price. Another thing to understand is the median is good at 95%, was supposed to be between ninety and one hundred and ten statistically. And another statistic that we use is the coefficient of dispersion. It's a big word. What it really measures is how well those 53 sales hover around that median. And that's what you want them to do. You want them to be consistent in their level of assessment. And our coefficient of dispersion was about under 5%. Typically we have to be under 15. So again, we met the criteria of both the IAAO and OPM. The median selling price for a single family home during this past twelve month period was $280,000 So that's a benchmark for your average or typical home in Andover. When we look at the lake, there were four sales on the lake, and the median selling price there was $650,000 The low was $4.32 and the high was 962,000. And this is typical of what we see in waterfront communities. The waterfront typically goes up faster than the remaining part of the town. I've seen that along the shore in Connecticut, I've seen it in the Rhode Island shore, and Massachusetts. I think
John has already told you about the hearing process. So if there's any questions for me, I'd be glad to answer them right now.
You said there were 53 sales. From what period did you pull from? Was it all of twenty twenty, twenty twenty one? What did we pull? It's
October 1 to 10/01/2021. And that's a requirement, again, of OPM, to use that twelve month preceding period up to the date of valuation.
Anyone else? Okay. Go ahead. I was just gonna ask. So
you're saying that it's typical to see these types of changes in lakefront communities. Is it? I mean, it seems like the rest of the town also went up a little bit, certainly not what the lake did, but Are you saying it's typical in this particular year or in this particular at the last couple of rebels in general or you're talking about just in this moment in time.
I would say it's historically typical for waterfront properties to go up at a higher rate than properties without that amenity. It's just a function of supply and demand. The demand is greater than the supply, and therefore, the price is driven up higher than it would be for your normal residential property.
Okay. Now, john was the trend wasn't our last reveal. The trend was actually that we went down slightly on grand list. Isn't that correct?
I apologize. I don't have a a ton of data on the last reval. I do recall the overall residential grand list going down 3.7%, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were to isolate the waterfront and find that it actually went up. Okay. Because like Steve stated, typically, the I wouldn't say just I wouldn't say the lake even though it's a lake in Andover. But in other communities, when there is waterfront versus non waterfront, it does increase at a rate that's greater than the rest of the town or in a declining market, it declines at a lesser rate if it declines at all.
Okay.
Oh, it definitely declined in the last three, Val. So listen, my biggest problem with all of this is, you know, I have been I've been trying to understand exactly how the entire reval impacts everyone and does it do it fairly. That is my biggest issue and my biggest question to you, John, my biggest question to you, Steve, is how do we provide that information to the residents so that they can understand that it's been done fairly?
Well, terms of a revaluation, the law requires us to value properties at their market value or in Connecticut at 70% of their market value. So from an assessing point of view, we have a strict formula that we have to use in order to do that. In getting the public to understand the process, I think the best way to do it is to give them access to all the data that we use. And that is on the website, the Vision website, both all the data for all the values of anyone in the town, plus they can do sales searches and look at properties that have sold in order to determine whether their property is consistent with some of those properties or whether they feel it's inconsistent. And typically that's what we tell people. There's essentially three ways to determine whether your property is valued properly or not. And one is if you have another opinion of market value, because what we've given you is an opinion of value. So maybe you've had a mortgage appraisal or you've had some other issue to get your property appraised, you have that data, we would review that. A second way is to look at the sales of properties in your area and compare them to yourself and see whether you feel that your property is accurately represented. And the third way is to just, even if you don't have any sales data, your property to a similar property in order to ensure that similar properties are paying a similar share of the tax burden.
Steve, I understand that. And, you know, I don't really even question my valuation on my property, let's say, and I live on the lake. What I'm having difficulty, and I've had difficulty over the last couple of rebels, is trying to understand how all of the other areas of the town if all the boats are floating in a direction that is similar, then we're all paying our fair share. That's really the whole issue. I do not and I have not and I can evaluate my property easily. That's not the question I'm really asking. How do I evaluate the entire reval? How can how can someone evaluate the entire reval?
Steve, if I may Steve, if I may. I mean, there's three ways. There's three approaches to value. There's cost approach, there's the sales approach and there's the income approach. We do when we do a municipal revaluation is called a market driven cost approach. So we take our costs from the market. The first thing we do is we go out and look at the properties that are selling and we work our model until it values those properties accurately. Then we use our model in the rest of the town. The other thing that we did was we went out and we looked at every parcel and, we did those, full exterior inspections and we made sure that we knew exactly what everybody has because things do change over a five year period. I can't tell you how many times we pulled up to a house and saw new roof, new windows, new sidings, shutters, gutters, doors, garage doors, the works and the condition of the property, you know, has been improved. So now we're comparing it to sales of properties that were more improved versus ones that weren't. That's all part of what we do. The Board of Selectmen empowers me and my office to make these decisions. Then I make them and I defend them against the individual property owners. All of our information is open to the public more so than any other, you know, municipal department because it goes back to the Boston Tea Party and and fair taxation and everything being open. We put all of our stuff on the Internet. People can sit at home and look at it all, and they can make those comparisons.
And, you know, this is my fourth revaluation being implemented for the town of Andover. And and in the last twenty years, we've only had five appeals even taken to superior court of which we gave back a total of less than $30,000 in assessment, which is less than $1,000 in taxes on a $9,000,000 local taxation that we raise. You're talking about one one hundredth of 1%. And I think, you know, the the history speaks for itself. This is what we do, and this is why, you know, the town of Andover pays my salary and pays this company. I think the board of selectman has to have a little faith in the process.
Again, I'll ask the same question. How do I evaluate it? You just told me to just trust you.
I didn't say to just trust me, but it's not my job. I didn't say that. I said it's not I I'm saying now it's not my job to teach the board of selectmen or any individual how to do my job. It's my job to place a value on the property. After which the law says, if you are are agreed with the assessment process, you file an appeal. There is an appeal. It's called the Board of Assessment Appeals, not the Board of Selectmen. The appeal goes to the Board of Assessment Appeals. The Board of Selectmen are specifically removed from this process intentionally in order to have a fair application of the local property tax.
Who said who said the Board of Selectmen wanted anything to do with that? All asked, again, was how do we evaluate the revaluation so that everyone is treated fairly? Because everything that I've heard has been on an individual property by property property basis. I'm asking in a global sense how to do it. So you're basically saying, John, get all of the data and do your own work. Well, let's back up a second. I think to be fair,
if we had listened to the whole presentation, I think John and Steve both pointed out that they had to have a certain timeframe for the number of sale for when the sales that they would use for for the reval was. So they said, you know, it was 2020 through 2021. They had four comp sales on the lake and 53 comp sales overall. That's that's your basis. They're following a state guideline. If they've done that correctly, which you know they're telling us they have, we've hired them to do it. They're certified to do it. If they go to court and lose dramatically, which John says they haven't in the past, they've given them back 30,000 over four revals, 30,000 of assessments, not dollars, but $30,000 in total assessment. I mean, hired them. They're certified. It sounds like they're telling us they've done their due diligence. So asking the I'm
not majoring. I am not questioning they haven't done their due diligence. I ask a simple question, how do we determine that it's fair and equitable across everything? Not just an individual house. I'm not questioning your house or my house. I'm just asking in a global sense, how do we show our residents that it's fair and equitable?
Well, if I can, the only way to judge a mass appraisal is to look at the statistics. That's what the Office of Policy and Management does, that's what the International Association of Assessing Offices recommend. So it is a technical approach. Non technical person, what they could do is look at those sales, look at those 53 sales, compare the selling price to what we have put down as a proposed market value, and judge for yourself, does that represent the property the way we think it does? We know the statistics works because that's what we do on a regular basis in order to set up the model that values the town. For a non lay, a non technical approach, you could just look at those properties and look at the values that we've put on them. And then you just do a sample comparison. We valued X property at 300,000. There are three other properties on that street that are similar, what did we put on those? And you're talking about thousands of properties, so it is something that takes some time. That's why it takes time to do a reval and
there's really no other approach that I can think of.
Another great test is properties that will sell over the next three or four months in comparison to where we value them. That's something that you can look at, but other than the statistics and you have to meet those statistics in order to certify the rebel with the state of Connecticut. They allow for a certain quarter there. We're like one third of the way down that corridor there, which means that our data is very tight.
So you're saying that you're saying that OPM takes a look at this.
You have to file the you have to file and certify the performance based revaluation standards and they look at all our sales and our assessments and and they review that data. That was the coefficient of dispersion that Steve was talking about before and said we were at five when most towns can barely come in under 10. So, you know, I I think it's very good. And while there were only four sales that took place on the lake in the last twelve months or the sales testing period, there were 15 sales that took place over the last three years and they showed, you know, an escalating, you know, sale price that was that was going up over time. And I think anybody who was watching the real estate market in the last couple years saw the prices going up on their own street. And, you know, our our only goal is for fair taxation. We're not on commission. We don't make any more by having assessments be higher or lower. Our last brand list, the grand list went down. Our only goal is to analyze the data
and to promote and administer a fair application of the local property tax and frankly we're the ones who are qualified to do that.
No, I just wanted to point out and say I appreciate this conversation because I'm gonna get questions that maybe Jeff asked earlier, and then I can now answer these questions better. So we're just asking these questions so that when people come up to us and ask us, we know how to answer that. So this is helpful, thank you.
You're welcome. The comment you made, Steve, about looking at the sales that you guys used, are those available somewhere for people to look at as a reference point?
Oh yes, they're in the assessor's office. And like I said, our website does allow a sales search. So if someone say had a ranch house, they could use the sales search and look at all the ranches that sold in a certain time period. Okay. The data is available both you know in a hard copy in the assessor's office and online. Okay.
Can we post those 50 3 sales on the website please?
We have all those sales because we did them ourselves. Don't care. I mean, we're $4.42. He's 500,000. Excuse me?
I'm sorry. I missed I missed that conversation. It was over.
Jeff? Okay. John, can you ask, can you give the information to Amanda so Amanda can post those 53 sales that are the basis for this reval. It will assist the residents who are concerned about their numbers and Get out of here. I'm on a meeting. When
do I get a chance to say something? Do I interrupt?
No. Excuse me. Excuse me. I didn't do that. Board of Selective Meeting, Amanda, can you mute Cortina?
Amanda, this Amanda dropped off. So unfortunately, the host got passed to John. John, can you pass me the host, please?
What's a host? They're going to mute you. Why? Yeah.
If not on the Board of Selectmen, can you just
Listen, try I realize residents have a lot of questions and concerns about this. This is not the exact forum for any conversation like this. The only people supposed to be talking are the Board of Selectmen and individuals who the Board of Selectmen is allowing to speak. All the residents who spoke previous to this spoke during public speak. At the end of our meeting, there's another public speak that residents can talk during that time. Would appreciate. John Schponis, have you transferred the host responsibilities? I
didn't realize I had the host. How do I transfer it? So John, it got passed to you because Amanda got bumped off the call. So if you look at, are you on a computer right now? Are you using your computer? So my if you look picture, there's like three bubbles of when you put your mouse over my picture and then you say, just click on it and pass the, it'll say something about give the host opportunity or pass the host.
John gets to be the genie host. John is the host. Paula, did that work? Hey. Paul's the host now. Yes. Okay. Okay.
The answer the answer is yes. We can we can put the we can give the sales to Amanda and she can post them on the town website. That's not a problem. That would be perfect. And then
I'm assuming I'm assuming one second. I'm assuming since there are a lot of questions related to this, any information John that you can post to minimize, you know, the residents who have a problem with their reval, that would be great because all of the information is supposed to be public. And as opposed to have all these people have to dig for everything, whatever the assessor's office can post would be greatly appreciated. It would minimize the calls and the concerns that we as selectmen may be getting and that we need to have the information made available. I appreciate if all of that information would get posted up online. Eric and Amanda, if you can facilitate that, that would help
greatly. I'm
going to suggest also a link to the vision website. So if we can put that there too. I'll talk to Amanda
at another Isn't currently one already on the assessors page? I believe there is. There is, yeah. And we also, I also in leading up to this asked Amanda to put out a, our, a link to our mill rate and previous mill rates so that people could have that information as well on the appropriate pages. I think I got three things I think the first thing is that people need to understand that because your taxes went up X percent or your your evaluation went up your reval went up or down a certain percentage that doesn't mean your taxes are going to go up that same percentage or down that same percentage. It's going to depend on what the budget comes out at, and if the whole town went up a certain percentage, then you know, then your taxes may not move at all. I think people need to understand that first and foremost, but I do have two questions. I know that people were hearing previously that if they didn't call in by the date, you know, they got their notices late and they hadn't called in by the date that they had to wait until February. I know I was I was kind of in that same boat I I got a late thing I thought we had to wait until the Board of Assessment Appeals. Didn't realize there was a there was a running list for people to talk to vision.
Absolutely. I mean, you wanna do your hearings right away for a bunch of reasons. You wanna have an opportunity to inspect properties that require a reinspection, and you wanna have time to research whatever issues they bring. Plus, we, you know, we've come to learn that if you give people six weeks, a lot of times they'll wait five weeks before they do anything. But we're not gonna shut everybody down who comes in, late and still has questions. Getting getting them tele hearings is no problem whatsoever. There's actually four being done tomorrow. So we are still, talking to those people. And, you know, I mean, Adrian, I've known you for a lot of years. Anybody can come to to talk to me at any time, even after their informal hearing, even after the BAA. And, you know, the the biggest thing is some of these properties, you know, it's tough when you didn't get into them. Yep. Actually did get into to 311
out of about, you know, 1,200, residential parcels. So, you know, that that was pretty impressive. We visited all of them, but quite a few people were willing to let us in. And another we took information at the door from another 484. So, I have to say Andover residents were incredibly, cooperative throughout this whole process. I think we really only had one, sort of negative incident and it was because someone had a restraining order against someone else and didn't hear the doorbell being rung and our guy ended up in the backyard and they saw him. But other than that one, the process really went very smoothly and, you know, I have to thank all of our Andover residents for that.
So that so that the only other question I have is if someone comes to the process basically is if someone has questions they come to you, you know you guys now or hopefully already and then if they still have questions they can go to the Board of Assessment appeals. If they go to the Board Assessment Appeals and their number goes down or up or whatever, they have a chance to appeal that again to court. Is that correct? And my my my the second part of that question is, Does the town have a chance to appeal that so like let's say somebody goes into the board assessment appeals and it gets lowered dramatically, do we have a chance to can we appeal that if the town disagrees with the with a major reduction and can they can can they appeal it if they if they disagree with the fact that there wasn't a major reduction?
Okay, so it's kind of got two questions there. So the first one is, after you go to the Board of Assessment appeals, regardless of what happens, and we should say that the board of assessment appeals has the power to increase, decrease, or not change. So after you go to the board of assessment appeals, you have the right to go to superior court. Now when I worked for the city of Jersey City in New Jersey, we did have we did go to court and have a property increase. I've never asked for an increase in Connecticut because I never went to court on a property that was that undervalued. But I honestly don't know the answer. Probably have to research it. But the assessor can increase any property the following year that they feel is undervalued. At the end of the day, my job is for fair taxation. So I have had situations where I've gone out and someone says I got rid of the pool and it's a raised ranch and then you see that there's a patio in a finished basement and in the bottom of the raised ranch in central air things that we didn't have. I can't go out there with blinders and it's my job and my duty to discover list and value and add anything that changes value. So
while that's always a possibility, it's on the rarer side that, know, we go out and we look at a property and increases, but it does happen. Thank you.
John, one quick question. You said that you, had that many in home inspections and there was another 900 that were not. I'm assuming that you did exterior walks around the ones that you didn't get inside?
Sure. There were exterior walks done around every parcel in town. So they all, you know well, I should say except for those who there were 77, properties that, you know, instructed our guys to leave, and there were 18 that were gated or no trespassing in which the vendor will not enter onto the property. So other than those, they did go on and measure the exterior of every single property, check outbuildings, make sure we had the right number of outbuildings, the right size, etcetera. But they did end up getting into 03/2011 and, took data from the front door with with with the property owners from 04/1984. So really, you know, statistically, that's that's that's pretty good numbers and really good cooperation in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
Okay. So if you measured the exterior and checked the outbuildings, if there were adjustments that needed to be made to the card, they were made there then or what's the status?
The card gets marked up by the data collector. The data entry is done by someone different. Okay.
Alright. Okay. Thank you very much for all that information. Anybody else have any questions? Jeff, Scott? Just a quick question for John.
I noticed there was one minor error on my line card, and I sent you an email about it this evening. Is that just something that doesn't require a walk through or anything? That's just something that can be dealt with internally, correct?
That's correct. I mean, if people came for informal hearings and said, you you have me down for three full baths and I have two full baths and one half bath. Those are the kind of changes that we we just make. So if you shop me something, we'll take care of it. Yeah. That would that's actually the issue. I'm I have on my card, I have two half bathrooms, and I only have one. I'll tell you three and a half. I got two and a half. What about being naughty.
No. It's just just so people know. They don't have to go through if it's just a small error like that, they could just send you an email. Correct? Can the public? No? Okay. Scott? All set, Jeff.
All right. Just to let the public know a bit of a process is to and John, just so you can verify this is there's vision meetings that can occur and then it's the Board of Assessment Appeal. And then from the Board of Assessment Appeal, if it is not done correctly for the resident, they can sit there and file a suit in state court related to their assessment. Accurate?
That is correct and that's on our website right underneath our current revaluation update. Okay. Alright. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you for taking the time, gentlemen.
Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. Bye. See you. Okay.
So we're gonna move on now to item five, boards and commission presentations. I do not believe we have any. We're gonna move on to item six, the Memorial Day Committee appointments and the assistant town clerk Barbara. I guess I'm gonna say good show. Anybody want to correct that pronunciation please. I'm not even gonna try it. Amanda. Good.
The show. The show. Okay, that's close. That's close. Thanks. So do we have any appointments for Memorial Day Committee? I did not see any. Am I missing that? Anybody?
There aren't any. It's still on our list to help Okay. Find some All right. One second, please.
Eric, are you gonna update for the community center committee during your thing or? I
was not planning on doing that update since you were both at the meeting. What about the other three and the public?
Okay. So we have nothing, boards and commissions, is what I'm being told. So do we need to make a motion to appoint Barbara? Nope, she's She's hired. Really? She's
been working, Jeff. Well, know she's been working, but I thought the Board of Selectmen had to approve those types of things. Nope. Actually,
that is Carol's, Carol Carol's gets to select the individual. Yes, she does. Yeah. Who approves them? Carol.
You can't, can't. No, It's gonna select them again. This is technical, but not technical. It would have been nice if the Board of Selectmen was informed before that person got hired. The role of the Board of Selectmen, right? But what are you going to do? State statute doesn't- Not necessarily what I'm going to do. Jeff says this all the time. Is it done right and in accordance with the rules or it's not done right in The with state statute says that she gets to hire more- I didn't sit there and say she didn't get to select that individual. I asked the question, approves employee? If we're gonna complain about other things done, then
may as well complain about this one. You're making me bring out the Grinch gloves, Jeff, you really are.
Alright, so I make a motion that we approve Barbara Goshi as the assistant Tom Kirk. I'll second that.
Okay, further discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? All those that abstain. Abstain because not necessary.
Where are your grinch clothes? Again, do it according to the way it's supposed to be found and people can't complain. That's what the state statutes for. Right?
Would have thought that we all could have got a text at least.
Yeah. But again, it's not up to us. It's up to Carol Lee. Again, Adrian, you're missing the point. I I don't think I am because if you say no, what are you gonna do? Say no, you're not gonna appoint her. She still gets to hire her. She gets to pick her own clerk. We don't have a say. It's I'm pretty
going to research that one. I wonder if that is true. Wonder if we said no, would she have to go back out and redo it? She would give you the same name again. So
I asked that question to Dennis as a town's attorney. Dennis basically said she gets to choose her assistant. That's her right to enroll.
Okay. All right. Resignations, we have none. Town Administrators report. Eric is sick. He's not been feeling well. He will have a very short Town Administrators report.
Okay. I don't really have any updates to the report that is online. So, do you all have any questions for me of that report?
You know, went over it and I thought maybe, you know the big culvert that's on we're going to be getting a billion dollars and I think that shovel ready projects are probably going to be the ones that are going to be chosen for that money and maybe if we did the engineering on that Bazola call for that we could possibly get get that done.
That is a very very good point Scott. What do you think about that Eric?
So you want to hire an engineering firm to do the survey and site design for that? Is that what you just Just get Brandon and start the engineering process on that big one. Well, that one's in truth and has already said beyond what he's willing, what he has the time, you know, and capabilities to design. What we would plan on doing the same thing, we're starting to do now, which is go to RFP for an engineering firm to design for that.
Ahead and do that, but there's probably four other culverts in town that Brandon can do the work on. Brandon can do some of them, yes.
Okay. So let's actually do that with Bozzola Road. That's a very good idea, Scott, because that one is going to take A lot of money. Some significant
adjustments to deal with that brook that's running through into lake.
Just to ask a structural question here as far as timing, is there any limitation on design phase to actually doing the work? Because I know we're hoping we get a grant, but if we don't, is that design work valid for a certain amount of time or is it, you know, is there a Well,
I think we'd be okay if we started the design now because the overriding agency that controls this is the Army Corps of Engineers because the solar has more than one square mile of drainage running into it. Okay. Therefore, it's an Army Corps of Engineers review and they are just updating their standards. Now, what about on the smaller ones then?
The smaller ones, it's kind of case by case, which one qualifies and which one, you know, what approval process occurs for each bridge. It's the size of the stream, I think.
And I I meant as far as the same question, is there an overriding agency issue for any of those?
The one on Hutchinson Road, that's also Army Corps of Engineer approval. I don't know. I'm sure when we get to the one on Juravadi, that one will be Army Corps of Engineer approval. I don't know on all of them. I haven't looked at all of them. Okay.
I suspect most of them actually are big enough. Certainly, the one on Bear Swamp would be also.
Okay. So, do we bid them out piecemeal or do we have Brandon do the smaller ones and you know?
Well, I mean, in truth, my plan was basically as we get money in the kitty, we've already started the design phase for the one on Hutchinson. And we're probably close to having enough money in our account now, our bridge and culvert fund to deal with the first one, You know, which means if we went to construction sometime at the end of next summer, and we put additional money into the fund in the next cycle, we could get one done. And then my plan had been to address them as we get as the fund has enough money to do individual culverts.
Okay. Okay, so Eric, it would it would probably be in our best interest to find out which ones of these culverts that Brandon Brandon can actually assist with and then which ones he can't. Then you can come back to us at the next meeting and we can decide what we do with the other ones because should just be utilizing his time to sit there and do that as much as possible.
Exactly. Get the engineering work done on all of them.
Yep. We should attempt to try to have them all lined up if we can. We probably won't get enough money to do that, but in reality, the town is probably going to end up having to pick up some of these culverts out of our, just our general fund. You know, we're going have to pay for these because you're going to have something break eventually.
Well, most of these culverts are big enough that we're eligible for the 50% state funding. The only problem with doing it through the state program is there's enough additional, I would say, aggravation that it drives the cost of the project up. And basically what Brandon has said is any culvert you can do for under about a quarter of $1,000,000, it's cheaper to self fund than to try to get state money by the time you bump up all the requirements that the state requires.
Okay. All right. Well, I believe it's actually under new business, so I'll leave it. Does anyone else have any questions for Eric before he has any other? Eric,
under the transfer station, we got a quote for the replacement of the old cart structure. We were talking about using the other building, I thought.
Correct. So I had asked Jay to get me a couple of quotes for replacing the overhead door. I just don't have that information to present to you yet. Okay. I'll get it to you as soon as I have it.
A couple of questions, Eric. You did some work on the rail trail. Is that right? The public works did, yes.
And how much time do we spend on that? I didn't know we had dollars or time allotted for that at this point.
We used materials on hand, stone dust from our previous project. So we didn't really put much in the way of materials into it. About the paving?
Was that our guys? Was some paving on the rail trail. It was that state or was that us?
No, we didn't do any paving on the rail trail. We did was put down a little gravel, a little stone dust, and then flattened it off with the roller or flattened it off with the compactor.
Okay. So the other work that was done up there was state stuff?
I'm not sure what paving work you're referring to. I guess there were some transitions that were done. They were not paved. They were just, so what's happened is over time there's an erosion right where the bridge and the trail come together. Yeah. So there's a drop off from the wood structure to the So bus
all we did was, and we do this practically every year or every other year, we just add more material and flatten it back out so it's safer to ride on. Okay, all right.
I also have a couple questions. Unfortunately, Sherry's not on here, but I'm hoping that given that you probably signed them, you may know what they're for. We had a check for M and G Masonry. Yep. What was that That
was pouring a new slab in the Public Works Building.
Okay. Where was the slab poured for? I didn't know we had a project going on down there, so.
Yeah, we did. Well, what we looked at is where we park Machinery and how easy it is to get equipment in and out of there. Yeah, and there was one area that's if you go in the back door, it's on the right hand side. Yeah, and the slab was recessed about six inches and there was brain there that was screwed up. So we had MG command and pour a level of there.
Okay. Do we was that something that was that was bid out or no? I don't remember that. It was not bid out. Okay. And callback design did some work as well. Callback did the Veterans Park
Veterans Park, the connection to the well and the drain back system and the, what do you call the no reverse valve? Sorry, I'm losing my mind here. That was part of what was presented last month for the fees for the Veterans Park. The blowback valve? Yep.
How much was the slab, Eric? Yeah. Where was that paid from? Slab was money came from where? Probably maintenance. I think that was maintenance and public works. How much was it?
It was We separated labor and materials. I'm trying to think, I think that concrete was about $2,000 and I think the labor was somewhere in that same ballpark.
So $2,000 so that was under 20 yard. That was like what 15 yards?
In that ballpark because it was two trucks. Two trucks worth. Yeah. There was and there was a repair spot in the back also. So they did two separate slabs, but one was a small slab in the back. I just 14 yards, Adrian. 14. Okay. That's okay.
I'm just I was only questioning it because I thought we had had got pretty good prices from the guy that did the ones down at the transfer station. And I'm just surprised that we're, you know, we're not bidding out, at least getting prices from more than one person. That's all.
And so Eric, why didn't you get bids on that?
Honestly, they came to me and said, hey, I wanna pour this ad back here. I got MG lined up to do it.
Not how we, that's not how we do work here, though. That's how we got in trouble. Not our administration, but the previous administrations have had issues in the past that it just doesn't look good, you know.
So in the future, Eric, just on something like that, because that was $4,000 It's not an inordinate, and I'm sure the work is fine. But I'm not questioning the work. I'm just questioning how we're doing it. That's all. I I understand what you're doing. It would it would help us all if we could sit there and and get, you know, two quick quotes to see. Yeah. I'm
not suggesting that you go out and do a formal bid on everything, but at least just make a couple phone calls so we're covered. So if somebody asks, we can say we legitimately talk to at least two or three people, you know. That's all.
Okay. All right. Any other, Eric, I'll ask. And it sounds like in reading your report that the, the the area in the basement with the oil tank and all of that stuff is still up in the air. Do you have a timing on that? I do not. I do not. Okay.
All right. Did you get any prices for the tanks yet?
You know, neither. None of the three vendors I have asked for that have come back to me with an actual bid yet. Which is slightly an annoyance of mine, but that's why.
Hey, Eric, as a suggestion to make it easier going forward on like slab projects like this, maybe it's, you know, we we went out and we tried to get and I don't know how far along we've actually have gotten with, you know, trying to find somebody that does electrical, somebody does construction so that we have that on call type person for small projects. Maybe we need to do the same thing for concrete for foundations and floors. That we you know somebody that's going to do, whether it's a you know concrete pier or somebody that's going to do slab work that we have somebody that we can we know they charge $50 or $100 you know, a yard, you know.
K. Alright. Any other questions for Eric? Okay. We move on to nine, old business. Discuss and act upon the following. The Veterans Monument Park upgrades. Jerry Wright gave us his presentation during public speaking. He's he's no longer with us. Scott, do you have any other issues you wanna Jerry's address with still here. I missed him. Oh, where? I missed him. Hi, Jeff. Okay.
Oh, hi. Sorry. You're over there. Do you have anything else that you want to add besides what you talked to us on public speak?
Okay. I hope you got the letter that I did up that showed what the cost is going to be for everything. And of course, that seems to change with the availability of getting product. And so right now I'm sitting here on about 90 sold brick that we can't install in the third walkway because we cannot buy the gray border brick. We got put the gray border brick in before we put the brick that's sold in. So this has all been put off until spring, which is fine. I did talk to the Battlefield Cross people out in Minnesota this morning. And the Battlefield Cross has been put together. It hasn't been welded yet. And they're going to put that on the back burner until we can get the granite. The reason I went with them to get the granite is that I wanted to drive to Minnesota to pick up the battlefield cross to make sure that it's what we had ordered rather than pay for it and get it here and find out that it isn't. So why not get the grant at the same time. So it was $9,000 We did some adjustment to the size of the granite piece. We brought it down a little bit. We're only putting one flat side on for the plaque, the bronze plaque to tell the story of the Battlefield Cross instead of four. So we're down to around 5,600 He's willing to drill the holes in it for us. He's willing to drill the holes in for the
the bronze plaque. And so when I pick it up, unfortunately, my half ton truck will not handle the weight of this block. It's about 34 to 3,500 pounds. And so I'll be taking out a trailer to bring it back. He said it'd probably be later in the spring, which is good for me because I really don't want to go to Minnesota in February. So, and this all hinges upon everything getting back here is when Ron then can put the rest of the walkway in. We have enough money to cover the Battlefield Cross and and the plaque and the granite in the account at the American Legion in Hebron. So we've got almost $16,000 right now on that account. So we got money in there and money keeps coming in. We're still selling brick. I've got 10 more to give to Carol Lee to put in next week. And people are calling me all the time to buy more bricks.
We're at about five ten brick that we sold so far. Wow. And we've raised totally somewhere around $50,000 for that park. There's been no cost to the taxpayer or to the town. What they did with the irrigation, thank you, that 7three. I was getting a little tired of dragging 100 foot hose around as Scott can contain to that. And but now we've got the nice irrigation in and having the power in is good. The flagpole bases are in. The flagpoles are supposed to be installed later this week. And that's around $5,300 and change. And we have money in the account for the bricks to pay for that. So the POW Monument is in New Hampshire. I have not heard back from them yet as to the status on that. And it's fine if that doesn't come in until late spring early summer. The base is ready. So it's just a matter of bringing that in, gluing it down, and it's done. So I'm just waiting on that's about $3,500 So I do have a fundraiser set up for February. We do have Highland Park Market. A friend of mine talked to Molly. She wants to meet with me down to the park and then she's going to let me know how much Highland Park is willing to donate towards the rest of the monuments. We do have another fundraiser set up for March and that's out in Newtown. So and I'll speak in tomorrow in
Waterford and hoping to pick up a couple more brick down there about 08:30 tomorrow morning. And so the other thing was across from Monument Lane is that little piece of property that I think would make a good seating area. What's nice about it is hold on a minute it's just orange juice Adrian it's nothing else. Cheers!
Is that if I could get a little help with the town from that, the Cub Scouts have asked to come and help clear that. And the clearing that meets pulling off all the dead branches that are in there, the vines. Just clean it up, clean the bank off and give the fern that's in there a chance to grow. And that'll look really nice in the background. The shade trees are nice. I talked to Jay about it. There's one big dead tree that does need to come down that needs to be dropped, cut up and hauled to the town dump. So if I could get some help with that and to put a cover over that catch basin so somebody doesn't go tripping off into there and
wouldn't hurt to put two new poles in there as well. The other guardrail poles are rotted and they're old. It just doesn't look good. That area there dressed up would be really nice. Once the flagpoles are in, we take a picture of it and we present that to the Hartford grant and I'm sure that they'll say that that's fine. At that point there we'll apply for a new grant which will be to buy five nice benches and three benches on that side and two in the park area. We buy the benches with the concrete sides and the plastic or the metal bottoms and back they weigh about 600 pounds. If we go with all concrete they weigh a thousand pounds apiece. There's nothing worse than sitting on cold concrete to my thinking.
It holds water you got to clean it up it's better off to have something that's porous that will clean up. So that would be the next fundraiser that we'll do later on in the year to put those benches in.
Jerry thank you very much for all of the work you've done on that park that part looks park looks fabulous thank you very much. You're welcome. You're all done with me? I think we're all done with you. Anyone have any questions?
Yeah, I want to say something. I want to brag a little bit for Jerry because he won't do this. So thank you, Jerry. I know you're speaking at different areas and you're busting your butt. So I appreciate that. It looks great. And I want to ask the board and anybody else in this call, if you see a post on Facebook about the bricks, please share the post. So that just helps everybody out and gets the word out. So thank you Jerry. I appreciate you.
Yeah one more thing I spoke at West Point last week on the committee there for the retirees council at West Point to greet them on Agent Orange and they bought a brick. So I emailed the editor of the West Point Academy this morning and say well I have one now from the retirees council how about getting one from West Point Military Academy and then I'll be going after the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines and like this so it's nice having bragging rights and and I have Paul to help me with that so thank you Paul.
Jerry so the the place that you need help clearing is that like right behind the mailboxes there directly across from like where the cannon on that? Yes. Okay.
Yes. Yep. Come spring, I'll have that cleaned up really nice. I just need help get that big tree down and come in there with that little excavator that we have that's a godsend to the town and to level that off and loam it and just raise that catch basin up. Don't have to raise the catch basin, you just got to put a cover over it. Right. Nobody falls into it. Okay. Any other questions for Jerry? No.
Jerry, if you put together a work party or something to go down there, just maybe let us know. We'll try to publicize it for you. No, I'm gonna be asking for your guidance and help. So yes, I will let you know, Adrian, and you can bring your shovel and boots and come downhill. I'll bring my tractor down. I ain't working that hard.
Thank you. Appreciate your guys support. I really do. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Jerry.
Alright. 9B connectivity grant construction progress, Eric. We good? I mean, I know we had the there's there's a hold on the sidewalks.
Yeah, that's that's as far along as it's going to be this year other than they still got to put topsoil down in front of public works on the bank. The rest of the construction will take place next spring.
Any update on 9C on the policy on the snowplow damage and mailbox replacement?
No, we sent it out. Sent it around. Published it on social media again. So we've tried to put the word out. It was on the town's website. And public works did go along and notify everybody on their plow routes who had a mailbox that needed to be moved. It was in danger of getting hit.
Alright. Nine d electrical and HVAC upgrades at the town hall. I know they're on hold, so you don't need to go on that.
Okay. Do we get the heater? Is the heater situation parts were on order? Are those is that being addressed still? Or Yeah. It's being addressed. I don't know that it's been addressed, frankly. I gotta check back in with them. Okay. Wasn't that one the damper issue primarily?
Yeah, it is. But it's it's a the damper itself has a little part of thermal link and the thermal link blue. So the the little thermal link has to be repaired so the damper will stay open. Because right now, it's kinda shut.
So do we have someone to fix that? We do. Nine e transfer station?
The only thing I wanted to say was I had hoped we'd have the quotes by now for the overhead door. We do not. So I don't have any update with that. Okay.
And then as far as the shed, I know we had the one quote from Regan. Have we gotten any other quotes on that?
No, but it sounds like you guys have decided you're not going to do it anyway. So I wouldn't be looking at getting other quotes for that. I mean, thought the consensus of the board was you were just going to transfer that cart function to the brown building and put the tires in the blue building and call it a day.
Is that accurate? Jeff shaking his head. Scott, you good?
I'm not really in favor of opening the door every time somebody needs to put a tire in there myself, but I'm only one. Well, how many tires are we talking a month? I can't give you a tire count.
I'm just saying if, if we're, if we're only talking, they open it, you know,
three times a day. I don't see what the big deal is. Especially if they have an opener and they had, they can control it from up above. Yeah. Yeah, I guess if it's three times a, you know, that's six times a week, then I don't have a problem with that really. My thought was the person wants to leave the tire can go show Dom, say I got this tire, gotta get rid of her Steve and then they can just open the door, go down and put the tire in and close the door. Right. That way we don't have people just dropping things off with the rims on them. How often are those tires picked up, Eric? You know?
I think I see a bill for that like probably five or six times a year.
So I'm guessing every two months. Yeah. Maybe just because we all like data and more data the better, look at the last bill for them and tell us the number of tires. Actually, the last two bills so then we can give an appropriate date range. Okay. So 9F, Veterans Memorial Field, Surge, Expression, Field Maintenance Services.
Jeff Murray you know, worked tirelessly on getting all the information that we needed on the surge suppression, bought all the parts and I think he gave them to Lenco. I think Rick went and picked them up all the stuff up there so we have to put some time together to get down there and Rick's trying to figure out what he needs to for electrical parts to hook it all up and then he's gonna let us all know we're gonna go down and install it. Right Jeff? Yes. You're putting the warranty on that?
They're guaranteed and you know we're protecting everything, especially even the valves, the individual valves are getting protected, the pressure transmitter on the well pump's getting protected, and we're protecting the pump on both ends and the irrigation controller. So it's pretty comprehensive approach we're taking this time. Yeah,
very good. Excellent work. Yeah, it'll finally be a flawless system down there.
Field maintenance services, are we okay with the- was Hebron okay with the transfer from their services to mister Glarco That
is a good question and I will totally admit I dropped the ball on that. It happens. I meant to reach out to Since field maintenance occur until March or April, figure that out. Did you sign that contract, Eric? Nope. Okay. I haven't signed any contract for that.
On your list. Let's find out about that for next meeting. And then, 10, new business. Discuss and act about the town COVID status and position. All the data that Eric has shared with us shows increasing COVID count in town. It's at fifty three per one hundred thousand right now. So we've had an uptick in COVID cases. We just need to be concerned about it. I I agree with the group that we want to try not to sit there and minimize activities. It's an issue that people need to make their own decisions, but we do need to really be enforcing all indoor mask mandates
within town buildings. And we as a board should probably discuss a little bit right now about having in public, in person meetings that are going on. I mean, we have our meeting on Zoom. I know that there's some of the committees and some of the boards that have in person meetings. Just throwing it out there. Need to require that they wear masks, but should we just try to take all of our meetings back to a virtual setting? Anybody? No? What's the Board of Education doing right now?
I believe they're meeting in person, aren't they? Right, they are, but masks required?
Yeah. Yeah, they're doing, I think they're doing, some people are doing remote. I've been doing remote. It's been intermittent for some of the other members. I have to say, I don't know that we're gonna have to do in person for the community center stuff. You know, you can't review prints effectively on a Zoom meeting. I understand that'll work for some things, but I don't think for other things it will. Right.
Yeah, think our committee, which it's a small organization that we're reviewing the prints, this is more of a public forum, which I think the Zoom is better because, it allows people that might be afraid or a little bit nervous to go to. No, I'm
just saying, I don't think we wanna make it across the board.
Yeah, I think it, yeah, individual boards, think we can let them decide what they feel is appropriate. Okay. Alright, so that's that. Ted B, budget schedule?
Just for one, just if we back up, what are we, I mean, I know there was some discussion about the senior activities. What's our position on that? Sounds like the seniors don't have anything till January anyways, so. Well, have a, I was told they have a Christmas luncheon coming up on seventeenth, I believe. Thought Kathy Plazi told us she canceled.
They also have They a movie also have a movie, I believe. Just want to make sure, give them direction. It's been canceled, yeah.
Okay. I just don't want seniors to think that the Board of Selectmen are driving this because I feel they should be able to meet in person if they so wish or desire to.
They're just not going to meet for the rest of December, and they wanna see what happens in January. Okay. All right? I
just want them to make up their own minds. They did. Okay.
Well, Jeff, I mean, we're almost seniors. We get a vote here soon, so. I'm getting AARP stuff, so I'm getting close. That's what I'm saying. I'm I'm I'm there in another couple months. But Maguire, how does that feel anyways? Do we have to sign up anywhere?
Automatically sign you up, Adrian. They just keep saying. Let's move on to the budget schedule. Let's sit there and Eric, when are you going to be prepared to have first meeting and then we can figure out schedules after that?
So I sent you a I sent all the boards a proposed schedule. Let's see. Is it on Amanda, is that in the packet? I didn't saw it. Okay.
I sent that to you all about three weeks ago, a proposed schedule. I'm sorry I don't have a copy with me because I'm at home. I'm not at work. I will resend that out to you tomorrow.
Okay. So, when do you think you'll have information ready for us to meet? Just give us a ballpark. Beginning of January, like after Beginning of January. First week of January. Yeah. He sent it out on 11:12.
Okay. As a board, do we want to start scheduling meetings for right after our January meeting? What would we choose to do? I think that's smart. Okay.
So it says he's got January 3 deadline to return to complete budgets to finance office. January 17, we distribute draft budget. January and February budget hearings on individual budgets. 01/28/2022, distribute budget workbooks as approved by Board of Selectmen to Board of Finance. Okay. So we don't you didn't have dates for for January, February, but you do have a date for us to get started, which would be really January 17.
Okay. So let's sit there and put that on the calendar.
So we should be looking for those to be distributed to us on that day. When do we wanna do our first meeting from there, I guess?
Well, our meeting let's go this way. Our January meeting, I believe, is the tenth. So at the tenth, let's put out our schedule at that meeting. You want to set it then? Yeah. Everybody in agreement? That's fine. Good.
All right. Let's move on. So Town of Tennessee, townwide Christmas caroling.
Paula. Okay. December 18, starting at 04:00. We've got our four stops. We have the firehouse participating, the Board of Selectmen, the PTA and Alcoa. The Rec Commission is going to be having some hot cocoa and cookies at stop number one at the Town Hall AES and then stop number four at Veterans Fields. We're decorating tomorrow our trailer. Adrian and I are working on that. It's gonna be fun. I hope everybody comes and participates. What else? To one. We're
going to be done by six. Yeah, six the latest. It's going to be,
it's four stops. We're not doing like we did last year. Yeah, the first stop really actually happens before we really take off because we're going to be right there the school in the school parking lot there. And then we're doing Island Street like what 420? 428.
And then and then the third stop is going to be over at the over at the park. So so I would encourage Scott if you want to ask your better half and Mr. Maguire, you would do the same. Come on, bring the spouses out. Let's do some caroling. Let's fall off that trailer. Jeff, you know you wanna. He's
not available. Jeff. Yeah, the little white ball down in Florida. Yeah, but Mr. McGuire
is supposed to be there. He could ask his better half. Yeah. Brasson, I know you wanna bring your wife. No, I will ask.
Doesn't mean that I'm going answer that you guys would like, but I will ask.
Okay. We can have Paula reach out to her if you want. She is very persuasive. Mr. Murray, enjoy the golf balls in Florida.
Watch out for the alligators. Scott, don't forget to ask your wife too. I've got a question,
So at the field, I texted you about this. I wanted to bring a pop up down for the recognitions and then we're gonna put lights on the pop up so there's a little bit of lighting down there. Where can they plug in for the electric? The power is at the back of the field. Okay. So if I'm looking at the fence that back fence where where is the outlet?
Halfway, you know, where the control panel is, it's a 100 feet off of the road there.
Okay. And there's lights down there. Do they just come on or how do the lights come on? Yeah,
there's field lights. I'm gonna have to go down Paul and turn the power back on and check that for you and I will get back to you. Yeah let me know if you can. Your power's off I just want to make sure that we can turn on just some of those outlets down there. You're going to ask your wife about caroling while you're at it right? I will Adrian, absolutely. Oh my gosh, wow.
I'm going to ask just like Jeff's going to ask that's you know.
That's all we can do Scott. It's all we can do. Okay
let me know Scott because the recognition they're having a meeting tomorrow I know you're not going to get down there tomorrow but I just was going to talk to them and say that was option a. Option b is I've got a suitcase generator and we can bring that down there for them. Yeah. There's power down there. I I gotta make sure that it's gonna turn on to some outlets. Yeah. Just so that we've got some sort of lighting if people are walking around. I just didn't want anybody to get hurt when they're walking around and and you know they're going to be watching us from the road but if they're eating and hanging out before we get there it might be a little too dark.
I have some big lighting that we could put down there also I think. Okay, like some spotlights? Yeah, yeah.
That'd be great, thank you. Okay, that's all I've got. Unless you have something else Adrian?
Nope. All right 10D formation of Museum of Andover history committee.
Okay that's me again. I've been talking to Kathy Derozia and her and I have been talking about getting a committee together for the museum and the committee would be interested in doing some upgrades and looking into some grants for the museum. So I know that some of the siding needs to be worked on and maybe new windows. So she said she would be willing to be on this committee and get some more members and she had some people in mind that she was going to talk to. So I just wanted to bring that up tonight to the board and I'm very in favor of this. And if we've got people that are interested in doing it, then that's great. So what's everybody's thoughts? I think it's a great idea. I think that's a wonderful idea, Paula. Okay. That's how things get done in Andover volunteers.
All right. So do we need to make a motion or anything or do I just go back to her and say start gathering, gathering the troops? What do we need to do from here?
Get some names. Get some names and then we'll, vote on it. Yeah,
I mean the hardest thing we have right now is we have so many different positions open. You know, putting another one out there, I don't know, is gonna help.
Well, I'm being positive and I'm saying that it's gonna be great And Kathy is very enthusiastic and I even talked to Mr. Yeomans and he's excited about it. So I'm going to say the committee is going to be formed and they're going to do an awesome job. I think they will.
Excellent. Volunteers, right, Scott? That's it. Okay. So now we're moving on to our 10 E pedestrian safety initiative.
This came from me and this came from a post that was on Facebook probably three or four weeks ago from Karen Zito about some traffic issues that she had run into with some individuals in cars. This is, again, it kind of piggybacks what I've been noticing in the last few months when we turn the clocks back is that people aren't, you know, we've done all this work around the lake to try to improve speeding and vehicle safety, but we really haven't focused on the pedestrian side of it. And I've been running a lot around the lake and I've noticed a lot of people are wearing dark clothing. They're blending into the environment. And, you know, it's very hard to see people when we don't have any lights around most of our roads. I I I was coming home tonight and I had one of my neighbors was walking and I could barely see her. I got about 20 feet away from her before
I actually saw her on the road. I put a question out on the Andover Support Network site just asking people, you know, if you were provided a vest, would you wear it? And overwhelmingly, I got a lot of positive responses. So this is something I like to ask the board. Would this be something we'd want to pursue? Maybe purchase a few vests and keep them at the town hall, maybe give some to the trooper that he could give out if he saw people walking around the lake just to create a little bit more visibility for our pedestrians. I looked into them, they're $3 to $5 apiece. I still have some money left over from the events that I put on that were supposed to be put into the rec commission budget.
This may be something that the Rec Commission can do because the races that I put on, I wanted some of this money to go to recreational uses, and I think getting people out walking safely is a good recreational use of that money. So, you know, I'm talking a couple $100 here to see if we can get people to get out there a little bit more visible. Karen, I see Karen Zito, she walks in my neighborhood all the time and she wears a highly reflective vest and I'll see her 5,100 yards away at night. She sticks out, like, you know, she sticks right out. I can see her right away. Other people I can't.
There's a group that walks down a Hendi that wears yellow vest and you can see them a mile away. Just, I mean, I can be down at the bottom of Hendi and I'll see them walking at the bridge. They stick out that much.
I think it's a great idea, Jeff. It's just to, you know, you just get them at the town hall,
someone wants one, they can have one and we give some to the trooper. If the trooper sees somebody down walking at the lake, gives one out and say, hey, know, we want increase the safety. Good idea. It's a relatively inexpensive thing we could do that would have a bigger impact that I think than just trying to, we've been focused on the traffic so much, maybe we work the other side and just try to get the pedestrians a little bit more visible too. So I just, I would just want to put it out there and see what everybody thought about it.
Great idea. You think they are out there are Jeff?
What's that? How many runners do you think there are 50? 100? They're just walkers. Anybody that's using the the roads around the lake or even around the town. Just if they they want to get a free vest they can just go to town hall. Maybe Carol keeps them and just give them out free of charge. Buy 20 or so and just see how it goes. If they're gone, we buy more. It's just Great. It's a great idea.
Okay. Well, I'll contact Carol and see what she thinks and see if we can get something going and see if we can get some I'll give her some part number, some numbers of vests that are out there and see if we can get them ordered and then we'll put it out there and see if anybody grabs them.
Excellent. So 10 F VoIP system. I know Eric has multiple quotes out there. Eric, have we made any decisions on that?
No, there's one more I'm still waiting on. It's not the contractor's fault. I've blown them off twice because I was too sick to meet with them. So by next meeting, I will have a comprehensive, you know, set up for you, and the decision can be made.
Okay. Eleven, approval of, meeting minutes for Monday, 11/08/2021. Anybody wanna make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the Monday, November eighth twenty twenty one regular minute meeting minute meeting minutes. Second. Second.
Opposed in favor? Aye. Jeff, you in? You out? Okay. Good. Excellent. Alright. He's ordering best.
He's ordering best. Well, finance department reports. Does anyone wanna make any comments related to the finance reports presented?
I thought we were getting a percentage column. I also thought we were getting an Excel spreadsheet. Didn't get either. That's why I'm asking. I know. I'm with you.
Okay. I also, I'd like to see detail sheets so we can understand some of these numbers because, you know, like the rec commission, there's a $17,000 number in there. I'm assuming it's a grant, but we need to understand what that is. It'd be nice to see like we got the we got the thing from public works to show us where we're up to right now. We should be getting those detail sheets from other departments as well.
Okay. Maybe next meeting we can have Sherry or we can talk to Sherri before the meeting and try to get that information. I mean, we
Well, they're set up in Edmonds, right, if they're set up in Edmonds, we should also be talking to her about whether or not the one of the whole reasons of going to Edmonds was that we were supposed to be able to have access to these to these funds to be able to see the detail lines, right? So we should be able to go in and look at the fund for roadwork, look at the fund for, you know, tar money and be able to see what the expenses were and where they, you know, where they came from. That was the whole point is to have or to finance the board selectmen, be able to have access, not editing, but visual access. So I'd like to Yeah. See
That recognition, I know they well, I actually talked to Carol on Saturday. I don't think she deposited any of the money for youth basketball. So I don't know what that $17,000 is. Eric, any idea?
I'm pretty sure that's a grant that came in last summer to cover the youth recreation league stuff, think, but I'm not positive. To cover youth recreation league.
Yes, the money for the summer camp program. The grant that they got last year for the summer program. For like summer cool, is that correct?
Okay, but don't quote me on that. I think that's the answer, but I could be wrong.
So it was did did you were you able to talk to Sherry at all today? I did have a conversation with Sherry today.
Okay. Is was she not able to make it tonight for some specific reason or?
She's at the dentist. Oh. She has a tooth problem. That's not good.
I have one question on one of the expenditures to Linco. It's just a strange amount. It's $9,999.99 Right. So you want to know why it's $9,999 And 99¢.
Right. Basically because I told LENCO that I thought the town could swallow paying about 10,000 for it and he comped us the rest. The total bill was around $22,000
Okay. He charged us half. I was just curious. It was just seemed like a it just seemed kind of an arbitrary number so.
Yes, correct. He's been doing. He's been doing a lot for the town. Oh, I know he has, but I just thought about is there some way that. We could recognize a lot of these people. I mean, we've got Lanco and and you know Jerry Wright and we have we have a lot of volunteers doing some really big work for the town. We're supposed to be writing up letters.
Yeah, Amanda and I have actually talked about that. I should have had it done by now. I have not. But we're going to write a nice letter. Thank you letter to all the contractors that have donated their time and efforts to the museum project because there are a lot of them. Yeah, put that on your list. It is on my list.
My suggestion, can we somehow include that into the walk with the bricks? Especially for the park. Like one section, you know, thanks to these kind of things to these people to, you know, for their efforts.
Let's let's buy them bricks. That's what I'm thinking. I don't know if it's appropriate to do bricks, but I I'd be I'd be akin to doing, you know, maybe a brass plaque because the the walkway is is to honor veterans. Yep.
Some something in that area, maybe just put There's their hands on one walkway for supporters of the veterans. That's what I'm thinking. So you wanna put it in there? So why wouldn't you wanna do that for the those supporters? I didn't realize you had another one for just supporters. I haven't been down there since he has finished finished. This. I agree. I agree with Adrian.
I'm thinking about it now that we should find a place and we should, we should pay for a plaque
for all the people who help build that. Yeah. Just give the rec, you know, the town of Andover wishes to recognize the following community members for their generous and continuous support in this area. Yeah.
I agree with that. So let's, let's get a, Let's get a list of all the people that should be recognized and bring it back and let's try to get something.
Yeah, we'll talk to Jerry about where he might envision that as being a good spot And then we'll figure out what to put and
go from there. Might have to go on that hillside under that nice shade tree on a park bench. Actually, that's not a bad idea.
I know I'm creative like that. Now you're talking. Or put the plaques on the bench just like when people buy benches. Yeah.
There you go. Okay. Anything else about finance? I mean, listen, this, We're supposed to get checks. We're supposed to get a lot of different things. Haven't seen We got the checks. We got the check registered. Step one, I missed that.
Well, came in today. It came in today and I At 04:00, by the way.
So I just wanna globally say whatever we need for these meetings. And I know sometimes Eric gets things last minute during the day, but they gotta, it's gotta come in like Friday.
I go, we're all work, we're all working, we're doing stuff. And we can't do a Monday meeting and be expect to be checking our email at 05:00 trying to eat a meal and.
Some of us aren't, some of us aren't even done with work at 05:00 or we're on the road or something. So this is really frustrating. I did that in my job, I support my boss or whoever and I get things sent, you know, on time. And I know that reminders go out, but if it's, I don't know, if it has to come from us, then maybe it has to come from us. I'll send an email out to everybody and say, please get everything in by this date because. Well, given the fact that it's not like it's something that doesn't, we're not asking to happen every month, we are. And the fact that there's a whole month to get that registered to us.
It doesn't matter when in the month it happens, if it happens at the same point in every month, then we're covered, right? Right. Okay. If it happens a week before, we're good. Yeah. And I'm just saying this globally. It's just, it's very frustrating when I have to make a decision
on something I haven't read or I'm trying to read during a meeting. It's very, very frustrating and I, you know, I just want to make an educated decision and I know everybody else does too.
How did Jay Tuttle make up such a nice comprehensive report?
He sent it today because I spoke to him. I haven't read it. Anybody? You read it? I read it. I read it. Wow, you guys are good. I work till 05:30 or 06:00. I'm with Paula. Yep. Trying to keep my boss happy. He had a very good report.
All right. So can we just, we need to have on the agenda for next month, what's going on with Edmunds and whether or not we're going be able to get access and I know we're getting ready for budget, but that's the whole point. We're supposed to have this up and running and working for budget, you know?
You you think that Jeff or Adrian or Jeff or Paul or somebody could just open up Edmonds and share it with everyone. Yeah. I would think that that should be able to be done. That was the whole point of paying $38,000
wasn't it? Instead of having, you know, instead of having QuickBooks.
Exactly. Pop it open. Jeff McGuire can open it up. Jeff's laughing. Eric, are we reconciling?
And reconcile it and write in front of us. Nope. Eric, are we reconciling? Oh my gosh. No. I'm asking the question. I'm not kidding. No. I'm not either. It's it's why that not doable? Eric, are we reconciled? We are reconciled.
Excellent. That's first step. Okay. So let's get Cherry on. We'll put Cherry at the top of our agenda
next week. Wasn't that that software was $35,000 wasn't it? Almost 40. $40,000. Right. Yeah. We bought
I can't remember how much QuickBook was. I think it was maybe a tenth of that. 6, 6,000 or 5,000 or something. Yeah. Are you kidding? I don't know why Jeff wouldn't let us go with QuickBooks. It's really difficult.
If I remember correct, if I remember, I was I was on the losing side of that vote, Mr. Manning. He was fighting for it. Please, let's not go there, please.
I have to tell all of you, I have lost some votes. Been on the winning side of every argument, and I've been right on all of them but that's okay.
Oh wait, he made me do a ho ho ho.
So let's keep going. Department report, well let's see, the budget appropriations, there weren't any. I didn't see any over expenditure requests. The tax collector's report is in there. We collected about $350,000 this month. There were two refunds of excess payments, Toyota Lease Trust and an Armstrong, the Linda one. The ones that I always tell you, and I sit there and I say this to everybody because it really does offend me, is when you look at the assessor's report and you look at all of the adjustments that are made to people's taxes, we only vote on the ones that we have to issue cash back for, but we never have to vote on all of these that are given for other reasons, and they're all most of them are just normal reasons they should be given, but, you know, we don't even talk about the BAA.
I'm sure we will eventually, but moving on. Yeah, moving on. I got outvoted again.
Okay. Yeah. You got eight minutes and then I got stuff to do. So let's move this along. Oh, boy. Any other report questions? Anybody?
There was a miscalculation in the I just want to point out in the packet for the refund request the total was wrong it should be $952.95 Last month was listed at 6 k. I was I just got a message sent to me.
Yes. Let's see. I was wondering because you're not usually that good at math, Paul. $52 and 95.
Wow. Hey, by the way, there's grass growing somewhere, Mr. Manuel. Hey, I'm I'm on that. I'm on that. All right. Be quiet. You have seven more minutes.
All right. So are we going to vote on those refunds? Anybody want to make a motion on those? Because I don't really need to sign them if you don't want to vote. I'm good.
Speaker I guess I should make the motion since I have the correct number here, unless Adrian is a, you know, he claims to be such a numbers guy. I I never made that claim. I just said that you weren't. Oh, now I gotta come up with something quick to say on the spot here. Okay. I make a motion that we refund the requests that are listed here for a total of $952.95 Second. There you go. All right.
Further discussion, none. All those in favor? Aye. Are other reports that are out there. Any other questions on any of them?
Did you did somebody say that Jay sent something today I I didn't get it.
It's in the package. That's a DT didn't know he sent a separate detailed budget report.
Can somebody forward that to me because I'm looking in my email and I I don't have that. Did you check your town email, Paul? The I'm looking at it right now, my friend. Came in at 03:27.
The only thing I have is from Amanda this morning at 11:28 and Sherry Holmes at 03:59. You sent it to pking@andover.org. Andoverct dot org. So I didn't get it. Thank you. That's andoverct dot org. It's P. King.
Everybody forwarded that to her. Yeah. Did you get it, Scott? I did get it and I read it. It was a very nice report. So happy that we got Shay.
Paula, did you get it? I got it. Is that coming right now? Give me a second for her. I just got it. Thank you.
I already sent it to him. Every once in a while, I look at my emails.
Wow. If we can move on, does anyone have any other questions of reports? Any of the reports? Any of the questions? Oh, and by the way, in the assessor's report, was a $23,000 reduction in total assessed value. Love that. Okay.
Correspondence anything anybody no all right public speak let's go do we have anybody Joanne Ebert I am all set thank you Kurt Dowling. All set, Jeff. Thank you for attending the entire meeting, Kurt. Diane Choquette. I'm all set. Thank you.
Thank you for attending the entire meeting. We have another person in yellow flowers, Kimberly Persson. Hello? That's fine. Dennis O'Brien, thank you as always for attending. It's always great to know that your presence is there even in a phone number that just sits on the screen. Is he awake? He is, he's awake. Kidding me? This is like Apple TV for Dennis O'Brien. All set, thank you.
All right, thank you. This is like Netflix. This is humor for him like you wouldn't believe. Okay. So we're all good. Anybody wanna make a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. Scott
second. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Great seeing you guys. See you on Saturday. I'm looking forward to it.
Not not this yes. This Saturday. See you then. Yes. This Saturday, Paula. Yes. Did you get did you get that email yet? Are you gonna be streaming live, Paula?
Hey, it's from UPC. Yes. Elaine is gonna be bringing a camera over and she's said she's gonna set a camera up at stop one.
We'll be I'll on the sun porch of my shorts. Wow. Wow.