Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
October 14, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Amanda are we all set?
Amanda can you give us a thumbs up if we're recording? It's not recording yet, no. It says recording now. I'm back in recording. I'm sorry. All right, excellent. Excellent.
Is that me or is that someone else? Amanda, it's really strange I have you on twice. We go. All right. So we're moving on to four boards and commissions presentations. The BOSBoe combined finance department committee, town accounting software, and the assistant finance officer hiring committee. Who's doing this one?
So I can handle the second part of that. So the hiring committee has been established, was established by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Ed at the last meeting. We've gotten some preliminary dates, that work for all of us at the end of this month and the beginning of November, and we have had at this point 10 applicants for the position. So that's all I got for that.
Okay anyone else want to add to that Adrian, Jeff, Paula, Scott okay.
I handed off my duties to God, I'm totally blanking. I'm sorry. Long day. Diane? Yeah. Handed off my duties to Diane because the dates are towards the end of the month and I won't be available. So okay
alright four b conservation commission rail trail bank proposal Monarch Monarch Way Butterfly Way Station proposal Carrie
that's me We talked about these proposals at the last Conservation Commission meeting, the end of September, and the Commission's on board. But we would, you know, this is something that we'd be doing cooperatively with the town because the town you know does all the mowing for town areas this there are two proposals that you all should have in your packet right have you seen them correct one is for the the rail trail bank opposite the post office and Dubois and all that and the other is for the flat area at the top of that hill where it widens out before you get into the woods that go down toward the covered bridge And so the idea is just to stabilize that bank because it erodes and it always looks horrible. We could stabilize it with native species that if mowed not tightly, but up, you know, four or five inches would always look reasonably neat and would hold the soil better than it's being held right now.
So that's what that proposal is about. I was down there just today looking at it. There are quite a few invasives that look scraggly. They always look scraggly, the bittersweet and the mugwort and so forth. I pulled out a whole bunch of it. And, you know, that immediately makes things a little neater. Doesn't take too much work. As for the second proposal, the Monarch Waystation, I don't know if you all are aware of the Monarch Waystation movement. It's like a thing. There's a let me turn my screen around. There are all these stations all the way they start down in Mexico. And the deal with with the monarchs, which are, as we all know, diminishing and threatened, is that, you know, the first generation starts in Mexico, and then it lays its eggs up here somewhere in this area, and then there's another generation that flies up to here, another generation that gets up to us by the end of the summer. And these are the ones we're seeing right now. The fourth generation actually is going to fly back to Mexico starting very soon. So having plants that are appropriate for them to lay their eggs on to create that fourth generation that completes the cycle
in the more northerly reaches of New England, like, well, here, is really good. And it's very easy because all they want, all they desperately need is milkweed. And that's for the larvae, the caterpillars, eat. Carrie,
I appreciate the history lesson and everything, but we have a really big Yeah, yeah, go on. Do you need from us?
We just want your input as to whether this is a good idea for the town to do. It sounds like it'd be a great idea. And we can work on it as a concept, you know, within our commission over the winter and be ready to hit the ground in the spring with invasive removal and planting seeds and blah, blah, blah.
Kerry, let us know and let Eric know what you need, as Adrian said, and we'll try to accommodate you to make sure that that happens. Yeah. Mean, I you know I made an offer last meeting that I will sit there and honor. I want this to happen. The presentation, the information in the packet was excellent, but just let us know what we can do. Eric, I know we're going to need some state sign offs on a little bit of what we're going to try to accomplish, but let's get this set up for next spring so that we can get that done. It gives us time.
Kerry, listen, if you need more community involvement, maybe we can reach out to the library. If you'd like to reach out to library, they could coordinate something around this, maybe do like a monarch presentation or we could highlight books on monarch butterflies that month. I mean, whatever we can do to support you will do. Just let us know what you need from us.
Okay. I think it would be wonderful. I'll just say this in closing. It'd be wonderful if you were to replace the Beautification Committee with a grounds committee of people who are committed to continuing working with townland to improve it. Because the Conservation Commission can only do so much. Have ideas and we have a few people, but it would be really nice if we had a committee to work with that was on board.
Doctor. We will work toward that. Okay, any questions for Carrie?
Doctor. No, Carrie, I would just say that we'd like to, we'll definitely consider that, but what we could use from the Conservation Commission and some of the other is we have a hard time recruiting for these committees. Anything that you can do to help us in that regard, start talking to your friends, start talking to the people you walk with and the lake folks and Yeah, I things in the River East too. From the Okay.
Good. Good you presentation, Carrie. Thank you Thank very you for listening. Thank you for your efforts, Carrie. Appreciate Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Thank you all. 4C Economic Development Commission, Elaine.
Yes, we've noticed the Hebron Open for Business page on Facebook has been really good for their businesses and promoting their businesses. So I attended a meeting last month that they had. So they opened it up for Andover to go ahead and attend meetings and figure out what it is they did to go ahead and see if we can replicate just a small portion of it and have Andover open for business. They've got another meeting coming up that I'm going to attend. We as an EDC quite right at the moment are extremely busy with the whole election going on, but we're going to regroup in November and have a meeting hopefully November 12 to go ahead and discuss what we can do for Andover open for business, but we already went out and took I took some pictures of the Andover Pizza and went ahead and put a little Andover Open for Business blurb about Andover Pizza out on the economic development
page. And we're going to use that page, but with the heading of Andover Open for Business. In your packet, you can see the Hebron Open For Business, they had a task force, they have a board of selectmen member, they have two business members, they have a town employee, Donna Lanza. They have all these people who have been working on it. So it's not just the EDC, it's only one EDC member. It's really a task force. I don't know how much of that that we can do, but we're going to look into trying to do a little mini version of it. And we certainly don't have as many businesses as they do to go ahead and promote, but we will do the best we can to go around and promote what we do have and put it out there. But it's just that we need to regroup as an EDC and figure out who's going to do what and recruit, just as you mentioned, how impossible it is to get recruitment, recruit people, but we're going to do what we can to recruit people to help out. Amanda is actually the impetus behind all of this. Kind of put us together, you know, Hebron and Andover, so we're going to pick up the pieces and go with it. All right. Any questions for Elaine? Anyone? Comments?
Elaine, how's the Facebook page going? I know I joined but are you getting a lot of likes?
We're yeah. Yeah. We're getting a few likes every single day which is which is kinda cool and the more businesses we start to promote then that'll spread because then say, hey, check out that page because they just talked about us. So yeah yeah we're we're we're picking up some people I mean it's it's it's slow to grow but once it's out there then we'll have more listening ears about our cause for promoting our businesses. Great, thank you. Thank you. All right, anything else? No. All
right, traffic safety committee speed check, speed sign, speed limit, speed check sign. Can we back up real quick?
Four a, I didn't hear anything about the accounting software. The last I heard, we were gonna be signing a contract, but where is that?
We did sign a contract. We've had the first introductory meeting, myself, Laura, and Barbara with their reps. Timeline? Probably January, February, full implementation, something like that.
Oh, so we're we're waiting at we're waiting a little bit on this. Yep. We're a ways out. Okay. Is that them or us?
Well, since they're the ones doing pretty much all the work, it's mostly them. We originally floated January 1 being the timeline for doing the complete turnover. And the rep basically said they already have 15 or 20 towns stacked up to be January 1 cutover dates. So they wouldn't even consider that one right now. Okay. They've
said they've pushed it out. And has there been any discussion as to how this is going to impact audit budgeting for us given The that
reality is, you know, we're at this point, we're going to end up budgeting essentially the way we've done it in the past for this coming year, I'm sure, because I don't think we'll be able to cut over and then budget using Edmonds prior to that.
Okay. All right. So we're gonna dual use for a while is what you're telling me? Yep. Okay. Just wanted to know, I hadn't seen or heard discussion on it. Thank you. Sorry.
Sorry, Jeff. Go on. R and D, traffic safety committee. Aaron. So the radar speed sign is finally up and functioning. So that's good. It took a long time. Had a traffic What? Where is it positioned? Where is it? It
is on Lake Road at the first spot that the safety committee recommended, which was coming down the hill from 03:16. So it is there. I've already had at least one resident email me and ask me whether it gives out tickets. Say yes, maybe they'll slow down.
I was noncommittal as to whether it did or did not. The second thing is the commission met last night and discussed a range of things. There wasn't a quorum. So it was really just a few of us that were discussing things. A couple things came out of the meeting, one of them which I think we can implement directly, and that is the desire for a crosswalk where Island Street and Lakeside Drive intersect because it's right to the access way. And there've been frequent complaints about people walking across there. So by identifying that as a crosswalk, we're planning on doing that right now anyway, because we're about to do line striping. So it's a good time and we'll implement that as part of the line striping. Other than that I know Joe the chairman has been really busy because he's never sourced employee and they've been getting beat up a lot.
So he's I think they're trying to regroup and focus on what can be done next spring. The other thing we talked about pretty extensively is the possibility of turning Island Street into one way, summer only. I think for plowing it's better to be two way in the winter but it in some ways it makes a lot of sense making it one way in the summer just because that one gets people parked on both sides and there's really only a possibility of one lane down the middle when people are parked on both sides which happens. So why
switch it back and forth then? Why not just leave it and the plows can do what they need to do? They'd be the exception.
I mean, you could, but I don't think in the winter there's a parking issue there. So why would you not have it for two way traffic in the winter when you're not worried about parking? Right. People get people will get in the habit of doing it a certain way and then they're gonna
they're gonna turn around and have an accident when we switch it. So, you know, I mean, if the only issue is plowing, then leave it a one way and be done with it. You know? I mean, if that's the only reason to switch it back. It's we don't have businesses there that are gonna be affected. It's not a general parking issue for the residents that are there I would gather. So I would just if you're gonna do it, do it and leave it and that way there's no confusion come summer, you know, when you start changing it. You know, and then because otherwise you're gonna have to go out and get much more involved signs printed and you're gonna have to swap them out winter and summer and just make it simple, you know. Why why why make it confusing?
Next be the traffic committee. They can sit there and come back and say they want to do that exactly for a year long and we'll go from there. The traffic committee did do that determination. So
Eric, you were talking about the painting of the crosswalk at Island Street. So that can be put in conjunction with the one way if they decide to do that in the spring coming up. I know there was discuss discussions on that committee from a previous meeting about, murals. Maybe that's the area that we do that whole street painting area to try to get people to slow down.
Right. I mean, so are you suggesting that we don't do the crosswalk now? Because I would have just done the crosswalk when we do line painting because we're redoing some stop bars and doing line painting.
Are you having any parking lots done in the spring? Not that I know of at this point.
What the reason for not not doing it now, Jeff, if he's already in the area working?
Because if you're gonna sit there and do no. I I have no problem doing that, but if you were gonna sit there and make it a one way street and you were going to do a lot of other issues, then I would do it in the spring. But if you're not going to have parking lot striping done, then do it when you can. Okay. All good. Anything else from the Traffic Safety Committee?
Nope. Those were their only thoughts at this point. Okay. So to so to clarify, Jeff, then Eric's got the okay to do it when he's doing the other paint line striping? Yeah, have no problem with it. Does anyone else on the board have a problem with it? Oh, it's a good idea. Get it done. Yep. Okay, I'll make it happen. Thank you, Eric. Appointments five. Hey, Mindy Gosling, land use board clerk.
So this is a just notification to you we've hired Mindy Gosling to be the Land Use Board Clerk, to replace Linda who has retired after retiring after retiring. Alicia Lee, Temporary Town Clerk Assistant.
Yep, same thing. Alicia is a temporary employee just to handle the overflow with ballots and get through the immediate crush
for that. Okay. How are we budgeting for that financially?
So that is coming out of the registrar's budget. And I think partly that is because the registrar has gotten some extra money from the Secretary of State. But I suspect given So what I'm saying is we're okay financially now If we have a series of referendums and a bunch of other stuff, you know, we'll be in trouble later in the year with the registrar. This has been a pretty expensive year for the registrar's office. Fine. It'll hold an absentee ballot issue.
Handle it correctly and let's not have any problems in our town and let's move forward. Yeah, mean, no, we have some supplemental
payroll given the fact that we've been without an assistant for a while anyways, right? So we could shuffle if we needed to? Yeah,
yeah we're not going to have a problem covering this financially if that's the concern. Okay, Matteo Whitford, Assistant Town Clerk.
So we did interviews, we interviewed 10 people for the Assistant Town Clerk position. It was myself and three area board clerks plus Carol. We whittled it down to four finalists of which one of the four decided she was going to withdraw because she's more interested in the finance, the open finance position. So we brought the three back in for a second interview and I think Matteo was kind of the clear choice of everybody for that position. Is she a town resident? She is not a town resident. Was that one of the criteria that we looked at? It absolutely is one of the criteria we looked at. Okay. How many of the four were town residents? One of the four. The one that withdrew? No, not the one that withdrew. Okay. All right. Any other questions on those appointments?
So just for the record, this is a little unclear. There's a state statute that says the town clerk is authorized to hire assistance unless the charter overrides. And our charter is a little unclear on that legally, whether you as a boarder supposed to be appointing officially her replacement or her. So I give you the option of officially being the appointor or deferring in which case Carol will officially appoint her. Somebody make a motion.
No. I I my my personal take on this is that given we had nothing to do with the interview process, Carol do it.
No. I'm gonna sit there and disagree because when you, the town eventually gets around to changing its charter and the town clerk becomes an employee, you're not gonna have the employee appoint the employee. So you address it then.
Alright. I would I would sit there and do it but that is me. If no one else have an opinion on this? I agree with Adrian.
Okay, that's two. That's follow-up. We'll move on resignations of the beautification committee. Yeah. Do you have to officially appoint the other two? They're temporary, aren't they? No, that's within my purveyor. Okay.
We'll let Eric handle his issue and Carol handle her issue. All right. Resignations to the Beautification Committee. I believe last meeting we voted on this or no? You did not. We did not. Will someone make a I'll make a motion that we accept the resignations of the Beautification Committee and we honor them for their years of service to the town and all of the good work that they've done. Seconded.
Further discussion? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Town administrators report. Eric.
Okay. So you have my written report, so I won't go into all of that. I am going to cover just mostly the things that were in additional to the report that you asked for. Jeff Murray, you asked about revisiting town email sending without using the Outlook app. What I would say is we discussed this before, you certainly can make a choice to install the using the regular Outlook and not use the web version on your phone or your computer just with the caveat that you know that if there's a FOIA request you know all that stuff may be addressed as part of that. So that's up to you if you choose to do it You know, it's not anything that's a problem on my end. It would simply be a problem on your end if you chose to do that and it happened. It's a fairly unlikely thing to have happened. Second thing was the agreement over wood chips. I know the sportsman's club was interested in getting some wood chips from the town's pile. The town has no issues with that. So basically it's shorter for us to truck them there than anywhere else. What I had suggested to Jeff was that the town when we have to pay for trucking, we pay about $90 an hour for a truck and an operator. Given the round trip and that he's talking about somewhere around four trips,
that means the towns would budget basically about $180 to that. So I would suggest that the Sportsman's Club donate $100 to the food bank, something like that and we'll truck over the chips if that's meaningful to the Sportsman's Club. Well, let's back up a second. Although I appreciate the
I think your heart's in the right place. But given the amount of stuff that the Sportsman's Club does for Andover and the fact that we're having a problem getting rid of those chips and they're willing to take them off our hands, I don't think we should be asking them to help us get rid of our pile, know, to pay to get rid of it because if we don't get rid of it, we're trucking it somewhere else anyways. It can't sit there for an unlimited amount of time. So if they're willing to take it, whatever it's costing us to get it there, God bless them for taking it from us. I mean, I don't I don't feel the the need to charge them for doing us a favor. You know. I mean they already do a turkey shoot and a bunch of other stuff. They're always helping us out. So I don't feel comfortable asking them to to donate to do us a favor personally. How many loads do they want Eric?
Jeff can probably speak to that. I think I worked it out based on what you were talking for volumes, roughly four trucks, three or four truckloads.
How many loads about right? Six or seven six or seven yards
to the truck load. Thank you, Scott. You read my mind.
They could take more. They could take more. I'm not sure. It just depends if we took a few loads and how much we used. But, I mean, am I am I wrong, Eric? Are aren't we I mean, they're not exactly flying out of the public works department, are they?
No, no. I mean, if you as a board want to give them the chips, I I have no objection to it. I'm not, you know, I'm just looking at it and saying, don't want the town to look like it's Why why are the chips at public works anyway? They're not at public works. They're at the dump. They're so basically, when we chipped on the side of the roads, all the brush from the trees that distinctive removed. In some cases when we were in areas where there was lawns, we can't just blow the chips on somebody's lawn. So we blow them into one of their tractor trailers, they drop it at the transfer station because it's cheaper than us having it trucked to their disposal location. So
that's why we did it and it's fast. We saved money but now we have to pay for it in another way.
It's still Adrian, just wait. We're working on something right now to get rid of those chips for nothing. So
I mean, my question to you, Eric, would be why we had I looked at your open space summary of all the acreage we have. Why wouldn't we spread that out somewhere where we won't have to worry about it in the future? Now, I agree with helping the Sportsman Club, but shouldn't we be planning when we get those things that this is where we're going, whether it's the pit over on Parker Bridge or wherever else you might use to get rid of that? Ideally, yes, but this was kind of quick. I'm
not so sure that the pit is not really easy to get into with tractor trailers. I suspect if we were gonna dump it at the pit, we'd end up transferring it to our trucks or tri axles anyway.
Yeah. This is this is an actual tractor trailer, Jeff. It's a it's a it's a dumping trailer. So it's a massive trailer with an open time. Longer 40 foot. Right. Okay.
So just I want to bring up something. I talked to Mike Ford, which is a grounds person of the Andover Sportsman's Club when we discussed this and he says he's willing to give a donation if that's what we want to do in the amount of $100
don't we give it up to them? Let them decide If he's already got it in his head, he's probably going to donate it.
Aren't we going to have one of our selectmen make a big push to donate to Andover Food Pantry for Thanksgiving again and Christmas? No? Should.
Okay. Listen, the Sportsman Club can give the money wherever it wants. Eric, just make make it available to them. If we're gonna have to pay or we're gonna have to move that somewhere else let's move it to somewhere it's gonna do some good for some town residents. And Scott can you elaborate at all as to what you're working on? We're working on getting rid of all the chips for free. Somebody wants the chips and if we deal comes through it we'll just lose them all.
How long before you'll have an answer on that? Tomorrow. Okay, so if that and they'll take all of them? Yeah. Okay, So I would make a motion then that if if Scott's
deal comes through, we do that. If not, then we make them available to Endover Sportsman's Club when they donate at their disposal. Would say, Adrian, the best thing to do is just give the chips to the Andover Sportsman's Club and let them make the donation to whoever they want and the balance of the chips will be gone and you won't have to worry about any of it. Fine.
All right, then Eric can do that without We don't need a motion. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Let's go. Okay.
Next item up, Adrian asked about opening the town hall. There is a separate motion or a separate line item there for opening the town hall. I will say personally, I'm not in favor of it for a couple reasons. One, I don't think there's anything that's not getting done right now that would get done if we were fully open. And we're not turning anybody away right now. They just have to knock and have somebody come out and escort and make sure they actually sign in so we can do contact tracing. And number two, I think there's a fairly strong likelihood that we would end up with a union grievance if we did it. I would tell you that my planning right now is working out what would happen if we do get another COVID spike in town and figuring out how we can work remotely again more efficiently than we did the last time. So much on full reopening. We ever have a COVID spike in town?
We haven't had a big one. I mean, there are multiple Andover residents at the moment with COVID, whether you consider that a spike or not, that's up to you. So how many residents currently do we have? Two. Unclear either two or three.
Okay. Have we had more than that at any given time?
The very early outbreak, we had probably had that many in a week at least once. Okay. Something like that. I mean, I guess It's very low community transmission right now. I'm not trying to tell you that there's a problem currently. There is not. And with a little luck, we won't have one. So what would the grievance issue be on? Well, so first of all, if you read the governor's executive orders, we are still being, we are still supposed to be having remote working for people that are in high risk categories. And we clearly are not doing that. So I think the employees have accepted the fact that they're functioning right now and nobody really has a problem with it. And the other thing is that in a lot of cases, we're able to serve people without any direct interface
because a lot of the people that walk in want things that can be done electronically just as easily. They just don't know it. So what I'm saying is I don't, I think right now the employees are on board with what we're doing right now and we're not losing any services. That's my take on it. But we can discuss it more later and you know ultimately I will support whatever decision you as a group make. There was some discussion last month about hunting on town land. I personally think you guys should hold a public hearing if you're serious about doing that. I would just say that I'm not a hunter, and you had a lot of stuff in the last meeting about how I was supposed to evaluate individuals as to their suitability to get a permission to hunt on town land. I'm spectacularly unqualified
to make those judgments as far as I'm concerned. If you want me to do that, you're going to have to provide some kind of objective criteria for what qualifies somebody as somebody allowed to hunt on town property. I think you should probably also list explicitly what properties you're going to allow hunting on, list of weapons types, calibers, whatever you choose, define the hunting season, and define the list of animals that you're going to allow to be hunted on town property.
So I think something got lost in translation. The motion was for bow and crossbow so there are no calibers involved. There's specific seasons that are allowed with those weapons and I think all we were asking for you to do is get it you know we can we need to put together a form that asks for the person's state hunting license and you know whatever vehicle they're gonna be parking so that we have the license placed off a resident calls in and has a complaint we can verify who's there. The
form form Adrian is available through the state and and all the regulations are we would use would be from the state regulations I called three different hunting clubs to find out about their specific regulations that they have. Yep. And the Andover Sporesist Club, a friend of mine went through the bylaws, was nothing in there about what they have for regulations when they hunt on their property. The box and coon, I guess it's called maybe called the carpentry, said that they have, you know, if a person puts up a tree stand they mark it with the hunters name and the person signs in and another one I called in Coventry said that they used the state regulations
as far as all the rules and regulations so there's three you know I think if somebody puts up a tree stand that's a good idea to have their name and address or whoever the name's on there, but following the state regulations and the permits from the town or from any given landowner, it should just be the same thing. It's the easiest, safest way to do it.
So Scott, is that something that you can pull the form up so Eric doesn't have to go try to find it? Absolutely, yes. Very simple. Eric, think beyond that we're just looking for someone to basically to register with the town that they would like to do this and we need to give them a map of the appropriate properties. I know Jeff, does not want anyone behind the school and I think that's appropriate if that's, you know, Paul had concerns about that as well. So other than land behind the school, we had already ok'd this. So.
What exact are properties we're talking about here? Have we gotten that far where we're talking about specific locations or? I think anything over 10 acres would be eligible. So what about properties that are landlocked?
That's not I would say Paul, that 16 acre parcel right next to you, you probably could hunt on.
Well her point her point is that there's no way to get there without crossing someone else's property. So that would Yeah. Be I don't I don't know how that, you know. Well, they can't they can't legally cross somebody else's property with a weapon. Right. Yeah. Maybe yeah. Unless I get permission from the landowner.
Unless I get permission from that landowner. So can we do this? Can Scott
and Adrian and and Jeff, I would imagine you're interested in doing this and even Paula, I'm the only one that won't go out with a bow or an arrow and shoot a deer or a beaver or a little why you guys put something together that you guys, agree with and then let's give it to Eric and we'll try to get this put in place. Yeah. Have no you're not gonna do a public hearing. You're just gonna do it. We're just gonna do it. Yep. Okay.
So I just have a question. How did this all get brought to us in the first place? How did this whole subject come up?
Eric told me that some people had come into the town hall looking and Carol also said the same thing looking for hunting permission. Eric mentioned it to me and he said would you like to put this on your next agenda? I said sure, let's put it on. So publicly, that's exactly how this came down, Jeff. Okay, well Scott, one thing I would like to see is if these people are
interested in hunting on town land, usually somebody that's interested in doing something in town or using town property usually comes to the Board of Selectmen and presents or actually speaks to public speak about what they would like to do. I have yet to hear anybody come before a border commission and ask to hunt on land just some discussions at town hall. So if those people that are interested would like to come and actually speak about it. I would be more interested in saying to see if there's a need first before we decide. So you want to say you want to backtrack then, Jeff. Well, yeah, I think we're kind of putting the cart before the horse. I think I would really like to
see if somebody really wants to hunt if they if they're if they really want to use the property to hunt, they can take the time to come to a meeting and discuss it with us.
I mean, listen, did to be clear. I'm not going to be the person hunting I actually I won't be hunting on the property. No I'm just saying you know I'm not going be hunting either but I'm just a little confused in that we did do a motion last month and we all agreed on it. And now we're so we're going to do we would have to put
some more I mean, that kind of came to us that night and then I started putting some thought into it and just some issues and some locations. It's I just think some areas are appropriate. Some areas are not appropriate. I think if we just make some blanket statement that we're going to make 10 acres or over, we may impact some residents negatively that we didn't think that we would impact so Well, but here's the I just make sure that there's a need. We need to demonstrate a need first before we
I don't have a problem with the demonstrating of the but the idea that we're impacting residents because we're allowing someone to hunt on town land. It's no different than I don't have to get permission from my neighbors to have someone hunt on my property. Know I'm not I'm
not sure but Adrian that's your property. The town is the town's property. Exactly. So they don't need
permission from a neighbor to do that. Just to be clear.
Well, mean, I I understand what you're saying, Adrian, but let's just get a little more information. I think Jeff and I both have questions. And listen you know that I support hunters. My husband is a hunter but I
have some thoughts and questions still that I'd like to get some answers to after Why thinking don't you bring them up then, Paula, so we can get this? Yeah. So let's let's nip in the bud. Yeah. So
I think some of my questions got answered. So it's gonna be bow, right? Not in rifle.
No. Weren't doing rifle. That's a little too complicated and certainly I think Bow allows us to wade into these waters gently and see how it goes. Right, and I'm also sorry,
one thing. We never voted on this. We discussed it. No, there was a motion.
It's not in the minutes. I don't think we voted on it. No, we didn't.
We've all decided you decided several of you were going to work on it, but there was no decision made about anything. And you had lots of ideas.
That The we're going vote on later in this are actually visits, queue under a section. The members discussed the option of allowing residents to hunt on town property, not including school grounds or surrounding areas. Members agreed to work on a plan for allowing only bow hunting on town property. Jeff Maguire suggested for the members to come up with a plan with the town attorney to present at the next meeting. So I'm just letting you know that's where the minutes were and that's what I was looking for. Sorry if I wasn't. So Paul, everything that you said and everything that Jeff said is great because Adrian, the one thing that I would say, even though I'm purple, I would vote against this. So I'm just letting you know. You guys all might vote for it. All four of you might vote positively for it. I'm voting against it. So I know I didn't I think you're working on Paula right now, so I think you're good. No. I I'm I'll be honest. I'm
I'm I have reservations about it because I think it's gonna open up a can of worms, to be honest with you. And what's the difference between if somebody has the has access to hunt on town property or we have some state property in in the town that's not being used either? So what's what's the difference?
Why do say the state? Hunting on all the state property.
Yeah. What's that? He's already hunting on state property. What do you mean it's not being used?
Yeah. Is it I guess that was my question. Is, like, Bishop Swamp being used? Is that what It's already open to hunting. So people are asking for more more spots to hunt? That's that's what they're asking for when they're coming into town hall? You're married to a hunter. They're always looking for a new spot.
I I know. I know. So this hunt hunting in a Bishop Swamp, then they go find that parcel behind you that no one's
Right. It it it is not an I I I will go it's not a horrible thing we're using town property for some recreation purposes. I really don't Yeah. Mean, come up with a plan, come back to us, don't waste let's not discuss it in nauseam here. Let's find a way to do it and come back and let's vote on whatever you come back with. Let's vote on it. The question Paul, what are the questions that you have? Yeah. Do you have any other questions so that we Specifically.
Right. So I I'd be interested to finding out what what the exact properties and addresses that we're we're giving them access to? And then who's going to monitor, you know, is anybody making sure that they're not trespassing on other people's property? And then how, how is it marked? Like, how are they going to know? Like we're giving them a map, but are these properties marked so that they're not wandering, you know, not purposely, but by accident. And then we get a call from a resident that, you know,
somebody was trespassing on their property. Well, I mean, to be candid, you all you should know at least being married to a hunter that, you know, every every hunter is responsible for himself in the woods. Marked properties or not, sometimes people do accidentally cross borders. It's the responsibility of the DEP. So they already have a state entity that people can reach out to if they feel someone's trespassed while hunting. So just like if somebody crosses into my property now from the property behind or a neighbor or whatever or even comes over from your side, you call the DEP. So it would be the same type of thing. If if someone crosses into their property, whether they're they might not they might not be coming from town property, they could be coming from another adjoining parcel. Parcel. So they're allowed to do it if they've if they've marked a deer or hit a deer and they're and they're tracking it. They should call DEP when they leave the property and say, I've I've hit a deer. I'm tracking it. It's crossed into another parcel. That's their responsibility as a hunter. But it's no different. There's a state entity already in place for these types of things. Right. For all those regulations.
And and to be fair, to use your word, Adrian. Yeah. I know that that's what what has to be done or what that's supposed to be done but I also hear stories that somebody shoot you know gets a target, the deer goes crosses land and they don't want to call or whatever or they have to drag it out a different way. So it's not a perfect world, I get that. But you know I'm that's why I'm very interested to see what properties we're gonna tell them or areas in town and I'm not against it. Think we need to definitely have a conversation and make sure that we think it out before we put it out there and then know we're opening up a can of worms. So.
Person that hunts on somebody's property has to be responsible enough to find out where the boundary lines are first Paula. That's what they would do first,
Okay. It's no different than when your husband goes out to a new property, he walks the boundary, tries to identify based on the map and the marker where the lines are. Someone comes to my property to hunt, I walk them around the property that the perimeter, I do it because it's quicker than having them do it. I know exactly where the boundaries are and I also know where some easy markers are to say, hey, when you see that pine tree, that's the that's the end of it. Know if you see this stone wall that's the end of it, but most most hunters are pretty, adept and also, if you your husband may be able to show it to you there's an app that you can get through your phone. So you understand there's an app that you get, it shows you all the outlines of the properties. It uses the GIS system which we have here in Andover. Shows every single parcel. So they can pull that up on their phone and they see literally the outline of the parcel that they're on. And where they are on the app. Right.
Right. And and they don't even have to do a hunting app to do that. They could do it on the GIS app so there are there are multiple ways to do this but it sounds like you may have already known that so
Yeah. I'm just like I said I'm just being honest I have I have some reservations about it so if we if we sit down and we
talk and get some Well I just feel like you're there's a issue here that you're not addressing because you already know you already said you're shaking your head that you know there's this app and everything so you already knew all of that so right but you're not answering my questions you don't even have my you don't have answers to all my questions I'm asking what are the properties
and I'm interested to see what those properties are I and I've been going I've walked every town property in the last week to check them all out and I brought that to Eric today.
So that's one question. What are the other questions? Obviously find
properties. What are the other questions you need addressed? Well, that's the biggest one. So we talked about how are they marked. Obviously, somebody's going to use the app and then I mean, are we gonna monitor it?
We just going on the That's the DEP's job. Okay,
I'll go. What about approval? What about licensing, town licensing requirements? All of the The state license require them to go through a class.
Once they've Are you asking people to sign up with the town and say they're gonna be on the property? You said that their cars are Yeah,
we can put that together. There's a state as Scott said, there's a form on the state website. We'll pull that up. We will put that together with a list of properties and maybe modify that form so that we have a way to identify vehicles
when they're parked. You could put that on on that a notification,
and you have to make a copy of it and keep it in the town hall. Right? So so we can we can sit there and that together. I just so my point is if we put all this together and we come back, I wanna make sure that we've addressed all of everyone's questions, not just Paula, if there's other concerns I Jeff
a ton of concerns. Like I said, we need to first demonstrate a need and we need to demonstrate that there's a hardship too, that there's actually, is lands needed for people to hunt on. Like I said, we have Nathan Hale, we have Bishop Swamp. We have the Sportsman's Club that has a ton of hunting land that people hunt on. The land behind my house is 10 acres, but it's also like shaped like a pencil. You shoot a deer, it's gonna automatically run on somebody else's property. Mean, that's a given.
So again, we can certainly put together a list of appropriate properties. But if we put together a list of appropriate properties and you say, well, we don't have a need and I don't see a hardship. Guess I'm just flabbergasted that we're now talking about we want to show there's a hardship.
Yeah, because Adrian, we've had a month to think about this and I put some thought into it and it's like nobody has come to this board and asked for permission to hunt. Not one person. Not one person. So if people if people show up at a meeting and they want to they want to hunt on town property and there's a they show that there's a need open up town land for hunting, then I'm all for it. But So saying, Jeff, that you require
them to come before the Board of Selectmen to ask for hunting permission? No, but I haven't, Scott, I haven't heard one person come and ask. Well, it's beyond that. He's saying even if they come if they can't show them enough hardship and they can say, well, I've already hunted Bishop Swamp and I'm not getting anything. So I need another place to hunt. Is that what you're looking for? It's true. I'm Italian. If I'm a town person, I'd like to I'd like to hunt on this land. That's a that's a legitimate excuse for a reason. It's just that's not a hardship. So you're just saying you want them to come and say I'd like to hunt here
because hardship is a completely different I would like to see because I know we've heard people that want to hunt on the property but I haven't yet to see one person come forward and request a hunt.
No, I mean, to be candid, I don't I haven't come forward to request a hunt. And I would also say that I am comfortable.
Adrian, Adrian, I'm gonna ask particularly Scott, you and Scott put together what you believe Listen, we've
already established Paula's and Yurindo. Yeah. Four votes. And Yurindo. So it's a dead issue. Paul didn't say no. Let me never said I was gonna waste your time. I'm not gonna waste your Why I asking this? And then you guys are gonna vote no. It's it's not worth my effort. I never said I was gonna vote no. Never once I said said if someone does not come before the board, you're not interested.
Plus if we and like Eric said, there's been no public meeting about this. It's like So so you just said unless someone comes to the board, it's a no. All
I ask is that you go to the town attorney with whatever you come forth with and make sure that he agrees that it's legally acceptable and personally I would go in front of the insurance company because Jeff, it's legally acceptable.
Other towns do it. That's not the issue. The issue is we have you,
Jeff and Paula voting no. Paula because she doesn't want someone hunting No, for a I said I would vote no. That's fine. Adrian, do not put words in my mouth. I never said I would have a no no. I say it all. Alright, Adrian. What what's what's the Adrian and Frank then? What why are you I wanna hear from Adrian then. Okay? I'm gonna put you in the hot seat. You wanna you wanna put word no. You wanna put words in our mouth. I wanna hear from you. Why are you pushing this? Give me pitch it to me. Why why are you loving this idea? Because it's not about loving the idea. It's about well, first of all, let's back up.
Scott has already expressed that people have come and asked about hunting. K? So that's how this started. I don't care one way or the other personally. I'm not gonna be the person hunting. I do think it's a benefit to our environment to reduce the deer population. That is a different conversation. But I also feel like we have all of this property in town that we do nothing with, that we should make available to our town residents for a variety of activities. You know, I think most residents don't know that you can go snowmobiling on town property. I think most residents, if especially hunters, if we made the land available to them would utilize the town lands because there are not a lot of large parcels left in town that are open to hunting. So for me it's about making it available to town residents. I mean I'm sure your husband would love to be able to add a parcel that he could go and hunt on in town and not have to drive to Colchester or wherever it is. My
frustration is that this board was talking in favor of this a month ago and now for their own reasons have now backed up. And I and candidly, Paul, you asked a lot of questions that you already knew the answer to. So they were rhetorical and that you already knew the answer. So that's a little frustrating for me. You know there's an app out there. You know there's wait. You know exactly how a hunter, being familiar with it, already know exactly how a hunter finds his way around a parcel. So you're asking a question that you already know the answer to. If you have a specific objection then just make that objection. Don't try to come up with a list of things. A legitimate note simply saying, listen, as a resident, I don't want someone crossing my property to get to a landlord town parcel. That is a legitimate argument in and of itself. All All right.
Need to discuss this as individuals and bring forth proposal to the next meeting. Okay. I I have one more thing. No. I have one I have one more thing to say. Okay? I've not said whether I'm gonna vote for it or not, and I don't know why you keep putting words in my mouth. It's legitimate to say that last month, yeah, I was for it. I've thought about it and I'm not sure if I'm for for it against it. It's good to have these conversations and ask questions. Exactly. Jeff,
the idea that we have these conversations privately and then come back to the board is wrong. Eric made a point a long time ago when he joined our you're saying we should have these individually. And we shouldn't. We need to have them as a board so that residents know that we've discussed these things. Adrian,
didn't sit there and say that we shouldn't have the discussion. I don't think we should have this discussion right now. If your concern is that we can't come up with a legitimate proposal that at least three of these members will vote for, then don't waste your time. I agree 100% with you. But if you talk to them and you come up with something that's legitimate and either Paul or Jeff will vote with you and Scott, then it'll pass. I won't stand it. I'm not gonna grandstand on it. It's just not something I'm gonna vote for. So, what I'm asking you is we can go on and on about this, but I would think if you pick up the phone and talk to Paula and say, deal with Paula's concerns and get a proposal
that's appropriate, you'll get it passed. I think it's appropriate that town residents be a part of our discussion. So that's my point.
They will. That's my point too. Would like to have some residents that wanna honor the property for the town meeting. The next meeting when we have I think that's not a big part, guys. No, no, that's a nice part.
A second, you guys. Just wait. We are Board of Selectmen members. This, we're doing this for the public. I'm not doing this for me. I got thousands of acres to hunt, Jeff, okay? If this is not a personality thing, if you're on a board commission, there's regulations you follow. Right now, we're following the regulations, we're following what the people of Andover want or don't want. If they don't want it, we won't do it. But personally shouldn't have any bias towards any bit of this. There's
no bias just comment. Yes, there is Jeff. There's bias, obviously there's bias here.
But because we're asking questions It's a use of public land. If you wanna use it for that, fine. Maybe maybe I don't feel comfortable with any type of hunting. Okay, I'm biased. Apologize. No idea, guys. But what I will say to you is, Paul, legitimate proposal and we can vote on it. We have nothing.
Why don't we put the referendum on November 3? Why don't we add as a referendum item? Let's go. Decide. Too late. Late. Too for that. Too late. I try. Listen,
just because we ask questions, all right, I'm just gonna put out there. Just because we ask questions, don't assume that the questions are geared towards what we're thinking on our head and how we're voting. It's good to have an open conversation and ask questions. Adrian, I wanted to hear why you supported it because there have been times in the past where you said something and I've changed my mind. So
everybody I don't have a personal stake in it. For me it's just I feel like I'm always sitting there that I don't either. That's fine. That's fine. I
I don't have a stake in this one pit. So then what I'm trying to say is don't attack me and say you don't want it because you have the landlocked like I'm just asking questions guys. Okay, so everybody just calm the frig down and we're having a conversation. Okay, so let's move on. All right, what are we going to do from here? We're having another conversation or are we going to referendum? No, what
you said is you want to find out what properties you want to hunt. Need to be specific about this because you can't keep bantering every other meeting about if we're gonna do this or not. You want to know what properties we want to hunt. Yeah, because I think the public's gonna want to know So that that's really simple. I already had all the maps out today. I showed Eric, but then we kind of dropped it because didn't know what where this was going tonight. Okay now and Jeff what what are the problems that you have Jeff? You'd like this one? It's not going to be we're gonna what we proposed is to open it up to bow hunting maybe nobody will come Maybe nobody will come to ask Eric if they can hunt here. Maybe they won't. I'm not gonna I don't believe that we should put it in a river east, but I think that if people come, there's two or three old men in town that want to hunt, they don't have a place to hunt, I don't see any reason why they can't go out and go go hunting.
Me either. We have hundreds of acres, and Adrian is absolutely right, nobody does a thing with it.
Nothing. And like I've told you Scott, I would do it as a trial basis, open one parcel of land and see how it works. But Jeff, thank you. Putting up every piece of town land. Jeff,
I didn't like when they put a driveway through my backyard back here. But I was the first person to I made two motions on it after the town voted on it that it was all right and I made the motions to pass that thing back to my backyard. Just because you're home and get somebody hunting in your backyard, it doesn't mean that you're gonna put, you should put a bias on it that you don't want to Scott,
it's not a good fit. It's not a good fit. It's a good fit. There's 200 acres back there. You're out of order. You're out of order. Okay. Let's back up. This is getting a little heated.
Scott, is there is there four parcels in town that are well over 50 acres that we could open up?
Yeah, there's there's there's the one at the dump. There's one down on Parker Bridge Road that's, you know, 40 acres down there. There's there's one up on Beer Swamp that's, you know, 20 or so acres. For bow hunting, you don't need a big parcel of property. Okay. Okay. Can we come back next meeting?
So let's let's look at the let's look at the larger parcels and then come back to the board. We'll come back with the form. We'll get it in everyone's packet next month. Early. Early. And we will put together a basic outline and Paula and Jeff and Jeff can take a look at it and decide whether they feel it's appropriate or not at that time. Can we just
do something so we can somehow inform the residents that the town will be discussing this at the next meeting. Anybody that's for or against it to please attend because I would like everybody to have a voice and because there could be people against it. There could be people for it. Everybody have a chance to speak yay or nay whether it's the law or not to open it to law. Absolutely.
And now it's a public hearing at the beginning of next meeting, if that's how you wanna go. I think that's acceptable.
And if everybody says they don't want it, then that's very easy. Very easy. Let's
put it, can we agree to put something in River East? If you want it in the River East, sure.
And I'll reach out to Sloan and Michelle and see if they're interested in doing an article just in case. That sounds like an acceptable plan. Paula
that's fine. And we're just talking about town just town residents right. We'll have the option on residents just residents. Okay.
Okay Eric, you're still up. Oh boy, okay. I almost don't wanna say this. Next up, Forrester Downlands. Oh gosh. So I'm not trying to start a food fight. But you are. I replayed the tape, of the conversation regarding forestry at the last one. And I just need some clarification before we start engaging with the foresters on what we're wanting to do. There's a couple basic options that I see. So the town total has somewhere around $3.33 50 acres of large parcels that could go into a forestry program in some form or another. But what I couldn't really understand from the last meeting is, is your objective as a board to maximize the timber harvest or to maximize the future recreational values of a parcel or what is it that you're trying to get out of the forestry and that way we can gear the contract towards that rather than, so I guess I just need to know where what the board wants to accomplish with forestry management on town properties. Well, unless someone else wants to jump in.
Right so Go ahead Adrian.
I would think that we would want those things to coexist and I think they can. That good forestry management can lead to better recreational access. So I think it can be both and I think a good forester can advise us what parcels would be appropriate for heavier timber management and what parcels would not be appropriate whether it be because of access limitations or quality of trees or what have you. You may have a 20 acre parcel that is ripe for management because it hasn't been done in a while and and it's starting to stifle itself. And you may have a 75 acre parcel that's been done in the last thirty years or simply doesn't have good growth. So that's really the forest job I think to guide us a little bit.
But I guess what I'm sorry, what I'm wondering is your Money.
That's kind of what I got out of the last question. Let's just go honest. We
don't need to carve additional trails into our land unless someone tells me we do and proves to me that that's required. It's about what is the appropriate management of the land and what's the financial value for the community. Anybody else got another issue on that?
No. So Scott, listen, if we charge for those hunting permits, we may get Jeff on this.
That's right. You might. You are right, Adrian. I am biased to the money.
Yeah. So, Eric, does that answer your question or are you still looking for some sort It's of
not fully it's not fully answered. Now, you know, one of these parcels first we got to clarify something, you know, parcels that they just gave to the town is a big long parcel. It's 3.1 miles. I figured it out today. You know, it's and it's possible to put a nice trail in there. Now, we as a board have never said whether or not we would like a trail in there or would we not want a trail in there at the same time as doing this forestry work? Now, that's I would think that you know we need to talk about that first. Is everybody interested in putting a trail trail through there? No, absolutely. No,
think that was kind of a dead issue that the feeling at the last meeting was that we already had enough trails
and that Look, I have enough time. I'm mowing trails and I haven't had enough time keeping the stuff behind the school clear.
And I although I I misspoke about whether we had a motion or not. I'll state again. I think in this particular case in the motion we made very clear that it was not about trail access. All right, so that's good.
Next thing you need to do is how do you want to manage the forest? You want to manage it forestry or you're managing it for Jeff said he wants some money for the town so, you know, there's different ways to cut forests you can cut them a little harder and make a little bit more money for Jeff or you can not cut them or you can cut them and you know turn them into a forest that you know is nice. Right now the a lot of the forest that the state gave us is you know, there's no secondary growth in there at all, it's all crown. The whole thing is just nothing but a crown. Cut it out a little bit, you'll get secondary.
And you'll get a secondary growth just much more pleasing to the eye as far as I'm concerned. But Scott wouldn't a good Forrester if we engage them give us multiple options?
Yeah, they'll tell what he's gonna do is he's gonna tell you what you have and what you could do and he's gonna ask you he's gonna ask you what I just asked you he said what are you looking to do here? You looking to have you know an uneven edge stand? Are you looking I to would maximize some wood? Are you maximizing it for money, for Jeff,
are you what are you doing? What do you wanna do? So I think I think, Scott, though, what the board is looking for, at least what I'm looking for is when I put my parcels into forestry, the forester came back to me and said, here are your options. Here's A, B and C. Cut now, cut later, don't cut, and here are the repercussions of each. X amount of money now, X amount of money later, or what have you. So I would think that when we're asking for a forester and a forestry plan for those town properties that they can come back to us and offer us multiple options that we can then choose from based on them looking at the parcels and saying for instance, I've got a really nice stand of red oak in the back of my parcel. If we have that on a town property, they may say, you know, red oak's really going well right now. If we pull that, that's x amount of dollars and it will open up maybe some crowd. So
I would hope that that's what we're gonna get from the forfeiture. Right, and that's and now that we need as said, everybody else on the board agrees with you, Adrian, and I agree with you also, that's but I just wanted to ask first so that we're everybody's on the same page on this, so we're not going back here with this, we don't know what we want to do, but that that's a good direction.
Options. Let's go. Do you wanna make a motion on that, Adrian?
No. I I I don't think we need to. Don't need to make a motion. I think Eric was looking for We've already asked him to He do was looking for direction for the contract with the Forester.
So he's asking for. There's not Is gonna be a the the the only outstanding question in my mind is we have two parcels that were timber harvested pretty extensively in the not too distant past. The first is the parcel right behind me. How many years ago? What? How many years ago?
Ten, twelve, 11, something Yeah. Like So yeah, that's too recent. Well, it's always gone, but it was And the second one is the property behind the transfer station has been logged fairly recently too. And don't tell him, I can't tell you what year.
But again, let's let the forester take a quick look at those and he can say, yep, it was logged, it was logged completely
or well, leave it alone. But I think if you're going to the difference is if you're gonna have a forester put together a plan for that property, you're gonna end up paying him for it because he's not gonna get his commission on timber harvest. Harvest. It's clear about half the property we have, we could get probably an agreement for them to do it just for their percentage so we don't have to pay. But if we want to do all the town properties, the bigger properties, we're probably going to have to pay for that. And that's my second question to you is, do we really want a complete timber harvest plan for the town, like a long term forestry management for the whole town, or are we looking at just what we can essentially monetize? The state, the property
that the state just gave us, I would say the other two parcels we leave alone. I'm gonna, I'll take a walk through that, the one at the dump. I haven't been in there in, you know, four or five years, but and I'll see what's in there. But I would say that the one behind the school and the one at the dump you probably leave it alone. Okay, everything else we're talking about forestry management
for the Route 6 Expressway properties. Yeah. Potentially the property at the end of Bear Swamp. And that's basically it in the stuff behind where the old pit is and the area off Parker Bridge Road. Right, but I don't think that we're gonna
go in there either. That's not a, it's not a part, that parcel off of Parker Bridge Road is not a, it's very hard to get into, I don't believe that we should even go in there.
Eric, do we have a complete list of town properties?
Yes. Okay. It just I thought there was more than that. Maybe I'm missing something. Well, there's lots of little pieces here and there, but we're probably not gonna timber stuff that's onesies and twosies.
No. But do we have anything else that's 10 plus? Yeah. There's one at Merritt Valley that timber is overgrown near on Merritt Valley and, you know, lake in Merritt Valley across the brook there. Yeah. But we could look at that. I know somebody looked at it a long time ago. I've I've been in there and know it's all overgrown. Same same thing. Am I am I incorrect in saying Scott that anything 10 plus we should be looking at? Yeah, eight or nine ten I mean it doesn't it doesn't really matter if it's if it's a stand of timber that you know there's some value in it and it's gonna help with the forest management aspect of it then you should be doing it. Doesn't matter if it's, mean, one or two, three acres, probably not, but if you know it's five, eight, nine, ten, somewhere around there, I would think that somebody could go in there and, you know, make the town some money and to make the forest better. Any objection, Paula, Jeff, Jeff to 10 plus as advisement to Eric?
No, it's fine. Let's go. Oh, it's like I know that one over on Merrick Alley, it might be like eight or nine acres, but I know the timber in here is completely overgrown.
Scott, can you work with Eric? Yeah. Get this back to us next month and say what's up? Well, we want to try to engage.
I mean I mean, we'll have a meeting with the surveyor in a couple weeks. The surveyorforester. We've already reached out to him. I've already given him a preliminary list of the parcels and the maps. We haven't really talked about what we did and what we don't. We certainly have enough guidance from the board based on your conversation tonight to tell them what we want to do. Scott and I disagree on one of the parcels but that's okay. Know? Well
let an unbiased third party tell us what to really do with that. Let's put it in the mix Eric and Scott and let yeah like Jeff said let somebody else you know settle that coin toss. Okay So that's good. Eric, what else we got?
Alright. You Adrian, you asked me the question tree cutting progress versus budget. Original budget for tree cutting was $50,000 Board of Finance added $25,000 to that. So far we've expended $59,000 cut five fifteen trees. If we're going to do something between now and spring and I'm not sure we necessarily should, what we would do is we would go after there's a couple really big monster oaks on Juravadi Lane, Juravadi Road, that triangle that are problematic. A preliminary estimate from distinctive is that dealing with them and there's like four or five that need to come down that's going to be somewhere around $9,000 because we need the really big fallback machine to deal with that. I say everything else waits until the leaves are back on the trees. We have like some of its judgment. I know we skipped a tree on Burnout Brook that I said, Ah, it was going to be fine. The forester or the machine
operator told me I absolutely should take it down. And he was right because it came down in the last storm
a few days ago. There's two monstrous red oaks on cider mill that need to be that need to fall back also. Yeah. And Jason knows about them.
Yeah. I mean, do have a bunch of stuff we can do, but you know, every time we have a wind event, we're taking down a number of trees and taking out power in town. It's happened basically every single wind event we've had, you know, since the summer. So I think I would like to hold a fair bit in emergency reserve, cause I think there's a likelihood we may end up needing it. And what is the balance in that account Eric? Seventy five minuteus fifty nine so 16,000. So that answers that question. The last question that you all had for me was information about plans for voting. So the vote will be in the AES Gymnasium. The registrar's office and the town clerk's office are very definitely on top of that,
although both offices have been spending an awful lot of time dealing with it and I think the registrars are very unhappy. They have fixed stipends, because they've been putting in enormous number of hours. We have put on several announcements on social media and on the town website about voting. We do have the ballot box in front of the building. The security camera is on and functioning, so hopefully we won't have any shenanigans with the ballot box. I'm not anticipating any. I do not anticipate any problems with balloting at the local level. What happens at the state level and the national level, you know, is not of any concern for mine, but in terms of Andover, we are going to have a fair and safe election in the town of Andover. Rough numbers so far, we have 2,200 voters in the town of Andover. So far, about five twenty five absentee ballots have been requested and mailed to residents, which is about 25% of the electorate. And so far we've received back a little over 150 absentee ballots. And then the last thing is many of you have probably heard but RAM is shutting down for one day because there was another Andover High School that tested school student that tested positive for COVID today or yesterday. So they're shutting down for one day so they can complete the contact tracing and doing virtual learning. They're hoping to be back to school on Friday and that is it for my report unless you have questions for me. Sorry it took so long. Adrian, questions? Nope he's answered most of them. Okay Scott?
All set. Jeff? All, we good? Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks, folks.
Okay. You're not done. Old business. We went through the COVID update with Eric. Anybody else have any issues related to that item 9A? Okay. 9C, fiber optic connections with town hall. Eric, where are we at with that? The fiber connection is up and running. We are cutting the cord with cable, as of this month. Okay. You happy with that? Fiber and it's functioning correctly.
Are we moving to VoIP on the town lines now?
So I have a call in with one of the reps, the one that the school is trying to go VoIP with. We're gonna have a conversation with them and I'm following up with CCM because CCM has a contract in place with one VoIP vendor that they pre screened. So I'm looking at both of those right now and then try to see what other possibilities are out there. So yeah, I'd like to start moving on this now that we have a stable fiber connection out to the real world.
Okay. We got the rest except for alarm monitoring, right? Yes.
So I've had a couple conversations with Wally. I have basically pawned that off on the fire commission and said, you guys need to do the work on this and figure out a new supplier for alarm monitoring, you know, a town wide supplier and come back to us and figure out help us figure out what we need to do.
Okay. So hopefully Wally will get back to you when? Did you give him a timeline or?
I haven't, but it's also pretty open ended with the vendor. So we're not under any real time rush. And since we're getting it for free, I don't have any real incentive to make the transition like in the next six weeks.
Okay. All right. New business, the annual report that was in our packet. I'm assuming everyone took a look at it. Basically Andover has, you know, a 10 to 15% utilization rate. Any other questions related to the annual report? No. Did they go up in their budget for this year, Eric? This current calendar year? How did they Yes,
did. Exactly how much I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I'd have to research that. Okay.
All right. We should keep this information for that purpose of budgeting time. Veterans Monument Park, where are we at with that?
We canceled the survey. That's really all I've done on that at this point. Okay, so why is it under new business? Good question. That should have been under old business. Okay.
Town email access. I know Jeff Murray had a question regarding that. You addressed that earlier. Jeff, you have any other questions? Somehow
I must have missed the email about the I mean, I remember a point there was a point with our iPhones, we couldn't send an email out. We go in and receive. It was SNPT server. There a snafu with that. And I don't know if that was ever resolved. If it was resolved, I missed the email on it. But I can currently receive Tom emails on my phone, but I cannot send anything through my Andover Connecticut and or email
address. Eric, can you help him get with South Windsor to get that solved? I think the first thing I would do is I would tomorrow morning reach out to Amanda directly and she maybe If will solve not, then we'll put a ticket in with David
and see whether David can can solve it. I didn't know if anybody else was having the same issue. So I want to bring it up tonight as well. I am actually but and I have an Android ironically. Can we get the the the pop addresses sent to us.
That's what I'm looking for. I have a I have an email and a call in with Amanda's but she just didn't get back to me today. That's like her.
Hey. I actually did send the directions to you for getting your iPhone set up. Okay. It was, I believe, to your personal email, and I will send that out to everyone tomorrow and just test it out and see if that works. Will those same instructions work for an Android? We'll see. Yeah. Maybe we can talk offline, but do you both have an Android? I have an Android use iPhone it should be the same server doesn't matter
as long as the snap and pop addresses are there yes yeah
okay Amanda, if you could help us with that, that would be great. We have nine d wood chip agreement with Andover Sportsman Club. We discussed that already. And nine e voting plans. Is there anything additional besides what we've talked about before? So we're gonna vote in the school. We're all good to go. It was great during the primary. We can keep social distancing, and, hopefully, everybody votes in.
Jeff? Can I just make a little side note since we're sort of in the we're sort of in Eric here under old and new business? I've said this Eric privately, I wanna say it again publicly so that he gets the hint. I hope that you are making a list of all of these things that you are devoting time and effort to, including the VoIP and the server and the and the software and all of the things that you have done both in your first year and now going on your second year and making them making the public aware of the level of work that both you and and the town is putting forward. So it's not really just this group as as a board because a lot of the stuff is coming from subcommittees and other groups. But I think it's important that the town understand that even the things that they can't see, there are so many things happening. These are things they're never gonna know even really happened except that when they call, they're gonna get through. So
I think it's important that you're doing that for both us as a board, the town as a whole, the subcommittees that are working their butt off, and in you specifically. So I just wanna say it again publicly so that it sort of sinks in. You need to be running a list of this stuff for your own, I mean, for yourself and for everyone. That we can put out there and say, look, these are all the things that have been done to benefit you as a town.
Yeah I mean I was planning on you know at some point in the not too distant feet you know put a list together of you know essentially a status report and a progress report and say, hey, here's all the things we've worked on in the last eighteen months. Here's where we were, here's where we are.
You keep working on going forward. Keep going on going just easier to keep track of it as you go so you don't miss anything. Since Adrian
is bringing up a point of positive things that have happened for the town, are all of the road ceiling projects done? No. And just as a side thing, the town roads need to be on the agenda every month. But go ahead. And this coming from the man that hates having things on the agenda. I do. I want them off. I want to complete my list. It's like a checklist. I got to get it done. I got to get it out of here. I got to move on. I to do something else. Okay, so there's two things still going on.
The first is Haynes as a contractor will be in here, in about a week and a half or two weeks, exact start date still unknown, to do shimming of a section of Bunker Hill on the top and then a small section on Lake Road and then Erdoni And West Street, as prep for next year's chip sealing plan which is part of the plan that I gave you guys, several months ago.
And the shimming will hold the winter without without the sealant?
Yes, it will. The reason is that we're basically opting instead of just doing a an for instance an edge shim in the areas we shim it we're going to basically shim it lane to lane and we're going to come in and we're going to grind in so we have tooth and we don't have a big step up at the lip and we're going to use tack coat. We're So gonna spend the money to shim it carefully so that we know it's a pretty permanent fix. Okay, thank you. That answers my question.
And then the second half of is that we are starting next week, we are borrowing a hot box from the town of Bolton. Thank you very much Bolton. And we're going to compare two things. We're going to compare how fast the crew can fix potholes with hot patch in a hot box and the full crew. And then we're going to spend a week with Comer and using what's called the Dura Patcher. And Comer is going to loan us, we have a compatibility problem between our trucks because the coal chute in the back is off to the side and The Stupid Thing's really designed to have a center mounted coal chute on the vehicle. So we're going to borrow one of their vehicles, crew and their machine and we're going to have at it for a week and do kind of a head to head comparison to see whether it's fast enough and efficient enough to justify us continuing to do it. So that's that.
That's patching.
Okay. So we've made an adjustment from renting that from Comer for a month to a one week trial.
Well, so we're going to do two things. We're going to borrow a hot box which is basically a box that you put asphalt in that keeps it nice and warm so you can use it longer and we're going to compare the two techniques because you know obviously the crew is much more comfortable and knowledgeable about using a hot box and using hot patch as opposed to the spray patcher. So we're going to see, we're going to see whether it's really as effective as I think it is. And if it is, we're going to try to keep the thing for a while and continue using it. So right now I'm really only committed for a week, but if it works, we're going to keep it longer and keep having at it. Okay, and when is the last time we've used a hot box in town? I don't know, not for a couple of years. I mean, what we do is we go to the asphalt plant with one of our trucks, we get say five tons, we use two or three tons until it gets too cold and we dump the rest somewhere where it doesn't really matter too much because it's cooled off too much to work with. So you need the mass to keep the part you're working with hot. So by using a hot box, you can keep all the material hot and you don't waste anything. So that's the goal with the hot box.
Okay. That was the end of new business. So we have 10 approval of minute meetings from Monday, September 14. Everybody have their opportunity to go through those minute meetings. All those in favor? Well, somebody make a motion.
Sorry. I make a motion to accept the meeting minutes of September's board select meeting. September 14. September 14, thank you, 2020.
I second that. Second, yeah. Scott seconded that. All in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Adrian, are you in favor or are you opposed?
I'm neither. I'm gonna stink, I wanna go back and look at the video and see if that motion's there or not truthfully. No
problem. Yeah. The treasurer's report, Barbara had provided us a revenue summary, budget summary. I did not see the Town Road update, but
Derek, do you have an idea on that Town Aid Road?
Town Aid Road, got quite a bit of cash. We haven't spent that much out of it. We just spent for we just took out a town Aid Road, the fog seal over the chip seal, but not a lot else. We got a pretty good infusion right now. We're going to spend a bunch of that on the basically the paving right now. That's really going to be the focus.
Okay, I am. You should have the town aid report. I printed out system report carried through a balance from last year that was basically the last payment received. Very little spent so far and both of this year's payments were already received and booked to the account. So there's over 200,000 in it.
Well, not both of this year's. We got all of last year's and we got our essentially summer installment, our July installment. The second one usually comes around, I don't know, around January, mid January that we have not gotten yet. I don't know, look at the report because it has It is in here, Barbara. Total state funding is 187,000.
Yeah, coming in this year. We're going to receive 93.
Can I ask a question on this revenue summary because this report just bothers me, Barbara, since you're on the phone or on the computer? All of these adjusted revenue numbers, what are they? Because the way I look at this report, we're supposed to collect $2,377,000 and our adjusted balance is a negative $2,338,000 It appears we received $42,000 to date. Why is there those numbers in the adjusted revenue line?
You know what, I don't have the report with me, but you have a budgeted number. And are you talking about the far right number, which is to be received or an adjusted?
So that's my so my negative is my balance to receive. Correct. Okay. So the way I would go those my credits. Right. Credits of that. Okay.
Yeah, you're running negative until you collect every perspective. Credit
year to line is not negative, it skews the report. It's just a little odd. So we're basically saying that we've received so far through a quarter of the year dollars 42,000 of the $2,300,000 we're supposed to receive from various sources other than taxes.
Right. Let's And see, it's October, so the first ECS payment should be coming in. I do believe the last day of October.
Right. Okay, and this report is through October 8. Okay. The town budget summary, anybody have any questions on that? We're through a quarter of the year. The bottom line is we've expanded 25% of our number.
Anybody else Yeah, I've have any run into no problems so far. We did have one. I'm going to resume that overexpenditure report. Something came in this week, just not in time to get it into this packet but otherwise budgets are in good shape. Just to comment on something Eric talked about earlier and that was Wally's. Oh, the temp person who is being paid out of Wally's budget. And he is very anxious to make sure that you know that, yes, the Secretary of State did send money. And I'm thinking, I'm trying to remember because it came in three pieces and I think it was around 3,500
because he anticipates as the year goes on, he's gonna have a pretty squeaky tight budget this year. So he may end up needing to come in at some point. But we're going to be way over on employee health insurance because the assistant in my office had a plus one package that won't be spent and then the new assistant town clerk isn't signing up. And I ended up not having to sign up as well. So there'll be a nice cushion left over there if other budgets are in need.
One other question that I have is on your cash account summary. You have a bank balance for August 31 for the municipal checking. Basically, one should be the same number, but the operating account, which is the 5096 account, Why is there no bank balance in there for September? And then why do we why are we stating we have a difference of $178,966.20?
Okay. If if you're looking at the report I sent, there should be balances, but the difference in the bank balance and the system balance will always be outstanding checks. Okay. Any minor adjustments that might have to be made, but generally by the time I balance the checkbook, I've accounted for all of the reconciling items, but outstanding checks
will always be that difference. Okay. So maybe we want to change the difference column to reconciliation issues, and maybe we should look at that report and put bank balances in for September 30 so that we know what we're dealing with. Where are we now? I
haven't balanced for September yet. I'm still doing reconciliations and journal entries.
Okay. Well, then if that's the case, then what's the difference in there? I don't understand it. If you can just look at your report for cash accounts, it would help us. I will. That's it. Anybody else have any other questions? You lost me at expenditures.
I'm sure I did. All right. What else we got? Excessions. Okay. All right. Budget appropriation transfers over expenditure requests.
Eric, do we have anything? Yes, you do. You have a motion for three refunds. They're all in between $11 and $135
Okay, does somebody wanna make that motion? We got a to
authorize the following refunds. Christine Metcalf for $54.23. Brendan Donahue for $11.19 and Steven and Alana Foss for $137.20 as outlined in the tax collectors report. Second.
All All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Eric, Okay. I had asked you about the budget and the appropriation transfer and overexpenditure requests. Are there any of those?
We've just had a single overexpenditure request at this point that deals with so the laser fish system in the land use office. Basically what happened is when we adopted Laserfiche, we cheaped out on the building department equipment. We tried to repurpose an old computer for it a bunch of years ago, and we didn't use the latest version of software because it was cheaper to adopt the old version. So we've been having nothing but problems with it. We have a plan in place to transfer it and to reinstall it on the server, but we have to put the latest version of it to get the bloody thing to work correctly which is probably something that should have been done a long time ago but never was. So that's what the the over expenditure that you will see next month which I signed today was for so far.
There's no motion or anything related to that. We'll move on. We'll look for that for next month. Tax collectors report. Before we get started, tax collectors report, and I told Eric and Amanda before the meeting, if you take a look at that, that's a very nice report. It's how I'd love to see all of my data come to me so that I can easily understand it. Since it's color coded and graphical, I do much better. As do I. Okay.
Anyway, please tell the tax collector that the reports are very nice or we should sit there and tell QDS that the reports are very nice. It does give us a lot of information as to what's collectible, not collectible, and it tells us what situation we are in as far as economic development and as far as businesses in town. Of our $9,420,000 worth of taxes, we only have $373,000 of personal property taxes. That can tell you where we're at related to our business taxation. Anyway, any other questions on that? Anybody? Nobody? Good. We'll move on. Assessors report, item 14. Okay. Give us a little bit of an understanding of where we're at and where we're going. Okay. So at the last meeting, the assessor came on and
we had talked about putting in place gone back and forth with an amendment to our existing contract to spell out how we need to do business based on the guidance from the Board of Selectmen at the last meeting. So we went back and forth. I think this is what you see in your amendment to the contract is our fourth iteration of that. And Dennis reviewed it before we signed it and amended it. So basically what it says is they're going to start, they're going to visit all the properties, they're going to do an exterior inspection, and they're going to make sure that the property measurements are correct. If the homeowner is there, they have a questionnaire, they're going to review the field card with the homeowner, if the homeowner is willing and gather as much information as they can while they're on-site. If the executive orders change and they can enter the buildings at some time in the spring, they will revisit the sites and do the interior inspections. So the second item there is what we came up with. Oh, sorry. Oh, okay. So the second thing there is a revaluation update that we intend to send out to all the residents and use on social media and the town website, which just kind of explains the process to people because people are probably going to have questions about it. So it just kind of lays out what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how that's going to happen. And then the third thing there is essentially a flyer. It will be on a sticky back paper.
So when they visit a property, they will put this on every property so somebody knows that they visited the site. So if they look in their security cameras and see some random person there, don't I get the usual calls that you know and Daryl doesn't get the calls about people visiting their sites. And it'll also be a way that they can get more information about the process if they so choose to kind of hopefully alleviate some of the issues. And then the last part is their revised schedule on how to accomplish that in this year. So those are the three things that you have before you.
Okay, so in the basic sense so that people understand this is supposed to start, their data collection is going to start in November? Yes. Okay. Yes.
Yeah, I mean we basically held them up. They would have been data collecting a while back, but we kind of put the stop John and I put the stop on it until we were sure the board was on board with where
we were all going with this. Okay. So we're going to start in November and we're going to get this done within the timeline that's been established on the revised contract. Correct.
Alright. Anybody have any questions related to the assessment? They are going to try to get into homes.
What is I I read here. Right? If they're going to ask for permission. Right.
Well, I don't think so really. I think what they're going to do is they're going to try to get everything they can from the outside. The assumption is that nobody's probably going in the house at this point, but they still have an obligation to do it at some point. So what they're hoping is that at some point, climate changes enough that they can do full interior inspections. Inspections. Their goal is still to do full interior inspections if they can. And they would do that when though? Say that again.
What would the would the trigger be for them switching to full interior inspection?
Adrian, let me read this for you and you'll this will you'll be able to understand it better. During the restricted period, contractors should make an exterior inspection of the property, measure the improvement, and make a note of the date of visit of the property. Property owner's home, the data collector will attempt to obtain interior structure characteristics at the door. Should the property owner refuse to provide the characteristics, the property would be considered refusal. Property owner is not present, the contractor will leave a notification indicating the inspector was there. Once he is determined once it is determined that the restricted period has ended, the contractor shall send a letter to the property owner of the property having received an exterior inspection during the restricted period requesting that the property owner follow the contractors designate then the stated time frame as agreed upon by the municipal assessing officials and the contractor. So they're gonna try to get into that.
Adrian, I think your question was there's something that they're terming a restricted period, and I'm assuming the restricted period is related to COVID and what the guidelines are. Then they have a section here that agreed that after the restricted period has ended, VGSI shall send a letter to each property owner requesting that they call in in order to set up a time in which to complete the interior inspection. What we've now agreed and allowed the contractor to do is do an exterior inspection, and in reality, they'll never do interior inspections during this go around. Okay. I I yeah. Maybe.
But that's but but that's not what it says, Jeff. No. I know what it says. I'm gonna tell you what's going to happen. What it says listen, what it says I'm happy that we have this because this is something that we can hold the assessor to and hold the contractor to, that they're going to get a certain level of work done. Reality with COVID and what they're saying, they're going to come out to our properties, they're going to do an exterior inspection, they're going to try to talk to us, they're going to ask us to update their card, and then if I read this correctly, I should then get a letter after the restricted period is over that if I would like to schedule an interior inspection, I can call them and do it. If I don't call them or you don't call them for an interior inspection after the restricted period has ended, they're not going do an interior inspection.
So they're still required by law to do an interior inspection if they can. And I see where your point is. And I get that there's
the last evaluation they were supposed to go into 20 homes that had sold during the period and they didn't do any of them. So I just keep asking the same questions and I get accused to be They're gonna do comps on the latest home sales.
So anyway that that's what's stated here. At least I have some guidance. At least I know what I can ask questions about and what has happened and not happened. That's all I asked for. That's all I'm asking and what I am telling you is get them started and get this moving because I just want I mean, they're to take the data and John is gonna sit there and use the data to create a mass appraisal with VGSI and we gotta just get it done. So we've already agreed to pay them. John has told us that there's no way to get a reduction on that contract. It is what it is. Let's check it off our list. Okay. Departmental reports, they're in our package. Does anybody have any questions related to any of them? Eric, do you have any comments related to any of them? No,
I would just say that, you know, I think you're all aware that there was a really bad structure fire on Gilead Road that the fire department responded to in the last kind of period. That's the only real kind of major thing. The building department has slacked off a little bit in terms of total amount of business. They were crazy busy for a while, but that seems to come have come back down to, you know, normal seasonal levels. And that's all I have on that unless you have any other questions, for me. Was the new tanker truck used during this fire?
Yes, it was. New tanker truck was used. They actually had been planning on having a ceremony that morning to officially ring it into service. And they ended up bringing it into service on the way to the fire. However, I will also say that tanker truck is back at the dealer at the moment getting a new dump valve installed because one of the dump valves isn't working correctly. So I mean it's all covered under their warranty but but that.
It was the second truck in the park in the driveway. Second vehicle in the driveway.
Alright. Alright. Thank you very much for that. Any correspondence, Eric, that we need to discuss? No? Okay. Public speak. There's really no one, on the public. Amanda, if you would like to speak, you're more than welcome. Amanda, thank you for everything you do. We greatly appreciate everything you do. You work very You're so welcome. Back at you. No, no. You guys are the ones that work really hard. Dennis O'Brien, thank you very much for all your efforts. Dennis, don't go on too long, but you're able to speak to us.
I'm just happy to be here, and I see you're gonna finish before midnight.
Absolutely. I'm not I I could be wrong. I mean, I don't think so. Adrian's been texting to to to to our friend over there about, like, this is gonna extend too long so I know they have a bet on it. I know they have a bet on it because we
could never finish in two hours. Well, I'm available to help out with, anything you do with hunting And if you want to do an ordinance, you know, an ordinance does require a public hearing. I like the idea of a public hearing. I don't know the town that well in terms of the properties and, you know, I I I don't know. Some towns use public property for passive recreation. Based on what I've heard, I'm getting the notion that that's not happening here much. But you know, you have you have some expertise on the board in terms of you know, what's out there and whatnot. So I I found that discussion to be very interesting. I'm I'm learning. Nobody in my family hunted and I grew up in the city and lived in the city all my life. So I play ball. That's what I do and coach.
I'm enjoying They sent you to the army Dennis. So you do know how to hunt. I did. Yeah, I was in the army. Okay. All right. Andover, Connecticut. I do not know the individual. Would you like to speak? That's Amanda. That's Amanda's alter ego. Amanda,
you got two on us? All right. Okay. You're done then. All right. Nick is done. Barb is done. That's the end of our, public speak. We are now, someone needs to make a motion to go into executive session. Make a motion to go into executive session. I'll second.
Okay. All those in favor? Aye. All right, thank you very much to the public. We're going to sit there and dismiss you now so we can,
talk in executive session. Amanda, I'll text you when we come out of executive discussion executive session.
Have a wonderful evening. Thank you. I'm going to stop recording. Thank you very much. Have a good night. You too. You too, Amanda.