Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen Regular Meeting
October 10, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
So thank you. We are going to call to order the Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Tuesday, October 10. We're going get started at 07:02PM, and the first order of business is the pledge of allegiance. So I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Okay. Item two, public speak. So we're gonna get started, with, Mike Blasey. Mike who? I don't know. Are you talking about us? Yeah, I'm asking Mike Palazzi if he has anything to add to public speak. No,
thank you. All right, now I'll move on to Kathy Palazzi.
I do. I just want to say thank you very much for rerunning for the Board of Selectmen and I wish you all well for your next election which is November 7 coming up very quickly and I believe your next meeting would actually be the day after if I'm correct on that unless you've changed that But anyway, all of you, good luck. You've helped me enormously, helped the seniors so much. I can't thank you enough for all that. Thank you. Alright, thank you.
Let's move on. We'll go over to, Darryl Stein. You have to unmute, sir.
I'm actually not here for the public speak. I was going to wait for the new business having to do with the catch basin unless it's appropriate for me to discuss that at this point.
It would be more appropriate for you to discuss it now because you will not be allowed to participate during the meeting.
Okay. So I had some correspondence with Eric Anderson regarding a catch basin that's near my property. It's actually about 300 feet from my property line. It's in very bad condition. It could collapse, could cause a vehicle accident, and if it does collapse, access to my house and another house will be blocked. There has been some disagreement between me and Eric over who owns it. I looked at the land records and the maps. Clearly, it's on Town Of Andover property, and there's nothing in the land records saying that it's my responsibility or my neighbor's responsibility on it. I sent a letter that, detailed out, my position on it.
Okay. We do have that on the agenda. We will be discussing that. Very good. All right. Thank you. Celeste Willard. Thank you, I have nothing at this time. Okay. Gretchen.
I could speak for Gretchen. She's in my house. She's not, she can't unmute right now. She's got nothing to add. All right. No problem.
Jeff Tracy. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I I thought I'd never have to do this again after I retired. I'm I'm here with with, Daryl. I'm the, the other resident of the driveway in question at 554 Lake Road. I have nothing more to add to what Darryl has already stated. Okay. All right. Thank you. Hank?
Good evening. And just for folks to be aware, I'm Hank Gruner. I'm also a member of the Conservation Commission. And I'm here I wanted to speak regarding I think it's item eight on your agenda this evening regarding Joshua's Trust and some proposed parking area and trail relocate trail location off of Skidder Hill Road. There's a piece that I understand, Joshua's Trust has recently, come into possession of that's adjacent to, town owned land that previously was part of, I believe, Route 6 alignment. I walked the property two weeks ago, looked over the, notes that that were in the package tonight and agree that, that makes a lot of sense for that parking area,
on the area that's part of the townland, which is pretty scrubby right now and with a fair amount of debris and trash. And the trail, the proposed trail location and the crossing makes sense that was proposed by the folks at Joshua's Trust to swing what you know, where basically their property is primarily associated with the wetlands. The town of Andover's property sort of abuts that more in the uplands, and where they would need to cross the stream makes a lot more sense to do it where it narrows down, is over on this the area that's more owned by Andover. So I agree with the assessment that has been put forward by the folks at Joshua's Trust. It's a nice piece of up upland property and wetland once you get past the the the scrubby area along along the road. I also don't believe there would be any
potential impacts to the ecology of the site with a trail and passive use of hiking recreation on the site. Okay, thank you very much. Mhmm. You're welcome.
And for the record, I asked Hank to to weigh in on this from the Conservation Commission's perspective.
Okay. We can bring Hank on during the that discussion if it's appropriate. Joanne Ebert? All set. Thank you. Alright.
Diane Grignard? Okay. I know I know Diane was having problems with her sound earlier. So, maybe you can reconnect or come back to us for the public speak at the end. And I believe the cell phone is Dennis O'Brien, a town attorney. Is that accurate? Yes, it is. Okay. Alright. So, let's move on to item Jeff, Jeff, I think Diane wants to speak. Oh, hi, Diane. You on mute? You're on mute. No.
Come on. We we give you operator error. We give you a five count, Diane. I'll even I'll even go nine count. Ready? Operator error. Alright. Alright. No. Yeah. If you get it fixed, we'll let you break into the meeting and talk. Okay? But you gotta get it fixed. Alright. Okay. So let's, move on to additions and deletions. Do we have anything that we wanna add to the agenda?
Are we are we gonna discuss the stop sign at Long Hill during new business? Is that a new I didn't really see it there. Well, that's
one of the ones I wanna add. Okay. Okay. We can add that. And then another thing I was thinking of is, do we wanna discuss the AES parking lot, or do we gonna do that on Thursday? No. We're gonna discuss it tonight. Okay. Can we add that to the agenda then? Yes.
I'm all set then. Alright. But, Jeff, was there something that, Paula wanted to add?
She wanted to add the parking lot. Diane, I hear you gurgling over there, so you're not fixed. No. I would restart your computer. That's my all it's my go to. I'm gonna give you my senior use. Restart. Alright. Eric, what else would you like to add?
So, unfortunately, I'd like to delete item number eight, which is discussion with Joshua's trust. Unfortunately, the president has a family emergency and is stuck in Chicago dealing with something. So he is unavailable. There is some information in the packet. I could probably speak to it briefly, but I think it would be better to have that discussion directly with the president who is not available tonight. Personally Eric,
Eric, just a quick question. We should probably keep it on the agenda because there's some things that we need to add, like going through like, I know the conservation commission weighed in, but I know what I did on the back with the trails with the pools and and having a walk and possibly some, some maps of, like, where this trail would go and some site locations where things wanna be open. So we we ought to have that discussion. So next time they come back prepared with that information.
Okay. That that is fine. I would suggest you add item 11 e, which is AES parking lot crack and mastic seal, and item 11 d, which would be local traffic authority stop sign on Long Hill Road slash Endy Road. And then I would also consider two other things. The first is 11 e, which is move item 15 b to item 11 e, which is Democratic town committee website.
Then 11 Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Just just give me give me a second. So we're talking 11 e is the parking lot repair or we'll just call it the AES Parking Lot. 11 F, what were you asking for? 11 Stopping parking traffic authority. Traffic authority. And then 11
would have been AES parking lot. Yep. 11 F would have been local traffic authority stop sign on Long Hill. 11, sorry, that was my error, was Democratic town committee website discussion. Basically, move that up from correspondence to a discussion item. So it could be moved on if you so chose. Can you hear me now? Yes. Give us one second. One second.
And then the last item would be 11 gs, which it would be Norton Committee scholarship, discussion.
Okay. So you threw an extra one in there, the d t t DTC website discussion.
That's under correspondence? It's currently under correspondence. That was probably inappropriate. I should have put it in as a line item in new business.
Okay. So just put that one there for eleven g and then eleven h. Norton discussion.
Norton discussion. Okay. So we have four potential ads and one drop that was dismissed, which I agree with Jeff. So, I'll just make this motion that we add 11E AAS parking lot discussion, 11F Traffic Authority Long Hill stop sign, 11 gs DTC website discussion eleven h Norton discussion. Who's gonna second that? Scott. Do you Scott second that? All those in any problems with those? No. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Diane Greiner. Congratulations on fixing your computer problem. That deserves a hand. Thank
you. Thank you. Being old is such an adventure. I got a new iPhone today and everything. It's like wow. Wow, this is a big day. Okay, go ahead Diana. We reopened our public speak. Thank you. I appreciate you indulging me. I did have two things. One, when you talked about the library board appointments, reappointments, it wasn't clear on the agenda here, but we already have one has been appointed, Sharon Trishchenko. We have four others that want to be reappointed. And then we have two alternate spots. Jeff Ballard is already an alternate and would like to continue being an alternate. And the opening would be for a second alternate and that would be for Brad Kelly.
I'm just gonna, I'm gonna speak at this point because, you know, normally we don't communicate back with public speak, but none of those are on the new people are not on the
list. It was on the list in the packet that I pulled up from, Eric.
The list that we have has, Brad Kelly, correct. Or an alternate? No, that he's just that's not how it's listed. So Right. Right. So you wanna put Brad Kelly as an alternate? Yes. And Linda Fish, myself, Kathy DeRosier as regular members.
And Jeff Ballard as a As an alternate. As an alternate. So one, two, three, four. And Sharon Shevchenko is not here. She has already been reappointed a couple of meetings ago.
So let's just put Sharon in. I used to remember how to spell the last name. That's bad. Eric will be all upset at me. All right.
Anything else, Diane? Yeah. The other one is you're going to be talking about the Joshua property. Yes. I know you guys talk about it among yourselves. I have no idea where that is. Can you kind of just when you get to that point describe where it is on Skinner or Wheeling? It's somewhere down there, but I don't know exactly where the Manchester Trust property is. All I ask is that it get defined very clearly for those of us that aren't familiar with exactly where it is that you're talking about.
Okay, we can do that. That's why I wanted to discuss it tonight so we can kind of lay out, get a lay of the land Diane.
Yeah, I assume you're not doing maps and this is not a public hearing or anything like that. But I say if you could just describe exactly where that property is, I would appreciate it. That's it. Thank you very much. I appreciate your indulgence.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. So we've added those items. Now we're going to move on to item four, treasurer's report, finance department, revenue summary, town budget, town aid road, town cash, corporation transfers, former expenditure report, and the summary of the audit status. Eric?
Oh, you will find all that missing from your packet. I did think so. That was definitely a screw up on our end. Kate was supposed to add that, basically give you what she added to the last Board of Finance meeting because that was only about a week or a week and a half beforehand. So, I take the hit for that one that that's my screw up. Financially, we're in decent shape overall. There are no major issues. On the finance end, the big thing we did is we did convert payroll over to QuickBooks. So we are using QuickBooks payroll as of this pay period. We have come up with some minor snags, but, you know, there Cheryl and Chris are working through those now. So it seems like it should be a reasonably good transition.
Okay. Can you forward that information on to us tomorrow? Sure. Okay. Okay. That takes a lot that I did not see, so we're gonna go move on to item five, board and commission. Well, before I do that, does anyone have any questions for Eric, Jeff, Scott Nope. Related to the treasurer's area? As I addressed before, Eric, just let's make sure that the payroll tax returns are are well sorted out. And so the first set of returns that we'll be required to do won't be required to be done until January. Let's make sure that we get them done the first week in January, not the last week in January. Alright? Okay. That's if I'm here or I'm not here. Okay? Fair enough. Alright. You got it. Item five, boards and commission presentations. Let's address the library board of directors. So we do have a letter or I don't necessarily know that was from the library board, but we have a request for the library board of directors to be, seated, and we'll go with the regular members, Kathleen DeRoziers, Lisa Kurtz, Diane Gremmier, Linda Fish, and Sharon Chebyshanko, who has already been appointed according to Diane, and Brad Keel as an alternate and Jeff Ballard as an alternate. Anybody want to second that? Second that. Alright. So any discussion on the library board of directors? No? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Carol Lee and a note for the Memorial Day, committee. I did not see that in the package. No, I did not. I saw a letter or a request from the Commission on Aging chair that is not on the agenda. So what do you want to do, Eric?
Okay. Eric, do me a favor. Do you have the email or the letter from Carol regarding the Memorial Day Committee? There's some possibility I can find it.
Yeah. Is it a significant issue or something that we can address tonight, or it doesn't need to be addressed until the next meeting?
None of this is super time critical because all boards and commissions carry on until reappointed.
Alright. Just because I'll address it, Elaine Bucart, the Commission on Aging Chair, has asked the board to allow for alternates on the commission. I'd like to push this off till next meeting, and I'd like to know who's on that commission because I don't know who's not in the commission for aging. And then we can discuss No problem.
Excuse me. Excuse me, Jeff. I hear you. Yes. She I thought she was gonna be on. She's away, but I thought she was gonna get on from Maine, but apparently or Canada, wherever she is. And maybe she just couldn't make it tonight. I didn't know. She usually texts me, but I'm on it. I'm the secretary. She's the chairman. What we wanted to do, we have right now Ellie Scoog is on and Georgia O'Brien and myself. So there's five members. And, our municipal agent is an ad hoc member, and our because she comes in to report anything that's necessary that we need to know or if there's anything that we have to talk to her about. And the other two p we wanted to have two alternates because we put
Linda Armstrong would like to come on as an alternate. And what's god. I forgot the oh, Kim is on there. She replaced Judy, Knox who went off. So she's one of the five members.
Okay. So you got five members. Not too confusing. I think I got it. George Georgia O'Brien, Kathy Palazzi, Elaine Bukar, Ellie Skoog, Kim Haws are the five members. Right. K. And then you want two alternates, and Linda Armstrong is potentially one of them. Eric, when are all the boards and commissions re upping, or are they required? I mean, I I know that we usually allow them just to continue. But
So it depends on the board. We have boards that have one year, two year, and four year renewals.
So I don't keep track of when any of the boards are We we have four we have four years, Eric. We are four years, and we don't we did not have to be reappointed this year. K.
There is a in the original makeup of the COA, and I apologize I didn't have it in front of me, Jeff, because I did not know she wasn't going to be here to present. But in the original makeup, Jeff, I wanna tell you that the board of selecting themselves are the people, not your group, but years ago, were the people that appointed the commission on aging and said that what they their duties would be. They said at the end of that discussion that if they if they had they named five people, a five member board and said that if they needed, alternates in the future,
so be it, the Board of Selectmen would then approve or not, but that's up I I have no, Kathy. I I don't believe the board will have any problem approving alternates, and you can get the alternates lined up. And I know you have Linda Armstrong, and if you have another one, you can have a a quick little note submitted to next meeting. We we will approve it. Eric, what I would ask you on appointments and this page of appointments, this item six, can you put on here as a lead sheet all of the commissions and all of the last appointment dates so that it stays there as a as a static page so that we know what the hell heck is up with all of those committing commissions and committees? And it might even be something where we put all of the members that are supposed to be out there and just leave it as a static page. That would be helpful. At least to me, it would be helpful.
So That's gonna be pretty long. Yeah. Let's see how bad it is.
Maybe This is just point that you're not elected. So there's only 19 commissions.
There's only there's only 19 of them? Correct. Wow. And you know, I'm really happy that there's 19 of them, that we have that many volunteers. And I'm sure there's a lot of repeat volunteers like the Palazzi's and all the other repeat citizens that help out tremendously. Maybe what we can do is that would be good to at least get a even if it's only in one set of minutes, we at least put it out there like once a year as to hear all the committees. I would like the appointment dates on the lead sheet because I would never have known that there was a four year aging Commission on Aging appointment. So anyway, that would be helpful. Okay. So
you asked That was on page five, I'm sorry, you didn't even have it. I put it, I said on appointments, but that's not really where it should be. It should be on, like, a lead sheet for page five, boards and commissions.
Understood. So you also asked for the note from Carol Lee. I will read the email that should have been in the packet. Memorial Day committee appointments. Please revisit motion made at the 07/10/2023 board of selectman meeting under item five a, Memorial Day committee. There should be five members and one alternate, and this was not clearly stated in the minutes. The incumbent members are Kim Hawes, Carol Lee, John McCall, and Robert Post. Wayne Thorpe and Louise Goodman would like to be new members would be new members. Isn't that six?
So, again, ideally, one of those will end up being the alternate. One of the two new members will end up being an alternate.
Okay, well, since it's the Memorial Day committee and we have a little bit of time on this one, can we ask Carol for a defined alternate so that we understand what we're doing? And we will gladly approve that. And we will make it clear. I mean, because even that's not clear. Her email isn't clear. If you're asking for five members and an alternate, who is the alternate? I mean, just asking. Okay. Okay. Right. Punt it again. Not a problem.
All right. Let's move on to there were no appointments that I saw. Well, I saw the commission on aging, but we had that discussion already. We did approve the library board. I guess that's under appointments, okay. Item seven resignations. I didn't see anything in the packet.
Is that accurate, Eric? None that I know of. K.
Item eight, discussion of with the Joshua Trust board president. So we're not gonna have the discussion with the board president because of a family issue, and he's traveling. Let's talk about this, what was in the package, which was a breakdown of a site visit that you did, Eric.
No, that actually, I didn't go on that site visit. I went on a previous site visit with them. He walked it with, they're proposing, Joshua's Trust is proposing that Bill Penn and James Cole would be Andover's representatives for Joshua's Trust for monitoring
that property. Okay. So let's let's explain the location of this property for the members so that we all can understand. Okay. So
Joshua's Trust owns a parcel with a very narrow frontage on Skinner Hill Road. You know, as you, if you were transitioning from Long Hill Road to Skinner Hill Road, just as you come up the hill, it is on the right hand side, about halfway up the hill. They only have about 40 feet of right away, and it is right adjacent to a town parcel. The town parcel is a parcel that was given to the town with restrictions based by the state of Connecticut after they abandoned the Route 6 Expressway project. So, that's where it is.
Eric, would it be possible to bring up the WebGIS browser and share your screen and just show everybody the Hanover parcel and the Joshua's Trust parcel?
I can certainly do that. It'll take me a minute or two. But That's that's fine because I think it'd be relevant for this discussion. Okay.
And it was and it was requested by Diane. So just as an understanding for everybody attending the meeting, we're under, you know, an agreement with the property we're we're talking about is.
Hi. Can I cut in for a moment? I'm afraid I'm late to the meeting, and I know I wanted to ask for an alternate for our commission on aging, and I might have missed that. You did. We,
we spoke to, Kathy Palazzi, and we're going to approve that. I think what we we will approve it at our next meeting and just as you can get the alternates in place. I know Linda Armstrong is one of them, and if you have another one Yep. That can be
No problem. All right. Thank you. Sorry about that. No problem. Okay. Eric, how are doing?
Working on it. K. Can you see that? Yep. Yes. We can. Can you see my mouse on that? Yes, we can. Okay. See this long parcel right here? Yep. This is one of the town parcels. All of these little parcels in here are part of that same thing. Although they're separate parcels, they are all town parcels now as part of the property that was given to us from the state. This parcel right here, which I am outlining that says Manchester Land Trust is the parcel that is now owned by the Joshua's Trust. Joshua's Trust. Mhmm.
So and I am getting a little nervous now because I just got signed out on Zoom because it said I'm signed in on another device. That's not a good sign. Not sure why that is, but if we get hacked, that's the problem. So those are that is the parcel in question that we're talking about. This is the Joshua's Trust parcel, it backs up to the Haverhill subdivision, you know, and it abuts the town's property. What Joshua's Trust is feeling the town out is whether we would consider collaborating with them on essentially a loop trail that would encompass both properties. In an exchange, they would agree to help
clean up the town property because the town property is full of, you know, tires and junk tires and just general 40 year old dumping ground as part of the process.
So that's it. So, Eric, show show the public where the proposed parking lot would be. Where's Halliburton's? Where was? Oh, we're here. That parking lot, but there was gonna also be one on Wheeling Road, correct? Not that I know of.
I thought that that's what this, notes from the, Joshua Trust was.
I mean, I think they could conceptually, I mean, basically what they want to know first is, is the town even willing to have this discussion? Because they're not going to waste their time if the town is not willing to even consider it. So the first meeting was simply to say, hey, you know, we are now a landowner in town. Is this something you're willing to consider if we come back to you with a proposal?
So, I mean, you're kind of asking me to speak for them, but I'm not them. I am not talking to someone. No. I, I don't, I don't necessarily know we're asking you to speak for them. I, I think you're, we're asking you to show us the properties and show the public the properties so that we can have that discussion that you sat there and stated. I don't know. Would anyone have a reason why we wouldn't want to entertain that discussion?
Well, Jeff, I think we should definitely entertain it, but I would like to I mean, the the the information submitted was pretty vague. I would like to see what the proposed trail would be, where it would go, where the proposed parking lot would be. And, you know, I I know we had we had the conservation commission on, but I would like to get wetlands to weigh in on that and see, make sure that, you know, the impact was negligible, with the proposed trail. So if they can come back with us with that stuff at the with that information at the next meeting, it would be kind of helpful to determine whether we could look into it or not.
Okay. So our the marching orders for Eric is to go back and go, we we'd be willing to discuss this. We just want more details.
Yeah. Just like a layout where the trail is gonna go. You know? And I know and I know that, Coventry is considering doing that trail from from Bull Notch on down, and, you know, that's that's probably incorporating some of this some of this discussion. And, you know, I could see foresee it, being a link trail into Nathan Hale eventually, but I'd like to see what the proposal is now and what they're thinking of doing. Yeah.
I don't think at this point they have a set proposal. I mean, I don't think they're willing to put the effort into it unless until they have an initial discussion with you and decide it's worth their while.
Okay. But I was just wanting to see what the plans were to begin with because we can't really decide anything if that's worth looking into if we don't know what the the scope of the project is.
Well, let let's go from this standpoint. It's, we're willing to have the discussion. We just we know we want more details. So you can go back to Joshua's Trust and say we would be interested in entertaining that idea. It'd be passive recreation for the benefit of the community, and, you know, they're gonna sit there and take care of that. But I know where the property butts to some of the residents, so we wanna make sure that we understand what the trail is gonna encompass and how it's gonna go. So
anybody else? The trail locations, where the wetlands are on the trails, where they're located, that kind of stuff so we know what we're getting into.
Yeah. And I don't see this as a drawback to the residents. If the residents can access the trail from their backyard, I see it as a benefit for some people. Mhmm.
All good. I I'm I would tell them, Eric, that we're willing to entertain idea the trail there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright. Let's move to Thanks, Eric. No problem.
Let's move to item nine of the town administrator's report.
Okay. So we will so town hall operations are going relatively well. Willie Bell has been doing a great job keeping up the town hall and as far as I can tell the library. Sorry.
The way, Eric, I would like to to, you know, commend Mr. Bell. I tell him every time I see him, he does a phenomenal job on that building. You know, I, I just, I, sorry to interrupt you, but I think the public needs to know that Mr. Bell and his wife, who I found out was an Andover resident, originally, they do a great job. That building's never looked better.
I agree, Jeff. It's a nine or it's a nine day difference. It is. Absolutely. He cares. They care. Amazing. Is amazing.
Yeah, he's been doing a great job. I discussed with him the prospect of redoing the exterior window painting for the Andover Museum. So, I think the plan is at this point to schedule that for next spring. Cause he basically has the bandwidth to take on one reasonably large project per year and keep up with all the other, you know, cleaning and maintenance tasks.
And is staying. Correct? He is staying. No. He retired from Hebron, but he is staying in Andover.
He very definitely is. Good. Although his wife did make him ask, if they could have, like, two weeks off, because they wanna take a trip. And I said, absolutely. You could take two weeks off. We'll we'll suffer through for a couple weeks until you get back. But but yeah. Nope. Absolutely. Can have three weeks off, maybe four.
Yeah. I told him he couldn't retire until I retired, just so that you know. And I'm not retiring anytime soon as far as I know. We talked about Joshua's trust. There was we did have a RFP. We were supposed to meet tomorrow at the to go over with the one of the contractors that worked for the Andover Fire Department as well as the Andover Town Hall. Just got a note from him a little bit ago. He's got a family emergency, and he can't make tomorrow either. So we're gonna have to reschedule that one, unfortunately, and I'm gonna try to get something out to everybody after this meeting is over since that meeting
was tomorrow, unfortunately. We also, as part of that, we're intending to swap the town hall over to propane from our current heat source of oil as in addition to the heat pumps we're installing in the downwall. My intention is to add two additional 1,000 gallon tanks behind the fire department lined up with the existing two tanks, and some level of interconnectivity between those tanks for emergency purposes. It's doable. I'm working on getting quotes for that now. Unfortunately, that does require a wetlands application, a zoning application, a B100A with the health department and the fire marshal sign off. So, that's in the works, but it's going to be a couple months before we get that completed. I'm pushing that right now because I want to get that done as part of the construction on the community center, not as part of the contract, but as a standalone contract, but use the same excavator because he's already on-site. So, but I can't do that until I have permission to do that. So that's in the works.
I gave you the information for the state local bridge grant application. I think what needs to happen next is we have to go to town meeting in November and actually approve or accept the state local bridge grant because remember, because it requires a town match, it has to go to public meeting. Then as soon as we do that, then we can submit an RFP for the contractor to do the work. I have a proposal from Nathan Jacobson to do it, but it's over the cutoff threshold, which the Board of Finance has said we have to go to RFP. So that will have to go to a separate RFP unless the Board of Finance makes a decision not to. So the last one I want to talk about, we did get the $100,000 to do the connectivity study going down Route 316. We're going to discuss that later under new business 11C, because I'm going to need a motion from the committee to appoint or the motion from the Board of Selectmen to appoint a committee to evaluate the RFP and choose a vendor for that. I also went and spoke directly with the transportation planning staff at Prague, because all along what I wanted to do is do this study initially, and then immediately apply for lots of funding. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is a solicitation for this year, but there will not be lots of solicitation for next year, and possibly not one for the year after. So, what that means to us is that, you know, we had the bid meeting today with the with we had four engineering firms that came to the bid meeting, so hopefully we'll get at least four proposals out of this to review. But the goal has to be to submit
for a lots of grant in February. I don't know when exactly in February the grants are going to be done, because they haven't, Crogg hasn't announced the dates for that. But we're going to be under a pretty significant time crunch to get the lots of application out the door. So if we don't do it now, we're going to wait at least two years, maybe longer to even be able to submit. And that's about the best funding mechanism for this. So I really don't want to miss out. So, I also put in the packet, and it's up for discussion later,
the renewal of the agreement with Bolton for services by the building official under the town engineer discussion. I've already talked with preliminary engineering work for the design for the new pad for propane tanks. I'm also looking at potentially switching animal control services to a shared service with Columbia and Hebron. That would give us basically a shared service just to cover the three town area. And it would have initial state funding to cover a significant fraction of cost for a couple of years, but I'm still trying to figure out and work out what the actual relative cost is to Andover. I have no doubt we would end up with better service than what we have right now, but, you know, I don't want you know, go any farther down that road unless I can convince myself that it's gonna be equivalent costs to what we have or lower costs. So I'm just giving you a heads up that I am working on that in the background. We've done a bunch of guardrail replacement. As most of you know, we did line striping. The line striping contractor was in yesterday, which is a little unfortunate because I wanted to do that after we had this meeting, but we can recover from that. That's not a big deal. Bunker Hill Bridge, we I put in the packet the report from what's called the plans in hand meeting,
which is DOT's new meeting format for having their 70% completion meeting on-site. So, you hopefully had a chance to read through that. There haven't really been any any updates on the Long Hill Bridge or small bridges and culverts. As far as the community center, I was gonna leave that report to Adrian and Scott, because Scott at least is on this report. We're still struggling a little bit with the filters at the Andover Veterans Monument. Still need to come up with a better solution for that. As far as the senior transportation vehicle, they've sent me paperwork for this, like, three or four times. And it's a little annoying, but I keep signing it all and sending it back. But when I talk to them, they still say we're on sometime in the next year to get the new 16 passenger bus
for senior transportation, which is fully funded, which is pretty cool. The STEEP grant, the 2022 STEEP grant, I've been working to get that project back on track. I met with SHPO, the State Historical Preservation Office this week. It seems like we finally came to an agreement on what we need to do to mitigate the effects of taking down the old building. And also that they would agree that Scott Yeomans as a historian is capable of doing the documentation for the original building that we're tearing down over on Center Street. So they're supposed to send me a bunch of information this week, but I haven't got it yet. So the good news is we're gonna be able to get out of it without spending significantly more money than we've already allocated to upgrades for the Andover Museum anyway. So I think that would be okay.
And when you say that, before you move on, when you say that,
and you came to an agreement, did you come to an agreement with the work that was proposed for the museum? So the agreement we have is that credited towards the I submitted a bunch of pictures of stuff that I thought would be appropriate to. They rejected my idea of replacing the doors because they said basically the door sills are rotted anyway. Have to replace them, so we're not giving you credit for that. So what we agreed on is as mitigation, we will be able to do the exterior window refurbishment, which I should be able to have. I've already discussed that with Mr. Bell. And Mr. Bell should be able to do that for us next summer. So that will satisfy part of the requirement. And the second thing will be the replacement of the, you know, the interior ceiling in the addition to the Andover Museum, which is the part you walk in when you walk in the entrance when the museum is open. That ceiling was water damaged really badly prior to the museum taking it over, because that roof used to, you know, leak for years. So it's one of those things that it really has to be addressed at some point. So those two things will be the things we do officially to mitigate for the effects of tearing down the old firehouse. So that's actually less than I thought I was going to have to do to satisfy them. So,
so I think we're we're in okay shape there. And we do have $30,000 allotted to those two projects. So if I can do a lot of the the window work with mister Bell just as part of his normal scope of work for the town, that means I should have enough money to do both both parts of that. So that's why I think I'm in reasonable shape. And they agreed that as long as we completed the work within two years, that would satisfy the historic preservation office. So I think we're in a decent spot for that. Does that answer your question, Jeff? It does. Thank you. Okay. On to the 2023 grant. As I emailed you all, we did get really good news. The state or the town was granted a $500,000 state grant. That was for work at the Andover Veterans Monument or Veterans Memorial Field. So the priority was basically installing three pickleball courts. And they will probably also be installed with basketball hoops on the sides because you can set that up to deal with, you know, to work for both pickleball
and basketball. And that will be fenced and lit. There will be that will cover the water supply to the softball field that will cover repaving the parking area that's going to be right adjacent to the pickleball court. It will cover the installation of a playground of a kid's playground on that high ground between where the soccer ball soccer field is now and where the pickleball courts are going. And hopefully that will cover lighting of a soccer field. The single costliest element of that is soccer field lighting. This will require a fairly significant contribution from the town. But that's just, that's a fact of life these days. The state, in almost all states, all state grants right now are requiring a significant match to get it. In fact, if you look at the list of grants that were accepted by the state, there was not a single grant accepted, you know, that didn't have a little at least a 20 match. So we will have to go to town meeting on that too because accepting that grant will
you know, the town will have to spend, you know, a 100 or a $150,000 as part of the project or so. The good news is it gives us a budget of, you know, 650,000 total to work on down there, which is pretty helpful. And some of that expense on the town side can be, you know, work in kind. So it can be work on work by public works. And there's a bunch of the depending on what we get back for cost estimates. There are a bunch of that project that could be done by public works. So we have a way to make the talent match, you know, without spending a ton of tax dollars.
Questions on that? Excellent job, Eric. That playground will be very beneficial to the community so that, you know, you can get children down there and not have to go to the school. So any parent that has a child that's not in the school could go down there and use that playground. I think it's excellent, and it's great news.
Good job. Yeah, just a second, Jeff's comment. I think that playground is going be a great resource to the town, and it's gonna be good to attract some younger families in here and give them a place to have their kids play a little bit.
And Yeah. School hours when the school's in session. So I think it's a win win for everybody. And and as we know, the pickleball pickleball courts are great for Andover seniors and getting them to get out there and be recreational and win medals. So, very happy about that.
Do think we are going to have to put up together a little committee to oversee that because number one, I am not qualified at all to decide what should be on a playground, you know. And I think we're we probably ought to, and we don't need to do it at this meeting because we're not far enough along in the process. We still have to have the intro meeting, we're steep, to actually work out the details of the funding. But I think we ought to put together a little design committee maybe at the next meeting to start fleshing out what exactly we want and where?
Let's get through the this the November meeting, and after the November meeting, we can sit there and get a good what we should do is we should actually do it right now. I'll make a motion that we request applications or Letters of interest.
Yeah, letters of interest to participate in a Veterans Memorial Field Phase two renovation to utilize the 2023 steep grant awarded to the town of Andover. That'll be my motion. I'll second that. Right. And then just discussion on that, before we vote is we did the same thing for the original, phase. We had a good group of people. I believe Scott, you were on that. Shannon Loudon was on it. Ken Romeo, I know, was on it. We had a number of good people that participated in that and allowed us to come up with a good final product that is very valuable to the town. So I think this will be also very positive. So any other discussion? No? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. So the motion is to request people to participate in that committee.
And just another note, Eric, if you're talking to any other town administrators, like somebody in town, I know they have Adams Adventure up there, which is a really nice playground. If there's any other committees in any other towns and notes that they made or know, things that they found out along the way to kinda help us and benchmark some of the other towns. Because I know Columbia's got some really nice playgrounds in their park. So maybe we can get some lessons learned from them and and help us out a little bit with our committee. Cole Chester has a really beautiful playground also. Yep. So have you talked to some town administrators or managers just asking, you know, like, who'd you use for your playground? You know? Do you have a committee? Did you make notes? Anything we could use?
Yeah. And I was actually planning on talking to the to Craig, the guy at Hebron Parks and Recs, because I know they're just in the process of putting one in now. Good. And we had we had some discussions about what they who they went with the vendor and how they went through. So yeah, no, that's going to take a bunch of work. And I recognized after reviewing all the playground stuff that I am wholly unqualified to decide what's appropriate for for children's playgrounds.
Right. Is is there any way we can advertise is there way we could contact the school and maybe advertise that through the school newsletter that they put out? Because there may be some parents in pre k in in in the area that may wanna contribute. Because that would be our target audience, I would assume.
Let's, let's ask Celeste to sit there and reach out to the PTA or the PTO, whichever one it is called now, and sit there and see if we can get a member of two for that committee.
Yeah, I'm happy to help. Just so you are aware, the PTA is raising money to finish the upper playground. So we're embarking on that. We we went contract, through MRC game time. They gave us a quote and they seemed very they came out and they did a site visit. So I'm happy to pass that information over to Eric. But we're in the process of raising money to finish that upper playground at the school.
Okay, all right, good to know. All right, Eric, you can keep going. Thank you, Celeste. Okay,
so put on your thinking caps. This is a good problem to have. So, we have underspent our connectivity grant budget. So, we have around $25,000 left in that that can be used for amenities and connectivity issues in that same general area between the athletic fields and Center Street, and possibly extending down the rail trail a little bit. We have to be careful to get not too far astray of the original intent of the connectivity project, but if any board of selectmen or members of the public have public or trail side amenities that they think you really need to add that are related to public use and connectivity,
let me know, and we can discuss how to implement that.
How about a gazebo like they have on Church Street? With the tables underneath. So
it's not a bad idea. How about we put all of our thinking caps on and we come back to you? Because I still believe you need to make the whole area appealing to the community so that they use it more. Yeah.
I will say when you drive down there now on the weekend, it's not uncommon to drive by and see the entire Centre Street parking lot filled and Lake Street at the same time, and a bunch of cars behind the museum. So we're actually on busy weekends already, basically maxing out our existing parking capacity, which is pretty cool.
You know? Yeah. Just every time I go to Church Street and I stop there, there's always people at that gazebo sitting there and parked and, you know, just talking. It's like a just kind of a meeting spot where people will stop and take a break there. So I just that's kind of my thoughts. It would be a great use for that money. What about Charisse, Eric?
Well, we've done a bunch of plantings there, you know, in the future to shade the area, the seeding area, and also to continue on with the theme of making that whole area a pollinator pathway. And we also paid for some of the trees along the sidewalk running down Long Hill Road from that same fund. I'd be happy to discuss it. I'm just not exactly sure where I'd put them. If you got ideas about where, you know, where shade trees should go, let's let's chat. K. Yep. Both good ideas. I like them both.
So Okay. The trip grant, the state has still not. I called the program administrator the other day, as you probably remember, we submitted this one back in April. They've actually approved, the state bond commission has approved the funds for it, but the DOT commission hasn't met and actually decided, they kind of admitted to me they hadn't actually even decided how they were going to rate the projects, let alone actually rate them and make a decision. So, that's looking like end of this month, beginning of next month before there's any decision. The reason why that's slightly important is that will come in later when we start talking about the stop, the intersection of Long Hill and Hendy. Because that would be the one time we would have the ability to make a significant change to that intersection,
is if we're grinding it up and we're reclaiming the whole area, we could potentially redesign it then as opposed to now, when it would be expensive to do now. So, transfer station, we have apparently managed to mostly chase the rats out from the area around the dumpsters. Unfortunately, when they went to remove all the tires, the big pile of tires we have with the Bloop Building, When they were pulling the tires out, they realized that has now the rats have basically migrated from the area behind under the behind the wall, they're now living in the Blue Building. So, we're working with pest control now on a revised plan to address bait stations and other mitigation numbers in the Blue Building. So that's not great news, but it is what it is. And that's pretty much it. I did have some other complaints from individuals. We do have a real problem on Aspinall Drive, which we've known about for a while, but it's it's one of those things we just haven't gotten to address.
There's some kind of artesian spring under the road on Asphalt Drive. So the water comes right out the middle of the road. And it's, you know, it's definitely problematic. Several of the neighbors are really unhappy with it. You know, I know in the winter we salt the heck out of that spot because it is an ongoing problem in the winter. It does appear that a lot of peoples in that neighborhood have pretty well saturated properties. One of the neighbors was convinced that the road was causing his septic system to flood out, but his septic system is about 10 feet in elevation higher than the road. So I assured him the road wasn't the direct cause of his problems. But, you know, we all know there's been an inordinate amount of rain this year, and we are having an awful lot of drainage related issues that we've been chasing down with residents in general. So that's it from my report at this point, unless you have other questions for any of that.
So this was the first year, or how's that problem on Aspidol Drive been previous years?
I mean, Jay said he's known about it for a while. It's the first time I've actually seen it personally. It was definitely pretty bad. I mean, water was squirting out of the road about two inches high. You know, so there's an awful lot of water pressure under there coming from somewhere. But it's the road is kind of in a little bowl, and it's high on both sides. It's basically high on three sides. It's like a little draw, so you can understand why. Jay and I have kind of talked about mitigation, you know, but I think Jay's thinking that, you know, until he can dig a hole in it and kind of understand what the problem is and where it's actually coming from, But basically, what he's talking about is an interceptor trench under the road that leads downhill about, you know, 150 feet to the a basin. Now, the next basin that the water would go into is part of the state, the Route 6 drainage system, so it would require permission from the state, but we would probably be able to get it because the water is going to go into the state's basin, whether it goes in underground or whether it flows around it, it flows directly into the basin.
So but, you know, that would be a pretty extensive project because it would be a fair bit of piping, and it would be the addition of, know, some sort of drainage basin and an interceptor trench and a bunch of things to address that. So not going to be a quick project, probably not something we're tackling in the fall, but it's definitely something that some of the neighbors are pretty unhappy with. Certainly not the only spot we have of that occurring, that just was the worst I'd really seen. The neighbors called right after the last big rainstorm, and I went out there, and it was pretty impressive, and it's definitely damaging the road. So it's something we're going to have to address at some point. It's just a question of figuring out where it fits in in the priorities.
Okay. Do we have any other questions for Eric? No. Okay. We're going to move on to item 10, old business community community center construction update.
Scott, are you, uh- There was a safety meeting this morning at 07:00, the Community Center Room. We talked about, there was very few issues because there hasn't been much that happened since the last meeting, but, hopefully they're putting up the forms today and hopefully they'll be pouring tomorrow or the next day for the walls. And, there was, unfortunately when they were digging the trenches or the footings, they hit a pipe, they have to replace the pipe and redirect it to a main, pipe drain it off. So, they have to work on that in the next week or two, I guess. And, after that, they're gonna backfill. So, as soon as we get the walls up, we're gonna be bank making some progress. That's it.
Looks good. It's at least moving forward, so I'm happy with that. Item 10 b, discussion of blight and level of involvement.
So, we've been keeping on that agenda. I apologize. I was supposed to get from Jim an update. He did not send me a written one. Did have a, he did give me a verbal update. You know, he's still discussing with the town's attorney how to deal with the Barnett issue on Route 6. He is sending a letter to the guy on Long Hill that has the mattresses and the other stuff, because that seems like it's continuing to get worse. So, I told him he needed to follow-up with them and to send them the other letter, you know, which is kind of the first step in official blank. So hopefully that will get addressed. The other house on Long Hill Road, that is directly across from Bear Swamp, there, you know, the contractor's been actively working on that. It's looking a lot better. I told Jim that he needed to inform that guy that he needed a what do you call it, he needed to put a dumpster back on-site because he's starting to accumulate debris on-site again. So that's all I have on that, unless you have specific questions for me for that.
Nothing right now. Anybody? Scott or Jeff, any questions on that? Nope.
Okay. 10 c, stiff account update. So the, I'll give you the long and the short of it. Last month, we made about 7,000 in interest on our STIF account. We're currently getting around 5.3 percent on that money. So year over year, it looks like, you know, we're going to have somewhere, you know, in the $85,000 you know, range right now. And then Cheryl is trying to decide whether she can continue to move more money. It looks like we can continue to move more money into it. So, that's working out well. You know, M and T Bank is not the easiest to deal with to move money, but we seem to have it figured out fine.
K. That's extremely positive news. So have we gotten any bank fees from M and T Bank that we need to offset against that interest?
We have not at this point, but M and T is still not doing what they said they were doing, and we've reminded them multiple times that they're supposed to be providing us with a secure courier service, and they're still saying they're working it out, but they've been working it out now for like six months or seven months. So, you know, I think longer term, you know, again, we're going to be looking at a new banking solution for our main bank because they're just the service from them is pretty atrocious. That's something that we should deal with offline,
but that is positive news that it's a net positive impact to the town for interest earned on its reserves. So I'm very happy about that. Item 11, new business. Item 11 a, a catch basin complaint.
So this you had a bunch of information in the packet from a resident of town, Darryl Stein. You know, in summary, a subdivision, a small subdivision of three houses of which two share a driveway went in in the 90s, and as part of that, the applicant put in a catch basin essentially at the end of his driveway. His driveway comes down a steep hill, There's a large drainage watershed, and then a catch basin was installed. It was supposed to be installed beside the driveway. But that's, you know, which is what the as built looks like. But that's not what's actually there. What looks like is there is the catch basin is kind of in the driveway. Catch basin is not in great shape. It wasn't built particularly well to begin with. It was built with block construction instead of using precast, which the town had abandoned by that era, but the builder, the developer hadn't. So the question became, is that a town's responsibility or is it a homeowner's responsibility? You know, the applicant came to one conclusion, Jay and I came to another conclusion, Therefore, it's it's going to you as a board for discussion. So the question is, what do you as a board want to do about this?
I read the information. My biggest issue is, since this is a, an issue, I look at it and go, have we brought it to attorney Brandt's and asked just for a preliminary opinion to get like an understanding of responsibilities? Because to me, it appears to be in their driveway. I drove by it today. It's obviously drainage to collect water running off of the properties, not the road. And so I understand that it might be in the town right away, but there was an easement granted for those properties. And I would just like an opinion. I mean, would like a very quick opinion from attorney brands in telling us who's responsible, because to me, on a common sense approach, it appears that the homeowner should be responsible for that, not the town. That's my opinion, but legally I'd like to know. Okay. I will refer that to attorney Gritz.
I mean, does anyone else have a problem with that? No. K. Sounds good to me.
Alright. Item 11 b, meeting on the board of selectman, board of finance, and board of education joint meeting on the twelfth.
I don't have anything to add to that. Paula had said she asked that I put it on the agenda for this meeting in case the board wanted to discuss anything prior to that meeting. And lo and behold, Paula has popped up on our meeting.
Yay, Paula. I look at this meeting as a way for us to outline our understanding of our boards and what's our responsibilities and what we have authority over or not over and just maybe working a little bit better together to get things done positively for the community. Anybody else?
No. Okay. Sounds good to me. Let's move on to 11 c, RFP for Route 316 connectivity project.
So in last month's packet, I put the proposed RFP. Today was the RFP review, the contractor review. We did have four contractors show up, which was good. Barton and LaJudas, Rob Noon from BSC Group, East West Engineering, and PLA Design. So we got a good representation of design and engineering firms, so that's good. We had a good productive meeting. This will close on, I think, the twenty fourth, and we'll do bid openings. What I would like to do is make a very small committee to do the review, simply because we're trying to get this, we're trying to make a decision on the initial phase of this quickly because we have to produce, we got a grant to produce by February. So, my suggestion would be myself, John Kuzewski, don't ask me to spell that, who's the town planner, and then Jed Larson, Chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission. That would be my recommendation. Keep it small, because they're the ones that are, we're the ones that are most intimately involved in that. That would be my recommendation, but obviously, you can choose whoever you want for an RFP review prior to approval of any kind of contract.
I have no problem with that. Do you want us to make a motion to that?
That would be good. If you're going to empower us as a panel by the purchasing policy, you're the body that designates who that is.
Okay. Does anyone on the board have anyone else that they would like appointed to that? Anybody? No? So, I'll make a motion that we appoint a committee to evaluate the RFPs for the Route 316 connectivity project. And Eric, I'm gonna ask for your assistance. That's not part of the motion on this next part. Members of that committee should be Eric Anderson, Jed Larson.
And John, I'll give you his last name in just a second, Guszkowski, which is g u s z k o w s k I.
Okay. And I take that as part of my motion. So those three members. Second.
Right. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. 11 d, a building inspector contract.
So I drew this in your packet. So this is super late. This was supposed to start at the beginning of this fiscal year. It's basically what we budgeted for this fiscal year. But, you know, I always send you the contracts. So to see whether you have any questions and also to get feedback from you on where you think how you think we're doing as far as the building official goes and if there's anything you wanna do before me signing that contract. Has it been reviewed by attorney O'Brien?
Not this year's version of it. This contract has been reviewed by him in previous years. Can certainly send him this version.
If you would, it always helps to sit there and have him put his eyes on contracts that we're gonna sign. Do you have any issues with it, Eric? I do not.
Okay. Do you have any problems with how the building inspector is working?
Overall, no. I think it's running reasonably smoothly. So, no, I'm I'm pretty satisfied with where it's going overall. Anybody else have any other questions related to this?
No. If the our attorney finds out that it's fine, can Eric sign it? Sure. Make a motion to that.
I'll make a motion that have after attorney O'Brien completes his work looking at the contract that Eric can sign it and give it to Donna Bolton. I'll second. Alright. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. 11E, the AES Parking Lot discussion.
Sure. So, I sent I missed the packet because I didn't have it in time, but I sent you all a copy of what the contract would be with Indus for both mastic sealing as well as crack sealing in an explanation of both. So basically, you know, no matter who we use for crack sealing and mastic sealing, we're going to have to bring in a contractor a day at a time, because either we're using Gorman out of New York, you know, or we're using Indus, which is up, you know, in the Boston area. So they're pretty much only willing to work a day at a time. So but there's more than one day of work in the upper there's more work than just the upper parking lot that would work in a one day increment. So what we would do is we would schedule this for Saturday. We would do the upper lot and then we would do the lower lot at AES because that needs some work too. And we would get probably some work done at the town hall lot and potentially at the shared lot between the town hall and the fire department out of this.
So my guess would be the cost that would be associated by the upper lot only would be in the 8,000 to $10,000 range. Total project cost would be in the low to mid-20s. That's what it would be. Jeff asked me to bring that back to the whole Board of Selectmen, Given that we've solved the budget issues with public works, we definitely can fit this in the budget right now. So it's just a question of what we want to agree to. Personally, I would say at this point, I would probably just do it. But if we're going to do it, we need to make a decision quickly because we have a fairly narrow window, we have to get this done, and we'd have to sign a contract pretty quickly if we're going to do this.
Have both the contractors confirm that they can fit us into the schedule if we go this route?
We did not Gorman, I don't think can fit us in. So that's not even an issue. Indus probably can fit us in. And Indus is doing what application?
So Indus would be doing both crack sealing and mastic sealing. And they're very similar products. Mastic just gets applied with a different technique because it's like crack seal but it's got big aggregate in it. So, it works in wide things and there's a there are some wide cracks at the at the upper parking lot and the lower parking lot that would would work well with mastic. And mastic is a great way if you're worried about ramps and discontinuities where the catch basins are. Mastic is a great way to kind of ramp those and shape those so there's no nothing to there's no trip hazards on there. So that's that's why we would use some of each.
So if I'm looking at Indus quote, it's $24,000 in the ballpark. It's a little lower. It's 50 Yeah. And and those are plus or minus
because Indus is working off the Capital Retail Council of Governments bids. That's who we're basically glomming onto for this. So, it's per material. So it depends on exactly how much they apply in a given day. So there's some variability in that price.
But what I was getting at is you're basically taking a third of that and saying that is the upper parking lot basketball court area. And then the other third of that is the school parking lot. And the other third of that is the town parking lots. Well,
more. So the lower lot needs a lot of cracked ceiling, but there's only four or five spots where it needs mastic ceiling. So the two things are a little different. I, my guess would be the upper parking lot is about a third of the total time and materials we would need. The lower parking lot is a bigger fraction and the town hall parking lot and the fire department parking lot will do as much as we can with what we have left over. That would not, I mean, I would bet we get to the town parking lot with the mastic applicator. I don't know that we get to the town parking lot with a cracked ceiling contractor.
Okay, but from a mental standpoint, we are looking at doing a repair to the upper parking lot for the school that we anticipate reclaiming within the next twelve months. That is true. Yep. Alright. I guess I I'm gonna I would like to invite in Celeste Willard, who's on the Board of Education, just to ask a question so that we can Celeste, how, since it is a certain amount of money that we would be investing as a town to maintain or do some maintenance on that parking lot, is it truly necessary before we go to the reclamation? Is that the opinion of the Board of Education?
It is, Jeff. The parking lot is closed because it's because we have that big crack. There's areas that aren't safe. So we've closed it. It's being used only for emergency purposes only. Or if you have to drop off your child or pick it up, you'll pick up your child, but it's not being used in the normal course of the day to day, pickup and drop off. But we are respectfully requesting that we get we put a Band Aid on it, so to speak, so where we can use it. Otherwise, it's gonna be closed until we can get on the schedule to have it completely done, which won't be done until the spring of next year. Alright. Thank you. So
let's get past the issue, that issue, let's talk financial side of this, Eric. I know there are some funds that sit there and have been out there in in school renovation that was mentioned in the memo, but where where would we be taking this money from?
So short of any other decision from the board, this money would come from the road improvement fund. Which we already have a problem. Not anymore. Not anymore. Board
of Finance made that fund whole. So, you know, we're back to our original boat, our original budget for road improvement fund.
Okay. That's good to know. I'm glad they did that.
Right. That's why I'm not so worried about if that hadn't been done, I'm not sure I would have said we have the ability to do it. But I think at this point, we do. It's just a question of whether we want to do it.
If we do this, how how long would the lower parking lot have before you would recommend redoing the lower parking lot?
I mean, in truth, the lower parking lot is every bit as bad as the upper parking lot. It does need to get reclaimed. But the reality is that's a $350,000 plus, you know, project. And I don't necessarily think we're gonna do it any time soon because when you take the totality of what Public Works has to do, I mean, if I had to choose between that and, you know, a functional repair to Ridge Road, I would probably choose Ridge Road today because I think, you know, we have bigger fish to fry when we look at it on a town I
understand there's other priorities. I'm asking you, if you had it on a calendar, how soon would you want to do it for getting other priorities? Like, is it can it last five years with this mastic? Can it last four years with this Band Aid that we're putting on it? I mean,
So prior to the discussion regarding the upper lot and there, the board of Eds wanting to reclaim that, What Jay and I had kind of proposed internally, and it cost estimated was crack sealing both lots, and then bringing contractor in, saw cutting out the big gap in the basketball court and then grinding probably four or five fairly large spots in the lower parking lot and then shimming, you know, in the next year or so, which would have been somewhere around $60. And I think that Band Aid would have got us five years, six years down the road before we needed to address anything. You know, but it would have been a band aid. Ideally, over the top of that, you would chip seal to lock it in, but chip seal in a parking lot is really tough and would, you know, it would last much longer, but it would really piss off everybody that had to deal with it. So so that would be my my take on.
Okay. So, again, we spend $24,000 on the upper and the upper, which we know that where the plan is to get rid of it. So I'm asking the lower working lot, give me a timeline, it'll last three years in your estimation, because I do believe the lower parking lot is just as good as the upper parking lot in my mind and what I've looked at, so I'm asking, I mean, we're saying we're going to invest $24,000 in two parking lots, three parking lots, and even four parking lots, but the most at the upper and the lower school parking lots. How long is the lower one going to last if we do this? Five years before we have to go do what you just said?
Three years? Two years? Give me a number. Just I would not have anticipated reclaiming the lower lot in the next five years, personally.
Okay. So a question I have, Jeff, is you said that the lower lot is just as bad as the upper lot. If we do these repairs, is the upper lot gonna last longer? Is it gonna still have to be reclaimed next year just because we have the money?
That's I mean, where I went, Jeff, was kind of different. I sat there and said, well, if we had the 100 and some odd thousand dollars, why not just go and do the repairs that Eric was asking for, for get six or seven years out of it, but do it really, really well, like maybe do a little bit extra to that, and then you get five or six years out of it. If that's not the case, I mean, my biggest problem with this whole thing is if we're putting $8,000 at something to have it, I mean, I guess I would ask the Board of Ed in a general sense is, Celeste, if you don't have that parking lot open, is it really going to impact what's been going on for the first month or month and a half of the year? Is it going to get any worse? Mean, if we said no to spending $25,000 on a Band Aid, really, and we, I I guess I look at it as a town and go if we spent, if we didn't do the $24,000 and then we reclaimed it next year, so we lose the access because the Board of Ed is determined that it's hazardous and that's fine. We lose it for the school year, we then do the reclamation of the upper lot, we're still going to have to spend some money on the lower lot to keep that out of the $300,000 range in the next few years. It's a question. Mean,
my question, Jeff, is can we just if it was repaired this year, if the upper lot was repaired like we're talking about, how many years could we get out of that upper lot if it was repaired? If we just didn't reclaim next year, we took that money, we put in that dedicated fund, and the following two or three years, we seed that fund with enough money to do both the upper and the lower lot at the same time. We do a full repave.
Eric had just said that $60,000 of repair work, I mean scheduled good work on the upper and the lower lot would get us
five years, I thought you said Eric? Yeah, that would have gotten us out. So we were, what we were initially looking at is setting that lot up to get cape sealed down the road. So in other words, we do a chunk of work on it this year, we basically shim it and we chip seal the heck out of it, You know, that was presuming the town crew handled the drainage. And then we went back in the following year and cape sealed. Now, talking to both the contractors that would have done the cape seal, neither of them is at all happy with cape sealing parking lots. So, I'm not sure we could have gotten them to cape seal it. You know, but that would have been my low cost approach to how to put these things away for a period of time. Obviously, full blown reclamation, gives you the longest time between major amounts of work you have to do on something. But even after you reclaim, four years from now or five years from now, we would be either sealing or crack sealing the parking lot again.
You know, but it I don't know if that answered your question. If
I could just, I know, Jeff, you had brought up if it would still be a continued inconvenience, you know, given that we've been, you know, it's been close since the beginning of the year and we've been It is an inconvenience, the buses especially, because everyone is being dropped off and picked up at that lower lot. So the buses have had to wait now, where before they were able to get in a lot quicker. You know, the traffic's been backed up on the road during pickup and drop off. So it is an inconvenience for the parents picking up and dropping off as well as the buses. And also just given that it'll be the wintertime, you know, we've had parents and we've had some students walking up the side of the hill to get to the office. They've been obviously, you know, the notice has gone out that they can use that lot if they're picking up their child or dropping off their child, you know, for a doctor's appointment or something like that. But our concern is that they're climbing up the hill there and given the winter and the ice and everything, we don't want anybody to do it. But has been an inconvenience for the parents and for the buses.
Eric, if we didn't go with Indus, is there anything that the Public Works Department could do to assist with that parking lot on a lower cost basis?
So, we wouldn't be able to deal with the cracks. We could potentially deal with the areas that are sunken around the basins by going in with what's called class 12 asphalt, which is asphalt that doesn't have a big rock in it. It would be possible to smooth out the areas just with asphalt. It may or may not hold up well under the plow, but if it was put down well and compacted, it might hold up under the plow. You can't really put it in the long cracks though, so it wouldn't address the basketball court, it would address the basin tops only, the three basin tops that are sticking up a little bit. Are we using the basketball courts, Celeste, for playground?
No. To to my knowledge, we're keeping the kids off of it because there's a big crack in the middle of it.
And, Eric, just so I understand, why can you not fill the cracks?
Because it's not really wide enough to fill successfully with asphalt.
It just it won't hold. It won't stay in. Yeah. Staying to Eric's point, it's gonna have to be somewhat elastic because it has to have some give and take with the with the heat, you know, with the heating and cooling of the day. And if we just put regular stuff, it's just gonna crack and come up. So it has to be a rubberized type of material that'll give and take with the the movement of the earth.
K? Yeah. I mean, the only way you could do that with asphalt is to basically come in come in there and cut a slot, you know, a foot or 18 inches wide so you have a wide enough area to do, take it back down to dirt and repave that, which we might have ended up doing if we brought in Abbey construction earlier in the year. But I don't, you know, so that would be possible, but that would be a that would take a while.
Yeah. Like, Jeff, anybody that's tried to fill a you hear a crack on your wall, you just try to put a you know, you just try to put compound over and and fix it, crack just comes back. You have to V it out. You have to widen it. You have to patch it that way. Same with the asphalt.
Yeah. But I'm looking at it differently, Jeff. I'm looking at it. What could I get to last twelve months?
I'm not looking at twelve months, I'm thinking if we could spend this money and get some more years out of the both lots Long
term. You're looking at it to sit there and revise the entire project. What I'm sitting there thinking of is what if we, what could we do lowest cost possible to make the upper parking lot, let's, let's forget the basketball court for now, but the upper parking lot usable for, for the parents. Like, what's the lowest cost alternative that we could use to have it available for the next ten months, and then do do the the project as it was proposed for the upper lot, knowing that we have a problem with the lower lot, you know, this is where I'm okay with somebody, if we all agree that, you know, it's a bigger project, I mean, listen, I think if you spent the $130,000 across both those lots and you made them viable for five years, just as Jeff said, and then you sat there and put these on CIP and said, we have to fund these just like we are dealing with all of the catch basins. Well, then we fund them all, like we fund it and then we reclaim in five or six years. And I understand the logic, Jeff, I do. Yeah, because I don't want to spend this money and just tear it up next year. Just, to me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. That's why I'm trying to find the lowest cost
option. But I'm not looking at the lowest cost. I'm looking at like long If we can get it out, because that money, if we put in that dedicated account, I'm just looking playing devil's advocate here. If we have that money and it's in a dedicated account that we can add to it in the next three or four years, we can get economies of scale and get both of those parking lots probably done cheaper than two lots individually. Am I right, Eric? Like, a paving company came in and did both lots, it would probably be a little less money.
It would be somewhat less. Remember one of your biggest single costs there is the cost of asphalt. You would save yourself from mobilization. Your testing costs wouldn't double, but they would go up. So there would probably be some cost savings, but it wouldn't necessarily
be it's it's not gonna be in the 30% range. That's No. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying anything we can save, it may even equal out what we've put in for the patches on the upper lot. We may actually reclaim that in savings just by doing both at the same time down the road. It is possible. Yeah. I just wanna think of it. Just talk discuss all the options here before we move forward with just a temporary fix that's only gonna last us a few months. That's all.
Well, the other side of it is we don't have to do the fix, and we inconvenience the school and the parents on the upper parking lot and then just do the upper parking lot when we have the available time as soon as we can get that on schedule.
Well, we got to get that parking lot open. My take is we should get it open. You know, and if we then my discussion is, my point is, is either going be a long term fix or a short term fix. You know, if we just spend it on a short term fix, that money's basically, we're gone, the money's gone. You're not going to get a long term fix on that upper parking lot. Well, Jeff, if we fix the bottom, it's just this, I was told that the both lots are about the same condition.
No, but what I'm saying to you, Jeff, is if we do a long term fix, Eric's already expressed that it is about 60,000 to $75,000 to do the long term fix, right? Could you even get it done the next month?
No. I mean, we had Abby lined up with the likelihood of us getting them in. I mean, it's going to be a push to do Indus. The only reason I think they'll do it is because we're actually, we want them to do it on a Saturday. And a lot of towns and a lot of groups don't want Saturday work because they have to pay overtime to their employees to be there. So, I think I'm not even absolutely positive I can slide it in this year, but they have said they will try really hard to do it.
Okay. But this fix, Eric, is part if you we do the larger repairs that are 60 to $70,000, this repair is part of that 60 to $70,000. Correct?
Well, we would be doing the crack ceiling anyway. Yep. That's the same. If we were We wouldn't be losing money on the lower lot by addressing it now because we know there's a bunch of stuff we do have to do to the lower lot. So, whether we do it this year or whether we do it next year, there is some stuff we're going to have to do to that lot because it is heaving badly. It's got a couple areas that are really bad. And we are, you know, some of the catch basins, it is sinking around the catch basin. So we're definitely gonna have to do something to it. And the curbing is kind of screwed up in a bunch of spots. So it's not like we don't know we need to address it in some form or other. It's just a question of how much money we spend versus how long out we think we are to reclaim it, in my mind.
So if I understand what Jeff is Jeff Murray is asking, he's going, if we spend this $24,000 across the three lots, and then how much more money do we need to spend on the lower lot?
Like in the spring, in the spring. Spring to have it
in better condition and viable for three to five years?
I mean, I think you would probably want to there's basically three areas where we would mill and fill in there. So one day or so of grinding, and basically three days with a paving box and the curbing. So we were looking at spending with Abbey construction, you know, in the 40,000 to $50,000 range for that. So that would probably be, if we're going to do that approach, and you said to me, we're not going to reclaim this for five to seven years, I need to get this through the next five to seven years, that's kind of what I would do. And then I would probably schedule it so I did the rest of the town parking lot, because there's a couple spots in that that are pretty bad too that really need to be cut out and addressed. So I would probably do them both at the same time if I were going to do it. That's how I would approach it.
And then I would go to Board of Finance in the next budget and ask, you know, dollars 75,000 a year for the next five years to cover the remaining costs of paving both parking lots. I mean, I think that would probably be the most sensible way to go about it, but that's just my opinion.
So you are saying, so if I understand this correctly, you're saying fix the upper parking lot, spend the $24,000, but then take money and utilize money to repair the lower parking lot for a longer period of time and then put it on a program that we repave all of the parking lots in
four years or five years. Like a cap, yeah, put in the budget for capital to go into that dedicated fund for AES so they so we can park, we can do the parking lots, you know, once we accumulate enough money to do that. I mean, that sound reasonable?
And sorry if I'm speaking out of turn, but I just want to just remind everyone that, you know, the money was approved. I think it was up to $120,000 whatever dollar amount, but that was approved for the upper lot to get reclaimed and paved.
But it'd still be used for that, but where we'd get additional funds to do the lower lot as well.
Okay. All right. Just Okay. So what you're saying is, Jeff, then the the 120 is earmarked for the upper lot, and then the additional money would be used or It would be used in the whole project. Okay. Okay. It would be spent
for the parking lot. It would still be spent on on that program, but not but more in a if we did it this way, but more in in a longer term basis to get the lower lot, which we would end up having to I mean, listen, it's all town asset, so it's all town.
It's going to have to No, I understand, Jeff. Just I just again, I'm, you know, I just like I said, we all agreed or, you know, everyone voted that the that money would be used for the upper lot.
It would just be a question of when, Celeste, I guess is really right.
I mean, we got it. Right, which I guess it's, you know, next spring, I guess, or, you know, when the contractor is now able to do it. So we could do this fixed, it's just going kick the can down the road. So unless we have a long term plan or a lantern fixed to improve these parking lots, Right. Think, you know, doing it in chunks every year and putting some money away is probably the best idea. Well,
the one thing though, Jeff, that I would sit there and get, you might have some economies of scale, but if we're not going to get a huge economy of scale, we may as well do the upper parking lot anyway.
Mean, I and it's a question of what the overall economy of scale is gonna be between the two. Well, my my point, Jeff, is if you can just take this money and we're just gonna spend it this year, and we're just gonna tear it up next year instead of getting some value out of it for four or five years, and we can keep the parking lot usable. That is the that is that is my mental
Yeah. I don't really wanna spend the money just pulling up next year. That makes no sense to me. $8,000
or something that's going to be. But you gain a year of utility out of it. Yep. You know? And you relieve the pressure out of us doing it as soon as you have to in the spring, and you put that project off to, you know, the summer when school is out and it's not in everybody's wick. Mean, to me, I think that would be the difference if I were thinking about it. And, you know, it's just like patch and puddles. I mean, we do that knowing that, you know, a cold patch isn't a permanent fix too, but you need to do it because people are screaming at you. This is just expensive.
That's where I was trying to go with, can you cold patch it? What what can you do to not spend the $8,000 in maintenance, in in this cost to sit there and and have it usable? That's what I was asking.
Right. And no. And I I get that. I mean, Jay and I talked about that pretty extensively as to what the approach is that made sense. If you only wanted to do the upper lock, you could just bring in the mastic contractor and just do mastic. And, you know, you could probably do the whole upper lot, you know, and not spend the 24,000, spend half of that, but then you would be mastic filling the wider cracks there that are more economically filled with crack seal, but are still a trip hazard. So that's, you know, I mean, I'm just trying to get you the best bang for the buck you can with the contractors. Would they come for just the upper parking lot?
They would bring in the mastic contractor just for the upper parking lot. They would not bring in a contract, a crack sealing contractor just for the upper parking lot. They expect to have a full day of work out of it because it's You've
just increased our potential costs to maintain or to open up the upper parking lot by $4,000 which is what I was trying to reduce from $5,000 to $4,000 was what my mental side was saying, you could possibly do it. If not, we should just sit there and say we're going to do the contract for twenty four thousand dollars and repair the, do the maintenance on the upper parking lot to make it usable, and then sit there and do the best possible work we can on the lower parking lot to make it usable for longer, and to Jeff Murray's point, if we did it this way, we're just going to extend the timeline on the lower parking lot for repairs and maintenance on the lower parking lot because we're going to have to fund it differently. I mean, what Jeff was really saying is logical in that if you had $100,000 to spend across the parking lots, you could make those parking lots viable for three to five years, and it would give us three to five years to finance and to fund the total reclamation of those two parking lots, which has to be on the schedule to get done. So it's a question of what do we want to do? You want to spend the $24,000
Everybody has to be on the same page that we want to make it. The upper parking lot has to be good for the winter for the students and everyone to be able to use that upper parking lot. The only way we've already found out that you can't do just the upper parking lot. You have to do all of them.
You have to spend the 24 We're dollars in a corner that
we're going to have to do the $24,000 bastik deal on all of the parking lots.
And I'm kind of under the impression that we just do it. And then when the spring comes around and, you know, whatever we have for boards at the time in the spring, we make a determination whether we're gonna continue repairing these lots for another four or five years, or do we just tear up the upper lot and, you know, replace it? Nobody wants to waste I
think right now we need to make a decision as a board to get that lot fixed and get it passable so people can use it. So,
so that means we're, we're going to vote on this $24,000 Indus quote or thereabouts, and we're all, just so we're all aware, it's an $8,000 maintenance issue to make the upper lot usable for the next ten months.
And in the spring, we had the discussion whether we do, do we want to reclaim it completely or do we want to, you know, keep it repaired to get another four or five years on And that's something we'll discuss with the Board of Education as to what's
the best use of those funds as they put aside for the maintenance programs or for capital improvement projects. So Thank you. Alright. So Motion. Contract with Indus and get that rolling is what you're saying. Yeah. Because if we wait any longer, we're gonna we're just tied to We need a motion, Eric, for that? Yes, we do need a motion for that. Let's make it, let's put it out in public so our other boards that are involved understand what are, what we're doing. Right.
Okay. A motion to spend the 24,000 to seal the parking lot at the school and the town office building.
And we're assuming that's coming out of the road improvement fund. Am I correct? No. And the county is funding. Right. And and it's town funded.
It's not coming out of any of the money that the school board is is funding for the upper lot. We're making that perfectly clear.
Well, let's let's go from this. So who's gonna second his motion? I will. I'll second your motion, Scott. Jeff, I don't necessarily know. I mean, yes, it's $28,000 or $24,000 coming out of road improvement. We could sit there and move the money that was sitting there in the school improvement fund if we choose to, and we can do that at a later date. I don't really, I mean, again, it goes back to the same thing. It's all town money. It's all town money. It's just an agreement between us and the Board of Education and Board of Finance, and we'll work it I mean, could ask the Board of Education for money if that is necessary. I don't really know that it's necessary because the Board of Education has already made it apparent that if they have over fundings, they're going to start putting it in this account. Yep. So it's going to go to pave the parking lot when we actually can actually pave both the parking lots.
Correct. So if they have an overage next year, they could put in that fund and it would go towards the parking lot. Isn't there already $8,000 in that
fund? There's a $128,000 in there or whatever the numbers.
Well, since the town hasn't cashed the check, there is currently only $8,000 in that pending.
I'm saying that $8,000 could be used towards the 24, though, couldn't it, Eric?
Yes. It could, but here's the issue with that. The Board of Ed cut us a check for a $122,000 for 130,000 job. So the town was going to spend basically every dime in that account. Plus, we were going to spend money out of the road improvement fund anyway, because we were on the hook for catch basins, as well as the inspection services, as well as services of the town engineer. And we would have had to eat any cost overruns. And anytime you reclaim, you stand a chance of running into cost over overruns. Totally,
totally understand. And yes, thank you for the details on that. But the issue is, and the reason why that check is uncashed is to allow the Board of Education the time to sit there and say what they want to do. If they want it put in that fund, it will go in that fund. And then this is where we have our meeting scheduled for Thursday. We just have to understand, everybody has to understand that the Board of Selectmen is not just arbitrarily deciding what to do with that money. We are trying to put in the time and energy to make the right decisions. And until the Board of Education understands that and listens to what we're talking about, like Celeste has tonight, and I hope she goes back and tells them, we've done this on every issue that we've discussed as a board. We all have differing opinions. We all want to do things right. I think we're all fiscally responsible, but maybe we're not totally trustworthy. I don't know, but
that's an issue, Celeste. That's not just on you.
No, I understand. No, understand. I we're all very hopeful that that meeting on Thursday will open some discussion and get better clarity, You know, as you stated earlier for that meeting and just to kind of go back, think the hope was for that 80 for that $8,700 that the money that was left over from that expansion fund was going to go towards the reclaiming of that upper parking lot because we encumbered 122000 for that project. But now with the understanding that it's going to be more, we did have that buffer of the $8,700 left over from that expansion fund to help fund that project. Okay.
I've got a question. So Celeste, you had a special meeting last week. Watched a Board of Ed meeting in September. So from what I understood is the board of ed was clear about what they wanted that check to be used for. So I guess I'm confused as to why we don't know tonight. I'm under the impression cash the check and put it in the account. I thought that they had decided that. So Celeste, is that what you talked about last week or what's?
So the we did have a special meeting, Paula, but we, did not take any action on the check, because according to the agenda, there was no actionable items. So there was no motions to be made. So there was a discussion and we are going to further that discussion tomorrow at our regular board of ed meeting. Okay, thank you. I wasn't sure, so I
wanted to make sure I No, we just we didn't have an actionable item, so we couldn't make a motion.
Right. And so frankly, reason why I didn't want to cash it, other than the fact that Jeff told me not to cash it, which is a good reason in and of itself, was because as soon as the contractor notified us that they were not getting us on the schedule for this year, I thought it should go back to the Board of Finance to decide whether they wanted deposit it. And I think it's also a valid discussion whether they want to put that money in the 2% non lapsing or the capital fund. Because one of the things that the auditor said was that you can spend the 2% non lapsing account for capital projects. He said as long as they are education related expenses, and he would classify a parking lot that was used primarily for educational parking as an educational expense.
Think that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow night, that check goes, whether it stays with the town, whether it comes back to us, I think that's going to be our discussion for tomorrow and decision.
Jeff McGuire, the budget for this school was how much last year? 4.2? 4,000,000. They have- 4,000,000? And what's 2%? About 80,000.
Right. So it's over 2% of that non lapsing of fund is over 2% already. It's 3%, right? Correct.
Correct. So yes, that was my point. They could not have put the whole thing Right. 2% non lapsing account. There's nothing that says they can't put some in the 2% non lapsing account and some in that. And the other thing is, let's be honest Again,
again, let's not discuss what the Board of Education should or shouldn't do. It's not our point. That's part of our meeting on Thursday. My whole issue was I did not want to cash the check and have the Board of Education then come back to us and sit there and say we were doing something nefarious because we couldn't get it done within That's the not what I wanted. I didn't want the issue. It's the Board of Education's money. The Board of Education decides what to do with it. If the Board of Education asks me my opinion, I'll give it, but that's not where we're at today or right now. Right. So. Right. Yep. Okay. Did we make a motion somebody made a motion, but I don't think we voted. Right? No, we didn't. We had discussions, and then we got off on this part. So Scott had made a motion to approve the repair and maintenance for the index crack ceiling, and I seconded it. So any more discussion on this item? No? Alright. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So let's move on to 11F, the traffic authority Long Hill stop sign.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate the collaboration and the participation and the agreement. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good night, Celeste. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Traffic authority, Long Hill Stop sign.
Okay. The Board of Selectmen acting as a cohort is the local traffic authority. So you are all the decision maker, final decision maker on anything related to traffic. The public works foreman and I have been discussing a few intersections in Andover which are problematic. One of them that we know has been problematic for quite a while is the intersection of Hendy Road and Longhill Road. And we kind of both feel that it would be smarter in the short term to try that out as a three way stop. It is currently a two way stop. There's a stop coming from Hendi, and then there is a stop for those that are going, I guess that would be westerly on Long Hill Road, but there's no stop from the easterly direction on Long Hill Road. The problem is it's on a curve, so we're putting a stop sign on a curve, but we would deal with that by putting a stop ahead sign and also probably painting stop ahead on the road itself.
Just partly because it's such a big wide intersection that, you know, there's we've had repeated issues there. I personally think the long term way to address that is to reconfigure the entire in, you know, the entire intersection and either square it up so it's a T intersection, or alternatively, to make that a little mini roundabout. But that's not something we're doing anytime soon, but we could easily try a stop sign and see if that cuts down on the complaints prior to biting off on an expensive intersection redo at some point in the future. So, that's what we're contemplating
doing. But that requires your approval, and so we're bringing it to you to discuss.
Go ahead. I was pretty surprised today when I drove to work and I saw this the road was already painted for the stop sign, the line across the road. Yeah. Well, we can paint over the the stop bar. We did have a slot for the contractor yesterday,
and so we took it. But if if you decide you don't want it, we will just repaint over the stop bar. Yeah. And I and through my email converse my conversation with via email, you know, dispel some of my concerns. It is a blind corner. Even if we wanted to try to enforce that stop sign, I think it would be kinda hard because, like I said, it just when you go around that corner, there's no way you're gonna ever see it. I mean, looked at it today, and it's just it's a really bad spot for a stop sign. I mean, I don't really know any place in town where we have a stop sign around a blind curve, like where this would be. I'm just not on board with it. I think if I even if I even if I stop there to go to work and try to turn on the left on to Hendi, there's still people gonna be blowing that on the stop sign going the other way, even if I stop or not. It's I I just I just see a lot of problems with it. And you changed the speed limit on that for something? What's that? Low everybody down?
Would it work? No. I mean, they're already going way over the speed limit now. What's what does dropping the speed limit do? Does it affect behavior? Probably not.
I I'm I'm just trying to, you know, look out of the box here. Yeah.
I am in favor of the roundabout in the in the future because I do think, you know, people having to go around that roundabout will slow the traffic down in that area, definitely. I mean, I am support I am supportive of that roundabout. I don't know if the stop sign is such a good idea being being on a blind corner as it is. I know we I know we have problems on Lake Road where we we added that stop sign. It was kinda the the visibility was pretty poor there. Heading up towards 316, there's a stop sign that you can barely see half the time. It's obscured.
I mean, this one is completely a 100% obscured until you go right around the corner, and you're maybe ten, fifteen feet from the side is when it becomes visible if it's gonna be erected. So it's not like we have a 100 feet where you can actually see it. I mean, you have to be right around that corner to see the stop sign. What are the rules for something like that, Eric?
It's a local road with a 25 mile an hour or 30 mile an hour speed limit. So, you know
Well, what I'm saying is I remember when we were talking about the double line that there were rules requiring what kind of line we could put on the road, so what I'm asking is what are the rules as far as stop signs?
As far as I can tell, you as a local traffic authority have the authority to put a stop sign there. Now, I would suggest if we're going to do it, we do everything we can to draw attention to the fact that there is a stop sign there by putting a prominent stop ahead sign just back of it, and also painting it on the road. Everybody, you know, because most of the people that use that commute that fairly regularly. And after the first couple of times, they're going to know it's there. Are they going to ignore it? Yes, a lot of them will ignore it. But, you know, the other thing I was looking at is what is the downside of somebody blowing that stop sign? And the downside would be somebody that had pulled up to Hendi, stopped, saw somebody approaching the stop sign from the other direction and going at the same time with the guy, blew the stop sign in the other direction and collided with him. So, I mean, that's the real downside
to changing that over to an additional stop. But the reality is you only need, you know, the collisions that are going to occur, as long as one of the two people stops, the collision won't occur. So in my way of thinking, by requiring all three of them to stop, you know, the likelihood is at least one of the two will stop, and you will lessen the likelihood of a collision. But that's just a guess.
But, Eric, my issue is if there is a collision and that is on a blind curve, somebody's gonna argue the point like, couldn't see the stop sign until I was right on top of it, and I couldn't stop anyway. And that's my concern. It's just the visibility of it is terrible. And so, like It's terrible if you're going too fast and you ignore the fact that you just went by a stop ahead sign. I rolled up at twenty five today, and it still it still pops up. You really I mean, if somebody's traveling twenty five, and by the time they see that stop sign, they're not they're not gonna be able to stop in time to get it unless you know it's there.
If we're talking about the roundabout, what would be the timing on that? How soon would that happen? Years, five years, ten years? Yeah. Years.
If we got the trip grant and we were reclaiming through that area, I would spend the money to get a traffic engineer to design a roundabout for that. But without it, it's too expensive to do, in my opinion, you know, because it's just one bad intersection among, you know, several.
Well, one last question, and Jeff kind of broached it, is how many accidents have we had there? I don't know.
Or the traffic authority, shouldn't we know the statistics? Yeah. Like when's the last time there was an accident at that intersection?
I don't know, but since the only ones I have, you know, when I look at my crash statistics, I only have data for essentially bad accidents. So there has not been a fatal accident at that intersection. I can tell you that.
The worst case, so we don't really know if there's been any accidents. Okay. So now as town administrator, statistics, number of complaints about that intersection? A bunch being three or four. I'm I'm a statistics guy a bunch.
And So what were the what were the actual complaints?
People blowing. People going too fast around that corner. And, you know, I mean, I can tell you from a cyclist, it's a shitty intersection to cycle by. That's for sure. I certainly wouldn't wanna walk around that intersection either.
Not on the inside, for sure. When I used to run, I used to go on the outside of that curve. Either way. Yeah. It's too and that's just common sense to stay visible. That's all. And if there was a stop sign there or not, I was still running bike on the outside of that curve just to stay visible.
I think it's just gonna you put the stop sign there and it's not visible. I think it's gonna create more of a problem than it doesn't sound like it's a I mean, it's obviously a bad intersection right now, but I wonder with Jeff's point that you put it there, then now you're gonna make a situation that's kind of not great, bad. And then in a couple years, we're gonna change the intersection again. So is that gonna confuse people going from a stop sign to I don't know. I'm just thinking, I don't know that the it it warrants a stop sign right now.
Okay. Then we'll pay it over the stop part. Not a problem. I, I grew, I grew up right there, Eric.
Mhmm. And lived there forever. And I've never had a problem at that intersection ever for any, any bit of time that I've ever been on that road there ever.
So what, what provoked, what provoked this whole conversation about the stop sign? Is it that you just were trying to come up with a solution for the people that were concerned about the intersection?
Well, so, you know, we both talked about that intersection a number of times about what could be done there. Because in my head, it's one of three places where long term we ought to be considering changing to a roundabout. And those three are the intersection of Gilead and Cone and Juravadi, and the intersection of Lake And Lakeside, and then the intersection of Endy and Long Hill. They're just because they're all essentially bad intersections that a very significant fraction of the public doesn't obey the stop signs anyway. And so, is a significant chance of a T bone collision, which is the most dangerous of the automobile collisions. So long term, I kind of think those three intersections, if you say over the next fifteen years or twenty years or thirty years, we ought to be thinking about changing out to roundabouts. But then the question kind of came up to what do we do now?
And the reason it came up now is because now we're blind striping that road because we know we're not going to do anything to that section of it anytime soon. So this was the chance, if you've got the line striping contractor out there, if you're going to make the change, now would be the time to make the change. So that's why we're discussing it. The problem is the line striping contractor got a little ahead of the discussion because they came in sooner than we thought they were because they don't necessarily go on the same holiday schedule that we go on.
Alright. So I'm I'm guessing that the way that this is looking is that there's not an appetite to put a stop sign there. Am I accurate?
Okay. Pretty accurate. Pretty accurate. No problem. We'll paint over the stop bar.
Okay. There won't be a stop there. Do we have to pay the contractor that came out to put the line there? Are they gonna charge us for that?
The stop bar? Yeah. But that's one stop bar a month. You know, we probably painted 40 stop bars this year, so it's not that's not a concern. We're having to pay the contractor anyway because it's the same contractor that's doing all our striping and stop bars and share rows and everything else. So no issues.
Alright. Let's let's move on to 11 g, the DTC website request. Right.
So we got a request from the DTC to add additional links to the town website to the DTC website. And I told the DTC that's not me decision, that should be a political decision. The two things I don't want to weigh in on as far as the website are anything related to religion and anything related to politics.
So that is your realm. Listen. It's really not a hard one to deal with. Is is the Republican Town Committee website linked?
Not to a local one. I think they just have, I think right now they're just links to the national parties on the registrar's website. I mean, real question is should we be linking to them in general? The Board of Selectmen has in the past said yes, you know, links on the registrar's site to the national organizations.
Yeah. Know. I mean, if there's listen, everything here is about fairness and equal. I mean, if it's if it's done for one party, it should be done for the other party. It's not really that hard, not really that controversial. But if it's not there, then there's no reason to link unless there's approval from the Republican Town Committee to get theirs linked.
But I don't, does the Republican town committee have a local, I don't know who's got a that's not
the issue, that's not the issue. The issue is if the Republican Committee would like to get with the Democratic Town Committee and work together to do something positive for both their organizations, no problem. We should support that. If not, then
we don't need to link anything. To answer that, Jeff, I think that the links go to the Connecticut Democratic Party's website, and it goes to the Connecticut Republicans website. In there, they can click on the local party, and then the contact information is on there. So, like, if you wanna contact the chair of the Democrats, that information is there. So if that person wants to get ahold of the chairs of either party, they can find them by the links that are there right now. Uh-huh. And then if you go to the Democratic Party website and if they wanna contact the Democratic, Connecticut Democratic party and link a website to Andover, they can do that.
Okay. So can I just Yep? Let me share my screen and I'll show you what's actually there so it makes sense, if you're okay with that. Sure. Let's go. So this is the current register our voters page. If you click on under that page, if you click on political parties, it brings up Democratic Town Committee, Republican Town Committee, and the Republican Town Committee just has a link to the national site. Currently, the Democratic Town Committee has a link to the Connecticut Democratic site. And I think that this link goes to their Facebook page. So what they have asked to have is an additional link under that, which so make this show this link is their Facebook page, and the second link is their, you know, their regular website. That that's what they're asking to do.
I'll sit there, and I'll talk to to Catherine and and have her just link it to the Facebook page. I mean, it's already there. I mean I mean, that that's why I'm saying it's
just a decision I don't want to make. Understood. I'll I'll speak to her. I mean, but it's not really well, it should honestly, it should all be just equal. But we'll sit there, and I'll address it with Catherine if anyone doesn't have a problem with me doing that.
Yeah. And and, Jeff, I don't does the Republican Party have their own the Andover Republican Party have their own Facebook page? Yes. They do. Does it make sense? Can you know, if the board wants, do you want us to add the link to that year two to even it up? Because I mean Yeah. I did. I mean You just tell me what you wanna do as a group. I mean, I don't think anybody ever contacted
you know, I never heard anything about it, about putting anything on the web on the on the Andover web page, so that can be done easily. We don't really and then put an email contact on there as well, just like the Democrats do too. That's that's not a big that's not a problem.
I mean, if that's what, you know, if that's what the board wants me to do, I'm happy to do that. I mean, I honestly don't care personally. I wouldn't put any link to the political parties from the town's website, but that's just me, my opinion is, may not be shared by you. I think would be helpful
if the green party if there's a local green party in town, they wanna have a link to it. That's fine. I mean, I think it's beneficial to have a link to the state site and then the local one. And I think one each would be fair. So if you wanna have a link to your Facebook page or your web page, that's fine in Andover. And a contact information in Andover who you wanna get ahold of is fine. It it's not costing us as a town. Fair.
I mean, it's Whatever. Just be fair. People can get involved and join their town committees and stuff, they wanna get involved, and I think it's a good thing to put on the website. All the better. Yeah. 100 agree. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, it doesn't really matter. Just get involved.
Okay. So I can tell my admin assistant to do it. What your suggestion is to if you get me the link to the Republican Facebook page, we'll match that so it matches what's on there for the Democratic town committee. Mhmm. You want an email link to somebody in the Republican
committee. Is that Carol Barton, or who who is that? That would be Carol Barton. Just Okay. Just listen. Just get the address and the links. Do them separately outside the meeting. No problem. Right?
Okay. We could talk offline tomorrow, Eric. I'll see you in the morning anyway.
No. You won't. Because Okay. Did that get canceled? He canceled it. I will try to put out that notice as soon as I get done with this meeting.
Okay. So I will get you I will contact you tomorrow, and I will get you that information.
Okay. So the the board is on board with saying the Democratic Town Committee can put either their Facebook page or the link to their website, and then the Republican Committee can do the same, put the link to their Facebook page and put their email address. Is that correct? That represents what the board wants to do? Yes. Here's
what we'll do. I'll make a motion that political parties can put a link to their state organization and one local link and a corresponding email address for the local town committee. Someone second that. I'll second that. That way it's all fair and equal and we don't have to sit there and have if the DTC wants one or the other, they pick one or the other. The If Republican Town Committee wants one or the other, they pick one or the other. All All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. That's clear direction. Appreciate that. 11 h, the Norton discussion. What's up, Eric?
Okay. So let me stop share, first of all. So Diane Greiner has would like to set up a scholarship under her name that would be kept by the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, but administered by the Norton Foundation. And I told her that that was appropriately a Board of Selectmen decision, not an ERIC decision to do that. That's all I know. Diane is on the line. She might be able to give you more information about exactly what she's trying to do. But I think that should be a discussion by you guys. Diane, we'd love to approve you
donating part of your fortune to the betterment of Andover youth and higher education. So please just let us know what you want to do and how we can assist.
Well, can I speak here, Sissy? Sure, go ahead. Basically, what I wanted to do was set up a fund with the Hartford Foundation. They would own the fund, have the money, invest it, blah, blah, blah. Interest only would be available for a scholarship for an Andover student, basically looking to pursue the trades rather than a carpenter, electrician, a variety of things like that. But I would like the Norton Commission to be able to be the ones that would advertise it, put out an application, deal with the schools, select the recipient, get the money from the Hartford Foundation, and have the check written. So that's what I would like the Norton Commission to do. And I don't know what kind of issues that would be with the town.
In my head, all we'd have to do is legally try to get an understanding of what we need to do. I'm assuming you're going to have to put together some kind of agreement with the Hartford Foundation. And you're going to have to because it would be something that you would have to provide us the legal framework for it. And then we'll sit there and work with our end to make sure that the Norton Foundation has the clear direction related to what it's doing. And I don't think there's any problem on my end with doing it. It's just there's more work from your end to do. Yes. Yes. I realize that.
We'll approve it at a future meeting. Okay. Because the Northern Commission the Northern Commission already handles Scholarship.
Scholarships. So it would be another one. They do one for the historical society. Yeah. So it would be the same thing that they do, only the money would not be kept at the town. It would be kept at the Hartford Foundation.
Okay. That's very generous. I don't see any problem with us approving that at a future meeting.
Oh, perfect. I will pursue it then and see what happens. Unless
has some other reason why we would not want another plumber or electrician or someone that's in a trade to get some funding. Anybody?
Yep. So just a quick question, Diane, this would be for somebody that does secondary education outside of high school? Yes, it'd be beyond high school. So it'd be like Port Chester or something like that to go for HVAC or something? There's
like diesel mechanics and schools for that. Even schools for truck drivers, a variety of those kinds of issues rather than a college kid who is studying Greek mythology. Okay. I was just curious. That's all. Yeah. And again, I thought this would be better to set it up now before I die rather than setting it up through a will because, there may not be any money. It may all go to some memory society or, you know, healthcare issues. Let's hope not. Yeah. It wouldn't take effect until after I'm dead anyway. So it's like, that's the plan.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Duncan. That is very generous of you. Sounds great. Thank you, Diane. Let's move on to item 12. I believe we're through all of the special items or the added items. So we're gonna move on to item 12, approval of the minute meetings for September 11 regular meeting. I
make a motion to accept the meeting minutes for 09/11/2023. I'll second that.
Alright. All those in favor, aye. We'll move on to item 13, tax collectors reports report, refund requests. There are some in our meeting packet. Yeah. I mean Or you did have all of these due these amounts due, the delinquent tax. I mean, somebody needs to find a better report that's more consolidating.
So I thought that was a little extensive. The one that was sent to you separately was 300 something pages long. But, yeah, this is still and I don't think we need to be reporting on people that owe $50. But it is good to keep in mind that there are a series of people with quite a bit of money outstanding. And there was a note in from the tax collector, you know, on there that's basically saying that, you know, there are a series of individuals that look like they keep basically getting around paying their motor vehicle taxes by just continuing to rotate through who they register the car under. And we have some that have piled up a fair bit of fees. And the question is, we just have to make sure we can catch them prior to them. The problem with people doing that is when they do that, our real hook to get them to pay is the fact that the DMV won't release. So, the question is, can we put a release that covers all the potential names that they're likely to re register so we can get them for back taxes, or what other options do we have? You know, in the past, my feeling has been we don't necessarily go around them because delinquent tax people are the best investments the town has because every bit of that, instead of making 5.3% in the STIF account, we're making 18% on the money they owe the town, but that's only if we manage to collect at some point.
We're gonna pursue that So, a little farther, I think, at this point.
Okay. Where were okay. So we were on tax refunds. Yeah. So they are they are on page 57 of our document. Correct. So I'll I'll sit there. My my least favorite thing to do, but I'll make a motion that we approve tax refunds totaling $681.16 related to refund of excess payments. I'll second.
Alright. All those in favor, aye. Department reports, does anybody have any questions related to any of the department reports that were provided? Okay. Item 15, correspondence correspondence, 15 a BMX.
Right. I thought I would put in there for your review. We did get a request randomly from the public. I don't think it's somebody that's an Andover resident, but he noticed looking at the state list that he got a steep grant and thought it was appropriate that we spend the money building a BMX. BMX park. So I thought I would pass that on to you. I have instead relayed that to the DEP recreation trails coordinator, Kim Bradley, and told her that I think DEP should be the one that builds the BMX track. I don't think DEP is going to build it either. But I'm leaving to that because I got that request. There's the information from Catherine Bugaldi Lewis about the website. She was quite worked up about it. And then item C was the welcome sign. But the, so the, I put in what the EDC has originally proposed for a location of the sign. That location's a little problematic because it is on DEEP property. And they have subsequently decided, and Elaine could give you chapter and verse on it since she is on the call. Yep. To pick a different location. It's the location next to Over Andover with, which is where the old chicken scoop concession stand used to be. The good news is it would basically be on town property. It's adjacent to the state right away, so it makes it cleaner from our end anyway, because we wouldn't have to deal with DEP. And Elaine can brief you on that spot. Sorry,
mapping occurred before that decision was made. Yeah, I know, I realize that, Eric. Like, oops, yeah, that's what we initially proposed. When Art from Art Custom Signs, who I've been working with, came out to take a look at the site that we thought would be a good spot for the one sign, he pointed out that in his experience, and he's been doing town signs, signs for towns and businesses for over forty years, was that it would just be lost there. He goes, That would just be a total waste. It would be lost because you had the Andover Congregational Church right across the street.
You had the library right up the corner. You had the Center Street parking lot there and all the signage there. And he goes, it's just, and he goes, how could that be a welcome to Andover? You're right smack dab in the middle of it. And so we took a better look, and he said the better place to be, and this was his suggestion, and I did agree with him, would be across from the museum, the Andover Museum, and on up a little hill, and facing the traffic of people coming from Columbia through Andover, and it'd be Welcome to Andover, and then the very things you see when you see Welcome to Andover then is the museum and the
Veterans Monument Park, and then there's 316 and the sign that says Town Hall Elementary School that way, and then you're going to approach the next intersection and see Andover, you know, you're going to see the church, you're going to see the library, you're going to see the rail trail. And maybe someday the village knew that was proposed to go ahead and be built. But so that made a lot more sense to have it there, and then have ones very similar to it over on the other side for the traffic coming from Bulleyn, a second sign, over say by Shawnee Mill where the dog pound is. Once again, it's the only sign you're going to see right there. And then as then you approach the whole Andover Center, you know, what we consider kind of the center area. So that's become the new spot. And as Eric said, it's way less problematic because it's actually town owned property. We own that parking lot right there. So it'd be really easy to give permissions to go ahead and put the sign there.
Okay. Alright. Is there anything else that we need to do related to the discussion on the sign other than figure out how to pay for it?
The Board of Finance already allocated money for that in the last budget, so the sign is
paid for. Yeah. For yeah. For the one sign, we have we have money for it. And so now Art is going to write up an official proposal. Now he knows exactly where it's going to go and what it is we're looking for. So that proposal should be coming out soon, I'll send it off to Eric and John, our new town planner,
because John's gonna be very much involved in this. Right. Does he have any problems with the location as proposed?
Barring any discussion from the board to the contrary, I would just, it's under the threshold and it's already a budgeted item. So, that's where the EDC wants to put it. I would just sign the contract and let it go. So barring the Board of Selectmen telling me otherwise, I would just basically sign it when we get it, unless you want to review it or you tell me something to the contrary.
Well, I would ask once Art sits there and does the design that you put it where you are expecting to put it. I mean, because everything that's in this proposal is is a an incorrect location. Just No. We'll have to write it up differently.
We'll have to yes. We'll do that. You want to see a different schematic of it before then you want it to come back to you for approval before EDC does it. Is that what I'm getting? Well,
you're not putting this in until the spring anyway. So come back to us and show it to us, then by the spring, it'll be approved and ready. Okay.
I just I just have one quick question. Is this gonna be lit up at all or illuminated? No? No solar?
We we we talked about that, but we'll have to look at the location because the the location that Eric wrote up and was proposed is all treed and there wasn't any sun to be had really. So now this new spot, we'll have to take a look at it to see if it will be conducive to having a little solar panel to go ahead and have it lit up. Yeah. It'd be kinda neat to have it lit at night. Yeah. Would look nice. Yeah. It'd look nice.
And I think we have actually electricity at that parking lot, don't we? Yeah. Think there's power there. Yeah. There's power. So it might actually be an easier spot if we wanted to just set up an electric sign. Another meter for Eric to monitor. Yes.
I would not wanna pay for electrical power just for a single sign. That would be an expensive,
you know. You already have power there. You're only paying for what you draw.
Well, no. Power. There's You're paying for the service as well. Right. But I don't think we're paying for the meter at that location at this point. But if we're tapping it and using it, then we would have to restart that meter.
Let's think about that one. Alright, so that's the end of 15c for right now, so let's move on to item 16, public speak. Elaine, you're it. Okay.
We've already talked to I basically stayed on just for the bitter end because that's where the welcome side was. There you go. Yes. No, I do appreciate no, I appreciate you looking into it. So, we will rewrite up the proposal of where it's going to go now. Like I said, it was something that Eric and I had talked about before. We had the town planner, we did a sidewalk and stuff, and then, you know, it wasn't until the next week that changed, that it was changed and made more sense. We'll go ahead and write it up for you. But yeah, so far, I guess, I just want to say that for Sustainable Connecticut, because, you know, that was an EDC initiative, and it kind of stalled because we didn't have any Board of Selectmen who would be willing to attend the meetings that are required or the classes, whatever. But I think we have a volunteer now who's going to go ahead and take care of that on Sustainable Connecticut. So that's another thing that we'll be pushing for in the next couple of months to get, you know, involvement in it so that we can continue on with our process of of trying to become a sustainable town. But that was it.
Alright. Thank you very much. Since the only other person on the phone call is Attorney O'Brien, we're going to move to item 17. Motion to adjourn. Second.
Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Alright. Thank you very much. See you guys. Good night, everyone.