Meeting transcript
CIP Regular Meeting
May 21, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Order. And so present are me, Eric, Kurt, Shannon, Louise. Yes.
No one from the public at large, so we're missing Ed and Adrian. Hi, Louise.
Adrian said he will probably not be here because he is waiting for an inspection in Bloomfield. All right. So he's kind of screwed.
All right. So public comment. Apparently not. Additions or changes?
I would like to suggest a couple things. I would add item 6a administrators update, 6b material handlerspreader, and 6c steiner blower.
Do we need to make a motion for that or is that just
something we can decide to do? Well, if you're gonna put it on the agenda, you should probably make it in motion. Okay.
No. It doesn't have to be by motion. You just you it's right in there additions or deletions from the agenda. And because it's regular meeting, you can add or delete stuff from the agenda without motion, I think. Normally, that's done with the motion, but
I'm not gonna worry about it. If you're not Wanna make a motion to add all that to the agenda, Eric?
I would, but remember, I'm not officially a member of CIP. I'm just I'll the motion. Okay. I I second it.
So shall it be. Okay, well these are your things Eric so tell us what's Okay going
I'm gonna share my screen give me a sec let me hopefully find the right item because of course I got about 50 things open.
Do we have anyone who doesn't want to approve the meetings, the
minutes of the prior meeting? I was gonna say we have to deal with that next and I have to abstain because I wasn't in the meeting. Okay. So why don't we deal with a motion to approve just going along the agenda a motion to approve the minutes of the prior meeting and take a vote on that Fred.
Okay, so would anyone make that motion to approve it? I think I'll motion to approve it. All right, second? Second.
To approve the minutes of the prior meeting? Okay. Yes. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone against? And I abstain. And Shannon abstains. Okay. Hey, Ed Sarisley here. Hey, Ed. Good to see you. Good
thing David Cerusley's here. He just hooked me up with Zoom for the first time ever.
Welcome to Zoom. Welcome to the brave new world. Yeah. Thanks Kurt. Thanks Eric.
I seek your names. I don't see Lorraine's name. Let's see. I see Shannon, Fred, Luis. I see Luis. Hi. Hi. Sorry I'm late. Okay. Ready to go.
Excellent. So all we did so far was approve the minutes of the last meeting. Yeah. I looked at them. They look good. Alright.
Okay you up to me? Are you up to item six?
Yeah we're there yeah we just had to do that approve the minutes now and now it's your show. No business.
6A administrators report I just want to catch everybody on CIP up with kind of what's going on and then we're going to talk a little bit about some potential acquisitions. As all of you know the budget this year got truncated quite substantially because nobody had the aptitude to push a budget through with big tax increases without going to a public vote, which was the appropriate response and I'm not complaining I'm just telling you that that's what's happening. For those of you that are curious about the roadwork plan for the town the roadwork plan is on the town's website so you should be able to find it. If you can't let me know and I'll give you the direct link to it. Next thing up bridges. I have reapplied this year and started getting through the approval process for the Bunker Hill Bridge. That bridge, we have gotten accepted into the federal local bridge program, which as most of you know, the federal government pays 80% of the costs and the state pays 20% of the costs. So what we did is I changed kind of the category of the application because one of Andover's problems are is we don't have a town engineer and we struggle with the resources to put out really good RFPs to and go through the process of selecting a design firm. So the state has a program that I was able to qualify us for where the state keeps the responsibility through the design stage.
So, but they also pay for the design. So the first time the town has to put any money, has to have any skin in the game is when we are dealing with the easements along the side in any potential acquisition with the landowners if we're widening the bridge for instance. So the state assigned us close Jensen and Miller, mostly because I asked them to assign that particular firm and our chief consulting engineer on that is going to be Chris Zavidio, which you may know Mr. Cerisli because he was one of your students and speaks highly of you. Oh, thanks Eric, thank you. Yep,
so that's what's going on. So we're working on the program. The second reason I wanted that particular sub set of the federal program is it tends to go a lot quicker. Their typical time to construction is you know their typical time to completion of construction going that way is about twenty four months. So the as long as we don't get ourselves in hot water because of the fact that there's it is an area that has a series of threatened species which often delays these projects. If that doesn't delay the project we should have the we should be looking at spring twenty twenty two for construction of the project. So design complete out to bid, you know bulldozers going spring of twenty twenty two. And if we could pull that off that would be great from my perspective.
Okay, that sounds good Eric. Hey listen, I just want to pipe in for a second. You guys hear me? Yep. If there's species in the environmental that lasts a year or two, I would recommend we, as part of your streets program this summer, for the 100 feet over that bridge, Just seal the cracks and put a short overlay. Get the water off of that bridge and it'll not only last another three years through design, it'll last another twenty years in my engineering opinion. I'm glad we're going to redo it. It eventually needed to be redone. My particular opinion, as you heard at the testimony, was that it would last a long time if we just sealed the damn water off the top of it. But I'm glad we're doing it. But again, if there's any concern and delay, I would make sure there's no water getting down in there.
Right. So we did last fall, late last fall, when we hired Indus to do the crack sealing, we crack sealed the road and crack sealed past that bridge. We didn't do most of Bunker Hill, but we did it up through the bridge for that very reason. And when you and I walked the
northern approach on the left side, I know a week later, Tim or Ed or someone came by with a hand shovel and just scooped a little tiny trench to get the water off the road before it entered onto the bridge. It wasn't totally inadequate. I recommended we take the bucket there and really scoop it out to really get a drainage channel off of the road before it hit the bridge. Has that since been done, Eric?
You know, I've sent Eddie out to do it, but I will honestly tell you I never checked up on it. So I've just put that in my note to go look at. And we're scraping roads right now, so it's the perfect time if they haven't gotten it done. I'm glad you said that because you know what, I am so happy to see that. It was like bouncing your head against the wall with blood. You bled so long, you stopped bouncing your head against the wall. With Bob Burbank,
for ten years, I've been telling him we got to seal the roads and trim the sides with the bucket. Now, I just noticed this week, Eric, thank God that you're on top of it. I see roads being trimmed, all the sand being removed, especially 200 feet from our drainage culverts. So the water is finally gonna get off the road and into the culverts. Thank you, Eric. You're welcome. I'm working on it. Okay. So sorry for the side note guys, but this is all infrastructure and capital improvement. It's been lacking in our town for ten years and this is why we're paying for it now. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with you there.
Okay, so back to Bunker Hill. Yeah, we need, okay. So we're gonna go ahead with the design. C Jam's a good firm. I work for them and it's money well spent in the long run. Okay. Well and actually the advantage
of it is the state tried to sweeten the pot because originally nobody would go that option because nobody wanted to trust the state to maintain responsibility. So they sweetened the pot by agreeing to pay for the design phase. That saves us 20% of about $350,000
Right, because at the public meeting we're looking at spending $450,000 was our contribution.
Yeah, it knocks it down a little bit That's good. You know, and of course they always give the feds the worst case scenario. So they put aside enough money no matter what happens they can make it go through. Right, that's So we should be in good shape with that.
Eric may I chime in for just a second? Certainly. The eightytwenty that's just for design that's not construction right? No that's construction. Construct the whole thing the whole So money the town doesn't pay anything? No so the state 20%. It's a $2,000,000 bridge.
So for the design phase only the state the federal government will pick up 80% of the whole project. Okay during the design phase the state has agreed to pick up 20% through the design phase so up until we're done with design the town doesn't have to cough up any money for the rest of the project which is the actual construction the town's on the hook for 20% of whatever the final tab is, which is variable depending on what we want and what our demands are. Like the big cost adder would be if we decided we had to put in a temporary bridge before we did it for instance that would be a big cost adder, you know and then so basically what they're required to do is they're required to come back with if it's possible to rehabilitate a plan to rehabilitate and I mean Chris basically said looking at the design characteristics in the original state they probably wouldn't even allow a rehabilitation which is exactly what the the DEEP told us. If it was a bridge that met their characteristics
already they would allow us to rehabilitate but it's not so we're not going to be given that option. So they will do multiple options, know, so the town will have a little bit of choice in terms of what's, you know, what's done. So that's that that's Bridge. So I'm pushing this as hard as I can you know although it's taken me like six months to get to this part but you know approvals take a while. So that's bridges. So capital buildings, we were lucky all of you know about finishing the roof that went well. We also successfully did the asbestos abatement project in the Public Works Building that also went well. We tore down the accessory shed roofs without an issue. Because of that we had to do a bunch of masonry work because now we had openings in the side of the building. I am probably off also going to authorize a rear door in the building because I think it's kind of stupid that every time they want to walk out the back door they have to use the giant automatic door just to go outside because you know there's no rear pedestrian you know exit to the building. So it is my intention to do that and I bid that out got a couple quotes it looks like we'll probably end up using MG Masonry for that you know it's a $3,500 project it's not a big deal and there's money left over from what was allocated for the roofing. So that's the goal is to try to punch that out before the end of this fiscal year. The library, the library people have been squawking for some time that the railing in the front of the building
is failing and that they've had to re weld it and they don't like the ramp and the stairs are uneven. Alright, I get it. It's not perfect and more important there's a big lip at the end of it. So the first thing that's obvious is that we're going to all the trouble to make a handicapped accessible entrance to the library. And then the final step is getting to the ramp, you know, and there's an inch and a half bump with your wheelchair to get to the ramp. So as part of the connectivity grant, the original estimates for that came in fortunately lower than what we'd anticipated so we're stretching that project for a couple of things. One, a little bit
in aesthetics but at the same time we're planning on replacing the ramp up to the library and the landing and the railing. So we'll be able to squeeze that project to get one of the library's capital projects done at the same time. So we're hoping that that project goes sometime mid to end of the summer. We are using the Capital Regional Council of Governments a program called EZIQC and what that is is it's a essentially a pre bid contract that Crogg has with a company called the Gordian Group who oversees it and in each region they pick one you know competitive bid with one general contractor and then they have a set arrangement by task basically cost per unit for everything imaginable. And then so there's really no negotiating it's just whatever the unit costs are all they're going to get paid for it. And the state apparently is quite happy with it. There we will be about the eleventh connectivity grant project that the state has allowed to run through EZIQC and they've been happy with the result and the contractor we picked this will be their fifth you know connectivity grant project. So I think we'll be okay with that. So Eric, yep. That's
so you're talking no no town funds or no nothing we have to do about that you're just letting us know that that's going to happen.
Yeah, this is zero town funds. What we're using is we're going to end up using the grant fund the grant because we're running a little under budget and it's kind of a related project so we're going to sneak in one of our building priorities at the library at the same time. Sounds good.
We're also going to add a bike repair station and a couple benches and a picnic table up by Center Street because we should be able to slide that into the project too. So a little extra for the town and it doesn't cost us anything. So those are always good. So town hall projects. It's kind of three things going. One you know about which is the upgrade to the information technology that was approved by referendum last year. The new firewall is in and installed. The only thing that still has to go through the firewall which does not now is the registrar of voters is still outside the firewall but we're going to try to do that in about two weeks the next time our IT guy is back up. And our new server is up and running. We have for the first time in the history of Andover actually completely backed up in a raid, I don't know five or seven or whatever category backup system. So we have essentially the primary data, a complete backup, and a secondary complete backup that is essentially that only runs one way without manually reconfiguring it. So in other words it's designed so that the the third backup essentially is not corruptible whether they're right or not I don't know but that's what they tell me.
So that's that's the kind of number two on my list. Number one, I've gotten an amazing amount of flack from people for the fact that the flagpole in front of the town hall is not lit at night. So I think I got enough money in the beautification budget that we're gonna we're having a couple electricians look at it and I'm planning on you know putting in a permanent light system for the flagpole so we
Eric, let go get ours. Yep. Well, they're bidding ours too. That's that's our second light there since the building was built. Yep.
Yeah. No, I The other one used to burn out. They used to burn out quite often. This one here is it's it's doing very well for the long haul. Yeah. And installed it.
Yep. No, he's a good guy. I like working with him. And the last thing I've been thinking about if we can we can stretch it out of this year's budget because you know we always have some excess money in most years the previous boards of selectmen just let it all go back to unexpended funds but I'm trying to knock off some of those little priorities that you're not necessarily going to be able to budget for especially next year and one of them is re shingling the gazebo because the shingles on there about 30 years old it's not really leaking yet but they're in pretty rough shape. I feel like I haven't done enough homework yet I have really only have one quote it's from the original builder which is probably reasonable but but I got to do a little more homework before I you know put that one out there but I'm contemplating that. So that's kind of it for building stuff. You know I don't know what any of your feelings are if you have other things that you know or do the gazebo don't do the gazebo. I know Adrian and I have been talking about what we would have to do. We do have a quote that's reasonable but we don't have enough detail in it to say what they're, whether it's the proper shingle,
blah, blah, blah. Eric, if we don't replace it now we'll eventually be placing all the sheathing and the plywood on it as you know. Well,
it's not plywood, it's lath. But in one of the things Adrian said, which I hadn't really contemplated, is that once you fully nail a wooden roof, when you pull the lath, when you pull the shingles, you probably ought to replace the lath too if you want it to last a long time. So I got to review that again. I think I can pull it off. I think I know where I can get the money to do it. It's just a question of figuring out whether we have a solid enough plan and we can put it together fast enough to do it in this budget year. Yeah but it's time. Most asphalt shingles go twenty five years tops. Twenty five years is is asking a lot for asphalt shingles. That's wood, isn't it? Yeah. They're they're actually wood shake. Oh, I'm sorry. They're wood shake. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Eric Eric
Yes. That gazebo was a donation. Yeah. Basically, it's it's let go for as far as routine maintenance goes. So I think, you know, looking at it, I'm sure it needs more than just a roof, but maybe, you know, an entire facelift for the entire gazebo would be you know, it's used all the time. Yeah,
mean it needs the roof the most. Correct. You know, and there's no sense doing anything else until you've done the roof.
If gonna have an electrician run a conduit to a flagpole, the musicians at one of our concerts last summer said there was only one circuit there and their amplifiers quickly overloaded it. We might consider running a conduit two foot down to the flagpole and another conduit to the gazebo if we're going to continue to hold concerts there.
Yeah, you know, I've looked at that. The problem is Ed, I got to dig up the goddamn parking lot to do it. And it's not a minor, if it was just a question of pulling new wires through an existing conduit. Don't have that. We've done it already. No, what's it, what is there?
Just unburied cable? Well, it looks like a really small conduit.
Well, maybe we could run one heavier gauge wire in there and split it. I'm just saying, we need to just take a look at it because, you know, we have nice conscience there and they talked about what is the service there? What is it 20 amps or only 15 amps?
I wouldn't even want to guess. I know they blow circuits regularly.
Right, right. And there's beautiful concerts there and that shouldn't be a limitation. So I'm just saying, having electrician for the flight pole, look at that. Maybe it's simple. You have to dig up the driveway, then I guess forget about it. But maybe they can pull out the existing wire and put 10 gauge instead of 12 gauge wire and increase the amperage.
You know, this is Andover. Just run an extension cord out of town hall.
Yeah, but you got to run over it when you get cars run over it though. Yeah, well buy cheap ones and then you just replace them. All right. If it's an easy fix, I'm saying pull a new wire through the conduit. That's all. If we have conduit. Sure. Sure.
So And I think the first thing you do is devise a Start with the roof because that's the most pressing. Yes. Then then devise a plan to up up upgrade or update the entire thing that's been let go too long or we're gonna lose it agreed yeah
I don't disagree the other thing I wanted to mention is we were able to get Lenco donated a enormous amount of time this spring to the town redoing the electrical system in the garage. And also the firehouse.
And also the firehouse. He donated about 130 to the project at the garage. We redid the entire lighting system for the building so you can actually see inside the building now and we worked off basically all the OSHA violations in the building. So at this point I don't have safety concerns with the building which makes my little heart go pitter patter because that building used to you know it was bad. So so that's one good thing we've been very successful with that and I really thank them for all the work they've done. I want to talk a little bit about two more things one our capital equipment purchases, as you as Kirk can tell you the fire department tanker is on the way and we should have it about when, Kurt? Hopefully by the end of the month, July 1. I mean, June 1. So that will be a nice thing to finally have a tanker in the town of Andover.
Wish we had the parade. Wish we had the parade so Kurt can drive it down the main street.
I'm sure he probably will anyway. We'll have a tanker parade. A tanker parade. There is a parade. It's a it's a car parade for Memorial Day, Ed. Oh, wait. Oh, really? Okay. Okay.
Look on the town website. Did we we are doing a basically, you know, a little bit different upgrade, but a parade nonetheless. Alright. Still want Kurt to drive the tanker.
No. Kurt Kurt's gonna drive the tanker the night we pick it up. I'm gonna drive it to the firehouse and that'll probably be the first and last time I drive the truck. Okay. I'm bringing it So
we got lucky this year and that it was a relatively mild winter, you know so I pulled every dime we didn't spend out of the snow plow budget and am planning on piling it back into public works equipment. So as we know, we had anticipated this year buying a small tractor for roadside mowing to speed up the roadside mowing operation but given the shrinking budget that's no longer a possibility. So you know we just we just don't have the cash to do it. So I moved up one purchase which I figured I could do on my own and that was the material handling arm for the loader which is good timing because we need it for the public works project and it was kind of stupid that we kept driving the loader to Coventry putting their arm on the front of our loader and then driving back every time we had to lift stuff up with it.
So we finally bought our own it was it's about $7 but it's a worthwhile and it's you know it's certainly going to last the life of the vehicle. We also, CIP was in agreement last year with purchasing a material spreader for the back of one of the trucks. So what this is is a basic way to to run material out the material chute on the truck onto a conveyor platform that can drop it say six feet past the side of the vehicle and the reason is it really speeds up the amount of time it takes to deposit loam and stuff on the side of the road after a paving project. That was one of the things I noticed from watching them is that it just took forever to try to do that with the loader without a side tip bucket and we went back and forth whether it was more convenient to use a side tip bucket for the loader or use the material spreader because they're both roughly the same cost basis.
Eric, excuse me for a minute. I still have a technological concern with this purchase. Sure.
My experience with this equipment is that your little small hatch in the back of the tailgate of a dump truck works very well with cohesiveness material like dry process, dry stone, dry sand. Any cohesion in the soil or you just mentioned loom, if it's damp at all, it ain't gonna come out of that little trap door and it ain't gonna load the conveyor belt.
Yeah and I think the other thing we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to get out of our El Chipo method that Eddie likes to do which is go get the ship material from the pit themselves and use a lot of that on the side of the road, you know which has big boulders and everything else. So it is going to affect our material choices but the problem that you know kind of was raised is that a side tip bucket really doesn't push the material very far past the side of the loader and the real problem is is that if you come up parallel to the road, unless you're running up over the curb, which you don't want to be with the loader, especially not with fresh asphalt,
you know, you're much more likely to damage the curb trying to do with a side tip bucket than with a material handler.
Yeah, just as long as Ed realizes it does have its limitations. Any kind of moisture in there is going to cake up and it ain't going to come out of the truck and you're going to have a guy there with a shovel trying to get it to come out. You can force it out, but it does have limitations just so they know that.
Yeah, yeah understood. So since the last time we discussed this and CIP was generally in favor for it, we went back and we looked at multiple manufacturers so we've got three we got three bids on different machines different units and we spec'd one just out of curiosity all stainless versus a regular steel unit. The difference between the lowest bid and the one we chose is about a $100 on a $12,000 piece of equipment but it just it it seems to be the one that does the best job for what they need. If you want to go over the bids we can I can pull them up now and we can look at that stuff right now if you want to do it? No need.
We've discussed this already. I think we can make the call.
Yeah, I mean, you've already, I think even motioned generally to do it, but I'm bringing it back now that we actually have an exact unit that we're looking at purchasing and we have the money in this year's budget to do it as opposed to next year's. Eric, that's the $11,995.45 Correct, correct.
I'll make a motion to purchase the material spreader for $11,995.45 as recommended by the town administrator. I'll second the motion. Anybody against?
All in favor? We now have to have discussion or you move them move the motion. Okay. So discussion?
Side side dump bucket would have been better, but I'll vote favor for this. I told Joe to buy the bug the side dump, three years ago, but anyways, I'll vote in favor for this. It's only $11,000. We gotta try 12. It
Yeah. 12,000. We gotta try it out. How much how much was the side bucket? More. Yeah. Side buckets are not cheap. Nope. Can't be. No.
I think I think for the amount for the amount of work that we're doing, I think this will be fine. It's gonna be good with dry gravel. Correct.
Yeah. Not dry, get gravel, good soil. It'll be fine. Dry soil. It's gotta flow. Okay. Yeah. Call a vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone against? Abstentions? All right, the motion has The
last one I haven't kind of completely convinced myself of, but I'll talk you through my logic. When we intended to get the small scale roadside mower, we did it knowing that we were going to buy a blower unit for it. Because one of the issues we've long realized with the trail is that by not blowing off the rail trail you know a couple of times a year we're getting a lot of organic build up on the trail surface and we're starting to build up a lot of muck in a number of areas. So there's two things you need to do. You need to keep mowing the sides lower, you really should scrape it, And the last thing is you need to blow the damn thing off and you can't let the leaves rot on the middle of the trail.
So we don't have a vehicle we can really put a big blower except for our Steiner mower. So this is kind of a crazy little mower that has a big triple mow deck in front. We used to use it when we mowed the field ourselves, but it's fairly slow for mowing. So it's actually, know, compared to the guys with the, you know, the ones they stand on the back and go like hell, this thing is pretty slow mowing. It's got a fairly wide path but because it's got a front mounted PTO that runs that the mower unit, you can also slide in a fairly large front mounted blower. Now, when they bought it originally, because they cheaped out, they bought it with a really small front mounted PTO blower. They didn't buy the big blower, they bought the little blower, which I've seen in action and the little blower is kind of useless. The big blower would probably be effective for the trail. It's got the power and the velocity to do a good job of blowing the leaves. Ideally, we would have put it on the new tractor,
not on the Steiner. But the reality is we're probably not looking at that tractor for at least a couple of years now because probably we're going to have to switch priorities to a road, you know, to a what do you call it? To a new sweeper or a sweeper in conjunction with Hebron, you know, I figured this at least gets the blower portion done, you know, which is one of our needs for the trail. It's good for blowing other things off too. It's just, you know, its primary use would be to blow the trail off a few times a year. Before I actually pull the trigger, still want to reach out to some of our neighbors and see whether this is something we can borrow from time to time from somebody else. But the other thing I want to keep in mind is that you know these little tasks like blowing off the trail are the kind of thing you slide in between other projects and you know having to wait and borrow it from somebody else makes it a lot less convenient when you're trying to do it as a filler project. The blower is about $5,500 and I'm gonna pull up I'll pull up the documentation on the unit in just a second.
Question, question on item 3e. It says single quote because it's custom to Steiner. We would want forward compatibility if we get this Steiner custom bower that it could also be adapted to mount and the new tractor we get in three years?
That is the problem. It is a specific piece of equipment for a specific tractor. Because Steiner does their own thing and their PTO does not seem to line up with anybody else's. So if we buy this particular one we're stuck with the Steiner which is one of my concerns with it.
How old is our Steiner? How old is our existing Steiner?
I think it's about ten years old but the thing is if
I could there Right it's ten years old but it's like brand new because there's zero hours on that machine. I remember when they bought it They used they they used it for a short time and and the thing is sat down there just collecting dust at the Public Works Oh,
well they do use it every year but it's got super
low miles on it. Oh, good. That's like it's like brand new.
Okay. Yeah. That's good. All right. Let me figure out how to bring up the screen. We'll have Have taken good care of that thing so it's still in good shape? Yes. Never went never went anywhere for it. Okay.
They just it's because we've mostly sent out most of our mowing to outsiders just more than anything else because of lack of time. And personnel and personnel. All
right let's see if I can is that coming up? I said yeah. There we go.
You see that? Okay. So this is kind of a crappy picture, but basically it's a big ass blower that hangs off the front of the machine and then you got to hang a big ass weight off the back so it doesn't dip over forward. You know, I was looking at the specs of the blower and it is roughly what I would expected to purchase for the trail. What I like actually is the fact that this is a front mounted one where most of the ones we looked at were all rear mounted units and it's kind of nice to be able to actually see what you're blowing. So there's some definite advantages to this but again the huge disadvantage is it's not really compatible with anything else out there as far as I can tell. So this is kind of a white elephant as long as the Steiner lasts we can use this thing you know once that dies we would be in trouble. So it's that's what's questionable in my mind that it's not as multi purpose as I would like. One more point.
This is what we're using the Steiner for like if it's getting used a few hours a year now we're just adding a few more hours it seems like it should last quite a long time.
Well, and that's the thing. And the other thing I could think see that would be an advantage of this is that because it's you're not using that for mowing the trail that means in a crunch you can have one guy mowing the trail and one guy blowing the trail because they're two different pieces of equipment. So maybe in some cases it's probably pretty rare that we're gonna put two guys on the trail both doing different things but it does offer that you know. So it blows stuff off to the side so they'd go one direction blow it off to the right another blow it up to the left is that kind of what you think? Yeah it can blow either straightforward or to one side or the other side. Okay. So you would basically make a pass blowing it off on one direction and then turn around and blow the other side off. So you'd have to do one side at a time.
Eric does Steiner does Steiner make a bush hog for the front of that thing? So a type of bush hog?
I don't think so. I looked I was curious about that. They got a bunch of stuff but it's mostly a mower unit. You know I did notice they had this and we looked at it because the Steiner actually we already have a front blower unit but again the town cheaped out when they first bought it And they bought one with a really little blower. I mean, it's a cute little thing, but it doesn't do a lot.
One thing about that, Eric, a comment about that. If you put enough horsepower behind that blower, it'll blow off any gravel, it'll blow off, especially stone dust. If we ever put some stone dust down on that trail, it'll take it right off. So it's a balancing act. I don't know what the right horsepower amount is. I know by maintaining my own gravel driveway for twenty years, if you put enough, if you put the blower low enough and it's power, it'll take the gravel right off. So what's the proper amount? You know, if you just spend a little more time with the blower it has, maybe you won't be blowing, maybe you can get the leaves off without blowing off the stone dust.
Yeah, no. I mean, I've seen the little one in action. It won't blow at six feet?
My backpack blower has got a lot more oomph than the little one on the front of that. All right.
We just don't wanna get ourselves in trouble, you know, if we're ever gonna maintain the trail nice like the other towns. What are the other towns though? Are they blowing the trail or the blowers? Yeah. We're about the only town not blowing anymore. Is there And is anybody putting stone dust down anymore?
Know stone dust is expensive enough. Right. That and one of the things that's kind of annoying is the DEP has money for expanding the trail but they don't really have money for maintaining it except under really unusual conditions so so it is one of my concerns is that, you know, we're not keeping up with the maintenance of the trail. We're not digging pitches out. Never have. I'm trying to get back to the point where we have enough time to allocate to that
and to specifically program for that. Well, I'm just saying if you put down a good process with a vibratory compactor, an eight horsepower blower won't take the process off if you keep it, you know, eight inches off the ground. You put a 12 horsepower down two inches off the ground, it'll take process off of there. So that's something to consider for the future. Yeah, understood.
So I'm looking for feedback for this. Can tell you I'm not a 100% sold on this approach because there are some downsides to it but I think if we're going to get a blower system in the next couple years this is really our only option other than you know tie in a pull along blower behind Eddie's pickup truck you know, with a guy in the back holding onto it, which I think is probably not a great thing for public works.
Just make sure you can adjust the height on it. So when it goes on that Steiner machine, it doesn't always have to be two inches off the ground. If they can raise it at all, like 12 inches off the ground, that really will reduce the damage to the trail.
Yeah, in the nozzle, can angle it down, you can angle it to the side so you can adjust that angle. Okay.
Right. So they can't have it downward. The ability. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Let's buy it.
As somebody who's who's totally novice at all this stuff, just listening to all you guys talking about this, how often do we need to use the blower? I mean, that we're using the blower and we've had it for a long time and we use it or haven't used it and maybe use it once a year, what are we looking at as far as use of the blower? As a ballpark, takes probably no,
it is a good question. As a ballpark, it takes, you know, roughly twelve hours a year, as close as I can tell, for one complete pass, and we're looking at two passes a year. So that piece of equipment is going to get about 24 a year. The problem is you can't just rent the unit. So by the time you rent an entire tractor with its associated blower, you know you're now talking about 4 or $500 a day you know and you know it's it's not super cost effective well maybe not $400 a day because you'd be running it for multiple days but you know from a cost perspective it's tough to justify the cost of a rental blower is what I would say because you can't just get the blower if we could take our existing tractor and just rent a blower unit for the back of it, that would be relatively cheap. But you don't seem to be able to find those. You have to rent it as like the piece of equipment that's the blower.
Might be uses for it besides the rail trail. In the fall, Eric, remember all those culverts we walked, the approaches to the rail trail and Shawty Mill and Burnap? Well, they're all clogged with leaves and sand combination, right? If the public works can start maintaining those approaches to the culverts in the fall, if they come by with that blower just for 20 feet, they can get the most of the leaves out of that and get the water off the road again with the blower, provided they're not blowing onto someone's front lawn. If they're blowing onto a farm or city property, there are, would say a majority of culverts could be blown out in the fall that'll keep them clean. So it might have use in certain places where you're not putting it on neighbor's property to blow out the culverts.
Eric, what's the cost again for this unit?
It's about $5,500. So it's not cheap, but it's not crazy either.
Well, allows us to get, to actually take advantage of an investment that we made a while ago that we're not using Correct. Very much.
That's point. Also starts us maintaining the our piece of the rail trail that we have never done while everybody else around us does maintain them. Yeah. That's you're right.
Yeah. Other than keep that Steiner sitting around doing nothing and we're not maintaining the trail, that's I was gonna ask, it fit on the front of the UTV? Oh no, we don't have a PTO. I'll bring that up again, Curtis. But
there may be more uses for it, Eric. There may be some places we can clean out some culverts, We'll just get the leaves out before it builds up sand For and
sure, Eddie. One thing, Eric How many uses? Eric, you mentioned that it has to have some kind of a ballast
load on the back. Does that come with it or would would the town guys make their own? Yeah we actually it turns out we have the ballast because the mower unit that hangs off the front requires the ballast too. Oh okay. So we do have that already so we're okay with that. It looks like we've got a big enough ballast to be able to run with this thing. Okay. I think it takes yeah it takes it up it takes a 200 pound ballast.
If I recall Eric, that's an articulator correct? Doesn't it? Doesn't that machine articulate in the middle? No I'm talking about the spanner itself.
I don't think this one does. I know the newer Steiner's too. Thought it did.
I'd have to look it looks like a fairly conventional tractor but you could be right. I'd like to make a motion to buy the blower. I'll second. Kurt second. Discussion? I think we had plenty.
Eric I thought you wanted to look a little bit more into this or is that so is that premature or what do you what do you want to do? So
the problem is is that if we're gonna pull the trigger this year we got to do it by July 1 so what I would say is give me the authority to buy it if I can't borrow one I mean because my first choice is always to see whether I can use somebody else's but you know and if I can do that cleanly and conveniently you know I would rather not spend the money but if I can't
I would like to buy it and just get it done with it. Problem as you know Eric from October to November everyone else's blowers are in use They're in they're cleaning out their culverts with them. Yeah. You won't be able you won't be able to borrow one for the first snowfall.
Well, there that that is a possibility, I will admit.
Alright. So I'll amend my motion not to buy this particular blower, but but to buy a blow a blower of of Then you typical specification. Yeah.
Well, I should amend it further and say, know, up to the seems frozen. You know, his his request requested money. So
We're having some problems. Having trouble yeah. Trouble with the connection a little bit. Trouble with the connection.
Just a bunch of people trying to talk at the same time. So go ahead. There you go.
My my my point was let's let's set the amount, you know, and let Eric use his discretion on spending it. I like that.
So does that require a change of the motion or can we just stay with what we've got? We gotta change the motion? So Ed, will you modify that motion?
Certainly. What do you want Eric? Up to $6,000 to the blower? Yeah. That works. So amended. Second.
We had our discussion. Does anyone have all in favor? Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? So shall it be. Thank you, Eric. Anything else? That's
all I got, unless you guys all have questions for me. I have a couple, if I could. Certainly.
Back to you already mentioned about the tanker coming in at the end of the month. After the last time I spoke with Rick Langley, he had finished the town garage work that you had him do, and he did some work for us at the fire station, and he recommended that we change all of our lighting in the firehouse to the LED. Sure. My quest my question is, is there any any grants or funding either through Eversource or someone else that you can either take, like you and and Wally Barton, our chairman, go after to get that done at the fire station?
Absolutely, Kurt. Honestly, the school has done that through the Eversource program. Town hall has done the Eversource program. Rick did the the public works so we don't need to do that so I did not realize the the fire station had not been done but if that has not they don't need that's
that is it's not been done. And to the best of my knowledge, I don't think the library's been done. Okay.
I mean, I I think it's something that we should look at as a as a as a capital improvements committee to upgrade all of the town buildings with that if especially if the school's already done it and town public works has done it and have you done it at town hall?
Honestly, I did not realize those two facilities hadn't done that. And and for the most part, we should be able to do that through Eversource and do it right with on bill financing and the way that works is basically the cost of the project essentially has to be less than the difference in your electrical cost before and after So it kind of pays for itself. So yeah that's definitely worth looking into.
Right so could you approach Wally with that? Wally And didn't get to talk to him. You know, I did when I was at the firehouse when he left. So Sure. But then, you know, I gotta get Wally involved. He's the chairman. So the other thing I had too is is we just we we discussed it last year, the year before, about the old town hall. I didn't see anything really for upgrades to the old Town Hall. And, and I'm not saying, you know, right now, this is up next year. I think next year's gonna be really tough with what's going on now, but we talked about doing the siding and windows and doors at the, at the old Town Hall. And, and I know Jeff Maguire was, he was an outspoken critic of, of actually doing that. You know, he wanted to get that place upgraded
and fixed up. So, any anything in the planning for that?
I honestly really don't have anything. And the only thing on the short term planning for the for that building is installing Fire alarm. The camera system. Know we need to do the fire alarm too but that's not budgeted either.
That was my next question too was the fire alarms for there and have you straightened out the fire alarm for the public works?
We have gotten the fire alarm for the public works straightened out finally. That took a while. The sensors are functional so it actually works. It actually reports to Tollin. It took forever to get Frontier to actually get enough of a quality enough line to the building so that it would actually work. The problem was really there were two problems with it. The first problem was the previous administrator in a fit of frugality got rid of one of the phone lines to the building that was to the alarm and the alarm doesn't work properly without two phone lines. It needs a primary and an alternate or else it just keeps alarming all the time saying I'm not working I have no backup.
Or it goes to the for the, like for break ins or something like that for the PD.
Yeah, so That's been good also. It is back. We put in, reinstalled the second line and we finally got it functional. The big problem with both lines to the building had so much had such poor line quality that about half the time it would try to self test itself, it couldn't self test itself because it could not send an information packet over the phone lines which is pretty pathetic when you think about it.
I'm not positive but I heard that Frontiers filed bankruptcy anyway so they wanna leave shortly. Yeah. Happens there. Well, good riddance to them. Yeah. I know. For sure. And and the last the last thing I had was and I was hoping that Adrian would be on board, but if if we pass the budget next Wednesday, I think it's the twenty seventh, and set the mill rate, what are the procedures that Wally Wally Barton has to do to get the money for the, you know, the UTV and trailer that was approved. The up, the up to $20,000 Should we, should, does the chief move ahead and just get his, get his, get his three bids or what's the process that we have to go through? Are
you aware of that? I mean, I would honestly, Kurt, it is already the there is enough money in It's already funded that's what that's Equipment Adrian
fund. Right. So whether you do it this fiscal year or next fiscal year that money is there and has been allocated for, you know, in part that purpose and you have approval from CIP. Okay. I mean, you can ask that question with the board of finance but I don't think there are any other hurdles to you acquiring and spending that money. Right, okay. Just wanna make sure.
You know, I would feel comfortable right now if you presented me with the proposal on what you wanted.
Think because CIP has already bought off on it that I could approve. Right. But when when Ronnie gets back from Maine, I'll have him do that with you.
Okay. And and Questions, Kurt. Sorry. May item six in the minutes. The fire department will look into a Polaris grant being offered. Did that did that fall through?
Yes. Yes. Polaris, Polaris is based that grant thing fell through and they're supposedly going out of business. Okay. Okay. We got that from Adrian to tell the truth. Alright. So we'll buy it. He has his eyes on it. Right now, the the next low bidder was the John Deere from Marvin's John Deere in Colchester. Okay. Marvin? Yep. Okay. We'll buy it. We'll buy it.
Eric, it's a little off the subject, but when do we all get to see the audit report? Good question. Yeah, no kidding.
So the auditor wouldn't give us a report that didn't have draft stamped on it until we paid him surprise surprise so we cut him yeah okay awesome we didn't really we weren't too excited to pay him until we had a final audit so yeah so the bottom line is the audit and the single audit report are done I have read them. We've shopped it around to a couple of people. We should have it we could I guess I would have it by the board of finance meeting.
Just give me a yay or nay or are we in good shape?
Yeah we're okay we're we have basically what we thought we had which is about a half million to plow back from the unencumbered fund balance into which is what we've accounted at the Board of Finance.
And for you and Shannon, I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Stephanie Bancroft has been elected chairman, chairwoman of the RAM Board of Education.
Our rep from Rosemarie A7 in Andover. Oh, that's terrific. I saw that the other one had had resigned. Yeah. Made all kinds of issues going on up Yeah. When did Stephanie when was Stephanie named chair? It must have been their most recent meeting then because it wasn't in the River East. The last meeting.
That's great. Yeah. It is. Sure is for us, I think.
Well, we had Danny on there, Danny Holt's club before, and and I guess and maybe maybe we can finally get a change in the Ram board makeup to put more than two people from Andover on the Ram board. And and Dave Gustanian is resigning from the Ram board. Oh, so we're gonna need it. Well, he he didn't wanna do that until he had a replacement. Does he have his replacement? No. He's nope. Well, there there are several people that have expressed interest. He he said there's four or five people interested. He has submitted his resignation.
I do have a call in to the attorney because it's a little questionable right now, actually, with all the governors the way he's flinging out executive orders. So the normal mechanism is to have a town wide meeting and to select his successor at a town wide meeting right because it's a board that is can't self elect because they're from other towns. That's how Stephanie was most recently elected.
Right doing it the same way it was done with Stephanie Bancroft the first time she was elected. The problem is that with the prohibition against meetings, the question becomes, is the governor essentially forcing that to be a board of selectmen decision Or are we looking at figuring out or would the board appoint somebody temporarily? Or is there some mechanism for doing an online meeting with a minimum at least 25 people so we have quorum and doing an online vote? That's what I don't know. I'm hoping to know fairly shortly so I can present that info to the Board of Selectmen. Okay. Kurt, you're Yeah. Whatever
works out, just I'm really happy that Stephanie's now the new chairman from Andover. And Andover's had a, you know, we've had chairman of the RAM board for quite some time off and on, so throughout the years.
Yeah. Yeah, I had a long talk today with Dave about kind of the goings on the RAM board. He said, Well, I don't think it was as bad as, I mean, you know, the chairman got all wound up because the rest of the commissioners basically said, Look, you really have overstepped your boundaries. We think you should resign. She basically said, fuck you if you want to remove me, remove me. So they said, okay, you know, you're removed. And then she claimed that, you know, it was because they were all being unethical and,
you know, said she filed a whistleblower complaint. There's something going on though because of the superintendent resigned just before her.
What the heck is that all about, you know? Yeah. And from what I understand she doesn't actually have a position so if you resign without having a position you know Dave basically said he thought they were going to be critical enough of her that she elected to resign rather than have a bad performance review. Right. Okay, I have one question. Go ahead, Louise. Regarding
that big large grant that Mike Burke is getting a committee together, can any of that money be used for something like the gazebo roof or anything like that?
Are you talking specifically about the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving grant?
Yeah can any of that be kind of applied to that?
So it's really unclear to me, to be perfectly honest. That's one of those grants where the town can't really necessarily have any direct involvement in how the money is allocated, how it's spent. I mean, lots of people have told me how they want to spend that money and what they want to spend it on, but it's not my, I mean, I never see that money. I can't be part of the commission nor can any current member of a border connection in the town of Andover. It's really unclear to me who's going to spend that money and what they're going to spend it on.
Is there any way to request it, you know, through the committee, if they can look into that so we're not spending town money? I know we can't do it as members, but can we do it as a committee, as a member?
I think you can do it as an individual member because they're asking for input as to how the 50,000 should be spent, Louise. Right, so why aren't we looking into that avenue a little bit for some of these expenditures?
Well, because I don't think that's really what that was designed for. It grant wasn't really designed to just augment the municipal cookie jar it was more you know for things for the community
right the gazebo I think maybe you could argue the gazebo Yeah. Yeah. Think That's what I was thinking. The roof. Yeah. I mean, 5,500 is 5,500. Yeah. Sure.
So, Eric, I just wanted to express things. I don't know if we're in public speak or whatnot for the, what do you call it? Not construction, but the they put up the sign. What do you call that? I'm missing my vocabulary. Installation of the sign at the Veterans Memorial Field. Yeah. And for Amanda for painting the back of it and whoever did the front of it did a great job and it's wonderful to see that up there for the first time in more than a decade that I've been going down there for Williams soccer games to have that finally up. That's great to finally have it acknowledged as not just Long Hill Field or the recreation field but as its proper name, the Veterans Memorial Field. And along those lines, just having been on the field committee for that whole darn project and and having discussed the mower, what is the status? Do I understand that the I'm not remembering his name right now. The guy from Hebron who's in charge of their fields has taken over full responsibility for our soccer field? Correct. We are subbing a 100%.
It may not be till July 1 technically, but we are subbing out 100% of the maintenance of that field to Richard Clarco and Hebron Parks and Recs. Great. Including the sprinkler blowout every year, which would be wonderful because our existing contractor can't seem to do that without injuring themselves, which is a whole another story. And we are hoping like hell because we still haven't turned it on for the year because we got to replace the filter assembly again, that the lines in the ground aren't damaged because there is some possibility of that. We do have an insurance claim in. So if the in ground lines are damaged, we'll get it paid for one way or the other, either by the contractor or the insurance company, but I don't want to dig up the field if I can. I'm hoping like hell it is perfectly fine, but considering that they over pressurized the son of a bitch enough you know to blow a PFC or PVC fitting that's supposed to be rated for about 80 psi, you know they put a hell of a jolt through it.
Eric, isn't Hebron already mowing down there? I thought I saw other equipment down here this past week. Good question.
I think they are mowing already. They're certainly dethatching and spreading soil and doing everything else down there. Right. Well, was recently
mowed. So if you don't know who did it, hopefully it was Hebron.
I thought I saw the Hebron equipment down there. That's what the reason I had. That would make sense. It could be. I'm actually not sure whether that arrangement started
July 1 or whether it started the mowing season. I have to look. I should know, I kind of signed it, but I don't remember off the top of my head. For some reason in my head that was fiscal year but probably not because that wouldn't make a lot of sense really.
I have one more thing Eric drawing it back to what we are. I'm just looking at the last minutes and the air conditioner and heat pump are they now just pushed into the future because of budget problems?
Possibly. So I still have to we got Towneigh Road and they announced what the funding was for LOCIC. But my understanding is they haven't actually bond funded LOSIP yet. So there's some question about whether LOSIP really exists or whether it doesn't. If LOSIP does actually exist this year, that would get us about 70% of the cost of doing all the HVAC upgrades for the town hall and the Public Works Building. We might be able to stretch the existing fund for building maintenance to cover the rest, but the answer is I don't know yet. And until I get through summer paving season know honestly I'm kind of too strapped to worry about that right now.
Yeah okay I just wonder what was going on with that. Happened to read it when I was looking over the minutes and you didn't bring it up now. So I just wondered what was going on. Okay. Right. No, no biggie. So we are now at what public? I'm not sure where we are now, but are we at public comment?
What did you have anything more Shanna? No I just used my public comment that was basically to talk about the thank you for the sign and
to ask about the field so thanks. And by the way I'm not trying to take credit for the sign I wasn't the one that painted it. I didn't put it up. Who did it, Eric? So it was painted by an artist that's a friend of Amanda's. We originally had the artist that was gonna do that did the mural at the library was going to do it but she had some kind of complication like she got pregnant or whatever you know one of those things and decided she didn't want to do it so we found somebody else to do it. The recreation commission footed the bill for the sign which was kind of nice because at the time I didn't really have a budget to pay for it and public works and Jerry Wright put it up on yesterday morning so it was good and then Amanda went down and painted the backside of the sign So looks great. Nice. I make a motion
that Eric hire Amanda full time, for what for everything that she does. That that girl deserves full time hours. If I thought I could pull it off, I would have, but I just Go go for it. I'll I'll back you up. I'm serious. She's worth her weight in gold. Yeah. She is. Very definitely.
Just just it's all I got. I make a motion to adjourn. How's that? Motion to adjourn by Curtis.
Second. Second. Seems like there are a couple of people jumping on that one. Okay, we have adjourned at 08:19. This is one of our shorter meetings. Good meeting, Fred. I do my best. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you, guys.