Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
February 15, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Order the Amanda, I did it again. I apologize. No worries. So we're going to call to order the Tom Andover Board of Selectmen regular scheduled meeting for Tuesday, 02/15/2022. And we're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Thank you very much. Public speak, we'll start with Elaine, you're first. If you'd like to wait, you can. I'll wait because I was just here for the community garden discussion.
Abby, I'm sure you're here for that as well. You want to wait? Yes I am. Okay Jim Hallisey he's out. Sharon Chewchenko. Hi.
I'm just here for the Poet Laureate. Okay you got it. Kathy I
actually would like to ask permission of the Board of Selectmen that we are allowed to reopen the senior center March 16. We would like to have our young at heart meetings again, and we would like to have our movies once a month our lunches and our exercise programs. All right. Thank you. Kimberly Ivy.
Hi, I would like to say that I support lifting the mask mandate in town buildings, and I would also definitely support reopening the senior center for I think it's really important. Okay. Kathy Derozier? No public speak. Thank you. Okay. Kelly, I do not know your last name. Kelly Hagerty.
Well, Kelly Hagerty, you can go first. Go ahead. I just also wanted to say
hopeful that the mask mandate is lifted and also support the senior center being opened. Okay. Bob Wallace.
Hey, Jeff. How are you? Good. Are you? I support lifting the mask mandate for town buildings and also the senior center reopening for those that enjoy that. I think it's very important and I think they should have it.
Just point of clarification. I don't keep saying senior center. Think Kathy was referring to the community room, is used as a meeting space. Then I support that. Thank you, everyone. Amber, Amber Armitage? No public speak. Okay. Joanne Ebert? All set. Thank you. Okay. Diane Greiner? I'm all set. Thank you. Rob Miller?
Mr. First Lechman, I'm your health director from the East Maryland Health District, and I was asked to attend by your town administrator, Eric Anderson.
No problem. We'll have you hold first. I'll hold off for now. Yeah. Louise Goodwin? I'm good. Thank you. All right. And then back to Kelly. I don't know your last name, Kelly. You're over there in that corner. No? Okay. We're going to move on. We're going to start with additions and deletions to the agenda. I have an addition that Oh, you missed some public speak. Aaron Borys. Oh, page two. There's a page two? Is a page two. I apologize.
Yeah. Aaron Borys, go ahead. Thanks. I appreciate it. I just wanted to say that I'm in support of the board moving to lift the mask mandate in town buildings and allow for choice and also to open the community room for the folks that enjoy it. Thanks. Okay. Diane Shoukat. Okay, I'm all set. Thanks, Luis Mendoza.
Yeah, I echo what I just heard Aaron talk about in regards to the choice for masking and support the opening up for our town. Jessica courier.
I also support lifting the mass mandate in public buildings and in support of opening the community center as well. Okay, Victoria Kavanaugh.
I'm also here to support the option for masking and opening of the community room. All right. Michael W. Okay. I'm here for the same reason.
Okay. Thank you very much. And Kelly with her hand up.
Sorry, I was on mute before. I am here to support the mask mandate. I want to make it optional for the parents and open for everybody else.
Okay, thank you very much. So I think I went through everyone. If I've missed anyone, speak up now and I will get you. So this is the first time, I think, in our Zoom meetings that we've had two pages, so I apologize for missing some people. Eric Anderson, I want to shout out to you and wave to you. I'm glad you're doing better. And thank you for joining us. Okay. Additions and deletions to the agenda. I said I had one. I have to add the and I have to find it and I will send it to you and it is just a, It's something that we're going to talk about. It's related to the radios in town. Jay, tell me, let me see. I have it, I scanned it, I was supposed to send it out to all of you.
Well, you work on that and we'll move on the agenda? Because you got a lot of people here. I understand, do you have anything that you'd like to add?
Jeff, can I make a suggestion? Sure. Since the director of Eastern Highlands Health District is with us, that we move that agenda item to directly after additions and deletions. Sure. And I would also move discussion. I know several members of the board wanted to discuss the public works and the roadworks plan, and since Jay Tuttle is also on this call right now, I would move that you add him directly after that.
Sure, no problem. I would like to add the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection agreement to the agenda just so everyone's aware of it. It will not take very long. I'd like to oh, go ahead. Just someone second that.
I'll second it. I'll second it. Thank you. Done. Next, Jeff, what would you like to add? Can I add nine gs? Do we need to add that for the senior activities? Need to discuss Yeah. So we'll do that as nine gs.
Sure. And we'll do mine as 9H. Let me type that down. And I'll second that one, Jeff, for you. Nine gs, senior center or community room.
Senior Center activity resuming senior Center activities. Community room sorry. Man. Senior activities.
I'm starting to wonder why I'm working so hard to work on this Community Center.
I don't know, everybody always wants to say community center too. Adrian, we apologize.
I have one more question. Know we have Rob Miller here. Does that have to be added as an agenda and voted on us to have him present since it is not on the agenda? Or does that have to be seconded? I'm
going to add him. I will make the motion that we hear from Rob Miller as number three or four
AA. I have a question. Why do we need another presentation? Hasn't the state already kinda done this already?
Well, I would like to actually hear from our actual health district just so everybody is aware, and then we can vote the way that we want to. I don't believe Rob wants to take a tremendous amount of our time, but I'd like him to give a state of where we're currently at. Does anybody have a problem with it? Anybody want a second or motion to get him on the agenda? I'll second that. Okay. Okay. Anything else? Anybody else? That's it? Okay. Will we vote to add all the items to the agenda 4AA Eastern Health District nine gs Senior Activities and 9H, Connecticut Department of Emergency Services Radio Agreement? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. Okay. So you're opposed to all of the above?
Nope. You lumped them all together. Can we do them individually, please? Sure.
We can do them all individually. With the selection of senior activities. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
All those opposed? All those that abstain? Okay. 9H, the Connecticut Department of Emergency Service Radio Agreement. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? All those that abstain? 9AA Eastern Health High District, Rob Miller speaking on behalf of the health district. All those in favor? Aye. I'll be okay. I'm
done eating. All those opposed? Aye. All those that abstain? Okay. So we are at two to three. Rob, thank you very much for, coming. We greatly appreciate the the the effort to to make this meeting, and, thank you, and sorry about that. Okay. We will take 4AA off at the request of the selectman. Okay, so we're moving on to 4A community garden shed installation. We have a presentation by Jerry and also by Abby Weiner Winter, excuse me. Let's get that started. You guys have the floor.
Thank you very much. If it's all right with the board, I'd like to share my screen if possible. And I believe Amanda should give me permission has given me permission. Go ahead, Abby. All right, thank you so much. Hang on just a second. Alright. Is everyone seeing my PowerPoint? Yep. I'm seeing some nods. Okay. Great. Well, thank you everyone for for giving me the time and Jerry the time to talk about community Garden Shed tonight. So last we talked about the community garden here on the board of Fleckman. This is before we really got a lot of things in motion, and it's been a handful of months now since we've had major momentum behind the shed. So I'm excited to kinda just update you all with what's going on. Hi. This is Eric. And Eric, you're on the screen. He's muted.
Go on, Abby. Sorry. Eric was talking over. That's all right. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I just wanted to give you an update on our shed proposal and just kind of the things that are in motion behind the scenes at the garden. So just so we're on the same page. So first and foremost, our first goal for the shed is to well, for starters, I don't think we really need to emphasize how much we need a shed. There's certainly a lot going on right now at the shed site or at the garden site that you've been able to see so far. So, there's certainly a need for some storage capability and to have a rooftop for some rainwater collection so we can have some rainwater watering at the garden. And our our absolute first choice for a shed is reusing and repurposing Dave Ackerman's confection stand that's so fondly at the the Veterans Fields right now. This is obviously free. We have lots of space to be provided by this shed. You can see that the measurements are pretty great here. And I do have I did win a grant back in the spring, so I have some money available to approve aesthetics and make sure that, again, this shed is nice and stable. But again,
first and foremost, need to make sure that the shed is stable. So, I've got a nice team of professional volunteers here to help me out. We have Mark Williams, who's generously offered to move it for us. John Congarino, who's out in Waterford, he's volunteered to help us move it as well. And we have Jeff Ballard and Jerry Wright in town, who are just they have a lot of hands on experience. And the whole team is ready to go on deck to make sure that the shed is really a good fit. So we'll be able to lift it up, make sure the foundation's nice and strong. If it needs any sister boards, sistering boards put in, make sure it's nice and strong, we can do that. And if we decide it's not looking very strong for the garden, we'll scrap the idea and move on. But the shed would really be a great fit.
I'll show you right here. This is just my stab at Photoshop. This is kind of the idea where we'll put it. I'll go into that further later on. But this is sort of what it would look like. And again, like I said, I have the $700 to improve it. So, that would look a little bit more like this, which would be lovely. And this is just kind of going over the budget of what I would be doing for improvement. And again, this is only bringing us to 400. So, if we decide we need to get more, you know, plant things around it to make it look nice, we can do. If we need more boards for sistering up some of those floor joists, we can do that as well. Getting the repurposing the shed would really be a huge window of opportunity for us. However, when I first applied to this grant in the spring, back in the spring before I even knew the shed was viable for us, I did originally ask them to purchase a new shed. So, this is if we determine that the repurposed shed is not viable, it doesn't look like it's very strong for us, this will be our backup plan, which is an absolutely fine backup plan. I talked to Home Depot. They're happy to get this really nice shed down to an affordable price for us. It's fine. It's fine. It'll do. So, this is just our backup. It's certainly not the first choice. We have to, in addition to buying the shed, we also need to get a nice deck for it for it to sit on. It's not just a shed we can toss on the ground. It's got a plastic bottom. We wanna have a nice deck underneath it to anchor it down.
This is the additional cost that would go with that. And mostly what I wanna get at is the pros and cons that our team of garden volunteers has gotten to, to show how valuable this retired concession stand would be at the garden. You can see here some of the major pros are it's extremely adaptable. The adaptable reuse here would be amazing. Having just the wood size gives us so much flexibility. We can drill things in. We can customize the shelving inside. It gives us just such a great space to grow on top of. And there's so many grants available that'd be perfect for improving and growing upon this shed and making it just a perfect home for everything we need at the garden.
Whereas if we were to get a new shed, we can't really customize it. It's a one and done purchase. It's plastic. It's not upcycled as well, so it's increasing our carbon footprint at the garden. And as a subsidiary of the Sustainable CT Committee, we're, of course, always trying to lower our carbon emission and our carbon footprint. So repurposing a shed that would otherwise be abandoned is a huge mission of ours as well.
Abby, are you basically just asking us for the shed and whether you can move it or not?
Yeah. And then I just wanted to kind of go over all the the entire scope of the project, and then mostly wanna open up for conversation at the end and see if there's any concerns as as we move forward. I'm going into math and then why don't I open up for conversation at the end unless you have any specific questions yet.
No, I just we have a full agenda. Mean, we can I think we can figure out pros and cons? So location Okay. And that So would be
just a quick location then. Here's if we were to repurpose, it's this smaller purple one. I can blow through this. This is an outdated plan I recognize, so we can ignore that. I'll just take you to the web map quickly just to show you.
Oh, now I got to show you the new screen.
Okay. You should see the web map now so I can zoom in. So here's the, new location, the senior center. If I zoom in, here are this purple shed. This is the repurposed footprint here. This is if it were to be the purchased, purchased shed here. So there's just the general location. There's no concerns for zoning. We can see the parcel that it's within. We can see that it's no concern of the wetlands. These are showing just wetlands demortation. So that's pretty much all I have on that just kind of feeding forward. Because mostly I do want to get to the root of it, which is if there's any concerns, questions, any brainstorming points even, too, that the Commission would like to share as we move forward with this.
I just have one question, Abby. Would it be possible to do the upgrades to the shed before you move it?
I think that's a good point. I would hesitate to paint potentially just in, you know, in case there's anything that'd be dimmed up before moving. But things like the door, I'd love to get just your the approval of the commission so I can or the board rather, so I can go ahead and buy the door as soon as possible. Get that door on as soon as possible. I wouldn't I wouldn't put the door on until you move it. Okay. Well, then there we go. I'll at least buy it. I'll have that at the ready. But paint,
I'm a little hesitant to do that, but, you know I'm just concerned if there's other damage or rot underneath. If we go and try to move it and, you know, we find out that there's more there than
Well, Jeff, I thought that's what you said, that they were going to sit there and evaluate the mobility of the structure before they actually picked it up and brought it here.
Abby, do you have dimensions on the shed, height, the height of the shed? I do, yes. That was right back here. The
shed is eight'three wide, 14 feet long, 11 foot tall, and the contractor in Waterford through a friend of mine is volunteering his special trailer with a tilt bed and winch, and he said he booze these for 11. And as long as it's 11 feet and under, we have no problem with wires. He can hook onto that thing. One thing he asks is that maybe we lift it a little bit, maybe with a couple of bottle jacks so we can get started under it. And he'll lower it out of his trailer, take it up and drop it and probably be done in an hour. And he's doing this coming from Waterford. Alright. Does anyone have concerns about placement?
Just so we're. I had, I you know I had a long conversation with Abby this weekend and for one thing she she told me that they were going to move it to DPW for reassessment and rehab first.
Also talked about being, you know, there's plumbing that's hooked up to that still. There's plumbing that needs to be taken off of that building before it can be moved and there's some wires, the electricity is turned off to it but there's up there's some wires that's coming off of it. There's a few things that have to be done before they can move it.
So Scott, they talking abandoning the wiring and the plumbing in place? Are we going to tear that out completely?
Wiring was taken away and cut off last fall by Lenco. And then, but there's there's plumbing that is going into the ground and that is attached to the building there.
And then I talked Do about we have a plan in place to deal with the plumbing that's left behind?
No, and we don't have a plan in place to put take that plumbing off of there yet Because, you know, I guess I should go down there and look at it and see if we can just detach it and then pull it away from it. But, you know, then there's going to be plumbing in the air.
Yeah. And then my second, my second concern, Scott, is why are we moving this twice? Why is it public works and then to the field?
I myself thought that it probably, until it got, fixed up and made, made to look nice that I really wasn't in favor of moving it up to the up to its permanent home until it was, you know, if in the case we knew that something was wrong with it and had to be repaired, painted, and what have you before it got up to the school because it's gonna be in front of a brand new building.
Yeah. Is there money in there for are you gonna set this on stone as well?
Good question. So there's a pile of stone that's behind the fire department right now that we've been given permission to. That's just to kind of give it a base. And then also, we'll be reusing the cinder blocks that are underneath the shed currently, make those nice and level, it'll fit on those cinder blocks on top of the stone drainage site.
Yeah, and I was echoing Scott's, you know, that's what I was getting to originally about if you were going do the work before I got up there, because I'd hate to get it up there and not have enough money to finish it, and then we kind of have an eyesore up there.
Right. Exactly. And if Jerry's got a friend that's want to help out with moving it, suggestion would be that you try to do as much work as possible where it is. And then if, if the guy has a trailer that's made for these, you don't have to worry about racking or any of that stuff or tipping it. You should be able to do the repairs and then move on, you know. I'm not, yeah, I'm not in favor of it going to public works and then they're just get it done and move it where it needs to go. But you know, let's.
I believe that it should be made to look nice before it moves to its permanent home.
Yeah, that's, I don't have any objection to that. I just don't want to go into public works and then, you know, let's just fix it where it is and then move it if that's what needs to happen, Scott. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's fine also. Agree with that. And I'd like to put my 2¢ worth in, but I disagree with that.
Can I make a suggestion? This first I've heard about the coming to the public works, and I'm not sure where you want to stage the building at public works so it can be worked on. If you're going to stage it, stage it where it is, lift it, can inspect it and redo everything right there in one spot, and then move it once after it's been made viable. Yeah, exactly. As far as a far as a pad, Abby, I'd be willing to discuss that with you. But you're gonna want to box out the area, not just put stone down, you're gonna want to dig out the area, get rid of all the topsoil, and you're gonna want to put a good stone base down for a good drainage underneath.
Yeah, so they have access to stone, just have to box it so it doesn't migrate into the soil.
Yeah. So would it be possible to have Public Works go down with the bucket truck, I mean, or the bail order and just pick it up and put it on blocks so we can look at it? They can make an assessment underneath, make sure we don't have any rot and come back. No
offense. I did suggest to Abby that we could go down with the forks a while back and we could probably tip it a little bit to see, but whoever's going to assess it, you know, we all got it. It's got to be arranged. But that's about all I can really do. I'd like to say something. Go ahead, Jay. Okay.
It's it's asking a lot for this guy to come from Waterford twice to move this shed. And he's doing it on his own dime, his own time through a friend of mine. Okay. So you've got to think about that. That, okay, John, come on up, move it. Quarter mile and six months from now, you get to move it up to the.
Up to the yard, I think it's asking a lot. Well, Jerry that that's why we're suggesting it only gets moved once that it gets fixed right where it is, and then when it's ready to be moved to the school it's moved once. That's the conversation right now.
The whole idea of moving it to the town garage originally was that Mark Williams was going to pick it up with his forks and strap it. And if it made it to the town garage with no breakage and falling apart, then it's ready to go up to the garden. That's why we had like a staging area in case it decided to collapse. Do not this collapsing at all. I do not.
Yeah, I don't I don't think it needs to be a public works personally. I think we pick it up. We figure out if it needs to be addressed structurally. And if it does, we do it there and get it ready for your friend's trailer. So like you said, he can come once.
You can you can put a couple bottle jacks or any kind of jack underneath that and pick up one end and work on it. Right. Place what you need to. Let it down.
I will I will gladly come down with a hydraulic ball jack if that's what you guys want or I will come down with my my tractor and a set of forks if that's what needs to be. Personally, public works has enough to do. I'll I'll gladly volunteer my time before typing up public works for another morning. Okay, so when can we get this done?
That's a great question. Well, first question I just have to ask is I just want to, is this the water that you're talking about, Scott? Because if it's already disconnected from the water, we can start to do something. Do you see this? Yeah. Is that the water that you're reflecting? Yeah. So if that's all disconnected as it's appearing to me, we can lift it as soon as it's not frozen to the ground.
Then there's one electrical connection in the picture right there.
Oh, I see. Right there. Okay. So we still have to wait on someone to disconnect that But or to lift it and
Abby, can pick up one end of this without a problem and you then we can assess the whole thing.
And having this connection having this connection here is not a concern. Yeah, the connection needs to be disconnected if you're gonna disconnect Yeah. We'll just get somebody down. So that's that's the only thing that it sounds like we're waiting on. Once it's disconnected, then we can proceed with lifting and assessing. And then as soon as we decide it's good to go, when we sister as sister before Joyce as needed, then we can start painting it, priming it, painting it, sanding it, you
know, the proper order there. Yeah. And get it ready. And wire, I think, Abby, is goes to the old well and the and the old so that so basically all we need to do is figure out if somebody has done it so that when it's jacked up, it can be. You know, it can be held in place with. Right. You guys can coordinate that so for the meeting purposes tonight, what do you, what do you need to hear from us having that it's okay to that's okay to repurpose the shed?
I wanted to hear a clear yes, go ahead, and I wanted to iron out any questions, concerns we had. And it sounds like if that's everybody's, input, I think we're we're doing really well. I think we're good.
Okay. So let's go back to the issue of we're all in favor of repurposing the shed as long as it's in good working order and it gets as much renovation as it possibly can in its current location. Does anyone have any issues with the location or what we're talking about, where we're putting it? I'm assuming it doesn't impact school property. There's nothing about this that will be a problem. Does any member of the Board of Selectmen have a problem with it going there at all? No. As long as it's down at the other end of the plots. Yeah, exactly.
And and I already went over it with, Abby also that they're gonna be moving half of their half of the plots down to the other end of the plots because it's gonna
where's the picture there, Abby? I can show you. I quickly made a sketch of I'm sorry. I'm too zoomed in. I quickly made a sketch of your proposed plot plan. Right. I've got slow Internet here. I'm sorry. Thank you for your patience. I guess that didn't work. But
You're gonna take half of them and flip them to the other side of the shed. Right. They're they're gonna be, you know, it's gonna be a 90 degree corner then.
Yep. You're gonna take half of them and move them down. That's gonna get it away from the construction site. Perfect.
Like that. Right? There you go. You actually you so, Scott, you actually probably want it. It. It's it's a but Adrian, it's only going to be half of what she's she's showing there. Okay. The green, the the darkest green is only going to be half in each individual length.
What's the distance from the corner of the building to the corner of that? I have to actually get out there
and measure We laid that out this weekend and I would say it's about, you know, around 40 some odd feet right now, but if we move the rest of it over there, Adrian, it's gonna get get them away from the construction area.
Yeah, they're gonna probably need all of 50 feet to get in there. Exactly, yep. That's why I asked her to move them. Yep. Well, how about the compost Yeah.
We'll move those too. That's doable. Because those the compost piles are, I didn't lay those out. If you could see my cursor, they're at the southwest most
Okay. Corner of the garden. So I mean, really, it's gonna be about really, Abby, it's gonna be about attrition over the course of the year so that if if the program that we're proposing passes for the community center that, you know, in the fall, they could start doing layout. It's probably not going to take off before that even if it got approved. You know.
And that's the major goal of the garden. We've always tried to be as flexible as possible. I think having the shed in this location gives us that as well. So, would make a motion that we accept the
garden committees proposal community gardens committee proposal to repurpose the shed renovate in place and then move to the move to the approved location for this presentation. I'll second that.
Any further discussion? Not hearing any. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you for your time. Right. Thanks, Abby.
All right. One second. Oops. Oh, I got lost. Okay, moving on to item five, appointments. We have Memorial Day committee, John McCall,
Amy Knox, Carol Lee, and Jerry Wright. No, we got an updated one today from Amanda. We did.
We did. Would you like me to read that? Sure, go ahead. Please.
You wanna just do it in the form of a motion or do we just Please do it in the form of a motion. Okay. I motion that we appoint the following people to the Memorial Day Committee.
John McCall, Amy Knox, Carol Lee, Haws, and Bob Post. I'll second that.
All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? No? Okay. Great. Well, Paula, if you can continue if there are changes to the Museum of Andover history committee, just keep going. I'll do the next two. I'll just continue off of the update.
So I make a motion that we appoint the following the following people to the Museum Andover History Committee, Kathy Derozia, Joan Foran, Chesney McAmber. Second.
All those in favor, aye. All those opposed? No? Okay. And by the way, before you go on further, that museum in that area, Jerry and Kathy, it does look phenomenal. You guys have done a great job. Thank you. All right. Keep going. Sorry, Paula. No problem.
I agree. Great job. Thank you. I make a motion to appoint the following people to the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee. Catherine McGoldy Lewis, Anne Marie Daigle, Joan Foran, Linda Armstrong, Shirley de Flavas, Mary Nella Chalfant, Susan Slater, Tina wisely, and Kathy Palazzi.
All those in favor, aye. All those opposed, all those in abstain. All right. Thank you for all the people who are donating their time to the community. It's greatly appreciated. All right. We're going move on to item six, resignations. I don't believe we have any. Eric, do we have any? No? Okay we'll keep moving on. Town administrators report. Eric. Okay. There you go. So
nothing really big for me at this point, just a couple quick notes. We had the final DOT bridge presentation a couple of days ago. I think Jeff Murray was at that meeting, you could get a firsthand. But it really wasn't any different in terms of presentation than the previous meeting to the town. The next two steps up are they send out a review of meeting notes, and if everybody agrees that those accurately reflect the actual presentation and the comments at the presentation, the DOT schedules a public hearing for Andover residents and a presentation by the DOT. That's hopefully sometime in the next six weeks. As soon as that's complete, the DOT signs off on it when they get around to it. And that that's basically the 30 design stage for the bridge.
I'd like to get all those things done in the next six weeks. Not absolutely possible that that's possible. The question I have for the board of selectman is, I think, given the states, the money that's going to be available for infrastructure. Has a potential to decrease our costs to get a few things replaced. And part of it is that the federal government is considering going to 100% match on some, you know, bridge, some things that meet the federal local bridge program. So, don't know whether that's going to be retroactive and whether we can apply it to Bunker Hill or whether that's going to be forward. Going forward. The state has not released any rules on that yet.
But what I would like to do is I would like to start the preliminaries for the Long Hill Bridge replacement so that we're positioned to take advantage of that federal infrastructure money. You know, because I think that's important. You know, I had a long conversation today with our rep at Close Jensen and Miller. Basically there's been an overall set of guidelines by the federal government, but no real details from either the federal or the state government as to how that's going to be implemented. So right now, nobody knows, but I would like to take us up to the point where we start the application, because that doesn't obligate us to anything. And then before we're actually in the design program and, you know, we're obligated to, we then have a decision to go forward or not. So, with your approval, I will start the preliminaries for the Long Hill Road bridge application.
I also think on the same vein, it looks like they may have some of that money designated for structures that are under the size of the federal local bridge program that are eligible for the state local bridge program, and there may be a way to decrease our costs doing that also. So I want to do two things. One, I want to immediately start the survey for the culvert replacement on Lake Road near Basola, and then my goal is to put out an RFP sometime around April 1 for design and engineering services to replace two culverts, which is the Hutchinson Road culvert
and then the Lake Road at Basola culvert. You know, and we'll do it so that we maintain our flexibility, so we allow firms to essentially bid on the design and engineering for each culvert individually and combined, because the town engineer thinks we'll get a better deal if we do design services for two because they both have basically the same headwater area. That's what I'm thinking. I don't know whether you as a board have any want to weigh in on that. I know we talked about you had asked me a meeting or two ago to get us to the point where we can take advantage of some of that infrastructure money. And as far as I can tell, this would be what we need to do to put ourselves in a position
to do that. We should have enough money in our current bridges and culverts fund to fund the design work for them. And at least at the end of the design work, we'll have a better feel for what the cost of replacing is. And then, you know, we'll be available to apply for any federal grants that come down the pike. So that's kind of where I'm leaning for that, I'm kind of looking for feedback all of you as a board.
Cost of replacement, Eric, one of the key markers for whether or not the federal program will apply
under the No, so the federal program is based on a series of different things. First, it has to be big enough to qualify. So in the town of Andover, the only bridges that qualify for that are the ones over the Hop River. Everything else has too small a span to technically qualify for the federal bridge program. And the second thing is it has to meet a certain set of objective criteria for how bad the bridge already is. And fortunately or unfortunately for us, the Long Hill Bridge is already scour critical, which means that the DOT evaluation has said that in an extreme flood event, volume, the water volume through that would be high enough to potentially undermine the footings, you know, and cause structural collapse of the bridge, which is why that's eligible for that program. You know, now we've had it inspected several times this summer after the major floods, and we don't see any real evidence of really bad scour under there. So it doesn't seem like we have an immediate problem. But, you know, that's a, you know, nearing 100 years old bridge at this point, and that one does need to be replaced.
Well, Eric, listen, I mean, if we have an opportunity to get federal funds to do any of these projects, we should take advantage of everything.
Yeah, I don't think anyone here is going to object. You're basically doing exactly what we asked you to do. Yeah, right.
Right. I'm just letting you know that my intention is to, and part of it is timing, right? Because if we're only eligible for the federal local bridge program, then the town has to foot 20% of the costs, and it's going to be 20% of the costs on this right after we get done paying off the Bunker Hill Bridge. So so
so, Aaron, just so everybody understands, we're being forced to handle issues that have piled up on this community over the last twenty, twenty five years.
So we have some backlog of necessary infrastructure work that we need to accomplish. Yes. Then everybody in the community has to
figure it out, and all we're trying to do is identify what the costs of those programs are, and if there's a way for us to offset some of those costs with some type of grant funding, whether state or federal. You're going down the light route.
Only questions I have is this. So if we do the design work right now and we decide that the cost is out of reach because we fall into the 20% category, at least until the other bridge is done, and so that way we can roll we would then roll one bridge into the other, which I actually thought was our plan anyways but.
Well, it is, but you know and part of the thing that that's we're fighting right now is the cost of structural steel is really high. You know and that's having a pretty dramatic effect on building costs right now. Now, in the industry seems pretty convinced that the cost of structural steel is going to come back down. Whether that's the case or not, you know, I don't know. And the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, to get to right here to the 30% stage on Bunker Hill. Started basically the day you hired me as the administrator. So I mean, we start right now for Long Hill, if we're lucky, we're looking at 2027 construction. So there's going to be a gap between the two bridges anyway. But if if we really if we don't get increased federal funding, you're still looking at something that's going to cost us $600,000 seven years, six, well, five years from today. So that's the only thing I want to be aware of. And what I would plan on doing is I would plan on using the same state design program that we used for Bunker Hill, because that makes it logistically a lot easier for us and the state pays for the cost of the design. You know, but given that, you know, the town is still going to be on the hook for a pretty considerable amount of money.
The only real downside to using the state design program is once you get initial federal approval for it, and the state, the town signs up with that program, you know, we're pretty much obligated to go through a finished, you know. In other words, there's some significant penalties unless there's a really good reason we back out. So, you know, Eric, I don't, nobody
on this board is going to tell you not to fix a bridge. I mean, we know that bridge is coming. We've been talking about infrastructure. We've been talking about, you know, paving. I think the bigger conversation tonight is going to be, can we get more paving done in the meantime? So yeah I you have the support of the Board unless someone here wants to pipe up now. I think you have our our you know we definitely have our support and I'm proud of you for stepping you know up and digging into this. I would also note though, you need help or you have any questions about applicability, my understanding is Diane Scharquette's been digging through this as well, so free to reach out to her and she'll help you with any, she's, you know she has a background in you know in compliance so. Yeah yeah. Yep. Fair enough. Anyone want to object. John No let's go. Okay. Alright, moving on. It.
That's all I have unless you guys have questions for me. How far along is the design on Hutchison Road. So at this point, the survey is done and we have the initial hydrology. What we really need to do is we need to put together an RFP and the town engineer is recommending that we bundle that with one other bridge, and we try to design them both at the same time, because thinks it'll be cheaper, because they both have basically the same water flow, and they're both going to be roughly the same size. Obviously, one's going to be buried a lot more than the other, but they both have pretty similar hydraulic capacity. You know, and then, you know, the suggestion is, we're probably looking at a preformed concrete arch, bottomless arch, partially because that simplifies the design of it.
You know, but, but I think we're gonna, we do need an engineering firm that will take on, you know, those culvert designs as a discrete project. Okay, sounds good.
And just just as a second question, when do you when do you anticipate that those two culverts can get finished? What's your timeline?
That's going to be funding dependent. You know, I mean, we're talking about a pretty significant amount of money for both culverts. Hutchinson, you know, like 200,000 plus Lake Road at Basola, that's a $600,000 plus culvert replacement. Probably that would go through the the state local bridge program, which would provide 50% of the funding. But currently, you know, we have under $100,000 in the bridge and culvert funds. We have enough to get through design phase. But I don't think even with this next budget cycle, we'll have enough in the fund to actually pay for one. So if we can get one this year into the state local bridge program
Excuse me, Amanda. Can you mute the individuals that Yes, Kimberly, I agree.
Please unmute everyone that's not a board member in Eric. Thank you. I'm sorry, Eric, I couldn't hear you, so. Okay,
so basically, you know, a lot of this frankly is funding dependent. You know, the goal would be get us to the point where we can either use the state local bridge program, or if the federal government does push money, more money down into the smaller size culvert funding, which it sounds like they will, but they haven't really put out any guidelines about exactly how that's going to be, or what programs are going to be available, we can take advantage of that.
Okay, so priorities on these Hutchinson Road is number one?
So here's what I would say. Hutchinson Road is the worst one we have. It's also going to be one of the lower cost ones we have to repair because it's fairly close to the surface and it's a relatively easy spot to get in and access and repair. So that's part of the reason and we already have the survey data from that. And we've already closed off one lane of that road anyway, because the bank is failing
in the end. What of shortfall are you worried about as far as numbers wise for funding for the design work?
We can fund the design. What we can't fund right now is construction.
No, but I thought you said you weren't sure if in this cycle we, even with this budget, this next coming budget that you had enough.
What I'm saying is I definitely have enough for the design. The question is, do we have enough to actually replace one once we've got a design? And that's going to depend on what funding mechanism we use, But until we've got a solid design, we can't apply to the state local bridge program. And theoretically, we wouldn't be able to apply to any of the federal programs. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to position two culverts for funding
right now. Two and a bridge, right? And the other bridge? Correct. So, so, okay, right. So we're sort of putting the cart before the horse when we talk about funding at this point, so.
Yeah, and frankly, don't have federal guidelines on what they're going to fund, nor has the state. In fact, when I asked the state, they basically say, Don't ask us. We haven't come up with. We don't know what we're doing yet, frankly. Okay. All right.
And this Hutchinson Road culvert cannot is outside of the scope of public works. Yes. Probably.
Unless you give him the other guy which he's talking about. Well,
I just. What is your feelings on that, Jay? Jay Tuttle? There you go. Okay. I'm on.
So what are your feelings about the your the town crew working on the Hutchinson Road Culvert?
Well, it'd be a pretty good task for us. It's not with the, it's not something that we couldn't do, but that would dedicate pretty much our whole construction season right there, or at least a good 9080, you know, seventy five percent of it. Is,
is it And we don't, and we, we don't have, I'll tell you, we don't have a big enough equipment, you know, you're talking about cranes and we'd have to get a larger excavator for the deeper parts. So, we would, we would have our limitations. So
the only way I think that's really practical is that and we have just talked about it a little bit. There are some pre made, you know, aluminum arches you can buy. They're not inexpensive. They don't really have a great necessarily track record in the Northeast for longevity. They're used pretty commonly in the South. You're talking us out of this right now.
Yeah, well, I've I've already talked myself out of it. Okay, so moving on next next idea, right? Yeah, so that would be the only from my perspective, the only practical way that public works could tackle it because those are light enough that we could move it without, you know, serious cranes and rigors and all that. But short of that, I don't think we have a lot of options.
Well, I mean, if you if you if public works was able to rent you know. Yeah to long reach 400 series excavators you don't need rigging equipment, you can pick them up with that, but the point is. In order to do that, you need another guy because you need two guys in each one guy needs excavator needed a couple guys down below and you need a couple guys brigging so we don't have the staff.
You know. I don't disagree, I was not planning on doing this with public works. Okay.
Jeff, are you rolling your eyes at us? Are you rolling your eyes am at us?
Rolling my eyes because everything's about numbers. So if we can sit there and evaluate that and we can sit there and come up with what the numbers would be, it would be extremely helpful because Mr. Mandeville is always telling us that public works should take on more projects and more things. Hey, we're talking about increasing the budget to add an individual to the public work staff. So, you know, if I, you know, I just look at it very simply. If you tell me that an outside contractor is going to charge us 600 or $700,000 and Public Works could get it done for $300,000 and they need $200,000 of equipment. You know what, I might tell you buy the $200,000 of equipment and let Public Works do it because now Public Works has all this equipment and we get something done. It's it's about, yeah, it's probably
a $100,000 worth of equipment rental for the summer. No, and I agree a $100,000 worth of equipment rental, but maybe there's there's a piece of equipment that Jay really needs to sit there and get this done. The numbers for the contractor versus the number of buying a piece of equipment for public works means public work public works now has a piece of equipment that you use for the next twenty years. Just numbers. Put down.
You would just ask what? Yeah. You would rent that of equipment for the summer. Wouldn't buy it it's just cost prohibitive unless we started doing bridge work every every year, you know just you can rent it for give or take 6,507 thousand a month, you know. Well, if you're going to sit
there and want to add staff to public works, which I am in agreement with, then you better be giving public works projects that the community can sit there and see, and we better be offsetting costs down the road. And the only way to offset costs on the road is to do these projects and not have contractors.
Right. Yeah, I don't disagree. Just want I just want our expectations to be realistic. That's all. Then if you're going to sit there and have that, you're going to have pushback on adding people to public work. You better have numbers to support what you're asked what we're asking for and I. Well let's let's get the design work let's add a person to public works and and once the design work is done, and we know what the. We need to know how deep it is how big of culvert because the culvert size is going to determine the weight of the pieces that need to be lowered into place. Exactly.
All right, Eric, do you have anything else or is there any other questions for Eric? That's it for me unless you have questions.
No. Eric, thank you very much for for getting on and Eric we're glad that you're feeling better and you know it's good to see you on camera. Alright, we're going to move on to old business.
We're going to go to 8A, a Veterans Monument Park upgrades proposed covered bridge. Jerry.
I laid that out in a letter to the Board of Selectmen, and a late entry was the site where we'd like to put it. Now, don't blow this out of proportion, okay? We have a really deep area there that the water runs into that I'm afraid that someone's going to fall into. And I said, well, why would it be nice to put a bridge over that, that would be handicap accessible as wheelchairs, the power wheelchairs weigh about 300 pounds. And let's say a veteran weighs 300 pounds or whoever, it's structurally built it to withstand an 800 pound load. And that would look really nice and I haven't really had a chance to talk to Jay yet about that because
really need two guardrails put in there. Two guardrails are shot they're rotted out and it would be nice if there's two nice new guardrails in there. Between the guardrails is five feet. So that's why we make the bridge five feet and 10 foot long And that's all we need. Where are you talking about Jerry?
Eric, I didn't know you were going be on board tonight or I sent you the paperwork as well. Amanda has it. If you're on board, Amanda, could you send that to Eric now?
When was this? Did anyone else see this? I'm looking for it. I'm not.
I just got the email that you sent to the board. Sent it today.
Yeah, it was a letter I sent to the board plus the picture I sent you this morning of the site where the where we'd like to cover it with something because it's a deep hole.
All right, maybe maybe I can share my screen. Give me a second here and I'll I'll pull it up. And I just thought that that would look really nice. That would.
And it would be funded by donations. I will sit there and do Jerry. I didn't get a letter. Got the. I got it. The whole board yesterday.
It's in the area where we just cut the trees.
Right. Jerry, are you talking about the culvert across from the monument? Yes. Okay. I mean, it's I know we've talked about it kind of briefly, but we haven't really discussed. I mean, we could make that a real catch basin. I I'm not sure what the I know we've got drainage issues because from the rail trail that comes over the embankment and leads into that culvert and because of the shape of things of the land, we had a little icing problem there not too long ago. So there's more than just making a little covered bridge or area. I'm not you know, I know you wanna make a seating area, kind of a picnic area, gathering area. Right.
That could be made into a catch basin put a catch basin great. That's something we just got to. There's a lot of things going on with drainage in that area.
Well, I didn't want to involve the public works Jay because I know you're busy and I just thought we would put a cover over it. Working with the the Boy Scouts in South Windsor to do the Eagle Scouts to do a project and they seem to be receptive to that and I'll know more about that tomorrow And that would be something that would probably be done in June or July when they're out of school. Think what I'm
saying is there is a drainage issue there and you just can't cover up what's there without addressing the drainage issues that are coming from up above coming down the embankment and then
plus gathering some of the water coming from the roadway that comes down from the road going up, the driveway going up to the trail. It seems like this is a little more involved than just building a little bridge. So can we put this off till we have Ken do a sidewalk and kind of all get a look at what we're talking about?
Scott, can I ask you to work with Jerry and Jay and come back to the board at our next meeting and tell us what can and can't be done and where you're at? And Paul, I know Paul has been involved. So Paul if you'd stay involved with Jerry's but come back at the next meeting and say hey listen this is after getting with Jay and understanding all the issues this is what we'd like to do. I certainly can. Right. Sounds good to me.
All right, excellent. We're going to move on to eight B electrical and HVAC upgrades at the town hall. Eric, where are we at that? Yeah, Jerry, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Good to see you back.
Thank you. Okay, so I don't have a ton of updates on that. We've got a couple preliminary quotes. So we do have a quote for doing the masonry work to block in that one window that needs to get blocked in the equipment room. And we have a quote from Mitek Plumbing for essentially two options. The first is a single 400 gallon you know, double wall tank to replace the existing tank. The second is it is possible to shoehorn in twin two seventy five gallon tallboy tanks in there. The twin tank option is somewhere around $6,000 including the old tank removal and re piping. The single tank option is somewhere around 5,000. I have two other quotes that I'm waiting on for the same. Until we have more information on that, I don't want to pull the trigger. I think we need to wait until we got all the information for that. Those are the Roth tanks?
Yeah, those are Roth double wall tanks. All of them? All of them? Yes, yes. Because there's only, there's been so much consolidation in that field. There's not a ton of manufacturers, you know, and most of them make, you know, kind of the standard two seventy five gallon tank in the standard orientation, which just doesn't work for us size wise, because that's what we have now. Yep.
And Eric, you have this in the current budget so we can get this done and accomplished before June?
Yeah, I mean, long as I can get, as long as I can get the contractors to actually get me quotes back, I mean, I think we can pull the trigger on this pretty quickly. I would like to get this done. You know, I'd really like to get it done pretty fairly quickly because the the kind of stages this has to go through is we got to put the oil tanks in, and we got to re pipe. Then we have to do the masonry work. And then as we convert to VoIP, which should be happening sometime in the next six weeks or so, we're going to be able to tear out all the,
you know, telephony wiring that's right next to the existing electrical panel, and that frees up enough space to put in the larger subpanel that we need for the critical loads panel for the town. So yeah, so I want to get this portion done and dusted as soon as I can because there's I a lot of other
encourage you to have Amanda reach out or yourself reach out to the contractors we're waiting on estimates for. The fact that we reach out back out to them, we'll tell them we're serious about getting this done and explain to them we're on a timeline to try to do this within our budget year. That will also tell them we're serious and that may get the quotes back sooner, but also may help with pricing.
Yeah, I've reached out to both contractors within the last week and told them they needed to expedite it. But, you know, like everybody else, so many people in that, so many things are backed up in that industry that we're struggling to get stuff back, which is We're all struggling
right now. I'm very, too, so I get it. Yep. Okay, let's move on to 8C, Pedestrian Safety Initiative. That was largely Mr. Murray. Mr. Murray has lost internet unfortunately. Okay.
We'll circle back to that one if no one has a problem with it. Eight D, the renewal of the tax abatement for Hop River Homes and the softball field lease renewal. I know that I spoke to Attorney O'Brien, I believe he's on the phone, but Attorney O'Brien was reaching out to the board, to Maria Tolman, regarding the issues that were necessary, the paperwork that was necessary for us to approve a potential tax abatement. I also instructed him to start working on the lease for the field and to make some adjustments. We should sit there and all see that lease before it gets sent initially over to the Hot River Homes board. Unless attorney O'Brien wants to add to that. Dennis on? I thought he was. Dennis, are you on?
I thought he was the phone number that I didn't call. Paula, I'm not sure who you're talking to, but you're muted.
That's okay. We don't need Dennis. I love him, but go ahead, Paula.
No. I'm I'm talking to a member of my family. Sorry. Oh, sorry. You're doing this and I'm like, can't hear you. That's
okay. We all All right. Jeff, we're still waiting on paperwork and we're waiting on
something Yeah, to there's requirements for us to approve the abatement. There's requirements of documentation to come from the Hop River Homes and the associated nonprofit so that we can do that. Then in the meantime, we, and before we even approve that, we need to get the lease signed and through whatever organizations that Hop River Homes needs to get done because they're, they have told me that they need to get it done through one of the federal agencies that assisted them with their purchase. I'm at a loss for it right now. So
tabling this to next month, is that what you're saying? Yeah, correct. Lot involved, Adrian. Nine. Sounds like it. 9A, let's get to this, the mask mandate in town. Okay, is Mr. Murray back with us?
He's still lost. Amanda, Mr. O'Brien says he's muted and cannot get on.
Okay. So let's circle back to this for one second. Dennis, if you're on your phone press 6 to unmute yourself. And
that looks like Mr. Murray is back with us on his iPhone.
Is he? I was just calling him to tell him to dial in. Yeah. I'm here. Okay. So Dennis, are you 69?
Do we lose anybody else? Dennis, if you can hear us, just press 6 on your phone.
We're already tabled that. So why are we circling back to it? We don't have all the paperwork. Because he asked, Adrian.
Okay. Just cool. We're good. Right. Right. Dennis, we'll talk to you later. So let's move on to 9A. Mask mandate in town. Which one of you would like to speak to this?
Okay, so I would like to start the conversation about lifting the mask mandate on the town buildings. Make it in the form of a motion.
I make a motion to lift the mask mandate on all town buildings in the town of Andover. Seconded.
Okay, further discussion? So I guess the issue is to follow the state mandate. Have we discussed this at all with the employees in the town hall? All of them?
I have had that discussion with the employees in the town hall.
Okay. And give us the information. That's all we're after.
So I think town hall employees all. I mean like like like society at large, they run have a range of opinions. I mean I think they all pretty much understand that it's coming. They would all prefer to do it more gradually. You know, I think from their perspective, something like making it on March 1, making a transition and saying, masks go from required to recommended, and then April 1, masks are optional. I think that would line up with employee desires overall, But ultimately, it's a board decision what you're going to do. And I think that probably lines up roughly with what the AES is going to do. I did send to the board a note from Scott, which was Scott Leslie that the ram you know ram essentially intends to make masks optional after the February 28 deadline, if that's what the the State Commissioner of Education allows.
Okay. So basically, we are all in the same situation. We would absolutely love to get rid of masks. We all want to get rid of masks, but we all have to take into account that we have to keep even the lowest and or the most vulnerable of individuals safe. So what is this board's desire? So we don't have to talk about it any further. We can just vote on it
unless people want to What about the dates? The dates that I think that what Eric talked about and having the same schedule as AES sounds reasonable.
AES doesn't have a schedule yet. Yes they do not have a schedule. He has one Eric. No no he has one from Ram.
No I read that I read that also Adrian. I read that from Scott Leslie that sounds fairly good, but I also heard that AES may have a schedule. Can I as a Board of Education member Wait, wait, wait, one second?
So The school has not had a discussion on it yet. Yeah, Scott,
how would you have heard that? I'm interested to hear I just heard that there was a tentative
idea in place and it was close to what Eric was talking about.
Paula, even from that standpoint, if it's a standard, that means that our superintendent would have that and that may have been that's out there. I'm just telling you. So as a general, that's a guidance that was provided to all of the school districts. So RAM is basically saying that's what they're going to do. The question is, for all of us, do we want listen, if we do not want to sit there and put any restrictions on the town hall, because that's really what we're talking about, we're talking about the town hall and the library. And to be really honest, the library should have its own rules and regulations, and we should allow the library to do what they want.
But no, just decide if you want to sit there and put any timelines in. If you don't want to put any timelines in, don't put any timelines in. You made the motion.
Would ask, go ahead Paula, sorry. No, I'm, I'm, I'm just saying if somebody doesn't feel comfortable with it, they can still put a mask on. So we're not saying outlaw masks or take them away. So if somebody would like to still wear their mask, they can wear their mask.
Okay. Yeah, agree with Paul on this. It's personal choice at this point. I think we're at the point where we're at personal choice. Think If somebody
feels uncomfortable at this point. And our town office building is it's segregated enough where if somebody's uncomfortable, they can wear a mask if they want. It's their choice. I think that it would be appropriate to
allow town employees to so choose to have masks at their, at their counter and at, if they so, so feel they can ask a resident to put a mask on while they're in their office.
They never put the mask on. That's shortsighted. You'll never get a resident that comes in, and you're not gonna put our employees in that situation. So yes, our employees could wear the mask. That's understood. So the people don't have the town hall, residents can too as well. It's a personal choice. That's right. Residents can come in, but you're not going to ask a resident who comes in without a mask to put a mask on. Right.
The difference between a member of the public and a town employee is that you as a board are liable for an employee getting COVID. You're not liable for a member of the public getting COVID. So that's not the guidance the state has given anybody.
Correct. How are you ever going to prove that somebody got COVID from a town? Yeah, there's no workers compensation for COVID and there's no pay for COVID. Sorry, that's ridiculous to be honest. No, I don't think you're correct on that. The town still bears liability
for employees who get COVID. It is harder today to prove that it was a workplace.
It is, you are not required to pay anyone that's out on COVID at all. That is not true, Eric. I'm sorry. You know, my wife has dealt with this just recently in a hospital setting and it's, it is not the case. Well, that's certainly not the guidance I've gotten.
Do we have a motion on the floor? We do. Any It's further already been Sorry,
seconded. It already had been seconded. This is the discussion. Discussion. Do
you want to put a timeline on this? That was the question. Yeah, let's what are we talking about for dates? Eric, what were those dates that you had said?
So what what I had suggested based on, you know, discussions with the employees was basically as of March 1 ending the mask mandate, but just simply saying we recommend mask usage within town buildings. And then as of March 31 or whenever the case rate gets below 15, you know, to just masks optional. Are we below 15 already?
No, God, no. Still at 26, six, twenty seven. I mean, we're still well in the red. Don't get me wrong, we've come down enormously from our peak. At the town of Andover peaked out at a case rate somewhere around 165 per 100,000 per two weeks. And so we're now down to about 26. So we're now down to about 15% of our peak, but you know we're very definitely in the red and we probably will be for the next couple of weeks. As is pretty much the whole state. I mean remember there's only four towns right now that aren't, you know, in the red category. So it's not like there's not significant community transmission right now. There is, but the really encouraging thing is that if you look at the most important metric, which is hospitalization rate, you know, we're down to somewhere around three eighty five people hospitalized with COVID, you know, whereas just post Christmas, you know, we were between nineteen hundred and two thousand. So, you know, we've come way down, but you know, it's not. There's definitely still community transmission right now in town. Don't kid yourself about that. Eric, could you restate those figures again that you said at the peak? At the peak, the town of Andover had somewhere around 155. I actually have that graph sitting on my work computer. Don't have that For
100,000 is what you're saying? For 100,000. You're talking tenth of 1%.
Well, and and for reference, our week one, our week two cases are seven. So we are below 15 on our week two. We're we're weak. Our our one week case was 22.
Right, but that's all the if you look at the positivity rate, if you just look at that, is higher than the 26 I'm quoting. I'm quoting taking today's numbers, today's date, and going back fourteen days, because that's the most current numbers. I'm saying over the last fourteen days, our positivity rate is 26. So it is coming down. There's no question. It's come down a lot, which was what was expected for Omicron. You know, we were looking at, you know, based on everything that happened in South Africa and everywhere, a huge spike in a pretty fast tail off. And that's what we're seeing, you know, and you know, the rates are dropping, but they're certainly not going down to zero right now.
So that's where we are currently. You know, whatever decision is made is made. All this good information that we're supposed to get from Rob, we're now getting from Eric. Eric, thank you. So let's just vote on this because you're obviously probably not going to want to put in a timeline on this. Are you? Mean, if someone wants a timeline,
need to make a motion to amend it. You control it. So Paula, do you want to put in timeline? No, I want, I want it effective immediately.
Concur. Two? Okay. Then let's just vote. All those in favor? No? All those opposed?
Okay. Passes three to two. And I gotta say, I just wanted a timeline, and I would be I'm not opposed to this mask thing. A timeline Can please say yay or nay? Would have been appropriate.
We did. We oh, sorry. There's three yeses, three affirmatives, Adrian, Paula and Jeff Murray, and two opposed Scott Persona and Jeff Maguire. Sorry about that Amanda.
Jeff, just for clarity, Scott, that's why I was asking if someone wants to amend the motion to with the timeline it needed to be amended right there. All
I all I wanted was a timeline. I'm I'm not opposed to the masks at all but you know, I. We're not opposed to the masks either. If somebody would like to wear a mask, they could Everybody wear a
wants the masks off. It's choice- Everybody wants them off. Now it's a choice of when we take them off. If we choose to wear them, we choose to wear Let's move on. It's not an issue that we need to continue to go because we voted. So we are now moving on to 9B, upgrades to a town hall. Scott or Eric, sorry. Okay.
Hang on a Wait a second, I'll just go. No one else other than members of the Board of Selectmen get to talk during the meeting. You can wait till the end at public speak and you can say whatever you need to say at the end of our meeting.
Okay, Eric. Okay, so other upgrades to town hall other than what we've discussed so far. So I think one of the things has been interesting is me learning to navigate the world from a wheelchair, which is not something I had expected to be doing. I did visit the town hall, the other day via wheelchair. You know, so one of the questions that was asked was, you know, can somebody in a wheelchair get through the upper door and the lower door down to the building office? Because we do have an elevator, but then we don't really have handicapped accessible doors into the building. So the answer is yes, I can personally, but that's because I have a fair amount of upper body strength. It doesn't necessarily mean the average person wheelchair bound can. So I do think that it's a reasonable topic for discussion for the board, whether they would consider a, know, essentially a button activated door, because that's a fire door. We can't just get rid of it, but we could potentially switch to an electrically activated door there. That's not going to be inexpensive. You know, that's going to be somewhere around $5,000 to retrofit that door if you chose to to do that. The second thing which I think is appropriate for the town hall would be to replace the existing water cooler that's there, Because one of the things is that most buildings have blocked off the water coolers during the whole COVID.
But since we don't, that's really the only good public accessible water supply. We've kept it. We should strongly consider switching that over to one of the types that allows both water fountain function and filling of water bottles. Because as you know, most employees have water bottles, but there's no real convenient way to fill them in the town hall. And the third thing that that has been a discussion, and it's a discussion because we keep repeatedly overflowing our toilets, because people continue to flush paper towels down the toilet bowl. We've had this consistently after elections. We've had it not infrequently after large gatherings and large meetings at the town hall. The reality is no matter what placards you put on the wall, people still flush inappropriate things down the toilet, and it gets stuck in the baffles and it backs up the septic system. Solution?
The only real solution would be to swap to a electrical hand dryer. So we've kind of segregated the two bathrooms now into a public and an employee one, because we agreed to that as one of when we got grieved by the union over early COVID provisions in the town. So I think we're kind of stuck with that unless we want to reopen it with the union. So the way to address that would be to simply put an electric hand dryer in the public bathroom, and then the private bathroom, you just change it to a keypad from the existing door. And that's probably your lowest cost option to prevent that from happening in the future. Other than that, don't, you know, those would be the three things along those lines. I think we should consider as a town. You know how much all that's going to cost here? I don't have firm estimates other than I got a couple quotes for options for replacing the water cooler plus or minus depending on how fancy you want to get there, that's a 4,000 to $4,500
item. As far as I know, door opener, the one quote we have is somewhere in the $5,000 range, and LENCO would still need to do an electrical, would still need to wire the plug for it, which again, that part is not a not that big a deal. As far as the electric hand dryer, I don't have a firm estimate for that yet.
Eric, can you find the door is definitely something that we should consider and consider quickly, but also if there is any kind of funding for some type of Americans for Disability funding for that, that would be great. And then the electric dryer is just a no brainer. The dang electric dryer and move forward because if I have to sit there and see another text or email chain about the septic backing up,
you know, then we I'd like to address those two items because I think we have simple solutions for both of those. The first thing is, we put a, from my construction experience, if we put an actuator on that door, that whole section of the town hall is grandfathered. So if we start doing upgrades to that door, be prepared to do upgrades to the rest of the building. If we start doing spotty upgrades. I'd rather see a button and a door into the community room and possibly Eric moving a temporary office to the community room.
But I may have another help for that wireless doorbell. We can put a button out there. Another point,
the bathrooms. Somebody located the paper towel dispenser directly across from one of the toilets. It's easy just to reach across, grab a paper towel, and use it instead of the toilet paper, which is not easy to get to. My suggestion would be to move the dispenser over to where the sink is so it's easier to reach and it's out of the reach of somebody using the toilet. I think that's the problem. I don't think it's the other bathroom. I think it's just the one bathroom where it's located directly in front. People see that and then they just grab for that. So
that would be my solution for fixing the paper towel issue. I would rather see the opener put into the community room.
Didn't you say before, Jeff, that you thought that we should have an electric dryer
in the Yeah, there's a couple issues with that. We're going to have to run an EMT or conduit right on the wall because of being a cinder block building. Trying to get another receptacle
in there is going be a challenge. Well, Jeff, what do you think about when they change out the panel, having them run all the electrical for the things that we just talked about? At least Trying that's
block to get through the is going to be a No, I'm saying do EMT.
Yeah. Do EMT while they're doing the panel. And so, have a wall mounted plug.
We'll have a wall mounted. They should be able to drop down for the bathroom. What I would actually do is do a surface mount wire mold plug and then just do wire mold along the wall and then do another outlet. Right. So,
you think it would be cost effective to try to at least jump those on when we're doing the panel replacement?
I mean, we could do those as a separate task. That's not a big deal. I mean, I'm not opposed to the hand dryers, but we need to get that paper towel dispenser away from the toilet.
The major heavy hitter there. Wouldn't it be best just to get them out of that room?
Well, listen, if the first thing is before we have to worry about all this wiring, we have gentleman who now is our handyman in the Tahoe offices. So Eric, can you ask tomorrow to have him move the paper towel dispenser?
It's just one of the bathrooms. Just one of the bathrooms where it is.
The other one is right next to the sink. Don't know why they put it where they put What about if we make it like a quarter dispenser? So it's like a quarter sheet, maybe it's slowing down.
It's a great idea, but how about we sit there and ask them to move it. We ask them to move it tomorrow and we move to another topic. Then Eric, if you can sit there and identify the cost of the
water, and we'll go from there. All right. Pausing for a second. We can do a wireless doorbell for now as a solution for Eric or anybody actually as far as access for that upstairs door. Because that's the lower getting on the. You're getting on the elevator is fine, it's when you get off the elevator that door is not automatic so. Wireless doorbells about $45
So, first of all, as far as I'm concerned, you don't have to do anything to accommodate me, I am plenty strong enough to back up to that with my wheelchair, flip it open with my arm and get through it. I am not the issue. If you're going to do it, do it because you want to make it handicapped accessible to people farther down the disability spectrum than me. I don't have any problem getting in there. I can get into my office. I can get into the building. I can get into the elevator. I have no issues getting in there personally. You know, the question becomes, is it is there enough?
Do we have enough people that we need to accommodate that there's a solution? Because the way it is right now is that if somebody wants to get in the building in their wheelchair bound, they basically call from the back door because the back door is normally kept locked. And then somebody comes down and gets them. And if they're going to let them in the building and they know whether they're going upstairs or downstairs, they can wait the thirty seconds until they get up the elevator and let them into the building. So I don't actually see a need for that right now, but it's just a question of how convenient do you want it to make for people overall?
Well, mean, given that we already were trying to fix the oil situation and the plumbing situation and the logical situation, you know, we're spending money hand over fist here. So, you know, if we have an accommodation that's working right now and you're saying you don't need another level of accommodation, I personally wouldn't spend the money at this moment. I think we definitely need to fix the septic issue because I'm sick of, as Jeff said, being part of a text chain where the, you know, I think it's happened three times since last July that, or including July that this has been an issue with the septic so.
Oh yeah we. Deal with it like quarterly there's no question it's an annoyance. You know, and and I do agree that long term going to an electric hand dryer in there would make sense. I see that as a good, it doesn't solve every problem because people can still be pretty creative about what they flush down the toilet, but anybody who's ever had tenants realizes that that's an ongoing concern because. Do you need a motion?
Just need to understand what it is you want me to pursue. Do you want me to pursue the electric hand dryers? Do you want me to pursue out the drinking fountain? Because I do think that's one that would, you know, if there's one that would benefit employees in the public in general, I think that would be it. And then do you want to address the electric door opening situation? Those are the only, you know, you answer those questions, you know, as soon as I have the quotes for them, I'll just execute and make it happen.
Well, would I would agree with Jeff. I would try to inquire as far as the disability access if there's any type of funding for that. Sure. And I would, go ahead Paula.
Marina had had gotten some quotes. Do we want, she's on the call. Do we want to hear from her what she got for quotes or are we looking to move on? If she has numbers, I don't object. Jeff, you can object.
I just sit there and think we're talking in minutiae, like, Eric, come back to us and tell us what you want to do. If it's in the budget, get it done. I mean, okay, let's hear the quotes.
Okay, hi. Can everyone hear me? Phone isn't Yep. Okay. So yes, also adding on to the plumbing with the water fountain, we also noticed that Willie does not have hot water in the janitor closet. So when he cleans, he's been using either cold water or filling a bucket from the bathroom sink with a cup. So we are looking into that also. So I met with Bill Bradley from Bradley and Sons Plumbing who Willie recommended that he works with in Hebron, and the hot water hookup is in the furnace room. It's just not connected. So it just needs to be hooked up. K. So So that was that. Yes. I go ahead, Sergeant. Keep keep going, Maria. Keep going.
Oh, so I did get quotes from a few different plumbers. Eric got one from Mitek also for the water fountain. I'm not sure if I can share my screen, but I have them in a document. I didn't get them till late in the day today, so I'll make sure I send them to all of Just you give Us brass tacks for now. Okay. All right. So let's see. For the hot water hookup from Bradley and Sons, just for the connection and the materials, was $355. He also gave us a quote for the waterfowl in, which for the whole unit and the labor and materials was $3,250. My tax quote for the water fountain, I believe, was, like Eric said, 4 yeah. 3,348. Let's see. And then for the door, I had them look at which Jeff Murray brought up a good point of even the community room. I wasn't even thinking of the community room as another door, but the lock for the bathroom, the keypad for the staff bathroom was about $1,100 were thinking Wait, of a
back up. Did you say $1,100 for a keypad lock?
Yeah, that was kind of a shocker to me seeing that one.
I think you need another quote. Yeah, I can buy one for $150 at Home Depot.
Yeah. Let's see. The next one, these were all from professional lofted, all these. So we're also questioning handicap button for one of the bathrooms as well, but that was an insane amount. That was another 5,000. But, let's see. And then for the 2nd Floor, adding the button was, $4,410.75.
And that was that was where we lock and safest to.
Yeah yeah just for anything door related was professional lock.
Okay, so Marina, thank you very much for that information. Eric, when you get that information, can you summarize it? Tell us what you want to do and that you have the appropriate quotes and that you have it in your budget and then get done what we can get done and let's Move on. Move on. They're all Maria, did you get quotes for the hand dryers?
Yes. Yep. I was just gonna say I found so I was thinking just one for the time being now in the public bathroom since if it's just us, like Eric said, it's literally just a black guard on the door. We don't know who's going in to use it, but at least for the public one, the hand dryer from Len Rick from Lenco came out today, and that was about, let's see. He put both in one quote. So it's about 3, it was about a thousand dollars for the hand dryer itself and the labor and material to do the hand dryer. Per one? For one, yeah.
Marina, do you know what we spent on the last six opportunities of the backed up septic ballpark? Yeah.
I know I just paid Skip's wastewater when they came out the next day after Jeff Murray, thanks for your help with that and others to get that. I want say that was about $1,000 to get that hold.
Okay. Guess what we're going to do is let's go
the truck for a minute. The septic tank was scheduled to be pumped anyway. So a lot of that money was just a month ahead of time. So we got to be careful about that. Well, $3.50 was probably the septic pump. Yes.
The other repairs to the toilets, the toilet wax seals were broken on both toilets. So that needed to be done too. That some maintenance that needed to be done. That was not something else. I thought
that was paid separately to Somebody call back else. It's a callback, I thought.
Well, listen, those are the things that I'm talking about. Like when you sit there and you do math and you go, okay, I just spent, let's say it's just $500 on a septic call. If LENCO is going to do a hand dryer and you're going to eliminate those paper towels from that then it just makes sense. Do it. Like to propose things,
moving the towels. Let's put two hand dryers in, let's put one in each bathroom. And then let's do the $3.55. That was for the downstairs hookup. Yep, that was for the hookup So for the
I would attack those three things. Stop, stop. Before you start talking about that, I don't think that's correct because the town used to have a hot water heater in the basement. The town does not have a hot water heater in the basement. There is no hot water heater there. The only thing that the only hot water in this building is 110 gallon small boy tank that's in the upper attic directly over the two bathrooms that supplies the bathrooms. The problem comes in is that there is no physical connection over there to get it anywhere near the janitor's closet. Know, so I think that's not the only practical way from my perspective. You want to solve the problem of having hot water for Willie to be able to walk wash the building, which is something I think we should address. You would have to take the cold water feed into the janitor's closet and you would have to build a little shelf and you would have to put, you know, a 10 gallon tallboy tank in the janitor's closet fed by the cold water feed that then fed the faucet there. I think that's totally doable, but I don't think it's a $350 hookup in the electrical room. I think it's a new tank in that actual room.
Is there power in that? Is there power in that room? There,
I think we we would have to get power to that. I don't know that there's enough power to run a small hot water tank already in that building or in that janitor's closet. Okay,
Eric, can you do the hand dryers and we'll figure out the other breast. Let's do the hand dryers. I
personally don't have to figure out anything. Eric, please figure it out and come back to us and tell us this is what you're gonna do. If you have it in the budget, get it done. Right. Sit there and come to us and tell, I mean, is, what level of micromanagement are we actually at today in here? I mean, I like to hear that you're getting things done. If you came in your report and said, Hey, I put hand dryers in that bathroom because this, this and this, I'd be saying, Eric, great job, thank you very much. But we're sitting here talking about
in Board of Selection meeting and we're gonna sit there and get down to that granular level, like, let's go, let's move on. So let's move to the next item unless somebody else wants to talk any more about updates to the town hall. Anybody? No? Okay. Year twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three proposed town budget. We got another meeting next week, correct? Got a I lot of
have a question about that. It's on Monday the twenty first, the town hall is closed and I don't think Sherry's available that night. So do we wanna just move forward with keeping the meeting that night, or do we wanna try and push it and and have Sherry join us?
I have no problem keeping it on Monday. If you want to move it to Tuesday or you want to move it to another day because you want Sherry there, that's fine. Anybody else can chime in. We can do Tuesday if you like. I can rearrange my schedule.
Does anybody want to move it or we want to keep it on Monday? I'm just bringing up the point. I'm not saying I want to move it or not move it. I want everybody else to chime in. I
personally don't have a preference. I've got to work anyways, so and I don't think Sherri was gonna do the spreadsheet on the fly, so I don't know if it matters.
I I just got information. It's illegal to meet under federal, the freedom of information to meet on a state holiday. Okay. And we need to move it. Let's move it. Tuesday. So it's it's illegal to have a meeting? That's what I'm being told by our town attorney who can't talk because he's muted.
Well, why don't you just keep him muted if we have a meeting? Listen,
I'll tell you what, that was quicker than it would have been. Yeah. Okay. Let's go. So let's move a meeting till Tuesday. Does anybody have a problem with us moving the meeting till Tuesday?
Hang on one second. No. So Tuesday is the twenty second? Yeah. Okay. So the only there shouldn't be any conflicts. The only other meeting is the Conservation Commission. So you should be able to do it Tuesday if you so desire.
All right, Tuesday it is then we I guess we need to vote on that one. Somebody make a motion. I'll make a motion that we move our, our budget meeting for Monday the twenty first to Tuesday the twenty second. Second.
All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? All those that abstain? Okay, four to one. Okay, need to call it out. Sorry, Amanda, Amanda, that was for AJ and opposed.
No, I'm sorry I was late. I was not opposed. You were not opposed. I was trying to, no, no I'm fine. That was awful late. Thank you. Yay or nay works best. All right, yay. Okay, yay.
Five yeas. Let's move on to the next thing. 9D, the event permit form for Hopin Hodges 5 Ks on 04/17/2022.
I make a motion to approve the application for the Hopin Hodges race on April 22? It was April 17. I'm sorry, April 17. Yeah. I'll second that, Jeff.
Okay. Just as a question, Jeff Murray, who is running this and what are they doing for the town? This is Ken Platt. It's the guy that's been running the summer series in town and has donated
most of the proceeds from his events to the town for recreational programs. He's been very generous for this time and his proceeds.
Jeff, has he asked for any specific support from CERT or other?
Yeah, he did it through CERT and I think the application process that went through to Sebastian and company.
Okay. Amanda, you could probably. It was, yep, it was signed by Sebastian and I know Amber was going to come into the town clerk's office and she's on the meeting here so maybe she Yeah can click on
Amber do you want to just chime in what is that is cert okay with that and are you able to support that logistically?
So I talked, I did come in and sign the permit and I talked with Paul and Mickey and the stretch of that area that they're looking to run on, 3.1 miles, there's no road crossings. Okay. So I'm not sure if they are asking for search support outside of parking, what they would need from us. Okay.
So yeah, Eric, they're just using the stretch from Ben Franklin to Shawty Mill and then they're going out and back. No road persons Right, so
like I said, outside of maybe helping with parking, I'm not sure what other assistance they would need from us. And they're gonna be parking at Ben Franklin for what I'm told. There'll be zero impact to the town. Okay, sounds great. I'm not gonna run it. Neither am I.
All right, Amber, thank you very much. So all those in favor of allowing for Jeff's motion, yay. Yay. Yay. Yay. Five yeas, Amanda. All those All opposed, right, let's go. So now we are on to 9E, Public Library, the Andover Poet Laureate.
Who is speaking to? Thank you for having us. This is Kathy DeRoger, Chairperson of the Library Board. As part of Sustainable Connecticut program in Andover, the Library Board would like to get permission from this board to host the poet laureate. Basically, you can we have an overview of the program in your packet poet laureate program serves as an advocate for poetry promotes the appreciation of and participation in poetry and literary art activities among Andover residents. Without further ado, Sharon Shashanko, who is our representative from the library working on this program will add some additional information.
Hi everybody. Thanks for having me. So, we're looking for the Board of Selectmen approval in appointing a poet laureate to the town of Andover. The application would be the applicant would be required to submit an application and three to four pieces of work to be reviewed by the committee. The timeline, the application deadline would be July 1 panel review 08/20/2022 award notification mid September and the term of the poet laureate would be 10/01/2022 through 09/30/2024 and the duties of the poet laureate would be to make at least three public presentations during town events each year and to foster public appreciation of poetry in the community. Does anybody have any questions?
Is there any remuneration or anything else that the town needs to address for this? Not that I know of. Okay, the Poet
sorry about that, Sharon. So I I I'm just guessing that the library board will be the judge related to the applications, just so I'm clear, because we did say commission.
Well, we were looking also for someone from the Board of Selectmen. If that's a possibility that and probably one literary professional. Maybe that could be a teacher.
I'm going to recommend that the library board sits there and coordinates that because then you're asking, I'm assuming you're at, if you're going to go that direction, then we have to appoint another commission and we have to get the applicants go through and do that. Sure that someone from this board would gladly join with the library board to judge the laureate and to sit there and be part of that. But I recommend you do it that way. And I don't think anyone on this, you know, I won't speak for everybody, but I have no problem supporting a Poet Laureate for Andover. It sounds awesome. I sit there and I will sit there and make the motion that we approve the library board's to appoint an Andover poet laureate. I'll second that. All right, further discussion on this topic?
Yes, I would like to be a part of that. You are, you are it. Wow, my psychic friends network was working hard.
Okay, so we know that Paula will be our representative from the Board of Selectmen because Paula is the one person on this board that can read those big words and understand what they mean. Further discussion Six of the homes. Right? No? All right. All those in favor? Yay. Yay. All right. Did we amend it to appoint Paula? No, we already know we appointed Paula. Right?
I just wanted write in so she can't back out. Oh, listen.
Paula is not the one on this board who backs out. She is very good.
She's very good. I'm okay. Thank you. We appreciate your support. Honestly,
to the Library Board, think it's a great idea for a small community to be able take that initiative that's awesome so. Thank you.
Thank you. Right, let's go on to 9F the Eagle Scout project request. Yes.
I spoke with the Scouts last week at their meeting, and Jarrett Lundberg is on the call with us. He is working on becoming an Eagle Scout, and he expressed some interest. He had some questions last week, so I suggested he get on the call and ask his questions. Jared, do you want me to kind of give an intro or do you want to just jump right in? You want me to explain to them what we spoke about? Yeah, you can explain it if you want. Okay. Then correct me if I'm sharing anything that's wrong. Jarrett was thinking about working on at the transfer station, cart area, and he wanted to fix that up. I suggested that he comes to the board and, you know, talk to them and offer his thoughts on how he was going to do that. Jarrett, why don't you share what you were thinking about?
So I was thinking about making a. Moving the tires from where they are now into the building which I heard that you guys were already thinking about doing and making a about eight foot long table about three feet deep to ease the process of sorting for the all the various groups that are doing cart. It would be, like I said, about eight feet wide or eight feet long, and it would hinge off of the wall, it could make a sort of countertop. So people coming in could place their returnables on the countertop and they could easily sort it into the various bins from behind the countertop.
Okay. Is there a timeline? Sorry, Jeff. Not in trouble. You're okay. Because that's my question. Yeah. What was the timeline? I know you have to start the process and apply, and you need to have this done before your birthday. So what's what's the timeline just so we can understand?
I age out July 7. So the sooner, the better. It would probably be or it would be nice to hear back later in February, later this month, or early next month. So I can get that right now. Okay.
All right. Does anyone have a problem with, and I apologize, it's Jarrett, just so I make sure I'm right in center. Jarrett, anyone have a problem with what Jarrett is considering related to the transfer station and the buildings down there? I know Jeff Murray and Scott and Adrian definitely have more visibility to that.
Is there any way we could review on-site or something I what we want to think we should have like Mike Palazzi down there. Me and Jeff.
Michael. This is just on a Saturday, some Saturday coming up maybe. We can all go down and kick around, including the guys up at the transfer station.
Is it possible to do it this weekend and then vote on this on Tuesday? So we're micromanaging this too?
Well, since we have to sit there and approve it, yeah, I guess we would. Yeah. I'm gonna micromanage it. Yeah, that's alright. I was wondering if I had to sit there and worry about paper towels. But so, Jarrett, what would you would you like to meet these guys on Saturday to sit there and go through your project? Yeah, I would just need a time.
Okay. Anyone want to sit there and recommend a time? Agent, would you like to micromanage this one? No, no. Jeff is in charge of this one. Wanna do early. Do you wanna do early? Sure. 10AM. What time? 10AM.
That's retiring early. Jeff's got working early, like, seven or eight.
Just pick a time, one of you. Let's go. This weekend. 09:00? Got it. Time is the transfer station open? 09:00? Eight. Eight. 08:00. Eight. Okay. 09:00 it is. Jared, can you do 09:00?
Yes, I can. Scott, can you do 09:00? Yes, I can. 09:00 it is.
Nice management. Excellent. Jarrett, thank you very much for the presentation. And Jarrett, what I would ask is if when it gets approved, if we could put you on our Tuesday meeting first thing, if you could join us for this, if anyone else doesn't have a problem with that, we put Jarrett first thing in our Tuesday meeting and we vote on this. The
only thing, and not to speak for Jarrett. Jarrett, do you have that conflict next Tuesday like you did this Tuesday? Yeah, I have drivers ed and it ends at seven so probably the earliest I would be able to get on the call would probably be like 07:10 to 07:15.
You call in? Are you driving at that point? Can you call in? Do you want to call while driving in driver's ed? No. Adrian. Do not put words in my mouth. Obviously, if he's in driver's ed, he might not be driving.
Here's what I'm going recommend, is that if you can't get on the meeting, please speak with Paula and express to Paula what you want to have happen and let's vote on this and allow him to get this done before he ages out of the program and he can get his Eagle Scout. Is that acceptable to everybody? Adrian, are you good with that? Excellent. Fabulous.
Excellent. So let's One note, Amanda, can you make sure you put that on the meeting for the special meeting for next Tuesday? Because it'll be a special meeting and we can't vote on it unless it's an agenda item. Definitely.
Alright. Thanks, Jarrett. Jarrett, thank you very much. Thank you. Alright.
Okay. Let's move on to, we had the items that I had typed into my other one. Hold on for a second. Senior activities. Yeah, senior activities. Right? Nine gs senior activities. Kathy Palazzi.
Okay, can she just give us a recap of what she wants to start up again? Think it's
everything, right? Yeah, if it's possible, we would like to open on the March 16. We would like to hold our first Young at Heart this year. We'd love to do that. And then the following Wednesday, we'd like to open the movies. And we would like to also open the lunch that Friday. That Friday as well. Sounds good. And exercise the following week. The exercise we'd like to start the following week.
So I would propose to, I'll make a motion that we formally allow the seniors to begin their activities again starting on March 16. Seconded. Oh, whoever.
Who are we going to give that one to, Paul or Jeff? We'll it Jeff. No, Paula gets it all the time. So we'll give it to Jeff. Right, further discussion. I think it's great that seniors start up and Kathy, just as a recommendation, be as safe as you possibly can be. So any further discussion? All right, all those in favor, yay. Yay.
Jeff, can I just add quickly that the mandate, we are still going to be using the mask on the buses when there's more than one person, just just an FYI? Because that the governor said is we have to do for public transportation.
That's a federal. We're doing it. We're doing it. Federal thing. Right. The town can't waive that in any way shape or form. That's a federal law. School buses also. Thank you.
Okay, nine H Connecticut Department of Emergency Service Radio Agreement I sent an email out to you today or this evening during this meeting, I'm only going to sit there and just let you know that the basics of this I met with the chief, of Fire Department, Chief Mike, and he is looking for us to sign an agreement to move to the Connecticut radio service. He had been working with Eric on this. I sat there and kept the agreement and I went to Jay Tuttle. I asked Jay to talk to the state representative because it has an impact to public works and it also has an impact to the school buses. And I wanted to understand the total dollars related to this move. But in reality, this move needs to be get done for the fire department anyway. So I want you to just take a look at this agreement and see what issues you may all have related to it. But we're going to let Jay talk about it because he did speak to, I believe, Mr. Rickencott or something, Rendoncott from the state related to this program. So Jay, just tell us quickly what issues you addressed.
Okay. So good evening, everybody. Just for some clarification, Jeff, I did not get together with the state representative on this. The people I did talk to was some, was some, radio service people, one being Bob Katie from the town of Lebanon. He's a Motorola and then J and S radio sales. And the information you got from Ron Mike and others, the MOU that you have is basically just for us, for the town of Andover and all the other towns in the area that they just sign up, it's in place that you agreed that you can use the system. Do you have to absolutely use it someday? No, you don't, but you have the ability to use it. It's a service that is maintained by the state and the more people that use it that's where everybody's moving to, More dollars come in to keep that system up and running. The only cost to us as a town to be on that system is to upgrade our own internals, radios and the different services that would be using that system.
Okay. And one thing I did ask is that at some point in time, before I sign it, that we get the total upgrade cost of those radios.
Did you get that, Jay? So I the the two I have a quote from JNS Radio and I have a verbal from Bob Katie, which he's services motorolas. So for just the public works, the radios that I we have 16 radios that would give us a spare mobile units. We have two bases. Sorry, 14 mobile units, two base radios, three portables in public works. So mobile units, they're about $5,000 a piece, and portables would be about $2,800 So that puts you in to the round of $90,000 mark for public Holy cow.
Now Remember though signing the MOU doesn't mean you have to do any of this. No. It's The it's town started this roughly two years ago when I was first the administrator when the state came out with this program and said we're thinking about it and they asked for all the towns to give them information about how many total radios the town could potentially add to the system. So, we supplied that information a couple of years ago and then the state has come back out finally and said okay we're ready to actually build this out. Now we need to sign agreements with the town which will enable you to access this. It doesn't mean we have to do it. That is, it is a very expensive conversion. There's no question. And, you know, ultimately, once we did public works, the school system would have to swap over or DATCO would have to pay to put the buses over. So, signing the MOU just gives us the option to do it at some point. You know, we would need to budget for the cost of replacing that because it's a stupidly expensive process to go through.
The fire department is prepared to make the move. Already have all the radios in place.
Correct. So, so the fire departments are, basically the surrounding towns that have got it in place right now. Coventry, Willington, Columbia has all the radios purchased. They'll be putting them in pretty soon. So, and they are fire department and public works. For some clarification, buses and schools are not going to be allowed on the system at this point. There's no provisions to have them part of the system. It's, It's for emergency use only at this point. And the school system that they have right now, that radio frequency would stay in place. We wouldn't have the ability to talk to them other than keeping the radios that we have now. That doesn't go away, but eventually this is where the towns and for the emergency disasters, emergency preparedness, this is the where they're going on that statewide system. It's that that 800 channel that the state has been using. Okay. This is basically a ham radio. Well, it's not, it's not ham.
I'm just trying to understand the base cost of the radio. It just seems
really, really high. Well, that first number I gave you is a high number and it's mainly because of the manufacturer. The other number I have from J and S radio, it's about we'll call it because there's some other points here in in but it's about 2,200 $2,300 a radio, but total cost to do the upgrade is around $55,000 for the public works. Okay. So But that that being said, also with this system, we have about 98% coverage, you know, statewide. And it also, you know, if there's a major disaster and we need to be able to talk to somebody else on the other side of the state for some reason, the ability to do that is there.
Okay. So I just wanted to make everybody aware that the fire department wants to make this move and really needs to make this move. Public works doesn't need to be on this radio system because you're still going to be able to communicate with the current radios you have. You're just not going to be able to cross communicate with other towns or the fire department because of damage. So the fire department already has the radios? They already have the radios.
And that's not my understanding. And I'm not sure they have the radios yet, or does he?
He told me he does. It hasn't come through CIP as something separate. So No.
But we won't sign now until we find that out.
How's that? So Well, as as far as the the signing, I mean, I guess that's up to the board, but just to have the ability to act and be a part of that system at any point in time, whether it's this year, five years, whenever, it doesn't cost the town anything to be have the ability to be on that system. There is a time period that we may not have that easily have that opportunity.
Okay, well let's sit there and we'll move this unless Eric, unless you know that there's a deadline on the signing.
No, I think part of the issue with the fire department is, part of the reason the fire department has to execute this is because they also use radio communication between them and dispatch. And as far as I know, our 911 dispatch system is going to be going strictly to the state radio system. So, I'm not sure our existing system is going to be supported from an EMS standpoint going forward. But we had our, we had for the last couple of years, when we looked at this, you know, there was the understanding that this was going to be a really expensive proposition from the town's perspective and that the town may or may not opt to go through with it. Signing the MOU doesn't obligate us to purchase the radios and actually connect. It just gives us the ability to do that.
And just so everybody is aware and the way I understood this, it's not going to impact our current radios and what we do with our current radios. Correct. All right. Let's move this into old business next month and move on from there. Item 10, the approval of meeting minutes for the Monday, 01/10/2022 regular meeting.
Anybody can make a motion? I make a motion to accept the meeting minutes. The date? January 10. Tenth, twenty twenty two meeting minutes.
I'll second it. Whatever. I seconded it. All those in favor? Yay. Yay. Yay. Even Adrian. Aye yay for Adrian. Okay. Finance department report 11A, revenue summary 11b, the town budget summary 11c, the town aid road update 11d, the town cash report 11e, the over expenditure report. Does anybody have any questions related to any of those items? No.
Okay. All right. Item 12, the budget appropriation transfers over expenditure requests. Eric, are there any? Not at this point.
Okay. Item 13, the tax collector's re re report and refund requests. God. Let's put it on somewhere else. Let's go into Sway. Okay. Are there any? Anybody want to make any motions? No motions? We can move on. Do we have any refunds to approve? No requests.
I don't actually know, to be perfectly honest with you. Alright. We're doing that right now. Amanda, there are no refund requests this month.
Okay. The town collectors There are requests. There are requests. Yes, there are. There are one, two, three, four, five, six requests for refunds totaling $2,051.35 Someone want to make a motion to approve those?
I'll make a motion to approve the refund requests in our packet, A total of two I'm looking for the page here. Page 55. Thank you.
A total of, it doesn't have a total, oh, sorry, dollars 2,051.35. Someone second that? I'll second.
Scott Person seconded it. All those are Wow. I get one in, he takes it away. Aye. Yes. Aye. Aye.
Assessors report 14 A, revaluation services. Nothing there. Just as a secondary thing, I asked Eric the revaluation documentation. We received an email from John. All of that is in place. He gave us the total taxable properties and we should have that input into our new budget calculation. Is that accurate, Eric? Yes, the budget that you had
that was entitled F2223 town budget document revised 02/2022 had that information in it. And all subsequent budget documents you get from myself or Sheri will.
Okay. All right. Item 15, all the departmental reports of fire department. Mike provided that to us. Mean, the fire department had a very month. There were a lot of accidents. I do appreciate Jeff Murray showing us accidents in other communities. I think it's helpful for me as an individual. I love to see those types of things. Thank you very much. The state trooper gave us a report and so on down the line. Anyone have any comments, anything they'd like to speak about? No? Catherine Palazzi, thank you for such a detailed report on the senior transportation. It's appreciated. Oh, and one quick thing, Amanda, please make sure that Mike Palazzi is invited to the meeting on Saturday for the Eagle Scout presentation. Will do. 9AM.
9AM. Okay. So we're gonna move to correspondence. There's none, and we're gonna move to public speak. So we're gonna go through our list of residents who are on there. And Kelly, the waving Kelly, you're up first. Public speak. Would you like to speak or no? She's muted. Is there
something that can be done so we can allow the residents to speak or? Nope. Okay. Sorry. There you go. Hi. I really
use the computer that much. No, was just curious on
the mask mandate for the school. I was just curious on the one that was Just as a side thing, one quick thing. This board doesn't have anything to do with the school mandate or how it's addressed. That's the Board of Education. Just so before everybody goes down that road, this board has control of public buildings such as the town hall, the library, the museum, and those types of facilities.
Okay. So I'm only here for the school mandate for the mask.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Amber?
No, nothing to say. Thank you. All right. Thank you.
Rick Wilson? I know that's Jared, but anyone from the Wilson family like to say anything to us? Okay. Joanne Eber.
Yes, thank you. I just had one quick comment. The only thing that was a little surprising to me on the mask mandate situation for the town employees is that it seemed like such a small thing that they were asking and you had I understand that you're making a decision as a board and then you're you know whatever you believe in or whatever but as an employee that is a town employee too that when you are dealing with the public day in and day out or you know in my case it is students but it's still a town employee you're faced with a lot of people so if they had just asked for maybe one more month of recommending that a mask is worn and that would make them happy, it just seemed like a small give, you know what I mean? It's not a big thing, it's during flu and flu season and you know one more month didn't seem like a long time. I understand you all made your decision. It just seemed like when we all talk about employees making them happy or you know I know next time at your budget needs meeting you'll be talking about different things with employees. I just thought that would have been a small give that they you know Eric had that feedback from the employees themselves
and that's important to me and you know morale at work and all of that. So I'm just here to stand up for them, but I understand you made your decisions based on what you think should happen. Thank you.
You. Bob Wallace. Okay. Diane Troquette. I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry we didn't get to see you today, Diane. Erin Borys? All set. Thank you. Jessica Currier? Okay. Victoria Kavanaugh?
I'd like to just say thank you to the board for all of the time you invest for the town. It's a lot. And that's about it for tonight, I think. Alright. Thank you. Michael W.
Yes. Mike Winnie from Long Hill. Yeah. I'd just say that I agree with
the town town taking the mask away, that's all. That's all I came to hear. So that's all.
All right, thank you very much. Leanne Hutchinson. She's not muted either. Leigh Ann, are you okay? We good? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Now we can.
Yes. Thank you. I wanted to thank everyone involved for the snowplow and road treatment coverage so far this winter. I think the crew has been out from what I can see early and done a thorough job. And I had expressed concern during the budget cycle last year that, this was being cut to some extent and was assured at the time that it would not go, you know, it would not be shortchanged, when the time came. And I think that a very good job is being done.
All right, thank you. I agree with you. And I believe Dennis is down at the bottom but he doesn't need to speak. I believe I got through everybody and the people that wanted to speak were allowed to speak. Now we'll move on to item 18 adjournment. Motion to adjourn. Second.
Was that Adrian? Yep. Adrian seconded that. Excellent. Good job. Scott, thank you very much for seconding that. Appreciate it. All those in favor, yay. All right.
Thank you very much, everybody. There were no negatives to adjournment. Everybody have a nice evening. Thank you very much. Cheers.