Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen Regular Meeting Part 1
June 12, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
So I want to welcome everybody to the Board of Selectmen meeting from Monday, June 12, 7PM. It is our regular meeting. And we get started with our first order which is the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you. We have on our agenda a section where we were supposed to meet with the Board of Education. That meeting was by the request of the Board of Education was revamped to their meeting on Wednesday. We're going to sit there and skip this section of the meeting. I know that in our agenda we will have issues to discuss information that was provided to us by the Board of Education, actually not provided to us, but provided to the planning and zoning, and we'll sit there and potentially speak about it later in the meeting. Like to move on to public speak. And so we're going to start with Linda fish. All set. Diane Greiner.
Yeah, I would just like to request as a courtesy to us zoomers out here that the Board of Selectmen members and speakers turn on their video so that we can see your lovely faces as you speak. I know there's some members that don't like to do that, but I think it's important for the residents to be able to see our Board of Selectmen in action. Thank you. Sure. Get the thing on top. Okay. So we're gonna move on to Diane Choquette. There she is. I'm all set. Thanks. Kathy and Mike Blasi.
Do you have anything to say? No. I think we're all set. Thank you, Jeff. Great. Valerie Bruno. All set. Thank you.
All right. And then I have a phone number. I'm assuming it's Dennis. Yes.
Dennis. All set. Great that you could join us. All set for now. All right. Thank you. Let's move on to item six, additions and deletions to the agenda. Do any of the members have any items that they want to add?
I have two additions, please. Sure. I'd like to add 13 gs signage on Long Hill Soccer Field or Veterans Monument Field. And I'd like, yep. 13 H. I'd like to call it, trying to make this easy. Three three verse three summer tournament. You said three rivers? Three three on three on three summer tournament. Anybody else? Nope. But I'll second hers. Okay.
All those in favor. What was the reason we moved the special meeting?
Can you please elaborate? The special meeting was moved. I I will give you the exact story, Jeff, so everybody's aware. And Jeff was at the meeting. I requested, from Jerry, that the meeting be on Monday, the twelfth to get this moving because the superintendent told me that she was or told the the public that she was gonna have the list of items available the day after the PNC meeting. To accomplish that on that night we had to do it the next morning is get it on our agenda so that we could all sit there and have it on our agenda legally. So I requested for Eric to put that on the agenda and then I received a text from Jared Kerme, the chairman of the board of education, requesting that or telling us telling me that his members couldn't make our meeting, and they requested that we attend their meeting Wednesday. We had already put it on our agenda. It was already posted. I had gotten that later in the afternoon.
So it went out the way that it went out, and it is canceled. And I communicated with all of the members on this phone call or on this meeting right now regarding their opportunity to make the Wednesday meeting. And we're gonna whoever can attend will attend. Scott will not be attending because he is on planning and zoning. That is how it happened. That's how it went down. Anybody else? Any other questions related to that? Okay. I do believe we have an in a later in our agenda to discuss. Is that accurate, Eric? I think I went through that. To discuss the not specifically.
That's why I'm questioning that. Why we're not discussing it tonight. I was prepared to discuss it tonight as a group because we can all make it tonight, so we should all discuss it.
Well, if you would like to discuss the issues that were addressed the issues that were addressed by the superintendent in the list of safety concerns, I'd be happy to sit there and do that with the board of selectmen. You need to add it to the agenda, Jim.
I'd like to let's see what number are we up to now.
Well, there is 13 c, which is discussion of special permit application. So you could discuss it there if you wanted, or you could choose to discuss it in executive session if you wanted. Your call. No. I'd like to publicly discuss this.
Yeah. I in all of these issues. You know? So I I if you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it in public. Right? So and if you wanna do it under that that item, because that's what I thought it was. It was the special permit application. You can, Jeff, but I would tell you to make 13 aye.
Okay. I'd like to make a motion to adopt 13 aye to discuss the concerns from the Board of Education about the community center development project. Seconded. Okay.
And just why don't we sit there and move 13i to the beginning of our agenda and get this out of the way? Anybody
else have any issues with that? No. Okay. So 13I, Board of Education concerns regarding the community center. Any other items that people want to add or anything we want to delete? Okay, so is someone going to second 13 aye? I think Adrian seconded both.
Okay, and then all in favor, aye. Aye. All right, so let's talk about 13I, the Board of Education. We received from Superintendent Bruno a list of items, safety concerns. And I'm going to be really clear about the safety concerns. Those are all issues that after receiving that, I went to Eric Anderson. I asked Eric to have the appropriate expert get the answers to all of those issues. Those are none of those are issues that the Board of Selectmen has any purview over. They're all related to the architect, the builder, and the engineer. And then there are are specific concerns that also relate back to the fire marshal and the building inspector. So, Eric, how are we doing with potential, responses from the appropriate experts?
We have some. We don't have all of them. I'll get to whatever I can before Wednesday.
Alright. That'd be appreciated. I mean, I have to be candid.
I'm not even sure why half of those are on there because I did the sidewalk with the Board of Education, those issues were addressed by the contractor and by us at that meeting. And with the exception of the deed and some issues that had to be the contractor had offered to work with the principal for the evacuation plan. But other than that, those issues were all addressed.
I don't get it. I really don't. We're to address them again to try to make this as nice as possible and to sit there and get this community center senior center built. So I do understand your frustration. I get it. But it is what it is. We're going to sit there and address it in open forum and public, and it's going to get addressed exactly as if I just spoke to you guys about. Any other issues related to? The Board of Education and the information from Superintendent Brown.
Adrian just spoke to the fact that there was one issue about the fire escape routes and emergency escape routes. And then the other open issue was the property line. I know Dennis is on the line since we're all here. I don't know if Dennis can elaborate on what his viewpoint is on that before Wednesday.
I'm not ready to elaborate on that in full at this point in time, Jeff. Okay. I wasn't prepared to do that. I've been thinking about it. I could do it, but I'm not finished with my analysis, and I want to I'd rather not I'd rather not say, frankly. Okay. That's fine. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Any other issues related to this topic? I mean, I do realize it's a main listen. We if we cannot get this this the community center needs to be built for the benefit of the community. It's really that simple. The board of selectmen, honestly, all we are responsible for is identifying what the community desires and to sit there and put forth an option. And what we've done is done that. We sat there and listened to the community. They want a senior center community center. We sat there and doing our best effort sit Every there and do meeting that's been out there has been a public meeting. It's not as if the Board of Selectmen single handedly handled the building committee. The building committee was done. Anyone in our community can sit there and volunteer for any committee anytime they want and for the most part we're going to sit there and accept them because we lack volunteers anyway. So reality of it is every meeting was out there, every meeting could have been attended. The people that did, did it because they have the desire to sit there and do good work for the community. And we as a Board of Selectmen put it up in front of
the groups that are sitting there and approve or deny. So planning and zoning approves or denies, not the Board of Selectmen. So we're gonna just sit there and move through the process and do it if it's in the best interest of the community regardless of anything else that goes on. So this is how it's going to progress. And I will be attending the Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, whether any of the other members of the board can make it or not, that's fine. But I will personally be in attendance. I'm rearranging my entire week to sit there and make it back for Wednesday's meeting.
Well, I mean, listen, I'll be candid. I'm not going to that meeting. I already rearranged my schedule once to do the walkthrough with the Board of Education and changed my vacation so that I could be here to do that. And. Totally understand. I get it.
All of those issues were addressed working with the Board of Education's designated Member that was on the committee, working with the architect, working with the working with our working group for the building. And he relayed the things that they had concerns about. We addressed those and tried to have bullet points for all of those at the meeting. The contractor was there and worked through some of the I should say some of all of the questions that were presented to him as concerns. And you know the list started as it started as one list of concerns a year ago, and then it became a new list of concerns. And now that we've addressed all those, now we have a new list of concerns. So it's a never ending cycle. I'm not going to play whack a mole with it.
Understood. But Adrian, just as a plan is a plan and a plan morphs, just like we were sitting there in our meeting on the planning zoning. Any plan sits there in morphs. Any plan is, it's called a plan for a reason and you evaluate the plan and you make a better option and you make a better decision. That's exactly what's going on with all this. I have no problem with the Board of Education sitting there having a certain list of concerns and then changing their list of concerns, but it just gets down to a point where we have to sit there and move forward. We have to get this done timely manner. The more we push everything out, the further away from further into the school next school year it goes, that's not what we want to happen. So I understand your issue. I understand you're not coming. I'm okay with it. I will sit there and go to the meeting and I'm
just gonna say flat out. Mean, we were told at that meeting that the superintendent wants a parking lot taken care of. And if she doesn't get the parking lot, she's not signing off on what And she
listen, again, I sat there and I will sit there and address that issue to everybody else. It's a town asset, it's gonna be maintained, it will be maintained, it doesn't matter. And you know, it really goes to this whole issue. This whole issue is it's all town money. The school is town money. The roads are town money. The parking lot is town money. It's all the same pot of funds. We are one community. We have to sit there and deal with it. The Board of Education is responsible for providing and to managing their funds to provide the best education they can for our community and for our children. I'm okay with that. I don't remember us ever having any discussions telling them how to spend their money and I get that. Adrian, I would sit there and say to you, if that parking lot needs to be maintained, I'm going to be the first person that steps up and says maintain that parking lot and fix it. If they if it's ever gone to CIP, if it's ever gone to CIP and I haven't heard of it, I haven't heard
It has not.
That's the whole point. If the school would follow the process for doing things like that, this wouldn't be an issue. That's okay. But that's not the point of this meeting and what we're talking about. So I understand what you're saying that that was a potential request. Unless you promise
you promise the superintendent a parking lot, she's not gonna she's gonna probably end up Let's let's let's move on to the next issue. So any other issues on this topic, Jeff, Paula?
Jeff? I'm I'm gonna I will not be able to attend Wednesday as well. So Understood.
Yeah. Alright. So we we now crossed that one off our list. So 13 I is off my list. All I'm gonna need, I I mean, test. So we did public speak. So the treasurer's report, item seven. Eric, I know we don't have a treasurer on. Do you wanna go through it?
So real quick, we finally basically have all our expenses in QuickBooks, and we've got all the revenue, although there's some late June or correction, we didn't have all the revenue in from the tax collector's office in the report. The good news is there are a number of individual line accounts where we're over budget, but overall we're, you know, under budget enough to be comfortable saying we're going to finish the year considerably in the black. And the Board of Finance, because of that agreed to transfer the money from the resident state troopers, the excess from the resident state troopers line item into the line item that covers a newly created line item that would cover the vehicle purchase for senior transportation. So, the treasurer will be back in Wednesday. We've got a lot of stuff to do because there's definitely a bunch of things that are misallocated. I have a big long list of things that I need get reallocated.
And as soon as I do that, we'll get you another list. I also
Sorry, can I ask you one question? Because when I was reading this earlier, I had a you were $500,000 short on revenue. You made that up in all the other accounts. So
no, we did not. We made up some of it because we hadn't been accounting for the supplemental motor vehicle, which is, or the supplemental assessment, which was about $130,000 out of it. And it's also the fact that this was done as of June 1. So we're 10% of the budget year not accounted for there. I looked at the tax collectors report today, you know, we're down to under 200,000. So there's basically more than $300,000 in there that's of revenue that's not accounted for in this budget.
That was my main concern as as looking through the these new reports that have to be modified. We have to make these much easier to digest for us and for the public. Have to be you have to run one set of reports consolidated so that we just see groupings. And then you can sit there and drill down into the details. But I do think we need to look at that error because that's a that's a and there's not that much in total taxes left after comparing the two. So like you said, there's not a lot of tax dollars left to collect because the majority of it was collected at the beginning of the quarter. So I just like I I'll I'll get with you after this meeting to drill down on them a little deeper to make sure that that's accurate. But your belief is that we are we will finish
in a positive position, and we have the monies to transfers to where we need to move the money. Correct.
All right, you can go on. Keep going. And I will tell you one thing, one last thing from an accounting perspective, just me mentally. I love the check register. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah.
And I recommend everybody in the public, and there's only like four of us on this meeting, that they look at that. I I I love the information provided there, and you can sit there and see in detail information that you're you're not seeing you don't you haven't seen in the past. We haven't shown that as the way we should have been. I like that.
Okay. So a couple of you have emailed me individually about specific questions you had with the check register. Is there anything at this point I can answer for you regarding that?
I have one question, Eric. When I asked about the Comcast bill, is that just for telephone and Internet, or is that for cable too?
So, that is strictly for the, so we have a package for public works because we don't have a fiber connection to Public Works. So, that is the one thing we have left on Comcast. We have one cable box basically at Comcast to provide the internet, and that's also the VoIP system for Public Works.
Understood. But that monthly fee seems like it's very high. I was just wondering what it would be just to get a, you know, a real voice over Internet like an Ooma and just the Internet service, and we get public works a streaming service or something if we need TV coverage for the weather weather or something like that. Because I strongly believe we could probably cut that bill in half. How much how much was the bill, Jeff? $2.30.
That's that's two separate bills. So that's two months' worth. We're paying about a $120,119
a month for that. Because I was I was confused why they had that $2.39 number. That's why I thought it was really high. Yeah. No. There's just two months payment there. Understood. Okay. So I'll I'll retract my question then. K.
Yeah. I was gonna say I don't think we're gonna get that for $55 or $60.
Yeah, we should be paying that. That's that seems reasonable. Okay. Any other questions on the treasurer's information?
So the other thing I would like to bring up is and I provided this to the Board of Finance, and that is the fact that we still have 25 checking accounts. The treasurer and I have decided we can collapse that down to at most seven, possibly six. The Board of Finance is on board with that. I have been trying to get a meeting scheduled with our government banking service from M and T, but trying to get a time when they're free and the treasurer's free at the same time has proven difficult. But it is our intention to get rid of the majority of those accounts. And so, we have the money accounted for mostly in the general fund. So, most of those are just legacy accounts. There will be some that still need to remain, but part of what we're trying to do is collapse those down to the minimum number of accounts we can, and then transfer as much money as we can into what's called the STIP account, which is a short term investment fund that's run by the state of
So, we're hoping to have that done by July 1. It's sitting on the treasurer's desk waiting for signature before we can submit it, but hopefully that gets submitted this Wednesday and we get that rolling because it offers us the ability to make a reasonable amount of interest compared to what we're making with M and T Bank, which is essentially zero. So just that's what that is on there for.
I'm in total support of minimizing the accounts and maximizing the amount of money in this difficult.
Yep. The other thing, the Board of Finance has officially set the mill rate for the town. The mill rate for the twenty three-twenty four fiscal year will be 30 1.29. So, no big shocks there. And then today, actually about an hour ago, I was looking at it just before this call, the state of Connecticut released the payment to town information broken down by grant. And I emailed that to the board of finance also, But the cliff notes is we're getting from the state exactly what we budgeted for. I know there's been, you know, a bunch of proclamations by the government that the governor that they've restored all this funding, the ECS and, historic levels of funding, the education and all that. But Andover is not getting that. Andover is getting exactly what we got last year for ECS funding, which is good, at least we're not getting a reduction. And it looks like it will stay level funding for the next two years in the budget. So that part is good. So the other thing on there is at the last Board of Finance meeting, they made series of motions. The first was to authorize the town treasurer to establish short term investment fund called the STIP account that was approved unanimously by the board of finance. I think it would probably make sense for the board of selectmen to also motion that if you guys are willing. I that's one of the ones where I think both boards should be in agreement on, and there's certainly no reason not to do.
I make a motion that we establish a stiff plan for the town of Vander a stiff account, excuse me, for the town of Vander. Seconded. Seconded by Adrian. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. For nothing. Let's go.
Okay. The next thing is, as I just mentioned, they authorized the town treasurer to establish a new line item in the current year's budget, which is 449Dash143Dash700 labeled senior transportation vehicle. And that will be, you know, where the money resides for purchasing the vehicle, the RAV4 for senior transportation. And then the second thing they did was motion to transfer $45,000 from the resident state troopers line item to that line item to fund that acquisition. And both were unanimous by the Board of Finance. And the last motion or two motions that they made was the first to recommend to the Board of Selectmen to establish a capital fund for Andover Elementary School. And, and they approved that unanimously. And then they also motioned to recommend the transfer of the account balance from the AES expansion fund to the newly established capital fund. And again, those two things, they can transfer the money, but I think you as a board have to create the fund if that's what you want to do.
And I concur with both of those decisions, by the way.
Okay. So so we have already approved the vehicle, so there's nothing to do on that item. So on the Right. Approval so just so I understand this, this is not to establish any new accounts or anything. That money will be kept in the general fund and will be sitting there and it's just a fund that we're gonna let's sit there and say we identified that, you know, like we did multiple years ago, Adrian, when you were on the Board of Finance and we had to do the roof. We sat there and and had built that up and and made that because it was a $400,000 investment that the town made or $450,000 investment that the town made to the building of the school to put on that roof. So this would just be if we sit there and the the school comes to us and says they need the parking lot redone, And we would sit there and fund this on a regular basis, knowing that they're going to incur expenses to deal with the management of the building where the school where the children are taught. Right?
Yeah. I I think that's sort of the way those things are supposed to work. Think I think if the the town is gonna be helping to fund this, then it needs to be those projects need be run through CIP.
Right. Well, but that's kind of one of the points that Board of Finance was making is that by establishing this as a capital fund, two things can happen. One, the Board of Finance can transfer excess fund money at the end of the year into that fund if they so choose. And secondly, because it would be a town capital fund, like all the other capital funds that would fall under the purview of CIP, which kind of makes sense because, I mean, if you think about it, CIP by charter is required to have a member of the Board of Ed on it. So, seems to me that the intent right off the bat was probably that, which corresponds to state law, that capital, you know, things still go through the town,
as they relate to AES.
So that would be the the rationale. That's currently not happening. So
But, again, you're saying it's not happening. There's been no requests. If I'm understanding this is the way that we've been dealing with, There's no request for any capital improvements coming from the board of education through the CIP. Right? I mean, nothing. No. Because they're just doing them. They're just doing K. Okay. So,
does anyone The air conditioning upgrade would be a perfect example of that. That never came through CIP. Okay. Alright.
All right. Rather than continue to ask questions here, does someone want to sit there and make a motion to establish this fund? I will sit there and make a motion that we stand. And Eric, just so I'm clear, because you're kind of in two different sections of this. You're in your town administrator report where you put all this, not in the treasurer's side. So can you give me the exact terminology for the fund that the Board of Finance passed?
So they made a motion to recommend to the Board of Selectmen to establish a capital fund for the Andover Elementary School.
That was their motion. And and to be clear, this would be under the purview of the board of finance and CIP?
Correct. It is not part of the AES budget directly. It is just a capital fund like all the rest of the capital funds. Okay. Similar to the capital fund for the fire department, which does not fall under, you know, the Board of Fire Commissioners directly. It still has to go through CIP for any expenditure approval.
Well, that's why this is confusing to me because all of this should go in the appropriate format to sit there and get to CIP to do anything that is in excess of a repair and maintenance for me. Repeat repeat what you just said, Eric. Anything that happened this capital fund, if we're establishing this capital fund, on my mind, my mind, we're we're establishing a fund to the way I would utilize it if I was if it was just me and I wasn't part of the town government, I would be putting money in this account to sit there and defray costs for down the road. So the issue ends up being the building the school building needs X or the let's stick with the parking lot because this is a big issue. The parking lot needs to be paved. It's going to cost $250,000 to get paved. And I'm not saying that. It's hypothetical. But we could fund $50,000 a year for five years to have the available money there so that we're not coming to the community in one year asking for $250,000
We're funding it 50, smaller chunks going forward. The school, the Board of Education, who is responsible for the building where the children are are educated. They don't own it, but they're responsible for upkeep, would come to CIP and sit there and say, we would like to sit there and do x to the school building or, to the school building, let's say, to the parking lot. And we would be able to as a town, as a community, we would have these money available and this fund to sit there and offset the costs. Am I thinking of it incorrectly?
No, you're not. And that also gives the Board of Finance, like I said before, at the end of the year, if there are surplus monies, for instance, returned by the Board of Education that could be used to fund that capital fund if the board of finance so chose. Okay. So
rather than rolling the dollars back into the general fund.
Yeah. I I get it. And and I listen. Again, this goes into a whole how how the logic is warped on on all of this. It is a community asset. It is a town asset. Any of the buildings the town owns need to be upkept, and we need to sit there and do a better job maintaining all of these. So to me, I have zero problem establishing this fund because the Andover Elementary School is the largest single building in the town. Fact that we're not doing things correctly is problematic to me mentally. I
don't think anyone on this board disagrees with you and wholeheartedly supports all of our buildings, including the school, being upkept. My only issue is that larger projects, you know, whether it be air air conditioning or solar or all these types of things should be going through CIP.
Okay. So I'll make a motion that we establish a capital fund, for the Andover Elementary School. I'll second. K. Second. Further discussion on this one? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Or nothing. Okay. So, Eric, just so I'm just so we're clear, like, because my setup's a little disjointed today, are we in the administrative report or are you sticking with the treasurer report? You were doing the Board of Finance because it was related to the treasurer or what are you doing?
Yeah, I was just doing Board of Finance because it was related to the treasurer and keep it all in one spot. Okay. And that was item seven g or seven h, which was motions by the Board of Finance, which is why I put that there or discussed it there.
Okay. So so we've gone through the fund the accounts, which are going to minimize them as much as you can. You went through the Board of Finance. They established there. Oh, there it is. My bad. I'm sorry, Eric. It was 17. You had it in different places, but it is page 17. All right.
Before we get under that, the second half of that was their recommendation to transfer the account balance from what is on the books that the town has as the AES expansion fund to the newly established capital fund. That's a legacy fund that's been sitting there unspent for the last more than ten years on our books. It dates back to when the last time there was an expansion of AES. It's just leftover money from that. And the board of finance would like to repurpose that money to establish the capital fund for AES. How much is The total in it right now is $8,754.71 as of the last time the interest was calculated.
And just so Okay, so I understand what the other one is. Does anyone have a problem with that? I'll just make a motion. I'll make the motion that we transfer the AES expansion fund monies in total $8,754.71 to the new capital fund for Andover Elementary School. I'll second. Alright. Further discussion on that item? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Or Aye. Nothing. Okay. So Eric, are you done in the treasurer's area? Yes. Okay.
All right. Item eight, Board and Commission presentations. I know we had a thank you note from the Andover Community Garden thanking us for the work being performed by Public Works and Eric and the good deeds done by Adrian Mandeville for donating some money so that he could collect rainwater and all those good things. I think that was all that was under an exception. Now also, and I shouldn't say that. You have all of the requests for all of the appointments to the various boards. Correct.
We should go through each one of those. We have a request from Andover Inland Wetlands to reappoint William Monroe, Jed Larson, Duncan Fife, Edmund Smith, Jane Massey, and George Elliott requested not to be reappointed. So five out of the six members. My recommendation is that we just go through all of them and I'll read them and then we vote on them as a block. Does anyone have a problem with that? No? Is anyone anyone on the call going to sit there and have a problem with any of the members being reappointed? If they wanna do one separately, let me know. No? Okay. The Andover Fire Commission, Sean Colwell was reappointed to serve as a Fire Commission representative on the CIP committee.
Yeah. That's just a notice. You don't have to vote on that. That's their
Okay. The Conservation Commission is requesting this is to Kara Lee from Mike Palazzi. This is requesting that Evan Agari, Aguirre, Hank Bruner, Mary Anne Gyle, Mike Flauzy, and Catherine Shea be appointed as regular members and two alternates, Carrie Crompton and Gary Gyle appointed in Conservation Commission. The Economic Development Commission is requesting that Elaine Bucardt, Kathy Blasi, and Catherine Baldy Lewis be appointed to another term, and Patrick Dougherty is resigning. That's it. Those are the requests that we have. Do we have any mail anything I missed, Eric?
No. We don't. Technically, Patrick isn't resigning. He's just not requesting to be reappointed.
Gotcha. I'm sorry. Not to split hairs. My my bad. That's what they wrote. That's what I read. You can put anything in front of me. I'll just read it. Okay. So I make a motion that we reappoint all the volunteers that have requested to be appointed for the various commissions. I will second. Alright. Further discussion? Anything? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye.
Did I miss Adrian or I said aye. Or nothing. Okay.
And we are reaching out to all the other ones that are, you know, all the other appointed commissions that we have to reelect. I have Carol kind of in charge of that because they all have different terms. So, we're getting through them as fast as we can. We have advertised in the River East vacancies in a number of boards and commissions because we are short. So, if you know anybody who wants to serve on town commissions, please have them get in touch with Carol or myself, and we'll be happy to put them to work on behalf of the town.
Item 10, resignations. Do we have anything, Aaron? We do not. Okay. Item 11 is the town administrator's report.
Okay. I'm gonna go through my report. Number one, the building looks great. Willie Bell and his wife Susie are doing a great job cleaning the building. The exterior painting for the town hall is almost fully complete at this point, and everything looks really good. He is re glazing slowly as time is available all the large windows at the library. That was a priority for the library. Basically, the last time the windows were re glazed, they didn't actually paint them. So, the glazing got really boldy. So, we're removing all the glaze and re glazing the windows and repainting them as we go along. And it looks to me like it's coming out very well. So that's town hall and custodial operations. We've got a ton of active RFPs right now. The RFP for both the Andover Fire Department and the Andover Town Hall both closed June 8. So, we need a review committee
for both of those bids. Now, the unfortunate part is we only got two bids for the fire department. We only got a single bid for the town hall, which is kind of annoying because I think a total of nine contractors walked, you know, went through the walkthrough. So, not overly happy with that, but we still need to go through the process and come up with a review committee to look at the bids. I think in both cases, the bids are going to need some review in terms of scope of what we're trying to accomplish.
What was the was the bid for the town hall?
The bid for the town hall was kind of three things. One is ductless split AC for the main area of the town hall, replacing the replacing the oil burner on our existing boiler with a gas burner, and then replacing the AC unit and furnace in the Community room from oil to propane and making it a dual fuel unit vehicle. So that was that. And what was the total bid? What was the recommended? So the only bid for the town hall came in at about $30,000 But that did not include the burner placement for the town hall. So, essentially an incomplete bid.
It actually might make sense to. To split those up because I know a lot of contractors that don't have a gas license but do other types of HVAC and or do straight HVAC and they just don't do gas. So it might make more sense to split those up and put that back out separately. And you know. Just food for thought.
Right and I don't I don't like I said I don't necessarily disagree with that, But I don't feel like I necessarily should make be making that decision on my own. I suggest that in technically per our purchasing policy, it's the Board of Selectmen's responsibility to select a review committee for the bids. Okay,
I would like to be on it, but I don't necessarily want it shouldn't be a committee of one.
Yeah, I'll definitely throw my hat on there for that.
Just so I understand, Adrian, aren't you really recommending that we split the bid up and rebid?
Yeah. But I as to Eric's point, I think the scope of work needs to be reviewed when you split it up. There may be and that could be why we didn't get bids. It it may may have been either out of their purview. They didn't wanna bother doing an incomplete bid or and we may want to I mean personally. When we ran into this with the library we've reached out or I personally reached out to the contractors and said, didn't you bid you came you walked you didn't bid. And we got some clear answers as to what we had done wrong, and so we we looked at it again, you know so. Those are things that can help us get better at bidding get more efficient at it, and so it might be worth our time to reach out and say hey you know you came you walk we didn't hear back from you. Well, what could we have done better, what was your concern with bidding whatever whatever. Sort of like a exit interview on employee, you know and and and you know and candidly at that point you asked if we change the scope of work and we rebid it would you be interested in looking at it again. And you might find out that you get some bidders that way. So I will gladly work with Eric on that and I'm not sure if anyone wants to recommend other folks to help us out. I don't know, Jeff, what's your situation? Is your is that a possibility?
I'm pretty swamped at the moment, but if you need somebody swamped. We'll
try it again. Welcome to the drowning pool. Welcome to the drowning pool. Yeah. I know. It's been crazy. I'm with you.
K. So If you need a third, I'll I'll I'll put my hat on. I'll sit there and say,
Jeff, you can participate as much as you can. I make a motion that we appoint Adrian Mandeville, Jeff Murray, and Eric Anderson to the review committee for the HVAC replacement programs at the Andover Fire Department and the Andover Town Hall.
Maybe we can reach out to the let's ask I would say I would like to modify that and simply say we'd like the Fire Department to maybe point someone to that too. Sure. I'd like to wrap from that. It includes them, so maybe you can get Okay, so I'll revise. I recommend
I'll make a motion that we put appoint Adrian Mandeville, Jeff Murray, Eric Anderson, and request and require that the Andover Fire Commission appoint a member to the review committee for the HVAC replacement at the Andover Fire Department and the Andover Tunnel.
A member of the Commission or the Fire Department either. One or the other. Just a representative for the fire department. Represent.
Appoint. I'm assuming the fire commission would be the one appointing it. It may they may have somebody better qualified that that's gonna volunteer. Do you know what I mean? So I don't know. I don't know. They can they can sit there and appoint a a contractor for all I care, but it's a representative from the fire department. Yes. Exactly. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Paula, you're second that because you're the only one not on it. Yep. Okay. Adrian already seconded it. He got into it first. All those in favor, aye. Aye. So Adrienne and Jeff just didn't say anything, Paul, you and I appointed that. I just said aye. Apparently I'm saying it like I'm
in a bad location, I can't hear everything. I'm so sorry. My bad. You're so so you're you're you're speaking softly. That's what I I should say. Alright. Let's go, Eric.
Okay. And so just for the record, I did apply for LOSIP funds as we talked about, like, six months ago for the town hall HVAC replacement. My initial application was rejected because they're requiring me to apply to the state historical preservation office because Andover Town Hall is now over 50 years old, and therefore, it requires historic review. So, I filed the paperwork with the State Historical Preservation Office for approval as soon as I get that. And I can't imagine they're going to make us go through any hoops, because what we're talking about doing is tearing out what wasn't original to the building, which is a bunch of wall mounted AC units and putting standalone units in. The next one up, there's an active RFP for the purchase of a hybrid RAV4 for senior transportation, which corresponds to what you asked us to do and what the Board of Finance has authorized the money for. So, we put out an RFP. What we did not get back from any of the vendors was a sealed bid. So, what you're going to have to do as a group is waive the fact that the bids were not actually sealed. They emailed us all the bids, but they didn't seal it. So, my suggestion is that you agree that that is okay. And then, you appoint yourselves to the evaluation committee headed by Jeff Murray, and you select the vendor. And with that, I would happily turn that discussion over to Jeff Murray.
Yeah. I reached out to three Toyota dealerships in the area that the RFP covered, and we received bids for from all three dealerships. They were I I I went back and I asked if they would submit a sealed bid, and they were reluctant to do that. They said it's not their usual operations to to do something like that, so they they prefer to email them. So I I received those emails, I forwarded those to Eric for consideration. And we decided we'd discuss it tonight. So I would I would like to waive the the sealed bid requirement and evaluate the bids and select the lowest bidder and get a deposit as soon as possible. I've talked to two of the dealers, the two lowest dealer the two two lowest bidders, and both said if we're we're, you know, we ease up on the color requirement, we can we'll most likely get a vehicle within, you know, a month or two. So but it all hinges on a deposit. They won't go in search right now until we put a deposit on one. So once we get a deposit on one, they will go out and search and find us a vehicle.
K. So make a motion that we point ourselves to the bid evaluation committee for the RAV four for senior transportation. Headed by Jeff. And Jeff, just before I finish that, you want me to roll you do want me to sit there and end the motion, waive the sealed bid requirement? Yep.
Okay. So I I make a motion that we appoint the board of selectmen to the bid evaluation committee for the RAV four for senior transportation and waive the sealed bid requirement. I'll second. Paul, a second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. K. Four nothing. Okay.
Now can we make when can we make that selection?
Do you wanna call a meeting right now? Sure. I make a motion that we select the low bidder and waive the color requirement on the RAV four. Seconded.
All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. For nothing. Alright. Let's go.
We we submitted we solicited bids from Colchester Toyota, Hartford Toyota, and Lynch Toyota. Lynch Toyota came in at invoice pricing, which was the cheapest by by 2 or $3,000. Eric, you have the bids in front of you, correct?
Yeah. I do. I'm just pulling they're actually the packet. We have the bid.
Yep. It's lower by $1,500 than Toyota the bids were as follows. Or Hartford Toyota of $34,008.55, Toyota of Colchester, $33,009.39, and Lynch Toyota of Manchester, $32,004.59.
So I would, like to make a motion that we put a deposit on a RAV four from Lynch Toyota because they're the lowest bidder. They're all apples to apples? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I would second that then.
Okay. All those in favor, aye. Aye. K. Alright, Eric. You still got more to go?
Yep. Hang on a second. We're gonna scroll back to the right spot. Union negotiations. Okay. So union negotiations are Wait. Wait. Wait. Fire truck.
Yeah. So fire truck, I did post the RFP for the fire truck that closes in July. And I would suggest that the board of selectmen designate. So, there's something in your packet from Wally Barton, and he was recommending that they use the committee that developed the specifications for the fire truck with the addition of one board of selectman member. And I think probably appropriately one member of the Board of Finance on that review panel also. That would be my recommendation for it. When is that gonna start?
That is, I wanna say it closes July 1 or second week until. It's Jeff.
Okay. Sorry about that. I'm sorry. Did I I what did I miss, Eric? Did I miss something? We nominated you to the Firetruck Committee. It starts the Absolutely. I'd love to do it. Did you vote it? Oh, I'm sorry. I have to call it. Further discussion, are you sure? I need a second. Paula? I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Or nothing.
So the motion then is the, firetruck selection committee plus one BOS member, which is Jeff Maguire and one board of finance member. Is that correct? Is that what you motioned?
Oh, yes. But Jeff's not the Board of Finance member. He's the Board of Selectman member. Right. Yeah. I said BOS member, which was Jeff. I thought you said BOF. Sorry. Oh, sorry.
You asked my F for something, I'm not really sure. Paul, is that the signal? That's early.
No, I have a sorry, I a bug in my eye. Okay.
Okay, so union negotiations with AFSCME are finally on for June 14, which is two days. So, hopefully we will come to a resolution there relatively quickly. And later in the packet will be the contract for COOL. That contract, I think everybody's fairly happy with at this point. I'm not absolutely sure, but we should probably discuss that and then authorize the signing of that. What what what
days are the union contracts now doing? It's June 14. K. Do you have a time yet? Yep. Let me pull it up. Sorry if you sent that. I haven't seen it.
Well, that was put on the the docket quite a while ago. It's at 10AM. I know we discussed a bunch of days.
Yep. So I I should have sent you a reminder already for that. My apologies. No. It's okay.
Contract with Cool, we talked about that. We did not get the rec trails grant. I am kind of in the background, working on a another possibility to fund that. But it doesn't sound like that's going to go through at least this legislative session. I did have the opportunity to ride the length of the rail trail with the DEP trail coordinator Kim Bradley. So, was fortunate to be able to have a long ranging discussion about what Andover needs in terms of trail maintenance and additional improvements. So, I'm trying in the background to lobby DEP directly as much as I can. And we did discuss being able to free up some funds for tree removal on the trail. We have one section of the trail which has an enormous amount of dead ash that's falling fairly continuously
on the trail. So, they're talking about potentially giving the town a direct allotment of funds instead of having DEP do the work, in which case we would simply hire distinctive tree care to do it, And then, you know, sub the whole thing out. So, that's where we're contemplating that. As far as the town clerk's office, that office is running fairly smoothly at the moment. They're in the midst of issuing transfer station tickets. That's the big thing up in that office right now. So, the assessor's office, there's nothing really major to report that is going to affect us directly right now. The regulation's changing about the valuation of motor vehicles are changing to MSRP plus depreciation model. And that's going to affect the grand list, but not this year. And the true impact is kind of unclear at this point. As far as social services, it's been dealing with the aftermath of a couple of evictions. That's been, you know, a little bit of a pain.
Can back you up a second? Do we have any idea? Has anyone done a look see to see what kind of impact a grand listing would be if enacted?
As far as I know, no. So. I don't know at this point. You know, obviously we're going to have to do it before the next budget cycle because it's going to have to be built into the next budget cycle. We're going to have to be able to, but we should have the information in October of next year when the new essentially grand list comes out when we convert to the new methodology. So we should know that prior to the budget season, but we don't know it now.
Normally when these legislative things go through, they have some sort of assessment document with them. Was just curious. That's all.
Yeah, no, I don't have that. I don't really have a whole lot of details on that. The omnibus bill was like another, you know, thousand pages or something like that. So what exactly is in it and what other little nuggets of laws that got passed that we have no idea about yet. We're gonna figure that out in the next few months. The audit is not complete. We did have a holdup with our actuary from Hooker and Holcomb. Again, we respond to them today. So, I'm hoping we have that back. We've expressed to them how freaking urgent it is that they give us the final report so that we can complete the audit by July 1. That is the last thing holding up the audit. So, I think if we can actually get that, we will get the audit out by July So, it's getting a lot closer than that I would certainly like. Building department and land use is going pretty well. Yes, we will review the fee schedule that is not something I really gotten to yet.
While I've discussed it a bunch of times with the new building official, we haven't really made any headway on it yet. But that is still works. We do have a bunch of zoning enforcement stuff going on. But right now, the zoning agents also busy dealing with applications, one of which being the towns so. You know we're not making as much progress on that, as I would like Dennis is helping out from the legal aspects of the enforcement actions. We did get a state local bridge application in for Lake Road at the solar. Based on the costs of doing these, we decided not to put the application in for the culvert on Hutchinson Road and just concentrate on Lake Road at the soul, because that affects so many more people. We have asked the dot to meet with us and discuss the possibility of putting a access way in on the other side of entrance road on the far end of the culvert. Because it seems to me the simplest way to do this is a curb cut on six on the other side of the culvert,
so we can just directly access it and we don't have to do the stream crossing. That to me seems like it's a hell of a lot cheaper than putting in a culvert, given the prices of culverts these days. Let's see. That's
so Bunker Hill Bridge. They supposedly the 70% designs phase should be released shortly by the contractor. We don't yet have a front date for final design completion. Long Hill Bridge, test porings are complete. The 30 design phase is going well. That one's actually progressing through the process a lot faster than Bunker Hill. And don't ask me why because it's all the same people. Talked about small bridges. You all know that the special permit application is pending is before the zoning commission for the community slash senior center. That was that. And
Those are the major things I wanted to discuss. You all got my notes regarding the transfer station and the issue we're having with rats. We did last Friday have a cleaning session at the transfer station. We pulled all the compactors out, cleaned the hell out of it, pressure washed it. And tomorrow the pest control applicator will be in basically treating everything and starting a very aggressive trapping routine for the transfer station, hopefully to get that under control. And recommended backfilling the holes with hospital?
What he what the contractor said basically is that the first thing you got to do is you got to get as much of the potential food source gone as you can. And then as soon as you do that, you bait the hell out of everything there and you shove bait in all the open holes everywhere you can and you make sure there's plenty of the poison bait around. And at that point, you can seal the holes temporarily. We know we're going to have to cut them back open and re compact because we're getting sinkhole removed. But there's no sense doing that. And you don't want to open it up until you've killed off the majority of the rats because if you scatter them now, the colony will reform somewhere else and you'll start having problems in other locations for the Blue Building or elsewhere. So that's basically the plan they're proposing for dealing with it. And I disagree
with sealing the holes. I'm just surprised we picked the most expensive option of asphalt instead of like, you know, one or quarter stone or, you know, three, you know, three quarter stone or something like that or gravel. Like why pick a 100 and something dollar a ton, you know, versus $40 a ton, you know?
Well, I mean, for right now, I mean, we're not talking about fixing it or completely fixing the problem. All we're talking about doing is creating a surface smooth enough for people to walk on. What Jay is talking about doing is just throwing hot pad or not throwing cold patch at the top and tamping it down temporarily until we can cut it back open in a month or two. Hopefully after we've gotten rid of the little buggers
and the holes are small enough for the hot patch. Is it going to drop into it?
He thinks he can deal with it with with cold patch. Okay, okay.
I was just surprised. That's all. I didn't realize we're trying to make a walking area. I thought we're just, you talked about sealing them and I was like, just trying to understand that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. It's more
to get the barrels out of there so people can walk around the compactors safely right now until we can do a more permanent fix. So on the edge there by the contract compactor? I I guess I didn't notice when I went. Yeah. Yeah. Adrian, it's on the retaining walls on the edge. It looks like it it could be a combination of both. It could be just looks like there's some erosion and some of the material went down between the between the retaining blocks. And would and it just we had some sink we had some sinkholes. So it's it's not anything it's not terrible, but I think I think Eric's right. I think we could probably put some cold patch knowledge just so nobody falls in or trips on anything. I hadn't seen the. So okay. Yeah. It's just a it's, like, probably what do you think, Eric? A half a dozen holes?
Yeah. I mean, they're they're not huge at this point. I mean, basically, all we're trying to do is deal with it temporarily to make a good walking surface until we could deal with it more formally. Okay.
But the contractor was very clear. He does not want us opening up any asphalt until they've killed off majority of the rats. Because he said as soon as you displace them, you know, it's a lot harder to deal with than dealing with them in place. So, boundary line adjustment details, I did discuss that the other day with the town engineer. Still don't have any kind of formal report from them. I told them I really wanted it back in a week or so. He's prodding his surveyor to finally bear into that give us back a report on that. The second boundary line adjustment, which would be between the town of Andover in the Hawes family, remember that's one of the houses that is directly behind the school. I had sent them a copy of the plans and I followed up with Kim Hawes, and she indicated that she and her husband were fine with the agreement. So, at some point when we go to file the boundary survey, we should probably have Dennis work up the boundary line adjustment document and file those both at the same time that we filed the boundary survey. So those are the two.
If I may, Eric, I believe that we're gonna have to ask for an 08/24 review on those as well. If it's a relocation of the boundary line, because it's gonna be a slight relocation of town property and vis a vis what is now a private property. You know?
I believe it's a It all depends on what it all depends on, you know, the substance of the of the change. Correct.
But I think it I think it would require an eight twenty four review and also unfortunately a town meeting based on our charter. I have researched it, and, too bad we have to go to those, extremes, but we have to follow the rules.
Is that is that the correct, though? Because I thought we've done some adjustments, like, even when did the did the Clark property easement have to wasn't that an adjustment as well? Would that have required a? Probably. It did. It did? It did, and it passed.
Okay. I I don't I didn't recall. I wasn't on the board at that time. Yeah. Anytime anytime you're you do any kind of a an adjustment to town property, gaining or subtracting or whatever, even if it's a small one, unfortunately, you you need an eight twenty four review. Statute is pretty all comprehensive. I just looked at it again today to make sure, and I I don't see a way around it unless it's, you know, very extremely minimal, even if it's minimal and and also a town meeting. So what you wanna do when you have the town meeting is, I guess, if there's any other pending matters,
you wanna throw them on the agenda as well so you don't waste time and money and whatever. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not you know, that's the way I see it. Okay. That's it, Eric.
The only other thing that I wanted to cover that wasn't in my report is we did finally get a note back from the DOT saying that you, the Board of Selectmen, had requested that the speed limit on Route 6 be decreased to 40 miles an hour in the vicinity of Dollar General, basically going from the existing 40 mile an hour zone to past where 87 comes in. The state of Connecticut has done a traffic study, and while they didn't agree to drop it to 40 miles an hour, They did say they would drop it to 45. They're waiting on a confirmation from Jeff before they proceed. So, my suggestion is that you concur with their recommendation so they go forward and it doesn't, go any longer.
I would make a motion to concur with the DOT's recommendation and try to enact the 45 mile an hour speed limit. I'll second.
Further discussion. Eric. What was the document that I signed? Wednesday wasn't at this. No,
that was not this that was for the tax collector. That's what formalized the mill rate for the town.
Alright, my bad memory. Okay, all those in favor. Aye. There we go for nothing. Let's go old business, Eric.
Okay, I would like to. We have an executive session regarding union negotiations. I would like to deal with the tax collector status in executive session.
Alright. I'll make a motion that we have that to the effective session conversation.
Right. We want to invite in the town attorney. Sure. I'd also make a second. I
was gonna say I want to ask a second thing and also I can make a motion that we add in discussion of the Community Center in in executive session. Seconded.
All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. 12C recognizing Andover residents. I
don't think we need to talk anything about this again. We voted and said we were moving it forward, so there's a forum on the town website. I tried putting it in the River East a couple of weeks ago, but I guess the email address that the River East had was the wrong person. So I contacted them again. So I'm going to talk to the River East this week about putting some more information in there. So I think we can probably take this off the agenda at this point.
Alright. Thank you for all you do on that, Paula. You're very welcome. Thank you for the idea. 12E, Andover sorry, 12D of the cool program contract. Where are we with that? Is it done?
So that's a good question. So Dennis sent back a series of revisions again. That is the contract that is in your packet. Paul, I believe you sent that to the COOL program.
Yep. I sent that to them last week and I copied everybody on that.
Okay. So, is there, do we know whether there are any issues that they have with it at this point or can we prepare a clean copy for Mr. McGuire to sign on our end?
I have not heard back from anybody on their end. I didn't know if they contacted you, but I have not heard anything. So I,
unless you want to, I can make a phone call tomorrow. Okay.
I just wanna say that the latest changes to the about the twentieth draft, I think, have been primarily cosmetic. I don't think there's anything in there that is gonna cause them to change. I mean, they sent a they sent a a version back to us, which I thought was pretty good. And I did make but I did make some clarifying changes in it, as you can see, if you look at the version that is included in the packet. And I there may be some objection that they might have to this, but I I cannot imagine what it would be. It's pretty close to what go ahead. No. Finish your finish your thought. Sorry. No. I think it's it's I think it's really close. What I sent them back was not far
not far from what they sent back to us. And I just wanted to make some clarifying statements and improve the language, and it looked to me like we were just about there. Hopefully, they will approve this. I don't see a problem with you know, as far as I'm concerned, as town attorney who has worked on this for quite a while, I wouldn't see a problem with the, board of selectmen approving this version, this particular draft, tonight, and I would recommend that. But, you know, you may wanna hear back from them first, but, you know, it would be nice to make an end to this.
If we approve it now and they, and they also agree, then they can just move forward and this is done. So that would probably make the most sense. So I would make a motion that we approve this version of the cool contract that's in our packet. I'll second. Further discussion?
Yeah, just as a comment, I think they have a board meeting this week. So I think I sent this Friday. So I'm just thinking this is a matter of, you know, a couple of days. They're probably looking it over and just, need another couple of days or so. I'm I'm just assuming, but I will find out. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. K. Or nothing. Scout. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. 12, Eric Andover, personnel policy discussion.
I would like to punt on that again at this time.
One and twelve f, we've already discussed. Correct. So thirteen, new business.
So, in your packet is a thank you letter to Matt Corner of Andover Landscaping for donating materials for the community garden. I put that in your packet. Unless you want some changes, I suggest you approve and sign it as is, or have Carol put your signatures, affix your signatures to it as you so desire.
I make a motion that we send out the letter to Matt Coordinator at Andover Landscaping, thanking him for his generous donation. I will second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
And at the same time, I would also like to acknowledge the fact that Scott Persson and his wife Lauren also donated a considerable amount of manure and other materials that they had delivered for the community gardens to get the beds established. So, I don't think he necessarily wants a letter of appreciation from the board, but I just want to acknowledge that they also made a significant donation to the town, and I certainly appreciate it.
Please don't forget, selectman Mandeville for his donation of $1,000 to the community garden. That is correct also. Thank you, Adrian. Will not get a
letter, and I will not sign it, but I will I wasn't looking for one. Speaking of which, if you need, I reached out to Jeff, he said at some point he was going get me a list of what they needed for materials. So just if that comes up to anyone, please, you know, remind him to just get to me and I'll get it taken care of.
Next. Eric, you got anything else on the new business front?
Yes. A whole bunch of stuff. The first thing I wanted to talk about, so there seems to be a large variety of opinions regarding blight in town. So, when we initially proposed the blight ordinance, was assuming we were going to use this to deal with four to five of the worst offenders in town, but there's a lot of people that want to do a lot more with it. And I think that's a discussion that has to be, you know, that really has to come from the top and you as a board have to determine how proactive you want to be with one of these things, or you have to leave it to the discretion of the zoning enforcement officer, one or the other. But we need a little bit of guidance because there's a pretty wide variety of opinions as to what we should really be targeting this as. You know, my personal opinion is that we should be going after, you know, the worst four or five offenders and dealing with the ones that are really either health hazards or, you know, really significant accumulations of stuff in obvious spots. But I think that's something that that's a board decision more so than an Eric decision. Can we put this on What
are you proposing exactly?
Well, he he wrote it, but can we can we push this one off? Because this is really Scott Person takes a personal he takes a lead position in this. So I would like him I would like him on the meeting to discuss his thoughts and desires related to this because he is really out looking at this. I know he and Jeff Murray are probably the most
Right. So I think given that, actually, he would love us to actually try to make some progress on this rather than kicking it down the road. So I guess I would reiterate my question. Eric, what are you proposing?
So I'm proposing that I need a lot more guidance because individually, people all want different things done for this. And I think you need to come up with some kind of more comprehensive idea about how many. I mean, if you take the literal definition of our blight policy, I think you can apply it to roughly 10% of the houses in the town of Andover. That's my guess from driving it around. And the question is, what do you really want to accomplish with this? You know, because I mean I've got people that want me to go after individual mattresses, you know, on the sides of people's garages, you know, in the question is where where is the line? Where do we as a town draw the line before we start considering enforcing something?
I mean, Eric, that was in one mattress. I mean, that one individual we spoke about has probably eight mattresses out in their driveway stacked up. Maybe they're trying to build a trampoline, Jeff. Maybe.
But they're getting rained on. It's an eyesore and it's a health hazard. Are they stacked nicely? No, they're just laid up against vehicles and all kinds of other structures. They're saying they're protecting structures with mattresses.
No, and this individual has gotten a letter from the zoning agent, the zoning enforcement officer in the past. So this is not the first About the mattresses? About the blight yeah. The issue with the garbage and other issues.
Okay. But what I don't wanna do is focus this on one because I think my concern is that if you set that as your threshold, you know, an awful lot of residents fall afoul of the blight, you know, and it's a question of resources, you know? It's a question of how intrusive you want to be.
But Jeff said there's eight mattresses. So if there's eight mattresses, that's not one. And is this a is this Wait a second. This is not Is all this visible from the road? Is it is it is it a mess? I don't Yes. I'm asking Eric. No?
I mean, if you want me personally, I ride my bike past it all the time, and I never see it. But but, obviously, other people do.
But you do ride fast you do ride pretty fast, so it's possible to just go No. I'm pretty old and fat, so I don't ride very fast anymore. If you're fat, then I'm then I'm in big trouble. Just so we're clear. Can I can I say You in want
what's in in what I'm sorry, Dennis? Yeah. Go ahead, Dennis. Let let I I think I can be helpful here. I I the one thing about about this kind of, action is it has to be done with precision, and the the the violator has rights to hearings and stuff like that. A lease has to be filed. It it it is a very time consuming thing to do. And, you know, I don't have an awful lot of time to deal with this kind of stuff in a town like yours because you're you are you all are doing so much good work in the town generating an awful lot of legal issues but I'm pretty darn busy. Are you are you so is
and so and so is the zoning agent. The zoning agent is is limited to so many hours a week. It's not a lot. He's pretty busy with zoning right now, and I have to work with him. I'm you know, and I I'm ending up being pretty much a staff person with regards to doing some of these cases. And, you know, again, they they require a lot of time. I mean, we're doing pretty well in it for for a while, but I'm starting to fall behind. Dennis,
are we allowed Dennis? Can I interrupt for a second? Are we allowed by law to bill for the time for an agent or yourself to work on these cases?
Can we recoup those costs? Not as far as I know, I think all you can do is find the, you can find the the the the the perpetrator, the violator, and, you know, the the the if the fine is $25 a day. And we've got two we've got two cases in which I don't want to get into too much detail. We've got cases in which there are there are fines, accumulating and liens are being placed. And those liens will be, you know, open ended. They will continue to grow as long as But if it's $25 a day
and, and so we should be able to, you should accumulate over the course of a week, money to pay for an attorney. If it goes more than a week, you're, you're accumulating enough money, I would think to pay for an attorney to place. But I'm working on a retainer if I only get paid so much. I'm not complaining, but my question is, we sub this out to another attorney if that's the case? And can we look at you know, accumulating more hours That's in
something to consider if you have that many cases. I didn't realize there were, I know, you know, I know there are a few. I didn't know there were 10%
or 8% or whatever. That's a lot. It's not. Eric is making that number up. The issue is really, really just let's just decide. Are we sitting there and we're gonna Yeah, give mean, you have, you have things at your house shoring about, so be careful, you're on the list. Correct, I'm on the list. My question and what Eric is after and the reason why, I mean, listen, Scott sent a request for a certain amount of information. Eric is trying to sit there and get clarification if that's what we're requiring to have him do with blight issues. Yeah. You know, to me, allow Eric to have some discretion, but Eric, if Jeff Murray and Scott Person bring to you something that they believe is not positive for the community, I mean, you need to look at it. I mean, what Eric what Scott is asking for is a detailed report by property all the time. I realize that might be excessive. That's what Eric is dealing with. Eric is going, Scott wants
more detailed reports as to what we're doing as a community related to these blight home to blight properties.
He wants I mean, Eric doesn't have the time for that right now. He has so many irons in the fire, although that is a wonderful idea that you know, and and when he gets caught up. It's wintertime and then he's starting budget season, so I don't know that it's within his ability to do that. I you know, and maybe that's something that you know we need to talk about, you know, having more time in the building department to address this.
That's the issue, Adrian. If Eric just wants direction, are we going to sit there and make him do this? If we are, just tell him and he'll figure out how to do it. If not, just give him the guidance as to what we're expecting. From my standpoint, I would rather I would rather we we sit there and identify and whether, you know, you identify the five worst and you sit there and try to knock them off. You know, we're not a big town. We don't have tremendous amount of resources, but that's all Eric's asking for. What is it? What's our guidance? And he wants it from more than just one board of select members. Wants it from That both is the reason why I wanted Scott to be here because he has he is the most vested in this issue.
So maybe we do something where we have the, you know, five most wanted every year that we want to clean up, you know? It's still not giving Eric the guidance he's asking for. Well, think right now, Eric's
got way too much on his plate to be digging in on this. You know, I think disagree with I don't Adrian, I am with you. But you know what? When I understood that Public Works I'm just gonna sit there and say this in public. Public Works is working on the the community gardens. I think that's phenomenal. But you've said many times Public Works doesn't have time to sit there and go down and work on our fields. And you know who's going down and working on those fields? That's Scott. So you I'm maybe we need get sorry when I see Public Works working on the community gardens and you tell Scott that they can't go down and help out on the fields to do maintenance, I've got a problem because Scott is down there investing his entire time to sit there and do that for the community.
So we have to can't talk out of both sides of our mouth on issues like this. I, I, listen,
I would, if I had to choose between the two, I think the community garden is a volunteer organization that has the people that can probably do what they need to do. I think there was some.
It's a town asset. We have a town asset in the field.
Right. I'm saying I would rather see them down at the field, but at the same time there was some overlap. As much as I'm not a fan of public works doing anything but roads. Because of what was going on with the Community Center and also the fact that there were some tree issues down there there was a multitude of things that public work ended up down there for you know, but
you know I'm not adverse to that. You're not missing, you're missing my point. I'm not adverse to them doing that type of work and just sitting there going when we sit there and say they can't go down and do the field and Scott's down there all the time dealing with that irrigation system, I've got a problem. So so anyway, Eric is looking for guidance and direction. And Eric, let's just move on with this because we're not going to make a decision tonight. But I do understand what you're after. I'll sit there and poll everybody else. And I have to get with Scott because I'm just saying, Scott's the most vested in this. Jeff Murray and Scott, as far as I'm concerned, are the most vested in that this blight issue.
They have the keen eye for for that type of issue. And I'm I'm probably more like Eric. I drive by these houses all the time, and I I don't see it.
So I mean, I don't care if you got you're working on a car in the front of your yard or you got some, you know, activities, good construction activities or whatever. But when you're taking things that can easily be taken to the transfer station at no charge and dumping them in your front yard, that's a problem. And we need to address it as a town. Because if you're the neighbor of that individual, would you wanna live next to that? No. And we have a duty as a board of selectmen to make sure that that blade ordinance is being followed to a certain degree, which means there's no charge for these mattresses and these things that are out in these yards. I mean, we don't charge for bulky. I mean, you can go get your bunk dump pass and you can take everything down there. It's not an issue.
I think the problem is, Jeff, that there are nuances to what happens in somebody's yard. You know, you could be furious because you see eight mattresses out there, and it could be that that person is doing an art project and they need 100 springs out of those mattresses to coil them up to make some sort of burning man thing. You know, I mean, so your trash may be somebody else's art. And I think that's where I've seen having lived in other towns Womantic where Mr. O'Brien is based, that in Canterbury, which is a small rural town very similar to ours, that you know there's nuances to these things. And there is pushback.
People move to rural areas so they won't be bothered by other people's idiosyncrasies. And unfortunately, some people are. And
I understand that, but this individual did the same thing last time. They recited, they cleaned it up, and now we're back where we were before. But is this about one person, or is this about No, this is about a multiple. I'm just naming one property, because Eric mentioned Okay, we're off track
again. That's the only reason. The issue with Scott and what Scott was requesting was reporting from Eric about the various properties. And if we put a property like this one that you're discussing on this list, Scott was asking Eric for information on a regular basis on all of this. We all agree Eric is busy. We all agree Derek does a lot for the town and the community. Eric's only asking us for guidance. Are we gonna ask him for detailed reporting on various properties? And if so Okay. So let's back up. So Eric, do we have a system where we open a file on these properties? Yeah, we do.
Okay. And the building department maintains a file and every point of contact is recorded in the file? Well, the the
zoning agent who's the blight enforcement officer maintains the file. So right now we have probably four or five properties that we're dealing with in one stage or another for one violation or other.
Everything from light to building code stuff. But any contact that he has with the property owners is recorded, right?
Yes, and he's supposed to be sending a copy of it to Dennis O'Brien, so we have a record through the town's attorney also. Are but are these public access files? Extensive I have extensive files on two cases.
Are they public access files? Are they allowed to be shared with the board of selectmen?
With the Board Selectmen, yes, but only in executive session.
So do we have enough going on that we should, at our monthly meetings, have like an executive session where we just get an update about what's going on with these properties?
Is it is that is it is there that much going on that that's warranted? There is there is a lot going on. I'm I'm spending a lot of time on it. I haven't in the past week or so, but I've been I've been involved in other matters. And I could spend a lot more time on it than I do, you know, even even on just these two cases. They're they're very some of these cases are very, very difficult. They're they're they're you know, there's a lot of lot lot of lot of things wrong.
Is How do other how do other talents handle this?
Well, other towns, Wyndham handles it by has been has been working with the blight statute and hoardings for a long time, and they've actually brought in substantial amount of of of fine money. They have but they have full time people working on this stuff. They don't have a a person who's hired for nineteen hours a week to do zoning and also assigned to something like this, which is a, you know, a lot it's a big time consumer. So essentially, I end up doing a lot of the work that, a staff person might be doing because he's so involved with zoning. And Okay. So we're both pretty good.
I guess again, my question, do you think that the fines would cover hiring more people to work on this?
Well, the fines might cover hiring. I would, I wouldn't hire another attorney. What I would do is hire, you know, you know, depending on your, you know, your need for full time staff or another part time person. Maybe you you could hire a part time person whose time is dedicated to enforcing the blight ordinance until we get, some of these real problem properties fixed up.
Okay. So what's can we talk about properties in every town. You're right. Can we talk about this at our next meeting then with Scott here as you requested Jeff so that we can maybe ask him how far he wants to go with this, if he wants to start finding everybody to cover this or not? Because we're either going to find everybody to cover the cost or we're gonna just kind of have to deal with what's being done. Because I would guess if then if we ask Dennis that other board of slackman's probably don't get involved in this as much.
And that's because they have budgets, so you you have to make it a you have to make it a money making venture and hire the appropriate level of staff. And if that's what you choose you to do, you go and do it. This is that a motion, Jeff? Second it. I second your motion. My first motion was, let's wait for Scott because he's really invested in this. I like your saying. Eric needs just guidance, and he's trying to sit there and be nice, where he's sitting there saying, Scott is asking me to do this, I want everybody else to weigh in on it and I don't want to offend Scott and Scott Scott is really passionate he, he cares a lot about the town and what it looks like so he has a probably a list. He probably has a personal list of
20 or 30 properties that need to be taken. What you're saying is that your money making venture motion would work. So again, Yes, second it would
work. It would not make anyone happy, but it would work. Just like everything else in this community, we need to make money vent money making ventures to fund and supplement the tax revenue that's generated. 20 people like everything else.
So but no, I'm ready to pass on this until Scott comes back.
I I'd like to report on this. I'd like to report next month on the two cases that were I'm handling with Jim Halsey.
Would love to go to the executive session and get information on those two cases next month. Yeah. I won't talk for any more than three hours.
All right. Let's go. Come on. Just just where we started from. When we started from, Adrian, just cost me dinner time. So it and that just took a half an hour. Just cost me What do you want? I'm gonna Uber eat something for you right now. Uber does not you Uber does not deliver where I'm sitting. I guarantee you that. So let's go. Really? Are you in jail? Almost. They deliver everywhere. Let's go.
Eric, where do Let's go. Okay. So next thing up, and the next couple are kind of interrelated. So our big bus has problems again. We just got it out of the shop to tune of like $5,800, and it's leaking oil again from a different spot. It would be expensive to actually fix it. It's also having problems accelerating. Dubois said he thought they probably needed a new fuel filter. And then the other problem would be about $3 to fix to deal with the oil leak. This thing has reached the end of its life expectancy. We're just throwing money at this thing at this point, and we're not running it enough to justify our costs in owning it. So, the registration expires in August. I would like to basically retire the thing at that point. Can deal with the oil leak isn't that severe. Can deal with the oil leak until then. I just don't see throwing more money after it.
As So far as we can't buy a new bus, right? Because we've had problems trying to buy one. Can we look at getting a used one or something? Or what is the plan to deal with this from a transportation point of view? Okay. So,
as in 2024, we have been informed that we will now get our 12 passenger bus in 2024. So, what happened is it got delayed. And then this year, there were no chassis built or there were no frames built to put a chassis on to deliver. So, it got put off. What the state did is they took this year's allotment of federal funding and instead of issuing any more applications to purchase buses, they said, okay, everybody we promised a bus for the last two years that we haven't delivered, we're spending all of this money adding it to that pool so we can pay for the new cost of the buses.
So, we have been informed that the bus is still fully funded and that we will get it supposedly next year. So, that's when we're getting the additional bus.
In the short That's out there. Just I'm just going to ask, and I understand you're we have enough equipment to deal with the seniors, deal with the AES requests and COOLs requests?
I personally think no, but Okay. Then I You know, I would like Kathy to weigh in on that because she's the one that handles actually getting the request from the seniors
on that. Where are the 12 passenger bus? So, Kathy, weigh in on this, please. Do you have do you have vehicles enough to help seniors and do the school and cool program?
Right now, I'm working on doing just that. I am able to help cool the month of June when they start back in cool camp June 19 through the thirtieth, I'm able to cover that. However, there are some days when my driver who can drive the that big bus cannot do it. The problem is, and Amy has asked me this, can we can she when she gets her license in July, can she use the small bus? And right now, the answer is no because I have both vehicles out. However, having said that, I heard what you said tonight that I will be getting a car. If that comes to fruition, let's just take a date July eighth, ninth. That'd be great. Because if that happens, then I can say other than taking the seniors, I have five trips booked for them, and I also have every Tuesday they have to go shopping, and every Wednesday they have to do food share and food share, and Fridays they need it for lunch. So, we can work around that. We can work around Amy, And I'm willing to do that, but I'm asking what time frame are you thinking that you will have a car put in the driveway
so we can actually use it?
Well, we just voted on it tonight to see. I can't answer that question until we put a deposit on it. I can't answer that question till we have a deposit. So hopefully, if I can go tomorrow and get a check from you tomorrow and take it to the dealer, or do we what what else do we have to do? Tell me how much you want to check for. Alright.
I will I will be in your office tomorrow morning.
Okay. I I suggest that you coordinate with Kathy Palazzi because she is very good at getting what she wants. Maybe you could give her the name of the salesperson in charge of getting you the vehicle, and she could check-in with him regularly.
Okay. So gonna check with two dealers and see who can get it to us the quickest. But And don't forget to get going to Lynch.
Jeff, don't forget to ask for the senior discount as well. We're already getting it an invoice now, Kathy. Thank you, Jeff. So that's the answer to your question. I don't know if I helped you, Jeff, at all, but that's what we are right now. Right now, I may not be able to do every day, but we are going to work it out I'm going to work hard tomorrow I'm going to look at it again and see what I can find out for her for July, that I can help her make sure those kids get to cool camp.
Okay, basically Eric your your your information here says it will require us $3,000 to register that vehicle again?
Probably 3,500 because I think it needs a new it needs a fuel filter repair also at a minimum. Right. So, you're looking at 3,500 to 4,000 to keep the big one on the road. But for how long? I don't know. Because I mean, we're just, now we're having fairly continual problems with that sucker. And the question is, do we put the money into it? Do we just take the thing out back and shoot it? And then if we do or we don't, do we consider the commitments to the pool program and the school? Because both of those are up for grabs right now.
Yes, you do. You put the 3,500 into it because you're here. You have you sit there and that's what you do. I know it might not be you might not want to do it, you do it. So unless vehicle unless Jeff Murray finds out the vehicle comes in tomorrow and gets done, you honor your commitments to to to school and to cool because that's the right thing to do.
Okay. So you want a contract for summer transportation for AES. You want one produced because we don't have a contract right now. We don't have anything right now. Please,
a one page one that's not very difficult to wrap our heads around and do so. Well, I.
Not for nothing, but. We are we positive Kathy that we can accommodate if we get you a car by then.
Yes. Other than I told you, I I would work it out with shopping. I have to take the people shopping on Tuesday, and they don't get back till 12:30. I need to get the cool kids to to lake at 11:00 in the morning, and I need to get a vehicle to get them back at 12:45. So that's what I'll be looking at tomorrow, and tomorrow I can give you a definite answer.
Well, maybe we could pull everybody on the bus at the same time and cool could pay the seniors to watch the kids.
Maybe you're right. That sounds good. And the seniors. Just a thought. Trying to multitask here. I'll do the best I can.
Thank you, Kathy. So Eric, let's just put something in there that you know that the the town would will do its best to accommodate the schedule, blah blah blah, you know.
So the question is, are we going to authorize Eric to put $3,500 potentially put $3,500 into the vehicle?
Hey, back up a second. Valerie just put something up that she has a summer wheelchair. Can somebody unmute her so she can elaborate on that?
She has a wheelchair student that needs the van. That's what she this is about. But is it summertime?
Yes. All summer are here. They've asked July 6, July 11, July 13, July Excuse me, Jeff. May I speak, please? Yeah. You can hear it. Of course. Thank you, Jeff.
Yes. Taylor has contacted me, a while back and asked that we provide seven days in July, a Tuesday, Thursday, to take the little boy, disabled boy, and take him to school. And I automatically said, yes. I would work it out. I did not realize that Eric had not been informed, and I apologized to Eric because I did not know that. But I did contract with Taylor verbally. I contacted and sent her an email that that, yes, we would do it. I have put it on the schedule. I have the driver. I have the bus, and I'm hoping you'll give me permission to do that.
Again, it's one town. It's money that's gonna be spent in another bucket
if we don't do it. If we don't spend that $3,500, is there any way we could contract with Eastcott or something for the student through those days? Well, let's let's Or with another service or another service? Unmute, Superintendent Bruni.
I is saying $300 a day. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven days. And is that both ways or $300 one way? One way.
One way, Jeff. One way. So it's $600 a day. Accurate? Am I doing my math correct? Yes.
Okay. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. $4,200. I can do it for less than I have it already scheduled on Eric Eric is saying we can't do it for less because we have to do the repair. This is all about a repair. This is has nothing to do with the driver. Yes. We can do it for less for hourly rate, but it's a question of if if the actual repairs are in the range of what Eric's saying, it's probably better to spend the money on EastCon, but that's that's Eric, really find out. Take it to whoever to get an evaluation of the number. If if are are you just throwing a number out, or you actually went and got a quote? We have a quote. So so, Kathy, you got a quote for $3,500. Yeah.
Oh. I mean, we just spent $5,800 to get this thing, And we're already a month later, throwing more money in it. You know, it's something I've said roughly a year ago that the thing has reached the end of its life expectancy. Can we keep plugging the thing along? Yes, but at what point do we pull the plug? What happens if we blow an engine? You know, I mean.
Well, you're not wrong, Eric, where we're at, we're in a very it's a a it's a situation that's Kathy got a new vehicle a year ago. I know. So so is almost three years ago. This is this is just it's it's a it's a situation that we shouldn't be in. You would have you would have retired this vehicle if the if the new vehicle had come in. So we're we're just trying to limp this along.
Have we looked at trying to buy another I mean, a small bus that could that could accommodate this? Like, you know, a used bus versus a new one. Have we looked at that?
There's not a lot of used vehicles around for anything, are there? Yeah. Usually, everything I was looking at is pretty run into the ground just like what we have now. So we're just gonna kind of repeat the same problems. I don't know if it'd be possible if we could just, can we rent a, like, eight passenger van or a
12 passenger van? You need one that has wheelchair access.
Yeah. Something for a month. Or not even a wheelchair access. If we could use the wheelchair one to haul the student, We had another higher capacity van that we could use to haul the seniors, like a 12 passenger or something from a rental agency just for a month, just to look into it. If it was $1,000 $5,100 it's still going to work out cheaper. Agreed.
Okay, Kathy, can you look into a rental of a van or Eric? Which one wants to do that? I mean, I know Avis Avis rents them out of Bradley.
There's a bunch of rental agencies that rent those vehicles.
I can do that tomorrow if Eric wants me to.
So, Jeff, you're gonna figure out if we can get the RAV four, and then we're but let let me let me step back. Even if we get the RAV four, if we we stop using this vehicle, do we have anything that's wheelchair accessible? Still Yes,
we still have two vehicles that are wheelchair accessible. We have a van and we have another 12 passenger bus. So, mean, presuming nothing breaks, you know, but I mean, we are compromising in the sense that we're giving up on some medical transports to supply the pool program and to supply the AES. So, I just want you aware of that, that that's what we're talking about. Now, we will be able to supplant that as soon as we have a RAV4, And that should get us out of the worst as long as neither of our other two vehicles break, we should be okay. Not great, but okay. Okay.
So first thing is, Jeff Murray, let's sit there and see if we can get the RAV4 as early as possible. Let's look into renting potential vehicle. And then I guess the question ends up being, if all of those things fail and they mathematically don't work, do we just put $3,500
in? Those are the three options. None are good. Today is June 12. Our meeting next month is when? Probably July 6, right, when the school needs their first pickup.
July 10. July no. July July 7, I think. Darn it. I gave you the dates. What what's the dates? Get July 6 is the first time I need that
And our meeting sixth. Our meeting is July 10. So does anyone have does anyone have a problem with authorizing Eric to go through the three steps in the group to sit there and see which is the most cost effective and then just execute the most cost effective? We're basically going to sit there and go, Okay, the RAV4, if we can do it and move the student and assist cool, then Eric doesn't have to spend the money. You're also telling me that that van is running, Or it's running poorly?
It is running, I think we're going to have to use it to transport a couple senior events right now. So, were gonna limp it along till August 1 anyway, unless it fully blows up.
Are we talking about the van or the bus? The bus. Okay. Alright. I thought there was something wrong with the van.
Okay. No, as far as I know, the van and the small bus are both running moderately well at the moment.
Okay. So just, Eric, go through the steps, try to find out for a rented van if we can do that and it's cost effective. That's great. Jeff Murray, you're going to find out if we when we can potentially get a vehicle, the RAV four. And then we probably will need to do this somehow as a group, just communicate about potential repairs if it all fails. I would limp along until you determine you absolutely need to spend the money. And if you have to spend the money, we as a committee spend money. It's just my take. Yeah. And we we gotta get that contract together. Correct. Okay. Let's keep going. Eric?
Alright. So on that case, I will put together a AES renewal contract for the summer. And aside from that, we're on the minutes. One
one last thing. When is Amy Knox you you know, we had a meeting that we voted to put Amy Knox in and get her certified. Is that not happening?
July 7. She goes for her test July 7. Right now, she's being Right now, she's being trained. Okay.
Alright. So she is on the payroll of the tenth. Okay. Alright.
Right now, we're still we only have one driver that can drive either the summer program, pool kids, and that same person is the only person that can drive the student for AES because AES still does not have any of their own drivers, nor does the cool program, both of which both entities agreed to have a long time ago. Okay.
But but Amy, we we made accommodations to get Amy trained, so she's getting approved on July 7. So May progress. She'll
pass. I have total faith in her. But, Jeff, please understand what I said earlier. Yes. She will get her license. There's no doubt about it in my mind because, I have our other driver right now, Susan, training her. She's doing a great job. So I have no problem with that. My problem will be starting July 9, I don't I don't foresee that she can use our vehicle right now to get the kids to the camp because my driver has to go is taking care of the student. Understood. Understood. Unless
and still, I can't have my driver who's the only one qualified. I can't have her driving the van to take the student at the same time she's driving the bus to take the cool kid. So you have to let us work it out because we know what we're doing. I know what I know. I know what I'm doing.
Then work it out. And then our issue is our issue is do we spend the money to repair the bus? That's that's all we're trying to do. How many how many how many
or how many weeks do we need the the van for? Is it a whole month? Is it a whole summer? Is it is it two months?
Yes. The month for for for the AES student, it's seven times in July. You it's in your packet, the exact dates. For for the cool, it's June after the kids start, June 19, and it'll be through July and part of August.
Can I interrupt for a second here? My thought is when Kathy's looking at her schedule, the student gets dropped off at AES first. The cool kids are not going to the lake right away. Correct. There's gonna be some time in between where the student gets dropped off. The cool kids go to the lake. Then the driver goes back, brings the student home and goes back and picks the kids up. So I'm I'm guessing that this will work out timing wise. Yes. And I know that Amy's gonna, you know, work around that with her, with getting the kids back and forth from the lake. So it's not like a bus run-in the morning where, you know, the bus is leaving and going around and picking kids up for an hour. It I'm envisioning that the schedule is gonna work out.
Yeah. We're gonna be flexible, and it's all gonna work properly. Yes. My I still come back to the same question that this Eric is raising. Do we have the right vehicle? And will we have the right vehicle to do that?
I'm guessing. I don't think that there's I mean, I can't speak for the the cool program and however however many kids are gonna be there every week. If they have to do a couple of runs with a van instead of the bus, I think they'll make it work. I don't think they had a bus in the past. I think they, I think Michelle Vale was driving the van, but I I don't know. I I'm sure that they have to She was driving the 20 passenger bus. She was driving the bus. Okay. Well, I mean, if if they have to use the van, I think they'll be. They'll be okay. I don't know, unfortunately. I'm
seeing prices around $3,000 a month for a van rental. The problem is most of them are sold out over the time period that we're looking.
Were you are you looking through, like, DATCO, or what are you looking through?
Who's the vendor? Looking through commercial vendors. So Avis Commercial, Budget Commercial, Enterprise Commercial. They have 12 passenger rental vans for like group trips.
Okay. So that's that's a potential option, but they're sold out. So that's Yeah. And that's going be the problem is most of these things get booked quite a far in advance. But Okay. Alright. Yeah. So we have to work together to figure that one this one out. It's got to get done. And the best case scenario would be that we get to use the vehicle that's in question up until everybody is satisfied and then it fails. Right, Eric? I guess. Okay.
Alright. Let's let's move on from this to are you done with everything? I mean, you still have the panel to review the RFPs. We did that. We talked about the purchase of the squad rescue pumper for the fire department. Right? Didn't we do that? Yep. You've gone through all those. Right. And my administrator's report, so you're good there. So item 14 is the approval of the meeting minutes for 05/08/2023. I make a motion that we approve them. I'll second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Excellent.
15, the tax collector's report. I didn't see refund requests. Did we have any, Eric?
Nope. She did not give us any refund requests. I didn't think so. So
I mean, we were pretty good on total collections for this fiscal year. We were really close on all of the categories. Yep.
We only have a total of less than $200,000 to collect from the current fiscal year that we're collecting at. So okay. Now let's get to the next part. So where am I at? Any questions on the Tax Director's report for Eric? No? Excellent. Any questions on all of the other departmental reports? The last one, which is the best one, was prepared by Kathy Palazzi, and that was senior transportation. Alright. Thank you. Let's move on to correspondence. Eric, do you have any?
No. I just want to say the one really good thing we have is we have the full public works department back at work. Everybody that's a town employee is off the disabled list at the moment. So we're firing on pretty much all of our cylinders, which is good.
Right. And then I'm going to skip 18. I'm going to go to public speak before we move on to executive. Jeff?
Yes, sir. Excuse me, Jeff. Yes. Did you address the matter that Paula brought up about the three on three soccer tournament? Yeah, added two things. I am so sorry. 13 I I you know. Then I should be running the meetings. No, no, no. Boy, 13 gs signage veteran veterans field veterans Memorial Field.
Okay. So last week we had a meeting with some of our board members and Eric regarding the the gentleman that's using the field at Long Hill, and he was asking if he could put some signage up on the fence promoting his soccer club. So Scott, you know, weighed in on his concerns with that. Then I said, well, let's let's all have a conversation tonight if. If we are agreeing on that, then I told him we would. Will let him know once we kind of talked about that tonight. He's he's thinking about putting some banners and signs up on the fence at Long Hill promoting. His Vail soccer club, and he was also saying that he talked to Ram youth soccer as well. I did not talk to the President of Ram youth soccer, but he said he talked to her and said that he was willing to put up and pay for a banner up on the fence as well for her and ran me soccer. So I just want to have a discussion to see how everybody felt about signage up there. Pros, cons, thoughts.
I really have a problem with those types of signs. What I have a problem with is if it becomes an issue and they're starting to multiply and there's other organizations that get on without us doing it because they were told they could put signage up. I don't want somebody to sell the signage for the benefit of their organization and not compensate the town for the effort that they're putting forth to maintain that field. That's it. I have no problem with putting it aside. Put it up for the season, take it down. Put it up for the season, take it down. It's not a problem. I would agree as well.
So I just have a couple things. One is that hammer when they were using the softball field did put a sign up on the hammer field when they used it. So that's one point. I would also say that I'm fairly neutral on it. I don't personally have a problem with the signage, but Scott, who's the person who has been most involved with the field is very adamant that he does not want to see the signage up. So again, that's not my opinion, but I feel that it's worth voicing his opinion because he was pretty,
pretty adamant about it. Yeah. After talking to Scott, I kind of I psych I've sort of side with Scott on this one because, I mean, we let one person do it and we open up a can of worms and you don't know. May get a bunch of other people that wanna put signs up. And then when do we start saying no?
Well, listen, if somebody is renting the field and they're cooperating with the town to run a program, then those are the people we say yes to. And if they're not, then we say no. Yeah. But And I and to your point, they're renting the field. They're not buying advertising space on the fence. Or or we turn it into a If they're running if they're renting And we rent just the signage space.
Say that again. Most of the people that are gonna come there are gonna come there to play that soccer league. They're not gonna come there because of the sign. They're gonna go there because there's a soccer game going on and those people were just interested. Townspeople.
There are multiple ways to get the words out to townspeople, whether it's signage on a fence, Facebook groups, you know, direct contact with other people that are in that sport. You need that in order for progress to be successful, they have to get the word out as many different ways as possible. And the whole point of this is to do something for Andover youth. So we're doing that. Why aren't we using every available avenue to let people know it's there? You know?
Well, does when did Paul, when does he need to know?
I mean, he doesn't even have any programs. This is more for the fall. Yeah, this he was gonna put it up. He was suggesting for the fall season. So maybe we can talk about this next month when Scott's back. Absolutely. I love that idea. When someone's committed to a
to an issue, we let them be the lead speaker. I'm in.
Alright. I'm I would like to I mean, I already know Scott's stance, but I think if everybody's I'd listening like to debate him on that one because I honestly
have no problem with someone putting up a sign. And I have no problem with the recreation commission selling space down there to put up signs to the local landscaper that wants to advertise to the people that are walking the track. I don't have a problem with that kind of stuff. That's me. You know, As Adrian said, use what you got. Okay, let's go next point. Next one, the 13H, three on three summer tournament.
Okay, so there was a town resident that came to me who I know and he is offering opportunity for kids in our district to attend a summer program that he's willing to run with someone else down at Long Hill. So the opportunity is it's three days a week. I believe three and a half hours and he's charging a fee for the players. It's kind of like a three on three verse three tournament style camp for kids and he he wants to do two weeks. Soccer. Pardon soccer,
yes soccer. I I left that out the best sport ever soccer so.
He's he's looking Is to this American soccer, or is this European soccer? Really? No. Was in football.
Except I found out you know, I found out in Ireland, they actually call it soccer. I did not know that, but they call it soccer because of Gaelic football because football to them is Gaelic. Soccer is soccer. England calls it just football. Just fun facts. Go ahead. Alright. Cheers. Cheers, man. Something so
we we originally talked about this couple of concerns came up, so just wanted to make sure that we have a discussion tonight and answer any questions, comments, or thoughts. Adrian and Dennis worked on a contract to have this individual be an independent contractor. The payments would come into the town hall. This is this is a town of Andover opportunity for student fifth, sixth, seventh graders, and we would be collecting payment. And the promotion, all the marketing pieces are gonna be worked on by the individual that's going to be running this. Thoughts, comments, concerns? Let's let's talk about this.
I guess I'll start off if you want. Paul called me and talked to me about it. She said as you know, and we were we were good with it as long as the rec commission got behind it is what the record commission voted on. Then I knew what the rec commission spoke about, and what their decision was is they were gonna permit this individual to have the tournament. The town was gonna collect the entry fees, and they were gonna turn them over to this individual, and he was gonna manage the money and the payments to the entities for trophies, referees, and etcetera. When I saw the contract come through, it looked like we were using town resources, I. E, the treasurer and the town clerk to process these payments and pay our vendors. I don't know what Eric's thoughts are on that, but I think our treasurer is pretty busy right now to be processing payments for the soccer. And that's not what the rec commission this contract is not what the rec commission voted on. So we have a discrepancy there. So So that's why I raised the flag to you the other day. And I said, look, this is not this does not match what the Red Commission agreed to do. And I don't wanna sign something that, you know, they did not agree to to to participate in as far as the trade in committing the treasurer and the town clerk to doing extra work that they didn't, you know, vote. The commission didn't I
listen. I agree with you to an extent. The problem is it's not up to the rec commission to decide whether the treasurer's office can or cannot or has the staffing bandwidth to handle something. It's not up to them. The Guard Commissioners should be deciding whether or not something is good for the town or not. Either you want soccer or football, whatever the heck you gotta call it. You want that for the town kids or you don't. So if you do, then you support it and you do it in the best way or in the way that's best for the town. They they made agreement where if they were gonna, they were gonna have this person collect all the money. It was gonna it was but it was it was rec affiliated, but you know he was gonna they were gonna collect the entry sheets, then give him the money. The problem with that is now we've got a program that's being run. We don't actually have any control of the money at all. So we don't if if these people don't get paid, or if there's a if there's a problem in the program or somebody gets hurt, we're letting somebody else handle all those funds and the town of Andover is going to look bad if there is a problem now. Not for nothing, but there was some concern from the Rec Commission specifically, you know Carol had had some issues in the past with this individual running a basketball program now. I don't know the details of that, so I'm not going to get into that too much. But my understanding is that there was, you know, you know, he was maybe overwhelmed with the program that he was running at the time and, you know,
was not tracking what was coming in and what was going out, and there was an issue with something getting paid or not paid. If the town is going to affiliate themselves with anybody and we are going to sponsor these types of things, and we are sponsoring it by default of staying the rec commission is okay in this, right? So, as soon as you decide you are going to sponsor it, you are responsible for it. So why would it be responsible for something that's not true? I mean, with the Viking events, we ran and collected the money and everything. The town wasn't involved in any of it. We ran it all ourselves. All the fun and the fun and the fun and
Exactly. Though, but they don't it's not the town of Andover the doing that race. Right? And that town of Andover is not collecting any of the money and then handing it over to the Viking people, are they? No. And then we're not. And I wasn't employing our treasurer on our town clerk either.
Right. And but this person is. So if they're Yeah. We're and we're getting and the town is only we're gonna use those resources, and we're gonna come and you know what? We're gonna make off of this about $400 How do you figure? Because we're gonna get about 15% of his entries, and that's what that's what that's what the bond's gonna be about. 15%. Go ahead.
What's that? Oh, go ahead. You said 15%. 15. Yeah. I know. I wrote the contract. He was at ten. I got him to 15. I know what he was offered. But what I'm trying to tell you is if we're gonna use this resources in this amount, our town clerk and our treasurer and our field for for $400 to let this individual come in for profit and come and pay us $400 I got a problem with that.
Well, it could be $400 or it could be $1,500 It depends how many entry fees he gets.
Right? Yeah. Well, if he gets 1,500 if he gets his max entry fees, he's gonna walk away with about 4,000 or $5,000
no. It's actually split between him and other people. It's him and a partner. Yeah. But combined combined, they're gonna pull away with about $5,000.
Listen. If the town wants to run the whole thing and make the money, I don't care. That's up to the town, but we I don't see anybody stepping up to do that. I'm just trying to protect the town and the employees. Understand, but so the town isn't going to offer something unless it's a nonprofit like the biking thing? No, I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying the town needs to be if we're going to use the town resources to this level, if this person the the bike events and the running events that we put on in the past are nonprofit. All the money's been turned over directly to the town. Exactly. Now we have somebody coming in that's a for profit entity using our resources, and we're getting 15%, and they're using our fields.
We don't have anybody. We have resources in town to run these events. We don't. We don't have people stepping forward saying, I want to run this program. We do have somebody doing pickleball. We have somebody doing this, but we don't have anybody stepping up to do soccer. So I I think it's unfortunate, and I I do I'm sure we do, Adrian. My son participates in Ram soccer all the time. There's comp teams. There's all kinds of soccer, not in Andover.
Of course. He's playing on the Andover team, regional team. It starts again in the Guys, guys, let's just sit there and go. So, Jeff, if your issue I mean, I'm just echoing Scott's concerns that he he forwarded it to us. No. I I get it, but I disagree with it. I I think if it's good We for the disagree. Kids But I don't care if Sony makes money as long as it's good for the kids. I'm telling you right now, you're opening up. You know, we did have a problem. Had to get the Listen, food in the Jeff, we're already doing it. Yeah, but we already had. We already had an issue. What about the guy with the running race that was walking out of here with 3,000 to $4,000 And he was saying he was donating money to the food pantry.
But that's the same thing. Right. And so in this particular case, the town collects the money so we know we're going to get paid. But my other question would be 400 My other question would be, what's going on with the softball? Is that a nonprofit? Yes.
It's completely nonprofit. The guy doesn't get paid. Yeah. It's like just like little league baseball. So he doesn't get paid to do any of that stuff?
Those are those are real volunteers. Yeah. This is an this is an exception. What you're what you're proposing is an exception. Is what I this is what I believe the town should focus on on the field is utilize the resource to make as much money as we possibly can to maintain that field and pay for it all. That's why I'm not adverse to using the fence as advertising space. In this case, this individual, you know, this individual, you can't look at it in the negative, you can't look at this individual in this as negative, because all he's trying to do is give kids an opportunity to participate in a sporting event during the summer when they don't normally do it. He's asking for profit. He's not doing it for get free. It. I get it. Can
I ask a question? If, if it was me running it, would that be a problem? I feel like the overarching issue is because there was a potential issue in the past. I I think that we have to look at the big picture.
And and let's talk about the overriding issue because I'm closest to that issue of anybody on this call. Well, Jeff, why even have a rec commission if we're not gonna do what the rec commission voted on doing? The rec commission. The rec commission can overstep it. We're just going to go and do whatever we want anyway. The black commission overstepped its balance by including whether or not the the the the town was okay with collecting the money or not in the treasurer's office. That is not their purview. Not their purview. Their purview is why they're yours? Is it yours, Adrian, without bringing it to It's my the Board of Selectments. That's why we're talking about it now. Yeah. So Well, that's why I counted the last couple months. The town clerk.
Collects all of the money for rec basketball. I realized that it's a town program. I do get that. Right? So I understand that we're collecting the money for rec basketball. This is a little different. It's a little different. Right? Someone else is running the program, right? And we could we could sit there and get a vote. Mean, honestly, that's honestly what the rec commission should be doing is running these types of programs and getting people to volunteer to run these types of programs. Okay, we don't have that just yet. But now let's sit there and say we allow this to happen. The town gets $400
to put into its its rec commission budget. Or if get or if they get max $1,500
Or max $1,500 Or you could always At least we understand, Jeff. That's my So sorry. Make it 35%. You could.
That's what That that is Exactly. I have no problem with that. But the town employees, if we're gonna use these resources, we need to be make sure our we're uncompensated for our time. I love these conversations. Now we're starting to think the way that I I'm with it. With it, Jeff Marie. I'm with But this 15% was just if we were collecting the money and letting Jeff,
it's also a. Oh, it wasn't. It wasn't. It's awesome. It was 10%. It was 10%. It doesn't matter. We just start.
Someone's looking to do something. Right. And I and I thought we're trying to, you know, the idea was that I didn't think it worked at 10% and so I, you know, I actually reached out to the individual and said, this doesn't work at 10% for the town. You're asking us to do too much work for not enough money. It just doesn't work. And his concern is. And I would go inside with Jeff Murray that what
should happen what should happen is we collect the fees, and we take the town's 15% and turn the remain the remainder over to, to, to the individual and to the contractor and say pay all the bills because he's paying for the T shirts, he's paying for the the referees, he's paying for anything else that he believes is required to run the the tournament correctly.
That's what I say. I just say we collect the fees, we take our percentage, we give them the money, we move on. But you're not gonna be covered by insurance if something gets hurt on that field. Why? Why? Yeah. You would
need commercial insurance to do that. Let's reach out to Kermit. His part, You can reach out to Kerma, you're not going be covered. If he does
Okay, okay, okay, let's ask one last thing. Kerma has a, like $150 policy that we can sit there and it's 15% plus the cost of the supplemental policy through KIRMA? Say that again, Jeff. They have a what? If I remember correctly, KIRMA had supplemental policies that people could reach out and pay for for events. Kerma has some type of An event type policy. Yeah. And so you tell them it's 15% plus you have to get coverage.
You know what else? I mean, the other individual that was down there, he provided his own insurance, correct? The other tournament he does. Yeah. Yeah. So would it be hard to ask him to provide his insurance for these events?
Yes, because I would tell you he probably is not set up as an entity like this, I don't know his business structure but he's just a dad.
He's not he's not I get that I get that but I want to make sure that the town is
Right, Jeff, he's not set up like that. He's not set up like that. That's why we wanted to have the town, if the town contracts him to run it, then the town insurance covers it. But if he has to provide the insurance, it's dead in the water, you know? So we were thinking, right, and we evaluate this after the first time. We thought,
we evaluated this summer and we said, hey, next time we have to do it this way or fix it. And if we want to see, it gives you a chance to see whether it works for him, whether it works for us. And, you know, is it too much work? Is not bad? Okay, if it's more work than we anticipated, then we increase the percentage for the next time around, you know, and maybe he turns and says, well, I didn't get enough people to do it. So, I don't want to do it again. But it was an opportunity to give something to the kids. That's all we're trying to do. And we sent the contract back to everybody once we thought we had something that was workable so that we didn't end up in the situation where we did with COOL, where we had 100 contract for crying out loud. So when we tried to come up with something everybody, at least on
the initial interest, could agree modifications because he came up with a contract that didn't work. Sent it to I tried to rewrite it. I sent it to Dennis. We took what I had and turned it into something that was functional for the town, and we went from there. But that's why it came back to everybody to say, hey, does this work for you? And that's where we have this conversation. But we thought 15% versus somebody mentioned 35%, that we thought 15% was a good starting point for the town to get a feel for it and also him to get a feel for it. Because if he only gets 30 kids, you know he's not. He's not making a ton of money either. And honestly, I don't care if he makes money as long as it's in the best interest of the town. We get enough money to cover our you know what we're doing. I think that's the important part and again giving something back to the kids. So that's my take on it. But Adrian, right now at 15%, we are not getting enough money back. We are not. We don't know that. We don't know that.
15% of this whole to run all the payments and everything. It doesn't matter if he scales it or not. It's still not going be enough because even if you scale it, you're still going have the wear and tear on the field. You're still going to have the, we're going have more interest in the process. There's no wear and tear on the field. I worked all the hours with Scott. He agreed that it was gonna be fine. We're closing that one spot where he's concerned about the bare spots. So
there's not extra wear and tear on the field. Calculated those hours in with what Rich Calarco suggested.
There's always Paul, just just me. There's always wear and tear. I know. What that's what we should be selling for. We should be and listen. I I am I am personally, I'm supporting it because you got a guy that's willing to go out and and and do the work to sit there and get kids involved. That is the reason why the community should support an employee of the town to do the rec commission work because these are all things that someone could do and set up. Pay coaches to sit there and do the the work if they have to, but we could sit there and make money to pay for their salary to sit there and do positive things for the community. That's what we should be doing. Have no problem supporting this until we all come around and say, yes. We have assets like the gym, like the field that can be utilized for good and and help fund town needed resources.
Great. So call the let's call the let's call the vote. Well, was the motion? The
motion is that we should agree to this contract for the three on three tournament with the stipulation that Eric reach out and see if Kramer has an event policy that we should or could acquire, in which case that would be, I would also want that deducted from the expenses.
Okay, so I'm gonna second that, but I wanna ask a question, further question very quickly to understand. We are requiring the treasurer's office to pay all of the payments and the vendor checks that are provided for this term.
Yeah, we should be looking at about eight payments out.
That's including referees for every event. Don't know what the referee count's gonna be. The referee counts, you're gonna have to issue checks to all these referees too. Right.
I meant for line expenses. For the referees, I don't know how many is involved. Adam, that's not my field of expertise. You might know better than I would, Jeff. How many reps would be? What do we need? Eight? I don't know. So we're talking 16 checks and we're talking a deposit of a minimum of hopefully 30 payments
from from parents maximum of 65 from parents. Well, another thing too. We are we gonna have to give these referees 1099s as well? I I don't know.
If no, because they're gonna be I mean, that's be $106,100
dollars. So, no, we do not. We do have to $10.99 him and his partner,
but not the refs, not the other people that are being paid because it's under I thought he I thought he was gonna pay the refs out out of what out of his 85%.
No. So I think worry about that. The 80 the 85% and the the 85 and the 15 is net expenses. Expenses first, then everybody splits.
No. Absolutely not. Now I'll vote no. It's 15% for the town off the top.
15% for the town off the top for accepting the applications, processing the applications, and that's about it.
Is that how And the That's how it's written. Responsible for. That's why Is how that
I'm not. Well, mean, this is this is outside of the normal scope. This is something different. But as far as I'm concerned, if $100 comes in, the town the town accepted the application. It's getting $15 for accepting the application. It's just a very small amount of money for the use of the field. It really is. And I'm with Jeff Murray on that. I am with him. But I am sitting there telling you that if it was me, what I would rather see is $100 comes in, the town takes 15% and remits the $85 to the individual and to the business and the business does all of the transactions. I would support that. I would support that 100%.
That's how I would sit there and say that's the most
I wrote hey. I understood the last draft of the contract. That's the intent. That's the our treasurer is gonna process the payments.
Yeah. Right. Is is that in the contract? Yes. Where where is that? That must be I I didn't write I didn't rewrite the whole thing, but I don't remember that. I thought that was done by the recognition. Okay.
So you would want him to pay everything, not the treasurer?
Yeah. Because what you're doing what you're doing is you're eliminating the the the additional work. So what is the work that's on the town? The the work is to accept an application, to accept a check from a resident or somebody that's participating, depositing that check, and then turning around and making one transaction out to the group to sit there and run the activity. Understand your issues, Adrian. I do understand your issues if certain certain things happen and it's a town event and what's the liability related to that. I do get that. I would only And we're hiring and we're hiring two people that run it, and we're gonna pay them $10.99.
That's how we're doing it. So I'm surprised that the problem becomes
if you transfer the money from the town to him, right? If the checks are made up, then then he has to cover the whole 10 on it. Then he gets a 10 on the attic for the whole amount. He's going have to show his expenses. So I don't have a problem with that, that he just needs to be aware of that. But more importantly, I still think I don't agree with doing it unless there's some sort of insurance. If you're going do it that way, there needs to be insurance covers.
I think I would sit on Eric getting a policy. I would sit there and Jeff Murray. I would sit there and agree with Adrian to cut the checks if it's only eight checks.
It's not that hard. It's not gonna be eight checks though, because there's gonna be so many games. You going have different referees. You're going to have a trophy company. You're going to have shirts.
Yeah, so he had shirts, disposable trophies, refs. And he had the consumables like you know water whatever whatever so. Yeah that. He figured he had you know he gave us like eight or nine line items and then you're absolutely right Jeff, however, many referees would be also a ten ninety nine so so I think you're you're looking at whatever, however many refs you need. Again, I don't know what you need for a three on three tournament over three days. And it's gonna depend on how many kids. You can only have two refs or three refs.
Yeah. Because they can only play a certain number of games at a time, right? Yeah. Well, he's probably gonna have two or three setups, sir. Let's say he has 30 setups. I mean, now this is, no, let's go to Adrian. Let's do the math because we can figure this out. Let's sit there and say he has sixty, sixty kids register. He's going to have 20 games. He can't run 20 games because he can't have 10 reps. He might have five fields. He might have five reps, and then they swap and they put the next kids on and the next kids on. So the refs will continue to work. You know, they might do three or four games in one session if he has enough enough teams. So I
still can't figure out whether you're intending this to all run through the finance department or whether we're collecting the money and just cutting a check to the individual.
I think we're debating that right now. I would I would do it that way, Eric, but my concern is with Adrian is not incorrect. And Dennis, this would be for you. What happens if the individual doesn't pay all the all the entities or doesn't pay them correctly? You know, are we covered just by making payments problem.
I don't see why that would be our problem. Yeah. Because he's contracting directly with those individuals. K.
And that actually puts us on the hook because if we contract for referees and stuff and he goes and makes agreements with people and says the town's gonna pay you, then we're gonna be on the hook for that money.
No. We we I think it's pretty clear in here that and I think Adrian wrote most of this, and I just kinda massaged it. But I thought it was gonna be collected by the town, and that town would take its 15% for taking the applications. And then, just write him a check for the rest of it.
Yeah. It was it was net it was set up net expenses, but all you'd have to do is deduct one line from that.
If we cut one line from it, it would switch it the other way. Okay. So so then let's let's switch it, put forth the contract that that way where it's it's collect the fees, take the 15%, remit the remaining 85% to the organization that's running the tournament, and run the tournament. Yeah. And what we will get an event a one time event policy? Correct. We request we we find out from Kermit on what a one time like, mean, personally, I don't really necessarily know we need that, but, we probably should ask to sit there and see if they if it's available and we can have him acquire that. And so then we would take the You notice I put a release in here. The insurance release it and prepares the sign.
Yes. Yeah. Because you and I both know, Dennis, that releases are only as good as the insurance that's paying somebody before they get pissed off. Everybody's gonna sue whether they got a release in place or not. You know? Oh, I'm already haven't been sued yet. Let's hope we don't get Listen, I I worked at Mount Snow when they got sued for somebody going out of bounds and it literally said on your jacket, on your ski ticket, no out of bounds skiing. They skied out of balance, broke their neck and
come on. Let's not talk about lawsuits right now. Let's keep moving on.
Okay. So we need to make them a remotion and make, well, we have to revise. We have to revise the contract, right? Send Yes. Okay. And send Okay. A new
let's make the motion now so we get it approved.
Okay. You make the motion because my head is still trying to catch up and write down. So we're gonna make the motion to approve the three on three tournament with a revised contract that stipulates the town gets a 15% Gross gross collections.
Yeah. 15% application fee and deposits the money and requires the organizers to get an insurance policy for the event. And the contract will be revised accordingly. Insurance policy through us or through him? Through Kerma?
Through Kerma. If if we don't get it through Kerma, he's not gonna be able to do it. So we have to figure out how to do it's gonna go it's gonna go through us, but he's gonna pay for it. Right? Yes. Out of his 85%? Yes.
Alright. I just wanna understand this because Yeah. You know, I'm gonna have to be the one that re revise it.
Understood. Tell Adrian that you're the you're the de facto member of the board at this point. Adrian's
help and and Paula's help. You're the fifth member of the Beatles. Good one. I
know you're buried. I'll pull it up and make the We are we are Larry, Moe, and Curly. Okay. Yeah. I'll I'll I'll pull it up and second that so we can vote. I'll second. We'll make it work. Alright. Paula seconded. All those in favor? Aye. No. No. No. I beat her on the second. I beat her every time tonight. You can't take that away from me. I'm, like, five and o tonight.
Hey. Wait a minute. He's the lead singer in the band, and I'm just I'm just a group groupie. Alright. I vote I vote yes.
I wanna replay, Paul. I know I beat you on that. K. So,
that was h. Now we're moving on to, correspondence. Do we have anything, Eric? No. We do not.
Number 19, public speak. Let's move through this. Diane Greiner.
She fell asleep. I'm working it. I'm working it. Here I come. Here I come. Too many buttons. Too many buttons. A couple of things I'd like to say. One, no mention was made of the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary activities that have taken place this month. And I think they've done a wonderful job. There's been lots of things, lots of participation, and kudos to the one hundred seventy fifth committee. I think they've done a wonderful job. Thank you, Paula. The other thing is this be Eric. I used to find your full report with the agenda. Is your full report out there someplace that
my full report is in the packet. It's not separate from the packet. Okay, because it used to be available
for people It like would be separate. It is. It's still in the packet. You just have to download the packet. Where's the
I guess right next to the agenda on the calendar.
On the account. Okay. You get it. You get everything we get that's publicly available. Full transparency.
But it's on the calendar. Okay. Because I thought it used to be the agenda and then your your report was underneath that or something.
You know, it's too late to make the packet, so I had to post it separately. This time I actually had it done on time. So, okay,
fine. Thank you. Will look for it because it's always very informative. I find it helpful. The other thing and I'm just making this up. You are going to executive session, and Adrian had asked that the community center senior center would be on that be a topic to be discussed. And can you do that? Is that a specific reason for executive session? Legal. Have engaged an attorney. So yes, we can.
Okay. So you're going talk about the legal issue of it? Yes, ma'am. Okay.
Fine. I just wanted to make sure you weren't just going to be talking other parts of it. So, I wouldn't want to miss that conversation. But okay, and that's pretty much all I have to say. Thank you very much. It's always very informative. Everything that you guys discussed, you do a good job and thank you very much for all you do.
Diane, to your question about that, that's why we had this conversation earlier to publicly air any other concerns we have that are not necessarily directly related to the legal issue.
Okay. And that's the part that's going to be moved to the Board of Ed meeting, right?
What the discussion we had earlier tonight that that you heard at the very beginning of the meeting. Yeah. That was the part that was not legally related. Okay. Everything else would be legally related. So it's Okay. And and thank you, Adrian, for turning on your video for me. Oh, I try it off because if the dog is on me or if my wife is coming in and out, I try to be respectful of that too.
I just think it's respectful to the audience and people to be able to see our elected officials at work, make sure that you're you're not sleeping or taking text or doing other things that you shouldn't be doing.
So I appreciate it. Our our huge viewing audience. Everybody else There will be there they are.
They are. Here we are. We ready? Valerie Bruno. Public speak.
I'm all set for right now. Thank you. Got it. Joanne Ebert.
I just wanted to add one thing on the three on three tournament, the soccer. I think that's a great idea too for the kids, whatever you can bring into town. I just hope that and I didn't see the contract just that there's enough staff members down there. Obviously, with the refs and stuff, I guess that can count and that they're just properly background checked and all of that kind of thing just for safety. Thank you.
Ed, and I'm not sure if it's Ed Serizli or if it's someone other Ed. I'm taking a guess. Senator Serizli here. Can you hear me? Can. Wow. Ed is up this late. Hey, Ed.
Yeah, very quick comment on behalf of the community slash senior center building planning committee, we all look forward to hopefully a soon to be groundbreaking ceremony, as soon as we're done with the review process for planning and zoning, in order that we get most of the heavy duty dirt work done in the summer when the children are away from the property and that we button up most of the dusty dirty work while the kids are away. K. That's from the building committee. Thank you. Alright. Anything else? Anybody else I miss?
Alright, everybody. Thank you very much. We're gonna move into who wants to make a motion to move into executive session? Adrian, why don't you do that? Make a motion to go to executive session at 09:54. And invite Eric and Dennis. I'll second.
Alright. Paula, seconded. And all those in favor, aye. Aye. Eric, if you can stop the recording, kick everybody