Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
May 16, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I know Adrian is in Missouri, so hopefully he has internet. All right, thank you everyone for joining. This is the town of Andover Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Monday, 05/16/2022. So we're going to get started and our first order is we're calling to order and we're going do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag
of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under the law, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all. Thank you.
All right. And now we're going move on to public speak. Mike and Kathy Plazi are up first. We're fine. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Diane Greiner. I'm all set also. Thank you very much.
Elaine Bootkart, I know you're speaking later, but would you like to add to public speak? No, I'll say it all during my segment. You got it, Catherine? No, thanks. Okay, Jerry, how are you, sir?
Hi, Jeff. Good public speak. Do you have anything you want to add to us? Well, if all goes as planned, we'll finish the walkway at the Veterans Monument Park on Saturday, and we're going to install the Battlefield Cross. And if that all goes together well, we hope to put at least one, if not all three benches in. So, Lane, if you happen to be around with a camera and want to take a picture, come on down.
All right, you got it. Jerry, thank you for everything you do. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. I enjoy it. All right. Joanne Ebert. All set. Thank you. Okay. Maria Tillman.
Okay, we'll come back to Maria. Sorry, I'm sorry, I had to unmute myself. It's okay.
Yeah. Just would like to state for the record that the Hop River Homes tax abatement and the lease agreement for the ball field are two separate and unrelated issues. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Diane Choquette.
Hi, the only thing I want to address tonight is when we get to the financial reports, the monthly expenditure report, there's been some significant changes made to it, so I just want to have an explanation of what changes were made and why. That's all. Thanks. Okay. Elizabeth Hoole? I'm good.
You're good? Okay. Kathleen. I do not have a last name. Deroziers and all set. Thank you. Welcome. I have a phone number, ends in 2345.
I'd like you to know that by now that that is me, Dennis O'Brien. Attorney O'Brien. Thank you. For later. Alright. And then we have another one in 5579. That's me. It's Marina. I'm driving home.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much. All right. So let's get started. Jeff and Adrian have joined us. So do we have any additions and deletions to the agenda? I can't get there yet.
Additions. I'd like to see. I'd like to see a conversation about. That was eight. I'd
like to see a conversation about the Memorial Day Parade location. So we'll put that one as a. L.
So just for the for the sake of the employee that's on the town, the call, I'd like to move the financials up so that she doesn't have to sit through the whole meeting.
That's okay. I'm doing the minutes anyway, so I don't mind sitting on it.
So eight l. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, so we'll make a motion to add eight L, the Memorial Day Parade to our agenda. All those in favor? Aye. Jeff, are you good with that one? Yep, I'm aye. Five
nothing, Nobody against. Let's move on to item four, board and commissions presentations, Economic Development and Commission. Helene, floor is yours. Yes,
I did, I resent an email off to everybody that was sent on April 4 that Catherine Magaldi Lewis went ahead and put together. Basically, we have Andover Yukon project coming up. And that is where UConn students, we are going to be a class. Andover is going to be a planning class this fall semester. And the professor, Professor Soyeon Park has done a walkthrough of the town on her own, and now we have to set up a walkthrough with some of us to go ahead and point out different things through the town. What they're doing is she's gathering information to try to figure out what to formulate for this planning class. When it comes to what they're going to do, it's beginning on 08/29/2022. It's a six week project and it's going to end about October 10. And the initial meeting to be set up with Professor Park is going to be May or June, so obviously June. Well, maybe May, we'll see. We still, but Catherine has been the point person on all of this with Professor Park.
She's been the one who's been talking to her and setting this up and Catherine's the one who got this project to look at Andover and consider us as a project. Now the their strategy includes they do research they do site visits they're going to have training and planning workshops. And in parentheses include town officials and that's why I'm talking to you guys because you are the town officials as well as planning and zoning. I think your town officials are the elected officials and certainly Eric are key people on this project and they're going to be working with the town officials. So mean Eric will probably be the brunt of the communications, but I would like someone or maybe two people on the board of select men to be directly involved in it to be part of it so we're going to be requesting that we get involvement from board of select men and. And really, as part of, know, I hate to say let's set up another commission, but it is a project that's got to be set up and we've got to put some names to it and contact people to it
and assign them to it for this project that's going to happen. And what the students will do is they'll come up with 12 different planning design proposals and the town's going to choose which ones are combined some proposals. They're going to request feedback and they're going to have a final presentation. And it says Yukon needs thus far maps. If there's any online maps, possible location for development ponds, lakes, trails, They have to do a walkthrough before August 29, and they're going to be looking for spaces to have their meetings. So community room, most likely, they'll want to have their meetings. Now, Catherine has also gathered a lot of information about different states, economic division, the development people via that association, and she got a list of all the people that we can contact for information and resources and things like that. She's looking into some of that, those things. Now, the issue we have of course, is communication and how to go ahead and set this up so that everyone knows what's going on in town.
And Catherine had come up with a great idea that we have a sharing folder somewhere on the website that basically is a gatherer of information from the different committees, different boards, different projects, what project committees, what it is they're working on, who the contact people are for it. If anybody wanted to come in and find out, oh, what's happening with the new community building? What's happening with the Vernal Pools initiative? What's happening with the bridges and redoing the culvert? You know, what's happening with all kinds of things? I mean, is no one place to find this information. And so, what we're going to be looking for help with is to set up some gathering of information that someone can go on the website and find things. I found it very frustrating because I was on the Connecticut, on the Route 6 regional project, and we came up with this huge plan from a company, a development company called LADA. We had workshops and we had all information. We have maps and we have suggestions and we have all kinds of projects written down and what, you know, how to proceed. I'm not exactly sure where all that information is should be on the website should be able to just point and click and be able to see all of those files because they were digitized or a bunch of CDs that we had.
And then the Department Transportation came in and took the LED plan and even developed it further for traffic calming and came up with a wonderful plan and also had a community workshop to go ahead and get feedback from people and talked about the village node and turning that whole area around the library as the village node. That needs to be someplace that someone can point and click and take a look at the study and see that it's there. And then if any projects come up that are actually being worked on like the community center, it would be great to have a folder to go to and get that information. So that's, I mean, it's just this huge, you know, then the long term planning committee, I think we can point and click and look at that stuff out on the website, but I'm not 100% sure. So it's a matter of just trying to get the information out there so that when somebody has a question,
they can go on the site, look into where that project is at, or if anybody's working on it, or what kind of planning has already been done so we can't, we don't have to just keep reinventing everything. And, you know, at this point in time, all we're doing is keeping our, you know, our bridges open and our culverts taken care of and our roads taken care of in the community center, you know, if there are other projects that are going on, I don't know about them. It'd be great to hear about them if that happens. It's a big ask. It's a huge ask, but it's one that will make communication so much smoother and research on how someone like you can can help, it would make it so much easier because it will be out there for the viewing. Sorry,
Paul, just a question. I mean, facilitate that, I'm assuming that on the website we could put a page up. I mean, I know that Route six connector document, I mean, it's monstrous, but we could break down the annual portion and put some of that information up there and basically allow one page to just be previous projects or whatever PDF documents that are available out there, can make that happen fairly easily, can't we?
But Jeff, to be fair, we've generally left this up to committee chairs to make a decision as to what they want to put out there and when they want to put it out there. Like- And
what I'm saying, Adrian, is I agree with that, but we should have a look, I mean, can't be that hard for us to have a repository page.
No, but it takes time that we, you know, we simply don't have, you know, Amanda's on a very limited schedule. We don't have anyone, you know other than Amanda currently posting. Have some backup people that have been helping out when Amanda's been out or sick, but we just don't have the hours to do it. It's not that we don't want to do it. So we've left most of that. Most of the heavy lifting has been left to the committee chairs to get the information together and then to go to amanda and provide her with the information in an orderly fashion and tell her what they'd like to put up and she's been pretty responsible. Listen, we will get that done on page available.
Yeah, and to answer your question, yes, we can do that. My only question for Elaine is, Elaine, do you think there, once we put this information up there, are we updating it? Are the documents gonna be updated ever? So it might just be an hour of time.
A lot of it's just a repository of existing information that a lot of people don't even know exists, you know, and that's and that's part of the issue that's that's why I was talking about the frustration is I was on all these committees long term planning I was on all of these committees, so I know the information is out there. And how to introduce it out there when people are looking. Because when people start, people don't even know that things are out there to look for. All
the information she's talking about is available. It can be posted. We can facilitate that. I'm sure Catherine is going to tell us that there are certain documents that need to be updated and that will be living, breathing documents. Those are more difficult for what we're trying to do.
That would be more like a project effort, you know, as a project. Jeff,
I would be more than willing to help, but it's just I want to have as much information for Soyanne as possible. And like I said in the letter, I don't know what you guys are working on. What what is planning and zoning? I have a lot of that the other stuff that Elaine's talking about and I forwarded to her so she would have it. But if she's asking me about what kind of plans we have going on right now, I couldn't tell her. I got it. That
is why, to move forward with this, we'll have to have some meetings. We'll have to have some dialogue you know, with the professor to sit there and see. Think it's a good idea in that it will get other people to look at our town and sit there and see what maybe we're not seeing because the opportunities have been discussed in the past. Some of them are limited and you know, but I have no problem working with you guys to sit there and try to.
Jeff, it would make sense. You know, have Catherine and Elaine who are very involved here. It would make sense to either one or both of them. Let's get Amanda to set up a tab and and if she can take some time to show each of them how to upload information and what have you let them put it together. Because again, I think we're I don't want us to be over promising that we're going to have Amanda do this. And then when she doesn't have time, people are going to be upset. Would make more sense to have someone that is working on the information to be able to upload it themselves. 100%.
Always appreciate your information. That's information we have that'd be more than happy to put up there and keep everybody abreast of it. But the information that other like planning and zoning or anybody else is working on. We do not have. So we can't put it on.
But again, that's why we have the website. The website is there, planning zone, admitted meetings go up. But there's the difference between the meeting that you want to have with the professor and what we can do moving forward and static information that has been out there like the Route six program. I get that. That's out there. I probably have a scan of that somewhere and some of the stuff that I was working on in the past. I'll send you the PDF that can be posted. That's information that's been out there. A previous study that's been done. We can sit there and try to help you with the repository. Adrian is right, we need to sit there and other information, other documents that we find, we can sit there and add to it. But a lot of the information is in our website. Think Eric and Amanda and Paul have done a great job with the website. I think there's a lot more information than there's ever been. But I understand what Elaine is saying that there's some studies that have been done before that, listen, let's just make them available.
We'll get you. It's town information. It's stuff we paid for years past.
Well, that would be great, but that Route 6 program is paid for by the state and it would cost us $14,000,000 or probably more like $25,000,000 to do that project today. So it'd be great if we had sewers, maybe we could pull a lot of stuff off.
That's another conversation because I think they're getting sores out in Sprague. There's there's actually there is there is yeah I had a conversation with Kathy Austin I'm getting sores and all of a sudden, it seemed like a possibility that I always thought it was not. We may get them. What
else, what else do you guys have that you'd like to talk to us about.
Well that's a basically, I mean in the past I mean I was a selectman for nine years and we were definitely liaisons to all of these committees, and, and as we would, we would assign ourselves to which committees we wanted to be liaisons to, and we went to the meetings and so we could come back to the Board of Selectmen once a month, and we had liaison reports, we literally just, you know, took about twenty minutes just talking about oh this is what the Conservation Commission is up to this is what planning and zoning is up to this is what the library is up to that you know I mean we we we definitely did that and I find that missing in the board of selectmen now the way that it's set up.
They have make some more take that into consideration but what else does EDC want us to hear? Well, I have a question. Would it be easier for us if we tried to, even if it's just the chairs in these committees or whatever, to meet like once every three months or something so that we could exchange ideas and exchange what's happening and contacts and all that kind stuff to just open communication. We all, each of us knows what's going on in each of the other committees, because we really should be, especially if I'm going to do this, I really should be aware of what's going on with planning and zoning. So if it's a huge thing to, or if it's difficult, whatever to put it online, maybe just getting together every three months and having a meeting for all of us is a good idea. I'm
trying I'm just, I like it I like to just sit in a room for a while with with everybody else and, you know, not the whole committees but just the heads and kind of talk about what we're up to
see how we can help each other because we're all working toward the same thing. We have a wonderful community room and we can always get there. I'm sure Adrian will join us every week and sit there and make it all happen. We can sit there and work through that. I have no problem. And listen, Kathryn. Jed is always available. You could sit there and communicate and reach out to him anytime from that standpoint. Mean, if you wanted to, if you if you ever wanted to sit there and talk to me, you do have my cell phone number. Anytime. Okay. What else does what else does economic development have? You need to talk to us because we're going to have a long meeting. Yeah, no, that it.
We basically want to gear up for this project that's happening and try to set up the communications that we can and set up who's actually working with these people. Okay, I think it's very exciting.
Interesting to sit there and see what type of developmental programs UConn can come up with. It's very interesting. All right, thank you very much. We greatly appreciate it. Okay. So number five is appointments.
Eric, do we have any appointments that we need to make? Not under this section. We'll make them later in the meeting. Okay. Item six, any resignations? Yes. Abby Winters has resigned as the board chair for the land use commissions.
Very sorry to hear that. Okay. I'm assuming that we're looking for one of the members of that to step up to the chairman's role, Or is she just a member? Well, she's the board clerk. So we'd be looking to replace her.
And I have an item later to discuss how we handle board clerks going forward. That's later in the agenda though.
All right. Let's move on to item seven, the town administrator's report. Eric, all yours.
All righty. I'm going to share my screen real quick. Can you guys see that? Yes. I'm going talk about just the stuff that's in red. Let me make it a little bigger so it's easier to read. Okay, so everything in black is stuff you already had in your packet. So I'm not going to go over most of that unless you have specific questions. I'm going to talk about the stuff that's changed since the packet came out. The first is that May 24 in the evening, we're going to do one of the Department of Emergency Management planning sessions. That'll be from five to eight. That's going to be all the principal, you know, kind of town employees that are involved in dealing with emergencies specifically for hurricane and storm related stuff. So myself, CERT, fire department, and public works, just the heads of that. So if any Board of Selectmen members want to join us, you're more than welcome to. It will be in the community room from five to eight. It's a statewide program being run with the National Weather Service. Offline, if any of you want to be part of that, let me know. Okay, so unfortunately the town's consulting engineer who is Brandon Hanfield has kind of announced this week that he was dropping all his municipal clients. He just basically said, look, I'm overwhelmed. I tried to hire two employees. I haven't been able to hire anybody. I can't handle all the work I have.
So that kind of puts us in a bind. It's obviously the summer is not a great time to be looking for a new engineering service. I put a RFP that's in your packet that I would like to send out as quickly as possible, hopefully tomorrow to, correction, an RFQ to see what firms are out there that would work well for that. I pulled all the surrounding towns and asked them who they use. Out of that, I ended up getting essentially four names and groups. Three of the towns use NLJ or Jacobson Engineering. They're out of, I think, Chester. One of the surrounding towns uses Anchor Engineering. And there's also a Willamantic town engineering has a municipal services division. I also tried one of the local engineers out of Coventry that I knew took care of another municipality, but he's not taking on new clients. With your permission, I'd like to put that RFP out there tomorrow. So do any of you have any questions about that?
No, I don't have any specific questions about the RFP.
How long are we going to leave it open for Eric?
I don't have a specific time. I mean, I'd like to get everything back within, certainly within a couple of weeks. I was going to reach out directly to all the firms that I've had mentioned. So we're going to publicize it, but then we're also going to reach directly out to those firms, to the principles, you know, to make sure they submit a proposal if they're willing to. The RFP, Adrian, has a June 15 deadline for submission.
Okay. Have we talked to the, I don't know if it falls into his wheelhouse or not, or if he's just a survey engineer. Rob, the good gentleman that was working with the community center people, does his firm do any of that out of Glastonbury?
I don't know, but, but I'd be happy to send him a copy of the RFP and discuss it with him also. That might, that might be a good idea.
Yeah. Yeah, and I was also going to send one to close Jensen and Miller because I knew that I know they do a lot of municipal work. Any other suggestions? You know, I'm happy to to send them or speak to them directly. Okay. Other items under public works. I also put in the packet an RFP for the work done or for the for the reclaim and repave for both the portion of Shawty Mill as well as the portion of Long Hill. Again, I'm looking at kind of two prongs with this. We can't really glom on the state bid for the whole project because the state no longer has reclaiming as one of their tasks.
So I'm looking at a straight RFP and see what we get back as well as using the CROG EZIQC bid process and just see what we get back for both those results and make a decision once we have the cost estimates in. Anybody have any comments or questions with that?
There's a significant amount of line drawing been done on Long Hill. I noticed that yesterday. Yep. Yep. And I'm sure Jeff Murray will tell us it's worse on Andy.
No, actually Hendi's pretty bad. Hendi's a lot worse than Long Hill as far as markings. You just said you were gonna tell us that. Okay, keep going here. Other things. What's
going on with Richard? I saw that. So he had a relatively minor burn on his hand today when they were dealing with hot asphalt and putting hot asphalt down. He's got a minor blister. I mean, he didn't really want to say anything about it, Jay saw it. So Jay's making him fill out an injury report. Okay. So we'll have that for the file. Not something he needs medical treatment for, but I'm just letting you know. Yes, just asking. Yep, no worries.
As far as the affordable housing grant, there was a public hearing that was last Saturday. We'll have the YouTube video up on the town's website hopefully tomorrow. I think it would be worth watching on the point of the part of the board of selectmen because I think it's an issue that we will have to deal with going forward in some form or another. At the transfer station, we're coming up on contract renewal for a whole series of things. The only area where we really have multiple contractors available is for the textile recycling. We currently use a vendor
that pays, we get reimbursed essentially by pound of textiles deposited in their box. There's another company that also offered a contract called CMRK. They're willing to pay us more money. They're willing to pay us for the transfer station, a flat rate of $1,000 a year. And they would also put, if we would allow them, they would put another bin on the town hall property and they would pay us 2,000 annually for that bin if we were willing to locate one there. I'm on the fence with them because they definitely have had some negative publicity over the years. Bay State, who's our current vendor, been very reliable and good. On the other hand, CMRK is paying us essentially double what base date is. So, I don't know what your feelings are. Base dates are current vendor. They're also on the vendor list so we can use them this year or we can switch to CMRK. And we can put the bin just at the transfer station or we can have a bin at the transfer station and the town hall. So that's what I got unless I don't know what where the board wants to go with that.
Do they pay the money upfront or at the end of the year?
So Bay State pays us as they collect by pound. So far this year, I think we've gotten, I know, just under $500 I just got the thing from April, April, you know, we'll get a check for, you know, 52 or something like that. The CMRK will pay us annually upfront.
Don't see what mean, if if they're willing to pay us upfront, why wouldn't we consider switching?
Mr. Basically, in my mind, the biggest issue is what is their collection history? I mean, website looks reasonable.
Yeah. I mean, I know they've definitely been the subject of some litigation both in Massachusetts and in other places, but they do have an awful lot of collections in an awful lot of places. So, I mean, it's a big company that's making, that does a lot of work in Connecticut. Not saying one or the other. I'm just saying I, in talking to their rep, I feel like I'm dealing with a used car salesman, whereas Bay State, I find to be a much more professional, you know, outfit to deal with. But, you know, on the other hand, CMRK is offering us more money and that's not a bad thing either. I mean, we always need more money.
I think there's no harm in trying it at the transfer station personally. If it works out there and we're happy with them then we can consider putting one at the town hall as long as we don't have a problem with pickup schedules and stuff, you know. Does seem reasonable to everyone? I have no problem with it. Just make sure that their pickup schedule falls right. Mean, we try at the transfer station. If it turns into a, you know, something horrible, then it's a dead issue. And if it doesn't, we can consider whether we want to put one at the town hall, you know.
Okay, anybody else have a problem? No. Eric, why don't you sit there and see what CMRK can do for us?
You as a board want to use CMRK as the vendor. That's easy enough. Thank you. I did get a note from Kathy Derojes that Mr. Farrad, the guy who's been maintaining the nature pond area has decided he doesn't really want to do it anymore. He said he's just getting to all the out mowing. So I think I'm going to try to sit down and look at with Jay Tuttle at that sometime and see what we need to do for maintenance for that without occurring much cost and fees. Aside from that, the connectivity project seems to be going fairly well. The stuff at the library is coming out reasonably well. The majority of the library side should be complete by the end of this week. The railing will take a little bit longer because that's getting fabricated. We're not going to have that for a couple of weeks. But they are working on that. They will be working on the other side, which is the side on Center Street starting probably Thursday. I did notify the DEEP that that was going be going on because I know that DEEP administrator wanted to know when that work was starting. I'm hoping that we do a walkthrough with the DEEP and the contractor Thursday sometime just to make sure we don't have any issues with that. And I suspect the majority of that project will wrap up in the next month. I don't see it going much longer than that. There will be some things that will be delayed because we have money in there for Sharos on Long Hill Road, which obviously we're not going to do until after the reconstruction
is done. That project seems like it's going along pretty well. That's pretty much it for me unless you have specific questions.
Anybody have any specific questions for Eric? Sit there and I'll tell you the library, the sidewalks look great, Eric. I hope the library is happy with what's going on. Also, it was really nice to sit there and see all the beautification committee or, and actually it wasn't beautification, but it was more the group that has been taking care of the museum, the daffodils on the Route 6, the thousand bulbs they planted looked great now that they're up. Absolutely. Yeah, they look great. It's nice to see them.
Eric, it's Jeff. I just have one question for you. Are we going to anticipate the snow removal on that new sidewalk? Is that going to be an issue for public works to clear that? Or because being right on Route 6, that could get snowed in pretty heavy? And are we going to be clearing that in the winter?
So that remains to be seen. That's actually kind of a board of selectman decision whether we want to handle snow removal for that or not in the winter. The part leading to the rail trail, I would say no, we don't clear any of that side because the rail trail is not cleared. Clearing an access path to the rail trail when you don't have a cleared rail trail doesn't make sense. The part on the library side, we do need to think about that. In the park going down Long Hill Road towards the bridge. I certainly got a bunch of flack from residents earlier this year after the snow melted and there was gravel and sand on top of the walkway. People expressing their desire for us to clear that walkway off so they could walk on it safely. So, which is good for me because that means people are actually using it. So, I have talked to Jay Tuttle about that. We are anticipating that we're going to end up buying a snowblower to clear that. So, yeah, I think we're assuming that we're going to end up clearing that and it is going to be a little bit of a pain in the butt. Yeah, it's going to be a pain because of the state
trucks are going to plow that right in. If we have to maintain that, it's going to be a little bit of an issue. Just wanted to see if we had a plan going forward.
I think there's definitely concern about, You know if you're if you're clearing it, you also have to be really paying attention to it, are you going to be are you also going to be going over and salting that are you going to be, you know it creates a whole nother. Layer of concern, I think, the winter, we are better off at this point, not trying to address that and addressing it in the spring as soon as possible to clear. Know snow and salt and whatever off of it, but in the winter, given that it doesn't you know it doesn't really connect anywhere at this point. That would be accessible like you said the rail chores is at that point still covered over. It might be a safer for the town from liability standpoint to not address it until spring.
I mean, think the only concern I would have for that is the portion that runs along the long one of the reasons for doing it the way we did it was so people could get back and forth and use cross parking, both at the library and over congregational church and be able to get up cross at a crosswalk and get back down. I would sort of wonder whether we shouldn't at least clear the part that runs the long, long hill from the parking area up to the crosswalk. If not, if we're not going to do the rest, you know, to me that makes sense not to do the rest, that I would think would be worth doing. But I could be convinced either way.
Why don't we deal with this while we get closer to winter? Obviously, Jeff is right in that we have to probably, if we're going to do it, we're going to have to move some resources from public works to make sure they get that done. Let's deal with this a little bit later. Yeah, my
question, Jeff, was just to make sure that we were going to anticipate that, and if we're going to have to clear it or not, that we make sure we have the equipment to clear it. That's all. Yeah,
CIP has already talked about a commercial snowblower And what that looks like and what that can do. It's just a question of, again, I think when we get closer to it, let's see, let's see, you know, if this budget passes, do we have the resources? Do we have the extra manpower? All those things kind of come into play so. Anything else.
That's all I have unless you have questions about the rest of the report. I
just want to add one more time. Thanks for getting the compactors fixed. Think Dominic will be very happy. Very happy.
Yeah. Mean, honestly, my concern with that is that I've made it to both of them, and I don't think it should be a problem because we don't really run three compactors. But Rick had told me a long time ago that the, that's not sized to run all three compactors. You know, and if you can just go down and push a button, it keeps recycling.
You know, there's nothing that says you can't walk down the line and hit all three at once and then trip it. Well, I think those guys are smart enough to be able to not do that as long as they know not to do that. Well, they've been told not to do that. I think we'll be fine then. We have to trust our employees.
All right. So let's move on to item eight, old business. Item 8A is the discussion regarding the renewal of the tax abatement for Hop River Homes and the softball field renewal. Eric, I believe regarding the field renewal, the lease, the previous lease has been signed. Is that accurate and dropped off?
I don't have copy, a signed copy. Maria Tollman apparently just shortly sent me a copy of the old lease agreement, and I think Dennis had a copy of that agreement that was brought up to current date, but I don't have anything signed from them. Before
Dennis gets into it, the understanding I had a conversation with Maria and the administrator for the Hawk River Homes, their issue is that they were going to extend the prior lease through 06/30/2023. We'll deal with that. Let's go on to the renewal of the tax payment. In our packet, we have a one year renewal for that tax payment. It's in our motion package that Eric had provided, I believe. I cannot get my computer to work there.
Yeah, Oh. Jeff. That's a resolution that I drafted. I didn't even recall that I had, but I guess I did. Looks like my work. It for you to use you select them to use if you wish to act on the request for an abatement. That resolution is a resolution that Eric has provided in the packet. You have to fill in the blanks as to how much the abatement would be and for how long. I understand the thought now is about an abatement for a year.
Correct. Right. Eric, in this section, you put a motion to approve the resolution for Harper River Homes tax abatement, and you said see attorney O'Brien's document.
Right, which is what is on here. Because that document came from Dennis, certainly not from myself. Yeah, no problem.
The one other thing that I would sit there and ask is you have some other resolutions in your document. Have one of the earlier resolutions was to authorize the RFQ for the reclaiming and repaving. Do you want that passed? Does anyone need that to happen? Because we're asking him to move forward with that. Anyone, do we want to pass the motion related to that? Anybody on the board care? Because I don't care. I don't care either. Adrian?
No, I don't have an opinion one way or the other. Okay. Paula? I'm fine. All right. Jeff, you good? Yep.
All right. And then he has another one for the reclaiming, so we're not going to do that. We have another item, 7C, a motion to authorize the town administrator to sign the MOU with asking me to extend the probationary period for the assistant town clerk. Does somebody want to second that one? Let's get that one through. I'll second that. All right. Further discussion related to that motion? All those in favor? Aye. Pass five nothing. And then you have another motion in here to authorize the town administrator to purchase an additional server license for the town server and have Vision GSI reinstalled on the town server approximately initial cost of 2,500. I was going to actually talk about that later under the assessor's report, but we could talk about it now. We push that off because I would just say, why wouldn't you go clogged? So we'll push that one off. And then you have another one, a motion to appoint blank as the Board of Selected Representative for Union Negotiations with ASKME. When did you want that one to happen?
That can go so we know we need to start doing negotiations at some point. I didn't know whether you wanted to talk about it in executive session and then appoint somebody afterward or whether you wanted to do it earlier. That can be at your convenience.
Well, the question ends up being which member of the Board of Selectmen wants to sit there and be the union negotiator. Adrian? Sure, sign me up.
And I actually, when I sent that to you all originally, I asked kind of a two part question. The first part is, is there a Board of Selectmen member? And the second part was in the past, the Board of Finance had wanted to be part of that process. Do you want to recommend a Board of Finance or ask for a finance member for that also or not? Your call.
Well, I mean, it never hurts to have a Board of Finance. Remember, that's what we were trying to do five years ago when we did this. It was supposed to work out really well. Then When when do we need to start those discussions, Eric?
Well, that contract is up in six weeks. I've asked John Coleman when he wants to begin the head of the union. I haven't gotten a response yet, but I mean, I would like to start the initial discussion pretty quickly since again that contract is up pretty quick.
My only concern is timing as far as the Board of Finance meeting and if they can appoint someone.
Well, let's appoint Adrian, and we'll sit there and you can have a discussion with the Board of Finance if they want someone to participate.
I have Yeah, let's just send them an email and
see if any of their members wants to step in. All right. So I'll make a motion to appoint Adrian Mandeville as the Board of Selectmen representative at Union Negotiations would ask ME. I'll second that. All right. Further discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. That passed five-zero as well. All right. And then there's another motion to appoint or to sign a contract with CMRK, which we already told you to do, Eric, so we're not going make a motion for that. All right. So we have the issue related to attorney O'Brien and
not that one. Community center RFP for design build is still in process. Eight D. Yeah, we haven't gotten to that yet.
Stuck here. Sorry, you were jumping around, so I didn't know if you'd talk about Everything
was before 8A, Adrian, on his motion issues. So we have it listed on his motion issues. I was just trying to get through everything before 8A. So now we're still back to the tax abatement for Hop River Homes. So I'm trying to find Dennis' Hop River Homes Eric, do you have that that you could post up on the screen?
Sure. Is the one you emailed out, Eric? Yes. Separate from the packet. Right?
I don't have it separate from the packet that I can bring up fast, but I can bring up the packet version fast. Yes. That's
what I was after. It wasn't in a was it in the packet? I can't. It's right after, where he has eight old business. Yes. They list all the old business items. It's just page 31 of the packet. There you go. Out of 108, by the way.
Come on, Adrian, did you memorize it? I know I saw it, I just couldn't find it. Well, remember it because I wrote it.
There you go. So Attorney O'Brien has written a resolution to authorize abatement of Texas to Hop River Homes of Andover. The main part of this is whereas the Board of Selectmen authorizes a tax payment to Hop River Homes in the amount of $12,000 for each fiscal year until June 30 really, it should say 06/30/2023.
No, no, that was last year. Last year's a big
so that's what's in our current Where are at? That's awareness. Come on. Say that again.
That's history. That's recent history. Yeah, but that's what I'm the last fiscal year.
I know that was last fiscal year, but we're sitting there doing this for the year that ends. No, know. Okay, so then tell me what you believe the date should be.
Well, they've asked for, they've sent a letter. No, no, forget
that. It's a one year abatement. What is the date? I can't say, I mean, was $2,000
I'm going to say it then. 2023. Resolution that will be signed is going to sit there and say $12,000 for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2023. All the rest of the information will be in there, and it is the $12,000 for the fiscal year. Someone want to second that? I'll second that. Okay. Does anyone want to discuss this? So Jeff, you moved that?
I did. Okay. And I believe either Adrian or Scott seconded it. Which one wants? I did. Okay, fine. We
have to change the date on it. That's all. Correct. We have to change the date on it. Further discussions on this? Anybody? No? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. That's
five nothing. Move on from that. Eric, the 8B town hall upgrades?
Nothing. There's nothing I really want to discuss at this point unless you have specific questions.
No, 8c Edmunds. Back up. I do have specific questions. Are
we moving forward with the I thought we authorized the water cooler.
We did, and then we couldn't get the water cooler that you authorized. And the best quote I could get after that was about $500 greater than that. So what I asked Rick to do was spend a little time digging and see if he could get the lower cost unit and bring the cost in for what we agreed to. I haven't forgotten about it. I just don't want to pay an extra $500 to do the job.
There's also, it was brought to my attention that we're having some issues with residents using the employee bathroom that's flagged Because it's, there's no lock on it. So we had that issue once. Still having it?
Yeah. I mean, we do have that issue occasionally. We did get an estimate from a locksmith about six months ago, but it was going to be, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks to address it with I will donate the lock and install it when I am back in town. Perfect. Unless anyone has an argument with that. Do I get the code? No.
Okay, good. You don't get it. You don't take your salary, you're technically not employees. Neither of us get it. Not an employee. Okay, good. All right. We'll go on to the next thing.
Do you have any more questions, Adrian? I do not. Just want to address those two.
Okay. Community 8D, the Community Center, or I'm sorry 8C, Edmonds Financial Software Status.
So we do have Edmonds finally directly accessible from both my computer and from our finance office here. It was kind of a difficult process to get it through. But it's working. It is working. We did have one further issue which kind of relates, but not exactly. That is the server on the school side that Phoenix was residing on has crashed completely. They have a backup copy, but they're desperately trying to figure out how to rebuild Phoenix from scratch. The problem is Phoenix runs off of a database that's not really supported anymore, So they're having difficulty resurrecting that, which is causing us some issues at the moment. So they didn't have a RAID backup? Well, they may have They probably have RAID backup for the data. I don't know whether they have RAID backup for the server itself. That's not a question I know.
Okay. All right. A, D, the community center RFP for design build.
It's still in the works. We were trying to find the RFPs that are out there that we're trying to kind of start. It says from starting from scratch, we're trying to find something else we sort of tailor to us. And unfortunately, some of them are just ridiculously large. So we're trying, we found a couple that are a little closer now dealing with John the architect and so we are trying to move forward on that. Hopefully have something for you guys to approve hopefully in the next two or three weeks. It just, it is very involved, you know, it is like our packet. It is going to be something north of, you know, 30 pages probably. It is not a small document. Okay.
All right. Thank you for getting that done. Slowly but surely.
We'll get there. 8E, the municipal veteran service contact person.
Okay. So I also gave you a motion regarding this, but I'll just say this. Since the last meeting, you had asked me to go out and advertise for the position to make sure we didn't have anybody else in the community that was interested. We did get one other pretty solid inquiry. I had a long conversation with that individual and also with Susan, who's the other person that was interested. I think what I would prefer you do is that instead of appointing a single municipal contact, you actually appoint a committee of two combined, comprised of both members that are interested in doing it. And I talked to both of them and they're both okay with that. The reason I like that is because I think they complement each other
pretty well. And I think they both represent different demographics. And I think together there'll be a good combination. But you know, I'm happy to answer any other questions you have on that. Sounds like a great suggestion.
And just, just so we're understanding neither one of them have any problems with that?
No, no, they're both fine with that. I had that question directly with both of them. And Jerry's okay with it? Thumbs up. Thumbs
right, so I'll make a motion to appoint Susan Kamarota of Juravati Road as well as John Body of Woodford Way to a committee to act as the municipal veteran service contact coordinators to act as the coordinating contact for all matters concerning veterans and their dependents in Andover. This will be effective as of fivesixteentwenty twenty two with the term expiring on 07/01/2024. I'll second that.
All right. Any further discussion on that motion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. I have nothing. There you go. One second. Back to my agenda. Now we are on to 8F authorize the UConn Energy Benchmarking Study.
Didn't we go over this last meeting? You already authorized it. I'm just giving you a quick update. Had a meeting with the principal at UConn and a couple of our students that are managing the project. We've given them some of the information, but we've got to collate a bunch more information for them to make that work. I am on it, but I need a lot of information from our finance department. And right now we have bigger fish to fry than that. I have not forgotten about it. I will get them the information, but there's other things we've got to address first.
That's all I have to say about that unless you have questions. As long as we've made them aware that there's a time issue on our side that we're just trying to address. Yep. Okay. Eight gs, the capital request for HVAC repairs.
Again, the only thing I wanted to say, you guys have seen that, just that we submitted several letters in support of their I submitted one, as did First Selectman McGuire. Haven't heard anything else back from them on that.
8H, Okay. Confirmation of letter and settlement for Amanda Gibson, the administrative assistant. Where is that? Eric, if you can post up, I mean
I'm not sure that's in the packet. You all did get that letter, directly, though.
Okay. So And we has it been signed on our side, and did we have someone verify that content is correct?
No one has signed as far as I know of, and I had requested of the town attorney to make sure that the agreement was reviewed again. I asked that as of this morning, but we may as well just to it to approve it. The three lines,
it it is consistent with the offer we made. There's some slight changes, but they're inconsequential. And, we are being released from all the future of all responsibility, liability, whatever in return for some consideration that we're providing. What were the what were the inconsequentials? Right.
Two things. There was some language in there pertaining that the labor attorney put in there pertaining to the statutes federal statutes prohibiting discrimination against people my age. And the this person is nowhere near that age. That was taken out by them, and there was some language in there regarding, oh, our offer, asset or or required that it'd be accepted within x number of days, and I think they went past the deadline, but, and they took that language out. K.
That's it. I mean, if you wanted if you, you know, if you wanted to pursue that, I mean, you could. You could always say it was too it's late, but, you know, then then you have to start all over again from scratch. No, just wanted to understand.
Thank you. Yep, no, I understand. I understand you're wanting to understand.
Okay, so I motion to authorize the settlement for Amanda Gibson for $11,236.50 as well as authorizing the town administrator to sign I'm going to rephrase this motion. I motion to authorize a settlement for Amanda Gibson for $11,236.50 as well as authorizing the first selectman to sign the general release and settlement agreement. Seconded. All right. Further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? So it passed five nothing. Okay. We are now moving to eight I town personnel policy to include part time employee status, return to work after injury, I, I, I longevity payments, and IV senior transportation drivers. Eric?
I sent you separately just because it would overwhelm the packet because it would have doubled the length of the packet. The copy of the town personnel policy with a series of red line changes outdated for you all to review regarding those four items. Those are the four items we talked about at the last meeting. The return to work after injury was the statement created by Dennis. Adrian, I know you had some other language you were interested in. I mean, that's fine too. I just, I didn't have a copy of that. So I just included what Dennis wrote for there. The second part was the part about employee status for healthcare and MRF. I think we should discuss that in executive session because that has some potential legal consequences. In the contract, when this personnel policy was enacted, we had deleted the section for the longevity bonuses. But we've been budgeting it for every year. And to be perfectly honest, I did not even realize we had taken that out of the policy until one of the employees pointed it out to me. It's in one of the union contracts, but it's not in one of the others. So I think we should make a decision one way or the other, whether we're going to include it or not, You know, and then make a decision as to whether we're going to offer there should be one employee eligible for a bonus this year in this fiscal year or not. Those are board decisions. If you have any other changes you would like to the personnel policy, let me know. The changes I outlined are in red so they're easy to see and read.
My own personal take is that we should be honoring the contract somebody who's hired under or the policy they were hired under. And, you know, if we've taken it out and we've been hiring since then that would be the, that would be the working going forward. But if we have someone that was hired under the old policy, we need to honor it.
So what you're saying is you want to have a policy that you honor for employees that were hired before the change and policy for those hired after the change? I think currently it only applies to
probably two people, one public works person and one town hall employee. Is that correct, Eric?
There's only one employee that's eligible for this year. The first time you're eligible for I think is at your ten year mark. And basically it's a $1,000 one time payment you know, at your ten year mark. Then I think we have one for fifteen year and twenty year service
also. I guess I was thinking of Tommy. Tommy be under the old contract? Or is it not in that union contract?
So I have to look at which union contract. One of them has it written into it and the other one doesn't, but I don't off the top of my head remember which I think Tommy, AFSCME contract has it written in there explicitly because it was copied the old personnel policy. The MEIU contract does not. The concern would be that we signed the MEIU IU contract when the old personnel policy was in place,
which it referred to. So, I mean, I suppose if they really wanted to push it, you know, it would be grievable. I don't know how that would end up. I just think it's a, you know, someone was hired under that we should be honoring it still. It's just like, you know, we can't be changing horses midstream on them, you know.
Think we took that into account, Adrian, when we did the new personnel policies, There may be some language in there in general that basically says that people are entitled to what they were entitled to when they were hired. Yes.
I think we need to honor the employee bonus that's due this year. And then if it comes up going forward again, we just go back to that, you know, what were you hired under policy?
Yep. Right. So Eric, this can Since we received it on the ninth, we can wait to approve this until next month. Sure. Great. Or offer me any feedback you have. I'd to
read it in more detail and look at the changes. Sure. All right. Anybody else have any other questions related to the personnel policy? Okay. So we'll move on to eight j, finance department office structure.
Any adjustments, any changes? Sure. No major changes at this point. I did sit down with both Sherry and Marina. I just frankly have not written up the notes and given to the Board of Selectmen yet, and I apologize for that. It's on my list of things to do. How are the weekly meetings going?
The weekly meetings are going fine. I mean, we're mostly concentrating up to this point. We've been mostly concentrating and getting everything finished for the audit because that is the most pressing problem. At this point, we've given them what we can for the audit. The problem is going to be if we can't recover Phoenix, can the auditor work with what they have? I suspect they can, but I'm not positive. Samantha, the major person that's assigned was supposed to talk to Marina and Sherry today, but I don't think that occurred. Marina, did that finally occur when I talked to you before you hadn't discussed that with them yet? Okay. Okay. Well, let's find out about that.
We are at this point six weeks away from the transition and we haven't really advertised for a treasurer yet. That is something we are going to have to do sooner rather than later. Well, have the, we have the,
we have the document that's been circulated. Do we have any issues with the current job description that the last one that just came through with the changes?
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I have not seen anything from you regarding.
Not me, Diane Charcot sent it over to you. It's in your email. I mean, when?
Hang on, I can tell you. Look, let's get through that and we'll get that out. I didn't have any problems with the last changes, I'll get with Eric and we will sit there and get that out. Well, you were CC'd on that email as well, Jeff. No, I read it. I didn't have any questions. Didn't The last one was fine with me.
As far as I know, I have not seen a draft of that.
I'll tell you the date as we go forward. Just give me a minute to get in there. Okay, thank you. Okay. And we'll keep going. So eight ks upcoming in person town meetings.
Has there been a change at the state level regarding requiring them? The
only change that has come down is that now with, if you're going to do a special meeting, a short notice special meeting, it now requires forty eight hours notice to all the committee members, but it still only needs to be posted twenty four hours ahead. So it backs up and basically says, if you're going to have a special meeting, you need forty eight hours notice now, not twenty four. So that's the only, the legislature finally authorized the continuance of either online only meetings or hybrid meetings. Okay.
So that means if we want to do a special meeting and we want to do it online, it's forty eight hours. Correct. If you want to do it in person, it's twenty four. If you want to do it online, it's forty eight. Okay, great.
I forwarded that to you. Was on the Jeff's comment was on the twenty sixth. I think Diane, for whatever reason, dropped you off of that after the first reply, so. Okay. I sent you the chain. Sorry about that. Okay, no problem. Before we leave
that, let's, as a board, does anyone on the board at this point in time want to go back to in person meetings? I do not personally. I don't.
I think we get more, I mean, I've seen more input from the public on these meetings than I ever saw when we did in person. All right, Jeff, are you all set?
Yeah, I'm fine. We'll just have to just give it a, you know, we'll give it six months to a year and we'll see what happens as far as the, I mean, I'm, I'm sure there's a lot of people I still aren't comfortable doing in person, so I think going this way is probably the best choice going forward.
Okay. All right, we'll move on to 8L, the Memorial Day Parade. AJ?
Just sort of, it seems that there's, there's some concern about having the parade at the Veterans Park. So it's now been moved to the old firehouse, which unfortunately doesn't have anything veterans related over there at all. And the concern from the chair of that committee was being able to hear the traffic on Route 6 and some other things. I'm not sure how we address this. I don't know if it's, you know, do we not have, I know we have a PA system that we use locally but so we don't have a portable PA system for that type for some to do an event like that then. Is that right, Eric.
Oh, we don't have a good one. We have a crappy portable one. Okay.
But, can I, can I interject one thing? Sure. And that we're not. So there was a lot of concern that we were moving everything away from the Veterans Monument and we're really not. The parade route is still the same. Everybody goes down to the Veterans Monument. They lay the wreath, there's a benediction, there's a flyover, and there's some other stuff. And then, so there's the ceremony that's there. What we've done in the past is the same thing that's being proposed for this year. And then the second part of the ceremony, which was the in person, you know, kind of part where they honored the veterans used to take place on Cider Mill Road near the cemetery. That is the part that was moved and because they couldn't use the Cider Mill Road site, they chose to use the parking the upper parking area, you know, right or wrong at the old firehouse. So that's what the committee proposed to do what you know.
Yeah. I don't know. I'm leaning towards getting together with some other veterans and seeing if we can put something together so that we can have sound down at the park more easily. I know I wanted to fix this year. I just, you know, it's a concern to me. I don't normally get involved in veteran stuff, even though I'm a vet, but it does bother me.
Has anyone Adrian, have you spoken to the committee? I have. Okay. All right. Adrian, why don't you and I I know I spoke to Paul, so I'll sit there and I'll try to talk to the committee chairperson and sit there and see if there's any movement over there.
Yeah, would welcome that. Did try to reach out. Yeah, I didn't have much luck.
Okay. All right. Anybody else have any issues related to this, Paula?
I am willing to offer up a speaker and a microphone that's, the speaker is almost as tall as I am, which I know, that doesn't mean much, Adrian.
I'm not going there. I'm appreciating your generosity right now. Whether
it be, you know, we're holding this on Center Street or down at the park or wherever, I'm willing to bring that speaker that day because the one that they're planning on using is it's not reliable. So I will bring that speaker and a microphone that day to be used wherever the ceremony is.
Okay. Have they thought about doing it behind the museum? Just in that parking area there? The concern the
noise off of Route 6. But if it's behind the museum, it's going to buffer a lot of the noise. I understand. Again, did have a conversation. It was not productive.
I mean, I would be supportive of having it down there somehow, some way.
Just fitting We to did appoint a committee. I don't know that it's our place to try to overrule that committee. I'd like to, I don't know that we can address it 100% this year. If Jeff, you know, if you have some luck, great. But if not, I would like to, I think we need to revisit this going forward. With all of the efforts that the town has put in, and, and Jerry has facilitated so much effort down there and put in so much time. It's just, it bugs me. Anyways, I'm gonna let that go. But thank you, Paul, the suggestion. And Jeff, if you can talk to the committee, that would be great. Okay.
All right. Let's move on to nine, a new business. Discuss and act upon the following: nine, a U. S. Army donation program qualification checklist. Eric?
Jerry? Okay. There is a copy of that in your packet. It is a checklist that has to be signed by the first selectman. I believe, Jerry, it's every three years stating we're still willing to pursue this project. And think the only thing we probably ought to do is have a discussion about what types of pieces we would want and where we would put them because we do need to list GPS coordinates of where this they would be going. So, but Jerry's the guy to talk to about that, not me. And he's on so.
What this will do, it'll just get us on the list if a piece comes up. They will contact Eric, the power administrator and say hey look we have a 105 Hollister it's available do you want it and then Eric will bring come back to the board and say do you want this have a picture of it and you're going to say no let's just go with something else But at least it gives us an opportunity to put another piece in there. I've been working with Congressman Courtney and the Department of Navy to get a piece off the USF Kitty Hawk and that is an aircraft carrier that's been sold to a scrap company in Texas for a dollar. They found out they could not get it through the Panama Canal because it's too big and they're rooting it around South America to bring it to Texas. And we're working to try to get something off that USS Kitty Hawk that would look really nice a plaque that says
USS Kitty Hawk and implement something, but I think would would show very nice because once that's scrapped it's gone forever. So we're working on it and as soon as that lands in Texas we'll find out if we can get a piece of it.
You should get a jet Jerry. I'm sorry what? Get a jet. Well,
that would be nice. There is a twelve year waiting period for Huey and but whatever we can get off that would be good and then we'd have to transport it and I'm willing to go to Texas and pick it up or bring it back here but again that's all in the future so this just puts us on the list right? It's got put us on the list and if something comes up, we have an opportunity for it. It has to be in the meetings in the minutes. So it gets back to the Army donation program and Rebecca's happy. Everybody's happy. Okay. Was there a motion related to that?
Sure, there's a motion in your I gave you a motion for that if you want is got did you have that you want to read it? Yeah.
I motion to authorize the first selectman or alternatively to town administrator to file the paperwork to authorize the acceptance of donations of army material through the United States Army Donations Program for Combat Materials.
And I think you should decide whether you want the first electman to sign that or me. Yes.
I I don't understand why we can't do either or that way if somebody's I have no problem with the either or. Okay. Your second seconded either or. Okay. No further discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. No. Okay. Five nothing. Okay. So now we move on to 9B, the fiscal year twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three proposed town budget with a referendum scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, May 17, from 6AM to 8PM. Eric, any issues related to the
vote? We included a copy of the referendum notice in there for you. It was approved at the budget to go to referendum, so it is.
Okay. Anybody have any issues? Discussions? No. Okay. 9c, longevity bonus for town employees per old contract. We have already discussed that. 9d, vision government solutions, discussion of local hosting versus cloud hosting for database.
Eric? Okay, so there's basically two options we have to pursue one or the other. The first is we have to purchase an additional server license for our existing server to start up a standalone server on our server for the vision appraisal setup, number one, or alternatively, we have to use a cloud hosting site to do it. I was initially assuming that we were going to want to put this on our server. I did have a conversation with our network administrator Lance Page, and we discussed this for a while. He said that most of the talents they deal with are choosing to put it on the cloud hosted server. He said simply because vision is still updating and maintaining this frequently enough that you have an outside entity coming in and needing access to your server moderately regularly. So his advice was you're better off with that cloud hosting it, but they could certainly handle a server installation. I've been asking them for pricing for a while. I have not gotten full blown pricing as to what it's going to cost for the server license and for us to install locally. But the first year costs are going to be probably basically the same, but then that's it. If we install it locally, it's a one shot deal. If we install it on the hosted site, it's a yearly cost
for what it costs us to keep it at that location. Do we know what that is?
Yeah, it's in your packet. It's the Boston Marlboro Data Center is where they do it. Boston Metro West data center. And I put in your packet the blurb from them about what the facility is and what its capabilities are. What was the cost though? The cost for the first year is $2,500 because we need the server license. Yeah. Well,
if you cloud host it, the cost is, you know, they, they deal with the server and it's $2,500 basically a year plus, I'm sure it will go up every year. Well, 2,500 per year. Yeah. For the cloud hosting. Yes. Wow. Okay. Yep.
What is our current, is that an additional above and beyond our current costs?
Yes. So the deal was when we installed our new server, we took out the really old, old server that ran Vision. And Vision was okay with doing that for a couple of years during reval because it makes it easier for them to update the data. But now we're at the end of that process and they're So we've been on the cloud with them for about two years, but the free on the cloud is gone. We either have to get back to our own server or we have to start paying for
the cloud. Let's back up a second. Correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't we buy a bunch of equipment specifically for that office? Wasn't there a nice computer system just for that office for this? I remember it sitting in the boxes in the office for months and months while waiting to get it installed.
So the vision was on an old server. Yep. Resided behind Amanda's
work area. Nope. No, I'm talking about the stuff that was in, it was in the assessor's office for
months. There was a giant box that was sitting there for several years. That was a huge uninterrupted power supply that was purchased for that old server and then used that for a new server. And as part of the last ReVal five years ago, did, they did spend some of the ReVal money to update two computers in that office. So certainly we could elect to spend some of the leftover reval money to buy the server license to install it locally, or we could pay for basically a year of cloud hosting if we chose to do that versus that. So would say that the less expensive long term solution is going to be hosting it locally. Probably the more convenient is cloud hosting it, but you know, but we got it's $2,500 a year. Let's, let's host it locally.
Okay. If you want to go that route, I will instruct the it guys that that's what we're going to do.
Any objections? No, that makes the most financial sense. The only question really ends up being technologically, are we going to have a problem having to update that?
That's the only issue. We'll work on it when it happens. Yeah. Murray, any concerns? Nope. I'm good.
Okay. Since that's not a budgeted item, I'd like you guys to do that in the form of a motion, then I'll execute it. I would authorize.
Oh, sorry. Of all, I apologize. I thought I gave you both options there. I did not. So.
All right. Well, I don't have in front of me, so I'm going to wing it. I would authorize the administrator to have our IT professionals, secure a license for vision so that we can install on our local server, the software and any Kubernetes we may need to do that, whether it's upgrade our backups or whatever, and use the leftover money from the reval to accomplish that.
So am going to second that? I'll second. Okay. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Now we are on to nine e, board clerk employment. Speaking of, is our board clerk back up? I don't know. Marina, are you on? I'm here.
So one of the things that's come up, and obviously we know what context it came up in, but it's come up in other things too, that one of the options that would make our lives easier is to just switch all the board clerks over to ten ninety nine positions. Now, some of them are not going to be happy with this, know, and we may have to re advertise for that. But I think it's cleaner on the town's perspective to do it that way other than keep them on employees run through payroll. So I did talk to Marina about this, about whether it's harder or easier on the financial end, and it doesn't really matter from their perspective. They either pay them through payroll or they pay them through the biweekly check process. So that would be my suggestion is that we use the same compensation we used before, but to change over all of the board clerk positions, you know, essentially to ten ninety nine, you know, so it's clear that they're not employees. This is just a per diem, position. K. What's going on with our current board clerk?
So she was unable to make this meeting. Okay. That was partially, actually mostly my fault because I thought I had texted her last week when the revised meeting and when I went to look today to see whether I had texted her, I never actually sent the text. So the text was sitting there. I did talk to her this morning, but she had already made a commitment. But if there's, if we're zooming it, do we need the clerk on the meeting? Not necessarily. It makes life easier, but it's not necessary. But and she knew that she had the option of doing it later. So she just didn't want to do it at this time. Okay. Okay. Any other questions related to this topic?
So if you all agree to this, it's my intention to start advertising wholesale for board clerks because we're going to have some we definitely
are really short total board clerks right now. Okay. Yeah. I think that's the way to go. Okay. 9 F. Town We need that motion, Jeff.
Oh, I'm sorry. Do we need it in a motion?
I mean, if you wanna make a motion, make a motion. If not, I, know, and you don't object to it, I'll do it anyway. But I make a motion that we switch all board clerks to a ten ninety nine payroll system effective immediately. And for Eric to advertise for board board clerks. So so admit not It's payroll. So just eliminate the word payroll, Adrian. Payment. Okay. $10.99 vendor payments. Okay.
Who seconded that? Anybody? All of you. Great. Good job, Paula. Further discussion on that topic? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Communications?
Yeah. I'm getting to it. Enough. Yeah. Maybe I closed that website. Okay. What was that one, Adrian? 9F, Town Communications Policy.
Eric? So I gave you a real short policy which just states, look, I know we've had some issues before with the board being unhappy with some of the stuff that's been posted. So I'm just going to say for regular posting that boards and commissions, meetings, agendas, and calendar postings just get posted with no approval or review other than the boards and commissions themselves. And that I just get a storyboard once a week on Monday for all the proposed social media community alerts and town website updates. And then I approve it before we do it just to eliminate things going forward. Perfect. You know, and then emergency communications, you know, call me or email me. You know, if you can't get ahold of me, guess they got to get ahold of Jeff and request it directly through Jeff. You know that way if you've got any issues with what's up there, you know the blame's all on me and that makes life easy. Okay. What
provoked this? I'm not following this. There was somebody had a concern about a post that went up.
Well, I mean, you as a board have certainly expressed concern with posts that have come up before. So this just simplifies that and says everything that's a post, I have to have eyes on first. And that will hopefully eliminate any concern on your part regarding that.
Are any of the posts? So I saw the under ordinary postings, you've got meetings, agendas, minutes. Are we gonna continue to promote like community events?
Well, I mean, if I get a storyboard on Monday that has a community events, I'll approve them.
Okay. So who those people are gonna send you something? So the rec commission sending you information on community events or
No. She's asking who's putting the storyboard together, Eric. So at this point, Amanda
will be putting the storyboard. The only difference is there'll be one more step before we actually post everything online. And that is a review by me. The only reason I wanted to run this by you is that this does have the potential to slow some things down. And so you should be aware of that, that I'm intending to do that.
Gotcha. Okay. And I think I suggested this to you. If you have a Google Doc where she puts the photo and the text under it. So you it's a standing document and you can update it however you need to. Yep, that's fine.
Yeah. And a month ahead of time or a week ahead of time, whatever works for you guys. That's the best way just so you have
something that you can keep updating on. And by doing it the way Paul is suggesting, if you did them, you could actually storyboard a whole month ahead. So every time something gets added to the calendar, anytime something gets put in stone, when Amanda has ten minutes, she can throw it together and just keep adding to it. And then so when she goes to pull it on Monday, it's already done, you know?
Yeah, understood. I mean, harder part is going to get be to get all the commissions, you know, to understand that, you know, they can't expect to walk into their her office and have something get posted or go out immediately, you know, unless it is a genuine emergency that they're going to have to do it ahead. Yeah, it's going
to take some time, but once we get the flow going and 95%
of our stuff is scheduled well enough in advance it's not an issue it'll be the 5% that are last minute and we'll. Deal with it when it comes up right. Yeah I think it's a good solution. And G, the mental health little library.
So that's also in your packet. That was something that the ATressa at is trying to provide for all the towns. And she asked for us to designate a location where they can install this and keep it stocked. And there's a note in your packet regarding their mental health library, little library. Okay. And where are you thinking of putting it?
I mean, I actually think it would be probably most appropriate to put it, You know, if the community center was built, I would put it more down towards where the community center is. Between now and then I think we should put it by the main entrance to the community room. That would be my suggestion. We could alternatively put it at the front entrance also. The advantage of the front entrance is that there's a camera there. So the first time it gets vandalized, hopefully at least we'll be able to catch the person who did it. If that does occur, hopefully. It is a mental health library. They may have a reason for vandalizing it that they can't control. And we also could think positively and not have it happen. Well, I have faith.
And maybe people won't wanna use it if they know they're on camera because then they'll get stigmatized.
Well, then we could put it back by the community entrance where there's no camera. That's Perfect. One of those locations is I think it would look great there.
Alright. Anybody else have any other questions related to that? So we agreed we're gonna put it by the community room entrance. Yes. Thank you. Senior Transportation Vehicle Parking.
So I think we really need to get the senior transportation vehicles out of the old senior center. I'm actually a little concerned that the roof where the large buses is going to cave in because it's in pretty bad shape overall. I had a long discussion with Jay and he thinks in a couple weeks they can clear an area behind public work. It would be behind the gate and it could be locked. The vehicles would be out of sight and we could park them there until such time as we come up with a covered location to put them. I mean, downside really is when it comes to winter, getting some of the senior transportation drivers to properly clear the vehicles is an issue. But I think I'm starting to be more concerned about the building and storing them in the building. But I'm equally concerned about them getting the catalytic converters ripped off since that seems to be the, you know, the ever present problem in, you know, in Connecticut right now. So that's kind of what I'm,
you know, I wanted to have a discussion with the board as to what you think and where you wanna go with it.
Wasn't there a space at the town garage that we were considering at one time inside? I don't think we were ever considering
inside storage for them. Well Jay told me about a spot that he thought that he could get to work. Well,
okay. So sorry, we're talking about two different things. I was talking about storage inside the main bay. Oh. There is some possibility that we could knock down the front shed roof on the cold storage and build some kind of long ramp to get up there with community vehicles and lower the floor by about four feet and reuse part of the cold storage. You
know, for doing that, we would need to get somebody to look at that and give us. You know, some sort of design estimate costs because it's, they can do the demo, but they obviously can't do the construction side. That's not an immediate solution, Scott. No. And I'm
not even really convinced that's a good long term solution because I don't know if it's actually big enough to get all of the vehicles in. I don't think it is because I don't think it's three bays wide. So I really don't think that's a great long term solution. The other option we could consider would be to park the vehicles up here by the town hall and just park them right in the first bays of the school park, lower school parking lot. And I'm just trying to get your thoughts on how you want to proceed because it's, we don't have a great solution to this. Know, all we have are, you know, all the solutions have their pluses and minuses.
I think public personally, I think public works for now. Let's, I mean, we've got to figure out something. The old firehouse is just sitting there, you know. We probably should talk about. I think we would be better off tearing it down. And putting a new roof cap on it. To to deal with the base situation over there. And then convert that into transportation parking long term. You know, and that may be something that we can work on a we can work on an RFP for. And then see see what that comes back as and and look at the budget for that next year, you know. Is it possible to put a couple more doors
up at the transfer station and use the blue building?
Well, you, as a authorized, some storage in the blue building for tires. I don't know that it's deep enough. Ford. No,
it's not deep enough for the buses. I'll throw this out there. Why don't we, have we ever considered just selling that property and using those funds to build a new garage down at the down at the Public Works Building? To sell the property and use that money to build a new storage garage down at Public Works. Problem solved. I don't know that you're gonna get much for it, but Well, mean, the new building's not I mean, I I looked at it doing a steel building on my property and it wasn't it wasn't crazy. It wasn't really cost prohibitive.
Oh, why don't we find out what the cost of a a steel structure just for at Public Works, just for the the senior buses? It's for around $5,060,000. Alright.
K. Yeah. Mean, an uninsulated steel structure. Yeah. You could do that. If we could sit there and get a grant for a bus, why can't we get a grant for storage of the vehicles?
I mean, whatever the proceeds we get from that, if we sold, let's just say we sold that property, the proceeds we got, we do have money left over in the building fund that we could supplement for.
Yeah. Let's, I mean, let's brainstorm this. So it's not, I don't think we're gonna get answers tonight. So let's brainstorm this and move it forward for now. Yeah. The only thing I'm suggesting is that we move the vehicles. Yeah. I think currently, you know, if you're concerned about the roof, move them to public works and then let's over the next couple of months explore. We'll talk to a couple of real estate agents and get some numbers on that property, what we could maybe get for it, and then go from there.
Okay. Let's move on to item 10, the approval of the meeting minutes for the Monday, 04/11/2022 regular meeting.
I never got corrections back for the ones that I asked for. The minutes are not appropriate for what we generally put out. Okay. I asked for corrections. I never saw them. So
Okay. So technically, do we have to approve the meeting, the minutes attorney O'Brien?
Eventually, you don't have to approve them today, but you do have to approve them at some point. K. So let's You know, you can obviously, you can amend them.
K. Let's get the corrections, and then we can approve them at our next meeting.
But ordinarily, since they are the preliminary meeting minutes are posted, this is the meeting at which
you make. But Eric, they weren't they weren't. I mean, I I sent an email back everyone got CCed and they were never they weren't sent back to us corrected so I'm not going to move forward on approving minutes. When they were wholeheartedly wrong and you can't you can't if you're going to start taking conversation out of context, you know or take bits of conversation I mean it's there were pieces of conversation there rather than the whole conversation. That's why we don't do that, because unless you're going to verbatim type everything that was said in a meeting you can't pick a choose. That was my issue with it now.
So we'll wait to our next meeting, so we can get updated minutes and then we can sit down and review them. We have a format
whoever's doing the minutes. If it ends up being Marina from this meeting, she can look at our previous minutes and mimic that format. We were happy with it. That's what we want.
Okay, so we're going to move on to item 11, the finance department report. A, revenue summary. B, town budget summary. C, Town Aid Road update. D, town cash report. And E, an over expenditure report. Anyone have any specific questions? I know Diane Choket asked some questions regarding the significant changes made to the data. Eric, can you shed any light on that? No, I don't know specifically what she's asking.
Diane, you're on the meeting. Can you, can you chime in? Let's bring her on Diane showcase board of finance, ma'am.
Hello. Hello. So change in this report is, and I'm talking about the expenditure report. At the end of the report now, there have been added two grants. I don't know why. There's nothing the board of finances asked for. We've asked for grant reporting, but not on an expenditure report. As well as the total amount of the town budget under the adopted budget is not the correct dollar amount.
Let's go through the first thing. The grants that are added at the end is probably a setup issue because the account numbers aren't even accurate. Eric, if you can go back to the finance department and ask them about those account number setups, they don't appear to be accurate. Then Diane, what was the other issue? The budget number is not budget. So
we pass a town budget unless it's been voted on by the Board of Finance to supplement that budget from other funds. You can't change the number. Right. So
what happened is I think that connectivity grant got added back in. Remember we found an error where it came on and then we took it out to fix it because it's off by the amount of the connectivity grant. So our adopted budget is not $12,725,050 It's supposed to be 12,000,004 and 27,040. So the connectivity grants in there again? Yes. Wow that's a.
So that connectivity grant popped back in as a budgeted item On page I have page eight of the
expenditure report. So that needs to be addressed as well.
So we can't change the town budget after we approve. Forget changing the town budget.
Can I just tell you? You have an expense account number or whatever, 30030, which is contractual service connectivity grant. Then you also have that at the bottom under another number, Same amount, 2013302330. That's interesting. Right. So is one revenue, one expenditure?
It appears that way. Eric, if you could sit there and address those two, those issues.
I mean, I get the trying to report on the grants and the expenses that are being paid out of those grants, but it shouldn't be part of the expenditure report because it's not those grants are outside of the town budget.
Well, Maria is on the meeting. Can we just ask her if there was some reason that this was changed?
Yeah. That was when I printed it. That was the first time I printed things through the new admin, you know, connection, and I didn't know that those needed to come out of the report before I sent it, so that's my fault.
Also, you're you're basically clicking on what you wanna include in the report?
Well, I think when Sherry was I have the one pulled up from the April meeting, and I I'm not sure how she exported it, but I think she was able to literally take those lines. Like, you know, in Excel, you can literally delete a whole line out. Think that's how she did it, but my report, literally, I just printed right, you know, to PDF or whatever from Edmonds. So I can't really I couldn't really take the line out. So is it is it currently in Edmonds as a as revenue? I think it's got a revenue one and an expense. I think there's two accounts set up for it, one revenue and one expense.
But connectivity grants or any stuff that we get like that should be set up completely separately because they have to be audited. Right. Just by the town, but when we get a connectivity grant, the state needs to be able to audit them separately. Yep.
So we need to be careful about how we're including that. It really shouldn't be under revenue, should be under a separate fund. Right.
That's something as we go move forward, we're going to have to probably address.
Are you telling me, Marina, that we don't have a standardized report that we print?
We're work. I mean, they're still working on it, Jeff, is what she's probably to tell you. I mean, we're
if we have that account under, like, the l accounts, that report is probably if I printed you know, like, I print the revenue or expense account reports, that's probably, like, a 40 page long report with all the accounts.
But do we have the connectivity grant currently under its own fund?
I have to double check. I wanna say yes, but I'm not 100% sure. Okay. Are you still driving? Or so do we need to have Eric maybe just send you some notes for stuff like this, or can you take notes on this? Yeah. Yeah. And I since Sherry was the one that was helping set it set it up in the system, I'd I'll have her look at it with me also.
Speaking of Jeff, did you ever get a chance to sit down with Marina and go over some of the stuff with her from our meeting? I have not. It's on my list of May, my last week in May. Okay. I'm excited about that. Won't get there. Did you talk to Marina and make sure she's going to be here the last week of May? Could be on vacation. We're going in summer. You're on vacation. You're on vacation? No. No vacation for me. Excellent. Me either. Alright.
I have I do have one thing, though, while we're on the finance department. I don't know if Diane had any other questions or anything that she wanted to go over.
Diane, I was I didn't look at this in-depth. Just noticed off the top that those numbers were out of whack, so at the stuff for the Board of Finance and I'll dig in, see if there's any question. You had something else Marina?
Yeah, so which I was just gonna wait. It's in regards to Edmonds. So I'm kind of glad Diane and Joanne, if she's still on the meeting. So I had a webinar the other day with them about a new product they're coming out with, and it's kind of it's the first line of the email that I read for the webinar, it says it's literally for councils and boards for towns to kind of it's not it's not you're like, you're not signing into the system, but it's almost like a URL, like a website you can go to that has all of the information from admins, the funds, the expenses, vendors, revenue, etcetera. And it we can set it up where it updates each day or every week or whatever. So anyone could like, any one of you guys can go in. And if you have any questions about stuff, especially during budget time or anything, can see and look through all that information yourself. I have the webinar saved if anyone wants to watch it, and I also ask them for a price list just to see just curious of how much it would be to add that product onto admin.
Interestingly enough, that was actually one of the selling points from them is that that was supposed to be built into the original software. We were supposed to be able to have people that could sign on and see the data, but not be able to access not be able to modify the data. Right, yeah. Well, we're supposed to be able do it without an add on though.
Oh, got it. Yeah, I know if it's, I guess, technically maybe not a add on, maybe it's just kind of part of it. I'm not really sure what the I haven't got an email back from her about pricing or anything like pricing, so maybe it's already Yeah. Okay. So it's called the viewpoint viewpoint dashboard. It's called, so it just it looks interesting to me, at least for, you know, the Can you keep us updated on that? Because that would be maybe help in some regard. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I'm waiting for it. She was we're supposed to reach out to the sales team and get back to me with a price list.
Eric, while we're on this topic of finance stuff, we had a question that was put in the chat about civil preparedness, the open balances, but this came up with another, with the seniors too. What is the cut off for people to be able to use the funds in their back with their balances and the I guess my other question is, if we're talking about doing balance transfers, are we making sure that we're going to the chairs of or people that are responsible for those budgets and clearing it with them that they didn't have that money assigned to something before we start moving it? I've cleared it with a lot of them. Haven't cleared it completely with all of them. I just I know that the seniors I think we're looking to use some of their money for new tables so. You know. But is there a cut off in? Are we going to go back to appropriate people? I mean, when are they, when are they going to know if we're looking to transfer funds?
Well, I hadn't set a specific date. Okay. You have a specific date in mind or the board of Finance does, I'd be happy to use your date. I don't. I didn't know if you had something in mind specifically or
whatnot. That's all. So are we saying that the people that have budgets that
they're dealing with are not aware that they have money left? Is that what we're getting? Some of them are aware they had money left. I know the seniors were looking to find out how much they had left, and I think that the message that they were getting was that that money may be transferred to other stuff. I don't know if that's the case, but that's the way they seem to interpret it.
So Eric, you also have the overexpenditure report that was prepared? Correct. Can you at least give us what, you know to go on with Adrian just said, can you give us an analysis of where you're expecting to move this money from?
Yes. So if you go down to the should be oh, where is it? Starting on page 76, there is a list of the preliminary the first round of money transfers I'm suggesting that the Board of Finance make. I gave this list to them last month, but they didn't like the format that I had had it in. So they asked me to use this format. So we put it in this format, and I cc'd you on that as well. Page 76 or page 68?
At least in Oh, sorry. I take it back. In my packet, it's page 90. Sorry. The draft behind it said 76. By error. Page 90.
Okay. Now I got it. Alright. I think you have to take this adjustment page that you have on page ninety and ninety one, and you have to sit there and do it like you have up on page 68. What that would do to everybody involved, like what Adrian was basically saying, was, Okay, I have to balance this account, but I'm going to also take some of the funds that are in this account. Then if someone or a separate group had a budget, they would understand that some of their budget might be taken. Eric, I would recommend page 68, 69, seventy, and seventy one. You have an in and out column.
So the first budget, the first method of doing the transfers that I submitted to the Board of Finance was exactly that. And I kind of got told that this was the format they wanted. So to comply with their desires, I produced it this way.
All right. Well, they're in charge of this. You can do it. To me, would be like, where is it coming from? If you're going to make a decision that you're going to take it from whatever account you're going to move it from, you kind of need to know that. I know that that happens in your adjustments, but it doesn't give you a total view of it. But anyway, I'll go do the analysis from the accounts that you're pulling from.
If you would like, I could send you what I first supplied to the Board of Finance, which was color coded and had for each line the to and the from if you want to see that. Felt it was more confusing and they wanted to see it this way so that's what we did. I have no dog in the hunt. Will supply it either way. I just prefer not to supply it one way for you and the other way for them because that's.
Well, they're more in places than I am, so you do it the way they want it. I'll figure it out.
Jeff, if you need an accountant to help you, me know. I know some good ones. Yeah, you know. I'll try to figure it out.
Okay. Item 12, the budget appropriation transfers and over expenditure requests. So we were looking at, I believe, both of those just now. So anybody have any questions related to the budget?
Can I just ask a couple of questions? Because we're supplying information differently than we have in the past here. What I wanted to do is give you kind of a snapshot by just taking every line item that we had and then starting on page like 68 show it ranked in order of percentage used. So you had an easy way to see what is over, what is under, and where the line is. Does that help you? Do you want to see that? I know the board of finance wants something like that.
I would, I would like to see whatever you're providing to them. If you can provide it to us the same way, again, as, as Jeff said, we'll defer to them as far as format, but it would be nice to see where our issues are.
Okay. Yeah. What you showed on '68 through '71 is fine. All I was saying is if you were going to make an adjustment, it would be good to see it on the opposite side as well. But that's fine. I can go back to the adjustments. We're good. Okay. Anybody have anything else on item 12, the budget? No. Moving on. All right. 13, tax collectors report and the refund requests. You know, there's two refunds. If somebody would like to make a motion to that, that would be great.
I make a motion to authorize the first selectman to sign the authorization to refund excess tax payments to Kevin Shea of $544.50 and Kristin McGregor of $28.80 for a total of 5 and $72.30 I'll second that. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Nothing. No, no, I abstained. Why do you abstain? Because it affects It affects what? Because one of those individuals
lives in his house. I'm supposed to be one of those people that sit there and
One of those persons lives in my house, so I abstain. Fine.
I get it. I get you. Access payment. I should have voted no. I knew I should have voted no. All right. You know what bothers me is that this is a big collection month, And I looked at the revenue report, and we were short. So those tax collections, so the April money is not in our revenue report. Oh, god.
April money's not in the revenue report? Because she had a massive, she had one day last week that was just huge. Yeah. I mean, it's always Sorry. End of April there. So
if you went to page 52 and you go to the current grand list, there's still $2,300,000
to collect. Yeah, it's not accurate. So let's just move on. We'll clear it up when we have the finance office squared away. There was I know what happened. Go ahead.
There was a so we have a shared drive between our office and the tax collector's office, and she had done this report that's in the packet. And then when Sherry went to go post it, something happened with a file where Aileen could see all the information, but Sherry couldn't. So I believe Sherry was working with David from IT to try to get it restored so she could get everything posted. Thank you for the clarification. Welcome.
Okay. All right, let's move on. You have the 14, the assessor's report revaluation services. Is there anything related to that, Eric?
No, not at this point. We answered the question about vision appraisal. That's the majority. Don't appear to have been sued this year, which is a change.
That is amazing considering the changes that happened this year.
All right. Let's look on to item 15, the departmental reports. Does anybody have any questions related to any of the departmental reports? No? Okay. Let's move on to correspondence. Any correspondence there? Nothing. Item 17, public speak. One second. I'm looking at the wrong computer. My bad. All right. Amber Armitage, you are up. Public speak. All set, thank you. Okay, Elaine Bucar. All set, thanks. All right. Joanne Eber.
A quick thought, I just wanted to say that I'm really happy that you're going to be reviewing the town's personnel policy booklet, know, just to make sure it's abundantly clear. I think that's worth looking into, Glad you're doing it. The town's very generous with its benefits and everything. That's great that you're going to tighten up that language. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Diane Choquette. All set. Thank you.
All right. And then we have one phone number left. That's Marina. Okay. So Marina, would you like to add to public speak? Nothing at this time. Okay, good. Marina,
thank you for your feedback tonight, by the way. It's helpful to have you on the, you know, to be able to answer those questions for us. Thank you. Yep, yep, no problem.
All right. And then Okay. So we'll make a motion to go to executive session.
So motion to go to executive session for the following. Consider renewal of town administrators contract A, B, union contract discussion, C, discussion about MRF changes in personnel policy.
Okay. Do you want to second that? I'll second that. Okay. Do we want to include Attorney O'Brien? Anybody have a problem with that? Nope. No issues. Okay.
All right. Paula, can you sit there and remove everyone else from the meeting and stop the recording?
I am not the host. I think Eric's got to take care of that.