Meeting transcript
BOS Regular Meeting
June 8, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Well
let's just get started. So we're going to do a call order. We're supposed to do the Pledge of Allegiance so we have a nice group to do the Pledge of Allegiance so we'll do it tonight. Hey Jeff, good to see you. You got to unmute. All right, Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation
under God and indivisible with liberty and justice. All right. We're gonna go to item two on the first thing I need to know before we go to public speak Selectman Mandeville will not be joining us tonight. He had a family emergency. So we'll get that out of the way. So it will be us four Board of Selectmen members. We are going to go to public speak right now. Paula if you'd like to go around the people that are on that would be great. Sure. Wally would you like to say something? No thank you. Thank you Wally. Okay. Diane, would you like to say something? No, thank you. I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Louise, would you like to say something? Nope, all set. Thank you.
Kurt, would you like to say something? All set Paula, thanks.
Okay, Linda, would you like to say something? Linda, would you like to say something during public speak? Oh, you unmute I think I'm muted. There you go.
I was just going to say I enjoyed the parade on Memorial Day.
Awesome. Glad you enjoyed it. We enjoyed being a part of it too. Mike Palazzi, would you like to say something? Mike Palazzi, there you go. No, thank you.
Okay. And somebody just joined with a phone number to the call. We're doing some public speak. Would you like to say something? And can you identify yourself, please? This is Dominic Dorico.
Hello, Dominic. Would you like to say anything during public speak? This is Paula Not at the moment. Thank you. All right.
All right. So Paula I would like to just say a little something. I wanted to take a moment. My name is Amanda Gibson. I just wanted to thank our resident state trooper Daryl for posting on his resident state trooper Facebook page about the Black Lives Matter movement that is happening across the world right now to help solve racial injustice for people of color surrounding towns and across the state, they've posted on their social media pages along with hosting peaceful protests. And I just wanted to coordinate with the Board of Selectmen members on how to appropriately post on our town Facebook page. I'll be reaching out about that, whether it's sharing Daryl's post or creating our own. I think it's important, we can figure that out.
Okay, thank you. Let's move on from public speaking. We'll go to additions and deletions. Selectman, do you have any items? I don't have anything to add. Jeff? Nothing here. Scott? Unmute yourself, Scott.
We had to add libraries. I'd like to motion to add the following agenda items to 7L, the library sprinkler system in bollards and parking stops. Okay. To 7L.
Anybody else? No? Okay. So all those in favor of adding the library issues irrigation system and bollards, aye. Aye. Okay. Anybody opposed?
I'm opposed because I think we just heard about this today and I think we should put it on next month's agenda. Okay. Adrian, I talked to Adrian about this and he felt the same way. Okay.
Well, it passed three-two then. Let's get on to number four, boards and commissions, presentations and appointments. Website Development Committee update, Paul or Amanda, whichever one.
Sure. I'll start, and then I'll hand it over to Amanda. We have an updated timeline. Amanda did a great job with talking to our representatives with Civic and nailing down a live date for us. So Amanda, why don't you take it away? Amanda, you're muted, so you got to unmute yourself first.
Oh, here I am. So just to make a long story short, we felt that we were being neglected a bit by Civic, and we were assigned a new project leader. And this all happened last week. We connected today with her, and she got us back on track, and we have this great timeline. And here it is. Today, she reached out and gave us the website link for the live site, and it is now being migrated. And our date for it being ready is June 23, which is exciting. It is this month, and our goal is to have it launched no later than July 8. So please let us know if you have any questions. I just wanted to thank Paula for helping out with this situation.
Okay. Anything else? So according to your timeline, we'll be able to sit there and get on live on the twenty third?
The twenty third is going to be when we see the beta version. So they're going to send us some stuff to look at. But the actual launch date when the public is going to see it is July 8.
So we're going to was talking about Board of Selective members. We did -Oh, -Will we be able to test?
Right. So we will include the web page that the rest of the board can see prior to the July 8, absolutely. Okay. All right and Scott or Jeff any questions no sounds great nothing here
okay 4B traffic safety committee appointment of the following members Steve Goodwin, Steve Willard, Michelle Vail, Deb Thompson, a Board of Selectmen member, Eric Anderson as an ex official member, and Daryl Teralt as an ex official member, the state trooper. I would like to be the Board of Selecting Member on this committee if no one objects to that. Anybody? I'll second that. All right. That was easy.
Well living at the lake I think you're the obvious choice. I
agree. You should be the person out there I agree with it. Let me close my packet down. So I know Joseph was on last week. Steve Willard is a good choice. Michelle Vail, Deb Thompson, no problem. If that's okay, somebody can make a motion to appoint those members.
I motion to appoint the Lake District Traffic Safety Committee for a duration of eighteen months starting on sixfifteentwenty twenty. The commission will be composed of the following members: Joseph Godwin, Steven Willard, Michelle Vail, Deb Thompson, Jeff McGuire, Eric Anderson as ex officio member, and Darryl Tetrault as an ex officio member. The commission will be examining issues around speeding in the Lake District and report back to the Board of Selectmen on appropriate steps the town can take to alleviate the situation. A preliminary report and recommendation are requested in three months. I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Before nothing, back to the good ways of our board. All right. Let's move on to item five, the town administrator's report. Eric, all you?
Okay. So I'm just going to give a quick recap. We've talked a bunch about the upgrades in the new server at the town hall. I won't beat that one to death. We're working with CEN on doing the conversion to fiber. We still have some issues in the elementary school as to where exactly the fiber is going to attach. We're starting to work now with the school's consultant on that. So hopefully we'll have more progress pretty quickly with that. We obviously we have to do that before we pursue VoIP. We have a couple different VoIP vendors that we're looking at that should go fairly quickly once we connect to fiber. The costs for the fiber are relatively the same as what we're paying now, plus or minus about 10, assuming we're not using a tremendous amount of bandwidth.
She did mention that depending on what the fire department is paying now for their connection, we may be able to use essentially the data plan that the town hall is on to cover the fire department too and decrease their costs. So it might not decrease the town's cost as the town hall, but it may be able to decrease our costs collectively. We ordered the time clocks for PrimePay, I put that on hold at the beginning of the COVID thing, but I think we need to execute that and get that rolling. We're going to talk a little bit in old business about the personnel policy, so I don't want to cover that here. I wanted to say we've gotten some feedback good and bad about the town wide communications and Civic. As we transition to the new website, one of the things we're going to be doing is switching over to use the emergency alerts just for emergencies and then have two other channels available that people can sign up for.
But anyway, that's the communicating to residents has been going fairly well. And I've kind of made it a priority lately to make sure that they know what's happening and what things are affecting them. So we published that and on social media, the roadwork schedule, which has now changed a little bit. And I also posted a series of posts on, you know, town wide speeding and what approaches the town can consider to alleviate that. I would like to interested in hearing feedback from the Lake Safety Committee because that's clearly one area where where it's it's problematic. We also put in a quick post about trail usage and safety because the trails are getting an awful lot more use today compared to what they were even a year ago. So everybody's got to kind of get along and do their part.
Public works, we've done a lot of sweeping and a lot of prep before the the chip seal operations. I prioritize those roads that are getting chip sealed so that they're ready to go. We've gotten all the catch basin clean. We've done one day of chip sealing with Indus again just to finish everything that's on the chip seal list. And there was one of the basins on Stanley Drive that had failed and was getting to be a safety hazard. So that got torn out down to the sump and completely replaced. We ordered a blower unit for the Steiner tractor mower. So we'll be able to blow off the roadsides and also the trails. We would have probably preferred to buy a unit for the new mower if we had bought that. But since we didn't buy the new mower, that was seemed like the way to go. We have an application in for to the Wetlands Commission as a town for the road drainage projects on Shawty Mill Road. So hopefully we'll have the approval for that in early July and we can get cracking on that. The chip seal date has been pushed back to the sixteenth. Basically the contractor's running a little bit behind and the microceiling and the penetrating, you know, road sealant stuff will be in July or August. Let's see, I've gotten a number of negative complaints about roads in general, potholes, people calling and via social media.
I mean, I know it's an issue, it's simply a function of what we have available for funds. I know Jeff had indicated he was interested in maybe taking a ride someday and going looking at the town roads and if any of the other Board of Selectmen members wants to do that I'd be happy to go out with you and kind of talk through what the strategy is and what we're looking to do. Next up or one of the next things up would will be an RFQ for the tree work. We need to get that out pretty quickly. Hoping to do that in the next couple, next week or so, week to two weeks. Been in contact with Brandon Hanfield about the culverts. He's pretty well done with his preliminary evaluation. We should have the final written draft. He promised it I would have it in my hands by 06:20. We also hired him on behalf of the Inland Wetlands Commission to review a couple applications that are, or potential applications that are in the floodplain that we really want to have a good hydrology guy look at. You guys all saw the sign at the ball field, which came out really nicely painted, and thanks to Jerry and the public works crew for putting that in. As far as the transfer station's going, we're well underway with that project. It's kind of a coordination between,
you know, Public Works and a few outside contractors. We did have some initial negativity on Wednesday with people who went to the transfer station thinking they were going to dump their bulky. Apparently it was not as bad on Saturday. I spoke to Dominic on both days. So it seems like it's going fairly smoothly. And that's pretty much it. It's that project is just rolling along. The other thing I need to address, which I haven't even really taken a whack at yet, is we're having a problem with the pump at the Andover Veterans Monument. So we're gonna have to figure that out.
There is also a request from the Beautification Commission to do some improvements at the monument. Basically what they want to do is bring in a bunch of topsoil because they're having a problem with the they said there's just not enough topsoil there to do a good job growing the grass. And long term they would like to put in a sprinkler system at that location too, but there's nothing really like pending. Also on the flagpole we got a couple of quotes for putting a light onto the flagpole so that it's illuminated at night, which as some of you may be aware is actually a federal requirement, we've just never actually done it. So I discussed that through the Beautification Commission and they picked LENCO for that one. They just felt that given what the scope of the project is, LENCO was the best quote for that. Connectivity grant, it looks like we should have no problem using EZIQC. I haven't given the contractor a final heads up. It looks like we've got everything out of that we needed. We were able to go back to the state and ask them if we could increase the scope of that project slightly to cover some the front entrance to the library and repour the ramp because the ramp has a significant lip and redo the railing. So we should be able to, we should, we will be able to slide that in as part of the connectivity grant so the town won't have to pay for it. That'll come out of the state grant. So the rec commission, one of the open questions last month was what to do about the signboard that the rec commission
bought a number of years ago. The rec commission has come back to us and said that they would like the final location to be outside the community room. So basically to serve as a notice board for the community room, which seems like a reasonable solution. That's it in a nutshell. I don't want to go in too deep. I sent you all a bunch of pictures of various different things that were going on around town. Does anybody have questions for me regarding anything in my report?
Yeah, I have a question. Can you share like real quickly pros and cons about the communication that people have shared with you with the blast system we've been using with Civic? So the only real
some there was somebody that was unhappy with all the things we were using the emergency communication for and felt we were overusing that. When you really look back at it, we've sent out what, a total of five in four months. So it's not like we're killing people, but several people, well not several, at least one person felt that using that for just announcing what happened at the trans was going to happen at the transfer station wasn't an emergency and wasn't an appropriate use. And I just simply explained to him that we intend to correct that and if we had rolled it out when we wanted to, which was with the website,
we would have incorporated that right from the start. But since we were kind of under the gun and we needed something, you know, we rolled it out without having the other parts of that platform available to us. So moving
forward, and I think we talked about this way back, but what's going to be the plan? So now we've got everybody in this one bucket, right? So are we going send out like an email to them so that they can log back in and then fix their settings or what, how are we doing that? So that would be what I would suggest. I would suggest we post
on the website and we use social media first and we say, hey, we launched our full blown communications. We now have a lot more options than just the emergency alert system. So please log back in and sign up for things that may interest you. And I believe the commission originally wanted just three options, one being an emergency alert and there were two more. One was town like boards and commissions news, and one was general news,
I think. I'd have to relook at Yes, my so other two are community events and boards and commissions. I suppose we can always add more, but that's what the website committee had originally agreed on.
Correct. So and I think that's reasonable because I think we can start using it for, you know, put most of that stuff out, you know, for that. Sure okay. Does that make sense? Absolutely yep. Good.
Eric on road survey do we have do we have any identification of significant potholes on given roads?
Not potholes per se, but you know each every road is ranked, by something called a PCI or pavement condition index basically from zero to 100, zero being a road that doesn't exist and 100 being, you know, like the Unicorn Road, the mythical road. You know, so it's a range of both things like potholes and alligator cracking and really deep ruts. So it's kind of a combination score. We don't have anything that gets out where are the locations of the potholes.
Okay. And is there a way for us related to the roads just to post a ranking of the roads? Yes.
I mean you just want to list the quality of each road. Is that weird?
Yeah, mean if we just listed the roads and we sat there and even did them alphabetically and sat there and said this is their grade as it was given by our third party contractor. Sure. We post that on the website just to allow people to understand that we're trying to do this differently by using some kind of methodology rather than just say, well, we're going to do this road for whatever unknown reason. So if we could do that, I think that might give people an understanding of what we're attempting to do rather than think we're doing things on a haphazard manner. Selective manual, very nice to see that you could join us. Hopefully everything went well with you. Good as it's gonna get okay so is there any other questions first eric
don't have a question but I just had a comment When Jeff Murray and I were down by the monument trying to test some things out for electricity for the parade, The outlet that's down there wasn't working, so I don't know if that has anything to do with maybe the issue that you brought up with the pump.
Which outlet? The one right at the, where was the outlet? Not not too far from the telephone pole.
It the was breaker panel Eric. It was on the breaker panel. Okay, and you just reset the breaker? No, the breakers were on. Opened it up and the breakers were on but the outlet was dead. Okay.
I wonder if you lost the leg or something somewhere. So that may be the root to our problem.
Yeah, so we have one kind of complicating factor to that and that is there's no meter there. And I had a discussion about that with our Eversource rep and he had looked at it at one time and he said basically that that was a bootleg install, that was, and you know because I had had some questions about that and he said basically right now you're not paying for that. There's a transformer, it's connected but there's nothing there. So we may not wanna, so what I'm saying is we gotta gently pursue that because I don't want to have to pay $20 a month for a meter if it becomes officially there.
Yeah and it was weird because I drove by that night, flagpole was lit up and I tried plugging in a couple of things to the outlet and the outlet still didn't work so
it's definitely a strange setup. Was it a GFCI outlet? No. No? It's an outside install and it's not a GFI?
No, there might be a GFCI breaker in the box. Yeah, it's possible but it'd be unusual.
But it's just as a standard outlet. I think they're GFCI breakers in the box was one for the pump. There's one for the lights and one for the pump. There
is one for the pump there. So there's breakers in there. Right. That's something maybe we want to work on
we're just troubleshooting when we do the when we do the lighting so I guess Winko is gonna do that all right okay any other questions for
Just one question for Eric. What do we finally choose on the the attendance shed? I know you had a I saw a request to quote to finish it. Is that the plan you're taking or are we going to finish it on-site? Just a curiosity.
We'll finish it on-site. They wouldn't offer me a quote to finish it themselves. I haven't really honestly that's low down on my priorities. Lenco's gonna get the electrical and we have a temp air conditioner we can put in so we got time to worry about that. Okay. Just a question.
I may have missed it but has anyone talked about reopening a town hall? No. With Eric? No. Where are we at with that Eric? I mean we should be able to at least have all the employees back at town hall now.
Well actually not without putting up a bunch of dividers and doing a bunch of things to town hall. We can do it but it's kind of a hassle actually and I think given the rate things are changing we can wait it out without too much difficulty and I suspect in a month or so we're going to be back to business as usual and we can avoid doing an awful lot of stuff between now and then. That's my guess. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions?
I have a quick question on I had some connectivity problems, so thank you for your patience. I realize I missed the public speak. Would there be an opportunity to speak, or would you like prefer me to
either wait till the next meeting or contact someone at town hall? Well, you can wait till the end of the meeting. There's public speak at the end of our meeting. Okay.
Should I zoom dial back in at a later time then? You can stay on if you'd like. Well, it'd be a three hour meeting, I assume.
Well, then your best bet is to come on at the beginning of the next meeting.
Okay that sounds good to me. I will I will do that. Thank you very much. No problem. Good night. All right let's get to old business.
6a is town personnel policies. I know Eric has provided them to us. Eric, what is your timeline on this? When would you like these in place?
I don't have a specific timeline. Would like to do it sooner rather than later but it depends. Mean I was assuming I would get some feedback from the Board of Selectmen at this meeting because we announced it last meeting and you got a copy. So if anybody has any comments I would be more than happy to take them. You need a deadline for this?
We got three hours of time we're voting on this date. So we're voting on this next meeting. All right. Is that acceptable to all the members of the Board of Selectmen? Yep. Vote on revised and the adjusted town personnel policy so we can get them off of this agenda and let Eric move forward with appropriate policies related to the employees. Okay, we're gonna move to 6b the community connectivity grant I mean Eric you reviewed that in your report do you have other things that you want to share with us not unless you have questions
I have something that I I look over those prints Eric and I was wondering if you could if you still had money on the towns and change the split rails to the standby times that we have done at the ball field
So the only split rail is that little section by the in front of the public works. Is that the one you want to switch? Yeah. How long is that down there? I'd have to look it's probably 50 feet.
Just saying that they don't last that those split rails don't last and those 10 by tens would be a lot better.
Okay I mean we did spec pressure treated you know split rail posts but it's not you're right you know the bigger the post the longer it's going to last. Exactly. If you want to look at 10 by 10 posts instead. Okay yeah I don't see any reason why we couldn't do that that's actually a good suggestion. Thank you. You're welcome. 6C the email provider Office three sixty five?
So we've pulled the trigger on that. I'm just waiting back from the contractor. What I've asked them to do is because we had purchased three licenses to get the Office product, about two months ago, and I've asked whether they could set this up and gone back to Microsoft and asked whether they can have the effective date of all of them the same. So we're not getting a bill for three of them and then you know two months later a bill for the rest. So but that should be in place. David Hicks, our IT guy is planning on doing the transaction not this Thursday but the Thursday after.
Okay. All right. I mean, let's just go on. So 6D is the annual report and audit?
Honestly, I still don't have it. We can't get ahold of the guy. It's kind of crazy actually. I'm hoping he's dead or he has some other legitimate excuse because this really is irresponsible, on their part. You know we should have had this thing almost a month ago. You know.
Okay, I mean to be fair to him though I mean we're saying this publicly wasn't part of the issue the fact that we as a town didn't send out our letters of clearance?
No, that's as far as I know that's been taken care of a long time. No, it wasn't actually.
Since I mean we those run out a couple months ago, month and a half ago that shouldn't be holding us up now.
But you're saying you should have had it a month ago. Those letters didn't go out to a month and a half ago. So you have to send them out, wait for a reply and then he's got to verify them before he can actually clear the report, right?
Right, but we had, so as far as I know, the only thing document he gave us because he was happy with it, take off the draft and send us the final document. And, you know, that was quite a while ago, way before the last board of finance meeting. And, you know, you can honestly, you can at least reply to us and tell us what's going on. That's what's really irritating. I have a call into him. So I'll try to get
with him again for tomorrow and try to get a timeline related to whatever we're at. Yeah. I don't think I don't think we need to kill it right now in in the meeting. So we want that as soon as we possibly can, and and we'll work to get it. Right, fair enough. Any other questions? Okay, 6E, the town accounting software.
Unfortunately, we have not Laura was on vacation apparently for two weeks. So we have not heard anything from her.
So Laura has sent out to She responded to Cheryl and she asked Cheryl to set up a date for the software committee to review go through the same review that we did with the other software.
I got cc'd on that. I don't know whether you did or not. I did not. Why the whole committee should be getting cc'd on this stuff you know. I didn't realize you weren't.
So anyway I had spoken to Cheryl after our last meeting and I got some information from her related to QuickBooks. As soon as you guys can have that meeting with the committee, that would be great. We need to get that moving and and set up a defined timeline for that and give a definitive date as to when we're going to try to truly have the software implemented, which goes along with our next item, which is six F, the combined finance department. We need to make a decision as a board as to what we want to do and a timeline related to combined finance department. So as soon as the Board of Education sits there and evaluates what it needs, what its thoughts are, we should sit there and make some decisions as to when we should combine that department. And what I'm talking about is what month, whether it's you know, it's it's obviously not gonna be July, and and it's probably gonna be more like sometime in the fourth quarter that we could actually get it done, but we have to start the ball rolling and make that happen. Anyone else related? I wanna talk about the combined finance department.
No. I think we're just waiting for we we've we've got days in the pipeline. We're just waiting on finalization for that date, right? Correct. Okay.
Alright. Anybody else on that issue? Okay. We'll move on to seven, new business. 7a plans for reopening up the town hall. I know Adrian asked a question about it, Eric, but why don't you give us a little bit a brief understanding of your thoughts related to reopening the town hall? So
the state has put out a bewildering number of different executive orders on this but as I understand it if we're going to bring all the employees and the state is still encouraging any employee that can work at home to work at home. So the deal is basically anytime you have two employees in the same office where they're not physically separated by something you need to put in some kind of divider mechanism to you know prevent their bad humors from from co mingling. So practically what that means is both for the, you know, for a number of the offices, what really needs to happen is if the town's gonna do it, we need to start getting plexiglass dividers and we need to start dividing up the spaces. The only other alternative is really to do what we're doing now which is only keeping one employee per office in at any one time and just staggering when and where the employees are in, which is also kind of a pain in the butt. My question is simply, is it worth doing it because it looks like given the rate at which we're going, you know, in a month or so we're gonna be at a place where we don't need to do that. So that's my question. I mean, can certainly pursue it, you know.
Well, so do we know what the next stage is going to look like? Is it still going to have those same requirements in place?
No, we don't. I, you know, I don't know what the next stage is going to look like.
If we're only doing one employee, like for instance, in the town clerk's office, if we're only having one employee in there, then are we looking at laying off the other employee while we're working through this?
I mean, I don't think we need to as long as we can get all the work done. Know, I mean Carol for instance is perfectly fine working from home. Know, it doesn't really, you're right it's an imperfect situation.
But if we only really we only have one person in the office at a time I understand that we you know we planned on this for a certain amount of time but at a certain point if we're only having I mean forgive me for asking but isn't most of her work require her to be in the office or have access to the files in the town?
A I would say neither the tax collector nor the assessor have to be there very often at all, I think both of them are set up fine fine to work remotely. I don't see any issue with that right now. So they're printing bills and bringing stuff home at this point?
They're not printing bills. If they're actually printing stuff, they're doing that from the office but most stuff is done electronically today anyway and the main software package at the moment is cloud based because we transition to the cloud based version for the know for the extent of COVID. My
point is in those two offices primarily they're by themselves. So really the only issue for commingling is the town clerk's office right? And treasurer's office. And land use and registrars.
I didn't realize registrar had a set schedule that they're open but
you know. Well they do, they do. You know it's not a ton of hours, that's true and you can certainly work around them and land use. The building department again that you could probably bring both back now, if that's your choice.
Well, how many people are in the lower office for the building department? Two at a time? Mean MR.
MR. They're six feet apart. I guess my question really goes to well, I have two things. One is, are we having any issues with the town hall with people not being provided the services that they need with a work from home structure right now? Are you having issues related to that?
I think we're slightly less functional in the building department than we are with everybody working there on-site. It's definitely not as fast with them working remote. I mean, there's definitely people and it depends whether the goal is to bring in just all the employees back or the goal is to bring all the employees back and have the town hall quote unquote open because those are different sets of circumstances.
My personal opinion is I think we need to bring the employees back. We're at that point now. I just feel like we're at that point. It's not necessarily about having the town hall open fully, but I think that's where the state is at in a lot of places. That's where most businesses are at. I don't see why we're not there. And as Jeff said, even in the town clerk's office, you're more than six feet apart. So No, you're not.
If you use the first desk and the last desk in Carol's office, I guarantee you that's six feet.
Yes. The problem is not even that. The problem really is if there are requirements for interface with the public and you have to have a plexiglass shield
But we don't have to open the building any more than we are now. But the employees are then there and they can operate more efficiently.
I mean I have a problem Eric one of the questions where you sat there and said the tax collector I mean what is the tax collector? The tax collector from home is doing all of her online data? Sure. She's not printing anything off. She's just performing, inputting of receipts from online data. And all of the checks that she receives that come to the office, she's coming into the office to process. Right.
Does anyone else have an opinion on this? Paula, Jeff, Scott? I mean, I just kinda feel like we're at the point where we should be, if we can do it, we should be doing it. Whether we're opening the town hall or not, they're town hall employees, we're paying for them. I get that everybody loves working from home, but it's not practical to keep doing that forever.
I'll start reconfiguring to, bring all the employees back. Well, hold on. That's fine. There's a difference between between, you know, let let's talk about the dates. I mean, so we have a timeline of June 17 for the second phase of the stage reopen. Yep.
Right? And Eric, that phase of reopening gives us what? Gives us six feet apart, and you're telling us that the state guideline is for plexiglass between employees? Correct. If they're less than six feet apart?
Well, if they're less than six feet apart. I mean, the treasurer's office is absolutely on. I mean, I don't even know if you can reconfigure that office to try to get them. No, but we could stagger their days. No, no, absolutely. I mean, I agree with that.
But we're already doing that. I mean, it's not like nobody's coming in either Barbara Maureen
are in there at any given time. We have four other offices that could come back with the exception of that one that's tight. The other four offices could come back in and work from the town hall. And I think that that's appropriate. And like I said, I will start pursuing dividers
comply with state regulations if you wanna do that. We don't need dividers if we come back on this, you know, if the seventeenth is the date that's a little over a week away. Why can't we do it on the seventeenth or the eighteenth?
I still don't think that gets you past the issue of having multiple people in one office working.
I know at least from my own experience with businesses and helping them get set up, including my wife's office, where they have more than one person in an office, as long as they are six feet apart that was what the hospital regulations, the hospital was following to make sure because they have two people answering phones and stuff in the same space but they're more than six feet apart so they don't need a divider.
How do handle So I understand. I think we need to bring them back. But when they're sharing a file cabinet, I mean, I'm not in the town hall, so I don't understand. But like, I know the town clerk's office, they're sharing filing cabinets so then maybe if somebody's in the file cabinet next to the first desk then they're not six feet away. So how is that handled?
Right so I mean it's no different than you walking down the grocery store aisle when you go to go around somebody. It's not like you're hanging out there it's intermittent. So
Well I guess we need to decide first of all are we bringing just the employees back but leaving the building closed to the outside or are we opening it up altogether? Then I think that's the first step to decide what are we doing there? Then that's kind of If
you're gonna do public service, then you have to get divider kits for the desks. But given that, know, in another month or so after we may not need the divider kits and given how expensive the plexiglass kits are, I mean the ones I just bought were over $120 a piece, you know, and and you know, you're almost a two week lead time right now to get them. Know, it is what it is as far as that. I don't know that we need to be serving the public, but I think we need to have the employees back in there so that we can get back in that mode before we open back up even if it's just for the next, if it's for a month. It still gets people back in the habit of being in the office and doing their jobs. Yeah,
well then I agree. I think bring them back and leave the building close to the public. I mean, they can still call the building and try and get in touch with them by phone or email and meet them at the door if they have to hand them something, guess. We'd have to work that out. But yeah, I agree. I think we need to start taking the next step to bring them back in. Yeah. And Okay. I'll notify them all tomorrow. No problem.
So just bring them back in after the seventeenth, Eric. Why the seventeenth? Isn't that the next opening date?
Yeah. But that's irrelevant for the town hall. That's got nothing to do with us. Okay. Today is as good as the seventeenth as far as that's concerned. Okay.
Understand are you subjected to additional guidelines right now between the eighth and the seventeenth and they loosen up after the seventeenth? Not as far as I know not for us.
No. Okay. I mean, there are to bring people back and follow, the appropriate guidance, you're going to have to have some flexibility. So, I mean, if the office is closed, then we have plenty of space if we did need to move people. I mean, heck, in the town clerk's office, somebody could be working in the safe and somebody could be working in the office. I mean, but Paula is correct. You're going to get within six feet of somebody. It's just going to happen. So let's think about that and maybe the Lord is likely to get together prior to the seventeenth to determine what we what our choice is to do. But Eric,
there are certain things they can do like, you know, like in the town clerk's office, can have one person that does all the pulling like maybe, you know, Therese does all the pulling of the files so if Carol needs something she pulls them that way they don't have to clean every single file every you know every cabinet door every time they grab something you know. You can have one person do it for the day and then that way they're not trying to they can clean it at the end of the day if they whatever they handled, you know.
What problem what problems do you envision just to start off with? Any?
I mean, you know, I think we're gonna have to reconfigure a bunch of stuff to comply with state law. That's all. Is there anything specific you're worried about, Eric?
As I think about it, if I know that's your objective, the first thing I would do is I would take over the community room. I would probably put one of the either the bookkeeper or or Barbara in the community room. You know I think you're gonna have some objection but you know they can deal with it or they can quit.
Well I mean if someone's not feeling that they want to come back to work that's their choice but we're calling them back. I think we've been pretty good about this. We didn't lay anybody off, We could have so. Yep, that's fine.
Listen, we're all concerned about everybody. Okay. But I think we're in agreement. It's time to get started, bring them back. But if an issue arises, Eric, give us a call. We understand it's going to be stressful. Eric,
one thing, what you said taking over the community room, do they have computer access from the community room? Because I know the people in the finance department, they're not connected to computer, they're not going to be doing anything. What are they going be doing? Yes,
they have Wi Fi in there. Yes but do we have a laptop that they can access the files they need? Brings it the meeting so why not?
Mean putting Barbara in there is fine because you can work in the community room as easily as she can work at home. Yeah. And she can pull files
and whatever else she needs and then just go back and forth. When they need to go less than six feet, then they have to put their mask on, you know, so.
So Eric, can you sit there and do a brief email to us all as to the requirements for this to occur? Because if you're going to sit there, mean, know Adrian said put your mask on, I'm assuming that you know if you're having people in the office are you wearing a mask?
Am I yes. Are most employees no. I mean they've been ordered to but they just kind of ignore it
so I mean you know, I guess we'll have to start penalizing people then. No. Look, if if they're in the space if they're in the space by themselves, they do not have to have their mask on. If they're interacting with another employee, they need to put it on. Right. And if somebody's not write them up. Well listen. It's not rocket science. Right but
also keep in mind there are some people that have health concerns that can't wear masks so then we need to address that too if they bring that up.
And you know, let's face it, you have at least a couple of employees, you know, that are, you know, have underlying medical conditions that put them in the high risk category.
So we understand that but this is Yeah, that's fine. Let's,
This is the same debate everyone is having across this wonderful land of ours as to when to go back and, you know, we're a rural community. Now's the time for us. And we're not asking for everything, Eric. We're asking for, you know, come up with a plan as to how to address each office's concerns and we'll go from there. Yep.
Like I said I don't if that's your direction I have no problem following it. I'm not I
just want to ask a question right here. What is not getting done by having the arrangement that we have now? What is not getting done and what would be bringing the employees do to change anything at this point? Well look the reality is No Adrian, Eric answer the question.
There's not anything not getting done. The question is like for instance the building department it's slower to get stuff out of them. It's definitely more cumbersome with this arrangement and trying to work, you know, but early on we put in place the technology stuff we needed to do to be able to function minimally well with people remotely because we didn't know how long this was going to last. So I mean, there's not anything that really can't get done remotely. It's maybe less convenient and maybe less efficient and maybe it, you know, makes you realize that, you know, there's plenty of free time for lots of people. I don't disagree with that, but you know, at this point, there's nothing that we can't do the way we're doing right now that I know of anyway.
Again Because I'm coming at this from, you know, let's get everybody back to work. My mom's coming back to as somebody that's been in a plant and had to wear a mask all day with safety glasses or glasses on and it's totally a pain and it's totally inefficient. If somebody can do the same job that they're doing from home right now without those precautions, I'm in agreement that they should maybe stay. I would like to get everybody back to work but if the guidelines are still in place and we have to jump through a bunch of hurdles just to bring people in to do the same job that they can do at home, it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, that's just my 2¢. Listen,
I agree with you, Jeff. And the reality is though that we are a town who is just now really embracing electronics. So there's a lot of stuff unfortunately still sitting in filing cabinets that they don't have access to and I candidly also just have an issue with the fact that we literally have one person in the office and one person not. One person in the office, one person not. If we can get the job done with one person there, then maybe we don't need two people in that job.
Yeah, but there's instances like I work from home a lot right now but then there's instances that I have to go into the plan. Those days that I have to go in, I go in. I mean, I'm not in every day. Right. If there's instances where they have to go and pull files and do certain things like maybe a couple days a week, then that's fine, they go in the office. But I would like to right now until things are calm down, would on the side of let's, if you can work home, if possible work from home but if you have to go in going. Listen, given the fact that they're opening restaurants and they're even opening restaurants now for inside dining,
you know, coming up on this in another week. I think we're at that point, you know.
Well, have to walk through a thermal scanner wearing my mask all day. Yeah, you do but but how big but there's a lot more people working where you are. No, it's the same interaction. If you're interacting within six feet of somebody, you have to have the mask on.
Just so we're clear, the thermal scanner actually does nothing besides make you feel better. I'm just telling you that's the rules I have to abide by. I know but those are Pratt and Whitney rules. The thermal scanner is not a state thing. Not a Adrian,
we all agree that we would like to sit there and have everybody come back. There's no doubt about it. Listen, your last point is actually the one point that is the truth. I mean because I sit there and I look at those offices and I wonder when people are not in the office, what are they doing for that office? I agree with you. That is a different issue though. The issue that we have to address right now is how safe do we need to make our employees and what are we going to do? If we and I'm with Jeff, if Eric's got to spend money to build But he doesn't have to. Yes, but you know,
I will gladly take the time to help Eric once he puts his plan together to make sure it complies with state. Okay. I just did this with my wife's office. It's not that complicated.
Okay. Well, it is for us. So we're going to all sit there and go through this in an appropriate manner. So Eric, start a plan to sit there and say what you're going to do and how you're going to execute it, but if you have to spend a significant amount of money to sit there and bring people back into that office and if they're not efficient, if they would be more efficient at home, I personally believe they should stay at home. But Adrian, I agree with you. Who can be more efficient? Who can be efficient? That is the question. And you know we do learn a lot. I mean, this is truly hopefully made us all understand and Eric and the staff understand truly what jobs in the office are full time and some that are part time. So, you know, if they're going home and they're not doing anything then that's a problem. If they're going home and they're doing work,
that's great.
Jeff to your point, if they weren't doing their work, I was sure we would have all kinds of emails and all kinds of complaints for residents saying where's my permit, where's this, where's that. I mean, I don't I'm not seeing that. I did have a resident reach out to me earlier before this meeting. I steered him to Eric and we took care of that issue. It's I mean, I don't see where things are not getting taken care of. That's all. If we had this mass, you know, effort of people not doing any work then we would be seeing it. Jeff
my point is not not doing work my point is the level. Jeff's
in the stay at home business I'm at the get him back to work business. So Yeah. But also I wanna go back to work. Trust me. I know you don't. Hey. Quiet. Go I'm trying to say something. Be quiet. Jeez. Paul is working the whole time.
Right. And teaching my kids. Come on. Anyway, also I want to point out that probably the level of services are going to increase because now people are going to be thinking about the next project they're doing or
paying their taxes or whatever. We have new contractors in town that are going to need to get permits. Know, we have things going on. The town's going to start blossoming again. Hey, the biggest upshot in the history of upshots right? It's gonna happen. Okay. Yeah,
think it's gonna ramp up. It's gonna start ramping up again. It
no slope. Okay. So let's Eric, are you okay with that to sit there and please work out a plan and keep our town attorney involved in that and sit there and make sure we do it correctly. And just What date do you have in mind?
Yesterday. Oh, I'm sorry. Jeff, Mr. Murray, when would you like to do this? You're on mute. You work from home? Oh my goodness.
I really don't have a timeline. I'm just saying what positions do we need? You're saying the building department or it sounds like we maybe need to bring those people in. If Linda, if people can work remotely like our bookkeepers and stuff and just bring them in it's just they're just changing location. Doesn't make any sense to me but if there's some services that we need to bring people in, I I think we need to make accommodations for those people. Yeah, I have
a hard time understanding how we can access everything from home. Just, it's time you know if we can go to restaurants they can come to work.
The building department Eric you can start them right away without a problem right?
Yeah. I mean Ed comes in every day right now anyway, so yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, tell me what date you want to do it and you know we'll make that the effective date. Well I would say I come in every day it's not like I have any particular problem against it.
It matters in what you have to do to get those people back into their offices. Eric's
gonna have to shower every day now because he's gonna have people in there so
that's the issue. Oh boy. All right. What we need to give Eric some time. It's June 17 Eric. Seventeenth. Okay. Thank you.
Anybody want to vote on that or am I okay saying That's good. I think the seventeenth is great. Vote on it and make it official, please.
Okay, who wants to make that motion? Adrian. I will make the motion that we bring in town employees back into the building, but not open the town hall for full public access on June 17. I'll second that.
Discussion. Are we going to sit there and state that we expect this opening to comply with all state guidelines?
I would think that would be correct, yes. No. Eric, you said no.
All right. Anybody else? All right. No further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. All
those opposed? I'm opposed. So three to two it passes.
I just want you to know Mr. Murray that means you cannot bid on the contract for the dividers when that goes out to bid. That's fine.
Conflict of interest I wouldn't do it anyway. Mr. Murray
and I don't want to spend any money on that. Noel's opposed? I opposed. Thanks. Jeff's Jeff's opposed. Wow, that's a first. I know. The Jeff blockade.
You've been Jeffed. I had to join Mr. Murray. I did. So let's I keep saying don't see what happened today.
I have not had cake. I've got to go sing happy birthday. We've got to go. So 7B, transfer station operations and policies.
Hey, John, before you get to that, I think the other thing under opening the town hall should be a consideration of reversing the what you guys put in terms of public meetings. And what I would say is allow public gatherings to resume as long as all gather the governor's executive orders pertaining to COVID-nineteen and social distancing are followed.
I would say we wait another month on that because we can't control who walks in the door. Your call. Why? Because there's a limit on size and they have to be six feet apart. Is somebody gonna stand in there and mark off every six feet in the community room? How many of our meetings do Doesn't matter. You can't predict it. If it's open to the public and 50 people show up, you gotta find room for them. That's what public Question,
how does this impact our summer camp if we have that directive? I don't know, I'm not running a summer camp.
We have a summer camp camp that's going to start with 30 kids. Have a but there's different rules and there's different executive orders on summer camps. So can we call meetings now camp access?
I'm just saying it's gathering, right? If we bring a squirt gun, does it make it legal?
So the way our current rules are, you are correct. With what the board of selectmen passed, you could not do summer camp. Correct. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And you are correct. Yes. So we need to reverse that policy.
Too bad we don't We don't allow summer camp to happen. If we had town employees in the building, they could work on this but thank
God. We're going to sit there and reverse this. So someone make that motion please so we can do this.
I would like to read it. Just don't know what the motion would be.
All right. I'll find the motion. Number two. I motion to allow public gatherings to resume as long as all governor executive orders pertaining to COVID-nineteen and social distancing are followed. This reverses a previous Board of Selectmen ruling on not having more than two people at a face to face meeting. I will second that. Further discussion? All those in favor aye
all those opposed Adrian's opposed Scott are you voting on this we need to add some more discussion about this. See?
Well, I was in discussion, you were on mute. What are you doing? That's not on mute. We
had a discussion. All we're trying to do is open up our public gatherings in accordance with the governor's executive orders. Everybody's got to follow the governor's executive orders.
So what you're saying is we can have 30 kids in the building but we can't have 10 employees?
No. Just pointing that out. That wasn't it. The issue was to do it but without spending any money. And if you can't do it, I mean, you already voted to have the employees come back June 17. Jeff
and I lost. I was just pointing out your hypocrisy in voting for a summer camp but not voting for people to go to work. I don't know about you but I haven't even gotten to that on the agenda.
How do you know what my vote is before we You just voted for this. That's why I voted I against voted to allow us to have a public meeting and gathering if you're in accordance with the Governor's Executive Order. Correct. What did I do? I didn't talk anything about summer program.
But we want people to come back to work and follow the executive orders to You've voted for it.
Adrian, the part you're missing is the executor's meeting we have to put separation which could be costing us a No, lot of we don't. Don't. I'm sure you stay six feet apart. Adrian,
you're asking and you're going to want in the town hall people to do what I do every day when I go to my office, which is live on the edge because I walk behind the person in my office and I get to my copier and I'll tell you I'm within six feet. That's what you're asking. I have the right to do it because I'm a public business owner. I can do whatever I want. If my employees choose to come, I tell them they can work from home. They choose to come and I walk close to them. That's how it is. We're not a we're not a private business. It's just what it is. So listen, you already won that point. The point here is do we want to sit there and allow public gatherings and meetings some of the smaller committees as long as they follow the governor's current guidance. Yes or no? You already held the vote. Had three votes for it. I voted against and Scott abstained. Scott, did you abstain or vote no?
I said I need more discussion about this. Okay. This this thing we had with the two people face to face meeting was for a reason. That doesn't have anything to do with the governor's orders. Yes. It did.
No. It doesn't. It doesn't. We did that because the governor was banning all meetings. He banned all in person meetings so we passed a motion to sit there and follow that guidance.
Because some people were not following the guidelines so we made it clear. We clarified that. Need the school district.
Doctor. So Scott I am opening this up. We will revote on this and have discussion on this. What discussion do you want to have related to this topic?
I want to revisit why we had to go over this. Remember the motion that we had with the two people is because of meetings that people were having at the school. Okay. And what was the exact what was the executive order at
the time. He banned all in person public meetings all not not so all meant less than two.
Yeah we had it we had it two or more so Eric could actually meet with people. That's why we left two or more. If Eric had to meet with somebody from another town or somebody outside of you know for whatever reason we left it so he could do his he could do his job.
The new order that's coming up is going to be how many people? It's 10, right?
Yes, currently it's 10 is what the number is right now but remember too this covers a lot of things. This covers the fire department and SERP holding training sessions as long as they comply with the governor's orders, which they can't do right now because they can't technically meet. That's why if you notice when they have a fire call, they leave everybody outside standing in the parking lot, only the officers go into the building, bring the vehicles out and then people get in. It's a little, I mean, I think we're at the point now where we are, you know, you're already wanting to expose all the town employees,
you know, why not open the meetings up too, if that's a concern.
And listen the way that it's worded is you have to follow follow the current state guidelines. That's it. You don't follow it then you're in violation and it's not our problem.
All right. So I understand that we need to follow the state guidelines. Okay. Any further discussion on this topic?
No, I'm sending you all the state guidelines. Page six is space requirements, which explains everything you need to do in an office space. Any other questions you'll all have it in front of you.
Okay. And those are the current state guidelines so that's what people would have to follow. Adrian, don't
what day do you play go into effect? But as soon as you know and the other part about this is we all we all have to realize is I don't want to have a meeting every other week to change something because a new guideline has them all laid out for you by date. Okay. Pretty simple. So good. What's in effect now, Radrian?
Six foot. Touchless appliances where possible and you want to put markers on the floor that show where the six foot marker is between employee spaces and encourage social distancing in those spaces. They're more concerned with common spaces than they are anything else. In a workspace as long as you're six feet apart you're fine.
So are you okay with me ordering touchless door openers, touchless soap dispensers?
It says where appropriate and acceptable. It doesn't say you have to have it everywhere. So if they're sharing a copier and they're all, you could have one person do the copying. It's that simple. Hey I need to copy something can you print it out? It's not that hard. I mean this is really simple. I don't know why this is such a big deal I really do not. We're asking people to come to work and do their job. That's not a safety issue. You
passed that motion. We're not arguing this. Jeff are you arguing this? Am I missing something? Eric just asked to order touchless door No, you brought it up. So I sent you the guidelines. Listen, here's the motion on the floor, right? This is the motion that we have on the floor to allow public gatherings to resume as long as all governors executive orders pertaining to COVID-nineteen and social distancing are followed. This reverses a previous Board of Selectmen ruling on not having more than two people in a face to face meeting. All right. All right. I forgot. Did Jeff Murray second that or Paul? Second it. Okay.
Any further discussion on this mundane motion that is getting tied into our employees coming back? No. Okay. Can we vote again? All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? All those that abstain? Mr. Mandeville four zero one. Okay let's go. Transfer station operations and policy 7B. Eric?
So I had a discussion with the town's attorney, and maybe he can weigh in on this a little bit. But so the question becomes what you do with people that just kind of refuse to follow the rules of the transfer station. In truth, we've been kind of ignoring that and, you know, letting, you know, some level of, minor anarchy, transpire there. It's nothing particular bad. It's not a lot of people, you know, it's a few people on occasion. But right now we have no real way to enforce anything. And so in speaking with Jeff, Jeff had proposed a set of rules which he outlined to you, and that were included in the packet which would have, dealt with that. One of the things that came up in talking this through with the attorney is that because using the transfer station is in some ways,
you know, a right by being a member of the town that if we were to do it, it really probably would require an ordinance and not a minor ordinance, so not one you could pass, one that would have to go at a town meeting. So what I would suggest is that we, you know, you allow me to work with Dennis O'Brien and come up with some kind of draft of an ordinance of how it would look like if you want to proceed in that direction.
So Jeff, let's sit there and go. You did send us out something. You want something to get done?
Well, you know, I went up and spoke to Dominic for a little bit. I spoke to Eric about it. And, you know, there's a situation where we have a couple of unruly people that are treating our attendance rather poorly. And, you know, originally I wasn't in favor of anything but I mean, nobody, no town employee should be treated disrespectfully and in turn, no town employees should be treating any resident unprofessionally or disrespectfully. But right now, the town has no teeth to enforce anything like obscenities against our attendance, threats, just not listening. And with those outlines that I listed, I think our attendants are doing their jobs by inspecting what comes into the transfer station to make sure we're not throwing away anything that's prohibited into the dumpsters.
So you know, something that gave them the right to inspect what is getting thrown out and then just to be treated in a fair and equitable manner. I think we should probably look into something like that. It's not just the attendance. I mean, could be any town employee. Mean, there are public works guys, anybody. It's just common decency. I mean, sometimes somebody's gonna have a bad day and I don't wanna punish somebody for having a bad day. So I mean, we give everybody pretty much one day of one forgiveness, know, one pass but if a continual habit, we would take action against it. So I wanna do something that's fair and equitable but I don't really want our town employees harassed and demeaned and sworn at. It's really unacceptable.
Is it always the same residence?
That's why I had Dom call in. Mean, that's because I don't really want to hearsay for me or Eric, I'd rather get Dom's take. So if he's still on the line, maybe he can elaborate. Dom are you still on? I just unmuted Dominic. Hey Dominic you're up.
Hi okay. It is mostly the same people that I've had a problem with. Well, that Steve and I have had a had a problem with from day one. They seem to have problem with authority. And they're going to do what they want to do, because they hide things in black bags. And after they leave I open some of them up. And you wouldn't believe what I find in the garbage. All bulky waste, you know, this and that. And if that's the way that the tongue wants to leave it, that's fine. But I think somebody needs to be more alert on that whole situation because of the fact I don't know if Willie Ways finds us for that or I don't know. What is what is, everybody else think?
Are are they are are they speaking inappropriately to you, Dominic?
Oh, yeah. I got called the the the FA word many, many times. How does it ring at the door? Sorry. And these are always the same people?
Basically, they are. Yep. Certain five or six people. You know, the majority of people are just you know, they ask, you know, where does this go? Where does this go? And they're wonderful. They're wonderful people. And, yeah, it's only that certain amount of people, and they're the same ones. You know? And I asked the guy when when we had a lot of traffic in there. I asked the guy, I said, sir, could you not park in the center because the traffic is out to the road and we need to get cars over there? He started arguing with me, and it's like, yeah, he raised his voice. I raised my voice a little bit. But, you know, something somebody's gotta pay for that,
you know, because he did not move his vehicle. He emptied his trash and smiled at me and went on his way.
Dominic, thank you, for that. One quick thing. Eric, what will it take for us to write up a policy with the town attorney to sit there and I see the town attorney raising his hand to talk. You know, I agree with Jeff that we have to sit there and make sure that our residents I mean, we should our residents in a general sense should should have proper behavior. And if we're trying to do something, they know that the transfer station a service, but it's also a benefit to the community and they need to follow Dennis, the
can we temporarily suspend access for something that's paid for by taxes?
Well, you know, normally we if you do something like this that, know, ends up with a penalty like that, you'd really have to do it in the form of a regular ordinance. I think Jeff did a wonderful job of writing it up with all all the, you know, it's got all the violations. It's got a list of the violations and it's got sort of like a progressive discipline, but, you know, you don't have a, the Board of Selectmen, as you know, does not have the authority to pass ordinances except for really, really minor ones like we've got on the agenda today. We've got one that's right near the, you know, it's marginally within the, I would say the definition of minor ordinance. This goes way beyond that. I can tell you this when when I heard Jeff say that town employees deserve to be respected by the public. I recall that even in the town of Mansfield, which prides itself in
proper decorum at all times. They had people coming into town hall and really giving the town clerk and other people a really hard time. And we did develop an ordinance over in Mansfield, creating violations that could be enforced against people who mistreat town employees. Town employees should not be mistreated. No question. So I think Jeff's idea is great. I could take Jeff's idea and turn it into an ordinance. The problem is if you're looking for something that you can enforce next week, yeah, you could pass a resolution saying that nobody can swear, insult, use foul language toward any town employee and attendant at the transfer station. And then go on, write down Jeff's list once before. But you couldn't, I don't think you could have the bottom line being a penalty of taking away their rights to use the transfer station without passing an ordinance. Why wouldn't you want to pass an ordinance like that? I think it's a great idea. The only thing is you just can't do it immediately like you just did with opening the town hall. Also Can I say that?
To attorney O'Brien, we want you to write up the ordinance. I will. Sit there and move forward with that. We
can't even have a town meeting related to that because we violate all the governor's executive orders. You can have a town meeting. You can have a Zoom town meeting. We're doing it in in Wyndham all the time. Okay. So if you sit there and you draw it up, we'll get it voted on then. I will do it. But you're saying most of the most of the legwork's already been done by Jeff Murray, correct? Yeah, Jeff Murray's done a wonderful job. I can almost take his language and move things around a little bit and add a little bit to it and bang, you got it. Just that you have to force it immediately, but you know, so what? I mean, you get or you could put up a, you know, you could start pass a resolution tonight, like I said, saying, you cannot do this, that and the other. The problem is you wouldn't be able to take away somebody's,
so you've got a system there where somebody buys a sticker, they have a right to use the facility. Okay, you really can't take away somebody's like, you create a right like that. You can't take it away without some sort of a process. Okay, so let's the way take you have set it up is just the way I would do it. The problem is you can't just Jeff Murray could have been an attorney. If he didn't decide to be a lawyer, he could have been an attorney. I can say the same for almost It's
just sad we have to do this, but you know what? I hate to do it, but it's you know what? I just don't want to see our employees being treated inappropriately. Absolutely. Do
we need to make it broad, not just for the transfer station? Should we make it for all town employees? I mean, given given that the poo that Carol has gone through with with stickers at her desk. That's not a bad idea.
Yeah, we you know, I got I'll take a look at what I wrote up in Mansfield and I'll and I'll
meld that together with what Jeff has done. There should be some type of appeal process as well.
Well, see, remember I talked to you before about that, about having an appeal hearing for citations. Somebody said, well, we can't do that here because we couldn't come up with somebody to be the hearing officer. And I understand that because Chaplin has, I got a system like that placed in Chaplin and they've had trouble finding people who wanna be a hearing officer. Okay. I thought we had didn't Celeste Willard come forward for that. Right. Yep. Pass it
because we're that that was sort of still in the the Lake District was gonna get hit the most with speeding and our our first selectman was afraid he'd be on that list.
Okay. I see that. I see. That's is that that happened? You don't remember that? No. Speeding.
Speedy. Well, it was associated with the idea that Darryl came up with about local fines. Right. There's No, a lot of stuff that I write that you guys I
totally understand that. I was referring to Mr. Mandeville saying that it was rejected by me for my heavy foot. I did not realize that I had. I mean maybe other members of my family had a heavy foot but absolutely not me. Can't have a heavy foot, Mandeville. 20 Can't five miles an hour is slow.
But that's okay. We, if you could sit there and do that, we would greatly appreciate I should do it. We'll address that at the next meeting. I'll be glad. Thank you very much. Excellent work. Thank you, Dennis. Excellent job. You. Mr. Murray. Okay. Eric, 7C upcoming road maintenance projects.
So I sent around and you had it in your pocket or packet just a list of what we had proposed for road maintenance. I sent it around to the town shared it on social media. So so we get that information out there. I don't really have anything more to say on that unless you have other questions for me.
The projects that you do have underway is there anything that you want to bring up to us? Any problems? Any things that you foresee as being issues? Nothing serious at this point. No. Okay. Our crew is busy right now.
Our crew is cranking away at the transfer station. So they're fully involved at the transfer station. I hired Richard Bagan to do roadside mowing. So he's off mowing away, independently of the other three. Okay.
Is there any way we can let the residents know which roads are going to be done next year?
We don't know how much money we're gonna have so.
So Which ones would be which ones would be first on the list when the money is allocated? I
mean I could prepare a list I could take next year's allotment from you know kind of the five year timeline but what purpose would that serve? What is it that you're trying to do? There's just questions about some roads and no answers.
Well, before Eric answers that Scott, I that's what I was asking for before. We have put up a road maintenance survey and we're attempting to get at those roads in a logical order. So Eric, if in that road survey information, I think we should have a web page that says these are these are roads that are on the schedule. They may not all be done in this order. Things are subject to change based upon damage but we're going to attempt to move forward in
a logical fashion. Right. That's why don't we instead of just doing that, Eric's putting this together anyways. Why don't you add in any of the other projects like we were doing some random basins too right? Eric? We are. So let's put together a list of projects that are getting done and let's put that out there as a public document and we'll also throw it up on Facebook so people know what's getting done and can appreciate that.
What's your timeline? How far ahead do you want to look? One year? What's getting done this year?
What's work that we have this year? That's that's already out there. So first of all, I already put that document That's out been out for several months. But what are they looking for?
I don't think you had your basins on there. I did not add basins on there.
I can add drainage work to that if you would like.
I think the issue Eric is not necessarily No one People will never be happy especially when their road is not getting what they need. Right, sure. The tender loving care that it deserves. And listen every resident, yeah you can break out the stick. Every resident wants to sit there and have their road taken care of. Totally understood. Absolutely. The reality is the pictures Eric that you put out in our package come out on the website so people because not everybody drives every road in this town all the time. Sure. You know if we can sit there and and and do that I think we'd be doing it. You you just have to sit there and speak to the residents and tell them not every road is getting done. Sure. It will probably get done in the timeline. I mean Eric isn't coming back to Lake Road to fix the problem down my road. I've asked him many times and he's told me no. So every resident in this town should understand that the first selectman is not getting exactly what he wants and I don't live on a state road that has been paved and paved so nicely that it is perfect. Or I don't live on Oak Farm and had that just redone about three years ago but it's fine. So we're doing the best that we can and if everybody in our community doesn't understand that Eric is doing a great job. He is. That'll
be determined later at this meeting. Let's not get presumptuous.
I mean, just so that we're all clear. I mean, the basic problem we're looking at is not including drainage not including bridges culverts anything like that we got about a 4 and a half million dollar backlog of roadwork that needs to be done And we have about $300,000 a year to spend on doing that roadwork. So if you do the math, most of the roads that need it are not going to get done, you know, and in the past what we've done is we have just prioritized just patching potholes but we haven't even done that well, and the problem is is that we will never catch up if we go with that if we go with the traditional worst first approach
which is what people want. I mean people who live on bad roads want you to spend money on their road before you spend money on the good roads and the reality is in the long term in a fifteen year horizon what I'm doing will work but it's gonna piss a lot of people off in the short term and I don't really have any solution for that you know which is why I told you upfront
that this was going to be controversial and you were going to get some angry people. Believe me I get plenty of angry people with what I'm doing for road work. And that's that's that's fine. I mean I've heard you deal with that. We can live with that but the more information that we put out the better off we're gonna be. So how about Eric how about a two year plan? Well you have a one year plan out there. How about a three year plan? I don't need any more detail than these are the roads that are on the list in this order.
It's gonna take fifteen years we could do a fifteen year plan.
We could but plan is gonna change. So do a three year plan and say these are the roads that we have identified and what we're gonna try to do and we're going to continue to maintain our good roads because that is the philosophy of this board not just Eric because we all agreed to it and if we didn't agree to it then we all need to change the philosophy because we can change what Eric's doing but I agree with it.
I think we just need to get I think once the new website is up we can put a section on there dedicated to roadwork and town
and that'll help. Okay, good idea. My intention under my administrator's page is to have a lot of the detail, the overall planning details for the town listed So people want that information, it's readily available. Because you're right, it's kind of buried now and it's not in It's real obvious
not that you haven't put it out, Eric, it's that it's getting missed in the process of Sure.
Okay. All right. So we'll get that taken care of Eric as we move forward and we'll get that on our website. Yep. Let's go to our 7D, Andover Youth Summer Camp. Eric and I were on a conference call I don't know Eric what was that last Thursday? Thursday? Thursday? Thursday, Friday, Wednesday.
Was with a member of the Eastern Health, our health inspector or I don't even know how you would want to phrase that someone from Eastern Health District. The Board of Education was represented with Sally and John. Cool was represented with Amy Knox, and Eric and I were there. There was one other person there, Eric and I, the attorney O'Brien was there, and there was another individual that was there. I don't know where she was from, but we all discussed what can and can't be done according to the executive orders that are out there as far as summer camps go. And I guess even before we get into the details of it, does everybody from the Board
of Selection believe that a summer camp is something that we should be sponsoring so let's get that up first. Absolutely. Yes. Adrian I would want to see some details. Okay. Scott.
I would like to see some details but I think that is a good idea. Yeah, mean, I'm generally in favor of it but you know, we want to make sure we protect them as much as we do our town employees so.
Okay. And I also too believe that it is a, you know, I am a big believer that that type of program should be supported by the town as much as possible because it's beneficial for not only for the parents, but for the kids. And it is something we should do. Now in this time of COVID, we have issues that we have to address. And those issues were addressed in our meeting related to cohorts of 10 and sitting there and trying to keep social distancing. Mean and the rules from the state are different for summer camps than they are for summer school. So it's not an easy thing and Amy Knox is on the phone call or on our Zoom meeting and there are a lot of issues. Attorney O'Brien has written up a draft contract for Cool and the town and Alma trying to protect everyone's interests related to this because even though Alpoa and Alma are not town organizations, they are a benefit to this town and they do things for the benefit of the town that we need to sit there and make sure that they're also dealt with because the summer program is
planning on using the beach for swim lessons for the kids. And so the whole issue from the meeting was that if we could not meet the guidelines of the state that we would not sit there and be doing this. I don't think it's going to be easy, but if Amy would like to talk to the board about how it's going to happen, you're more than welcome, Amy. Thank you for the great pictures on your wall. They look awesome.
Thanks. I'll straighten them out later. Yeah. So actually the regulations for a youth summer camp are much more lenient than opening offices and stuff like that as far as spacing and stuff goes, but pretty strict as far as the regulations that they do have. They do have to have small groups. So we'll have groups of 10 or fewer in each group. The max camp size will be 30 children. The idea is that a group is a cohort and a cohort is like a family. So the cohorts are not expected to stay six feet away from each other, but the groups will not interact. We will encourage masks, but if you can imagine keeping a mask on a five, seven, 10 year old all day long, not going to happen and hopefully we'll be outside and doing activities that keep them away from each other enough that that's not going to be an issue. There's lots of cleaning and hand washing regulations that will follow. We're going to have everybody bring their own snack, which last year we provided and everybody provided their own lunch. But as far as food goes, we're going to have everybody provide their own.
And the bus we're going to use to take us to the lake, we're going to seat them children every other seat so that whereas Lost sound Amy. Amy no sound. All right I'm gonna text her hang on. No.
There you are. Should I call in? No you're doing now. You're back. Okay, I'm back. The last thing we heard, Amy, was about the bus, every The other
bus, every other seat, but it's not really as important because it'll just be one cohort at a time. So one group at a time will be driven to the lake in there. They're not intended to have to be six feet apart, but we'll spread them out as much as possible, but it'll just be one cohort on the bus at a time, sanitizing it in between if we have more than one group going to the lake. But that'll depend on the numbers that we have. And what we're going to do is I've started but have not yet finished a checklist of compliancy that we're going to give Eric every day after camp. We're going to check everyone's temperatures in the morning, both children and staff members before parents leave, washing hands when they get there as well as after each activity or change of activities or something. We'll keep everybody's possessions separate. Everyone will have their own space to keep their belongings and each group will be kept separate. So one group will be in what's now the music room. One group will use the gym and one group will use the stage with the curtains closed using different exits and entrances that we have available. It's actually a pretty good setup that we have in that area of the school. And then we're the one thing we'll try and limit what they share as far as materials. And then gonna see if we can get enough like art supplies for everyone to have their own markers and their own crayons and their own paint sets or something. So I'm gonna try and do that as much as possible just to keep the touching of shared materials limited.
Amy, is there any accommodation for, I mean, know we don't have a lot of kids in Ann Arbor, but we do have some that may be low income or what have you that the snack might be an issue.
How do we address that? I hadn't thought of that Adrian. I mean I can definitely have something on hand I just was trying to limit the number of times that we're passing things back and forth.
Yeah. I mean, and again, maybe we don't necessarily have that in scale, but there may be a kid that, you know. Right. And it's it's really tough this year because I know I'm just thinking out loud.
It's a good thought. I will I will put some thought into how we might handle that but I'll definitely have some things on hand if if we needed to.
Okay. So the issue, Amy, for me is that based upon what Attorney O'Brien has provided you,
I understood that the COOL Board has to approve the contract. Is that happening? Has that happened? It is happening. I have the president's approval. I think she's waiting to hear from the rest of the board as far as like a vote. But it sounds good. It sounds positive. Okay. And your expected timeline for the camp is?
As long as we have the numbers and we're good to go. We are going June 22 through August 14, but we may have an issue with August 11 being the primary and happening in the gym. Okay. If it's a sunny day, it's not an issue.
All right. As long as you can follow and you believe you'll be able to follow all the guidance?
Yes. Yes. Think the groupings are the biggest guideline and the hand washing and sanitizing and stuff which is not extreme if you work with kids anyway, you're doing it all the time.
And you've done some numbers on this and this is at least a break even proposition or are you looking for any support in this regard?
Well, that's gonna depend on if I can get some more kids this week. I really wasn't promoting the program because I wasn't sure how it was going to go or how it was going to look until we finalize things. Right right now it's going to be a little bit tough to break even but I'm hoping we'll get a few more kids this week before we start. Do you have a what's the break even number?
I don't know. I'll have to find that out because different different plans bring different amounts of money. And at this point, we're having a little bit of reduction because a lot of parents are not going back to work, but are working from home. So they don't need like the before and after. Okay. Part of the program. So I'd have to I have to look at what we have and see what else we might need to get it really sufficient. And I think there there's got to be a number where we decide it's not worth it, but I hope we don't find that I think I think we can fill the spaces
to make it a break even it's definitely not going to be a moneymaker this year but you know if this was a different year it would definitely work in our How did program go last year? It was awesome. It was great. We had superintendents. We had 50 kids registered, you know, not every week, but last year parents did it just for fun just to have something for their kids to do. This year's we're not gonna get that. We're getting who needs it. And we have a couple of people who think that the social aspect is more important than the risk and wanna send their kid to something.
I think once you start promoting it, you're gonna see the numbers. And then once June 17 comes and things start opening up and people are gonna get their, you know, their job where they have to go back. I think it's going to be we're just in this weird phase right now where it's the unknown, right? I agree. I agree. I just want to be honest, as far as it looks right now, We're
definitely going to lose a little bit of money on this.
How many families and how many children are signed up right now? Andover families and children.
I have 15 children signed up. I had a few more of, I had a parent email me just this morning and say, you know, grandma watches the younger child and we're just not comfortable sending the other two to camp and when you have multiple kids drop out, it it reduces your numbers drastically and then a couple of the families just reducing the the time that they come. Dad's not working but he might be working. So, we want him to start So right now we are sort of in a different kind of phase, I guess.
If we get to a point where the numbers are kind of not there, can we maybe cut a week out here or there at the end? That's so what was thinking.
And I'm also thinking of cutting the youngest couple of kids because that would eliminate my need to provide two staff for the preschool group, because I'm not getting the preschool group, but if I can put the, the kids going into kindergarten and the big kids and take away the preschool program part of it this year? You're cutting out again Amy. Yep, we lost her.
Yeah, I just texted her again. It's my kids, my kids see you need to put me on first. My kids were at a scout meeting. You could hear me.
They have those parental controls on the box, know, and lock them out.
And I know those kids and they're outside 95% a day. Don't even start with that, okay? Yeah, I mean, I'm confident once you start hard promoting, you're gonna get the numbers and then also, you know, about pulling back a week or like you said, you know, canceling the younger kids. Yeah, I hate to think that way but I mean I
think once it starts hard That makes me have fewer staff. It's the one quick fix to the number of staff that I need is to take away the preschool.
Right, right. Amy, would it help you with having the recognition with supply equipment for you? As far as what kind of equipment are you thinking? I mean what would you need? I mean I know they have a budget and they provided things for you in the past and I know they do have some funds so I don't know if there's anything that they could do to help you maybe cut your costs a little bit that you would be spending on these items. Oh, you know what? I will put a list together and talk to the rec department and see if there's a way that I can get some help. Yeah, I mean, that's I mean, definitely know they have money, some money because I've given them some money that they haven't spent. So
let's
look into that. I'll put you in on the email so you know our conversation.
Okay, that'd be great. That's fine. I'll help you any way we can. But I just want to add
from a parent of a first grader. I want to send him to camp and the reason I'm doing it is because he's socially isolated from his friends and the other kids and I think it's really important that the kids spend time together and they play and they go swimming and they do all their things and it's been very tough on some of the kids in Andover and I think what you're doing is a great thing I think we really need
to fill that, we really need to fill this program up. Yeah, I wanna make it as much of a normal summer for as many of them as we can.
It's been very tough, I can tell you from A what the parents lot of parents. I don't have to tell you. Yeah, right,
and at least mine have each other, drive me crazy, have each other. Right. Yeah.
What a lot of parents are saying. Yeah. No, everybody misses Miss Amy. So we sent our kids there last summer and they love Miss Knox and the crew. So definitely. And my other thought was when Jeff said that, so doesn't the rec committee usually do some like summer kickoff event, which I don't it doesn't sound like they're doing that this year. So I don't know if Right. I think they mentioned
they mentioned that they might have a little bit of money from that because they do usually do something to open June, June 1 or whatever, which I know couldn't happen, but I will have to talk to Carol and and see what but I don't, I mean I got to put one of you on this because I can't just say hey where's your money?
I think I think Jeff I think Jeff Murray would be happy to part of that be that person alright
So there's a motion in the meeting packet related to the summer program. Does anyone want make that motion?
Just one more question. Just one more question before we make this motion. Is this just going to be closed to Andover residents? Or are we going to be opening to other towns?
Well, I think at this point with the issues that we're facing, I think I'd like to keep it closed to Andover students. But also, well, I guess that would change. If we didn't have, if we had preschool program and we opened it to the kids that attended Andover Elementary School's preschool program but live in Columbia or something, I think I'd be willing to take them just because they're their peers. Okay.
Because I know a lot of the other neighboring towns especially Coventry canceled their program and some of the other neighboring towns. I mean, I think this is a great thing for our town
to show that we do have this program for parents. And I think because we are small, think that's why we can do it because we don't have the hoards of people coming and I mean, we'll get enough to make it worthwhile.
Is there a reason, How did you come up with the limit of 30?
The limit of 30 I came up with because of the groups of 10 and the building that we're using the three different rooms. So the groups of 10 for the three different rooms that we have. Okay. Just curious.
Did you Yeah, I went to a very recently 30 was the upper limit. It's now been relaxed to 50 but I don't think physically we can deal with that. Unless we have the community room.
Well, let's get to that one. Yeah, 30 is a good number. It's a good number despite the circumstances.
Let's try to max out 30 and make it happen. So
somebody want to read the motion? Hey, I motion to authorize the first elected of town of Andover to enter into an agreement authorizing the town through the recreation commission to hold the Andover Youth Summer Camp in conjunction with cool and the Andover Lake property owners association and allow the use of the senior transportation 20 passenger bus. I will second that.
Do we want to have any further discussion related to this?
I just have one quick question. Is there any way that we can help Amy get the word out on our website, our Facebook page? How can we is it appropriate for us to help? How can we get the word out?
I I need Briody to put it out in his Sunday scoop.
We'll ask Diane Greiner to also put that out and we're asking her right now since she's on our call to put that out. I think it's been in her this and that. So before it was definite yeah you got to advertise ma'am so any further discussion
I'd say put in text but we got complaints for that so. All those in favor. Aye. Aye.
Nobody? Wow. Five and a half. Good. Good, good, good. All right. Let's move on to 7E, Recreation Commission sign request. Before we get started with this, Eric, I
read in here that the Recreation Commission is going to come back to us next month with where they want it? The Recreation Commission was coming back this month with work, which is where they want it, which is directly outside the community room as a notice board. You mean in the walkway coming in?
No, on the outside of the building, alongside the building. And in the rocks there?
Sure. Well, if that doesn't sound definitive, exactly where, Eric? By the entrance to the community room. That's not very specific. How about we
push this off and we get an exact location so we know what we're voting on? Yeah, maybe a picture of exactly where it is. It's going to be. Okay. Well I'm all in favor of that. Okay we're gonna move on now to golf carts in the Lake District. Oh boy. This
is gonna be good. So Eric, we've got a request for, people to operate their golf carts in the Lake District. Did this come from Amy too? She's not in the Lake District.
Like a wreck thing, that's all. Seems like a wreck thing. Selectman, Maryville, it didn't even come from me. So, where did this come from to start with? Does America?
So a resident asked whether the board of selectmen would consider this because the state allows you collectively because you are the local traffic authority to decide to allow you know, golf carts on any road with a speed limit of 25 miles an hour or below if you so choose. So given that we had a request I spoke to Mr. McGuire I got his opinion of it and we Dennis O'Brien and I drafted an ordinance or a an order from the local traffic authority that if you so desired you could pass and put into an effect. Not saying you have to or you should or anything else just that that is what it would look like if that was a decision you wanted to make.
So was all the people in the Lake District asked if they want golf carts in the Lake District? Did I go around every single household in the Lake District and ask? No, of course not.
I asked Alma and I asked Alcoa for their comment but did I ask each individual member no.
So what what's the pros and cons for doing it or not doing it I guess?
I mean you know I in some ways I feel like it's kind of the ultimate in laziness but what I've realized is we're not talking about people who are deciding whether they're going to walk somewhere or drive their golf cart. We're talking about people who are either going to take their golf cart or they're gonna drive their Ford ginormous to the beach, with you know by themselves or with their kids in it. So the question is ultimately, is it better to have them on lower impact, lower speed vehicles on town roads or driving their regular cars? I mean, I don't care one way or the other. I don't live in the Lake District. I have no dog in this fight. This ordinance is before you
to consider you can do with it what you want. I would feel a lot better if I knew that all the people were in favor of this that lived on the lake. I don't live on the lake so I don't know if Scott not not everyone is in favor. All right. Well are you in favor Mr. McGuire?
You're not gonna get it. It really doesn't. I mean, I'm more concerned about people getting injured. Is that a yes or a no?
I would vote for it because I simply don't think it's going to impact, one way or the other. I mean I'm not going to be negatively impacted. I don't have a golf cart. I never will have a golf cart. So if my neighbors choose to take their golf cart down the road I'm not gonna have a problem. By the way selecting Mandeville since I drive under the speed limit
It might get a golf cart you mean? Is not going to impact me
but I mean I could see the negatives to it also. Mean there's gonna be there could be a significant number of golf carts on the road. If we don't If don't speed limit is really not 25 miles an hour on the street anyway.
I've already heard some remarks from other townspeople asking why just in the Lake District Because we're special. Yeah, well we knew that
Well, no, this would be town wide too. Know that. This would be town wide. You just can't cross any state highways.
Right. No, that's not true. It's not town wide because any road with a 30 mile an hour speed limit and there are quite a number in town, you're not authorized. Nothing you can do will allow golf carts on those. Well, any roads that have 25 or less.
So Woodland Chase could have its own golf cart club if they wanted. That's right, Jeff.
Right. No, I'm just, I'm just bringing out the point. I mean, we're gonna hear complaints from other people going, why can't I have a golf cart? Right. I
Anybody with a roo anybody with a road that's under 25 should be able to have a golf cart. Yeah. Exactly. Or another thing I've heard was people are gonna be trailering them to the lake and driving their golf carts at the lake.
And where are they gonna park their trailers? I guess I guess I would ask the question. I'll ask the question to Attorney O'Brien or to Eric. What's to stop them now from driving the glove? Right, right. I mean if we don't pass Why do I have to make a motion? This is my whole point. Why do I have to make a motion?
It's a motorized vehicle. What's to stop them from driving their, you know, ATV? What's to stop them from driving their dirt bikes? They're doing that in the Lake District now anyway. A $1,500
fine and an impoundment of the vehicle according to state statute. Just so you know. For a golf cart? Well for any motorized vehicle that's not authorized to be on the road yeah. Yeah but I thought a golf cart
can be on the road it just it doesn't have to be the No. Nope. No
motorized vehicle down it doesn't have blinkers it doesn't have brake lights it doesn't have correct lighting for after hours it needs to have insurance etc etc etc and it has to be done to improve tires
Listen, if we're if if there I don't think there's anyone on this board that is sitting there saying this has to pass. I mean, so if we choose not to pass it, is anyone on the board gonna be that upset?
I don't, I mean, I don't Paula? Paula, do you have a golf cart? I do not have a golf cart but I have I pick one, don't let her lie. There's Barbie on it. No, that's my friend. So no I don't see what the I think it's fine but I don't know I mean as long as they're not driving it at night right and they're being safe and I can see where the concern is but Alright here's my here's what I'm gonna say on it given the lengthy discussion that Mr. Anderson,
God I love saying that it's like a Matrix movie, given the lengthy thing that Mr. Anderson has had to deal with with speeding in the Lake District, I think it would be imprudent to even consider this until we stop getting complaints about that. When we stop getting complaints about speeding around the lake then we'll talk about putting impediments to the proper function of traffic. You think that
more people are gonna go out and buy golf carts and speed with the golf carts? No, think what's gonna happen is you're gonna have people that decide to pull over and chitchat with their neighbor in their golf cart as they're driving by. Hey, Mr. McGuire, how you doing? I know you're selecting. Can I talk to you about this? They stop on the roadway. They don't pull off the road because they don't wanna get stuck with their little golf cart. And then all of a sudden you got somebody come hauling around the thing and they get hit. Listen,
I already know of people that are driving on the lake with their golf carts and that's not happening now. Well, us a list of names and we'll have them impounded.
No. Listen. Are you protecting your Okay, okay. I will sit there and I will agree with Selectman Mandeville because we just established a Traffic Safety Committee. Why don't we sit there and have them go out and poll more residents in the Lake District to truly Yeah. See Ask them about this issue. Is that acceptable? Mean, just appointed a seven member board to sit there and go look at the issues in the Lake District. I don't believe that any one of us should be making a decision without knowing
how many people in the Lake District are in favor of having golf carts. Okay. All right. All right. Move on. Move on.
Ordinance regarding the resignation and replacement of any town official, seven gs. Have we read the ordinance? Are we okay with our ordinance? I'm very much okay with it. Okay. Yeah, I'm fine with it.
I'm good. Okay. Do we need to read that or do we sit there? It's already posted in our packet. Can we make a motion to sit there and pass that ordinance? Well, let's ask the town attorney. If we just make a motion to pass that ordinance, are we acceptable without reading the entire -I believe you are. -Okay. Someone want to make that motion? Adrian, make this motion.
I make I make a motion that we accept the town ordinance as drafted by the town attorney Dennis O'Brien with regards to replacement or resigning of any elected official. Very good. I checked I think it actually covers does it it does does it cover to appointed also or no? Just so I'm not missing it. Elected or appointed. Alright. So so elected officials to any town board or committee.
You want me to speak to it? I can Sure. Go ahead. Quick. Quickly. Well, we need a sec. We I think the concern was that, there were resignations being submitted to town chairs and
Dennis, we need a second. I seconded it. I'm sorry. Didn't hear it. Apologize.
All right. Well, I don't you know, I'm not part of the discussion anyway. I'm just giving it attorney. Okay. But that's okay. I'll do it. Yeah, Adrian raised the problem of possibly town chairs or chairs of commissions getting getting resignation letters from public officials and sitting on sitting on them for a while, you know, don't forget, if you if you wait long enough, the the decision has to be made by you by you people, the Board of Selectmen. If they if they do it within a certain amount of time, the the commission or committee that's impacted will make the decision. So it makes a difference. And, you know, people, a lot of people don't know that when you submit a resignation, it's supposed to go to the town clerk. This will make any party chair or chair of a commission or board, if they get a resignation letter from a member, pass it right on to the town clerk where it's supposed to go, so that action can be taken timely
instead of waiting around. All right. So
minor ordinances drafted is before us. Adrian's made motion seconded by Scott. Any further discussion by any of the members of the Board of Selectmen? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Chair I have nothing. Okay. We're going to move on now to 7H, potential purchase of speed control signs. Eric, why don't you address this and where is the money coming from?
So I would probably I mean, it can come out of two places. We can take it out of the resident state trooper's budget, but we would have to transfer money into his budget to do it, because that's probably where it should come out of or we could just take it straight out of contingency. Those are our two real options for where we fund this thing. Couple different options, basically a 12 inch option and a 15 inch option, whether you want the little one or you want the medium sized one. They're both in shoot. But This is pole mounted? This is pole mounted but with the variable mount so you can just attach it to any of our vertical posts. Okay. This does not have the solar but this comes with one backup battery. I got an I basically had them add in a battery because that means you can have one battery, you know, and then just swap out batteries if you decide to leave it in place for a while. The other thing that I really like about this unit is it collects data so you can look back and you can say
you know of everybody who came through this radar sign how fast were they going you know and it doesn't take a picture of them so you don't get you know like this guy was going this speed but what it will tell you is that, you know, on average 30 people, 30% of the people are doing the speed limit. The fastest guy was going this, the average speed is this, and you can graph that data any way you want. So you can move it around and you can identify where in town
where the issues truly are. Right. And so you were involved in, finding out which one was the best one here? So you picked them out? So
the this was the original recommendation from our resident state trooper. I don't own that. I did look at a couple other units and a while back I gave them you some information on a different manufacturer, but you know, when I really look at it, this is a good one. It seems to me what all the resident state troopers in the area have. It has the data collection function that's of interest to me. You know, the only downside is you only get, you know, say three or four days out of a battery before you need to either swap out a battery or move location. So I mean, if you were going to leave it in one spot, like in front of the school or something then you would probably want to go fixed mount and put a solar
you know light on or solar charger on it but in our case it seems like a pretty good unit. In the future you could add a solar array to that if you needed to? If you if you wanted to? Yeah. I I think because it's it's all modular. So, yes. You could add that later if you so chose. Right.
Alright. Which one do you which one does the officer like? The third the 12 or the 15?
I don't think he had any real hard, fast, you know.
Do we know what size the one that was, borrowed from Columbia? I think
yeah I think that's a 15 inches unit. Do they make one bigger because I don't know if Jeff saw that one?
They do make an 18 inches I did not quote that one so I don't know what the exact costs are for that one. I'll leave that up to Jeff if he thinks we need a bigger one or not. Which Jeff are you talking to Adrian? The one that just spoke up. That's such an old joke now okay enough gosh.
Adrian is good about beating things into the ground. You are. Alright. You ready for the motion? Yes, please. No. I well, make the motion. Go ahead.
I authorize the town administrator to purchase either a 12 or a 15 inches speed control sign with a data collection unit and the money is to be taken from contingency. The total cost for the 12 inches is $3,148 and for the 15 inches is $3,353 and Eric or
Jeff is gonna pick the which one they're gonna spend the money on. Well that's not how it's going to work so let's sit there and we got to decide which one we're going to do so Scott pick one if you're to do the 15. Would pick the 15 inches one. Done. Let's do the 15. So that's the motion that would be the motion so authorize the 15 inches feed control sign with collection unit money to be taken from contingency total cost of $33.53 for that sign. Okay. Who's seconding that? I'll second. Discussion. The discussion that I have with Eric related to this is contingency the right place for this money to come from? That's that was my issue. Well,
contingency is the easiest place, but, you know, you're we're only one transfer away from taking it from a line item that would be more appropriate. So if you would prefer me not to take it directly from contingency and transfer the money from contingency to the troopers budget and then pay for it out of the troopers line item, I would do that with no problem. Okay and from my standpoint have we got the troopers budget or troopers bill for this year?
No. No. Okay so we don't even know if we have money in that line item or we need money in that line item?
Well it's more than just one line item because he's got a salary and he's got a supplies line item. What I would do is I would take it out of the supplies line item, which we overexpended anyway because there wasn't really any money in that and that's where we put the cameras, the field cameras for the ball field out of his line item since it was a security related issue. So, you know, we're over overexpending it now. We'll just be overexpending it a little bit more and we'll transfer money into cover if that's what we want to do. So if we did this out of contingency, any of the other members of the Board's electing to have a problem with doing it on a contingency? No. Paula? No. Yeah. I'm all set. Adrian?
Oh, I'm good. Don't care where it comes from. Let's just do it. Yeah. So
then let's stop discussion on it and let's have a vote. All in favor? Aye. All right. The seven I transfer funds between capital funds and unexpended fund balance.
So we're actually gonna cover that. That's a duplicate. We're gonna cover that under item number 10 motions for transfer funds from capital accounts. So we can ignore that for now. Okay.
We're gonna go to seven J, yearly review of the town administrator. This is to announce to the people on this call that we are going to have executive session activists After we discuss with the town administrator his yearly review, we will post something to let you know how that review went and what we will do is post the goals and the
issues that we want the town administrator to address for next year. I think we also have to post this pay. We'll have to come out and vote to approve the pay completion package.
Correct. So after the executive session, there will be an individual motion made and a vote on that motion. I
just wanna make sure we're in compliance. That's all. Sure, no problem. And so
any other issues related to that? This is just an informational item. We just want to let people know we were doing it to be as transparent as we possibly could. Any discussion by the members of the Board of Selectmen hearing no. Eric
has the option of having it in public if he so chooses.
No, I do not choose. Okay. I mean, I don't care one way or the other, but No, we have to give you the option, Eric. That's all. Yep, understood.
Okay. Anybody else? Scott, Paula, Jeff. Okay. A seven ks is the same thing. We're going to perform a yearly review of the town attorney. We're going to do that also in executive session. And we will sit there and give a brief I'm losing that word for what I want to say, but we'll sit there and post our results of that review after our executive session meeting and before our next meeting. Anybody else? Any other questions on that? Any other comments with Board of Selectmen? No? Okay. Let's go to item eight, approval of meeting minutes. Again, we added seven L which is library discussion. Library. My bad. Yes, Scott did add that. We do need to discuss that. There were two issues related to that. One was the irrigation system and the other is bollards for protection of the mural at that building. The one about the mural, I'm trying to schedule a meeting with Diane and Kathy Derozier, who is the chairperson of the library committee. Any member of the Board of Selectmen, I will sit there and let you know when I can get it scheduled. Asked for 06:00 in some evening to try to get down there and see what the request is and related to how we can get something done. I don't necessarily know that needs to truly be discussed in detail today before we have that meeting. I'll go.
Say that again. Yep. I'll let you know what it is. Know I spoke to Eric about that before also. So the other one I think is a little bit simpler. The library board has already voted to install an irrigation system in there at the library, and they want our approval to allow them to do it. It's an irrigation system that has been funded by donations and is not at a cost to the town. They just want approval to sit there and do it. We probably need to do is make a motion to allow them to do the sprinkler system then but also make it contingent on the fact that it's done
after the work for the connectivity grant is completed because what their thought was is they wanted to sit there and do this work when all of the other work was being done to their property so that they wouldn't have to damage the property multiple times, which is smart. It was probably wise not to have their contractors there at the same time, the connectivity grant contractors are there. I don't think that the irrigation system at the library and not being with tax dollars, it just needs an approval.
I do have one question. Has anyone from the library discussed what their long term plans are like? There's gonna be they're gonna need more money for opening it, closing it. It needs to be on a schedule for those types of things and how that's gonna be addressed.
Think Diane is the only one from the library committee on. So if you can sit there and unmute Diane, let's sit there and see if she can help us out. On mute. You are now unmuted.
Am I on? Yes, I am. Oh, okay. First, Jeff, before we get to that one, about the bumper meeting, I had sent you an email. Kathy and I are available Thursday at six six at the library, if that works for you.
It will work for me. If any of the other board of select members can make that, that would be great.
Okay. It's a date. Okay. And Adrian's question about long term planning of opening and closing. No, we hadn't discussed that, but we certainly will.
Scott, do we have somebody that already comes and does the ball field for winterization and all that? Yes, we do. Is it a flat rate or is it per head? Do we have any idea? Well, Hebron's gonna be doing it this year. Okay.
But we'd have to talk to them if to see if they would do that that system. It's gonna be a very small system. Yeah. I I I don't know if the town crew has a small air pressure.
Depending upon what the actual install sizing and everything is, it could probably be done with something like a 60 gallon compressor. You need something at least that size for a system like that. Right. That's just a small yard one. Yeah, it's a small one. I'm just curious because may just so the library understands they're also gonna be looking for probably another 300 a year to 400 a year for just basic maintenance to open and close it. Right.
Hours is down at the ball field is I think three or four. Yeah. On either end.
Yeah. So that's a smaller system. It generally runs about 300 a year. It's 150 for the open, 150 for the close and then you'll need another $100 a year and just you know, a a head went bad or something over the winter. So just curious if they had planned for it. I think it's a good idea in the long term that will allow them to do some nice things down there if they so choose. Right.
Okay. So does anyone want to make a motion to allow them to do that?
Right. A motion to authorize the library board to install an in ground sprinkler system at the Andover library using donated phone funds after work being done for the connectivity grant is completed.
Seconded. Further discussion? All All those in favor? Aye. All right. Item eight, approval of meeting minutes 8A, the Monday, May 11, regular meeting minutes. The Tuesday I'm going make all these all these at one time. The Tuesday, 05/19/2020, Board of Selectmen and Board of Education Special Meeting and the Friday, 05/29/2020, Board of Selectmen Special Meeting Minutes. Somebody want to make a motion to So moved. Okay. Second that? I'll second. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Okay.
Number nine, the Treasurer's Report. Eric, anything information you want to bring to our attention on that?
No. Nothing major. So you all know obviously the budget passed. So we have a budget which is always good
okay so all right Eric well we'll discuss that later.
Just out of curiosity, any projections for anything that's left over from last year? What you're are you shifting everything now to push things towards road work or what are you doing? So
there's an awful lot in motion right now. We're definitely gonna be under spent for the year, not radically, under spent. And we were also going to have more, the town brought in more money than it expected because we had under budgeted, for ECS. We got quite a bit more ECS in and we're actually doing really well from the revenue side. So I'm not sure what that piece is going to be but my guess is you know we're going to end up with you know, dollars 50 to $80,000 more in revenue than we anticipated. There's a lot of stuff still in flux. For instance, I thought we were going to, if you asked me two months ago, I thought we were going to be way under on bulky waste.
And we have caught up an enormous amount, just because everybody and their brother is running stuff to the transfer station. So actually short of closing it for the month, we would have been, you know, really far over on that one. So, so there's a lot that are still unknown, we're going to be okay overall. The one that's going to go over budget is the transfer station, the wall upgrade, the total package is. And that's basically because when we when CIP allocated the money for that, they really didn't anticipate any large scale expenditure for the electrical work.
And as we know, that's a big chunk. We also didn't plan on a poured wall or poured concrete new pads. Correct. Correct. Are you but I guess my point is if you're is that gonna eat up 50 to 80 or do we still have 50 to 80? And if we do, are we trying to
tie that up in road stuff or something else that we need to get done? Well, see, I don't think the 50 to 80 on the revenue side, I can just arbitrarily decide to spend. So the increased revenue, there's nothing I can do about that. That's going into the unexpended fund balance. Okay. That would take at this point a public meeting or the board of finance. Well, but I can't modify the budget. No. But couldn't you
couldn't you make a ask for a modification to have that transferred to the over expenditure on the transfer station? I
never even contemplated that to be perfectly honest. If you did that, then it leaves you the other funds available and then you can max out the roadwork side that we keep talking about we need to do. Okay, how about we do it?
I don't honestly I don't know enough about what the that would seem to me an auditor question more than a me question. I mean, don't have a problem with it. I'd be happy to spend more money on roadwork. It's just a question logistically, can we do it?
Well, the board of finance can make a dis they can decide what to do with those funds. Right. Dennis, have any input on this?
I mean, what the question is, I was looking up something else.
Dennis, the the conversation is that we've taken in more revenue in some areas. We we've overexpanded some of the budget in certain areas, but we also ended up taking in more revenue. And so all said and done, we're we're most likely looking at somewhere between 50 and $80,000. We have roadwork that we need to address. Is it possible for us to use those funds for the roadwork by having the board of finance denote that.
These are funds that are available to you for the remainder of this fiscal year?
They're funds that we've taken in in revenue this year. Okay. And you wanna be able to spend it on roadwork? Or at least, yeah, some of it. Probably not all of it because we want to leave a buffer if in case there's adjustments, but
Seems to me like it's a question for the Board of Finance. But as but as I heard Eric say, I would check with the auditor. I can look at the charter right now and see if there's anything in the charter that covers it.
I don't know that there is, but I don't think so. I mean, There's no restriction on it. And I think again, if it falls within other No problem. Jeff's singing happy birthday. I was like
we're being serenaded. Yeah. Good. No. So, I think, I mean, Eric, I think if it falls within the limits of the charter and the fact that we're now outside of the third, you know, you could use those funds for say for the transfer station and then transfer other funds what you're which you have flexibility of moving around based on the charter for the road work.
I mean, guess my stumbling block, Adrian, is that that's not budgeted number. That's not budgeted money. It's money we have, but it's not it was never money in our budget because we didn't anticipate getting those revenues. Was it your mark? We're over budget,
under budget, whichever way you want to look at it. Collected more than we budgeted. You're
one way or the other. Where did the money come from?
Came from grants, it came from We got more money under ECS than we had budgeted for. All
right. Wouldn't that money The question you can sit there and look at multiple ways. We got more from ECS, we got more from other areas. We're just we underestimated
our revenue collection. So if we had budgeted correctly for ECS, we wouldn't have spent as much town money on the school. ECS would have picked up the difference. But we factored in that the state had been cutting fairly regularly. Right.
And so we went with the assumptions that we were given at the current time.
So let's ask the auditor the question because he's probably the more appropriate person and let's go I would say so. I'll take a quick look at the charter and see if I find anything in there. I mean, gotta believe that Adrian's correct. We should be able to spend money.
I think you can do it. I just don't know the, you know, legislative, the legal
rubric under what she would do it. Right. I assume it would be a decision for the board of finance. The thing is in a in a normal budget year because you're spending money outside of the budget itself. So that would have to normally that would have to go to a town meeting
to do. Yeah. Right. But I'm just thinking if let me talk to the auditor and see if there's a way we can do this because we we even if that gets us half a road or another treat road treatment, it's a step in the right direction. Sure. You know? Yes. Nope. Price of asphalt is so cheap this year. Everything that we can do. Is it really? Yes. I don't think so. Apparently didn't pay for any last year then. Well,
all right. What's your tonnage rate right now for the town?
I would have to look it up. I don't know it off the top of my head. You're under a 100 though. You mean per ton Yeah. Of finished asphalt. Yeah. I was thinking more liquid asphalt is the thing that's really hasn't dropped in price right now. No, that never does because it's weird.
No, it's because of the binders, it's separate. So but actual tonnage is is probably $30 cheaper than last year. It's almost probably a fifth cheaper.
Well, no one no one in the community is gonna be upset if we do roadwork.
So let's see what we need to do, Eric, and and I'll talk to the auditor and, you know.
So let's move on from that section to we went through I mean we all could have went through our time aid road our cash report our tax collection year over date our over expenditure report Any other questions for Eric or anything else related to that area? Jeff, nothing? Paula, Scott? Nope. Okay. Adrian, I'm sure you're good? Yep. I don't want to forget you. All right. The budget transfer refunds
over expenditure requirements motions for transfers of funds from capital funds. Before we get to that we got to do the the four tax refunds for the tax collector. That's 11.
Oops. Did I have a number? I'm out of order. Sorry. You're right. Yep. My bad. Okay. We all make mistakes. Mark that down for the review.
Absolutely. So what do you want to do with this budget section?
So what we really need to do right now is we need to make the motions now to transfer the funds so that they're transferred effective July 1. You could wait till July to do it so the board of finance has already set up the capital funds but only you can take money from an existing capital fund and close a capital fund which is a little oddity in our, our charter. So there's basically four of them there is one of them you're just transferring money, you're not transferring all the money because we it's still not officially closed out so we can't and we know roughly what our last bill is so we're leaving enough money in it to pay their bills and keeping the Times Farm Bridge Reserve Fund open but we're transferring the majority of the money, you know, out, and then we're eliminating the public works building fund, putting all that to fund balance and eliminating the new library fund, putting all that to fund balance and then eliminating the AES expansion fund and putting all that to fund balance. And then once you put that in the fund balance,
the budget takes over in on July 1, that money just gets reallocated into the new funds that have already been created by the Board of Finance. Okay. If that makes sense. So
let's discuss just to make sure that the Board of Selectmen is all understanding of what Eric is talking about. If we're all good, can just make all those motions. Anybody have any questions related to this issue, Jeff? Paula? Adrian? Nope. Got it. I'm all set. Okay. So who wants to make the first motion related to the Capital Reserve Fund? Title Times how about I make them? I motion transfer 160,000 from Capital Reserve Fund titled Times Farms Bridge to fund balance effective 07/01/2020. Who's seconding? I second you. Okay. Discussion? Vote. All those in favor? Aye. I
motion to eliminate the public works building fund and transfer all remaining funds to the fund balance effective 07/01/2020. I'll second. Chair Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And
motion to eliminate the new library fund and transfer all remaining funds to fund balance effective 07/01/2020. I'll second. Chair Discussion? All those in favor? Aye. I
motion to eliminate the AES expansion fund and transfer all remaining funds to the fund balance effective 07/01/2020. I'll second. Discussion?
All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. So Eric, all the funds from those capital funds have been transferred. Is that everything you need done? That's everything I need done. Okay. So now let's move on to, 11, the tax collector's report and the refund request. So the tax collector has given us a report. So for this last month of May, well, the month that we're given May, we have collected $170,000 of taxes for the month. We have a remaining outstanding balance for the year of $435,554 which we would expect to collect most of it in June, but that's actually for all of the years. For 2018, the total is $274,000 Eric, just as a question, have you been dealing with a tax collector as to her collection efforts on 2017, 2016, and backwards? Have you been having an ongoing discussion with her as to what we're doing to try to collect those back taxes?
I haven't talked to her lately. I mean we had a discussion I don't know a couple months ago about the the stuff that had been sent off. I guess that was actually further back than two years old. You know, the really old stuff gets sent off to a collection agency essentially. We haven't really discussed collecting taxes from, you know a year ago I know she sent out the stuff to everybody saying that you know we're going to put on a tax lien if you don't pay up, because I had a couple panicked calls about that, last week.
All right. Well, that is something that you should work on with the tax collector to make sure that we do as good a job trying to collect our back taxes due as possible. Even from the last two years or this year, I would guess that probably due well, we got $274,000 still due for this year, about $81,000 due from last year, and $30,000 due from 2016. And a good portion of those are for real estate taxes. We should be able to collect those. All right. Any other questions? Any other Board of Selecting members? Anybody? No? Okay. So let's move on now to the we have to make a motion for the approval of the refunds. So it's 10A. I'll make this motion. I motion to approve four tax refunds for May 2020 outlined in the packet for a total of $5,298.67 I'll check with that. Those refunds are for
excess payments that total $5,298.67. Okay? Okay? They're all excess payment amounts. So you seconded it, Scott. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye.
All right. Okay. And Jeff, they're in the same packet. So So when you come in and sign the other item for the treasurer's office in the morning you can just sign those two and that'll be done. Amanda has already informed me that I need to do that and I will get there tomorrow morning and do it. Excellent. Do I have plexiglass set up where I'm gonna be?
You wear a clear bucket over your head as you enter the building that would be sufficient. But I will tell you I will take a picture and I will send it to Mr. Mandeville I will have my mask on.
Okay we should get like individual bubbles that everybody could like walk in. I'm gonna have
a shield over my face. You can walk in a bubble and you're just rolling around the office. And my shield, I don't have any problems with my fellow
employees at the time. So you laughed, but a friend of mine sent me a bunch of pictures that she had taken at the, stores farmer's market with all the different get ups people had and there was somebody walking around with a large plastic bucket over their head,
in a genuine attempt to prevent themselves from getting COVID. I don't know if you've seen Mr. Vanderbilt play golf, but he has a bucket over his head most of the time. So anyway.
But he won't get in a golf cart right because he won't get on the golf cart.
All right. So we're moving on to the assessors report revaluation services. Eric, anything you want to address with that?
No, nothing big. I mean, I think we're still at the point he's like the building inspector that, you know, he's really not going to be entering structures at some point that's gonna have to to stop because you know at some point you got to get into buildings and really evaluate the the upgrades that have been done but nothing you know nothing super urgent.
Okay we have all of our department reports are there any department reports Eric that you want to single out that we should be looking at more than looked at in our packet.
No, I got the registrar's vote really late. I didn't put that in, you know, because it got in so late. The rest are all pretty straightforward unless you have any specific questions for me on the various different reports. You
know, I see the one that would probably be my biggest issue is the senior senior transportation have we been using the vans at all?
So right now up to today the only thing we've been using the van for is we have been delivering food to the people that senior transportation used to take to the food pantry and food, you know, mobile food share. So we those people that don't have transportation, we are basically bringing the food to them. Okay. Starting this week, because CERT is no longer running the their food delivery from Ted's, We have started up and we will bring one person at a time to the grocery store. There's currently only two people that really require that service that really don't have the outside ability to get themselves and get them food. So those two individuals were basically doing one every, you know, person will go every second week. So that's at this point, we don't have any medicals lined up. So we're minimizing the use of the bus and right now we're just using one driver. What's in there for senior transportation is a little off but you know Kathy kind of jumped the gun we talked about it a little in the safety safety committee meeting and she put everything out to everybody before, you know, anybody reviewed it. So this is not exactly the plan what's in your packet,
you know, and surprise, surprise, the first I saw of it was when I looked in the packet cause you know, why would you CC the town administrator? But, you know, we do have a plan in place that we worked out with CERT and we've discussed it with Rob Miller from Eastern Highlands Health District about how we can operate minimally and operate safely with senior transportation.
So right now we're still doing it on an emergency basis. All right, any of the other selectmen have any comments or concerns about department reports? Eric, what's the transition plan currently for Kathy's position
as a volunteer to, she's supposed to be resigning here shortly, right?
Well, I got to hire her replacement. And have we advertised for that yet? We have not. We have not. We need to get that done or?
You know, we definitely do. I got a bunch of job descriptions I got to write right now and I just got to carve out enough time to actually sit down, write all the job descriptions and then put it out there and start advertising. It's definitely on my to do list. It's just, you know, there's a lot of things on my to do list. Okay I just we're getting
that may be an example of one of the reasons why we wanted to start progressing in that direction that's all.
Okay anybody else? Jeff? Good? Paula? Good? Adrian? Good? Good. Okay. All right. Let's go on to 14 resignations.
Eric? So we don't have any officially other than David Gustavian, which you already know about and we've set the special meeting for. Unofficially, Karen Osborne apparently is moving away from town. So she is a ZBA member and we'll have to replace her. I emailed her and asked her whether she's officially resigning, but I haven't gotten anything back from them. But I think that one's coming. Okay.
All right. That's all I know of. All right. We'll go to 15 correspondence any correspondence we need to be aware of? None. Okay. Public speak. Amanda if you can go through everybody.
Kurt are you there would you like to participate in public speak Diane Granier
Okay, you got me there? I just wanted to let you know that Karen Osborne is also gonna be resigning from the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee. She's already spoken to me about that and I'd hoped that she had already sent in her letter of resignation, but it should be coming.
Yes, I did let her know she had to submit an official letter of resignation to the board. Okay. Thank you, Amanda.
Thanks, Diane. Lucy Wilson. Okay and then Bob Hamburger would you like to participate in public speak
no thank you okay all right that looks like it public speak is over. To make the motion to sit there and well, for the members of the public that are with us, we thank you. We're going to make a motion so I motion to enter executive session at
Deputy before you do that can I just say one thing? Basically the plan is everybody gets thrown out of the meeting for right now. As soon as you get thrown out, can re register for the meeting immediately and you'll be put in the waiting room and then as soon as we come out of the the executive session anybody that's hanging on and that wants to will just readmit you to the meeting for the last items.
Okay are you saying you're they have to leave the meeting because if you remove them they won't be able to come back in so they need to physically leave themselves.
Okay I did not realize that. Because if you yeah
if you kick somebody out so to speak you remove them they won't be able to log back in so we don't want to do that.
So are you saying I couldn't have thrown Adrian out hours ago and we could have you know had a much quieter meeting?
Laveen do you plan on entering the meeting after the session? Nope.
Wait. Was that directed towards me? Yes. Said, do you plan on reentering after the executive session? Yeah. I do. Okay.
Okay. So Kurt and Bob Hamburger, if you guys could leave the meeting, if you'd like to get back in, you can re register right now, correct Paula? And they would just be in a waiting room until we restart.
Right. So they're going to hit leave meeting and then they can log back in like they did earlier and they'll just hang out in the waiting room until they're admitted. Okay.
So I'm going to sit there and make this motion and then we can sit there and address everybody as we do this. I motion to enter Executive Session at 09:57 for agenda items 17A and 17B the yearly evaluation of sorry 17A yearly evaluation of time administrator and item 17B annual review of the time attorney. I'll second.
Okay. All those in favor aye. Aye. Kurt and Nick if you guys could leave the meeting that would be great.
Do we need to call Kurt? I'm not sure if he's there.
So you're telling me he's just leaving us on in the background? Yes. I'm going to try to call him. Kurt are you there?
All right I'm going to step away for one second I'll be right back. He's getting a piece of cake I'll bet you.
Can't have it unless he has enough for everyone. Right.
Well, I hate to say it then we're just gonna kick Kurt out. Should we remove him, Paula? Or
I'm calling him right now. Let's see. We're waiting for Jeff. Let's just see if he's available. Did everyone get the packet sheets I sent out? For Eric's review. Did everyone get those?
Yeah. All right I gotta hit the men's room here real quick. Any questions on those? Amanda gets in. Hi.
All right I'm sorry. I told you he was getting cake. Perfect cake. All right So Eric had to step away. He said
Take off. All right. See? Caramel cake. Mean my daughter's. It looks like fun. Very nice.
Alright this meeting was supposed to be shorter. My fault.
No not my fault. It's Adrian's fault. Adrian's fault. It's always Adrian's fault. Oh boy. It's the cat's fault.
All right. Cat is going in executive session. Kirk stepped away because he went to the bathroom. Oh, you're doing that, Joe? My dog is in here. I got a dog. Was shooting the cord.
He was ready to rip the light down. He's bugging the hell out of me all night. I picked her up. We wanna see the dog, Jeff. No, the dog's downstairs. The cat's outside. That's why the cat's Oh, Maguire's.
My dog I think is in bed. She's got a puppy. Got a puppy. Idiot. No, it's not. Yes, I am.
I got He's a really good dog though. Is that the dog you went to St. Louis for?
Yeah, I did. Did Eric step away because of us or did Eric step away because he had to go to the bathroom? You want me to stay on? Yes, let's do you first.
Are we supposed to be still recording this by the way? No. It's still recording. We need to cease the recording.
Okay, Eric's the host so we need to wait for him to come back. What you doing?
That's the point of executive session. It's not to record it. Okay. We haven't discussed I will stop recording.