Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
January 11, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
2021, our first meeting in 2021. We can do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of Of America
And to the republic for which it stands, God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
See my belly, we're good to go. Before we get started again, I just want, I know that most of you are on the meeting on Saturday, but town employee Ed Kasasik, thirty years for the town passed away last week. So we're gonna do a little moment of silence. Brad? Okay. Public speak. Amanda, if you can go around the members of the public who would like to add to our meeting,
please do it. All right. We'll start with Mike Palazzi. Let's see. Mike, we just have to get you to unmute yourself.
I'm gonna log off with this, and Kathy's wouldn't on here. Wanna go with that.
Mike, would you like to try to call from your phone? I'm on the phone. Yeah. Kathy,
turn your router off and on. We worked well with the computer. Go and turn your router off and turn it back on. When your Internet comes back, you'll have better connection.
Kathy, can you hear us from your phone okay? I certainly can. Okay. Would you like to participate in public speak?
Do I want to yes. I'd like to talk about Saturday. I'd like to say what an excellent job the, registered voters did in organizing everything. The town clerk for sending everything out for Eric Anderson. He was fantastic. A very good guy telling us where where to go. I thought everything went smoothly, and I would love to see more meetings held that way until we're all safe through this COVID thing. Thank you. Thank you. Diane Grenier? I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. Dennis O'Brien.
I'll I'll save my my energy for the rest of the meeting. But I was very pleased to hear today that the initiative passed and I talked to Mike Palazzi today and to Eric about it and very, very pleased that it went well And that's, that's great. That's all. Great. Thank you. And I didn't recognize McGuire when I first saw him today. I thought he had a new hairdo. He does. All right, Shannon Loudon. All set.
I'm unmuting. So I too want to echo excellent job on Saturday. Very pleased about the results. I also wanna commend the search committee for finding a finance director. You're muted. I'm really well, Kathy, you need to mute, sweetheart, because you're not muted. In any event, looking forward to more details about that. I think that's terrific, and I really thank everybody who was on the search committee for that. I think we found a wonderful person who's gonna do a terrific job for the town and board of ed, And invite everybody to attend our Board of Ed meeting on Wednesday. It's the first time we'll be considering our budget. And also honoring Laura Edwards, who retired as of officially last Thursday on her sixtieth birthday. She's done a fantastic job for us for five years. And so, I would love to see as many people there who could be there to both hear about our budget and to say goodbye to Laura in good stead. Thank you. Thanks Shannon. Elaine Bucard. Need to unmute yourself.
There, I was having a hard time finding the button to unmute myself. Anyway, I just echo that Saturday was great. You guys did a wonderful job. Thank you. Thanks, Elaine. Okay. Joanne Hebert? Yeah. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, it looks like we're all set. Okay. Additions and deletions to the agenda.
Jeff, if we could, I'd like to move item 9C up to 4C just so Jay Tuttle doesn't have to sit on the whole meeting.
I second that. Absolutely. Well, I'll make that motion that we move 9C up to 4C. Scott second. All in favor? Aye. Any other additions and deletions? Adrian Mandeville, glad you could join us. I'm sure you're just thrilled. Adrian, do you have anything you want to add to the meeting?
No, I think most of the I have some questions, but they'll fall under other topics, so we're good. Okay.
All right. We're going to just move that one item up to 4C. We're going to get started with board commission presentations 4A, the Board of Selectmen, Board of Education, Combined Finance Department Committee. Eric, do you want to give that one?
Sure. I'll give that one real quick. Regarding the so we have a tentative agreement with the new finance director, the person we're hiring for a finance director, with an expected start date of February 8. However, as we started to finalize that we did realize one thing and that is the town and the school by state law need a formal agreement in place before we can have a combined department and combined personnel. So I left you a motion. The school's labor attorney has drafted a document that will do just that. I reviewed it, I don't have any issues with it. I asked Dennis to review it, he didn't have any issues with it. And so basically what what I'd like to do is have you guys make a motion you know to authorize me to sign that agreement prior to us hiring Agata. If I sign it today or tomorrow then the Board of Ed can sign it at their Wednesday meeting and then you know we have a final agreement in place with Agata. If that makes sense to all of you. Did you send that agreement out to us? I think so. Did I not?
I saw it. I think it's in the packet. It's it's stuff for tonight's meeting the email he sent at 04:09 on the eleventh,
which would I did not send it super early, would admit that.
What he's trying to say is he sent it at 04:00 this afternoon. It's the third attachment. It says cooperative agreement. Okay. Alright. Does someone want to make that motion?
I'll do it. I move to authorize the town administrator to sign a cooperative agreement with the Andover Elementary School as authorized by Connecticut General Statute after one hundred seventy one secondtion ten-241B to share the services of a finance director.
Someone want to second that I'll second it further discussion
I'd like to get a chance to read it. I mean, it was sent at 04:00 this afternoon without a notice that it was being sent for tonight.
Why was the term for two years just as a question since I'm reading it now?
Anybody, Eric? Because the contract for Agata will be for two years so it matches the contract.
I don't really care if it matches the contract. It's not really we might have another person that comes in and we should not have that be have to be renewed every time we hire a new person. So Anyway, Dennis O'Brien, I'll ask you a question. Did you have any problems with the agreement? Did I lose Dennis? I think he's muted. You're muted, Dennis.
I, when I first looked at it, had some questions and Eric answered my questions. We have we have one like that here. It's we've had a lot of experience with a shared situation and didn't work out too well. So we went to something like what you're doing where the finance director will be actually working for both of you, paid by the by the education department. And apparently, the assistant director will be paid by the town. Now, I think that require will require you to have another contract with the Board of Ed for the assistant position because there's but there is something that covers that in here. It does say that it's under section nine, roman numeral nine, Additional costs and expenses, the parties may agree in writing to split certain expenses for supplies, equipment and other resources used by both the town and the board. I would assume that you can do a similar contract when you when you finally get around to or maybe you already have
hired an assistant director of finance and that's exactly what we do in in Wyndham. The except that the director is under the control mostly of the town, and the assistant is under the control of the Board of Ed. Because when they had one director under the control of both of them, they were serving the director was serving two masters and it didn't work out very well. But anyway, this contract looks okay to me. I probably wouldn't write it exactly this way if I were writing it, but I think it's I would just ask to review it and give it my approval. And as it's written, I approve it. I didn't know. You mentioned mister First Selectman that it's a two year contract? It is.
And it's a two year contract for the position, not for the not for the person to fill the position. That will be a separate agreement, I assume with the Board of Ed. And it can be terminated though upon written notice of sixty days. Looks like you can you know, looks like it's a two one of those two year contract that you can get out of with sixty days notice, which makes you know, could you know, answer your question, Jeff, to some extent, it's not you're not locked in for two years. And I don't think you have to have cause to get out of it under under. I just read through it quickly. So there's flexibility there.
I guess I don't look at it that way. I look at it as like this is a benefit. We're trying to move forward with the town and we're writing an agreement with ourselves, giving one board the ability to get out of a contract in sixty days. That's kind of asinine. So
Well, if anybody's gonna wanna get out of it, well, I don't know. It could be either party.
Okay. I do I do have some concern reading this that it says that the board of the school board is gonna be the one that that gives the review of the person with input from the town, but it doesn't say that it's it's a pass through. It it basically also says that they're an employee of the board directly, which what board board of board of education
right and Marina is a direct employee of the town
right it's one and one So was there any consideration given to how this does it affect MRF or any of that stuff? Is it the same no matter where they work?
So in that case, yes. MRF will be the same whether they work for the town or they work for the school. Laura was on Murph and so will her replacement Agata or Agata. Okay.
Well, if I may, like I said, we experienced that the hard way. We started out with a joint agreement between the Board of Ed and the town of Wyndham, of course, we're a town of 25,000 people, a lot more complicated, a lot more politics going on there, I think than you have here. You may not think so, but I know Wyndham very well. And now I know a little bit about Andover after being here for quite a while. But what they had was a situation where the both the superintendent of schools and the town manager, one could initiate disciplinary action or actually fire the person. And Yeah. They fighting constantly about it and maybe Adrian knows about it because you work in town a lot and you hear a lot of things. But it didn't work and we just changed the charter again to set up a system that's very similar to what you have. The board of ed has control over one employee that would be the assistant and the town of Wyndham has control over the director.
I guess I'm not seeing anything in here that covers grievances or discipline or even a work schedule. So what is the agreement for work schedule?
So that's in her contract. This is not her contract. This is simply an agreement between the town that satisfies the state requirement that there be a cooperative agreement. In other words, we cannot legally sign a contract with Agata unless we have an agreement in place. So where's her contract? I don't have a copy of her contract.
Then then how can we vote on this? Because you're not voting on a contract. You're just setting up a structure here. I know, but we set up the structure then the school board signs the contract, but we never get to see what it actually says?
No. Because I'm sorry to interrupt, but she's gonna be an employee of the Board of Education. So, Adrian, what you are being asked to do is to allow Eric the authorization to sign an agreement as the town's representative to allow us to hire Agata. We're not going And even on to our contract.
Shannon, we're not going to vote on this tonight. I'm not voting yes until I see the contract for Agata. Yeah. I mean, this is not I mean, and this is not
this should not definitely be Jeff. We didn't see the contract for Marina. So she's also supposed to be working on behalf of the school, correct, or not at all?
Right? Do I have a contract? Did I see a contract for Marina? Anybody else in the board see a contract for Marina? No, I didn't see. Shannon, what do you want?
You're muted, Shannon. Unmute yourself. I know. And I don't mean to interrupt your meeting. I don't wanna be disrespectful to the rules. I'm just saying I this is the I just learned about this, like, a day or so ago. I haven't seen a copy of the agreement of what you're considering. I'm texting Valerie right now to ask where that is that I believe it was drafted by the board's attorney. But what you're being asked to do is to authorize Eric to enter it from my understanding again, I'm not looking at it like you are. My understanding is is that much like we're gonna ask the Board of Education on Wednesday simply to authorize me to sign an agreement so that we actually can even enter into a contract with a joint finance director. You're being asked to authorize Eric to be able to sign an agreement that authorizes the town to hire a joint finance director. Listen, I told That's you the agreement says supposedly. Shannon,
have no I don't have any problem with the agreement in the way it's written. I have a problem with signing it until I know the implications of that contract because signing this means that contract can then get signed.
Yes. But what you are doing is you're authorizing the town administrator who is her boss, her supervisor to enter into a contract. Do you sign off on all contracts for all town employees? I don't think the Board of Selectmen has that authority. It is the authority of the town administrator and the authority of the superintendent to enter into contracts with their employees. Correct? What would the board like to move forward?
Start with That's not accurate. You want me to answer that? Yeah. Go ahead. The board of selectmen is the is the executive authority. The the town administrator is their agent. So the board of selectmen knows how have the final say on on contracts like this. No question. Or a contract for an employment contract as well. It's different. Does
this board have a problem getting together later this week or by email to give Eric authorization once we have a chance to read it and have our questions answered? I would like to see their contract also.
Okay. All right. So, Eric, since we have this, we'll read it after the meeting and then we'll get you our questions and let's sit there and see if we can get this answered quickly. Then it would help us if if you have some type of contract for EGADA that we could at least understand it. Okay. Let's move on. So you say you have a tentative agreement with the finance director, but that means we don't have a contract that we've written up. Or are you trying to tell this board that the Board of Education is writing up the contract for this employee? What are you telling us, Eric?
So I'm telling you that I have not personally seen a copy of the contract. I know the contract, I know what the rough outlines of the contract are, but I don't know, I have not personally had a chance to review that contract. Ultimately, that will be a contract between the board of education and the finance director.
Okay. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, but is not Marina the new person, isn't she a union employee? So there really wasn't a contract per se, she was hired into a position. Is that correct?
Well, other than her contract was quite, there's a memorandum of understanding that was signed with the union regarding employing Marina because obviously she makes, her hours are very different. Her salary is quite different, and she works for multiple entities. So her job description is quite different. So yes, she is part of the same bargaining unit. Yes, some provisions of the union contract apply to her, but there's a memorandum of understanding that states the details.
Did I miss something or was there a select person that was on like in helping with that or because I never saw any of that. I never saw a memorandum of understanding or contract. A copy of the memorandum of understanding? That would be a first good start there. Okay.
But we also need that contract because regardless of what technicality you think that who is hiring who and who is paying for them, We need to see the documents so that we can all be on the same page. Please get us those documents.
Sure. Yeah, copy of the Marina's contract, the memorandum, a copy of this new contract that's in discussion.
Valerie is going to forward those to me right now. She just responded to my text. I'd be happy to forward those to the board as soon as I receive them if you'd like me to do that. Thank you, Shannon.
And Shannon, listen. I I I don't know how anyone else feels, but if you have something pertinent to say during a board select meeting, I have no issue with someone interrupting to bring us up to speed if someone else on this someone else on this call doesn't have the information and you have it. I'm perfectly fine with someone speaking up. Instead of waiting it's best to have that information. Okay. Are we done with the Of floor course.
Right? What's that? You're talking about me too, right? No, no, you have to be quiet. Mute him, will you? I can do that.
Right. Does anyone have anything else on 4A that they want to deal with or talk about? No? Okay. Let's go to 4B, Conservation Commission. We were all provided a report on hunting on town property.
Sorry to interrupt you, Jeff, but there was the town accounting software update that was also supposed to be part of that part of the agenda, and I was interested in hearing about that. No update at this point. Where are we at with it?
About the same spot we were at the last month. We haven't really made any progress on it.
Okay. Are we waiting for the new person to come in? Is that the impetus? Absolutely. Okay. All
right. And so the vendor has been notified that we're holding out and what we're waiting on? Are we gonna sign a new schedule with them once they start or?
I think once we have the new finance director on board, we're gonna have to sit down and figure out what a reasonable schedule for making that happen is. Yes. Yeah. Because now we're in the middle of budgeting. Yep. No question. Okay.
So you know when your start date of your software is?
No, he doesn't because we don't know until they They're gonna sit down and make a plan. He just Not running yet. 07/01/2021.
Let's go. Okay. Conservation Commission to report on hunting on town property. Mike Plazi, do you want to talk about this or Well, we all read Did everyone have a chance to read the report? Yes.
Yeah, we all read it. Okay. Gaffey and Mike, if you press 6 to unmute yourself from the phone, we'll be able to hear you. Hello. Hello. Hi, Kathy. Hello.
Okay. So Mike, do you want to represent the Conservation Commission on this report on hunting on town property? Yeah, I think it was pretty clear. Okay.
We just well, a couple of our members research the things that the state has, how we come under control and stuff. Bottom line is we didn't see anything wrong with what you guys did. We're just weighing in, that's all.
Okay. So does anybody else on the board want to talk about this issue? I'm all set.
Well, the so are we is this issue getting dropped now because the Conservation Commission?
Now it sounded like Mike just said that he was all set with what we did so he doesn't I think the report didn't exactly say what he just said but he the conservation commission said they didn't recommend hunting. Exactly that's why I'm asking. But now Mike is saying that he didn't say see anything wrong with what we did
But It was just very vague on what the we researched what the hunting requirements are for the state of Connecticut And this is what you see there and nothing was exceeded as far as hunters per square mile or that kind of stuff as far as we could see. So we're just weighing in, You guys are going to move forward with it, but we had a chance to weigh in and we did. Well, I mean, that's the question. It didn't say, it didn't seem to
encourage or discourage, but it didn't, I think the take at the very end was that it wasn't needed. Right. That's right.
I'm misreading that when I so the commission doesn't have a negative or a positive on it? It doesn't have a negative for sure.
Okay. All right. That makes me feel a little better. Yeah. I mean, reading it, Mike, I would have not taken that point. Right. I agree 100%. I thought it was against. Yeah, so did I. Did I. The way it's worded.
I mean, do you wanna read the one sentence conclusion? Yeah, right. Maybe you could change that report a little bit. What
does the board want to do with this issue? Do you want to vote on it and do you not want to vote on it? What is your desire?
I just think we should put it in the record, that's all. But they made a
report on the But we never voted on this issue as a Not yet. No. No. I think we're kind of letting, trying to get some more feedback from different areas and look around and see what was kinda out there. Okay. I mean, it's interesting that we're talking about it because there are four other towns also talking about it around us.
Right. He's right here. Yeah, maybe we could clear up that last line. I see what you're saying, but I believe that says we didn't see a need to act on anything in that.
Well, would sound better at the end of the report than what's there, Mike.
Yeah. Well, it says in conclusion, Conservation Commission does not see a conservation management need for opening, oh, I say for opening a town parcel. Right. Exactly.
Right. Yeah. Well, let me see if we can come back to that and I'll be in touch with you, Eric, you know, in the next day or so. Alright. Okay.
Let me give you my interpretation if you don't mind. I think all it says is you don't need to do it to thin out the herd. But you know, there's all kinds of other reasons why you would. Mean, doesn't say you can't do it or you shouldn't do it. That's not a reason to on town roads.
Okay, just just one thing to add. I mean, we've talked to Scott about this a few times and a few other people and we've talked about this hunting and we don't know if the people that want to hunt on Tom Land or even bow hunters or rifle or shotgun hunters. So we need to get that clarified as well. The people that wanted to hunt on property. I mean, I'll be candid with you. I'm not at this time, I'm not supportive of rifle hunters. Think I'm not either. I mean, I was only supportive of a bow hunting only. I don't see anybody really coming out of the woodwork saying I really want to hunt on Tom Land. So unless unless we have a huge contingent of residents that wish to bow hunt on Tom Land. I don't really see any reason to move forward with this. Okay. Okay. Let's move on to item five appointments.
Hang on before you did that, we moved up 8C.
I am so sorry. Mr. Tuttle. Jay Tuttle, public works introduction. Jay Tuttle.
So first of all, all of you have met Jay Tuttle. Jay Tuttle is the new public works supervisor. So I asked him to come on this meeting and just introduce himself and answer any questions that all y'all might have.
Jay? Good evening. Can everybody hear me all right? We can. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and started on the twenty first officially and things are moving along, making a little bit of progress here, cleaning things up and just kind of getting my feet wet and getting acclimated to the town. Any problems with Eric yet?
Nothing that I can think of. Point my finger to anyway at the Can get a contract for Jay? Oh boy. Too soon? Too soon. Well,
Jay, thank you very much for attending our meeting. And Anytime that you need to talk to us, you can attend our meetings. We try to make them quick. Mr. Mandeville is very good about that. Anything we can do
with Eric, you let us know if you need anything. Yeah, let us know, Jay. No, seriously, Jay, you asked the guy to get on the call. Do you have any questions for us? Is it going? You settling in well?
Yeah, no. Just getting up to speed here with the computer and just waiting for that to come online. We'll get that this week sometime. So this one's a little bit old. We made a couple of things work today.
So I can get online here with you guys. Are we getting him a different computer, Eric? Or what's the situation?
Yep. It's due here this week. Like I said, we're just cleaning things up around here and guys are welcome me on board. It seemed like we've got a good group here and they're willing to
move forward, get stuff done. Did Eric get you the jackets? Has that been ordered yet?
We're working on that. I'm waiting for some samples to come in. All right. Believe it or not, those are hard to come by too along with everything else. Sure. I hear you're cleaning things up.
You should go down there that the Public Works Building looks like 10 times better than it did. I was down there a few years ago and it was it was kind of a shocking sight. I'm glad it's getting cleaned up and organized. Yeah, they are. He's
very good. And they're the guys are really seem to be moving in the right direction there. They seem to be happy to be everybody
everybody works better in organized building when they get things when they need it. Yeah. Jay, thanks for coming on board.
No, thanks for inviting me and I'm looking forward to working with the town and hopefully I can help move things along. Great. Welcome aboard.
There is no shortage of work out there according to our list of projects that we need. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. And that goes without saying it's like that everywhere. Just pick your poison try to put out some fires and make some progression.
Jay, when it just ahead of steam before you get into the budget season here, the thing that we're gonna be looking for as a word from you is, you know, direction is to, you know, basically, we like to have a plan for the year, we also wanna know a broad strokes plan so that we can understand that if something's not getting addressed this year when it's been getting addressed. Yep. Understood. So
Eric's been pretty good about that but you know his experience level on yours and when it comes to paving is a little different so you know. Okay. Thank you. Understood.
Thank you. All right. Anybody else have any other questions for Jay? Thank you, Jay. Thanks, Thanks, Jay. Thank you.
All right we're going to move on to five appointments. Jim Rupert building official.
We'll deal with that in a little bit under old business or new business. New business. Okay. There are no resignations, Eric, or are there? Not that I know of. Okay. That's a first. Seventh town administrator's report.
Okay, you've all seen the report. I'm just going to go over the things that have changed. Obviously you all know about Ed Kasich or Kasich. You know it really sucks that he died five weeks after he retired but you know that's life I guess. COVID stuff, our first responders have gotten the first COVID shot and a lot of them have gotten the second COVID shot at this point. So we're moving along pretty well with that. The governor announced today that they'll begin vaccinating seniors 75 and over as of next week. And we should have more details within the next couple of days, as well as more scheduling and I notified Roberta and Kathy are putting together a list of those we know of that are over 75 to make sure we notify them to get on the list and get a date for the vaccine.
Now how are we cross referencing? Are we doing voter rolls? What are we doing? I don't know the specifics.
Eric, excuse me. Eric, I'm using the voter roll list and the list that we're using. Also, the current senior list that we have are active list as well. Thank you, Kathy. You're welcome.
Okay. And as of today, the town of Andover has had one hundred and eight positive COVID death tests and two deaths from COVID. Hang on a second. I put in your packet the memorandum the fire chief had asked me to approve of a training session that the fire department wanted to conduct. This is being led by the Connecticut State Fire Academy, but it's occurring in our building. Their concern is that they're running low on certified instructors, and they need to get enough certified instructors to host enough training that their department itself stays certified to do their jobs. So I approved that. We went over and talked about what controls were in place to do it safely. I felt it was a reasonable risk so I approved it. Town hall, as you know, we're still open by appointment only but we're pretty much fully staffed at this point. The town hall is running reasonably well.
The last week we held the vote for the land acquisition that passed 62 to two. So far everybody that did the drive by voting was fairly positive about it. I think that probably ought to serve as our model for how we conduct the original budget vote to go to referendum if we're still dealing with COVID when it comes time for the budget meeting, townwide budget meeting. So I spoke to Wally and the registrars afterward about how that would happen and there's still some things to work out but it seems like that's probably the most logical way rather than try to do everything online with Zoom, do the meeting portion on Zoom and then have a drive up vote. So that's what we're thinking of as we get into the spring and get farther into budget season. As I said before, we have a tentative agreement
with the person that's going to be taking over as the finance director, likely start dates around February 8. Obviously, we need a final contract and we need an agreement in place before the town and the school. Building department, there's two things for today. The first is approval of what I gave you last week, which was an updated fee structure. My recommendation is to put that in effect as of March 1 to give the builders in town a chance because some of them will have baked in our fee structure into their proposals and I don't want to screw the builders so it gives them basically at least forty five days between before the fees go into effect. And the second thing is a recommendation to switch from the building official being a town employee to a shared service through Bolton because that seems to be lower cost and probably better overall service than the options we had for hiring somebody directly as a town employee. So that's building department. We talked about public works, and we did settle on using a company called WeatherWorks to provide us more detailed weather information specifically regarding public works. So, so far that seems to be working pretty well.
As far as the transfer station goes, we had a couple complaints in the last few weeks about other residents at the transfer station not wearing masks. Not something I've done anything about. I suspect we have a high enough fraction of people that are in the never willing to wear mask camp that we'd cause ourselves more problems than we'd solve by trying to force universal mask wearing at the transfer station. That's my take on it. If you guys have a different take on it, I'm happy to entertain it. Just so you know that we're anticipating a road closure of Bunker Hill Road for two days during the day,
sometime in mid to the end of February, and that's so they can do the test bores for the bridge abutments so they know how far they need to plan on the bridge abutments going for the replacement of Bunker Hill Road bridge. I've notified the adjoining towns, public works been notified, the fire department and the school and school bus drivers. So it will be a little bit of an inconvenience for a couple of days, but it's a good test run so people understand what they're going to be going through when we close it for an entire summer. So that should be coming up again around mid February. No real updates on that. Revaluation. So we've had to this point, as far as I know, two complaints regarding the revalve service. You know again given the number that we've done overall it's been very positive but there have been a couple you know vocal people that were upset with the process.
We've had what two complaints out of six or seven hundreds that have been completed so far is that correct? Yeah something in that range yep. I mean, know there was some back and forth, was anything done to address? I mean, we got the email as far as the one resident, was anything else required with the second resident?
No, that that one, frankly, the company screwed up because that individual had asked them to notify them ahead of time when they were going to be there, and Vision did not. So that one was very definitely the fault of vision. Vision screwed that one up is The the person wasn't mad in the end, they were just not happy that they had asked to be notified and they weren't. That's that. What's our expected completion on those? I think we're still around four weeks out
For for initials, right? And then we've got callbacks for anybody that didn't.
Yeah, and then they'll I mean, the actual finish date is not till next October. Yeah, I know By the time everything's done. Okay.
Yeah. Let's see, complaints this month. Talked about the reval one. We did get one complaint about difficulty driving up Boston Hill Road due to ice, which I explained wasn't really anything we could do about since that was the state. We've had a couple of complaints about people still leaving their political signs up. I've explained that there's nothing really that we can do about that. We have had a complaint about somebody living in a trailer illegally on Shawty Mill Road. That's basically at the, we've already issued the cease and desist. So the next step up for that is basically to lawyer up and go after them in court.
Do you have anything going on the trailer on Wells Road that's also being lived in?
You know what? I misspoke. That's on Wales Road, not on Shawty Mill Road. Wrote that incorrectly. Thank you. So we're talking about the same thing. My apologies. All right. Did have one customer unhappy that his mailbox got wrecked on Bear Swamp, but it was a plastic one and it appears it got hit by the snow, not by the plow itself. So that's on them. We've had several people unhappy that we don't have a burning official in place yet. I'm in the process of addressing that with the fire department. They have two of their members that are willing to go through the training session to become burning officials. We had a complaint, multiple complaints about a rabid fox in the Lake District. And we've had a couple complaints about kids doing donuts in the parking lot at Veterans Memorial Field or So evidence of them doing
that's basically where we are in terms of complaints and that's what I have unless you have questions for me. Did someone see
the kids doing the donuts in Veterans Park? No they just called because they looked at the snow and it was clear somebody had done donuts in the park
and they were upset about that. And we're sure it wasn't an animal? I don't know. Wasn't a rabbit fox was it?
Driving a pickup truck? I don't know. I don't know. Hey this
is twenty twenty twenty we're talking about. Anything could have happened. Sharpshooters could come out looking for the fox.
I just have one question on the building official. Is that going be just like a he's just gonna be a contract of service or we're just going to give them a $10.99 kind of deal or just paying for hours worked?
So we are just gonna do a share and I put that in your packet. Okay. It's just basically a shared service agreement with the town of Bolton to provide the town of Andover with a building official and an assistant building official. Okay, understood. Why were there two different Are you done, Jeff? Yeah I'm done. Why were there two different contracts?
Two different numbers on the contract, yeah. Two different So what
I asked them to do is to give us a contract that takes us up through July 1, a short like six month contract and then a two year contract. So we get on a regular cycle that lines up with our fiscal year. So it's predictable as to what the costs are. So that's what that is. Is that One
is next fiscal year. Okay sorry about that Eric. Is that allowing the billing inspector from Bolton to have more of a full time schedule now? What was he at Bolton? Twenty four. Twenty four hours? Yeah. So
Bolton so you know, they have both a building official and an assistant building official. And they currently cover four towns. Andover will be town number five. So we're basically, you know, we're shared. Bolton provides it as a service for a bunch of area towns. We would just be one extra town. And so what we did is I sat down with Jim Rupert, and we looked at the size of Andover, and then also the number of permits pulled and the types of permits pulled in town and did comparables to all the other towns they come up with. And basically what we did is we scaled the services we're getting to be in line with the number of actual inspections they need to do and how that would work out. And that's how we came up with essentially the hours per week of coverage, which is in the end, it's roughly the same number of hours coverage we got from Ed, except because Ed was a standalone building official, every time he went to do his mandatory training, he billed the town for that too. And we got billed for all his supplies. So hourly, we're paying considerably more, but we don't have to pay for training, we don't have to pay for supplies, we're just straight paying for a shared service. And the other good thing from my perspective is that because he's got an assistant building official,
we never have to worry about coverage because if he's out his assistant covers. Now
does that contract, are we paying mileage on top of it? Do we have to cover insurance for the vehicle, any of that? So the only thing we have to cover,
we have to cover mileage if it's an emergency inspection. Okay. That's it. Not for regular day to day stuff is built into the standard contract. Okay.
So like for instance, when we had that fire off of Gilead, if it was an emergency response, we'd be paying for them to come out off hours paying for mileage for that.
Just so I understand, how many hours are you anticipating utilization on the Bolton department? How many hours? About five. Five.
Are the other towns in this agreement that are already doing it, do they have a home rules type secretary or something in the town hall as well or?
That's not a question I've asked. I don't know. I know they're not, although Jim Rupert has, they have a building admin at Bolton. I don't think that covers, that's not part of the agreement. We didn't also contract for the administrative
services relative to the building department. No, I'm asking because now that we're moving towards this, I want to know what the other, you said Worf Town five. So I'd like to know what the other four town structures are and whether or not we should be considering if we're getting to that point and we're only five hours, we have a full how many hours is Susan working downstairs now? Thirty. Yeah. So we basically have a full time employee downstairs and a building official that's only needing to five hours. Should we be looking at a different structure set? You know? Or we do we need thirty hours downstairs? You know?
Okay, so Eric, if you can look into that just give us back a report on that part of it.
Sure. I mean, if it doesn't get addressed before budget, I'm certainly gonna ask that question of budget.
So I mean the question is do you want to have somebody available to answer questions or do you not? I mean because we have this problem with all departments. You know if you don't have somebody there, know what happens when you call? What happens is I get called and I end up spending my time dealing with people who have building questions because there's nobody they can talk to. I mean, I think you should probably have somebody in that office full time, you know, is my guess and available to answer questions, but that's a level of service. And you know, it's less a question of it's more a question of what level of service do you want to provide to residents I think than anything else Adrian.
That's all I understand. I understand that but the building code in general across the state is standardized Right? There are some local ordinance issues, but otherwise it's generally standardized. There is no reason that five separate towns need five separate employees sitting in an office waiting for a phone call. That's a waste of resources as far as I'm concerned. So
Adrian's point is well taken. So Eric, what are the other four towns that Bolton services out?
I know Wellington, think Ashford, I don't know what the other towns are.
If we can find out what they do with their administrative staff, that would help us for the next budget cycle.
Dennis, go ahead. Yeah, I was just wondering, Eric, is this thirty hour a week person doing zoning too?
Nope. Yep, zoning wetlands. Okay. But she's not doing zoning and wetlands, she's taking in forms. Well, she's doing the administrative part, the
secretarial, administrative, whatever you want to call it, answering the phone, whatnot. So she's not just doing building work because that wouldn't be thirty hours.
It's not that my point is I don't think the whole department is thirty hours no matter how much you have thrown in down there. You may be right.
I don't know. But I just wondered if there were more functions.
So I thought there were. So that is something Adrian that we need to take up during the budget cycle. I understand that but it's if we wait till the budget cycle and then we ask Eric to go get those answers, then we won't have it done in budget cycle. It'll be next year. So That's fine. So since we're in the middle of this process, any information that we can gather will all help us.
Thank you. Yep. Okay. Paul did Paula fall? Is she okay? Okay, I thought you followed and you couldn't get up.
I caught that too, Adrian. She was hoping that she could get in another standing competition with Jeff Murray. That's what she was I'm Isn't that a song?
Standings. All right. Let's move on. And we'll go to eight, old business. Eric has already provided us with the COVID update. 8B, the alarm monitoring for town buildings. Eric, where are you at with that?
I do not have anything back from Wally. The Board of Fire Commissioners said they would provide it to me by this meeting, and I don't have it, frankly. 8C
is adopt the fee schedule for the building department, which was in our packages. Adrian, I'm assuming that you worked through this with Eric. Eric doesn't consult me on anything. I haven't seen this yet.
It's not what I heard. Don't even start with me, Adrian.
Yes, I went over this with Eric. Okay, so are you comfortable with it? I am. We had some discussion back and forth and I think everything that we're looking at is fair and comparable so.
Okay. And just so I understand that this is the building department, but where do permits such as retaining walls on the lake go? Are they part of the building department? Are they part of wetlands? What is that? Both? Yes. In other words, Both. Where would that structure be?
The Inland Wetlands Commission has its own fee schedule, which is not part of this.
Not part of this. Okay. As we go into our next budget cycle, I've had this conversation with Eric that we need to make sure that these fees and all fees within the town are appropriate so that we can pay for those departments that are there. It's got to be more of a pay for play situation. We have to be able to generate enough fees to provide the appropriate level of supervision inspections Eric, that are
we didn't look at retaining wall fees. Should we be looking at that? Retroactively, you mean?
Is there a permit already out on a specific house that we're thinking of?
I've already paid my permits. Get through my But I've had the conversation with my contractor that you know, there's a level of oversight the town needs to provide. We need to pay for those things. You need to make sure that the fees that people are charged are appropriate. Yeah. So, if Adrian's good with that, I'm fine. I mean, I just want to make They were were woefully inadequate before.
Oh, 100% agree. And they're they're definitely in line, they're not outrageous. Okay. Basically basically, we're trying to cover our cost of the department and, you know, as we're moving forward.
Correct. Eric's given me you know, he's told me without a doubt that he'll cover all the costs for the building department with the new updated fee structure. We have to hold him to that and make sure that we do, but, I mean, those these fees have to cover all of the costs of the building department and make sure that we try to calculate that. We should look at that during the budgeting cycle so that we know that if we are It goes to Adrian's point. If you have somebody that's sitting in a department for thirty hours and you have fees that you can collect, those fees better cover those thirty hours because if not, you don't have enough work. Right. Okay. Anybody have any questions for Eric or Adrian on the fee structure?
Does the department get does the fee structure pay for the department as it stands now? Eric?
The current fee structure does not. Does not. We cover we collect somewhere around the low 40s in terms of thousands of dollars per year in building department fees not including driveway bonds which we take in and release and and we would need how much
We I don't have that document staring me right in front. I can find it, we're talking about realistically what we're doing here is going to more than double the intake for the building department which should basically cover 100% of the fees for the building department. Good. Thank you, Eric and Adrian.
Does anyone want to make a motion to I guess we have sit there and to enact a new fee structure.
Is that required, Eric? I don't know that it is. Yeah, you're the authority that approves it, yes. Okay. I'll make a motion that we approve the new fee structure as outlined by Eric Anderson.
I'll second that. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. An update on the town meeting for land acquisition that was held on Saturday, January nine, 'sixty It went well. Thank you very much to the registrars and all the people that volunteered their time for it, or actually they got paid, but thank you very much for it and for Eric standing out directing traffic. I don't know if you noticed it, but in his nice new Andover garb that he so willingly went out and bought for himself. I really was impressed with the green jacket, and I don't know if you noticed it today, but Eric is now wearing his new red polo. Right. Are you getting billed for those?
You're not getting billed for those. Okay. That's fine. Otherwise, want to pick the colors. White. White. Yeah, smart.
Okay. So we're now going on to new business. 9A is a discussion regarding the 30 acres of land for sale in Merritt Valley Road adjoining town owned property. Scott, would you like to bring this one up?
Oh, Jeff is the one I guess that brought this into the meeting.
Yeah, I just noticed that property was for sale. I've heard conflicting stories whether somebody said there's a deposit on it. And I spoke to briefly about it and he was familiar with the town considering the property at one time. Since it's on the other side and we give our 70 acres access to Merritt Valley and possibly Lake Road. I wanted to put it on the agenda just for some discussion and felt and felt that we should discuss and see what the other selectman had to say about it. The sale has not been finalized but the buyer has already
dug test pits on the property. Okay. For development.
And you know we went after this in the springtime to try to buy it but What are they asking?
They only wanted 139 for it I No, wasn't a 100. Yeah, I think it was on 39. Anyways, you know, went through the whole thing with the planning and zoning and conservation commission and everybody thought that it was only worth 100 but I thought that it was you know, how much more ideal of a piece of property could you get than that.
Yeah I mean since it since it opened us up to that prime section on the other side of the wetlands on the hill there I thought it was an excellent opportunity to look into it. That's why I brought it up on the agenda because I think we would have saved that just in road construction trying to get through that wet area on our town. Oh my God. Yeah. And that that's just kind of in hindsight now is 2020 but I don't know if we should keep an eye on it and see what progresses. It's just I feel like we lost a major opportunity of chasing that property. Yeah. One thing I don't understand Jeff.
Go ahead Eric. Chasing it for what I mean what would you propose to do? I mean, we have 70 acres now that's pretty much kind of landlocked with a stream and wetlands that we would have to cross to get over. I think it would just have expanded our options for future but you know housing up there or have a developer interest in that property would give us to means egress. School. I mean, we could have gone in through Merritt Valley or else to put a continuous road in future all the way down to merit. So which is something we could put on that. I'm just trying to think future that's in our late it's kind of interlinked district joins our 70 acres that we currently have and people are currently using. That's why I thought it was important that we put it on the agenda to see that. Is that subdividable,
Scott? Do you know? You said you can There was two entrances off of Merritt Valley, yeah. No, for that parcel that's for sale? Yeah, there's two accesses, yeah. So they're looking at they're looking at they could do two lots?
I I'm not sure. I I didn't I didn't get into it with the realtor with that. He just he just said that they're taking test pits. I'm assuming they're gonna put they're probably gonna put a couple houses in there, would assume.
Well, the reason I'm asking is you said that it went through it went through getting looked at. Wasn't that part of the equation when when people came up with a value number? They they came up with a $100,000,
which no, no that wasn't they just they just came up with that as far what they thought it was value to the town was be only a $100,000. It's $3,000 an acre. As far as open space
far as open space goes, I guess. Well, no, but so are you saying that when we evaluate parcels we don't take into account the realtor value of it, we only appraise the open space value?
Yeah, I would know that's what the Conservation Commission did. And the Planning and Zoning Commission said, I think we said, no the Planning and Zoning said 100 and Conservation said 105 or so, I think. So I can clarify.
Please, because I'm baffled at this. The Planning and Zoning Commission looks at a parcel and looks at the totality of a parcel relative to the town's open space needs and makes a decision whether a parcel is worth it to the town to own, irrespective of what the cost of the parcel is. You know it doesn't matter what the development costs or the development value with that property it only matters to the commission what the value is for the town you know and the planning and zoning commission with the concurrence of the conservation commission looked at it and said we don't want to try to acquire this property if it's going to take us more than about a $100,000 out of our open space fund to do it. That's what they've decided. Right or wrong that was their decision. But
was there any consideration to what Jeff brought up tonight that that became that took a parcel that currently is really unusable and made it usable for the town. I mean you could even if you acquired the parcel and then rezone and then you know readjusted the lot lines you could give yourself the access that you need and then sell the rest.
Adrian, don't come after me. This is not a decision by me. This was a decision by two commissions which I serve on neither of them. No, I'm not. I'm asking if that's so that's not ever a consideration in those two bodies. They're only addressing exactly what Eric said. Remember
too, Adrian, that the only thing those two commissions and really it's the zoning commission has to work with is the open space fund. And if they bought that with the open space fund, you would not be putting a road in, you would not be subdividing that property because you would then be prohibited by law from doing that. You would be able to put in recreational amenities, but that's it because that's what's allowed under the open space, you know, statutes. So it's not like they can say, oh, well we'll buy it for a $100, we'll subdivide off this piece, we'll keep this piece. They don't have that flexibility. If you wanted to do that, you would have had to, the board of selectmen would have had to pony up, go back to the town and say, we want to take $100,000 out of something or a 150,000 or whatever and we want to buy it to do this with it.
So there's no structure available within the open space for pulling parcels out and then putting back on the market. Not when it's bought with those funds. No. Which
is why when we acquired the property we played some legal tricks to acquire the property on Lake Road to do just that to basically because there were multiple parcels there. And we got them to donate a couple of the parcels in exchange for us paying too much for one of the parcels, because that gave us the flexibility later, to sell off one of those parcels later.
Okay. This goes into a charter revision and giving the board of selectmen an opportunity to sit there and make a decision like Jeff is bringing up and finding a pot of money that would allow us to have bought that without having to go back to a town meeting and sat there and explained to everyone why we're choosing to do it and then have people vote no. Mean, 12 Center Street is the exact example of a problem. Yeah. We should have our own pot. It's not to abuse the situation. It's only to make a prudent business decision on behalf of the top.
I came to the game late. I wish I would have known about this back in February, March because I would have definitely pursued it being on the building committee. Scott did
bring the thing. Think it was a win win. I think we kind of missed a great opportunity by looking at purchasing
that property. I did Jeff. I looked at it, went to planning and zoning and conservation commission for six months.
Yeah, I just never heard about it. I never I was never informed. I didn't know anything about it. So then I saw that I was down there walking and I saw the for sale signs and I looked up the property and I saw that it boarded all our town property behind the school and it would have given us a 100 acre parcel back there. Am
I missing something? But are we getting reports or updates from these commissions on major things like this that happen? We don't get reports from all of the commissions.
I think this was important enough that we should have been informed of it.
Well, I'll flat out tell you, Jeff, we were informed. It. I I'm not saying. I I know that Scott was working on this six months ago, eight months ago when it first went on the market and we had conversations as to open space related. We could have had the conversation as a board to buy the property, but we never had the direct conversation of buying the property other than for open space purposes because that's all it had been brought up about. Yeah. I don't remember conversations specifically about Merritt Valley. Okay. I don't either.
It's all right. I mean, listen. That was Pat, but Scott It been would almost Well, I shouldn't say anything. With this board, things are not impossible. It would have been almost impossible for us to get approval to spend $140,000 I believe that's what he was asking for, Scott, in the beginning, $139,000 something in that ballpark. Yeah.
And then the owner reduced it by I think 15 or 20 for the town to keep it as open space.
If I remember correctly, Scott went to ask him to donate the property to the town. Right. Exact first, I asked I asked him. Good for you, Scott. And he refused. So
then it was a question of money. Then Scott had gone in and said, Okay, if we got it for open space, what would you be willing to deal with? The board said, 100. If I remember correctly, Scott, he was like, I'm not going to reduce the price. Right. Yeah.
Okay. Now, Jeff, I agree with you. I would love to have made a business deal just like we should have done with 12 Center Street. Should have made a calculated understanding of what was right for the town long term, not today, not Exactly.
That's what I'm thinking long term. I'm not thinking maybe ten years or maybe even twenty years down the road. We have a need for housing. We may have a need for more senior housing. It would have been a perfect
opportunity to place it in that area. Exactly. And then our town administrator will all look at us and go, it's a long term, long, long term, long, long term proposition
to get the money to fund what we would like to do. Even if you needed a space for a well, a septic system or something for the school, any of those things it would have been ideal for.
Okay. Well, here's here's the bigger picture that we keep talking about what a town center looks like. Right? You know, that if you put that together with the 70 acres that you have and you have a 100 acre parcel, now you've got a town center, you've got town center recreation, you've got town center, you know, everything's, you know, coalesced in one area.
Based off the survey, people overwhelmingly wanted that as the town center.
Right. And and I and I brought up the whole plan of concept. Well, I I I worked on there for a lot a lot of time to try to get it pushed through but I could not get anybody to.
I wish I would have known I would have been an ally.
Okay. Well Scott, if the real estate agent tells you it falls through, please bring it back to the board. Yeah. Can keep please keep our eye on that piece of property and just see just in case. Okay. Okay.
Shared service agreement for the building officially went over that, Eric. Do you have anything else we need to talk about? Nope. Don't we're need to not approving that tonight. We're going to read that and get back to you. Is it okay if we all text you, email you, call you?
I think technically that one you guys have to approve officially. If you waited another month, you could wait another month, I guess, but.
Okay, well, which contractor were you going to approve then, Eric?
The only one you have to approve is the one that covers us through July 1, because without that we technically don't have a building official. But I would say, yeah, that's the only one you technically have to approve. But is there a reason you don't want to approve them both?
If it was me, I'd like to sit there and look at that agreement for longer, the two year agreement. I don't necessarily have a problem agreeing to it, but
doesn't want us to see contracts tonight. I'm getting a little leery of this. You've had this contract. This is not new territory here. You're like Trump Jr. Tonight. Coach.
Good thing Amanda's running the meeting because I would have muted you for that comment. Maybe even put you back in the waiting room.
Almost like Dan in your Twitter account. What are you going to do. Hey let's move on.
So are we going to approve these these contracts for the building
there's something we can do interim to keep the services going until until next month till we can all read these contracts. Is there a resolution is there something we can do. Listen
I'll make a motion to approve the contract from today through 06/30/2021. Seconded. Further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Eric, we'll read the next one and a vote on it next meeting. Okay. All right.
We don't need that. We don't need that. We did, Jay, budget planning, recommended capital fund allocations, and employee compensation and annual raises.
Two things. One, I put in your packet the recommended capital fund allocation which is basically what I presented to you last year with a few more details. The reason why I gave that to you is because I think for CIP to plan for what capital purchases they're going to wanna do, they really need to understand what the funding level is that will be available for them. So that's why I provided that to you. If that's something that whatever feedback you have on that would be appreciated in terms of where you as a board want to go with that.
Okay. Does the board have any questions of Eric related to the allocation for the twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two budget? Eric, do you know how much the total allocation is increasing from 2020 to 2021?
So yes, if you look on that first column, that first column that says amount 2020, that's what we actually put in the funds last year as amended by the Board of Finance who went back and added money to it from the surplus from last year. So as you remember, when we modified the budget to present to the Board of Finance, we had trimmed pretty dramatically the capital request from last year from the first budget to the one that got presented to Board of Finance to the numbers in that column. So my quick math is like $80,000 increase? Maybe it's more than that.
Up 30, up 80, excuse me. 130 down to 90, up to 130. The roadwork fund was $3.50, it's gonna be 300,000?
So it was 300 the board the last budget was $300,000 However, because we ran a pretty significant surplus last year, at the end of the year, we did budget transfer additional budget transfers of $50,000 into that account. So that was $300,000 last year. Added it's $300,000 this year. Because we had a surplus, we dumped some of the extra surplus in that. Okay.
But we really need to look at it as to how much more we're going to try to request in a budget in total. So if you can get us that number so that I could know how much more money that capital request is for, I'm willing to sit there and support all of them. I don't think there's a problem with any of them. I probably think your bridging culvert fund is low, but that's me.
It is low. But I mean the question is how much can we really add? The difference is last year we had quite a bit of unexpended fund balance and repurposed funds we transferred into the general fund to fund some of this. So this year, pretty much all of it would come from taxation. Therefore, there's going to be a big, effectively, even if the budget doesn't increase, the effect on the taxpayer
is a fairly significant increase. What are you looking for three and change?
I think the increase is really about 130,000 if you take the roadwork out.
And how much did we have that we didn't? I guess what I'm asking is, what is the actual increase in taxation effects total on the new?
I think that's the number 130. Listen, we do not have to discuss this in totality right now. We can do this in our budget workshops because this is going to be something we all have to look at.
One thing I'd like to bring up is that the new softball field down there, Jeff, don't know if you wanted to talk about this at some point.
Well, it's something that we should sit there and think about what we're trying to what we would wanna do with it, but, you know, I think we have a lot of problems that we have to address. So,
Can I just kind of get a lay of the land? My bigger thought process on dealing with some of our shortfalls because addressing some of our shortfalls sooner rather than later saves us money in the long run. And given the rate, the interest rates being as low as they are right now, has there been any thought process or what would the as it would the board be open to looking at bonding, you know, putting together a bond package for some of the roadwork, some of the bigger capital, or are we still wanting to get another year out from COVID before we start talking about that? We've got one more year before the RAM bond pays out, that's going to affect the school a little bit but our indication for all indications say that the RAM board is going to try to take that money and put it into something else that we really won't see it.
Listen, I think as a board, we should really look at that and we should look at what the cost would be. Because in my mind, if we could sit there and give the residents a number, this is the number, we're going to keep coming back to this number for the next ten to fifteen years, I have no problem doing that. I have no problem showing it to the residents too to say, listen, we'd like to do this or I'll support that agent. Any thoughts from anyone else? Eric, Scott, Paula, Jeff?
When's a Ram gonna, when's a Ram, increase gonna start, dropping? Next, well this year into next year. But we got like, we got about two more years that increase.
Yeah. But so what's gonna end up happening though is there's also the bond is finally gonna be paid off. The bond they paid off. The bond the first tier bond payments dropped by 1,500,000. When that happens I'm talking about our levy. I'm talking about the levy that we have now. But the levy is related to both students and in bond payout. And it should come down based on that alone. So
I'd like to funnel the money that we're spending to ram. I'd like to funnel that into roadwork if we could the next in the coming years. Yeah, well, the question that the question the residents don't see a big bump in taxes.
But if we could if we could bond it out and let's say it's 1 mil 1 mil over ten years or a mil and a half over ten years but it gives us the money now to move that forward. You know, a bunch of these projects and you know, you could look at the difference in the community center building, you could look at the roadwork projects and the next fire truck and say, we're going to we're going to bond for these three things all at once.
Yeah, I guess we have to figure out how much road where we can possibly get done in a year. I mean, I don't know. But you don't have to spend bond money in one year. Oh, that's but the thing is, I want to make sure that we have a plan for spending that money. Yeah, but I guess my point is you're spending your plan here.
And I don't want to be paying interest on money that we're not doing work with. That's the problem. I don't want to bond for all the money pay interest on money. We're just holding on to it doesn't know I understand that. Like the fire truck, you can't go get it. It takes you, it's gonna be a year before you actually pay the bill, but you can't go get it till you've got the money. The roadwork, you can't contract out until you have deposit money and then you're six months, a year out on bigger projects. So all of it has to be tied into a longer term plan and it could be two or even three years before you spend down the whole bond fund. But because of the size of our needs, we don't have enough money if we do any any of these projects individually is not enough to justify a bond. You'd have to do it through tax implications. If you put them all together, now you have enough money to go to the bond and coalesce them all together and make something work. But individually, they don't justify a bond is the problem.
Okay, so globally we would all agree or we should all agree that we could look at this. We really need to what the interest rate is on the bond and what type of bond we go out and get. Let's evaluate it. There's nothing wrong with evaluating that information and trying to determine if it makes sense. Unfortunately,
this was something I had been really pushing Barbara on for over a year and got nowhere. I tried to get her to reach out to banks. I tried her to get to bring banks in. I asked her to reach out to Hebron because they had just gone through something similar and I got nowhere.
Dennis O'Brien, where is Wyndham getting their bond funding from?
I'm not exactly sure but we're doing a lot of bonding. Jim Rivers, you should talk to Jim Rivers in Wyndham. Who? We've been doing an awful lot of Jim Rivers, the town manager in Wyndham. Eric could talk to him. Adrian, you could talk to him. He's very, very easy to easy to access. He loves to talk to stuff. He has a background in finance, one of the reasons we hired him and ever since he's come to town, as you know Adrian, we're doing a lot of construction projects in town. Yeah. We've been bonding a lot because the interest rates are incredibly low. And that's the thing. Now is if you're gonna do anything, now's the time to do it. Yeah. I'd love to see that new softball field in Andover so I can bring my girls team down there to beat you guys again. That that's why I wanna get a gun for you, Dennis. We play in Hebron most of the time. Well, know, Dennis, over in Andover, we're not like Wyndham. We're progressive. We have a we have a we have a mixed team.
What did you just say? Progressive? Did you just our our lovely little town manager was progressive? We have a I'm just saying. We have a coed team. We're coed. What is that? Coed for people your age? Right. We don't call we don't call it we don't call it coed because that's
that's not the right term. No. My team is just little girls in there. 10, 11, 11 and 12 year olds. I'll be moving up to Major League next year with my group. Well,
Adrian, we should look at it. Let's take a look at it. Let's sit there and see if we can find out some information that, you know, it's definitely outside of the comfort zone for all of the residents in the town of Andover, but Want me to hook you up with with Jim Rivers, Adrian? Please. Okay. That would be a good you guys have worked well together. Adrian, I think it's a great idea. Okay.
I love it myself from you know being from out in left field here
yeah okay where were we what's the I'm sorry What text and where are we on there? What should we adjourn? 9D budget planning we did that. I got a second. Employee
compensation annual raises Eric. Should we address that during our budget cycles or what? So
I just want to remind the board that one of the things that you have a statutory obligation to do is to set the compensation for employees that don't have existing contractual agreements So not union people and not the people that are elected officials. So the remainder of that group you set the salary and benefits for. So my first question is, do you guys have a target that you're trying to achieve? Girl. That's progressive.
They got to work from home this year. They saved on gas money.
Eric, we'll sit there and do that in our budget workshops, but one question is contracts that need to be written for July 1, I'm assuming your contract is in that category, accurate? Technically my contract is up August something, not July.
Are there any other contracts that this board needs to sit there and be thinking about before July 1?
So at this point, no. The only contract you could consider would be an actual formal contract for Amy Orlamovsky at the library. Okay.
Okay, So well back up. Eric's is up in August for budgeting. Do we need to have a conversation about that? Yeah.
It might be up in August but we should write it
for a July 1 timeline. All right. So we're going for zero on that too right? Oh absolutely. Knowing you sure.
He's terrible. I'm just upfront. Getting it out there. Right, just trying to get your expectations where they need to be. Eric, Eric is
deserving of everything that this board can bring to him. We'll pay for the shirts next year, how's that?
And a coat if you want. And a coat. Put it in with mama works. I'm gonna give him the the color of the rainbow
for him. Actually, no. All kidding aside, Eric, given how much you are out and exposed and and, with even just going around with the road crew and stuff, you should look at getting one of those reflective coats when Public Works puts one in for yourself. Well, I mean, I carry a reflective vest with me at all times. Yeah, that's not the point. If you're gonna get hit, we'd at least like you have a logo on you when you get struck.
Right, so they know where to take the body? Well, who to pay out your employee unused sick time to.
No, but seriously you should have one. Should have one
No, you should have one. I'm being totally serious. You should have one of those coats. I actually agree with Adrian on this one.
So we can take you to the pit Eric. No I mean it's a that's what he's saying when you get hit.
It's not just a physical hit. It's just a safety issue. It should be the same with the inspectors and everything else that are out. Yeah I mean there's I agree with you guys. So so
back up we are going ahead with the town crew. So two things, one, I bought Jay a series of these shirts but in you know international safety green so you'll be able to see him a mile away. It'll look professional. It'll be a logo shirt, but it will be bright green. We are buying the public works crew logoed bomber jackets with the retro reflective stuff all over them because that's something I wanted Eddie to get last year but Eddie being Eddie thought it was a bad idea for some reason, not sure exactly why. Jay and I discussed that early on and that was one of my goals is to get high reflective outfits so that they don't get run over because it's really expensive when your employees get run down.
So here's another question I'm gonna throw out there because I don't know. I think you should have one both so that you look professional and you are safe. Whether it's out helping doing traffic with the voting or whatever, I think it's appropriate. But given that generally the more you order the better the pricing is, does CERT or anybody else have those jackets and if not should we consider doing that for CERT?
I don't know what CERT has. I mean CERT has a bunch of stuff but what exactly I don't know. Get a bunch of They have reflective
They have reflective I've seen them. They wear them. They have reflective vests. Okay.
I know they have some of the full on reflective cold weather gear but I don't know necessarily whether all of them do or not.
Anybody doing inspections or working on behalf of the town should have some kind of safety gear and logo
shirts or jackets. Yeah, and listen, given that certs volunteers, I mean, it's probably the least we can do for them. You know, Can we talk to somebody over at CERT? Yep.
I just feel like volunteers in this town have been underappreciated for way too long. I don't want to throw them a party, know. I want to do something for them. Okay. So Eric, please look into that, and provide back a
quote so that we can sit there and get it done. Just do it. Don't I don't wanna have another conversation and another meeting about reflective jackets. So please get the reflective jackets for yourself and see if CERT has any money in their budget, then let's sit there and do that for them as well because Well, and if if they don't, let's find the money in the town budget. Budget. Let's go. Okay. There is now our timeline on our board selecting a budget adoption and schedule for workshops. Anybody have any timeline they'd like to put out, like when we should start meeting?
I mean, you really ought to plan on a couple of budget meetings between now and February 1 and running a budget to Board of Finance somewhere around early February. Okay.
It's January 11. So do we want to start meeting? Is there, I would assume we'd still do it by Zoom. We would have meetings. Anybody have a problem with Wednesdays? How often do you want to do this? Wednesdays are generally not great for me. Okay. Thursdays. Anybody have any recommendations? Tuesday is an option?
Tuesday is always an option. Good. How about we email out a schedule and we sit there and try to get everybody to buy into it? Eric will post that up on the Tom calendar after we get enough buy in from the rest of the members. Can we do it as a SurveyMonkey schedule or something? If it was me, I would do it on Tuesdays and we would do it each Tuesday until we feel comfortable that we've gone through everything. What about the nineteenth and the twenty sixth? Well, you need more than two days.
Well, we were really good. Eric was telling us to start in February. Are you prepared for us to start meeting now,
tomorrow. You want it done before February? Anytime after Thursday.
I mean, we have enough to start a discussion on the twelfth tomorrow if you're ready to go for that. Sure, why not? What the hell?
All right, so I like Scott's idea, the nineteenth and the twenty sixth. Yeah, we can do that. Okay,
07:00. Eric, if you could put those on the calendar. Okay.
Okay. Item 10 is the approval of the meeting minutes for the December 14 regular meeting. Does anyone have any questions or concerns regarding the minutes? We want to make a motion to approve those. Motion to approve the minutes as presented. I'll second.
All right. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. We were all provided information from the finance department. Eric in his email provided us a cleaner copy. Are there any questions related to the information besides which month this was for? Did I put the wrong month on it?
No, it's covered up by the PDF complete information. Eric, are there anything Is there anything that we should look at specifically that you want to direct us to?
So if you There's two things on this one that you will see if you look at your budget workshop. The first is we had a little we incorrectly assigned a bunch of cost from the salary line item for public works, which should have been in the permanent fund for employee payoffs essentially. So we've corrected that. I went over that and corrected that with Marina. Basically we had to do a journal entry because Barbara incorrectly booked it. So I freaked out a little bit when I saw that original budget because we jumped from about 40 percent expended in public works to like 65% in one two week increment which obviously was a little unrealistic. So we've corrected it. We're in reasonably good shape on Public Works as I've talked to you about before. I allowed them to go over on the temp help because we were using Richard Bagan and because we hadn't, you know, we didn't want to permanently hire
until we had an actual completion date for Eddie. So we basically used him as a temp help as opposed to taking his salary out of the general line item for public works. We did run over pretty considerably in overtime this fall. Two reasons for that. One, we've had a ton of storm related stuff. It's like every time the wind blows, we end up with public works out in the middle of the night cleaning up roads because we've had a ton of closures. So that's been part of it. And the second part of it is as we've done roadwork, a lot of the roadwork contractors, they don't work nice neat eight hour days. They tend to work long days and we end up at the end of the day running two or three hours overtime for the road guards because we typically use our public works employees to supply so we don't have to pay independent flaggers. So you know, but overall we're fine right now on salary for public works. It's just that we've gone over in those two, but we were well under in the standard line item for salary. Now, as we get into the spring, because Jay makes considerably more than Eddie did, we're going to be a little over at the end of the year but not much over. So that's the only one I really wanted to bring to your attention on the major part of the budget. Are we still isolating?
I didn't think but we're not separating snow, are we still? Yes. Okay, so our overtime may be offset because generally this time of year where we are in January, we would generally be a little more expended on snow bunny.
Yeah, so far we're doing okay on snow removal. We had that one really long storm but other than that we've been doing, it hasn't been too big a deal. The other thing is if you look down in the budget, there's a series of appropriation transfers that have come up. Most of them you don't have to weigh in on. The ones you should probably approve and ultimately it's Board of Finance that has to have the final approval because they're over $5,000 and that is the temp line item for temporary labor for public works and then the overtime for public works. Those and I put those two over expenditures in your packets. Do you need a BOF referral?
No, technically what has to happen is the board of selectmen has to approve and then it goes to board of finance.
So you need BOF referral. You need us to approve it so it can go to board of finance. Correct, correct. Would you like us to do that now? That would be good. I make a motion that we refer the How many do you have? Three? Three.
There's I think there's only two. The only two that you need to deal with as a board are the budget account number 3011 and 301Dash112.
Those are the only two. I would make a motion then to refer those two account numbers as noted by Eric to the board of finance approving and then moving to the board of finance for final approval. I'll second that.
Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Okay, anything else there, Eric?
No, that's unless you have more questions for me about where we are. We're actually in really good shape overall on the budget. Did we have any COVID money coming in?
Yes. We do, we do. We've got one allotment of around $7 that we've gotten in. We have one coming in that should be around 21 in change. And primarily for hours, work hours or?
This is where it gets a little stupid. So what happened was So the short what we're going to do is we've booked it against the resident trooper salary and then we've reassigned the excess from the resident trooper salary into whatever we want to spend it on. That's the short version. Okay.
Any other questions related to that? Eric, just so everyone understands, you got a small amount and you're getting a larger amount and that was $21,000 or is that what the $55,000 was?
No, the $55,000 is what we're getting back from LOSIP. So we agreed to do the paving, the repaving at the transfer station using LOSIP funds. We paid for it out of the roadwork budget initially, and we're getting refunded from LOSIP, but we don't have that yet. Okay. So that was the other number. All right.
Wait, one more question, finance. The situation that we ran into this spring with the wrong transfer. Has that been addressed with Kerma and our
auditor? That has not been finally addressed yet. So that's That's still still in the works. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Since we already went through 12 in the budget and the appropriation transfers, We're good with that. The tax collector's report. There wasn't any tax collector's report. Were there refund requests? There were no refund requests.
Okay. I like that. The assessor's report, you've provided an update. I mean, how On the reevaluation services, how far complete or what's our percentage of completion?
I asked that. I didn't get a firm number, but I think they're more than two thirds of the way done at this point.
And with the exception of board member Mandeville, has everyone else here had anyone stop by their house or drop off a flyer or do anything else? Vice. Times. Two times for you? Paula for you. The question is for you. Why, do you know something I don't know, Adrian?
I may have sent them down to your house because I know that we need to get more taxes out of you. I had a very pleasant experience, no issues. And Jeff, you haven't seen the reval yet.
I had no issues once for a while. Drove up to the house. They had identified themselves. They had best son. They had identification.
I told him to freely walk the property had nothing to hide.
Paula was trying to hide her pool. She's walking around with a bush trying to hide it.
We had some wrong info. So I'm glad they stopped by and he was added that big pool.
Wow, no wonder why our meeting was so short last month. You just got to add every little comment.
We all know why the meeting was short last month, don't we? Because nothing got done. Yes. Okay. You're busy getting your stay ready. Department
reports. The only report that I had questions on really was the resident state trooper report. Eric, can you find out in next meeting, just report back, when non reportable matters are put onto this report, 01/2021, can you get a breakdown of kind of what they represent? I'm assuming their interactions that the state trooper has with residents, but please find out.
I mean, I can tell you generally that's for anything the state police get called to an event but nothing happens. They don't arrest anybody or actually do anything. So it's not just our trooper, it's the barracks total? Yes, correct. We may not be able to get a breakdown,
Jeff. That's the barracks total or? No barracks total over people from Andover called 153 times. Yes.
Does it include contacting him on Facebook and calling the phone number to the guy contact him on Facebook. Does that count as a report non reportable matter. So like
this? Yeah, just find out. Mean, I'm just interested in it because, know, there's three accidents and two other criminal issues and three non criminal issues and one hundred and fifty three non reportable matters. Well, Jeff texted him 53 times, so there's only 100 reportable matters. That's fine. At least Jeff wastes his own time, right Paula? All
right. I'm staying out of it. Any other questions related
to anything else here? Building department had a total net income of
1,200. I just have one question. I don't know if this falls under department reports, but I just wanted to ask Eric during this meeting. The issue with the line painting and the cars get settled, is that kind of gone away?
They haven't got back to me. I told them I was willing to give them a couple $100, but Okay. I just want to make sure that that issue has been resolved and we don't have any ongoing problems. I mean, I suspect they have an ongoing problem with the town, but they haven't asked me. I agreed to pay out a couple $100 to settle it, but, but, I haven't heard back from either. Okay just just wondering. Did we lose Jeff? All right, motion to adjourn. We have to do public speak. Nice try, Adrian.
So we really should, hopefully you've all had a chance to look through the agreement.
Sorry about that. Okay, back at it. Are there any other questions? And Eric, there is one thing on the, there does appear to be some, refunds for the tax collector. They're posted on page 78 of our package. Just make sure that we don't need to do something with that this month. Oh, I missed them. I thought there was three or four of them. If there is I missed it. Where are you seeing that? Say that again. I'm sorry, where are you seeing them?
It looks like a page 78. You know that they may not be tax collector issue, they may be assessor's issues. Maybe that's my mistake. Oh, okay. But I would assume the assessor passes it on to the tax collector and then tax collector processes the refund. It might just be that the assessor sent it to the tax collector's office and the tax collector's office didn't process the refunds for this month. So we should make sure what we need to do. Are there any other issues that someone wants to address related to the other reports?
So the one we do need to deal with is if you've all had a chance to read that agreement.
Well, I mean, I read that, but, you know, is there anything that so they want to know, they want us to sign this agreement between the town and RAM, and when is their expectation of getting it back?
I mean, they would like it sooner rather than later.
All right. So, can we read it and vote on this at the beginning of next meeting? I'm assuming no one else on our board read it and get any detail. Okay. So we're going to bring this back up next meeting. And we will get it done for the next meeting, Eric.
Okay. I mean, I will tell you that that will be, yeah, we'll deal with it.
I mean, I skimmed it here while we were reading it. Is there any issues with it that you see?
No, I honestly think that so the group has gone back and forth about how you fairly evaluate the three towns relative to the amount of services that are provided. So if you remember historically, if you go back five years, it just went off of census population data. And then somebody decided that wasn't fair and they decided it should be relative to the number of students combined in RAM basically between the high school and the elementary school. So they changed that to that formula and then, you know, Marlborough decided, A Town decided it was unfair to use that valuation in part because it fluctuated a lot from year to year. So people's bills would go up and down and up and down from year to year. So there was another formula floated that was basically total student enrollment you know is one factor and then the second factor is total census population and then the third factor was just the number of students in the high school in the elementary school or high school in the middle school which I thought was kind of stupid because it double counted the students from the high school and middle school. So we eventually have settled on a formula which is basically equal weighting between the census population of the three towns respectively and the number of students K through 12 that are actually enrolled somewhere. And how does that affect our number?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference, which is why this has been frustrating to me because all three formulas basically return exactly the same valuations for all three downs. So we're arguing over really stupid things because it doesn't change anything.
So is there any reason that we shouldn't accept the agreement as is? No. Motion to accept agreement for as noted. Anyway? I'll second it.
Dennis O'Brien has something to say. Yeah. I just wanted to say nobody asked me to read it but I did read it and I thought it was pretty good and the only questions I had were Eric covered. It was about the how much, you know, how much it's gonna cost and I even looked at the circ reports on all three towns, you know, and obviously you're gonna be paying less based on those reports, based on K-twelve. You're much, you're smaller than Marlborough and quite a bit smaller than Hebron. I was just wondering how much you've been paying in the past for this service.
So, it's, I want to say it's around $49,000 something in that range, but I think we pay but that's just the that's just what I see because the elementary school has charged separately. Now what I will say is there is up for discussion that they've been deciding what's the fairest way to bill the towns and whether they build the towns essentially one bill or whether they continue to build the primary school and the town separately because you know that hasn't really been decided yet but that doesn't matter because that doesn't change the actual amount the taxpayers pay It just means whether it's baked into the elementary school bill or it's baked into the town's bill.
You happy with the services you're getting? Yeah relatively. It's really extensive. I mean I have a lot of experience with social services, human services, youth services bureaus. My days as a legal aid lawyer, I I'm just wondering what kind of what kind of services you're getting? Are they good? Are they expensive?
Does with all of the census information they deal by population, does provide information as to how much services are used by town? Good question.
I think they, I have not seen the breakdown from this year. Last year they provided a list of the services specifically to each town.
Do they serve as like a youth services bureau for your town? That's exactly what they are. They are Andover's Youth Services The YSP? Well, that's an important service. It isn't Wyndham for sure. I mean, so I assume it is just about everywhere, but we have different kinds of needs.
All right. So Eric, before we vote on this, in the future under department reports, maybe we can ask if they do have a breakdown of how much the services have been utilized by Andover's residents. That would be tremendous. You know, and I I would like to know if I were you,
how much the other towns are paying, you know, in total and also, you know, to the elementary school and whatnot.
So Dennis, Andover's fraction of the total budget is 16%.
Okay, well that's about what it should be. But that's
just the part they because remember they get a lot of outside funding. The towns provide roughly a third of their total funding of which Andover pays 16% of one third of the total funding.
Well, they're doing a good job and they're meeting the needs of your people, that's a pretty good price. Price that you stated before based on my awareness of social services, is I have a lot of experience in that regard. Okay.
Anyone else have any other questions, board members? No? Right. Call the vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Eric, you can get that passed on to A. J. Happy, Eric. Yeah. I am. You're welcome. Assuming there's no correspondence. Not that I'm aware of. Public speak?
Yeah, I'll bring something up if I could. Hey, Mark. Hey guys, how you doing? Hey, Mark. Hey, Mark. Just wanted to comment discussion we had a little bit earlier about bonding. Think that given the situation and the timing and the needs of the town, that it would be prudent for the Board of Selectmen, the town manager, finance department, and the board of finance representatives to kind of maybe get together and come up with a plan. I hate to add committees or meetings or anything else to these kind of things, but honestly, if we don't have that kind of thing addressed and have some understanding gained by, I think certainly on the Board of Finance, but also probably in the Board of Selectmen and other avenues, it would just be prudent for us to find out more about that early so that we know what our options are and everyone understands what the trade offs are, etcetera. So just a comment about how we might approach that
sooner rather than later would be prudent. Yeah. I mean, listen, Mark, I've been asking about this for a while. I I will try to get what information I can from Wyndham. I will encourage our new finance person coming in to get as much information as they can and obviously Eric's gonna reach out. I don't know that we can pull something together for this budget. I would love to see us pull something together for this budget, but if we do certainly that's gonna include bringing in a bank and or somebody to explain to both the board of finance and the board of selectmen, which I would hope would probably be a joint meeting, to explain the implications of this and what the long term And obviously I'd like to record that Zoom so we can put it out there for residents as well. You know.
Yeah, agreed. I mean, don't foresee this happening in this budget cycle. It's just way too short a time period, unfortunately, but. You never know.
I mean, if we can get the town to approve, I mean, basically you come up with a number, you come up with a rate, you come up with a bonding package and you know what it's going to specifically. And if now's the time to do it which I personally believe it is, we kind of have an idea of what we need, it's just a matter of what it's gonna cost us. So you know how much can we put into that and come up with a number that we can live with you know, and whether that's prudent or not is is the next conversation. But Got it. Agreed. Okay. Yep. Shannon, do you have anything to add? Yes.
That's why I'm wearing my hat. Let's go. So before I before I break into song, which I hope will be a unique event in Board of Selectmen history, two things, seriously. I sent the agreement and the draft contract for Agada, well actually the contract for Agada to all of you. Dennis, I don't have your e I didn't have your email handy. So I'm asking somebody on the Board of Selectmen to send it to you. We especially need to hear back from you ASAP because the contract has already gone out to Agata. She simply hasn't signed it yet, so need to hear back from you guys. Second of all, I meant to say it earlier when I was being more serious. I very, very much would like to see the town of Andover no longer have May municipal elections. I would very much like us to see go to alternating Novembers and save the town a lot of money, get voter turnout up like we saw this past November, blah blah blah blah. And I don't know how that needs to occur. I'm to revisit for the Board of Selectmen. I believe it needs to occur by referendum. Charter revision. And hold on, Adrian, do not interrupt me. Charter revision. And a town charter change, but I'm putting it out there because it needs to happen. It's needed to happen for years, and I want it to be done. And finally, I hope you will all join in reminiscent of December
19 because there is a very important event occurring this Thursday. Free to mute her, Amanda. For
one of your fellow members. Mute her. So everybody join in. Mute her. Happy birthday to you. I can't hear you.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Paula. Birthday. Oh. Oh. That was not me. Moving on.
That is so cruel. I can't I words fail me right now. I'm going to Eric's a cohost. The singing was cruel. The singing was cruel. My singing is fantastic, Adrian. You you would have to pay typically for my singing. Okay. The singing didn't bother me. The hat did.
So anyway, are we all Nice job, Shannon. Thank you. Thank you. Paula, happy birthday.
Thank you. Thank you, Shannon. That was very kind of you. Paula, I'm sorry that your birthday was outed like that. I I I apologize on behalf of the board. It's not fair. Women of your age should not be shouldn't be discussed. Well, Paul, just just for posterity,
when when is your birthday exactly? You don't have to tell anybody, Paula. Keep it to Her birthday is Thursday, January 20 Personal intrusions are not appropriate. You'll be 44 young years old. My goodness gracious. That is not nice. Is not nice. I'm 50, gotta be 58. It is darn nice.
That's quite all right. I accept any gifts. My address is on record. So if you would like to send checks, feel free. Drop off gifts, okay? Thank you, Shannon. It was very lovely of you. Okay.
Now you're in the calendar forever, Paula. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon, for letting me know. Is there anything else that we need to do? Is there anyone else that wants participate in public speak? Amanda, are you good? Anybody else's birthdays we need to sing for?
I know that your birthday is We're gonna forget one that's gonna occur before the next board of selector meeting cause somebody doesn't like to have it announced. It shouldn't be very bad. So Adrian's birthday being February Oh, no. Come on. In February month. No. Yeah. Don't have a birthday.
No. We This will month is Paula's month. We're not going to stomp on your parade, Paula. Thank you very much for letting us celebrate with you. Is there anything else we need to talk about? Because this meeting ran a little bit longer than our last meeting. I blame that all on Adrian.
Yeah. Again. We're done with this meeting officially, we need to have a quick board discussion, technically not a meeting for Dennis O'Brien to talk about collective bargaining. We're gonna do this today? Yeah, at least have a preliminary discussion. Sure. Okay.
Then we're gonna go to adjournment. Someone wanna make a motion? CEO on Wednesday at my important Board of Ag meeting. Happy birthday, Paula. Are we singing to anybody there, Shannon? Yes. We will be saying goodbye to Laura Edwards and giving her a gift and a cake and a lot of other swag. So if you would like to be there in person, I might actually give you a piece of cake, Adrian. Oh, and it is Lisa Hewitt's birthday last Friday,
so she will be celebrated also. I'm afraid that you'll make me wear it. Okay. That could be a possibility.
Did someone make the motion to adjourn? Yes. Seconded. Seconded. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you very much. Amanda, can you terminate the people that need to be off of this conversation? See you guys. I
was gonna suggest we Thank you. To Mark Brinker, but apparently not. Okay, never mind.
Okay, so do we want to stop recording? Do we want to thank Nick?
Yeah, I think we ought to send Nick back in. Okay.