Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
April 11, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Order.
I apologize again. I am terrible. Am terrible. See, now you did that and I lost my. I'm gone now. Click on the Lost my group. This? Whoever's hosting the meeting is sharing their screen. So
There. Hey. Thank you. All right. So we're gonna call to order the Board of Selectmen regular scheduled meeting for Monday, 04/11/2022. And to get started, we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to The United States Of America to the republican for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty,
and justice for all. All right. Thank you very much. And now we're going to do public speak. And let's get started with Mike and Kathy Plazi. I have nothing at this time. Can take us off mute. I can't. Oh, no, you're not you're not on mute. You're good. Okay. Alright. Nothing for Mike? No, we're upset.
Okay. The fishes, how would you guys like to participate?
Hi, I just want to make a quick, I don't know if it's a comment or what you'd call it. I do a lot of walking, especially on Townsend Road. One thing that bothers me is that people don't walk facing traffic. They walk on the wrong side of the road. Is it possible to get signs to say please walk facing traffic? It really bothers me when I see this. That's it. All right.
Jerry Wright, thank you very much. Jerry Wright. I have to say the same thing, and they wear black clothes, and they walk on the wrong side of the road, and they don't. Anyway, that would be nice if they wore reflector vest. I've asked Susan Karada to come on and listen to her tonight. Susan, I can see you're there. And I am stepping aside as the Andover volunteer park director for the Andover Monument Park, and I've asked students to step up and to take over there. I'm trying to cut back on a few things. I hope you welcome her and she has anything to say. I'm sure she'll be on board. Thank you.
Jerry, thank you very much for everything you've done. It's greatly appreciated. This town is better off for you. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you very much. Susan, how are you? We'll let you speak if you'd like to join us.
Hi, I don't really have much to say. I do have a comment about the road walking though, on this different topic. I walk up and down my Juravadi Road myself and most of the time I do walk facing traffic but there is one little curve that I don't because if I walked facing traffic they wouldn't see me if they come zooming around that corner. So I don't know if that applies to what the first comment was, but there are times when I go back and forth across the road depending on what the road looks like. Thank you. Can we also put some speed signs and make sure people adhere to the speed limit because that's another issue, but we're not that's not about the military at all so sorry about that.
Well I'll let you all know I walk I walk pretty much every day that I'm at home in the morning because I'll get no exercise if I don't and Jerry and Diane has seen me walk and I walk facing traffic. But I will tell you, because I have a dog, I change sides of the road all the time to avoid cars. I try to get as far away from all the cars as possible. But I probably should wear reflective vests, Jerry, and be better and be safer. But
I try. So Hey, Jeff, can I break in there for a minute? Sure. Go ahead, Jeff. Well, let's, know, you know, like three or four months ago, I brought up the thing, the topic of reflective vests and we voted on it. It's been approved. Recommission has picked out vests and they will be making them available at town hall and the state trooper will be having him in his car. So if he sees anybody walking without a vest, he's probably gonna stop you and ask you to please wear one if possible and maybe give you one so we're it's in process right now. And we'll announce once the vest come in on the website that they'll be available free of charge to any resident.
Okay. All right. Diane Greiner, since you're clapping, you can speak.
I agree with the reflected list. Think that's a great idea. Put my name on the list. I'd like one. But I wanted to refer to your agenda item 10 B and 10 C, where they talk about the Long Hill Field. I think you really mean to call it the Veterans Memorial Field. It's really the proper name for that field. This is the ball field I'm assuming you're talking about. That's correct. So it's the Veterans Memorial Field.
We will make that correction during the meeting. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. That's it. All right. Anything else? That's it for Diana. All right. Joanne Ebert.
I just wanted to make one quick comment on an agenda item as well. And I could be reading it wrong, but it looks like new business I is about upcoming in person town meetings. And if that's, you know, the town gathering, then I withdraw this comment, but I'm hoping we're allowed to keep board meetings virtual for a little while with the budget season and the amount of meetings we're gonna have. It just seems to work out well. So I know you're probably gonna, that could be a whole other thing and I could be reading it wrong. So I just wanted to say that before you discussed it. Thank you.
All right. Diane Choquette. I'm all set. Thank you. Leanne Hutchinson.
Hi, I have a question about the Charter revision item. Can you hear me okay? We can. Go ahead.
Okay. Thanks. In your packet, it says that you're seeking volunteers for the Charter Revision Commission, And it says you voted to last month, on March 24, voted to initiate a Charter Revision Commission to be appointed by the Board at the regular meeting of today, April 11. And I just noticed in your packet, I did see the notice in the River East last Friday. And in your packet, there's a note that says, Notice to River East, please publish in the Friday, April 15 and April 22 editions. And I was just wondering if that's still in effect or if that's a change. In other words, are you gonna do you expect to solidify it tonight? Or do you still think you're gonna be taking letters of application even though the River East that did appear last week gave noon today as a for to turn letters on.
K. We'll we'll actually talk about that, Leanne, when we get to that item in there in the agenda. And I saw one phone call drop off on and I'm assuming (860) 742-5475 is attorney O'Brien.
No, that's me. That's Liam's Oh, hooked up. She's hooked up through her phone.
I couldn't get in it I couldn't get in at first, so I downloaded this again. And then I could hear you, but I couldn't see anyone. So I've now downloaded again. So maybe my first attempt is what dropped off.
Okay. Alright. No problem. And then the phone number 208-2345. That's me. Alright. Attorney O'Brien. Alright. And Yeah. No, you're good. And Eric Shevchenko.
Hi, everyone. My name is Eric I am on the RAM Board of Ed. I've been there since last October. I'm on with Lori Blake. We're the two representatives from Andover. We have just completed our budget proposal for next year. And I just wanted to give you a thumbnail sketch of that and appeal to you and your friends to vote yes on the budget. Some things went up and some things went down. But overall, we have a 1.22% decrease in RAM's budget relative to last year. That amounts to about $375,000 less than last year. Of that, Andover gets 2 and $15,000 So Andover's bill for RAM in the coming year will be $215,000 less than in the current budget. Also, there'll be a small amount of return from the surplus to Andover in the amount of $8,000 I want to emphasize that we have not scrimped on the budget. We still have terrific support for RAM, which is an excellent school. But we were able to, mostly from debt reduction and some other reductions, to be able to reduce the budget this year. So if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. And if not, I'm appealing to everyone here to please vote yes on the RAM budget. Thank you.
Thank you. I think we have everybody. Is there anyone else that I missed?
I have one more thing, Jeff, if you don't mind. Sure, I just got a text from Abby and she can't make it tonight. But she asked me to let you know that Mark Williams and I went down to and lifted the shed up about a week or so ago with a forklift. And it is very solid. It has one rotted beam, partially rotted beam on the side of the porta potty that could be capped and bolted with the two by six pressure treated board. And we're going to fix the shed where it is and move it and let me know when it's ready to go. Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
Right. Excuse me, Jerry. I'm sorry. Hi, Susan. This is Susan again. I probably should have said something when you asked me to say something sooner. Just to introduce myself, I am new to the Andover area. I moved here in December right before Christmas. I met Jerry pretty quickly after I moved here and Jerry's been getting me involved in a lot of the veterans issues and meetings and that's really something I want to focus on. I'm a retired military officer and I'm decided it's time for me to dedicate myself back to the veterans and that's what I'm trying to do. So if I could get nominated and accepted to this new position that would be awesome and I would like to help Andover and the surrounding areas as much as I can.
Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Greatly appreciate it. Okay. I think we have everybody done. We're going to go to additions and deletions. Paula, do you have anything that you would like to add? I do not. Scott?
Are all these additions here? The sheet that Eric gave us?
No, because this was posted before those conversations happened. So if there was something that you wanted to add, this is the time to add it.
Well, Eric has a whole list of items that were not just Eric's but Adrian's and so do you have the email, Scott from Eric? I'll tell you what, let me just let me just wasn't. Know there was something about Jerry's.
Okay, so we're gonna, we're going to And, Eric, are you on the town. Is Eric on the meeting. Yes, I'm here. So Eric these items that you have listed board and commission presentations. Steve, Steven Fish, a capital request. Is that on our agenda? I didn't see that.
It was not because Mr. Fish approached me Friday afternoon of last week. So it was past twenty could be on the agenda. Okay, so all of these items need to be added then.
Correct. Alright, so I'm going to add for I Steven Fish capital request for HVAC repairs for for I planning and zoning chair Jed Larson, who I don't know if he's on this meeting to talk about affordable housing plan meeting with Board of Selectmen Is Jed on the call? I don't see him. I do not see him.
So we don't need to add that one. Six I I I set a date for a special meeting for Charter Revision Commission.
That may not be necessary if you're happy with the applicant pool that you've received. Okay. When I sent this to you, only had two applicants. We're doing six still though right?
We're doing six but do we need six six III? No. Okay we'll leave that one. Alright
So we're gonna do. And do we have 10 J community center RFP for design build needs to be added. Yeah, Adrian wanted to talk about that. That's for the community center. Yes, 10 ks authorized UConn energy benchmarking study. And I think that's an L 10 L town personnel policy. So, does anyone have anything else they want to add to this agenda?
Well, Eric, was there something to add for Jerry's position, the veterans?
That is already on the agenda. It's already on. There's nothing you need to add to the agenda to discuss that. Okay. Okay. That is item 10 g on the current agenda.
Alright. Does anyone want to add anything else to the agenda? Jeff? Yeah.
Dennis? Dennis O'Brien. I just wanted to interject myself to say that, the Charter Review just took out six six a I I I. Now that that is where I thought you would address the resolution that I drafted and is in the packet. I think it's page 14,
order selectment agenda item, recharter revision. We're not taking that out. We're not taking that out. No.
Eric Eric had to add it was gonna add a separate item. Okay. We're taking out six. He was gonna, there was a request potentially to add, set a date for a special meeting for Charter Eviction Commission, because we're not gonna include that extra item, but we're not deleting
six, no. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that in in the event you do appoint the commission that you also get the opportunity to, you know, state whether there's any issues that the board of selectman wants to be considered, and also to determine the date on which the draft report of the commission is due because you're working with a real short time frame. Okay. I have all that information, Jeff. No problem. Very good. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Dennis. All right. There is one last thing that I would like to add and let's put that under 10 ms and it'll be very quick request to sign an agreement for Connecticut. Eric How do I phrase that related to the fire department, it's a, it's a radio, a radio agreement. What is that called Eric, Just so I understand again.
It's just an agreement with the state of Connecticut and the Department of Emergency Management Services to allow the town to utilize the state, you know frequencies and towers.
Okay, Connecticut Emergency Management Radio. So 10 ms, Connecticut Emergency Management Radio System Agreement. So, I'll go through them quick. And then if we can just have a second so for I Steven fish capital request for HVAC repairs for I, we're not going to do that one. Ten J community center RFP for design build 10 ks authorized Yukon energy benchmarking study. L Tom personnel policy 10 ms Connecticut Emergency Management Radio Agreement. Anybody have anything else they want to add? I'll second that.
Okay, Scott is seconding that. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? No. All right, we'll move on. So we're going to go to board and commission presentations. And we are going to start with for I Steven fish capital request for HPC repairs. Mr. Fish.
Okay. Well, I just want to start off by saying thank you for giving me the time here tonight. And I want to thank Eric for having me added to the agenda. I know at a very, very late notice I was there. I think it was just last week, last Friday, Eric, or Thursday. I came in and I talked with Eric about a situation that occurred at about two months ago where we had a failure, in our building up there in Hebron. And just so you know, I'm going to start off by saying actually this. I'm wearing my hat right now as president of the board of directors at, at but I'm also a longtime resident of Andover. I'm also a taxpayer. And so I'm understanding what's going on as far as budget is concerned and where we are and how late we are in the budget, you know, in the approval process right now. So getting here tonight to explain to you some things that have happened up there and some potential cost savings actually in the long run relative to the heating and cooling and the electrical costs for the building at is what the main purpose of little presentation here tonight. So, about two months ago, we had a failure, of the HVAC system, primarily though it was the water coil in the 2nd Floor of the building, which caused tremendous amount of damage, to the building itself. We lost, the kitchen area, the ladies room up there, the main part of the main, meeting room, where we have concerts and different kinds of events. Some of you have been there before. That is being repaired at the present time. It was covered somewhat under our insurance.
So the cost of that damage and what happened there with the pumps that went, that has been covered right now with some of our costs and with insurance. But what it did for us, it actually had us bring in and what we thought we would would be good to do at this point was to have a, independent analysis done of the building at the present time. Many of these systems are 15 years and older, 20, 25 years and older. And, so we wanted to have an analysis done of the HVAC system and also at the same time see if we could take advantage of some of the energy, credits and some of the programs that are out there right now to save electrical costs,
perhaps propane costs or gas costs as it was up there at So we had a proposal, and we asked around primarily in the town of Hebron. They deal with a, and had very good luck with a company called, Environmental Systems Corporation or ESC, and, they've done quite a bit of work in, in municipalities, and they also have a very strong relationship with Eversource and know how to get the, some of the tax and energy credits that are available at the present time. ESC came in and did a complete, review of our system after the repairs were made, and what they've come up with is two things that we really feel strongly we should get done. One was a high energy, a high efficiency lighting proposal, where they would switch all of our lighting over in the building, which is pretty substantial, the office areas, the meeting areas, and some of the larger group gathering areas, to LED. That cost alone was $19,067 with a $2,750 credit applied to that. So it would be, actually, total cost would be $16,317 The other main piece was the replacement of the furnaces that we have in there, which are now, been rated at roughly about 80%, 75 to 80% efficiency with four new high efficiency heat pumps. The cost for those heat pumps, and then tied into our new system, or into the existing system, was going to be $99,459 So between the two of those items, the total cost was going to be, or is, where's my bottom line here? It was $109,000 is the total cost for that. But here's what brought me to the meeting here tonight.
This is not an ask for $109,000 not even close. What occurred at our board meeting and what happened just before our board meeting last week is that I did hear, and as this was being this information was going around town in Hebron itself, is that the Hebron Board of Selectmen, I believe it was the Board of Selectmen, actually put in for a $55,000 line item from the relief funds that have been coming to the towns to be placed and put in place for this particular project as a part of their buy into this. They realize that the building is in Hebron. They've been noticed it's a regional building. It's a regional organization, but that was something that they did, and they, this was without us asking them to do such a thing. The main reason I'm here, though, is that because of that, it was requested that we make an effort to talk to the other two participating towns,
Marlborough, obviously, and Andover, to see if there was any way to have those towns apply some funds toward this major capital project. So at the present time, we're looking and seeking some kind of funding. I'm not suggesting any level of funding. I realize where we are with the capital funds here in town, and I understand some of the plans that are being made for the use for those funds, and we're very late in the process. But I wanted to make sure that at least the ask was made. I think that would look good to the town of Hebron. They're gonna go before their town, it's gonna go to referendum, and it will be a question on their when they go to referendum, for that amount of money. As far as I know, Marlboro has also been approached, and, they are they are seeking and looking for potential some funds that they could put toward the project too. Here's why it's very important that we ask for these funds. Dollars 109,000 would completely wipe out our capital fund in our budget. In fact, we couldn't do it. Actually exceeds what we have for capital. The reason that's so critical is that when we do apply for grants, the grants, the applications often look at our full budgets, and they want to see that you have enough money in your capital funds in order to sustain your building and the surrounding area around it. So we cannot wipe that out. And so one of the things we're also doing, besides asking the towns at this stage of the game, is that we are also going out there for grants.
And we did have Joe Courtney come by the building, and we talked to him recently, he has you might be aware, there are some community grants that are coming through Joe Courtney's office, and we are going to be putting in a grant for roughly $55,000 with that particular grant. That's going to be at the low end of the ask in the range for those grants. So we're hoping that we're competitive, but I've heard those grants are extremely competitive. So we're not holding our breath on that. So the bottom line is if Hebron comes through, and if they pass that amount of money on to us, if we can get some funds from Andover and Marlborough, is itself prepared to put in the difference for whatever may be needed to get the job done. Worst case scenario for us is that we have, we get the grant from Courtney, let's say. Let's say Marlboro turns theirs down. We don't get 55 from Marlboro.
We don't have anything from Andover or Columbia. We would get the grant from perhaps the Courtenay office, and then we'd have, we would be prepared to put the additional 55 in from which would cut capital way in half and probably push some things off somewhat into the future. The other thing I wanted to mention to you is that there are some significant cost savings because of these upgrades, and the payback has been calculated. I don't know if you want to go into any of that, but there is a savings for taxpayers in the long run, because our operating costs would be reduced, gas would be reduced. We know that for a fact based on the figures we got, and also our electrical costs would be reduced. It's pretty substantial.
Okay, Steven, just as a quick question, what is Andover's percentage of the budget?
Just so we understand that. I think right now the percentages, I I may be wrong, but I think it's about 17%. 17%.
But but you're looking for an equal number from each town?
No. Not necessarily. No. To be honest with you, and as I was saying to Eric when I went and saw him and when I heard this the other day or before our board meeting, last week, I'm not quite sure how the 55 figure came up, from Marlboro. I'm not sure how they came up with that figure.
What's the total amount what's the total amount that you need?
Pardon me? You need $1.00 9 total? Yeah. Yeah, it was 109 is the total. Correct. I thought you said that the the contribution of $55,000 was from Hebron. Oh, I'm sorry.
I think I said Marlborough. I meant Hebron. Yes. I'm sorry. That's my mistake. Marlborough has not committed any money. Columbia has not committed any money. Andover has not committed any money. Is just a request to sit there and see what we can do. So if you had this, if I'm understanding what you said, you would take grant funding from Courtney's office plus the $55,000 for Hebron, and you're looking to cover whatever potentially could remain.
Correct. If we get the grant from Courtney's office, which I think is we're saying that we we don't think we have much of a chance for that. It's very, Why very do you say that given the given the legislature's
insane push? I mean, I don't see insane as in a bad way, but I mean insane as in like they have just been rallying for regionalization on everything. I know. This is a perfect example of regionalization. And if anybody should understand that more more than anyone, it's Courtney. He needs to push this as you know we need to get all of our reps on board and say listen, this is exactly what you guys are talking about regionalization. You don't give us the grant, you're not really telling us that that you you support this as much as you say you do. Your money where your mouth is.
Did Jerry Wright leave us? We need to Jerry. Jerry, reach out to your friend Mr. Courtney, and help get this grant. Can you do that for us? We'd greatly appreciate your efforts on that. So, I would sit there and go Steve you should get with Jerry right and just so you can understand representative Courtney's office Jerry has a very good relationship with that office and,
you know. I can't say I disagree with anything that Adrian said, or what the approach is here. I don't know precisely how that grant is being submitted into and what the review process is. I mean, Courtney could help us with this, I mean, I agree with Adrian. This is a regional, we couldn't be more regional than what is.
Right. What's the name of that grant, Steve? Pardon me? What's the name of the grant?
Oh boy, I don't know. You know what? I will get ahold of you on, I don't know if I have the exact name of it here.
Is that Linda peeking her head in from the side? Hi, Linda. Hi. So
just as a general sense, I mean, I'm assuming that the real ask and what he brand is really trying to say to us is use some of our funding to sit there and help assist in this program for our federal funding. And I know our use of that funding is related to our community center. I'm not sure if there'll be any of that available. When is this all required? When is this all required to?
Well, proposal we have in front of us, Jeff, is good for sixty days at the present time. You're not gonna know on grants for a while, though. Yeah. Well, they said they were gonna turn the grants around, and we may not know about that grant. And if that's the case, we're gonna be stuck with probably having to take a short term loan of some sort until the grant comes in if we're if we receive it. But the and funds made that that's another issue here that came up. The funds may not be received. Even if we get the grant, we may not see those funds for several months. Okay, but the reality is you have money in your capital fund. You could use your money in your capital fund. Correct. And then we as a board and we as a community could determine
how to refund and and to build back up your capital fund after the fact. Right, I mean, that's how I would look at this right now. Yeah, I would agree with Jeff on that, Steve. We're not in a position tonight to sit there and make a commitment to this. Mean, is the first business being brought up to the board.
So No, and Jeff, just so you know, and I said this to Eric, I fully understand that. Didn't come here tonight to, you know, hey, can you give us $15 or 5,000 or whatever? That wasn't the point. I wanted to make the ask based upon what I was asked to do, and again, wearing several hats here, so I fully understand. Sure,
can I ask a couple of questions? What's Hebron's percentage of the usage? Of what, of itself? Yeah, of yeah.
Oh, geez. Because they're throwing in 55. Are they basically trying to match up their percentage? They probably did. I think they're, I should have had those figures. I don't have, I don't have my budget stuff in front of me here. I think their figure is somewhere, I gotta remember is, they're about, yeah, they gotta be in the 40%,
35 to 40% range, something like So they're probably hitting their number out of the 109. I believe that's probably it, Adrian. Yeah. So they're probably looking for $18 from us, give or take, to match up if we were to go that route. My question is, said that it's a Hebron building, correct?
The building's in Hebron. Yeah, mean, the thought is, of course, is a regional agency,
really. I mean, who owns the Wait a Wait a second. Can I ask this, Steven? We're not making the decision tonight. Is it possible that you could sit there and Adrian, we can come up with a list of questions to sit there and have available for them so we get all our answers in one email or one letter? I just have, I just, my two quick questions are who owns the building and do we pay to lease the building? Well, owns the building. They own it outright. Okay, they own it outright.
Okay, correct. It's not wrong by nobody's. No one has a ownership other than Okay,
just want to make sure we're not paying to fix a building that's owned by another town. That's all. You bet, you bet. No, we own that outright. Okay.
And then the percentages from all the communities, and I know Erica is now, we should get that at some point. Right, it's pretty obvious they're pretty much trying to hit, it looks like their percentage of it on a split. But until we know what the, got it. Do have those percentages, by the way? Yep.
So it's 16.78% for Andover at 17%. Yep. Hebron, 49.8.
Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing. That's what they're talking about. Yeah. They're taking their split of it. So I guess, I mean, I would be supportive if you come back to us and say you got a grant, we need to come up with a difference. But until we know what that grant number is, I don't know that anyone's going want to commit. Yeah,
I get it. And one thing to add, keep in mind that the Congress goes into summer recess about June and doesn't come back till September. So if any grant money is going to be put in or any grant for Courtney, it's got to be given to him before June. You're not going to see it until
October, November, if you're lucky. Yeah, the grant is being is it Jerry? Yes, sir. Yeah.
Nice to meet you, Jerry. But the grant is being prepared this week. It's gonna be going in. I mean, they're working on that right now diligently. But you're right. I noticed this is very, very tight timeline on all of this. I talked to Congressman Courtney this morning. They're all home on Easter recess.
I don't expect them to be going back for another week or better. Yeah. And we'll we'll encourage our democratic first, first selectmen to reach out as well.
Right Jeff perfect I'll actually call Courtney yes absolutely I'll do it with Jerry on the phone. I know what I'm doing right Jerry I know if you talk to us. You walk by the road down there I'll come down what's that That's right, we'll get on the phone. That would be awesome.
Really appreciate that kind of work behind the scenes is terrific. Joe's been there. He was there probably about a month or so, a couple of months ago.
Try to reach out to Robin Greene too. The Veterans Base Camp in Chaplin, and if they went through and put their grant money in nine months ago, we could have saved that little facility, but they didn't. It takes the wheels in Congress more than a month or two to appropriate money for such things. Takes months and months and months.
So we, Steve, Steve will participate in this and we'll help out. We obviously want to get all the information so that we're contributing what needs to be contributed, not not a significant amount more than is required. So but thank you very much. Thank you very much for the time unless anyone has any other questions.
Well, thank you very much for the time. I appreciate it, Jeff
Steve, can you can you pitch us the payback figures? Can you send that via email?
They're paybacks. I'll have all those figures for you. I mean, I got a bunch of notes here. I think I would have, gone crazy trying to pick all this stuff up, but what I'll do is I'll get an email out to all of you. That'd be helpful when we're talking to Courtney and Robin Green and others. Absolutely. Yep. Good to you. Great. Thank you. Eric, I'll contact you to get names and addresses and all that stuff, I guess. Certainly. Very good.
You so much, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Okay. We're gonna move on to item five, public works, the current 2022 roadwork plan. Jay Tuttle is on the phone. Jay on the phone. Jay Tuttle was on Zoom.
Can't you recognize him in the plaid? It's like his uniform. I saw him. Yeah. What can I miss? Still rocking the warm shirt.
There you go. Means you got the heat off down there. We appreciate that. Save the money.
We try. We do our best. Okay. So road work. What would you guys like to know? Did you get the Let's see, I can share my screen here. So did you guys see, did the Board of Selectment see the letter that I sent to BOF? Is that what we're referring to, to the Board of Finance? We're not to BOF, so.
Did all get that in their packets. It's in their packets.
Well, Jay, if you could talk to it and just share your screen and talk to it, it'd be great. We can get it. Yeah. Well, says I'm disabled participant screen sharing. Eric, you're gonna have to make him the host.
Or if Eric has it, can you put it up, Eric? It says multiple screen participants can share screen simultaneously, so you should be able to share.
All right, share the little green arrow at the bottom. Well, I mean, do we want to just get
to specifics? Jeff Murray had some very specific questions. Can we just maybe address those instead of going through the whole thing?
I think I got it here if this is it. Are you seeing it? Yes. Okay. All right. So the improvement request. So we have planned this year approximately eight miles starting with now this is separate from, are we discussing separate from the full depth reclamation of Shoddy and Longhill? We're just talking about preservation. Is that what you guys are interested in?
Jeff? Well, Jay, I just want to know, is Hendi actually good for preservation or do we need to reclaim and repave that whole road? I mean, it's gotten that section above Pine Ridge Drive going up the hill, that left hand turn. Yep. Gotten really bad. Mean, roadway is gone completely. Yep. Yep. And we need to address it. I'm, you know, it's getting to the point where the, if we get a major rain event like we had last year, we could lose a section of that road. So
isn't the problem Jay though, that we've got to do drainage over there before we do a major reclaim?
Much of the discussions that Eric and I have been having since I came on board. And as you guys know, most of this stuff is budget driven. And there are so many roads that need attention. Everything needs attention all at once. Last year, I don't know how many people actually drove the area prior to having the work done. I mean, we can look at what Bunker Hill was like. We had parts of roads missing on Basola, almost three quarters of the road was missing in a section on Rockledge. I mean, a lot of roads and there was a lot of repairs. And Shimon in the way that, there's no perfect system. And Shimon in the way that I'll say the way that I'm accustomed to.
It's patch and it'll last quite a while done this way. We'll overlay it, seal it up with the chip seal. And it's gonna buy you six, seven years before it needs to be done again. And it'll give time to put in place a plan where you're doing preservation along with what are the roads you're gonna start doing full depth reclamation, full reconstruction. A these roads, lot they need drainage work done. And just to tackle them and do drainage work is gonna required quite a bit of effort, nevermind the funding. So I guess the answer to your question, Jeff, yeah, Hendi is in pretty bad shape. So is Wheeling, so is Bear Swamp. And we can patch that up and level it off, put some shape back into the road and make it last quite a while. Is it perfect? No, it's about the most inexpensive way you can hold that road together for a time until such time that you can put some money into it to do your reconstruction on those roads. And they're gonna have to be planned. I mean, you're talking just a full depth reclamation without any drainage, we're at $150,000 a mile. More than that.
How much would Hendi cost if we did that? I mean, Jay, I understand, but
it's just that road has been heavily used in the last five It's to 10 just, it's getting to the point that's Yep.
Yeah, but the problem is, don't, I'll be candid, I don't want to spend money trying to do a full reclaim until the drainage is fixed because otherwise you're just throwing good money after bad.
I agree with that. I agree with that, Adrian, a 100%.
Okay. Okay. But in in one All right. The point is though, can we get a number as to if we did all of Long Hill, give me an estimate of all of Long Hill. All right. Sorry, all of Hendi. I'm sorry. But Hendy wasn't even the work. I mean, I understand Hendy's bad. No, of the questions Jeff Murray is asking a question about Hendy Road and I want to understand the total dollars that would be required.
They'll probably take all your budget for the year on one It's
a significant repair and the whole right hand side as you go up the hill, I mean, the roadways, the roadways gone. The roadway is gone. I mean, it's completely gone.
No, I understand. It. So let's all right Jay Jay is telling us Jay is telling us it would take our entire budget to do handy. That would mean we would do no, no maintenance and no other work in any other road in town.
So can we ask, can we ask the next question I think the more pertinent question is you're you've got you obviously have a schedule for all these roads Jay you have our current request that you're asking for here my concern my concern in looking at this is, have you actually sat there and figured out how much you can get done in house to cover this stuff. Because like I see 50 ks for FlexBeam. Are we subbing that out to Eagle Fence or somebody like that or Triple Yeah. So, All because I'm worried this
that's on there right now, the 50 ks for the flex beam, the catch basin cleaning, it's all outside contractors. Only thing that we're doing on in this particular, those particular line items is we're doing any prep work, sweeping, scraping the edges, cleaning things making it ready for the contractors to do their work. Are you
done with drainage on Shawnee Mill and Long Hill? No, definitely not. We gotta get that done before you cycle into this. Yep. Okay.
Yeah. So the question becomes, have you taken the time to sit down and figure out your schedule to get through these roads that were were preserving now. And turn that preservation into the paving schedule after the fact, do we have enough time. To get to these roads, as the second you know for the second sweep where we go to the permanent repair versus the patch that's the question. It's it's year it's years out right now. To have you done a schedule like that and say we're going to do this road this year this road that year have you actually worked out a schedule? No, I have not. So we don't even know if we're going to get back to these.
I haven't had that time to do that. So last, you know, I want to back up to what we did last year. And Jeff, you know, I don't know how much you I mean, guys all you guys live here in town. Bunker Hill, the bottom side was a mess. Was it busted up as bad as Hendi in spots? No. Did it have deep wheel ruts and did we put a lot of material on it? Most certainly. And I ended up on that particular road. We did a full single chip up to House Number 120 or 121. And from House Number 121 to the town line, that's where most of the shimming was done. We did a double chip on top of that. Was it wood? Is it Wood Fern? It's off of Lakeview Lakeview. So we had a section on Wood Fern and Wood Fern is my street. A bar or woods wood side. Okay, wood side off of Lakeview. We did a double chip on that. There was a section I mean, granted it was a short road, but there was a section just before the last three houses at the end, the road was gone, curb to curb. So, so where are you getting to Washington? So
saying saying where road is gone, you we can patch those areas and then put chip seal and that's what we're doing right now. We're trying to put do a preservation. That's what we that's what we're budgeted for. In order to spread our dollars so we can cover all these roads, the bad ones and pretty much all the roads need detention. Yeah, we're going to put a little bit more pavement into some of the the real bad ones. Those areas where the road is gone, we're going to put a little bit more material there because that's where it needs it. And we're going to put some shape back into the road. And that's what the chip seals going to seal
it up for a while. And any money that we put into those roads doing the preservation, it's not lost money. So that material is going to go back into the base when it gets reclaimed. The biggest problem with all these roads is, number one, yeah, there's a lot of deferred work. But the base of these roads is horrendous. There isn't there isn't a consistent material in the road, so we have problems with frost heaves. Some areas where they've had construction or partial drainage repair, they put good material in the road where there's bad material, So you get different frost levels of movement of the road. There's a section on Lake Road. I didn't I had no idea how bad it was. You know, what kind of materials in the roads right there by just before you get to Ordoni. That road heaved like holy mackerel. It was crazy. There was a crater in the middle of the road that and the only reason why it was a crater is because what was in the ground stayed and the road around it moved and it settled back in again. Look,
I think that I personally want to hear from you two things that you have a handle on how much this crew right now as it stands can handle. Yep in a given year and that you've scheduled as much work as they can handle on a given year. And I understand last year was an outlier because we dumped a lot of time into the bridge, but I have to tell you the residents are going to want to hear that we're getting some stuff done this year because you know listen we went to bat with you. We you know you have the excavator now in house. You're not worrying about going out and renting it. But people want to see that thing getting to work, you know
so.
We we have got everything scheduled that we can do this year. Right now, we're over on Lake Road getting that parking lot done so we can move on to the to the drainage on Shoddy and and
yeah, Shoddy. We gotta get Shoddy done. Jay. And when when are we going to Shoddy? I have a question, Adrian. For Of course, Scott.
Jay, is the end of Long Hill By Skinner and that corner on Hendy the worst road and road sections of roads in Andover?
Hendy. That corner. Yeah, Hill Skinner Wheeling Bear Swamp that whole circle. Okay, so I would expect you want talk about you want to talk about main roads, I call them throughways. Hendy and Long Hill. There's no main road than Hendy. Right, what I'm saying is Hendy, Skinner and Long Hill. Right. You know, Bear Swamp and Whaling, those aren't really through roads, they're just roads to neighborhoods.
Here's my here's my point. I mean, if those we were here, we know that those are the worst roads now. Those should definitely get fixed this season, I would think right?
That's they're on the list, we're gonna do a preservation on them. And keep in mind, Wood Fern, Dogwood, Shad Blow, and Old Farms are at the bottom of the list right now. When we get into doing Hendy, we'll start on Hendy, but Hendy to Long Hills Skinner. We're going to do those roads first and Bear Swamp and Wheeling will come next, but if there's cuts to be made because of cost, because of, you know, asphalt's gone up tremendously since, you know, we're pushing $90.95 dollars a ton right now. We're what $65.70 dollars last year?
$75 last year. So, you know, who knows what fuel costs, maybe hopefully they're coming down and maybe they'll settle out a little bit. I don't know. But right now, like I said, they're $90.95 dollars a ton. So depending on how much asphalt we use is going to be a driving force as to do we continue prep some of these smaller roads that, you know, I may have to cut back on chip seal to cover the cost of the added asphalt.
And Jay, I totally agree with you on that assessment. I think that's good that we're prioritizing the worst roads right now that we have in that area. I think that's what I really wanted to hear and to make sure that. So is there any way we can just kind of touch base every you know, week or I mean every month or so, just make sure we're on track? Because I don't want make sure we don't fall in the same trap that we got into last year with Shoddy and Long Hill. You know, I just want to make sure that we address these and if we have to bring in some contractors or do what we have to do, then I just want to make sure that this gets taken care of. That's all. I mean, road, the roadways terrible. It's gotten It's
not about bringing in contractors though, is it? I mean, it's really about whether we're going to have, I mean, we'll get those top four done. We just may not get to the bottom four.
Right? Yeah. And that's that's all going to be cost driven or, you know, it's budget driven because of what we're going to have to do to those roads to get them into some shape to make them last for a little while. Can I ask? Can I ask a question about
decision making, though? I do have a question with regards to why we're we're playing with the parking lot instead of over getting shotty ready.
Because we're making that making that ready for the whatever's going on the building next door. The crosswalk and just is ready for when they put in their driveway and they have an area for the connectivity. So they know where things are going to line up. In in the the time that we're spending over there,
we're just doing the main part right now. We're not doing the lower section where the that building isn't even through the that building isn't even through the process yet, is it? No, it's not. If the building's not through the, the building's not through the, the building isn't even approved yet, right? But we know we've got a grant and we've got an issue over on Shoddy that should have been finished last year, but we got sidetracked. Why did we not go to Shoddy first? It's
been a little weather weather driven for that. And we're going to spend a couple of days over there and we're done and get out of there. Okay.
So it's one of those that have an opportunity to get it done. It's on the list. Just try to knock out some of these smaller things and get over there because we're gonna be dead. We're gonna be over the on shoddy for the rest of the summer.
Well, I mean your your actual work isn't though, is it the I mean your stuff's got to get done first and then it'll get turned over to a contractor, right? What stuff? Are you guys working on shoddy literally yourselves the rest of the summer? Yeah. Shoddy is just for our department. Okay. Because I thought As far as
this roadwork, we got a little bit more scraping to do that we got to get done and we can fit that in with 's going on over shotty. But we've got most of that, most of the scrapings done that we need to get done and those guys are going to be over there. And if it, you know, we did not able to dedicate a three man crew all the time, there'll be a two man crew over there. And we'll hit the other jobs as we go along. But I gotta concentrate on this list here for the these contractors coming in.
Well, hopefully you'll get this budget will go through and you'll get another person and that will help a little bit, but you know we just I just want to make sure we're we're we're making good decisions about where our people are going and why that's all you know. And I'm not questioning your decision in the sense of saying it's wrong I'm questioning in the sense of saying. I think residents and and we need that that update like Jeff is talking about on a monthly basis, so that you're coming back to us and say hey we're still on track. And maybe mid summer, you have to come back and say hey I had to cut two roads off the list we're just not going to make it financially,
whatever whatever, but we need to know that as it happens, not at the end. Yeah and to piggyback what Adrian just said, is there any way we can put a schedule together like when we're planning to do these roads. Is there any way to put it like a preliminary high level schedule together to just
say, know, look, planning to be here this month, you know, for the during the summer, just so we know. Jeff said, even if it's by the month, so we say, hey, listen, going to get to we're going to get to old farms on in August or whatever it is, right?
Well, yeah, we're right now I have it planned at mid May to the June 1 between those and then those two weeks, that's when the paving contractors coming in.
So, still have sweeping to do. So, when I got a couple of guys over there doing drainage, we're also going to get sweeping done in town too. Yeah, we saw you guys started, know, we saw some on, you know, wells and whatnot, you know, that you guys have gone through and started hitting some of the drainage so yeah. It's
so for the residents to understand you're basically saying that you're planning on being in in May and June over on Shotty Mill. Is that accurate?
No, no, May we're going to be paid we're going to be starting on handy. I'm going have a paving contractor in there on May. Far as Shoddy Mill is concerned, we'll be I'm planning on being over there next week.
Jay, how about you do this? How about you start putting together that list? And, as we start hitting it off Eric will check back with you and we will post on the town Facebook and on the town website where you're working. And when you're going to be working so that residents can see it. I'll talk I'll talk with Eric on this. It's, you
know, give them a schedule and do my best to get you. I mean, I I'm bouncing around all over the place pitching and doing work too. So the the the I gotta try find time to take a few extra minutes to put schedules together, but it's as work comes, we try to knock it out. And we still we still have speed limit signs to to get up those electronic speed limit signs and I got to fit that in and I just got the post the other day. We got to go get those installed and on rainy days we're going to make something brackets to try to get those up. So there's a You can install signs on a rainy day, maybe you can't be digging drainage on a rainy day, you know? That's correct. That's what I said. I still had to go get the material. And when it became available.
Don't think we need a schedule for for signs, I think we need a schedule for major roadwork so residents can a expect it be know what's happening and see know where their dollars are going that's all we're looking for. Okay, please. We're just trying to have people appreciate you as much as we do. It's just, I just run out of time,
you know. We've Jay, this is Jay, we're not trying to beat you up or anything. Just We're not. No, I under I understand. I'm just trying to we're just trying to get ahead of the We're
trying to get ahead of the curve a little bit. And Jay, keep in mind, we're trying to get a budget pass to get you more help and we're trying to get dollars to you. In order to do that residents need to know they need to hit even if they're not on that road they see a post they hear from their friend oh they're over there today, where you know those things are important. Any other questions for Jay? I do not. Good. Jay, if you could stop sharing your screen.
Oh, sorry about that. No problem. Stop share. How's that. That's good. Thank you. Okay. All right.
We're going to go to six appointments, charter revision commission. We've received application appoint members and discuss structure of commission. Scott.
Right, we, we. Do you want to read this whole Eric, this whole thing Charter Revision Commission appointments other resolutions that has to be read?
Well, so the first thing you have to do is you've gotten the applications. So you've got to decide to appoint whether you want to appoint those members or whether you want to appoint different members or you want to do something. And then after that, you have to give instructions to the newly formed commission that you just appointed what the structure was going to be.
What you want them to do. Scott, start with, why don't you just tell us the what, how many, how many people, how many letters have we received? We got five. Can you give us the five names that you have currently?
Right. Carol Lee, Pat Billings, Karen Madore, Don Denley and George Knox.
You fit within the I believe there's restrictions on party affiliation. Yep. It's all that's all fine.
Republicans are underrepresented and the independents are overrepresented and Democrats are on there too. That's alright. It it could be four to one. So you got Carol Lee, Pat Billings, George Knox, Dan Don Denley, who's the other one? Karen Madore. Karen Madore.
And for the sake of can we just know what their what their affiliation is so that we all understand that we are meeting that requirement.
Carol is a Republican Carol Lee is unaffiliated Pat Billings is a Democrat George Knox is Democrat Karen Madora is a Democrat. You good with that Mr McGuire? Good with the Democrats.
Okay, I will say openly, I do have a concern with Don Denley in that we appointed him to the Community Center. Matthew Committee, and he did not participate, but for like one or two meetings so. Do you have.
Was second Adrian's concerned about that I saw Don maybe once so I'm I don't know if you'll show up for this, That was a yeah. We need participation.
Did you talk to him? Who has anyone talked to him? I I talked to him at length, Adrian. Yep. And did you bring that any were you aware of that concern might have come up?
I was concerned about that, yeah. And what was his response? He's gonna try to make it to all the meetings. He wants to do this.
I apologize. Jeff, can I can I chime in on this, Jeff? Sure. Go ahead, Dennis.
Well, you have to be careful with your appointments because not in terms of who they are, but in terms of the political party and also whether or not they are currently serving in another position with the town, any kind of position, even adjust to the peace. Okay? I sat on a commission once and sat for a year, and we were just banded after the town attorney found that we had more than our share of statutory share of public officials on the on the commission. And what I understand is only one one of these people who is a is a public official, and that would be Carol Lee. Exactly. Gotta make sure gotta make sure you're right. Because if you're wrong,
it it won't work. No. We're we're we're covered as far as that. None of these people are on anything else that don't recognize any of the names unless someone else Another point
okay. Adrian, another point I wanna make is I heard some concerns about one of the applicants. If you don't if you don't if you don't do this tonight, you have to get it done. You have to like like to have a special meeting because you have to get it done within thirty days of the date on which you initiated the commission. That was March 24. Okay. So you'd have to have a special meeting before then to to finish the impanelment of the commission. That will slow you down. You're pressed for time anyway. You've got a tight window to get this on the agenda for to get this on the ballot for November.
Dennis Dennis, is there is there any opportunity for us, if we needed to, to appoint an alternate or replacement at a later date if if this person doesn't show up.
I didn't see anything in the statutes myself, but You can appoint a replacement if he or she resigns, but I don't I don't know of any way that once you make the appointment, that's you know, you have a you have a thing in your charter about removing appointees who don't show up, but I'm not sure that applies to charter revision. That's that's heavily controlled by state law. Can can we can we add a person?
Not re not even replace. Can we just add someone else if they need another body to help out with the workload?
You you could add a person, but you have to make sure you you comply with the requirements as the political party Yep. And also as to public office.
Okay. And That in that case, I'll in that case, I'll support the list that you have, Scott. Thank you, Adrian.
You you could you could add if you add one person, given the makeup you have now, you have three Democrats and two nondemocrats. That works. K. If you added another person, it could not be a Democrat. Obviously.
Okay. Okay. It only can be they can only have a bare majority of one party.
So I would make a motion then that we we appoint Carol Lee, Pat Billings, George Knox, Don Denley, and is it is it Carolyn Midori Karen Midori Karen Karen Midori to the Charter Revision Commission. I'll second that.
A further discussion can we vote on them individually. I mean, I just, I cannot, I cannot stomach that.
Can I make a suggestion that since Dennis has written up the, resolution for this, that you probably ought to just do it straight off the resolution?
Let me let me read it then. I don't see it in the packet. It's page 14.
I I have it. I'll read it. You guys ready? Go ahead. Just
It says March 14 in there three times. That's an error. It should be March 24 if you're going to read it aloud. That's when you initiated the commission. You had a special meeting.
Do we have to vote on Adrian's motion or did Jay, Sky, you just amend it, correct? Well, you're right. There's a motion on the floor. So, give you minute. You can amend the motion have an I individual still don't see that in the packet. It might be page 15. We can amend the motion.
So 14 is the resolution that needs to be signed. That's not the motion, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the the molly. Molly. Cow.
Hey. I think it's pretty good myself, but in event I'm just glad we're not paying you by the wording. Holy cow. You better be glad you're not paying me by the hour. I know. Anyway, I'm happy, though. I love to I love working with you folks. Just just one more thing. Jeff said something about he has a concern about one of the applicants. You could you could make a motion to vote separately on all of them or to vote on four of them at once, and and one of them you know, it would take a motion to amend. That's all. But but we need five members. Tonight, we need five. You need five members.
Okay, let's let's let's let's get on with it. So, so let's make the motion and let's all move on. Very good.
I have a question. Since we're still in discussion and I am probably the least concerned person, but I'm asking this question anyway. So we have how many Democrats? Three. Two. Three.
Three and then the other, the other two are unaffiliated correct. Ones are Republicans one unaffiliated one on one. Thank you. But honestly I don't know that this is a political issue, this is more just about fixing something so. Right right, and we have word I don't want to rush into this, I know what the time is of the essence so I'm I'm looking at this as I don't want to rush into it, but if we have five people that are willing to step forward. We
can accept we can accept or reject their offerings as this Commission goes forward. We're concerned that they drift off into territory we don't want to broach them. We simply don't accept them.
Okay. Just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. Okay. That, is that alleviate some of your concern?
Yeah, I didn't have any concerns. Just wanted to make sure that
that was clear so it's clear enough. Do you want us to read this whole thing the whereas?
Why don't you just. I don't see that as. Why don't you amend your motion to include the resolution is written.
I love that I will amend my motion to include the resolution as written on page 14.
Adrian, we also have to add down at the resolve section, we have to add two things that you Okay,
So we're going to do, we are going to, As written on page 14 filling in the names Carol Lee pat billings George Knox don denley and Karen midori. And, including the resolve the pursuit to section, but adding to it the following to strike from the town charter any protected positions. And to add a line to the. Town. Town administrators position to add to the town administrators description of requirements after bachelor's degree or life experience of equal value.
Somebody going to second that. I'll second that. All right. Do we have any further discussion on this motion. I have, I have, I have something I have to say. Third item, consider on the same resolution,
and that would be the deadline for the submission of the draft report of the commission. It's currently listed as 07/11/2022. Correct. As written on page 14. On or before. On or before. Or before. Meeting. Why I chose chose that date. Yep. You had something to add Mr. McGuire.
My Republican friends have to do better. I'm just telling you,
you have to be able to do better. We're putting three Democrats on this so much better you have to tell. I am not talking about the Democrat. I know exactly what you're talking about, but unfortunately all of our Republican friends are serving on things so they're forced stricken from this opportunity. Apparently more Democrats are available than Republicans because they're not on as many things. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I really don't. And honestly, that's not a fair statement. We, Democrats in town do a ton of work. It's just that we just don't have the depth that you guys do on the bench, I guess. Come on, man. Listen,
I just I you know what I am saying without me trying to be I know. I know. But can we get a point of order and just and just vote on the the motion as as as it's on the table now? I don't think this is a political issue. This is just, you know No, this is not We need to revise the charter. We have five people longer Far service from political. This is not about the Republican Party, please.
I know but Jeff you said it was Republicans. It's no, it's the it's the person
that you are that is being put up. I have a tremendous problem. I don't know if you remember way back when, you know no okay.
I do remember but let's vote on this. Let's just let's call it to vote. All right all those in favor. Scott, wait Scott, Scott has waving his hand. Go ahead Scott.
But it's for the benefit And of the I am flat out telling you my wife will not forgive me, but I will vote in favor of this. Just, you're voting for the three Democrats. How's that? I'm voting for Scott.
Thank you, Jeff. We're all voting for Scott. Yes. Thank you, Adrian. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Jeff Murray. Alright.
Moving on. You're welcome, mister. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. Let's look for an alternate as a please, everyone, put your ear out there. We need a republican alternate. Maybe Adrian might have an alternate. I'm working on.
Residentation. Can have you an can add you can add a Member whole Member. A possible addition.
Possible addition. Listen, the hope is that this is moved forward quickly. Right, so we won't have any reason to have an alternate. So we're moving on to item seven resignations. I don't believe there are any Eric. Not that I know of. All right, eight town administrators report.
Eric. You all have a copy of my report. Do you have any questions on it. Do
you have anything that you would like to tell us or prize us of issues? Read your report. Just want to know if there's anything that you want to bring to the board's attention as a whole.
No, not at this time. Pretty much all the stuff I think we should be going over is on the agenda.
Okay does anyone on the board have any questions for Eric?
Scott, you had a question. Hang on. I gotta look for it. Apologize. The thank you about the thank you letters to the Veterans Memorial benefactors?
Right yep and Eric said that he had gotten them out and the reason that we didn't know about is because we didn't have to sign them. Okay. Eric did it without our signatures which I thought we requested but I hadn't seen them and I did not know that they're sent out so.
Eric I did not get a chance to read your report but. Did we we did have the marine meeting with Marina last week for the other board members that were not there. And we're moving forward on that stuff. Have a copy of the job description from some surrounding towns we're working on that with Eric. And dancer cats pitching in to try to come up with a job description for the. Replacement for the treasurer. Eric did you get a chance to reach out to our security guy self. I did work.
He was saying that he David Nixon Lance who's the network administrator. We're in here on Friday. We had talked it over with the Andover the school's IT people, with the intention of being able to directly port from the two computers in the, finance office bypassing the firewall and have a direct connection to where the program is stored on their server. What about your computer? What?
What about on your computer? What if it's in the building, we'll be able to do all computers. He knows mine is on the list to get that. The problem came up is that because we have a different sub domain with CEN, We call our domains the same. We have the same naming convention as So, the
the school has to do some additional steps now that are in the works, but that should be able to be made seamlessly.
So it works fine from these computers here. And that's been currently communicated to whoever it needs to over the school, whether it's Val or their tech person? Yes, that's been communicated directly to their expert.
Okay. Want to make sure we're moving forward. Yep, that's on the work.
All right, Eric, I'll ask you grant work that's being done down at the library. Can you give us an update?
So which grant are you talking about their AR grant or are you talking about the connectivity grant? Your connectivity grant. So the connectivity grant, the contractor is currently working on the sidewalk that's going to go in front of Long Hill and then wrap around Route 6. That's the major thing they're working on at the moment. How long is it gonna take? I
think realistically they're gonna be added a couple more months, all total. Okay. And the work up on Center Street timeline?
I mean, as part of the connectivity grant? Yeah, that whole, that I'm saying the project in total should be done within two months. Okay.
All right. Any other questions for the town administrator. Okay, move on. We are going to go to Item nine, old business, discuss and act upon the following and we'll do 9A renewal of tax abatements for Hop River Homes and softball field renewal. At this time, we don't have all of the information that we need to discuss this one. So I'm going to move forward on this unless someone has an issue. What are we missing?
We have some documentation that we don't have from Hop River Homes. Okay. Anybody else? No.
Do they know we're looking for it? Yes. They do. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.
Is that something you want beyond the letter that you got from Maria Tollman? Yes. Okay.
So what's the letter? What do we need besides that? Just so we're on the same page.
We need complete documentation related to the the information to support what they're telling us, and we need the lease for the ball field completed. Okay. All right.
So that's been handed off and we're waiting for them to get back to us. Correct.
Dennis has been communicating with Maria Tolman. She got half of what she needed and we don't have the other half. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Nine B town hall upgrades. Eric.
So there's nothing really. I think at this point we need to take a pause on that and figure out with the new building what that's actually going to have for an HVAC system before we commit to moving forward with changing over the town hall to propane.
Well, even if it doesn't, I mean, we're still going need propane for the kitchen over there. We can still throw the tank in, you know? What?
It doesn't really change the town hall, does it? Well, Adrian, don't we need a site plan, a finalized site plan? So
we're talking about putting them behind that retaining wall, correct? Yeah. Well, we probably need a site plan first. Proof site plan. Would hate to put the tanks in and have to move them.
Yeah, actually, I've got to work with Rob this week on adding some parking spaces or trying to figure out if we can throw in some more parking spaces. So I'll talk to him about an underground propane tank. Yeah.
Trying to locate them, Adrian. What? Field locate them so that Eric can follow through the work that he wants to get done on the town hall.
Okay. I think we're pretty good for the summer. It's just when we get into the fall months, we're probably gonna have to make a decision what we're gonna do. We're probably gonna have to put temporaries in for now.
Because you're not gonna you're not gonna have a tank in the ground anytime soon. Unless we get really get rolling on it. You know? We should have a better idea, I think, in as we roll into July, we should know where we're at. Yeah I think we can plan at that point. You're okay with that. I'm fine with it. Eric you're okay with that. Yep I'm fine with that. Okay I'll follow-up with the engineer this week, then, and try to get a tank spec out. We're we're shooting for a thousand gallon, To 100.
I mean, it depends what you wanna do. Would have put in a minimum of two one hundred to two one thousand thousand tanks.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's move on to nine c. Edmunds financial software update. Eric, where are we at? Are there any changes? Any information you wanna share with the board?
No, mean the big question was, would we consider moving to a cloud solution or can we directly port so it works functionally well from the town hall. And I think the answer is we can make it work functionally well from the town hall. And that's the approach to go with. It's definitely the cheaper option.
What are you, what are you talking about right now.
Yeah we couldn't use the software directly from the town hall, we had to do what's called remote desktop and it made printing and doing some other things more complicated so we're trying to work do a workaround to get behind the firewall so that it functions correctly, so we do have a solution that's in play.
Or working out. Admin software. Working now to where everybody is happy? Almost. Jeff Maguire?
We have work to do. There you go. Eric, just as a side thing, where is your motions email? Yeah, couldn't. Apologize. It was sent today at 01:48PM.
Yeah but what I'm after is he had sent an email that we were talking about earlier about the items that we had to add. Yep it's on that same email. Do you want me to forward it. Yeah. Below that Jeff.
Tuesday fifteenth. Today is the eleventh. Oh my god. No one here. Okay. I will find it.
I have it in front of me. Can just forward it and you'll you'll pop Yes. You could do that. Yep.
Okay. Actually, don't need to I had it open. I apologize. All right, let's move on. So we are moving down to new business in ten a fiscal year twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three proposed town budget. Wednesday, April 13 Board of Finance, budget public hearing and set a date for townwide budget meeting. Eric. Any issues that you need to express to us before we move to that motion in the email.
Board of Finance is working with the budget. They've scheduled a Wednesday, April 13 for the finance budget public hearing. We do need to, and this is the responsibility of the Board of Selectmen to set a meeting date for the town wide public budget hearing, which I think Carol Lee has indicated should be May 4.
Okay I have something to add to that. The DARE program is going to be outside So there was concern about that running into timeframe. So the DARE graduation is outside. It's not in the gym this year. And I don't know that we'll be done by seven. So just how kids are graduating? It's, it's the entire sixth grade, but they're also what it's not going to take long for the graduation but they were also doing cake and celebrating so it might be done at seven might not so that might that that's going to affect myself and maybe some other people that have kids graduating that night. Just throwing that out there, but it's not in the gym. And if it rains, it's the next night. So there's that.
Well, only problem is if we go later, we had issues when we tried to go a little later that it's too late for the seniors.
We can't say 07:30. It's got to kind of be settled. So I think seven would work. Know, 06:00 it's going to start. There's 20 kids. It's not going to take long. Then whoever needs to get over to the town, event, they can leave early and finish their cake and get away. Maybe we could
put the cake at the town event and combine the two. Can we we do it on Tuesday? The Not
enough time. We can do it on Tuesday because that is the the referendum for RAM. And since we use the same personnel as moderators as our our registers registrars, they can't do both. If you wanted to do it Tuesday, we'd have to start after 8PM, probably after 9PM.
So the answer to that is no. Correct. I handle I can handle no. So, and we have a problem with, we have a problem on the next day with, with cool or with their program. And so if we push it out a week Adrian what does that do for the timeline pushes everything out.
And a week later there's a talent show, so you're gonna, it's just that time of year guys so I think you keep it on the night that dare is there. You're not gonna worry. You're not gonna run into an issue with Dare in the gym because the program is outside. And the talent show is a week later, that's outside also. But you're, you know, it's just that time of year with events going on. Ram has their concert May 5 so it, you know, it's just lots of stuff going on. I would keep it.
Have having events outside because you can't use the stage.
Just want to know stage we can use the stage it's just, they're taking advantage of using the outdoor space. They used it last year. It was a very nice setting and
they're going to- It also makes people that are still mask reluctant more comfortable. Yes, and
it's, it's nice, you know, it's nice that time of year, it's a nice setting you see the, you have fresh air. Okay.
Okay, so let's just have it on the fourth and deal with the dare, the dare Make a motion. Somebody make it let's go.
I can't find his motion seat so I'll just I'll make a motion that we have our. Oh I'll make the motion You have it? I
can't get into the town email. It keeps telling me 50510 error. I don't know what that is.
Eric is that the. Is that motion the motion for to set the time and the date for the annual Tom meeting. Yes. Okay, I motion to set the annual town meeting for May 4 at 7PM at the Andover elementary school gymnasium seconded. All right, further discussion all those in favor. Aye. Aye. Okay. Next question. Call the vote.
I'm sorry. I thought you just did. No. He Yeah, should be
thank you. Yeah. No, nobody opposed and there is no abstentions. Thank you. You're welcome.
Go ahead. Quick question. Does the board wants want so you have the actual sheet that will get sent out to residents that requires your signature. Do you want it to be done like we normally do it? Or do you want to all come in and sign it tomorrow when you're there for the employee skip meeting? Use my signature electronically. Mine also. Yeah, it's fine. I'm good with it. Yep, you can use mine too. Okay, see in the sports world send it.
Alright 10B Long Hill. Well, I'm sorry a 10B a Veterans Memorial Field turf contract.
I was just sending this to you. So you had a copy of the contract. So you would ask me for that and you would ask me for a practice schedule or a field schedule. So, I provided the field schedule and the turf contract to you as a board. You have any concerns about the contract, Eric? No, I mean, the the the contract is ongoing anyway. The only thing they're really required to supply us this year is a, you know, essentially a cost schedule. So they've sent us a revised cost schedule and we baked that into the budget. Budget. Okay. And you have that whole cost in the budget? That cost is in the budget. Yes. Including
the other I mean, well, let's go Scott. Are we just so Scott, I know, is very involved in this. Is this the Hebron contract only and the turf management contract as a separate issue or is this all combined?
It's two different, it's different contracts. We have one with the consultant and we have one with Hebron.
Okay and I'm asking Eric all those costs are baked into what we provided to the Board of Finance. Correct. That's all I wanted to verify. Okay. All right.
Eric, were you looking for support from us to sign both that contract and the, the DOT?
I'm not looking for you to sign that contract. That contract was signed. It's a multi year contract. The only thing they're required to provide us this year was the cost schedule. Just letting you know that we have the cost schedule. That's what it is. And it's baked into the budget. So you're looking you're looking for the DOT and the building official services contract. Correct.
Okay. We haven't gotten there yet. But we will do next to. Yeah. So 10 E 10 D, the DOT local bridge program preliminary application. We need to just make a motion to allow Eric to sign that. I I went through that. Anybody have any questions? I'll do it. I'll sign. Motion
to authorize the town administrator to sign the Connecticut Department of Transportation federal local bridge program preliminary application for Bridge Number 4582 located on Long Hill Road over the Hop River.
Do we have a second? Second. Seconded. All right. Further discussion. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. The vote was five. Nothing. No, no one voted against no extensions, we're all good. Okay. All right, we're going to move to not 10 E the town of Bolton building official service contract.
I'm going to read that one too. Sure, go ahead. Motion to authorize the town administrator to sign a contract with the town of Bolton for Bolton official shared services from 01/01/2022 through 06/30/2023. Seconded.
Okay. So here's one of the reasons why I wanted to discuss this with you is that this bakes in what the Board of Selectmen approved and what so far the Board of Finance has agreed, which is an increase in hours starting July 1 for the official. And I just want to make sure that you're aware that if we sign this, that's what we're agreeing to. We could pursue splitting the contract and signing another short term contract that just gets us to July 1, if you felt more comfortable with that, I think they would go along with it. But since we've kind of agreed that this is where we're going, it's easier to do one single, you know, approval, if, if you're all on board with it. I mean, this is what we need. So, you know. I have no problem signing the contract. Okay.
I mean, much more money just so everybody is aware? What's the additional Funding over the prior year.
Well, it's basically. It goes from $11.15 dollars per month between now and June 30 and then $16.00 7 per month after that. So less than
$5,000 to improve our level of service. Okay, let's go. Anybody else have any other questions? I don't just want to vote
with you Scott Scott, you have a good attitude tonight Scott let's go. So, I'll call the call the motion. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. That vote was five nothing Adrian. No abstentions. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. Okay. We are moving on to 10 F finance department office structure.
So, as noted from the meeting we're working on a description and Eric's working on the. Eric is working on the. Issue with admins as far as access, and we are looking at. You know, trying to figure out how many hours we want, and they're probably something around five five hours a week something like that at this point so.
So we have we have some work to do, and we will sit there and. Get involved in it, hopefully, the software will allow us to do everything that we need to do properly. We should be okay though. Anybody have any other questions related to the finance department? All right. 10 gs municipal veterans service contact person.
Okay, so the town is required annually to appoint a either a commission or a single person to be the municipal veterans service contract person so.
We can we full stop before you go into the letter and the person and all that. Although I appreciate that I think it is appropriate that we at least advertise this because there are a lot of veterans in town, I know we it's nice to be able to have someone that's volunteered and I. Appreciate her offer, but I think it's important that we offer that to other vets, just in case, and then we make a selection. Okay. Anyone disagree with that.
I don't disagree with it in in principle I sit there and.
I say we we get it advertised and we vote on this next month. Perfectly fine with that let's if we can have currently run something for you know, two weeks in the River East that'd be great JI whatever. It just because you know the veterans I mean Jerry Jerry's a perfect example that of how active our veterans are and how willing, they are to volunteer so. You know let's give them the opportunity.
Okay, well, we already know we have one good candidate. We need to, we need to get this moving. All right. Does anyone have any problem with that? All right. Thank you. Let's get this done. We did sit there and say we were attempting to try to put all positions out there and get them advertised so we would do a better job as a board. So I don't really have a problem with it, but it needs to get done for next. We will vote next meeting I have no issue with that.
So just real quick Eric so can we make sure we just put a deadline on that like a week before the meeting so we'll just advertise it for the next two. Sure. So it closes out before next meeting. Okay. Ten h,
Kerma annual meeting. Eric, there was information in our packet. What would you like to share with us on this? So I'm just saying that the meeting's coming up. I don't know how mobile I'm going to be by that point. If one of you wants to go to the meeting, it's not a bad event to go to to understand, meet some of your peers and go to the meeting. If anybody's interested, we can certainly register more than one person. Free food and drink?
There typically is free food and drink at this event. Not exactly free. The town pays insurance and the insurance pays for the banquet, but it's prepaid. Let's put it that way. When it when and where is this?
It is Thursday, May 26 at the Hartford Downtown Marriott. What time does it start? Do we know?
First seminar is at 09:30. Registration starts at nine, I believe. Patrons in the packet, page 77. Thank you ma'am. Think I'm still stuck on sixteen.
Eric, and when does any decision need to be made on that?
I don't know what the drop dead date is to, register for that. All right.
We'll circle back to this one. We'll all get together and decide if all five of us would like to attend. Actually, that would probably be illegal.
They wouldn't realize that our packet this week was 121 pages. Yes, I did. Just thought I'd mention that. That's a low number. You
know, I just feel bad like residents go, why don't you read the packet? Well, know, it was only 120 pages of light reading just before the meeting.
Well, if you go through it and you go through the whole application for the bridge, which is all in there and, you know, I mean the the issues to the pages to focus on our financial pages.
Okay, see and I was, I actually enjoyed reading the bridge part. Did read that.
I read through the bridge package it was interesting but last week. Yeah. Last week what read the bridge thing.
There you go. Okay. Now that we all know that like at least one of us has read different parts of this it's good thing. All right, we're moving on to 10 I upcoming in person town meetings.
So very simple as far as I know the Connecticut legislature has not reauthorized the legislation that allows us to do Zoom meetings for town boards and commissions. So unless they get off their fourth points of contact in the next nineteen days, the next board of selectman meeting and all other town meetings will be in person only.
So is there is this statue Charlie something that says that we have to do that? Yeah, Pretty much. We've never gotten this much participation in the past. I mean, I personally think the Zooms are amazing.
Well, and I think it's kind of ridiculous that the state legislature is still meeting via Zoom, you know, and they're gonna let this thing expire. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe they will do the right thing and extend it as most of the municipal organizations like, you know, CCM and COST are urging them to do, but maybe they won't.
Okay so we're gonna find out. Can I can I I weigh in on this please? Sure. If if you don't mind, I'm I'm I have a legislator living in the in the house with me and she is a member of a leader Democratic Party leadership. They had a meeting today on the on on on all the bills that are pending, and this bill is still on hold. There is a bill. I just emailed it to you all. It's called raise bill number five two six nine. I tried to email it to all of you about ten minutes ago. If you wanna know what the situation is now, it's in the package is a memo from Halloran and Sage, which tells you how we got to this point. Last year, with the implementer bill, a 700 page document, a section 149 of that bill gave the rules that we're operating under now, which pretty much allows us to have the kind of meetings that you're having now, the the Zoom meetings, the virtual meeting, the hybrid meeting. But that expires on April 30 as Eric has pointed out. And there is a bill pending before the legislature, but it is not I'm told by my friend who's in the legislature that it's not expected to be voted on on the thirteenth when they next go into session.
That would be a Wednesday. But she said anything can happen, and you never know. There but there is a bill, and it is in, I believe, the administration and administrate general administration, committee that is chaired by another resident of Willamantic as a state senator. So I I I can find out whatever I can about this and give you, as much information as I can, give it to Eric, for dissemination along the way because it is important. It could it could be that your next meeting in in May, early May, relatively early May, second Monday of May, could could have to be in person,
and that's gonna be difficult for me. Dennis. I won't be Dennis, do us do us a favor and use your contacts and get them to pass that bill so that we can continue to have meetings via Zoom.
Well, I'm told that it is a bill that has bipartisan support.
We can always We can always just be rebels. Do it anyways.
Yeah. It's just a matter of of finding the time to get it on get it get it on the agenda for a vote in both the house and senate, and time is marching on. But, my wife is optimistic about it. You keep pressure you keep pressure on her, Dennis. You don't cook for her until she comes through on this. Oh, I I I if I do that, I'm gonna be in big trouble. So I I tried to, I tried to handle that, with great care. Okay. Alright. But I will
I will keep Eric informed. We will know before before we post our next meeting minutes or our next agenda Oh, yeah. To be in person or not. So You will know. Yes. And and if if you can be of any help at all, all of you, I will contact you individually to have you lobby your your own representative. But but I think there there is bipartisan support. Thank you.
Alright. We're gonna move to ten j, community center RFP for design build.
Yeah so we're just looking for approval from the Boris Lechman. Had a lot of positive reaction at the meeting on Saturday, I think Scott would agree. Right. And Jeff, what do you think? I think we've we've had good feedback, though, And I we're at the point now where with we just have to try to take in some of the some of the things were legitimate concerns we're trying to just figure out if they're feasible. As far as you know some parking and things like that, but these are all things that we can work out as we go through the process, but the next step for us is to go and start soliciting design build. Quotes. From contracting firms so we're looking for permission from the worst selectmen to put out an rfp for that.
And we're working on the rfp as we speak. All right, let's make that motion.
So I'd make a motion to to allow the Community Center building committee to move the project to an ask for rfp for design build.
A second that. All right, further discussion. All all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
Five, nothing. Can we discuss that a little bit? Sure. Adrian, Adrian, we approved $50,000 didn't we Initially?
Yeah, there's no cost associated with this. Is that your question? Yeah. So There's no we're soliciting quotes. We're soliciting quotes. Oh okay. Once we get a quote it, I think the correct measure would be to go back to tip. And as tip to approve the correct contractor and then move that to the board selectman approve signing a contract with that contractor once the budgets been passed. Okay. Very good move along.
That'll that'll allow us to do final structure for payment to so we can figure out you know exactly what we need. All right, 10 ks authorized UConn energy benchmarking study.
So Kathy Palazzi has been talking to went went to some went to an informational about doing an energy benchmark for town buildings and there's a person up at UConn it's wanting to do that for the town. And so the the ask is that we allow that to move forward and basically it doesn't cost us anything they're going to come in and benchmark our usages and try to give us advice as to how to make us more efficient on our energy usage. That shouldn't be hard.
You mean mean insulation? So let's make a motion on that.
I would make a motion that we allow the oh, hang on. Sorry. Where is that? Amy Thompson.
Allow Amy Thompson of the Yukon Engineering to allow a I'm looking for the actual thing. I'm, why am I not finding it? Sorry, I'm having a senior moment.
It happens. It's more often than not lately. Keep going. I'm with you. I'm Authorize I'm with Amy Thompson to do the Yukon Energy benchmarking study. Thank you, Scott. Seconded. Okay. Further discussion? Anybody? It's free? It is. It's. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Thanks Kathy. No, no opposition Adrian. Okay.
By the way, this was all Kathy I had nothing to do with except a note it tonight, this is something Kathy's been working on so. 10 l town personnel policy.
Okay, I ask that we put this back on. When we left off a month or so ago, Adrian was gonna get with the elementary school and get what their version of the policy you want to implement for return to work policy. So we need to see whether where that is. And then I think there's a couple other things that are issues with the personnel policy that if we're going to go to the trouble to revise it, we ought to do. One would be first and foremost, switching to twenty six hours for when benefits kick in for all new employees. That makes sense. And the second thing is somehow or other when we switched personnel policies from the previous one to this last one, took out the section about longevity payments. You know, I think that was honestly an oversight of my part. We've continued to budget for longevity payments the last two years, but it's actually not in the personnel policy. So that's another thing we ought to review. Is that in the union contracts or?
It is not in the union contracts because it was in the personnel policy and where there's nothing specific in the union contract, the personnel policy prompts.
Okay. And so the next question is, is the twenty six hours going to run us into an issue with the unions as well?
So if you remember, MEIU agreed to the twenty six hours and I haven't gotten a chance to look through that contract that they just sent, but I'm assuming that has that in there. So part of the reason why I want to do it now is we're about to start negotiating for the other union. So we ought to do them both at the same time. We ought to get it in that union contract and we ought to update our personnel policy at the same time. So then everything will be consistent. But I thought we'd already agreed to it,
prior and I knew that we, I didn't realize we had, we actually had a contract back from them yet. I know you had talked about expecting one, but.
I sent that to you, this past week. I think he just sent it to me either Friday or Saturday. So you should have a copy of that contract. Okay. Do you need a motion?
Well, I think you guys have, the last time we met you guys hadn't made a decision whether you wanted to approve the language that Dennis wrote or whether you wanted to review what the school was going to do and propose alternative language. Unfortunately,
I apologize, I did ask Valerie to get us a copy of that. And I, I apologize. I did not follow-up. I, I thought she might've just shot it over to you and I got lost in the loop and that's my, my fault for assuming.
Okay. I don't know. It something that needs to get done tonight, Eric?
No, but I just need to make sure that, that, you know, I don't wanna start writing other sections or making other modifications of it until you're generally agreed that that's something we should be doing.
From what I talked to Val about it, it sounded like they kind of had exactly what we were looking for. I will ask for that again. And again, I will make a note when I ask to then follow-up a week later.
Okay, fair enough. Okay. We have ten ms discussion about the Connecticut emergency radio agreement. Chief. Chief, Mike, from the fire department has asked that we that we sign an agreement that allows the town of Andover to participate into the new state radio program. My concern with that agreement has always been that it may require the town to pay for additional radios. The chief has informed me that that is not necessarily the case. And he's asked me to sign that document. And I figured I would bring it to the board before I actually signed that document. What does not necessarily mean. Well, he believes that, you know, he's going to try to go out and get grant funding now. Here's the thing, he doesn't need those radios he can participate on the UHF band. But the concern is that they'll, I mean, my mind, the concern is that the state will not support the UHF band eventually and that will be required to purchase those radios. Well, so if they don't do UHF, we need the new radio program. Anyways, yeah. Anyways, so I'm just letting you all know because my biggest issue was, you know, I had talked to Jay when Eric first got injured. I talked to Jay about it and the public works doesn't have any radios that would work on the system, the chief doesn't have any radios that will work on this system right now. But his hope is that he eventually will acquire those radios whether it's through grant funding or through,
you know, the town, but if we had to go out and get all of the radios all at once Eric $200,000 is not a short sell for the cost of all the radios. How many radios? It's for the public I works
mean, you would have. We're not paying for every single person to have a radio.
Right now we're not, I mean, we're not advocating the switchover. All this allows us to do is at some point in the future consider the switchover.
But how did they come up? How did this $200,000 number come out?
That was the chief and understanding all of the radios that he would have involved in this. I mean, he Do you understand how many radios that is? Yeah, he basically sat there and said every officer, all of the vehicles, you know, that's a lot of radios. No, that's, that's more than that. Dollars 200,000
at 4,000 a radio was 40 radios. He just told me that Lebanon
basically spent that on radios for this new service. So, it's a it is, it is something that's very concerning to me because I don't, I don't particularly look at it as a, you know, I know what he's saying he's like all is it's not, it's not requiring the town to commit any funding to participate in this radio program, but it is laying the groundwork that if they don't get grant funding, the town could be on the hook participate on this service a significant amount of money for all of the radio the radios required, so the question is. I mean the fire department wants us to sign this. What's the fire commission said?
The fire commission, I believe has agreed with the chief. Don't have any direct communication with the fire commission. I did not reach out to them. So, I would sit there and just tell you that I'm going to, I wanted to bring it to your attention because I didn't want to just sign it without bringing it to the board but it is something that down the road. Know, and I told the chief I don't want them come and ask him for CIP to fund his radios. Anytime soon. But.
But the problem with with what I'm hearing from you, so the quote from JNS radio was $3.00 $6 per unit for the radios.
Well, then the Chief is giving me information that we could fund then. Because I believe he told me only about 40 radios. I thought it was a total. I thought he was telling me these radios were extremely expensive. Well it'd be $6.53
radios if that's the case. That's why I said we say 200,000 like phone like I know it wasn't that much I mean you know, and this is because they're they have to be named brands, you know I'm. You know they're not they're not cheap it's a specific has to be on there's only certain manufacturers that are going to be doing this. And the quote was for janus radio sales and that was given to us, I mean get granted, it was, will say upfront it was a year ago, so they could have gone up but.
Yeah but is the are these radios for the old system and the new system. That's the new system, because we talked about it for public works last year. Okay. Remember Eric?
Yeah, yeah, we discussed it. I mean I just, I finally got into my email, so I searched for this radio quote because I remember we had gotten one.
So. Right. Mean, I think Jake provided quotes for what inexpensive radios to do it would be for their needs, but that's, you know, whether that's necessarily what the fire department wants or needs. But, but even if the fire department doesn't install dash unit radio
at $2 apiece you know, instead of 300 apiece let's say it's $2,000 apiece right you're still if you're 40 radios that's you know $80 that's not 200 so.
Okay, so no one here is going to have a significant problem with me signing this so that the fire department can participate.
I mean so they we give them the option to participate if he gets the grant money, then they move over you know all at once, and if they don't, then we have to do it slowly, know I mean. They have other pieces of apparatus they've been asking for so we'll have to just they'll they'll prioritize and let us know you know where they want to put the money I guess. Okay, then I'll get that done. Right. Someone else disagrees.
All right, let's move on then. No one had any other issues. Item 11, approval of meeting minutes for Monday, March 14, meeting, and Thursday, 03/24/2022 a special meeting.
I make a motion to approve the 03/14/2022 regular meeting minutes and the 03/24/2022 regular meeting minutes. Sorry, that should be March 24 special meeting minutes. Noted. Okay. Who is seconding that? Scott.
Scott. All right. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Five, nothing. None opposed. No abstentions.
All right. So where's our finance person again? I thought we were agreeing to work with them until July. The finance person also didn't make the Board of Finance meeting for budget. Yep. Finance person is in Hawaii on vacation.
So somebody approved the vacation in the middle of budget season for the finance department.
Well, because she's a school employee and that fits in with when school vacation is.
And and no one thought to maybe have her assistant come on and answer some of these questions. Good At least we know why we're doing what we're doing. Will ask
of all, Marina is probably in on this conversation. She's also in her other job, but she should be in on the phone. So if you have budget related questions.
I do. So we have in our finance report, a budget line item, for interest, and it's showing that we are woefully under under on the interest line. And I would kind of like to get an answer as to what's going on with that. Are you talking revenue income? Interest income? Yeah.
So, it's 131 130 triple $0.03 $0.03 interest line 40,000 budgeted we've collected $2,478.50 so we've only collected 6% of what we thought we were going to get. And I don't know if that's a reconciliation issue or if it's just that we ridiculously over budgeted.
Listen, that's not a question for Marina, honestly, that's an issue related to, I mean, I was looking at that, while Adrian They're trying to match these numbers up to some of the tax collectors information and there's no way that we could have budgeted that for interest income on our money. And if we did budget that as interest income on our We're bank money not even at are we at 1% on deposits at this point? No.
I doubt it. I bet you you're half a quarter of 1%. Right. But,
but it also goes into because, you know, I was sitting there looking at this trying to tie out to the tax collectors report because I was looking at the interest on active taxes, and it says that we've collected $33,000 but I can't tie that into Sorry my, I can't tie that into the tax collectors report.
Marina can you make a note of those two line items. Yeah,
100And10. And it's 103 and the other one is 100And3303.
Okay, I'm just writing I'm writing a note in my phone. Can you say the first one again? 100And10. Yep.
103. Okay. That's the account ID. And the other one is 100And30 and it's 303.
Okay, yep, I'll take a look. I'm just on my phone, I have nothing at home, but I can No, no, no, we're not we're not asking. We understand your situation
fully at this moment, so thank you for being on the call. Yeah, no problem. You can sort that out get an answer from your boss when she gets back that would be great.
And, and then Eric, just, just as a side thing, Erica. You know, under the revenue section so we'll stay there for a second. Transfer station permits. Correct.
We've only recorded 25,000 or $24,887 worth of permits this year.
Sure, because a lot of our permits come in right at the very end of the year as people buy them in this fiscal year for the next before July 1. So if we get them before July 1, they go in this year's fiscal year. So
we're gonna get a we'll get a bunch of these coming in and then she just got new stickers in. Okay. So you tell you're saying in June, you'll get a big significant push that'll push that revenue over. Okay. Was looking at it more of a for this year and you posted for this year. All right. Okay.
Oh, actually, this brings up a question I had for Eric we no longer and I apologize I'm out of order as far as where we are on the list but. We got rid of the flat pack down at the transfer station for cardboard. What do you mean by the flat pack? Well, we had a we had a cardboard that you if you, you know, we had an open top dumpster that we were flat packing in.
Yes, we did get rid of the we brought that in for a short period of time at the Christmas holidays. We brought it in for about a month because we were getting an exceptional amount of cardboard in over the holidays. That was a holiday only thing. Still had it in February
because I was still I noticed in February, I think the beginning of March, also hit it we still had it done, but now it's gone. So think we should have had it that late but it's possible. We did yeah we did because I was actually still I unfortunately get a lot of cardboard from Amazon, so that drives me nuts, but anyways so was there any advantage to having that.
The advantage was we didn't have enough compactor capacity to handle the surge. Okay. We just were running out of space. So we did that on a short term basis, you know, But we do have a lot of we are taking in year over year comparatively a lot more cardboard than we have in the past, and it is. We. More problematic.
Can we look at I don't know if we have talked to them a transfer station people about it like the the guys that give us our the new the new company that's taken over Willie waste, but we currently have a side shoot. For the cardboard. Can we get one to go the other way.
We could, or we could just switch our trash to that compactor. But yeah, we are gonna look into what it would cost Willie Ways to come in and redo the chute or switch out the compactor. We did go out this year and I did get a quote to figure out what it would cost if we went and brought in another compactor. Okay.
Because four in some ways makes more sense there. Okay, and what what do we have a did you ever pass that along to us, I don't remember seeing it. I didn't because it didn't seem like in this budget year we were going to do it, if you would like that information I will forward that information to you. If you wouldn't mind that'd be great.
And then, in the meat as a short term solution, can we can we when next time they come and pull can we have them switch the dumpsters around. So we put trash there and. Because it jams up a lot on cardboard when it comes in from the side like that. They've been struggling with it.
I mean, the only problem is that, you know, we have the one straight in dumpster now. You could convert that one over to cardboard, but then that means you're going back and forth with household trash in two different areas. So there's some downsides to that too. Well, the
cardboard's backing them up a lot. I mean, every time that I've gone in there over the weekends, it's the cardboard that people are backed up on. It'll make their lives a little easier. Okay,
if we can let Dominic know to do that that'd be great.
Okay, does anybody have any more questions related to the finance department. I do not. Any other members? Marina, were you on this whole call?
Yeah, I've just been listening as I when I left the seven down just to listen.
Okay can we in the future if we have marina on the call move finance to the front of the list so that she doesn't get stuck on the whole meeting. Absolutely.
Maria, can you just let us know next time, so that. Yeah you know if you're on where you know we don't want to be in a situation where we're keeping you on a two hour call you know and then having to combat the next day. Yeah no sorry. Thank you.
She's she's she's working as she listens to us babble on. So we appreciate. Even
it's off from H and R Block, so I only have a week left, so that's good.
Alright. With your luck, they'll extend the deadline. You'll have to you'll get stuck there another week. Same. I hope not. Thank you, Marina.
You're welcome. Alright. I'm gonna jump off. Thank you. Thank you. Yep.
Bye. So we're gonna move on to budget appropriation transfer over expenditure requests. Eric, I did not see any in the packet. Is that accurate?
That is accurate. And part of the reason is Marina and I have been going through the current budget basically line by line looking for things that are misplaced so that we get it correct and we're not, we're actually accounting for things in the right category before we figure out what we need to transfer. So we're about a third of the way through the budget line items at this point. So by the next meeting we'll have a more accurate assessment of that.
And just as a, I mean, it's probably not even here. Can you make the report have headers on every page so that you can understand what the columns are. If you can get to Edmonds then get that done or have Sherry get that done that would be greatly appreciated.
Ready to get Marina so she can start learning her way around Edmonds a little more. Yeah.
Okay, the tax collectors report. Anybody have any questions related to that? I was trying to tie some of the taxes and the interest paid to our revenue summary today but it doesn't look like all of the transactions have been posted yet. You know we still have you know about $2,000,000 of 2020 taxes yet to collect.
We'll get a significant fraction of that this month because this is a collection month, but there's nineteen more days left in the collection month. Yeah, owe you $5, what's your point? You're not the only one.
No. All right and then there's a letter in here from the town attorney about a refund for Thomas Talbot for the transfer transfer of the 7.84 acres near Shawnee Maryland and Boston Hill. We need to pass that and get him his refund back. Someone make a motion for that.
And make a motion to authorize the first selectman to sign the authorization to refund Thomas Talbot and the amount of $130.22 for taxes paid in advance on property he donated to the town of Andover located near Boston hell. Hallstein, I'll second.
All right, for the discussion on to our next item, which is the assessors report. I did not see anything included. Did anyone see anything included? Did I miss something? No. Okay. There were various There's other
an assessor's monthly office activity report, but there's not a report from the assessor himself in there. It's not really all that informative anyway.
Okay. Nope. Department Anybody have any other questions from any of the other reports?
I do have one thing on the fire department report. There was apparently a fairly bad fire this afternoon or this evening in the Lake District. There's apparently at least one fatality So resulting from that's all I know about it so far, that there's a house fire and it's under investigation. I heard from Trooper Nessie that there was a fatality. That's hard.
Move on from that I feel sorry for that and hopefully was it. Well, we'll ask a question Eric resident, and it was not one of the fire department members.
I don't know anything at this point. You have every bit of information I have. I would assume the fire chief would have reached out to me if one of his members had, been killed. Alright.
Apparently, Jim, I don't know the gentleman's last name did not make it. That is very sad.
Prayers go out to his family. He did get out, but he did not. They were able to get him out, but it was too late.
All right, let's move on to item 17 correspondence. Eric, are is there any? Not that I'm aware of. Nope.
Okay, let's move on to public speak. So, Joanne Ebert. No, okay. Leigh Ann Hutchinson. Hello? Yes.
Hi. Yes, I just want to say that I think that you have a small but diverse group of people who put their names in for the Charter revision, and I was involved in that in the past. And I think having the town clerk in particular, this town clerk, I think is very capable. And I think you have a good cross section of other people who put their names in, particularly people who have been in town for quite a while. And I totally understand the concerns about the attendance record of the individual that was mentioned. I wasn't aware of that, but that is very important. And I hope that I think one of your members stated that they talked with him personally and that he is committed to doing this. All right, thank you. All right and Susan Kamarota.
Well thank you thank you for letting me attend the meeting it's very informative interesting. Thank
you very much for attending. Thank you. I don't think there's anyone else is there? Joanne did you call on her? Did first. And so
she's I'm sorry did I miss I am here Jeff I'm sorry I'll make it really quick. No too late. Oh I was switching over to computers I think I need to just say really quickly that I'm speaking as a just a resident a public person not as a member of the board of finance and I'm going to make it brief only because of something that was said tonight. Just with all due respect to the Ram Board of Ed members that came on and spoke about their budget, that's fine I mean they were there very brief and and then they did make you know, over, I think when I was listening and looking there's cuts that add up to over $2,000,000 Then there's also the fact of the 600,000 that they're not returning to the town this year because they're allowed to keep it due to rules and charters. So speaking as just a private citizen, everyone should make their own decisions. Adrienne, you weren't on the call when they spoke today,
so they came on very brief and asked for support of the budget, which they can do. I just think that everyone should study the facts. That's all and and see what's out there. You mean the fact that there's they're spending.
The fact that they're spending 1,500,000 more instead of going down. That's kind of.
And that they're keeping the 600,000 I mean they they presented this way every year so I just want to be transparent and everyone taking the time to study it you know and know what you're looking at. When I see a 2%, you know, the public might think, you know, they usually jump in and that sounds great. That's all I just wanted to know because no one has questions about them and I happen to know a little bit about that budget, so I wanted to share a little more. Thank you.
All right. Thank you very much. Anybody else that I missed? Okay. Somebody want to make a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn at 09:31PM.
All right. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Five nothing and no one opposed and no abstentions. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll see you guys later. Good night.