Meeting transcript
BOS Regular Meeting
July 11, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Pledge of Allegiance. My thing. Ready? Pledge allegiance to the flag, The United States Of America, to the public for which it stands, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. Public speak, Paul, you want to buzz them through. We've got Joan Hebert. All set. Thank you. Dennis, I know where you're on. Mike, Kathy, pausing. Yeah. Any comments, Mike?
No, we're good for now. No, I want one way, man. Kathy's coming. Oh, God.
Sorry. I have my grandson this week. He's going to camp. Not use of these young ones. I'd like to thank Jay Tuttle, the public works foreman and his men for planting the beautiful six foot blue spruce tree at the end of historical society museum. Jay suggested we plant the tree that was donated to the town in celebration of the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary that we'll have in 2023. I want to furthermore. Thanks, Scott person the selectman for purchasing mulch and soil to make sure the tree did not die, and I know he checks on it constantly, and I thank you very much for that, Scott, and I want to thank my husband Mike and Kathy Derosia for the for taking turns in watering the tree.
Just to make sure it doesn't die. Thank you. Nick Levine. That's he's with Connecticut Voice Channel. Oh, okay. Amber Armintage? I'm all set. Thank you. And Kermang? I'm all set. Thank you. Diane Charcot. I'm all set. Thanks. And I've got a 707-5579. That's me Marina. I'm all set. Okay. I'm
sorry? All right. Can you mute the appropriate parties, Paul?
I am not the host. So Eric, can you take care of that, please? Sure. Who do you want muted? Everybody but a board member. Thank you. All right, additions deletions.
I'm gonna suggest you add two items. The first would be nine L, which would be generator for Andover Elementary School.
And second would be item 16 be an executive session to discuss the collective bargaining agreement. Okay. We also need 16 see contract renewal. So that works. Anything else anybody else. Mr Murray. Nope I'm good. Alright, so I'll make a motion that we add nine l school generator 16 B. Discussion of union bargaining and 16 C contract renewal. A second. All in favor. Aye. Jeff, I can't hear or see you. Aye. Thank you. Three oh. All right, Chartered Vision Commission, we're going to wait on that. We'll accommodate them when Scott Persson gets back on. So we're going to wait on 4A currently. Appointments, any? None. Resignations? None. Tom Admins reports, I think you emailed this late to everybody or just noted it. If you want the full effect, it's in the packet on the website, correct Eric with pictures?
That is correct. I emailed out an abridged version because I couldn't put that many pictures in there. Okay.
Okay, so real quick in terms of town hall operations, Willie Bell is repainting, doing exterior painting right now. The gazebo has come out really well overall. We get a lot of compliments as we've had a bunch of events there. There's a lot of projects going on in my office. Right now we're working on you know the steep grant that's kind of taking up a good chunk of my time. Dealing with the federal local bridge program stuff. Far as the town clerk's office, town clerk has been out for a bit but she's back as of tonight. As of July 1, we issued approximately five fifty transfer station stickers, which is less than half of the total amount, which is another way of saying a lot of people wait till theirs is expired and then they get mad and then they come into the office. Yeah, unfortunately,
while I was there, about 10 stickers walked out. So is there a reason that we didn't have the assistant working the extra hours how we normally have in the past?
What do you mean the assistant working the extra hours?
Well, to cover some some more of what Carol because Carol's obviously out. She's on vacation so.
Because the assistant didn't want to work the extra hours. It's not that it's not budgeted.
Okay, so she said no to it. We discussed that. Wasn't that part of me, but wasn't that part of the discussion when she was hired that she'd be responsible for filling in some of the hours?
Well, what has to happen is Carol has to officially, for the union contract, write me a letter or notify me that she is going to be taking on extra hours and when. But since Carol doesn't even notify me that she's going on vacation, that would be a little difficult. So that has not happened and her assistant has not worked the extra hours. Okay.
Are you saying you were not aware Carol went on vacation until I Carol went?
Typically no. Yep. I find out when I try to find her and she's not there. Yep. So you weren't notified this time? Nope. Okay.
So the next big thing that's really important is solicitations for the town engineering spot. A committee including myself, Jed Larson and Ed Serizli narrowed it down to four. We interviewed four and Adrian was also there part of the interview process. So the four firms we interviewed were Nathan Jacobson, BSC, Post Jensen and Miller, and Leonard Engineering. We've narrowed it down to two firms. We still got to do a little bit more background before we finally select the firm. But the great thing is that we have really good options, which is encouraging.
And any of the top four would have been good. Correct. Or the four we picked I should say. Correct. Okay. Else can interject. No, go ahead. Next subject, debris management.
So the last couple of times when we had storms and we had lots of debris, we really haven't been able to put in the theme of claims for it because it requires an enormous amount of paperwork and an enormous amount of work upfront. Realistically, we probably have to hire somebody to deal with it during the storm if we're going to do it. And we have to spend quite a bit of time getting a plan in place ahead of time. And the question is, is this really worth it? My own gut feeling tells me no, but if we got hit by a super bad storm, we would be regretting that decision. And the reason why I bring it to your attention is that, there's
one of a couple of things has to happen. Either we have to you know, get somebody on board upfront and then work out a management process and the documentation to do this, you know, or we just accept the fact that we're not going to be able to claim it if we do get nailed with the story. And I feel that's really a discussion that's I want to bring to your attention now. I mean, I'm not expecting a decision tonight, but I just want to say that that's something that at some point we're going to have to discuss as a board and decide whether we want to commit the resources to do it or not. Because reading through all the stuff it takes to get reimbursed by FEMA. That's why I haven't even tried the last two times we had a storm that we had a FEMA declaration because currently we don't really have the capability to even document what we would need to get reimbursed for. So, I think that's something that's going to be a future, you know, future topic.
Is that something you could send out to us on a separate just so we can see what we're actually looking at?
I could send you all the documentation if you want to read through it. That's not a problem.
Okay. It's sort of, you know, trying to have a discussion about something that we haven't seen. You skipped a couple things audit.
We still don't have an audit in place. The last we got back from the auditor was the total difference between, you know, both sides of the ledger is under the amount that's required that where it would be a major audit finding. So but the auditor hasn't really said how he wanted wants to proceed at this point.
Okay. And how much longer is that job posting open for and have we received applications?
For what? For the treasurer position? Yep. So it's a rolling application so it stays open until we select the candidate. So far we've had two applicants for the position.
Okay. So at this point are you thinking what we keep it open for another week or so and then get then start to put together committee or
that's I think that makes sense. My suggestion is that the board of selectman designates one person. The board of finance designates one person. The board of finance has basically said they're going to designate Diane Choket. And I think they may have picked the second person. I have to go back and look through the notes. And then whoever else you want on that committee. And we go for it. Any take on that Paula? Mr. Murray?
As far as who's going to be on that committee? Size, makeup, and yeah. I think you would make the most sense.
Okay. I have no problem doing it unless somebody else wants it. Jeff? Nope, I'm pretty book solid right now. So if you want to do it, that's fine. If not, I'll do it. Okay. No, I don't have a problem doing it. I'll make the time. So the other issue is who do we want on the committee? I mean, we've, I think in the past, we've tried to do this with a lot of people and I don't know that it's worked all that well. Eric, can we still get someone from another town to hop on?
Yeah, we would definitely do that. We would definitely go for at least one finance director of an adjacent town. Okay.
I think it makes sense, with Diane, you, Eric, and then somebody from another town, just to get an outside perspective too. Okay.
All right. We'll leave it open to see if Jeff. Would also like to be on it, or if Scott wants a spot, but tentatively I will take the spot. Okay. We still don't have access to Phoenix? No, we currently do not. Alright.
Do we have a timeframe on when that's going to be accessible or do we have an update?
Not really, no. Supposedly the server is fully rebuilt on the school side. Yep. And it works, but we've never had access to it.
Has the school been made aware that if we don't have access to it, school audit's not getting done either? This is getting a little frustrating.
If you're asking me yes Val's been made aware of that conversation. Okay.
So we have something else to their to is it Tyler is that their guy. Correct and we're still waiting to hear back. Correct. All right,
Are we going to what's our situation with admins as far as servers and where the data is held right now? The data is on the school server, not on our server.
Alright. So are we gonna migrate that off of there? Because I I'm kind of done going through this with trying to access if their their people aren't responding because they don't work for us. They work for the school. So What do we need to do to migrate that over are we going to have two different modules anyways because we have two bank accounts now.
Well, if you decided to much to migrate it, you would have to probably sign a standalone contract with admins and be willing to pay the entire cost of Edmonds.
Why can't we have the school on the town server? I mean, why?
Why are we moving it if we're worried about? Because we literally been messing around with this for how many months? The server the server failed when back in February March.
April but you're right, it has been an ongoing issue, no question.
And I'm basically you know we're banging our hair against a wall here and it's not being taken seriously. So if it's not gonna be taken seriously, then we need to do something because we're the ones that are dealing with the problem. You know.
So you as a board want to transfer Edmunds from the school's domain to the town's domain. That's what you're asking me as a board. Is that correct? Paula, Jeff, what's your thoughts?
I would like to get Scott's and Jeff's input on this as well since there's only three of us here tonight. Jeff would be would probably be able to contribute quite a bit to this discussion.
Yeah I can tell you yeah that's fine we'll we'll hold that thought. Between now and August meeting since Jeff isn't going to be on tonight, don't think. Why don't we get our options on that. Talk to our tech guy and find out what it would cost to migrate it. No.
Yeah, Adrian, that's a good idea. Then we can discuss it at the next meeting.
I just this is getting ridiculous, you know. Come on here we complain about it we were waiting we're waiting we're waiting next month we finally get something now it's rebuilt, but we still can't access it, so you know I mean this is, this is a joke. You know, and it's not funny anymore. So if the school is not going to take it seriously and they're not going to step up and understand it's also their responsibility to help us get the audit completed, you know.
Is it a matter of I'm just thinking it's summertime is the staff just not there at the school to talk to who they need to is that. This
is actually a Valerie issue I asked Valerie about it, the last time I had an opportunity, she said it was a town problem not a school problem. But it's their tech support so their tech support is dragging their feet because they're not hearing from the school that this is a priority apparently you know. Okay. We didn't get we did not get anywhere with them rebuilding the server at all until we asked for an incident report. Which anybody who's in it understands if you ask for an incident report that's not a good thing. When we asked for an incident report we finally got not our tech guy but there his boss finally stepped in and made a phone call to us, why do you want an incident report correct Eric. That is correct. You know?
Alright, well let's let's talk about it at the next meeting with Jeff when Jeff's here like we talked about and see what we can find out in between now and then. Right. I know it's frustrating. I know you, but I don't think we're gonna get answers. I don't have a problem waiting until Jeff and Scott are part of the conversation.
Yeah. Adrian, I share your frustration. It's just, you know, and I think it should probably belong in the town server since the town is operating pretty much three sixty five and the schools, you know, they do have a summer break and maybe they're not staffed as much. So it would probably make sense to put the information on our server.
Yeah, and I think my other frustration is the fact that the server had to be rebuilt instead of having a hard backup. You know, they had to go back and do a RAID rebuild. That should have happened immediately. And instead of happening immediately, it didn't get addressed until, you know, just a couple of weeks ago.
I don't disagree that that was not addressed as a priority on the school side.
All right. Well, let's talk about it next month and see we can find out.
Building department. Are we are we taking payments now and everything through there everything's up and running now? What do you mean by taking payments through there? We were going be working on being able to take payments through permit link. Are we still working on that? All
payments can go through PermitLink. So it's up and running now. You can pay electronically now if you so desire.
Okay, great. All right, I interrupted you at Deborah's management to go backwards. What do you want to do with the Deborah's management? Want to just get the information out to us and then we'll talk about if that's something we try to put out there. This something that I guess the question is what is the skill set for the paperwork that we're talking about? You know?
So it's just an enormous amount of time. I mean, like if you really look through what FEMA is asking, if you have to get rid of a branch, you know, you have to do everything from log the GPS coordinates of the branch to take a picture of that, you know, and you have to have a pre authorized spot to put all the debris. You have to segregate the debris that comes from town owned property from that of individual property owners, which means you have to have some security on your debris pits. It's just, you know, I question whether it's ever worth the time and effort for us to be able to do it. Now, problem is if you ever had a really catastrophic event, you know, say you had a true cat three that came through. And if you look at the national weather sort risk predictions
of 20 to 30% of the canopy gone in that case, I mean, it would be huge dollars and we would be in trouble if we didn't have it. So I guess it's Can a
we approach it as a major storm type thing where we put a plan in place to address the things that you just mentioned And then, you know, we, we pull that plan out when we get a, like you said, a major, the issue simple What
I'm saying is we probably would need professional help to develop a plan, you know, and we would have to have a pre arrangement with either a company or an individual that was designated to, you know, administer the program during an emergency. It can't be in an emergency that you decide to do it. You have to do all that has to be ahead of time. It's really just a question that do you want to deploy the resources to do it? Or do you want to roll the dice? That's why eventually I want to come back to the board. I'm just letting you know that there's going to be further discussion on this because this is a pretty complex issue whether we go after it or we don't. Okay.
All right, moving on. You got the drainage work on Chaudy and Birch.
Shimming's finished and you're going on to chip sealing, right? Yep. So Gorman will be doing the chip sealing hopefully at the end of the month. Okay. We did get Eversource to agree to partner with us again and split the costs of tree trimming. We're probably going after Gilead Road because that's our worst single road left and that's such a long road that should probably chew up the majority of our town pre work budget. We'll save some back for emergency stuff but the rest we're probably going to spend the whole thing addressing Gilead.
And that's a partner situation with Eversource and correct. Okay.
Yep. I already told you that the other really big change was that the federal local bridge program we're now going to be able to fully fund both the Bunker Hill Bridge as well as the Long Hill Bridge. So that's going to be a big, really large cost savings to the town. We will still need to have the ability to, because at this point, the funding will still come through the town, which means we will have to pay for the construction and get reimbursed. And we'll need the ability to fund roughly $500,000 worth of work, worst case scenario between the time we're getting reimbursed and the time we have to outlay the cash to the contractors. We can do that out of the unexpended fund balance, you know, or we can keep the money that is set aside for the Bunker Hill Bridge and use that as the swing funding. That's really a board decision. There is a chance that they're going to get rid of that and the state will pay directly. If they do, then we can repurpose that money at any time. But we just don't know yet. I'm just letting you know that the really good news is ultimately we're going to get a 100% reimbursement on the bridges, which is fantastic.
And what do we currently have in that fund right now?
I want to say we have around 380,000 but that's just off the top of my head. Actually don't have that number. All right.
Okay, we signed the letter of intent for the Long Hill Road bridge. I waited and told to sign the letter of intent until I knew the program was going to have 100% reimbursement. The good thing is I signed it the day they announced the 100% reimbursement because everybody and their brother's submitting bridges right now. I think I was talking to the DOT rep he said one of the towns submitted seven bridges at the same time. Now that the funding source is open everybody's trying to get in on it. The good news is we've already got our acceptance letter so we know we're getting funded under that. So small bridges and culverts in the community
center I don't have any real updates on that.
Adrian, maybe you could give it on the community center portion. Yes, the community center would just have like a couple of minor things. I reached out to you today for the bullet for the wage language that we need. And I also had to reach out to the architect to get just a couple more pieces of information that I cannot read off of the documents that we had in house. Unfortunately, they blew them up, did not enlarge the dimensions. So just trying to give a better descriptor of dimensions and things like that for the RFP. So hopefully in a day or two here, we'll have that out to people to kind of read and then be ready to stick it out there and get some numbers.
Okay. As far as the Times Farm Bridge, you know, that closeout is still inching towards completion. We just got a bill from the state for their portion through Close Jensen and Miller who did the initial evaluation work on the bridge. So that was the holdback. I got to review the paperwork before I pay that, but that probably is our final payment,
and represents full closeout of that project, which will be just so, just so residents understand this is a bridge that actually has been functional for what three years now for,
it was completed and opened in 2017. So it was five years ago we five years substantially the bridge. Yes so for perspective on how long that those funds may be tied up. Right the state does not work quickly that's for sure. The good news is we're going to have about a $100,000 in that swing fund that could be applied towards other bridge and culvert projects.
Because I think we had 180 at one point so they have obviously build us for some other things so. Correct. Okay.
Steve Grant. So Steve Grant, I'm still working on cost data. The next thing in terms of regulatory approval, the 08/24 referral to the Planning and Zoning Commission already broached at their last meeting. It will be finalized on July 18. I would hope that they will approve it, but I'm not absolutely sure because it's their commission to do as they so choose. We did get the results back from asbestos and lead sampling. There is a presence of some asbestos and some lead. We're going to need estimates from remediation contractors. I have some estimates currently for demolition contractors. We have a reasonable ballpark for that.
Do any of those people have in house that we can reach back out to them? Not of them.
There were, I did see some of the abatement contractors also offered demolition. So I'm going to reach out to them and see whether they'll quote it both ways, just abatement and abatement plus demolition. The survey is basically complete. There's one back corner the surveyor still has some questions about. He's coming back to resurvey that back corner of this week, but we basically have a completed boundary survey at this point. I did apply for a variance to the Zoning Board of Appeals that had to be filed as of last Friday. I got the application and the notice to the abutters. We're in good shape there. The Zoning Board of Appeals meeting is July 20. BSC is on the hook for getting us an engineering design for the foundation. I'm hoping to have that this week. I did meet with Millennium Builders. They're Crocs easyIQC vendor for this project. I chose them because I think that's the one way we can get something that meets our current purchasing policy. And we get a firm estimate in time for the grant. We will need a formal resolution by the Board of Selectmen. But before that, we need the eight twenty four referral anyway, and we sure as heck should have the variants in place. So we know we're actually going to get granted a variance. It might take a special meeting or we might be able to wait till the next board of selectman meeting and still get the grant in on time. I'll keep you informed when I get a little farther.
Do you need, do you need something from us for the, variance to the purchasing policy?
Yeah, I think we should discuss that. So I was going to discuss that on item HC under the steep grant application for 15 Center Street, but we could do it here if you'd prefer. Let's just do it now and get it out the way. The short version.
I'll give you the short version. I did cut one corner in this and that is the authorization to survey it to BSC Engineering. And the reason I did that was I needed a ZBA application submitted on sevenseven, and you only approved me to even start this grant process on, you know, roughly twenty days before that. The only way I was getting that was to
go with the contractor where I knew I could get it in time. Well, and just for clarification for the rest of the board, BSC has been doing our town engineering work for a little bit while we've been interviewing and going through the process of putting out RFP for town engineering. Right.
So the bottom line is anything that is over $5,000 is supposed to be competitively bid. And I did not. The board of finance had some issues with that. And I resolved the issues by paying for that portion of the fee that was greater than $5,000 So basically, I wrote a check to the town for $2,600 to do this so I could keep the project going.
Have you since received that money back? No. Okay. Right. So the issue here is that the board of finance wanted you to come back to the Board of Selectmen and CIP as the governing body to ask for an exemption here and then pass that along to them. Correct. To make this easier, let's just I'll make a motion that we ask for variance to the purchasing policy for the contracting of engineering services for the Center Street projects, Deepgram. I'll second.
Discussion, Jeff? Nope, I'm good. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Eric, get your check back, please.
Yep, Board of Finance still has to approve though. So one more meeting to go. Not a problem. Thank you. Okay, so that's basically where we are. The only other thing I would say with the STEEP grant is because we know the school wants to apply for a STEEP grant too. What I would just like the board to authorize is that I don't know what the exact amount of this steep grant is. I mean, because I don't have all the cost numbers. I will, you know, certainly by the time it needs to submit it. And I would just ask that we allow
the board of education to submit the second application for whatever funds remain between that and the cap of $500,000
Well, I think we already let the school know at the last meeting that they we wanted verification that they were going to have outside access to that to that park. So we're still waiting on clarification of that. She said she would get that. So believe we need to see that that's done before we're going to move forward with that. That's my own personal take.
Right. So I can send you what Val sent me to that effect. I originally thought she sent it to the whole board of selectmen. I did not realize she just sent it to myself and Jeff McGuire. So part of that fault is mine. I should have forwarded that to the whole board several weeks ago when I got it. I would be happy to forward that to the board. But again, you don't actually, I mean, as long as you're okay in principle with them doing the second application, then, you know.
I can't speak for anyone else. In principle, I certainly am. But my caveat, and I think it's fair, is that if the town is going to be putting this type of money into something that it should be accessible to the town, you know, and that so it doesn't make any sense to have an ADA accessible playground if the only way you can access it is from the school. So I definitely wanna see that stuff otherwise I wouldn't be supportive of it, you know. I mean if that's the case we can take that playground and put it you know in a different location that everyone can use it you know and not just outside of school hours or you know so.
But what's the deadline on all this? It's coming up soon, right? So Eric, you August 15. Which is
We have a meeting before that. Okay. So yes, if you can forward that stuff to us, then if we have any questions, we'll need to reach out to her to get that information before the next meeting.
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, the connectivity grant project has been stalled a little bit. We had to re change the contractor that was doing the timber rail fence. We had to do that to meet our minority contractor set aside. That project has been rebid out to them and we're just waiting for the contractor to get in and do the work. Hopefully that will take place relatively quickly. We are talking about spending some extra money on that both for plantings and also for lighting on the parking area there. We're doing that because we have the extra funds in the grant to accommodate that. So it's not something that's coming out of taxpayer dollars. So I will keep you guys all appraised of that. I had hoped it was going be done August 1, but it's clearly not going to be fully done by then.
Was that contract competitive or did it go up because we had to change contactors?
From my end, I don't know because we negotiate based on unit price through the program. So it hasn't changed the town's cost or the town's how much of the grant it's going to chew up. Okay. As far as the town wide alarms, FTP finally finished the alarm system rebuildinstall at the Public Works Building. It's been really annoying me that it's taken this long, but they finally have got that system fully addressed. We have had some problems in a couple of really bad rainstorms with signal strength in some of the buildings because currently we have interior antennas. We are looking at relocating some of the antennas to the exterior of the building. The one we're having the most problems with is the library. We just had to work out where exactly we could drill to give us the minimum amount of problems and still mount an exterior antenna. That's it for town wide alarm monitoring. Let's see. The good news is we are in the black for last year's budget, Not by a lot, but we're definitely cash positive for last year. So that's a really good thing. We're a lot farther along to closing out than we were in previous years at this point.
We still do have some expenses that are not accounted for. We did encumber the cost of the resident state trooper, so that doesn't show up on the balance that's still there. We would expect to get the bill for the resident state trooper sometime in August, which is normally when the state gets around to sending it. What I don't know is how because they bill us, they don't really tell us ahead of time what their indirect costs are for that position. Given the cost of fuel and how much resident state troopers burn, don't know how that's going to affect the cost of the trooper program. We did have a little bit of slack knack because partway through the year when our current resident state trooper came on, he had a lot less seniority than our previous one. So presumably there's some cost savings there that could absorb any cost in indirects.
Given the status for the finance office right now, have we looked into or reached out to the auditor to see if we can, if there's someone he can recommend for, you know, assistance to help out Marina to, so that she doesn't get buried while we're in the process of looking for the treasurer here?
I have not specifically reached out to the auditor to ask that question.
Guess the question is, do we need it? I mean, I'm assuming we might need something at some point here,
you know. Marina, what do you think? You're on the call.
I think I'll probably guys get someone. I think I'll just need help with, you know, like the cleanup after the audit of some accounts and make sure everything is all straight and narrow going forward. I I think I should be okay until you guys get a treasurer but I mean I guess it wouldn't help her to ask Michael what you think as well.
Okay. So let's put that on the list of questions. And when we talk to Michael about the, the audit situation as well. Okay. If he can refer us to accounting firms that may be able to handle it, you know? Okay.
We should have, we should have something to work with, whether it's honestly, maybe that's something that we, if we can get it done quickly, encumber from last year, because it's really a last year issue anyways, you know?
You'd have to ask that one of the board of finance.
I'm sure given that it's a common sense thing, they would be okay with it. Well, let's try to get an answer from Michael first.
Okay. We have been notified that the American Recovery Act funding the second allotment has not been released yet, but it's likely to be released fairly quickly. But I can't tell you what fairly quickly means in the state's vernacular. But that should be released at some point relatively soon. As far as town hall projects, the water bottle filler that we wanted, which was the less expensive unit. Finally once again found an online supplier that added available. So, we did order that that is being installed tomorrow. The VoIP system at the town hall and all the locations is up and running smoothly. We have some lingering issues we got double billed by Granite which we're trying to resolve.
Did we double pay or did we catch it? No, we haven't paid them but
know, but it's an outstanding bill that we're arguing over. There are a couple might relatively minor issues that we're going to have to work out with the prior provider. The libraries come back to us and said they have an issue with one of their their phone in the basement. They want some kind of cordless unit. So we'll have to make some minor changes but overall the system is up and running. It works a lot better than what we had before. So overall it's good and it's costing us roughly half per month what the previous system was. And so we canceled the other system we're out? Yep.
What was the problem with the AC? I remember it being down but what did we end up deciding it was?
Honestly, I think it just gets frozen up. The indoor coil was completely frozen. We do still have to get a better pan under the indoor because it has overflowed several times and screwed up the drywall in the bathrooms. I do need to get the HVAC guy back in to address that.
But it just freezing up. There usually is a reason for that either it's under, over, there's a line issue, there's a refrigerant quantity problem.
It doesn't have Right. To So I was there when the HVAC tech came, you know, and that was the first thing we checked, which was the superheat and the sub cooling, you know, it's well within the normal range for the instrument. It was not at the time he tested it, it was functioning normally and it has not been a problem since my suspicion. It's only my suspicion is that what they did when they had the election is they left all the windows open in the building. They opened all the windows and the AC was running. Then they got enough moisture in the system that they caused a problem with it. Is my guess, but I don't know. It's fine
on hotter days afterwards. All right. So I think it's not a problem that needs serious aggressive. Okay. All right.
So as far as the transfer station, Mr. Lumber did complete his Eagle Scout project and there's now sorting bins at the transfer station. And I would really like to thank him for all his work with that. We did relocate the tires to the blue building, you know, where it was. That whole little shack part is set up for the cart program. And then the tires go in the blue building. We did have an issue with one very unhappy resident whose driveway was in Andover and houses in Coventry that's insisting he has the right to use the Andover transfer station but we're frankly just not issuing them a sticker. There was a little bit of negative publicity over that but you know that happens. You know I don't know if you want any more explanation over that.
No, I think that's addressed. Taxes have been sent to Coventry so it won't be an issue anymore. Right.
We did on Saturday apparently turn away an awful lot of people who didn't have a sticker, several of whom have complained about it. We did the same thing we do most years, which was give people one week amnesty. The first Saturday and the first Wednesday, you know, we just warn people that their stickers out of date and they will not be allowed back in until they have a correct one, you know, and then we turn them away. So there was Can
we talk to Carol Lee about maybe doing a late night this week or doing something on Saturday for Saturday hours, given the number of people that were turned to Ray because of the limited hours in her office. And I mean, I also saw people walking out because the, it was so backed up in there. So I think we tried to, we need to, given that we didn't, we weren't able to cover the missing hours for a variety of reasons, I think we need to do something to make it up to the residents.
Oh, she's on the call. Do you want to ask her now or offline? Carol, are you on? I am.
Carol, is there any way we can do something with maybe Saturday hours or something? Because the number of people that got turned away for stickers this week already in one day or we're on day one and given all the people that got hit last week. How about I do a late Wednesday night?
Okay. What time would you go to on Wednesday, Carol? Probably six or seven.
Okay. Paula, can you do something? Maybe put that on the blast. Let's put it out there so everybody gets it. And then we'll Facebook it and, you know, just try to make everybody aware we're doing a late night to try to make up for it. We apologize for the inconvenience, something like that. Carol,
can you just think about the time and then confirm that tomorrow and then I can get that out there? Yes,
I will do that. Thank you for the accommodation, Carol. Thank you. I
mean, in their defense, we give stickers out two months before July 1.
This isn't unless Mondays. I No one's pointing a finger at anyone and saying it's anyone's fault. We're just trying to accommodate what we know is a problem. Know we're in a customer service business let's be customer service oriented so nobody has to be at fault, just try to fix what the problem is.
That's it for me, unless you have other particular questions.
I just have a random question about that and dog licensing. So do we have a reason why we're having the stickers and the dog licensing expire the end of June?
Dog licenses are mandated by the state, Paula. Sorry for interrupting, but they expire June 30 and that's by the state of Connecticut department at.
Right no thank you I was just I kind of like the idea that they both expire at the same time because if you go in the office then you can do both at the same time. I was just thinking sometimes people are away you know I know we have plenty of time where people can come in early, but just thinking for customer service reasons like Adrian just said, but just thinking out loud, asking that question if the stickers and the dog licensing can be moved,
But we've had the stickers for a while and we've had the, you know, it's just that people just don't think about it until the last minute. Right, right. Just a thought. Okay. Right. And obviously
an awful lot of residents are unhappy with the fact that it's something they can't do online you know but that's always been a board of selectman decision that you know it's a trade off between the number of people that are going to cheat the system you know, and the inconvenience to the town residents. And I'm not saying I have a good solution for it. I don't. Yeah, I'm just saying that that's that's kind of been a decision
of how we see the way we proceed. There was an ask of residents if there was a way, if there were like, say for instance, they're only asking for one sticker, could they get one sticker via mail, you know, sent to them, you know, pay the same $50 fee, get one sticker via mail. And then if they want a second sticker, they have to come in,
you know. I wonder if that is that a logistic nightmare or headache for the office?
I don't know. Carol, can you give us some feedback on that?
The only problem with that, that when the program was implemented is because the majority of people are going to put them on their own vehicle, but what about a few that give it to someone who lives out of town? That was the thought, and that's why it was implemented this way where the stickers have to be put on vehicles here at the town office.
Carol, what if we did it with just one sticker, though, and they couldn't get the other one, they'd have to bring in show the first ones on their car before we give them a second one and then put it on the second one. So we're gonna make them drive their vehicle in if they put the sticker on in the second vehicle? If they if they want a second one, yes. Because a lot of people are saying they just want one sticker and they'd be willing to just do it through the mail. This was some some conversation that happened on Facebook. I'm just trying to relay it.
That's the Board of Select and decision. That's what you want to do, but they just wanted to eliminate any chance of abuse of the sticker And that's why they're not done through the mail and even before when we had the sticker program and the stickers were free they were applied down at transfer station so this way you know they they were put on there at the transfer station and get the registration and ensure.
Yeah. And then when you mail it, there might be a lag time. You know, there there's pros and cons to it. Right? So then the person sends it in thinking they're going to get it in time for the, you know, next renewal and the office is backed up. Then they, then they're going to get mad that they didn't get it until a week later. So it's.
We, we really have to, we really need some way to brainstorm this because this has been a frustration every year. We're getting a lot of.
Well, let's, let's add it to a future agenda we're not in the thick of it. No. And, but it's still on fresh on the mind.
We need somebody smarter than us though, to come up with something. Cause we're, we're banging our heads on this one.
Yeah. I, I think, I think we're, we're smart enough to figure it out. We just gotta
just kind of talk it out and figure All right. It think we can get everyone that's, you know, can look at the pictures and see the other stuff that's being done. I think that's kind of it for your report, Eric? That's it for me. Okay. I see Valerie's on the call. Can we circle back to her real quick? Valerie, do you have a Hey, how you doing? Did you by any chance Eric said he sent it out. Unfortunately, it didn't get forwarded to us. Can you just confirm for us so maybe we can give her permission to sign off? How did you make out with getting the ADA access from the outside and the engineering for that? What do you mean? For the STIP grant.
You guys haven't approved applying for the STIP grant yet.
I don't know if At the last meeting, we said the requirement from us would be the ADA access from the outside.
No. Actually. If we do the grants, then I will have somebody come in and drop that plan for what it would look like.
Well, we're not gonna prove it until we actually see that it's done. I mean, that's sort of a you put in the heart before the course. You know, the horse before the cart there. At this meeting,
it was my assumption at this meeting. And I spoke with I don't see Jeff on here, McGuire. It was my assumption that at this point you guys would simply be letting me know that yes, I can complete that grant for submission for August.
Because that's how it was contingent on on making sure that you had the the ADA access from the exterior.
We'll make sure that goes in there if we can do the grant.
So the stuff you sent over to Eric was not does not include the ADA access from the exterior?
From the exterior, meaning there was a question. I need you to be more specific. The original question was matching funds.
We discussed that. You said that you're gonna try it without because you said sometimes they do not. Yep. And then it was whether or not
you guys would have grants that were $500,000. And if they were, then the town has to be the only one that applies. If Eric's grant was less than $500,000,
I was asking for the difference because Right. And we said that we were okay with giving you the difference, but it was contingent upon. We wanted to see that you had the ADA access from the outside because otherwise the only, if it's only available from the school side, then when school is not in session, that playground is not ADA accessible for anyone.
Well, that if if you're telling me I can apply for the grant for for August 15 with that as the contingency, then I'll make sure that's in the application.
Just tell me Yeah. The two contingencies were that and then the difference of what Eric is gonna end up needing. Can you tell me how much can you tell me how much the grant can be? Have I'm sorry. Missed the beginning of the meeting, but can you tell me what the difference is so that I know when I write He is still getting estimates because we had a we have an abatement issue that we have to address as part of that. So
Do you know what the potential date would be that I would? Because obviously when I put the No, understand. Eric?
Know, I'm hoping like hell by around August 1, have that in both, but you know, I'm still chasing down an awful lot of suppliers. There's an awful lot of moving pieces to this. But we're somewhere in what
the three range right now? But there's nothing to me that says this grant is likely we're going to be applying for more than 300,000 in funding.
So we're we're somewhere in the $300,000 range. So Okay.
So then in adding in, additional secondary access, I'll make sure that the grant doesn't exceed 200,000.
Yeah. It it needs to be an ADA access. That was the that was the thing. Well, it has a d x ADA access
to the playground itself. Right. You're asking for access from the town side.
ADA access from the town side. Yeah. To be able to to get up in there. So and it you know, there's a concern that there may not be enough room in order to do it where it's where we're we are currently looking at doing it. So, you know, that's why that that was put in there. Just cause it's, you know, would make no sense to have a playground that's ADA accessible and then I'll have a way to get to it, you know, We for something that's ADA
also do have multiple playgrounds, thank goodness, or multiple phases of the playground. So there's the upper playground, then there's the preschool side of the playground, then there's the lower playground with the two areas there. So But those are ADA compliant though, right?
Currently, none of them are ADA compliant. So in terms of access though, I do have options. Okay. You know, for the different phases in terms of making them ADA compliant. Yeah,
that's the thing. It's just if we're if the town as a whole is, you know, gonna support that kind of money, it needs to be accessible, you know, when school's not in session.
Yep. Were there any other questions from earlier? I'm sorry, I logged on late.
I don't believe so. Oh, not related to the playground, but we're still trying to get access to the server. So apparently it's been rebuilt now, but Which some kids server?
The school server that has the financial documents on the financial stuff, Phoenix and whatnot. You're talking about the old one, the disabled one. It's been Okay.
So you want the old one Phoenix, but you want access to the schools
or to the town. We need access to the Edmunds data and to the Phoenix data. Well, Edmunds you have already, that's active. Right. Yes.
So what we need is that Tyler apparently they have rebuilt the server on which Phoenix resides and they have Phoenix up and running. Okay. But we was still thinking of. Normally, can actually access it. Okay. Who needs to have that access?
Sherry does and Marina does because they need that to complete the audit.
Okay. I'll check the status of that. For the old server for Phoenix, for you're looking that server for the school side and the town side.
Yeah. So Phoenix as a Phoenix as a whole resided on that server, both sides. There was no separate sides. It was just town financial data because you guys didn't have your own account. Everything went through that. So And you need it for the old one, prior to when we switched over in 2021. Yes. Okay.
I'll check and find out what's going on with that.
Yeah. It's just been a little frustrating because this has been a back and forth since it went down. You know? So Well, this is the first you guys have asked me. So I'll check on the status tomorrow and let you know. No. Let's let's back up. So I actually asked you about this the other day, and you said it wasn't a school problem. It was a town problem. No. At the at the meeting that we or the the group, at the the group workshop that we had, I asked you about this in between.
You asked me if I knew about our server crashing. Yes. If our server has not crashed.
Oh, Valerie, your your No. No. No. School's data is also on that server. Phoenix
From 2020 to 2021, now I understand what you're asking me for, the old server data. Our current server did not crash. Our current server that If
someone asks you about a server that crashed and you've only had one server crashed
It didn't crash it didn't crash while we were using it at the school, Adrian. So I will look into what you're talking about. I just wrote it down and I will find out exactly what's going on with it. This I mean, this really needs to get addressed. So Okay. She's gonna she's gonna let us know. Thank you. Was there anything else? That's it.
So since that was on right now, I would suggest that we switch to nine L and deal with the generator for AES also. Okay, I think that's a great idea. We can hop over that.
So everybody knows I received a request from the school district asking the town to pay for the current maintenance and ongoing maintenance for the generator in the school district. And they because in the school's estimation since that's required for the town to maintain the status as the emergency shelter that should be the town's requirement. And Val, you can chime in.
It wasn't the general maintenance, the $480 a year that we pay for the regular checkup on it. We have always paid that. So I don't have a problem, know, keeping that in there. What happened a couple of years ago, and then again, just this past year was there were difficulties with the generator that caused that bill to significantly exceed $480 A few years ago, I had sent to Eric in that packet, there were quite a few issues that had occurred in the range of thousands. Kinsley had to come and do some repairs to the generator this year. And at the end of the year, then we had a bill for just under 3,000. So my request was that we are absolutely okay with maintaining the general upkeep the $480 But my request was when we do have those extra unforeseen bills that come in for things related to the generator.
Because it is there simply because I can't open if I'm generator. So we do, it really doesn't do us a whole lot of good, but we do have What to you
can stop right there for a second. If you don't have the generator, you don't have heat, which means your pipes are gonna freeze. So I would say that actually does you quite a bit of good.
So the question then was because the town has to have the generator in the building to maintain our status as the emergency shelter, would the town, know, be so kind as to agree that when those larger unforeseen bills come through, if I'd be able to put those through to the town. That was my request, not for the $4.80. I'm perfectly okay with keeping that. It's these other ones when they come through.
And Val, you might you might have said this. So I'm trying to absorb all this. So what was the situation where it was that made it a higher bill? Was it something that Yeah.
There was a malfunction and a repair that had to take place and it came in at just the $2,900 I think it came in at just under $3,000 And I just didn't have that in the budget, along with some of the other things that had happened this year. It just wasn't there. And so that's why I had mentioned it to Eric and to McGuire and I put a letter together just in hopes that when that occurs, like in this case, the town would help us out with that.
Well, mean, I'm just going to say from a maintenance standpoint, those things happen. It's no different than when you have unexpected things on your air conditioning, right? And on your, you you had some issues with a water heater, those things come up. So we have them on the town side as well. You know, that happens on a regular basis. Ours usually bigger like bridges, but, you know, but we do have them. So I personally, you know My question,
and I do know that it was supported by Jeff Maguire, which is why I sent the letter. But I would like to just remind you guys that when it does happen on a town side, sometimes you are able to go back to mean, the Board of Finance and ask for an additional allocation and the school being funded once a year. We don't have that ability to keep coming back when we have these things. And so we are at a loss at the town at the school side because we don't get to come back and ask for the overages because we're funded once a year. So I'm just simply asking
for these unforeseen things, for these things that come up related to the generator. I'm not asking for everything else. I'm asking for related to the generator if it's something that the town could take care of.
Okay. Well, can we talk about a little more next month when Mr. Maguire is on the call and see what his thoughts were? Because he got the letter direct Eric did? Okay. Adrian and Scott and Jeff, what are your thoughts?
I just remember when I was on the board of finance, I think the school came back once or twice with some requests for some additional funding.
And generally it's taken out of the non lapsing account, which you have. Yeah.
Valerie, if you have any issues or it's something like this that comes up, I mean, can easily go to the board of finance and just ask for those funds. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't approve something like that. Pretty much out of our, it's pretty much out of our hands. That's sort of point finance decision. Right. That's sort of the point of the non lasting account is that you have access to funds if you need it for these things.
Then I also will ask the Board of Selectmen to add to next month's meeting the idea of the revenue that has come in from cool from 2018 until 2022. That money that check for maintenance and repairs and general, I think it's under, you know, like red has been sent to the town from 2018 until now. And it's a few thousand dollars a year, but that's been given to the town. We have not seen that money up until this point. And I haven't seen it.
Cool's a nonprofit. They balance their own Cool is a nonprofit. They balance their own books.
But the check's been going to the town since 2018 as it that that's where the the check's been going for the rental of the school. And so I would ask that that revenue source be considered at the next meeting as well.
You would want to bring that up with the Board of Finance again. So Adrian, that is on the agenda. That's item nine j cool status rent checks. And and honestly, that's been occurring since long before I was the town administrator, but it does make sense to me if it occurs within the school and they deal with the added maintenance costs, etcetera, with the cool program there that they should be getting the rent checks.
But I don't know why this is the way it was set up. That's not the board of selectman's purview. That's the board of finances. And again, I don't. As far as I know, so you're saying there's a check that's cut for the usage of the school? Yes.
Yeah. So I I would talk to the board of finance, put it before them.
Would that mean I would certainly send that to the board of finance because that would be where I would love to be able to take out the the current bill that is $3,000 for Kinsley.
I don't I'm just to be clear, I don't think you're gonna get back funds because I don't know that the board of selectmen would allow you to go back and collect because those those accounts and years already closed out. So, you know, you can't go back to 2018.
I do have to tell you, I'm a little disappointed then because of these revenue sources have been coming in. And on the one hand, I'm being told that money went to the town. That's kinda too bad. But then I'm asking for '18,
2019, twenty twenty Twenty twenty twenty are already are already closed years. We certainly can't go back and rework a budget that's already been audited. So
Well, there's been checks since January of this year as well. So perhaps I could talk to the board of of finance on that as well.
Again, yeah, but you're not gonna be able to go back to 2018. Certainly, anything going forward, I don't have any objection to personally, but to go back to previous years that are already audited and closed is not going to happen, you know.
Well, I wasn't thinking that we were going to reach back, but I do think it would be appropriate for the cool rent checks that we received in the twenty one-twenty two fiscal year and for the checks going forward
to be deposited with the school, not with the town. Yeah. Again, don't, I don't have any issue with that, but you know, I think also too, the question becomes if that check was coming in, where was I don't, I don't remember seeing that in any budget item as a source of revenue, you know? So that's another, I guess, question for the finance department as we're working through the accounts, because it certainly hasn't popped It
into the rentals revenue line item, which should be on the revenue report. Okay.
Is it late is it clearly labeled cool rental or maybe that's why? No. It's just it's just like general rentals, think it's titled as.
Okay. Because that funding includes rentals from other things other than just the school.
Yeah. So I think it's great that you found this and brought it to the attention, and we certainly, I don't think have an issue with it going forward and talk to the Board of Finance about seeing if they can can adjust you for January till now. Okay, we're set with the Board of Finance. Thank you. Val, do you have anything else? Nope. That was it.
We still don't have Scott on. Has anyone else heard from Scott? If he's gonna hop on or not? He's he's been on. He's been on. Where is he?
I don't know. I don't know what kind of view you get on your Zoom there. I'm here, Adrian.
Oh, okay. Sorry. I wasn't seeing you, buddy. Just making sure you got were okay. Yep. I'm fine. Thank you.
Alright. So we hopped around a little bit. Admins report is done. Do we wanna hop over to Carol Lee and get her out the way so she can head home?
I concur, and that would also work because we got Dennis on the line also. Alright. Perfect. Carol? I
have here with me. George Knox, Don Denley, and Karen Liddell. So there are four here. Patty is not feeling well, so she wasn't able to join.
Can I make a suggestion and have Dennis do a small presentation? Certainly.
Okay, if that's okay with the chair and Adrian, I'd like to I was the one that asked to have this on the agenda for this meeting because we are, you know, facing a time strictures. We have to get this on the ballot for November 8 if we want to go forward with it. A lot of work has been done on it by the commission and also by the board of selectmen and myself and Carol Lee as well. And you know, we need to move forward on it. So we're at the stage of the process now where the commission has filed its draft report. The Board of Selectmen met on February 20, I'm sorry, not February 26, June 26, and made some suggested some changes to that report. And now we're at the point where the commission commissioners and the Board of Selectmen are supposed to meet and the at the with the result being that the commission will then vote on what to do with the suggestions made by the Board of Selectmen at the June 26 meeting. Now I've gone I've we've prepared a document that's in the packet. It's a three page document. It's a pages three, four and five of the packet. And that that includes everything that is up to date, including the original draft report and the amendments made by the Board of Selectmen, as well as well, that's where we're at right now. And, you know, if you recall on the June 26, what the Board of Selectmen did was make several amendments to some of the some of the provisions and based on what I'm hearing, the Charter Revision Commission probably does not have an issue with a lot of those changes. There was a change suggested by
Jeff Murray, a very good change to the section on the qualifications for the town administrator. Jeff, I actually found some language in an ad I found in the paper that was very similar to what you what you stated, Jeff, and I and I put it right into the proposal. And I don't think anybody has a problem with that. I don't think anybody had a problem with us cutting out the police services out of the long list of other other public officials that were going to be treated differently under the recommendation of the Charter Revision Commission as pretty much agreed with by the Board of Selectmen. So there's there aren't too many changes except for one. The one major change is the fact that the Board of Selectmen suggested that the town meeting, the budget town meeting no longer include a vote on the budget. That's a big deal. In fact, it's such a big deal that they had originally the board of, I'm sorry, the Charter Revision Commission originally had set up a bunch of four in fact possible ballot questions based on the work that had been done up to a certain point. And this one change that you have the Board of Selectmen recommended at the last meeting would necessitate another ballot question.
That would be changing the board, changing the town meeting to something that is just a formality. That would be a town meeting whereby the Board of Finance would report to the public on the budget, but no vote would be taken and you go straight to referendum. From what I understand, that is an issue that the Charter Revision Commission probably is the only issue that is where there are differences of opinion between the Charter Revision Commission and the Board of Selectmen. I'm trying to I'm trying to save time here. That's why I'm telling you this is what I'm my understanding is. And probably, you know, unless there's unless there's another issue. And that would be the Charter Revision Commission people because anything you've agreed on up to now, for example, the bifurcation of the budgets that's already done. That's you've agreed on that now that you're locked into that. That's the way the process works. You're only here to discuss where you have differences. And the only difference that's major in my view is that provision that would say your town meeting is simply going to be a get together without any voting. So that I'll leave you with that. And Carol, you're here with three members of the commission. So you have a quorum. That's for your five member group. You have a quorum easily four. And there's a quorum here of the Board of Selectmen. You have four selectmen. But the first vote would have to be taken by the Charter Revision Commission to either approve or disapprove the changes made by the Board of Selectmen.
And then after that, if there's agreement, the Board of Selectmen could vote to approve the entire package. And then in the there's another agenda item on later in the agenda under new business. You could consider then if there's an agreement or if there's final action, you could consider the ballot questions and then if that works, we'd be all done with this. And Carol Lee in her role as town clerk could send this off to the Secretary of State's office. Get it on the ballot for November 8, and you wouldn't have to deal with it again. I noticed by listening to the meeting at so far that you know you're deferring several, know you're having a long meeting tonight with a lot of really important issues and you're already deferring some of these issues of necessity to the next meeting. Well, in my view, if we don't finish this tonight, you're probably going to need to have a special meeting in the interim in order if you want to make the deadline to get I didn't, I don't see, I don't see in the packet
and forgive me if I'm missing it, but I don't see a list of the proposed questions.
Yeah, that's in the packet further on down the post questions. That's a, that's a secondary item. You first have to deal with the differences between their original proposal and the changes you made on the June 26 and from what I understand the only the only difference there is the item on the town meeting. But that's that's what we're dealing with now Adrian. With all due respect, it's items.
I think three pages three, four and five of the packet. I believe I found the others it jumps to the next set of questions is at eighteen starts at eighteen.
That that's not on the agenda for this particular item. That that is on the agenda under new business. I mean, we can go right into that if we can we can finish this up. That makes I I I that's all I have. Unless you have questions I just wanted to set the set the stage for your discussion try to save time.
Yeah, have a question. And I Carol. So Dennis, we should read like Section seven zero one c qualifications and compensation read the new wording for that section and then the four of us vote on that is that correct?
Well what you could do is if you if you're in agreement with the changes that were made by the by the Board of Selectmen on June 26 but for the changes that were made to the town meeting which I consider to be a big change You could vote on all of them together and say you say that you are approving those changes except for the change on the town meeting which you would like to discuss with the Board of Selectmen now. Okay. So that way or you could go over each one individually. But that's that's that's up to you. It's not up to me. Okay,
so I just pulled all of the members. Would like to do it where we have all three sections. So section seven zero one c, qualifications and compensation of the town administrator, section seven zero one general, and section seven zero two. Sorry, let me back up. 70170 Right.
So all in favor of approving the changes recommended by the Board of Selectmen to Section seven zero one C qualifications compensation, Section seven zero one General, and section seven zero two of the charter. Aye. Aye. So we had unanimous close to accept those three sections with the revisions proposed by the Board of Selection. Now, discussion with Section eight zero three of the annual town budget meeting and referendum and making a major change to the only forum where taxpayers and electors of the town of Andover can voice their opinion and remove items that they don't agree with. I know that we've discussed and we'll take a motion as to who is it all of those opposed to the proposed section eight zero three provision
say aye. Aye. Unanimous.
Excuse me, Carol. Hey. Now's the time You did incorrectly. Now's the time for you you're getting ahead of yourself. Now's the time for you to discuss that with the board of selectmen. Oh, to discuss it. Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. So, And I you got four members of the commission.
Okay. So, we do. So, I did lead into that we're opposed because it is the only forum where taxpayers, the intellect wars can voice their opinion and remove items from the budget. So I'm going to turn it over to Don. He would also like to say something.
Yes, I would like to know what the motivation is for this change and which ones are in favor of eliminating town budget meeting where we have a chance to not only have public comments, but also make motions to budget as we pick. Where does this come from? And then what's the floor in favor of that?
Anyone else want to chime in or? So this came up if you had watched the last Board of Selective meeting, there was some back and forth discussion on some of the adjustments that we were looking at. And one of the things that of concern is that as a as a town, we tend to get in this round robin at these budget meetings, you know, and part of the problem is it's such a small representation of the town. And in the past, even when we've had issues that cleared that meeting, if there was really a town issue, for instance, I'll go back and point out the back when we talked about the trooper removal when I was on the Board of Finance, you know, the budget got killed because of that. It still was addressed at a town level, even though it didn't get addressed directly, you know. At that budget meeting, but the concern is that general you're talking about you know, give or take you know 120 people 150 people. Making a decision that might affect the whole town Well, shouldn't say might, it does affect the whole town. And you know, the concern is we get a lot of feedback from the seniors that the budget meeting is too late, from the parents that it's a problem for them because of the timing. Some of our seniors don't want to be driving at night. It's a little bit of a problem for them. The parents are putting kids to bed. So the meeting itself is not all that well attended. And so there's a concern that a small group is having maybe a little bit too much of a sway on the budget, whether it's
and it can be from the parent side, it can also be from the resident side. It can be from outliers so allowing the whole town to have a say in the budget before we start taking it apart, I think, was was was part of that you know. We have these we have you know, give or take five meetings for each board at the very least there's certainly plenty of time for public comment prior to the town meeting and then at the town meeting we were very, very poorly attended unfortunately
So that was some of the background and concern, you know? Well, you're talking about comments only. I mean, I've been going to town meetings since I've lived here for thirty years. Have Sure. Watched changes in that budget take place at town meetings. Now, of the town meetings, when there was a controversial item going on or extra spending, I've seen 150 people who are well versed in what's going on in the town budget at that point, and these people care. So I think to take away their voice, whether it be seniors or people in the middle or people who are dead, I think is a disservice to this town. And I'm embarrassed, Okay? And I'm really upset that that people, okay, will take it upon yourself to remove that line item from from town voters. Okay? It's it's literally
Well, I mean, be to be clear, Don, we're not asking you to remove it. We're asking you to give the townsfolks a chance to decide if it's still a good form of government for them. But where where does the town where the town voters that want to go to these meetings? Where do they get an opportunity to make a motion to reduce the budget. But Don you're saying we're you know a small group is making a decision now that what you're what you're you're doing as a Charter Commission is you're moving this forward for the whole town to take a vote on. So if you move this forward, it doesn't change anything except that it allows the town as a whole during a governor's race. So you're going to get a good turnout. You're allowing the town as a whole to decide if that town meeting is still the right form of government for them. That's all you're doing. You're allowing them to make the decision.
They'll decide also. Valid questions to be, does the town voters and citizens of taxpayers of Andover want to eliminate the town budget meeting? So we're removing their ability to remove line items from the budget. That's is it. You put that on there? Any one of the questions?
You're eliminating the meeting completely that's the question right and and or the vote at the meeting. I mean, you go back and look at it, there's not a lot taken out of those budgets, The issue really is more than it becomes a contention. Budget meetings are are the mainstay of this town.
We're gonna have an honest conversation about there were mainstay fifty years ago that they're they're so poorly attended now. It's frustrating.
I know. And to be honest, though, knew this year, didn't see poorly attended. I saw quite a few guys saw a pretty full auditorium on a bunch of these meetings from both the people who supported the increased spending and the people that didn't. I think you're absolutely correct there. I'd be able to disagree with that.
I would wholeheartedly say that best case scenario, you had what, 170 people at a meeting. Okay. Right?
Okay. But is a bad number? I think that's a pretty impressive number of people that did their homework, okay, and had enough knowledge to show up at these meetings. It's five It's percent Same from the microphone it's percent. It's 5%. You cannot
you should not stifle okay free speech. That's five. Okay, guys. Point of order here. Point of order. It's 5% of registered voters. Point of order, guys. Come on. I think what I think, Don, what our concerns are is that, you know, usually at the town meetings when it gets sent to referendum, it doesn't really reflect the flavor of the voters and it may get voted to get sent to referendum and then it fails. And then we come back to the town meeting. Like last year we went back and forth. What was it four times?
Right. You know? When So the Board of Eds used to spend money and they
stack with that, that's what happens. It's Well, could happen with a fire but Don, it could happen with a fire truck. It could be happening with anything. It can happen. It's part of the process. Okay? I don't know, understand why you're trying to like move the process. It's not broken. It doesn't need to be fixed. Yeah. I know we can remove it, but I mean, I don't remember the last time we've had something voted to remove and actually
And actually pass. Yes. Right. So it becomes a bone of contention for everybody. And again, you're allowing 5% of the voting public
to make a decision To decide on what what goes to referendum, which would have people involved
in the budget process with the Board of Finance and actually with crafting the budget and offering their opinions of public speak so we could craft something that's palatable to the public at large. All you can do with a board of finance meeting is test, make a comment. You think you have no there's no there's no way you can make a motion to reduce the line item. But those but those motions this is the only vehicle where you can stand in front of your
your town and your boards and reduce a line item with whether you fail or not. Have that ability to have that voice. Okay, I just want to put out there that I'm rep Fredens. We only have a few 100 people show up to vote on the budget. When you're talking about percentages, we may have about 20% of the people come out to vote at referendum. But anyway, rather than let this go on, we did vote because it's it's not gonna be productive. So as a commission, we are not in favor of removing that. So if we take that vote, Dennis, I see your hand. Yeah. Just wanted to say,
Carol, if you, know, you can take a you have to take a vote. The commission has to vote on on that item. If you're through discussing it, but just let me say this. Then the Board of Selectmen votes and the Board of Selectmen had final say on that item. Just wanted to know that.
Right, they can overrule and put that on to the ballot, but we just feel also that because this was so last minute, maybe if it was given it to given to us initially when we were first given our charges for the Charter Review, you know, we would have looked at things, looked at the reasons, but it was given to us at a meeting last week. So, we reviewed it. And again, we'll take the vote. You know, I'll call the vote here, but I just want you to know again that where it was just thrown out here last minute rather than in the beginning with all of our charges.
Carol, be so you understand this was not something that this literally came out of an organic discussion on the last. No, no, I understand. But again, it wasn't something we thought about until that meeting.
Right. And to to Adrian's comments, we're one of the only towns that really does this town meeting anymore. I mean, lot of towns just, you know, put the budget together and go to referendum. And some towns don't even Definitely have an outlier. It's just decided by the board of, you know, the town council. Well, that's a great idea. Yeah. Sure.
I don't just follow everybody else. No. No. Do take away the voice of their own individuals, the taxpayers. Scott, you say that? I'm just waiting here to say that. Oh, Scott. I think you say that and say that. Alright.
When you're through discussing it, Carol, you can take a vote. But, you know, there are a couple of board members who haven't chimed in yet. They may not want to. I don't wanna put pressure on anybody, but you know, it's supposed to be a discussion and you know, it may be that we're not gonna get anywhere with the discussion. I don't know, but that's that's what, you know, that's the way it's supposed to work. I mean Dennis, Dennis, in your experience, have you I mean, what what what way are towns going with this? Are they going just to a referendum or they still have a town meeting? Well, the the the there's so many different ways of doing it, Jeff. And, you know, like in in Wyndham, for example, it's my best example. We have a town meeting which is there's no vote taken. It just goes straight to referendum.
And, you know, a lot of people don't, you know, feel it's not really worth it to have that mean. Just go straight to referendum. But don't forget, Wyndham is, you know, we have about 12,000 voters. You you have nowhere near that here.
Right. But then you then you have larger towns like East Windsor that still does it this way. As a matter of fact, after the third failed referendum, their charter reads that the budget is reverted to the prior year's budget with a 2% cap. So, are other towns that still do this. And again, if this is something that you want to look at, there's nothing that prohibits the Board of Select and from appointing another Charter Revision Commission to look at this and put this on the next ballot, if you want it on the municipal election in May '23. But the thing is just and I am using last minute again, and I'm not accusing or anything like that, but this was just put out. I know it was just after discussion. However, we're not comfortable with this. And, you know, I would, I would like to take the vote on this of the commission as to what our recommendations, unless you have further.
I've got a question. Yep, I've got a question. So if the board of selectman had put this out there when you were first looking into things and gave you time. What's the difference between a week? What would you have done? You've done a little So
what we would have done is research more towns to see how many towns still do it this way and towns that do it this way, like I told you, one that I know obviously is Windsor the way that they do it, and then revert to the prior years, and it's defeated three times with a 2% increase. We haven't had time to really look at any other towns to see what their process is with the bifurcation. We had an opportunity to do research. We had an opportunity to look at towns that do this. We have an opportunity to look at Hebron's bifurcation report. With this one here, we had no time really to do any in-depth research. And plus two last minute, to be honest with you, I don't know if other taxpayers and electors of Andover will look at it like why why was it and I understand what you're saying, but I don't know how that's gonna be viewed.
Well, here's a here's a question, Caroline. Isn't their opinion or how they view it? Isn't that expressed on voting on that individual question? It's not going to be wrapped in as a package of charter changes. This would be an individual question that every every elector, every taxpayer in this town that has a vote would be able to have their say on the question if it's on the ballot. Isn't that where they get a chance to have a say? Okay, you're correct. However, we were asked at one of our charter revision mission meetings
if we did our due diligence in researching prior to making recommendations as far as the bifurcation on the budget. We could say yes. We can't say yes on this. So I do see that as a problem. I honestly could not tell anyone that yes, we did our due diligence and we are recommending this in good faith to the people of the town, the electors and taxpayers of the town.
This sounds shady to me. And also I'll use that word. I I like to know, are any of the four of you opposed to this? Any of the four of you is out there? King,
a Opposed to what, Don? To be honest, Don, it's not our it's not our place to say. It's our it's our it's our senate. Meeting. Proposed. So so individuals can stand up, make a comment, and make a motion to reduce a line item on the town budget. Donna, I I think you'll I think you guys need to make your take your vote and then we'll take ours. I think that's the appropriate. And I have one other question for Dennis.
Now Dennis, where this is something that will affect taxpayers, not the left tourism residents. Is this a question that a taxpayer would have to be allowed to hold on?
No, no it isn't Carol. The Okay. The Charter Revision Statute only allows electors, registered voters, the residents of the town, of course, to vote on on on the charter. Just to let you know. Out of town, people cannot vote. Okay.
Alright. So is are the board of selectmen, are you set with your discussion or any additional questions for us? My opinion is to allow the
Charter Revision Commission to go forward with the things that we've approved this evening.
Well, they need to take their vote and then we'll have our discussion. I'm just doing everybody else is talking about it. So I'm so I'm I know but they need to take a vote so then we can actually have our discussion. Right. But Scott wants to give us his opinion on that. Let him share his thoughts. Go ahead, Scott.
I think that they should be able to go forward with what they've already been approved. That's what they were tasked with. They should be able to go forward with what they approved and maybe the question of removing the town meeting should be on a question for the town voters to ask them if they'd like to remove the town meeting. If they do, then a future Charter Revision Commission can look So into a non binding question, Scott?
And then let them go forward with what they worked on and have a future question or just put it in the
November election if you'd like to see the Alright. So let's let let them take their vote and then we'll adjust that. So we can move forward here because we're we're getting in a circle.
Yeah, I think it's unless unless somebody else has something to say that hasn't already been said, you know, I would recommend that the Charter Revision Commission vote on this item, the item of being the the question of whether the town meeting should be changed so that no votes are taken at the town meeting. So I would recommend Carol that you take your vote and then the Board of Selectmen can discuss it among themselves in public right after this and then they can decide to vote the entire package.
All right, very good. Okay, all of those in favor of changing section eight zero three, the annual town budget meeting and referendum as proposed by the board of selected say aye. All opposed. Aye. Okay. So there are four against.
Now can I ask a question? Eight zero three, is eight zero three gs separate from that?
Eight zero three. It's all of 803. So it's 803. A B. B. C and d.
Parts of d. There's a part of d also that is already been agreed upon, that's the bifurcation.
I'm sorry yes the following shall be inserted into the charter as a new subsection eight zero three
G and also also the last part of D Carol that's already in blue if you have color. Right. That's the bifurcation
that's already in. Right but just saying section eight zero three the annual town budget meeting and raffle random changes
annual town budget meeting leave it leave it to that that's really what you're voting on the end right and that's what we did just vote on And we voted against. Yes. So I think that's clear. I just wanna make sure it's clear in the record because we have a record for this process. It's it's detailed and Right. Done And that's why that's why I'm here. So
what we so we need to do is take a vote on whether we accept everything as presented to us by the board of by the Charter Commission, or if we want to put the changes through that we agreed to last time, or come to some middle ground.
Well, hold on. The only issue really that you need you need to vote on the issue that we just discussed. But the other issues are all agreed upon already.
There's no they're not in play anymore. All right. So we don't have to take a vote to move them. We don't have to take a vote to move them forward. You do have to take a vote to move them forward but it should be. Was my point. It should be a formality. I understand, but we start to take the vote. You're right. Yes. You have the final vote. You're right. Okay. So move to the questions if you have to vote. My point was if we clear the questions up first, we can if we clear up these other issues first, we can take one final vote and then go to questions.
Yeah, you have to do this first before you go to the questions. Right. After you finish this, the questions will be easy. Right. Okay. So It should be.
Scott, you put forward an idea, Paula, Jeff, discussion. Your own thoughts on this?
I wasn't on the last meeting when you all had the discussion. So I'm just, I'm going off of meeting minutes and hearing tonight and watching the meeting back. I like Scott's thought. I understand your thoughts from the previous meeting, but I kind of feel like we say a lot of times, you know, let's let the public be heard and give them a chance to vote on it. So that's my thought. Mine Jeff too, Murray?
Well, you know, I thought at the last meeting we did have a good, you know, discussion about this and made some good points. But to Carol and Don's point, we kind of threw this into them at the eleventh hour. Yep. So maybe we are rushing a little bit, maybe we need to just back the truck up a little bit and maybe research this a little bit more and we're making sure that we're making a sound decision here. So I said, if this was a month ago and we gave them a month to look at it, I would be more, if we were going to make a vote to overrule their decision, I would be more comfortable with that. But like I said, we made this last minute decision. They didn't really have a lot of time to look at it. And I am kind of siding with Scott with the nonbinding question.
I I agree. I I think my only concern with the nonbinding question is we have to figure out how to have it on the ballot so that it's not. I don't want it to be like we do the we do the charter questions and then have it be like right after it. Or maybe we just don't do it at all. We just do this vote and then we attack this at a certain later date with more with more input. I would just like to have it. Maybe we have it on a separate ballot.
It's gonna be confusing if we put that as a question. Right. I think we need to put it somewhere else. Dennis, you're waving? Yeah, I'm really not sure that you can do a non binding
question on a gubernatorial ballot of unchartered revision. I've never seen that done before. It's not to say you can't do it, but it's not been done before as far as I know. I've been involved with lots of charter revisions. You know, to me it would be unusual to have a non binding question on with a bunch of binding questions.
Well, that's what I'm saying. We we don't I think our concern is that we don't wanna put it on this in the same space. Could be confusing. But I think It'd be confusing. Definitely be confusing.
Yeah I can't say for sure. One way or the other, don't know I'd have to probably talk to the Secretary of state's office.
Well, I don't think we want to I think our point is, instead of having it listed with the Charter questions. We'd like to have it separately, maybe on a separate piece of paper, even that we do a hand tally later if we need to you know. Yeah, or do it at another time
by itself. Well, I mean, I think if you're going to do it, we try to do it where we're going to get the most contact, you know? Right. And if we do it on this one and the town says yes, then we move forward and try to get a Charter Revision Commission ready for the presidential, right? And if they say no, then we don't have to worry about it, but at least we've given them a chance to have their say. Well, what you could do is you could vote to approve the package that the
Charter Revision Commission has put together except for that one item that you want me to put on the ballot if it's possible to put it on the ballot as a nonbinding question.
Yeah. Okay. I support that. Would not possibly we won't do it. We have time. Scott, are you okay with that? If we can figure out a way to put it on separately? Certainly. You
know what? We made huge progress with this. If we get this this pass through. Yeah. And I I'm I give deference to Carol Lee with the idea that they didn't have enough time to they don't feel like they can make a recommendation. Adrian, they were they were unanimously opposed. We have to take that into consideration. Yeah, I, you know, but I think the reasoning is important as well. And her reasoning is that she can't make a recommendation, so therefore they don't want to do it. And I think that's fair. All right. So, I will make a motion Before that
you start, just let me say this. You need you need to vote of a majority of the total membership of the commission to do whatever you do. So, you need three votes. You need three votes to do whatever you're going to do.
Well, don't know what those are because we haven't called the vote yet. No, no, but I'm just telling you in advance
that you need three votes to pass anything. Well, there's only four of us here, so I I know. I know. Adrianne,
he's just putting it out there. Okay? He's putting it out there. Yeah. That's all. I I I have no axe to grind. Only axe to grind, folks, is to try to get this on the ballot because that's Let's see if we can take a vote and get you your three or get the three. Okay? So Yeah. You do it. Okay. One. Playing it out for you. Round one.
Thanks, Paul. So my motion would be that we accept the recommendations of the Charter Commission to move forward the sections to a to a ballot referendum. That's done.
Okay. All in favor or discard any further discussion. Okay, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. I would also make a motion that we explore with the registered voters in the town clerk whether we can put an advisory question on the ballot as well to ask if the town meeting should still be the the preferred budget method, or if you we should eliminate the town meeting and go straight to referendum from Board of Finance. I'll second. Discussion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Are we
okay, Dennis? Can we go to questions now? I think you should go to the questions now. Yes. And and then Right. I think I'm gonna take a I think I'm gonna leave the meeting because I've had a long day, and, you're doing very well. I'm impressed.
Dennis, I'm disappointed in you only in the sense that normally we get, 10 or 11 out of you. So I'm worried that you're Sometimes after midnight. Okay. We're gonna call you back in an we're gonna call you back in an hour. Keep your focus. You know what? I'm just just because you you want me to, I can tell. I'm gonna stick around.
I do I do enjoy these meetings. Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't. Alright.
And Andrea, just one more thing. Just thanks to the Charter Revision Commission for all their hard work. Well, we're not done with them. We're we're still talking to them. Well, I was gonna thank them at the end. We still have to You're get positive done with I thought we already had their vote. I thought we had to do questions with them. They're done. Done. Done. Done. They're not part of the questions? No. Oh.
Apologize. Votes on the question. Just a quick thank you to everybody for their participation.
Carol Lee, Don, all of you guys, thank you so much and girls, thank you for your time and your diligent.
Yes. Thank you very much Carol, Don, everyone. I can't remember everyone's name, but. George. George right. Aaron Thank you guys a job well done.
And and listen candidly to all of you, although we may disagree on some of these things back and forth. It's important to have dissension and to have pushback and have these conversations if we don't have them, then, then nothing happens, so thank you for your diligence, and you know we appreciate the conversation okay.
We do too, thank you very much all right. Bye. Good night. Okay. Questions, Dennis? Okay. Who has those? Yeah. They're on the
They're on the packet? They're in the packet. 18. 18 was the
18 is alternative what B yeah you should pass alternative B those questions and and then set apart question one on alternative A, which pertains to the annual town budget meeting. So if you you if you pass alternative B and those questions are carefully drawn, drafted to some extent by me, approved early on by the Charter Commission, I think unanimously. And I have have massaged them a little bit to reflect what happened on June 26. I've been doing this for years for other referendums and trust me folks, they're good. But I would recommend alternative B and then have another well add item one of alternative A about the town meeting if it can be done in a non binding way. So we'll have to see that. Carol and I will work together on that to determine whether it's okay to do that.
Okay, I guess we can just approve that Adrian and then Yeah, I'm just I'm just reading it because I didn't have a chance to get to read it. Oh, you're reading it? And allow Dennis and Carol to go over the questions and possibly add that question.
Yeah, if it's if it's legal. Right. The non binding question that you recommended Scott. You made the first recommendation as to that I believe.
I I wish I wished four was a little less wordy. I'm gonna be very honest.
You have to. Yeah, it has to be a little bit wordy because you know the voters, this is what the voters are gonna see and they have to know what they're voting on. That's a big change
that you No. I also don't like the wording where it says shall the town charter be amended to increase board of selectman authority,
you know? Well, it does because it it requires only a a three a vote of three of you to to hire or dismiss if unless there's a union situation. For example, myself. You can you can you can can dismiss somebody on a vote of just three three members instead of four. So it gives you increased authority.
Let's test that. I make a motion that we remove Dennis and Brian.
Come on. I need the I need the money. You get all the money. I know. Know. Alright.
Yeah, I mean, I I understand that it's just the wordiness. That's a mouthful,
you know. Well, I'm a lawyer. That's what we do.
What is the what is the guidelines for us if we approve these? Is there a way that we can put this out with an explanation
below them so you put out explanatory. Explanatory statements have to be approved by the town attorney.
Okay, yep. Alright. I'm I'm in favor of I I would make a motion to approve alternative B which this is charter vision draft ballot questions. With the caveat that we put together an explanation of statement for each of them to be put out as part of the mailing.
Yeah, I think. Was that a motion? Did you make a motion? Yes, as a motion. I'll second. Discussion? Scott, Jeff? Good idea.
Yeah. I think you need to because if somebody hasn't been sitting in Especially that last one.
They're gonna be lost. Yeah. Okay. But So what about this? If they don't read the mailing, Can it, can explanation be at the time when they're voting? Can be something okay.
They can put it on poster boards at the, you know, they do that all the time. Yeah. Think not gonna get that,
Well, you're not gonna get that done like, that's gonna take a little time because it has to be approved by it has to be, well, it's theoretically written by you and approved by me. But I will actually draft it. I'll give it I will amend
my motion to say that we'll put together explanatory statements to included in the mailing and posted at appropriate locations
at the vote. That's going to come down the line.
Yeah. The day people might not read the mailer, when they're standing and voting, they need to understand what it says. Will you still second the motion, Paula? Yes. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
All right. I think we're good on charter. Yes? Did you do the
did you also do the possible nonbinding question? Did you pass that? Yes, separately. Okay, that's separately passed. Everybody Yep. Yep. Okay, just wanna make sure. All right. Yep. So, well, Carol and I will work on that. We'll see what we can do. Okay. Thanks, John. Thank you. There's an attorney at the Secretary of State's office who will let me know. Okay. Checking on that right away. Thank you all very much for your patience with me. I appreciate it. No, no. We're good, Dennis. I will stay for the rest of the meeting.
Thank you. Eric, do we we need Dennis for anything else? Not that I know of. Okay. At this point.
Alright, Dennis. Thank you. If you do need to pop off, feel free.
I'm gonna stick for a while. Okay. See what goes on. It's only $9.00 8 for quite a lot. Yeah. Well, we're gonna try to move along here. Early. I'll have to use some more at night.
Alright. Sorry, just need to turn some AC on. It's a little warm in here. Alright. Okay. Moving on. Old business. Finance department transition, I think we kind of covered that a little bit in our already. Eight eight eight B Community Center RFP, as I explained, we're just waiting on a couple of detail things. Eight C, Sarah C. Steve Grant, covered some of that. Eric, is there anything else we need to address?
I don't have anything major unless you want to see a picture of what we're proposing, in which case I'd share my screen and show you a picture. Folks want to see that. Paul Jeff Scott. Certainly. I saw it today.
Actually, you know what? You just email it to us later? Okay. Take a screenshot and email it so we can just kind of move on here. Car charging station at Town Hall. It came through CIP. We universally agreed to it. Eric, do you want to do it briefly or?
No, just to say that the charger grant is into Eversource. We received a notification that they've received the application. We haven't heard back from it. I think we got it in in time. We'll get it, but I'm not positive because again, lot of people applied for that and it's a first come first serve grant. Okay. Okay. Town personnel policy. Let's skip that for now. Okay. Senior transportation vehicle parking.
We still have them parked in the old garage. We haven't really made any move to move them yet. We know we need to, but we haven't. Educational funding on job skills.
Still working on a policy for that, right? Yeah, I'm going to punt this for now because I think one of the unions wants to come back with a recommendation to the town as part of their bargaining position. Okay.
Do we need a purchase of a portable PA system?
I haven't found one to buy yet. If either Paula or Jeff finds me one to buy, I'd be happy to purchase it.
I'll get on it. I'll on it. I just been on vacation.
Perfect. Thanks, Jeff. Right. Rolling into nine new business purchasing policy waiver.
Okay. So I sent you all and put in the packet a memorandum discussing requesting a waiver purchasing policy rules. You've already approved it for the steep grant. I would like to also get a waiver approved for the car charger installation. And there's two problems with this. Number one, this was a grant that had to be executed in as soon as possible because it's a first come first serve grant. And secondly, I didn't have the expertise to put this in. I asked Rick, Rick Langley, whether he would help me with the grant application and to figure out how this was possible. So I used him to help me, you know, develop the grant application
with the understanding that if we got it, I would use him as the electrician to install. Total cost is over $15,000 However, the only thing the town is going to pay for in the end is half the cost of the physical charger and the physical charger we're buying off a state list. The state has a list of like, you know, six or seven of these that are approved for the program. So it's not like we had a ton of options with that anyway. I suspect if I had to go out and hire an MEP upfront to design this program,
design this, we would amount out a couple thousand dollars. I mean, I think to be fair, Eric, it sounds like you've done your due diligence on it. I don't have an issue with it. I would make a motion that we make a waiver for the car charger installation. I'll second.
Discussion. Scott, Jeff. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Jeff. Aye. Thank you. Moving on. We did nine via reading. We talked about Long Hill Bridge already. Audit status we already discussed. Talked about the 70 ks leftover for 'twenty one, 'twenty two. We talked about 9F already, nine gs, 9H. Can we discuss that real quick? Panic buttons?
So, sorry, I had to grab my notes. So, we don't have any real simple solutions for this. I did reach out to Associated Security again, who's the company I'd been dealing with, which was a recommendation from the guy who put our security cameras in. We know we're going to end up if we do it with a monitoring service. And we know we're going to have to put in essentially a commercial version of a burglar alarm and then tie in wireless panic buttons to it. What I don't have is a real cost basis for doing that. I mean, bigger concern is that I'm not sure this really saves us
kind of all that much time because now we got to call a monitoring service. And the monitoring service has to call you to the fire department of the dispatch. When our existing service, you hit the alert and anybody in the building, you hit the alert button on your phone and anybody in the building can call 911. Okay. So, I'm not convinced this is a worthwhile endeavor, but I'm not giving up on it until I have at least a cost estimate for you.
There Well, would go ahead, Eric. Go ahead, Paul. Is there ever a time where somebody's in the building alone? Sure. I'm in the building alone all the time. Carol Lee as well. Yep.
Alright. Well, you know, obviously you've got a lot of other irons in the fire. I think we'd still like to see what it looks like, but certainly not on your priority list for tomorrow.
Yeah, just one more thing. Like, do we have any kind of emergency plan with the employees like a town hall?
And to be perfectly honest with you, no. I mean, we've chatted about it informally. Okay. So,
maybe, let's kick that to the safety committee and let them talk about that. We have a safety committee. Yeah, because just something like a, you know, like a thing for the employees, like if they're going get out the building, a meeting area, Yeah. You know, calling 911, that type of thing, evacuation plan.
Yeah. Well, I mean, we do have an evacuation plan for the building.
Yep. Let's punt that to the safety committee and actually what's what's as it before you spend any more time on it let's put it back to them as to whether or not this is something that's still on their priority list. Can we do that. Okay.
All Jeff you okay with that Scott. Yeah I'm okay with that just this was brought up multiple times in the employee meeting. Yeah well let's
let's let the safety. Let's let the safety committee take a look at it. Yeah. I'm
fine with it, I just want to make sure it gets addressed. Yeah we'll
get an answer back on the safety committee and then that'll get Eric some time to also to kind of. You know, work the rest of this search suppressor Scott that's you right.
Think Jeff Murray wanted this added. I'm sorry that was Scott. No, the discussion with Scott, did
those surge suppressors get ruined in the last lightning storm? I don't believe they did, Jeff. Okay. I think that what you told me, the power had to be on when the pump turned on, it's probably accurate. We do, you're right, we should have replacements for all those things and we should also have replacements for the actual irrigation control, the power modules and the different zone modules. And we have a storage location for those at Public Works? We should be making one.
Yeah. Taking care of that stuff. Is there any way we could get a quote from the from electrician or just like what would be to provide those or should we just get? Should we just take our old quote and just order more? Yes, think that's a good idea. Alright, so Scott, do you want to facilitate that?
Now I'll talk to Eric about it. Okay. Now remember these things aren't free, so you know again you're you're proposing to spend you know several thousand dollars on things that aren't budgeted.
Just so that you're aware of that. Well, we can always take the cool program red checks. There's some money there. Oh yeah. No. No? Okay. Moving on. Well,
I mean there's there's gotta be money in maintenance, correct? Maintenance of what? Well, you got building maintenance, right?
Yeah. If you define a field as a building, then sure.
I would define it as a town structure or a building. And if we have these things out of spares, if we have a busy summer and we lose one of these and we risk losing that sprinkler controller, is over $2,000 Correct me if I'm wrong, Scott. It's worthwhile and saves us money in the long run if we have spares. Understood.
And a pump. You know, if we lose that pump, it's a significant amount of money. Exactly.
And if we have those spares, we don't have to have someone running around in their spare time finding spares. Well, listen, it's
if, it's when we're going to lose them. Okay. If we start getting into the 4,000 or $5,000 range, then we probably need to have a conversation about it. I think it'd be under 1,000, Probably like $5,600. Okay. Alright. I'm just saying if we start getting up into the thousands, let's come back to this. Okay. Cool program rent checks. We kicked that that's board of finance really anyways. Status for open board positions. Town treasurer we already know we've got two applications administrative assistants where are we at with that is it posted so
yeah it's been posted we have got a ton of applicants probably over 50 at this point not necessarily a lot of good applicants but a bunch of applicants. I've told Paula I would whittle it down to 10 forward. Was that listed as part time? Yes, of course. It was. Okay. Yeah, very definitely.
What we have not gotten any applications for is board clerk and that's unfortunate. We're still kind of struggling finding a permanent replacement for the land use boards.
Can the board clerk, and this is something, you know, I, and I guess I'm also asking about this because, know, we have Marina on the call. Why, why are we having the person be on the meeting? And then unless they're doing minutes while they're on the meeting, If they're not doing them live, then we should have them just be listening to the to the recording back and doing it that way.
Well, that not go ahead. On some occasions we do, but we don't necessarily, the land use boards aren't necessarily the most tech savvy boards out there. And the board clerk usually handles recording, and the nuts and bolts of the meeting to begin. Okay.
Doesn't mean it has to happen that way, but that's what typically happens.
I wonder if we can change the thing though, so they're not required to be on the meeting and they can just do it you know within forty eight hours or whatever the requirement is you know.
Right I mean we let people know that anyway I mean that happens not infrequently as it is.
All right. So is there a reason that we have a read on these meetings now right now? Well, on the inside. Say that again?
I'm on from the finance side too for any questions.
Okay. Well, I mean, if we're asking you to be out from the finance side, we'll you know, we've have we have a policy in place that we try to get town town employees off calls as quick as possible. So, yep, we can, you know, so that you're not eating up time, you know, on these meetings. I don't believe we actually have anything else on finance for you so you're you're more than welcome to hop off at this point. Okay, that's fine. And then in the future we'll address that if you're if you're gonna be off a board of finance I will address accordingly, so that you can get off quickly. I mean we haven't. To any of the board of finance reports yet. I understand that that's board of finance reports we've already gone through audit per department right. Okay.
Unless I don't believe it does anybody have a question specifically regarding the financials. No. I don't worry Scott person. There we go.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Marina. No problem. Have I got I have a question for Eric. Have we gotten anything for we've been putting it out there for filling the Ram Board of Ed
position? Have we gotten anybody sending in anything? As far as I know, we haven't gotten any applications. I asked that of the town clerk a while back and the answer I got was no application so far. Have not asked her since she got back from vacation, so it's possible one came in in the last week and I'm unaware of it. Sure, but she's today was her first day back so give her. Can we also
maybe just flag the chair of the DTC and the RTC to remind them we're still looking for someone? Sure. Meeting minute approval. Monday, June 13, Monday, June 27. Any corrections corrections on those? I'm gonna do them individually because Paula you weren't on the special meeting, right? Yep. Okay, so approval of the Monday 06/13/2022 regular meeting minutes all in favor. Aye.
Approval of the Monday 06/27/2022 public meeting minutes all in favor. Aye. Aye. One abstention Paula. Yes, aye.
My finance department report revenue summary, town budget summary, Town Aid Road. Did you have anything on Towne Road update that needs to be addressed directly or you're trying to give us a kind of where we're at? Nope, this is just where we're at. Okay. Budgets, appropriation transfers, over expenditure requests. Was there something in the packet on that?
Was not. Okay. And here's the ultimate problem, you know, and that is what the board of finance asked was that we get through the last payroll in June and then give them one packet of all the transfers. Okay. You know, as opposed to what we started to do, which was to give, tell the board of selectmen then give them some of them in April some of them in May and the final wrap up in June. Because of the dates involved there was no board of selectmen meeting in there So we gave them all to the board of finance and they approved them all, which you know, it's their policy on how they want to do it. They have the right to waive that. Think if they so chose and they so chose.
I don't have any. I personally, I think the board of finance can run finance and we have enough stuff on our plate unless there's a specific issue. I don't have any issue with that. Anyone else? No. Nope. Jeff Murray. Nope. Okay, moving on. All right, refund requests.
There are two refund requests in the packet and I apologize for not having a motion pre made.
It's fine, I gotta go back in, just lost my connection. For total tax refunds of $1,186.56 Okay, we need the names though, right?
One of them would be Nissan because it's a lease and the other one is Taft Val or Valerie Taft. Okay. It should be page 47 of the packet. Thank you. Some reason I got booted out of that. Alright.
Alright. Oh, yeah. I don't see them. Alright. So, we have a I make a motion. We approve the refund to Nissan for $1,084.14 under Section 12 dash 129 and that Taft Valerie for 102.42 under Section 12 dash 129. One second. All in favor. Aye. Aye.
Anything specific in the department reports that you think we need to address, Eric?
No, actually, unless you have questions for me regarding them.
Nope, I'm good. I already talked to Public Works about the, you know, Jay's gonna be, Jay cleared up his reports, so at least they make a little more sense and I'm good with the new version. You'll see them in your packet, I think so. All right. Correspondence 15. None that I know of. Okay. Public speak. Start with Valerie. That. John hebert. All
right, next voice channel amber arbitrage. Sorry I'm all set I couldn't unmute.
We gotta get you faster, Joanne. I know, I was clicking. I forgot you're on every meeting. You're still slow. I know. You for being on the meeting. Thank you. We appreciate it. Amber. I'm all set. Financial cat. All set. Okay.
We are going to go into B contract negotiations and 16 C contract renewal. Session. All right. Motion motion to move into executive session at 09:30PM.
Okay, and exactly who do you want in the executive session.
Board of selectman yourself and Dennis is out. Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Dennis.
Thank 09:30 and you're already into the end. Very impressive. I'm gonna tell McGuire what a great job you did, Adrian. Oh, god. Don't go don't don't get me in trouble. Well, you moved it. You moved the agenda forward. That's important. Thank you all and have a great night.
And Jeff. No, I did not. I do what I can. Anyways, we are back at, 09:52. I would make a motion that we, empower Eric to sign the I know I'm going to say it wrong m I e u. M e I'm sorry I can't hear all the Doc say it again. M e I u m e I u contract. And to enter into negotiations with asked me. Second. All second.
All seconds discussion. Okay, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Motion to adjourn at 09:53. Oh, did we start recording yeah we did great or should join 09:53. Second.
All in favor. Aye. Aye. Thanks everybody. Sorry it was long as it was. Know we had a we got a lot there, but hopefully we went and packed what we needed to. All right. Night. Good night, everybody.