Meeting transcript
Board Of Selectmen Regular Meeting
September 11, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I would like to call to order I'm sorry. Computer difficulty. I would like to call to order the town of Andover Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Monday, September 11. We will start at 07:06PM. And, for the first order of business, we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty, liberty, justice, and for all. Okay. We'll move on to public speak. Michael Palazzi first. Anything? No, I'm good. Kathy Palazzi. We're fine. Thank you. Okay. Anne Kerme. I'm just here listening. Thank you. Okay. ASC. Okay. Joanne Ebert. No, all set. Thanks.
My suggestion is if we don't hear from ASC and we don't know who they are, we need to remove them.
I'm not sure you should legally be doing that in a public meeting. I did text them or message them and ask them to identify themselves, but they're probably not legally obligated to. So
unless they're actually doing something Can you permanently mute them? I don't know.
Yeah. Let's try. See what we got. All right. Item three additions and deletions to the agenda. Anybody have any additions?
No, I have an addition. Can we please put under old business nine F Andover's Finest? Oh, I think we lost you, Jeff. Did you say something?
I I said one second. I just gotta get my my typewriter skills ready. So that was nine f Andover's finest. Okay.
Anything else? And we can get rid of above 15. Yes.
Great. So ASC is Andover Sportsman's Club. That would be Stephen King,
the president's club. I was wondering if that was Andover Sportsman Club. Okay. Alright. K. So
so removal 15. Okay. I'll second both of those. Anything else? Scott? No. I'm all set. Okay.
So there's a motion on the floor to add, item nine F, Andover's Finest, and to remove item 15, executive session related to boundary line adjustments. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Aye. All right.
Let's move on to item four, the Treasurer's Report and the Finance Department. Eric, anything that you want to add to this?
No, not to the report itself. I can certainly, answer or relay any questions you have regarding items on here. The thing we're most over in is the line item for the alarm system for public works. We did smoke the main panel for the alarm system and end up having to replace it. So, that was a pretty expensive, but that actually should come out of the building maintenance fund, not out of that. So it's really just assigned to the wrong spot.
A couple of questions for you, Eric, and thanks that you'll definitely, you, I mean, you'll know. The Gorman Group, what do we do with them?
So the Gorman Group, that would have been the bill for crack sealing of town roads. We also had originally hired them for chip sealing, but they frankly haven't gotten it done in time, and we basically cut it off and said it's too late. It's pushing it this far in the fall to chip seal. So, we're going to postpone the chip seal of those roads till as soon as it warms up in the spring and get it done early.
Okay. And you have a transaction here called Spring for $29,000?
Yeah. Spring is the, that's all the health care. I think payments, that's what that is.
Under spring. Okay. Okay. I actually like this, Eric, a lot. The other thing I would tell you, and I know it's not I mean, we have to change up some things as to visually how they they they show, but I definitely like a check register. McNeil and Company?
McNeil and Company, that is the fire I think that's the insurance for the fire department, I think.
I definitely wanna I wanna I wanna look I want you I want the spring transactions looked at because there's multiple of them during the course of the month. And if it's just insurance, you would assume it'd just be one. So and then just just as a side note, we paid the state of Connecticut a $100.
$100? No. The state of Connecticut paid us a $100. That's not how it's reflected here.
I don't know. They gave us an ACH payment of a $100. I don't know why it's where are you seeing that? On page two of the check register, it has an ACH check. State of Connecticut. Yeah. That's a minus. Oh, wait. They're all minuses. Yeah. I don't know. You're
right. Just take just take a peek at that one. Will you? Tell talk to me about that tomorrow. I mean, it might be something where they were trying to adjust it from one account to another, and that's how they did it. I just don't I don't want them to There also was one for $4.50. Yeah. It's at the bottom.
Yeah. The $4.51, that is a payment into that's what it looks like when we put money. Oh, you know what? That upper one that says state of Connecticut, sorry. We did two things. One, we're transferring money into our STIF account, which shows up as a transfer to the state of Connecticut. So that $100,000, sorry, I had that wrong. That's not, because at the same time we got an ACH from the state of a $100,000 for the Route 316 study, but we also made a state of Connecticut payment of $100,000 and then another $450,000 And then we did another $450,000 today. So, we've transferred basically a million at this point into our STIP account. We have a limit on how fast we can put money into there because of M and T Bank. So sorry that I had that ACH wrong. That was the first $100,000 payment to the STIF account.
Alright. That that makes sense. I gotta sit there and work with them on that. Just as a side thing, can you ask them to include an accounts receivable listing with us for next month? There's about $95,900 of receivables, and and it has nothing to do with taxes. And so I don't want anybody to think that's all the town is owed. Town those are those are other types of transactions, and it would be just beneficial for us to have an understanding of what they are. Okay. Accounts receivable listing. Yeah. Okay. So something that totals up to the $59.69 29. Okay. Any other questions related to the information provided by the treasurer? Okay. Item five, board and commission presentations.
There's some information regarding five a Memorial Day Committee.
Correct. Basically, what Carol Lees told me is that when she reviewed actual motion made at the Board of Selectmen meeting, the official Memorial Day committee is supposed to be five members and an alternate. So her suggestion would be to assign one of those members or one of those people to be an alternate.
K. For who since she's requesting this, does she have who the alternate is?
You have everything she gave me, so the answer is no. So we're gonna postpone this until next month.
And if we can get clarification as to who the alternate is, then we'll sit there and we'll clarify our motion. But there's no reason for them to not continue working and do their to do anything they wanna do related to the memorial tape parade. Okay.
But doesn't it say Wayne Thorpe and Louise Goodwin would be new members?
Correct. But there's the way it is got us five members and one alternate. Right. There are six people. So who is the alternate? One of the two, I would say.
If you want you want clarity, we should find out who the alternate is. Right? Yep. Okay. And is it going to stop them from doing anything in the next thirty days? No. No. So let's, let's move that on to next month, and we'll get the alternate. Old business. Okay. Item six. Are there any appointments? Eric?
None that I know of. Okay. Any resignations? So the, treasurer has announced that she will probably resign in December.
So she's giving us resignation or a resident probably? Say again? We have a resignation, or is this a probably?
It is a probably. Okay. But I think you can take it and try to convince her to stay. You can try. But, I mean, she told us it was temporary when we took her on board and that she was only gonna stay for a year, and it's it will have been about a year. So Alright. No problem. The one thing that I would ask you for is is
one of the things that she said she would do for us, and it appears she's did she's done this with the auditor, is she put a binder together of how our books should look to the auditor. That needs to be in place in the office so that we know how to follow with that next year for other people. Right? So if she is, I would ask you to ask for that so that there's a game plan and a road map for that office to follow and not fall behind. Correct. Alright. Correct. Okay. Anybody have anything related to that? Alright. Town administrators report. Eric?
Okay, so first talk about the custodian, Willie Bell has been doing a great job keeping the buildings looking good. He's also been taking the spare time up to the ten hours a week working on a long term project, kind of repointing with the library windows and repainting. And those have been coming out really well. I'm having a discussion with him now about maybe doing the Andover Museum windows as his next major project after this. But it seems to be pretty cost effective to have Willie do it, and it's coming out really well. Talked last month about Joshua's trust and the property located off of Skinner Hill Road. Because of a conflict, they asked to postpone any discussion at the October meeting,
but at least the president of the organization would be interested in discussing with the Board of Selectmen potential uses for that property and the town's property that's adjacent to that. Later on in the discussion, we're going to need to talk about how we proceed for the state local bridge grant application. And that's also going to involve a town meeting when we do it. We do have the cash in hand for the congressional authorization for the congressional allocation for the Route 6 study. And I put in the packet a preliminary RFP when we get to that, I'll ask for if you guys got any questions or suggestions for that, please let me know. The assessor's office, Jeff, had asked for information back on registration of Iowa State vehicles. I had a long conversation with the assessor because I know that's something that's been frustrating him. So I asked him to get put together, you know, kind of an explanation of where he's at, and he did, and that is in the packet also. It is our intention starting October 1 to transition to QuickBooks payroll. Just so that you all know, it shouldn't really affect anything from your perspective. Hopefully, we'll end up doing a better job of payroll services to the town because
PrimePay is is, you know, really, really sucky vendor. So, we surveyed the area and had wetlands flagging out behind the fire department. Then, I asked Nathan Jacobson for a design for a new pad to accommodate two more 1,000 gallon propane tanks. One eventually will be for a generator for the municipal complex, and one will be for the town hall for the furnace, for the boiler, and then the furnace at town hall.
I'm sorry, Eric. I was on mute before. Just as a quick question on the payroll. Yeah. Please make sure or at least communicate to us who's responsible for the payroll tax returns. It's just something that I want to make sure that you can switch to QuickBooks payroll and you can sit there and process it. No problem. But who's responsible for the payroll tax returns? And, you know, that includes preparation of the w twos and all that other good stuff. Just just But as a side thing so so we can focus on it and make sure we don't
have a problem. Something. Yeah. My understanding is instead of just doing payroll within QuickBooks, they're using QuickBooks payroll actual service to do this. So I'm assuming that's included with that, but I don't know. I'll get that question answered. Yeah. If you would. Alright. I'm sorry. You were on the pads.
So basically, what we're gonna do is I'm I'm trying to get this done as soon as possible because while we have a generator general contractor and an excavator on-site, I want to essentially pay that contractor to dig the lines and bury the propane lines back to the building while they're digging for the water lines anyway. So, that's in the works. So Public Works has question? Okay. Public Works has replaced the Steiner mower that did go through CIP, And we got the new mower in last week. As far as other public works projects, we did have to postpone chip sealing, which is really unfortunate,
but we're just chip sealing works best when it's done when it's really hot. And it has an extended period to cure before it cools off. And given the weather pattern we're in, in fact that they've pushed it back now, ten weeks in a row, we pulled the plug and we will, you know, spend that money probably with a different contractor as soon as it warms up again in early summer next year. So, as part of the Long Hill reclamation process, we know we needed to repair a big long section of guardrail along that road that's been pretty dangerous. We just didn't have the money to do it last year. But we did budget for it this year, and we are planning on doing that with our Atlas guardrail who, you know, accepts the state bid pricing.
So that will complete that part of the project. We did replace a section of wrecked guardrail on Townsend Road, where if you remember, a couple of months ago, somebody fell asleep at the wheel, hit the guardrail, flipped over upside down in the brake, but tore out a big long section of guardrail. So we did replace that because it was pretty dangerous not being there. And we were going after the driver to recoup your driver's insurance to recoup the cost of that. Also, far as public works, there's one employee out for a shoulder surgery. It's not a workers' comp issue, but it's something that was keeping that person from being able to effectively do their job. And they will be out for roughly three months. So hopefully we'll have them back in time for plow season. This is probably as good a time to be out as any in terms of that. No real changes on either Bunker Hill or the Long Hill Bridge, those projects are still in the works. We did after a bunch of back and forth change the type of filter on the irrigation system for the Andover Veterans Monument because we were getting that one like super sand quad with fines. So we changed to a different filter type which seems to have, you know, seems to have gotten the project or or gotten it working again in reasonable condition.
Oh, on on excuse me, Eric. That does anyone go down and watch to make sure their sprinklers are still working now that you've changed a different filter?
I looked at them the other day and they looked like they're working fine. So I'm assuming they're they're okay. And we did it, you know, knowing you know, we picked a filter type based on the fact that there were sprinklers downstream of it. So as far as I know, we're not clogging things up by switching filters. K.
The trip grant for the as you know, that that grant has been out there for quite a while. I followed up with the grant administrator today because it's kind of irritating me. And he basically said, they have the money sitting there. But they have basically said they're so so short staffed, they haven't even been able to evaluate the projects yet. They're hoping they're going to make a decision in October or November about what's funded. So, again, I don't know anything about that in terms of funding. Still working on the transfer station and completely eliminating the rats from the transfer station. I talked to the contractor the other day, he said they've been very successful. There's a lot less activity. So we think in a couple months or a month or so, we could probably start, you know, working on a more final solution for filling that back in. How is how is he determining
that the problem is going away? Or
how does he know that? Well, because they were actively trapping them with bait traps, and they're not really I guess they're not really getting any more of the bait traps. So, sounds like that's what they're using as their kind of guideline. And he said they just don't see anywhere near as much activity, nor do they see any evidence that they're moving, that they've just reestablished themselves in a different part of the transfer station. So that at least is pretty good. That's good. We did have a big bill for grinding up the brush pile at the transfer station. But what we've been doing is we've been going longer and longer between grindings, because the cost to bring the contractor in, you know, is is almost the biggest cost, the mobilization cost, these things are really big. So even though we spent, you know, $18,000 this last time when we did it, our cost per month has actually gone down,
because we've gone out to about thirty months between grindings. So we're kind of keeping an eye on the pile, starting over again. And, you know, as long as the contractor is willing to come out and grind it that late in the process, because after thirty months, the stuff is already breaking down a lot. That seems to be somewhat more cost effective. And other than that, I threw a couple pictures in the packet. Most of you by now have probably seen the plow that we finally finished off and put out there. That was a really rusty old plow that we got from Ellington that they had discarded. And although it looks pretty pretty, there's an awful lot of fiberglass covering up holes in the plow. It looks good, but it's certainly not a structurally sound plow anymore. But it looks good in place, and I think that came out pretty well. That's all. The only other thing I wanted to say is last month that you guys had
agreed to authorize Jeff to sign the form for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and transfer some of the funding that's essentially allocated to the town to prod. But the state has now come back and said, we need a formal resolution to do that. So, right after my report, I put in the resolution. It's all ready to go and kind of filled out. But I, it would be good if you guys made a formal resolution. You know, so we can check that box and get them, keep them happy. And that's page 18 of the packet.
Well, exactly. Going back to the plow, just so we, we let everybody know of what was the total investment in the plow that looks so good.
I think in terms of materials, you know, you have, you know, the paint was a couple $100 because that's there's a lot of paint in that thing. Tommy did the structural welding on it. Jay did the fiberglass work on it. So I think we paid around $400 to have somebody sandblast it prior to us working on it. So materials costs are pretty low for that. Probably a thousand, $1,500 by the time we're out the door. It looks great. Yeah. It looks great, Aaron.
Expensive thing for that is actually gonna be the flagpole. The flagpole is like a thousand bucks by the time you put the thing in or $1,200 by by the time you buy it and put it in. And we're planning on lighting it. Correct? Correct. Okay.
In fact, if you looked at the pictures, the lighting is lit now because K. Obviously, we don't wanna take the flag down every night. So No. We don't wanna do that. Just a quick question just a quick question for you, Eric. Do we have any kind of mitigation plan for the rats in the future, just putting up bait stations and stuff for the contractor just to make sure that we don't get to this point again?
Yeah. So what we basically did is is we signed an ongoing, essentially, pest control contract with them that I plan to keep going in the future. Okay. Good. Good. Good. It's basically an initial
cost upfront to get it going and try to knock the population down as much as possible, and then an ongoing, you know, and one of the things we've realized is no matter how carefully Dom and Steve try to clean up, every month or every couple months, we got to go in with Public Works and actually drag compactors back, because there's a bunch of spots that rats can get to that we can't get to clean. So, unfortunately, that's a task that's going to have to fall on public works because they're the only ones that have the equipment to kind of move the dumpsters and or move the compactors and do it. So Understood. That's good. That's it.
Any other questions for Eric? Okay. I make a motion that we authorize the resolution to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection and homeland securities. I'll second that.
Alright. Further discussion on that resolution? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. Old business. Nine a, a community center construction update.
Okay. Adrian's not here, so I'll give this one real quick. Oh, before I do that, one last thing on my report. I'm not going to read through it or go through it, but at the end of my report, I also appended what I was planning on submitting to the Planning and Zoning Commission as petitions for changes to the lighting regulations and the signing regulations. The lighting regulations allow us to do the potentially the lighting at the athletic fields, if we get the STEEP grant. And the signage regulations, among other things, allow the Board of Selectmen to use to sell the signage along the fence line and exceed the current regulations as they are. So, that will be submitted. Jed asked me to hold off and submit that at the next after the next meeting. So, that will be submitted at the end of September. And since it's basically I'm doing it on behalf of the board of select when I put that in your your package. So community center what?
Say that again. What what what about the commun oh, go go ahead with the community center. Okay, so the construction Before of the
you go there, I got to go back one step. Okay. Back to the treasurer's area and the finance department report because you brought something up. Have you gotten an answer from the auditor or from the treasurer related to the movement of money from the Board of Education related to the parking lot?
We did. I got both the legal opinion from Dennis and I got a, I had a long conversation with the and then today, again, with the treasurer on how we do it. And the bottom line is the auditor said he wouldn't, even though we're not exactly following our own purchasing procedure to do this, He said essentially, the Board of Education has signed off on it, the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance have signed off on it. So, you know, he wouldn't issue us an audit finding, you know, for transferring the money. He basically said in the way he views it is that that is an educated education related capital expense. And so it's the town's obligation because it's a capital project, but it could be funded by a transfer from the elementary school. So the auditor's okay with it and as is the town's attorney, as long as the money is transferred back to the town to the general fund, and then both boards have already agreed to move that to the
capital fund for AES.
Okay. And just as a side note, has that information been relayed to the Board of Education for their meeting for Wednesday? Yes,
it has. Okay. Good. Let's move on. Alright. Back to the construction.
Okay. So back to the construction. We seem to have gotten through the hurdle of figuring out what special inspections are required for the building. I still don't have a firm estimate from MTI, but I hope I will actually have that tomorrow. It doesn't seem like it's going to be a really big expense, so I'm not overly worried about it. There is an excavator on-site. They have stripped the topsoil off the area. And BSC Engineering was in today, pinned the four corners for the building, and then pinned the 20 foot offsets. So, as far as I understand, the excavator is going to start digging for the foundation tomorrow, weather dependent. There's still a couple minor little issues with the building permit, one on the part of the fire marshal that will hopefully be addressed at our meeting tomorrow morning at seven. He's got a question about basically who's certifying the lighting plan, which I don't think we've figured out yet. That seems to be the only major issue at this point. But digging has begun. There is machinery on-site.
That's all I got unless you got questions for me.
I don't have anything right now. Anybody else? Nope. K. Faster the better, Eric. Mike Clancy needs to get in there. Alright. Understood. K. Alright. 9 B Town Townsend Cemetery Stump Removal.
Okay. You had asked this be put back on the agenda for this meeting Because you Well, I
thought at the last meeting we decided we really weren't going to do anything related to it. I know that Scott had had I know I know it would be the it would be a nice thing to do, but I do understand where aging was coming from that we'd be subjected to this in the future with other entities. But
I have I have some questions about it, though, Eric. Let's, if, if the tree can get cut down in this, during this period when we're getting the trees cut down and, and we grind all the stumps at same time, can the town crew move or can, like if the con- we got a contractor and then they do the work, can the chips from the stump removal be moved down to the transfer station? Sure.
Or to a pile? Well, we wouldn't put them in the brush pile because they're already chipped up, so we would just take them down to a pit, dump them at the pit. So it would be possible.
Sure. Are you okay you're okay with that? The removal of chips being taken to the, Parker Pritchener?
Yeah. That that's normally what we would that's one of the places we would get rid of them. Sure. Right. But, yeah, I'm just
asking. So so what are you asking, Scott? Are you asking that someone's gonna do the the stump removal and you just want the chips moved?
I yeah. And I just want a a home for the chips.
I don't have a problem if the town does that. Paula? Jeff? No. I have no problem with that. Okay.
So the one thing I would say is that the the one tree they didn't cut in the front there Jay and I were talking about that. That one in the last couple years since we cut there is definitely dying now too. So we're probably gonna cut the last tree out front there this year also since it doesn't really make sense to address anything else and leave one ratty old
mostly dead tree there. Everybody looked at it, said it's 80% dead, and I concur with that. So if if that tree could be put on this rotation for the trees to be cut soon, then we can push this whole program ahead. Do it all at the same time. We'll grind that last stump also.
It is on the list that we're gonna take down. I don't know whether Jay actually has tenant lined up to come back in for anything, but that's something, that's a tree we've identified that the next time tenant comes in and we're doing one off trees will be one of the ones addressed. So what kind of time frame do we need to have that thing down to meet whoever
is going to be doing the stump grinding? I would say that this is a long it's a long term project, but something we have to coordinate. That's all.
Okay. So if we did it this fall, we would be okay sometime? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.
Just as a side thing with tree removal and and and trimming, you had talked about some damage done to guardrails. When Ashplin's out there cutting for CLMP and and something drops and hits, you know, a guardrail or what used to be a a good guardrail, what happens? Just so I understand.
I mean, if it if it was Asplen's fault when we knew about it, we we would definitely go after Eversource to replace or fix the damage. Yeah.
Okay. Then just take a look at Lake Road. You know? Okay. That happen? Over near over near Basoula. There's there's an old there's old guardrails, and I'm not it's just old guardrails, old the old wooden guardrails with the the wire through them. Oh, honestly,
those things are so rotten. If you leaned against them, they would fall over. Those things are ornamental at this point. We have been replacing them with time. I know about ten years ago, I hit a, well, maybe fifteen years ago, I grazed one with my truck, and, Bob Burbank charged my insurance company for, like, two fifty feet worth of guardrail. And, yeah.
There's just I mean, it it's just obviously it was it was aspirin and and dropping a branch on it. And, yeah, it it took it out. And I'm not saying it's brand new, and I'm not saying we need to charge them for 250. I just wanted to know what you did.
Yeah. Ordinarily, on something like that I mean, if it was a section of metal guardrail and they damaged it, we would definitely go after the old, timber and wire. I think we would have a hard time blaming them for any damage to those because we haven't done that in twenty five years, something like that. Those are all really old at this point.
Well, then you still should take a look at it because you're gonna have you have a section that's totally dropped. I mean, and they actually even put up a cone or something on it to to signify that it was that it was there. Okay. Okay.
So, Scott, you're gonna you're going to spearhead the stump removal for the cemetery? Me and Diane are working on it together.
Okay. Alright. Nine c, the discussion of blight and level of involvement.
Okay. A couple meetings ago, you asked me just every month to give you the updated version of the blight status and the status of the various different properties. So you have that, the updated version from the assessor that's in your packet, starting about page 23. So I don't know whether you have any questions about that.
I'm glad to see that somebody has that list put together. There's other there's other properties and other things that need to be added to that, but I don't I don't think right on publicly we need to do that. But Yeah. And then there's
tons more people that could be added to it. Right. And the late and the lady was down at her house on, Wales Road this afternoon. K. He was, instructing some young people to, you know, they're doing various activities around her yard mowing and whatever, and, so she's, they, they told me she was living in a motel, but she's cleaning the place up a little bit. Excellent. So I don't know. I, that's all I know. Yep. I liked all the resolved ones, Eric. Right. Yep. Yeah.
A few of them are resolved, because I've been driving by, and it seems like it's been piled up again. I do like 64 Long Hill, all the progress that's been made there. It Seems like that building is that residence is getting really turned around. So but a couple of the properties up the street seem like they have not been resolved as it says in the spreadsheet. So Okay. Wanna go re may wanna go revisit some of those. Which one in particular are you?
117 seems to have a large amount of mattresses in front of it. I'm not trying to single one person out, but it says it's resolved, but it doesn't appear to be.
Okay. I like I like the list, Eric. It at least gives us some visibility to what what your office sees as problems. And I'm sure there's members of our board that will be back down to you to extend that list.
Right. Well, it's good that we have it because I can go and look at these properties and see what the progress has made. And if we have an issue, we can look at the list and see if it's being addressed. So it's actually good that we have it.
Right. The other thing I wanted to bring to your attention, which we may end up is, may get a little ugly before it's resolved, is the Grimaldi property on Lake Road. They approached the town looking for a CO, and in the meantime they had built a standalone garage that was completely unpermitted and not inspected, and claimed it was all part of the house, you know, but there was nothing, it's never been inspected, there's been nothing filed as part of the house. So, I think the zoning agent told them in no way, shape, or form was he going to give them a CO for the primary structure and resolve that? It's probably going to have to go before wetlands because it's certainly within the wetlands upload review area,
and it's going to need a building permit, and it's going to need a zoning permit. So that one's going be a little bit of a mess. My understanding is they were pretty, pretty irate about it. So you all may hear about that. Just as a heads up. That's all I got on that. K. Nine d, STIF account update.
So I already talked about that a little bit. We've moved at this point just over $1,000,000 into our STIF account. We're going to continue moving money into it. And the goal is to maintain about a million dollars in our operating account here and transfer everything else into the STIF account. So that covers our worst case scenario of, you know, one shot bills when we do ACH payments to the schools.
Okay. I actually like that, Eric. How much is the total that the with the the anticipated total move?
It's gonna depend seasonally, but it's gonna be somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000,000.
Alright. And the interest rate right now, just so everybody's aware? Just I think it's just over 5% right now. Better than nothing.
A lot better than nothing. Yeah. We are still really struggling with M and T Bank. They really suck as an entity, frankly. Thank you, Eric. You know, I don't know any other way to say it. I mean, except for the fact that the treasurer is planning on leaving in December, I would be pushing to change banks right now. But I think that's one thing too many to be on her plate right now. But I think that's something we're going to need to figure out because, I mean, there's a reasonable level of service that you expect out a provider and, you know, you expect some transparency from a bank. We're not getting it,
You know?
So, Eric, what are other other towns using? Have we talked to them and see if there's a municipal friendly bank that you know, in the neighborhood?
You know, the the only ones I've talked to, I've talked to a couple towns. You know, I had a long conversation with a guy from Fairfield, and he basically said the same thing there in the process of looking for another bank because they're they're, you know, really struggling with M and T. You know, and and they're quite kind of pissed off. So I don't know who anybody else is using. I was going to probably put something out through use CCM's research service to basically look and see what other, you know, municipal banks or what other banks have large government sections. I mean, there's been so much consolidation in the industry. And, you know, a lot of people had used Peoples before because Peoples was really responsible to municipalities.
Then when M and T took that over, we've really managed to completely screw that up.
Well, to go to what Jeff is saying, which I think is is a valuable point, find out what Hebron and Columbia are doing because they're too narrow. Coventry, Columbia, Bolton.
They're see using. See if they have any good positive. Mean, don't, you don't have to have a long drawn out conversation with them, but ask the administrator if they're happy with the bank. You know? Okay. Nine e, speed signs?
So our speed sign saga, as most of you know, our electronic speed sign did get stolen. And we attempted, multiple entities attempted to locate that. It was because it still had the GPS tracker in it, which gave us a rough area in Lebanon where it got dumped. So we were unable to find it. I went out and looked a little bit. Jay went out and looked a little bit, and the state police went out and looked a little bit. And then about a week or so ago, Lebanon, while they were roadside mowing, found it. And as far as I understand, didn't wreck it in the process, which is even more of a miracle. So Jay will get it back from the town of Lebanon. Now the unfortunate part is after they stole the speed sign, working part, they came back later and stole the post and the solar panel and the actual static speed sign and everything else associated with this. So even if we get it back, we still gotta pay another 5 or $600 to replace the solar module on it and put it all back together. So it's kind of annoying that it's, you know, it's under the cost of an insurance claim, You know? But we will have we will probably be able to get that speed sign back up and working without spending too much money.
Is there any way we can do some theft deterrent on it next time, a cable, something to lock it possibly? Well, you know, so they basically
Special hardware, you know, like those anti theft bolts, something on the Well, I mean, they ground the old bolts off. So So they had a cordless grinder and they ground it. Yeah. They I mean, so so whoever did it
worked a little bit, and they just cut through the wiring to the the solar panel. So I mean and then they came back and tore the whole thing out of the ground and took the whole thing, plate and all, and those are buried pretty deep. So, I mean, maybe we can put up a camera and catch them in the action, but at the same time, you know, the ever since that was converted from a four way stop into a two way stop or from a two to a four way stop, I mean, the the sign for Cone Road, for Gilead Road, and for Juravadi Road keep getting stolen at that location as do the stop signs. So that's been an ongoing problem for, you know, for a bunch of years.
Yeah. I saw the cell phone camera still up at down at the ball field. It's still up on the telephone pole, so maybe we can rescue it. And if we put the speed sign back together, maybe we can set those up, and maybe we can catch some perpetrators.
The problem with that gap is you're gonna get every car that stops at that intersection. Yeah.
You could. But if you aim at the right spot, like in the woods aiming towards the sign, you might not catch the traffic motion. I mean, I've set them up before. You can you can just get if you get the angle right, you won't catch the traffic.
Yeah. I was kind of thinking about doing is putting one up in a really obvious spot right near there. Yep. And then hiding one well pointing at the first one so we catch the guy stealing the the, camera. Because, I mean, I'm sure they're they're looking to make sure.
You know? But Yeah. I mean, just put a poll on it and put the camera right on the poll in front of the sign. Make it obvious. Maybe they won't take it at that point. No. They'll just steal the camera first. Well, it's well, they're cell phone cameras, so at least we'll get the pictures.
Yeah. Yeah. It's Let's move on to 9F Andover's Finest. Paul, just quick. Well, actually, I'll tell you what we're doing. We're we're gonna table this. We're gonna announce Andover's Finest in our November meeting. We have some things to deal with, but that's where we're at related to the Andover's Finest discussion. Anybody? Any questions on that? Okay. 10 new business, 10 a Andover personnel policy.
So I really think if we're going to have a serious discussion on the Andover Personnel Policy, we ought to make that its own meeting, because there's enough stuff to go over, unless you all want to approve the changes I gave you a while back, which you certainly could do that. What you asked me at the last meeting specifically was to give you a copy of the long term disability policy that's in place for employees, And then you also ask what the cost is. So the cost to the town for that, I think, is around $270 per month to the town total for that policy, and you have a copy of the disability policy in your packet. So that was the
question.
Yeah. I have no problem putting it off to a separate meeting. It's probably something that needs that level of attention because there's probably some other things that we need to change and we need to focus on it.
Anybody Yeah. I think it's worth having going through that whole document and having a conversation about where we're going and what we're doing with that.
Alright. So that was 10 a 10 a and 10 b. 10 c sales vendor licensed Trinity Solar?
Yep. That's in your packet after the the long term disability policy discussion. I'll tell you what page it is in just a second. 77. Yeah. So we had an individual that requested a vendor license from the town. So the reason I put that on here too is because technically per the charter, you as the board of selectmen have to be the ones that prove it. So, it's up to you to decide whether this person gets it or not. And our current fee for it is about $5 But because subsequent to that ordinance, the town put in an ordinance that allows the board of selectmen to set reasonable fees for permits and things of that nature, it would make sense you either leave it the same, in which case we'll charge them $5 or you make a decision going forward what you want the permit fee to be, and we will adjust the vendor license and put that right on the vendor license. So that's it. This form has my signature on it, but by charter or by ordinance, you are the board that has to approve or disapprove this. And he's given us what's been asked for. We obviously did not put his driver's license in the packet because that's PII, and we can't do that. But we do have that.
Okay. Do we have any idea what other charges, other towns charge?
The only other town geez. I asked this question casually in a conversation a while back, and the only other town I know of was was around $20 a pop for a vendor's license.
Eric, I just have a quick question. How much do you know what the average fee that gets collected on the permit for the solar, panels on a roof? I'm sure it has to be permitted. Correct? They do have to be permitted.
But how much revenue does the town get from those permits?
It's a fixed percentage of the cost of the job. Okay. So dependent on the size of the system.
So I'm not sure I could tell you that off the top my head. I'm kind of thinking just the median cost, you know, like in between, you know, average size solar panel array. Because if we've got somebody if we're charging somebody $5 to go out and and drum up business and we're getting some revenue off of the permits, it seems fine with me that, you know, we keep that fee somewhat reasonable.
Well, but, I mean, this is not just for the solar industry. This is for if you were doing it, you would establish a fee for any vendor doing door to door sales in the town of Andover, because that's basically what this allows.
Well, I think what Jeff is saying, we could revisit the fee, and that's understood, but we don't have to revisit the fee today because it's been established. And the question is, we can reject it and not allow them to go door to door. But Jeff is asking how much money is it? $200 or $300 on a permit of this type, Eric? Give me a sec.
If he's just generating thousands of dollars in permit fees, I mean, it's it kind of offsets the cost of the license. And I know that's, that's just one type of seller. But I mean, most of the type of people that are coming around are usually solar or, you know, some kind of home improvement thing that usually requires a building permit or some kind of permit anyway.
Would say for a solar system, you're looking at a minimum revenue of $300 a pop, you know, and it would go up from from there. That would be my guess.
Without I don't think we have vacuum cleaner salesman anymore. We're going door to door. I think it's more, you know, especially solar or driveways or, you know, that type of stuff. Joe was with us as we move. Yep.
K. So does anybody have a problem with the permit? Nope. Alright.
Make a motion to approve the the sales vendor license for Trinity Solar.
I just have I had a quick question. In the packet, it didn't have a date that I saw. Is that gonna be filled? Is there a timeline on that?
What, how long do you wanna give them? I would've made it for a year, probably. Six months. I I think sick. Well. I don't know.
Jeff Murray and Scott, what do you think? Then he has to come back and pay us another $5 to get Yeah. It I
I mean, what's the cycle for our transfer station stickers, dog licenses, everything else is July 1, correct? I mean, we make the same cycle on these? I
think that makes sense. Keep everything uniform. Yeah. It's it's every budget season. I mean, and if we make them pay $5 now, I mean, we're four or five a couple months into the budget season. So it's not really gonna hurt anybody. So you're basically saying it expires June 30? Yes.
Okay, fine. Good. All right. So Eric, you'll make sure that it expires June 30. All right. So I'm a second and it expires June 30. Okay. Okay. So I'll add to my motion to approve the sales vendor license for Trinity Solar to expire on 06/30/2024. Second.
Alright. Further questions? All those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. We're now on to 10 d, town meeting discussions. Except the culvert grant and other items, zoning zoning fine ordinance. So Yes. Do we need to have a town meeting to for the culvert grant? When does that have to be approved by?
So it's gonna kind of depend mean, we're not under a super rush, but it would be good to do it in the next couple months. We probably ought to do it before elections. So I would probably say we set a time sometime in October. But I know in the background, you would also ask the town's attorney to come up with a zoning fine ordinance, which I don't think I've seen a copy of yet. And if we're going to do a town meeting, ideally, we would do both of the lot line, adjust boundary line adjustments, and go to town meeting for those at the same time. But it kind of depends on you. You know, sooner, so we have to go to a town meeting on the culvert project, because our charter requires, because that grant is only a 50% match from the state, it has to be approved at a town meeting, the project has to be approved at a town meeting.
At the same time, we ought to probably state what monies we're moving into that fund right then and there, and do that at the town meeting too. That's kind of the most transparent. And since we have to go to a town meeting anyway. You know, and then potentially the lot line agreements and potentially the zoning fine ordinance, which you guys had talked about. If there are other ordinance changes that you want to consider at this point, you know, since you're having a town meeting anyway, we might as well pile on and have a few things to discuss. But I don't know if there's anything I
personally have no problem with you piling on. I would tell you to do it after November, beginning of November.
Okay. So you want to do it in the month of November sometime? Yeah. It do it between the election and Thanksgiving. K. Unless
somebody has a reason why they wanna do it beforehand. Does that timing hold anything up, Eric or no?
No, I mean, you know, I think we're gonna be okay. Ultimately, we will probably request an extension from the state on the timeline for the state local bridge program anyway, but I don't see any reason why we can't. Yeah. I don't see that being putting it off to November as being a really big deal.
K. Alright. So then we'll put this on old business next month and keep viewing it until we set a date. Yeah. Ted e, the senior lunch program.
So I put a batch of stuff in your packet, but I wanted to to talk through that with you. And before we if we just well, we'll do that and then we'll go back. Because I did have one question about the proposal from Nathan Jacobson. And that is that the senior luncheon program, at one point it was fairly well funded, but the cost of food has gone up pretty dramatically. So we're paying a lot more per meal, and there's just no way we're bringing in enough fundraising with the current, you know, five per meal charge, and with the town only spending about $1,000 a year on the program. So what I'm doing right now is telling you that it is not over spent currently, but unless something fairly significant changes, that program cannot stay solid. So, before we're actually overexpending that budget appropriation, I'm coming to you and telling you that is, in some form or another, you know, that's going to
happen.
Kathy Can you give us an estimate of what the overexpenditure would be? Yeah. What
you need to talk about is how much these meals are costing now.
No. It's not. What's the total overexpenditure so we can determine how to fund it?
Sure. So the total overexpenditure at this point, worst case scenario would be about $9,000, something like that. K. I think we should fund it. Absolutely.
I mean, that's you know, one option is to keep the meal price the same and just accept the fact that we're going to run, know, fairly considerable. We'll do what we can to make that program work as economically as possible, but we may overrun fairly considerably. So that's option number one. Option number two, we haven't raised the price of that meal, and as long as anybody can remember, would be to bring it up to $8 per meal, which is still probably less than half our total actual cost for the meal, and then, you know, essentially fund the difference. So that's why I'm bringing it to you for discussion. How about we
sit there and ride this out for this year? And then when they get to move into a really nice building, we can really figure out the launch program and sit there and see how best it can work. Good idea. So you have to raise their prices and they have a nice place to live.
Yeah, we could ask Kathy, like, what do the seniors feel about that? Would the seniors be upset if they went up a couple dollars?
We don't know that yet. I've constructed a letter. I sent a text to Eric. We met today. We just had a good discussion. And, what one of the things I did was I've written a letter that I will be giving to the seniors and suggesting that we do increase the $3 due to the food increase however additionally I've now contracted to get the meals for $16 each versus the 20 that we I think that's what we were thinking, Eric. So, I can go now and get a $16 meal. And, I think that might be the way to go as well. So, I wanted to talk again with Eric on that.
And also, in the meanwhile, I'm going to be contacting other vendors to see what they might offer us and and what they might suggest. I still feel just like Jeff just mentioned Jeff McGuire that once we're in the new new building we've we're we have the pancake breakfast like I want to do once a month or every maybe five weeks. We'll we haven't decided on that. And and we'll have a reasonable amount, and it'll be open to the entire town. And I really feel that we'll be maybe making money on that. And the other part of that is I wanna go with the CRT meals once we get into this new building and have a functionable kitchen, I really feel that we'll we'll be able to qualify for that. And I'm going to put in for that for next year, because that'll be coming up in April, that grant. You're muted, Jeff.
Jeff, you're muted. Sorry. Does does anyone else have a problem with us supporting this for this budget cycle? No. No. Okay. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Yeah.
Yeah. It's just difficult. I I I think the cost of food is almost doubled. I went to the supermarket the other day, and it's everything's just gone out of it's gone out of control. So I mean, if if if the seniors are willing to help a little bit, we can help. We can we can figure it all out in the future. Thank you.
Sounds good. So I went to McDonald's for the first time in, six months, and I spent $17
for lunch, and I wasn't No. You can remember when you could get you could you could go to McDonald's for $5? Now you're gonna spend 15 to $20 to get a meal at McDonald's. It's crazy.
It is really pretty absurd. So we'll do what we can to keep costs reasonable for that program, but we'll keep the rates the same that we're doing now. And I'll just keep you appraised to where we are. K. Sounds good. Alright. 10. Okay. So there's three items on here. The first is the 20 passenger bus. The second is the old Steiner mower, now that we've replaced it. And the third is the fire department has said they think it might be smart economically to trade in ET215, which is the oldest engine, which is the 1991 that's getting a replacement. Because they're basically
what Wally said is they're willing to kind of roll the dice and go with just the tanker and the one engine they have right now. They wouldn't feel comfortable getting rid of the heavy rescue, but he said basically that the prices that they're that used vehicles are going for right now is so high because a lot of people are having trouble buying new ones, and new ones are so expensive, that he thinks that they think it would be worth investigating what happens if they sell it back to a dealer now. But they the fire commission wanted to know whether the board of selectmen would consider that at this point, so before they started working on that. So my assumption is that we should explore that possibility, but I want to ask you guys what your opinion of that is first, and then we'll talk about the other two. What are the possibility?
Yeah. I'd like to see the number I'd like to see the numbers, what it's worth. Right.
K. What about are are is there any discussion on the the 20 passenger bus or the Steiner motor?
So what I'm going to suggest we do, we've got a couple options. There's a municipal bidding site called GovBids, that's one. The last time around, we actually did better with the there is an auction house that does most of the stuff online, so we don't have to bring it anywhere that we got the that's how we sold the last cloud truck and or the F-five 50 and a few other things the last time. That one seemed to be pretty successful, and we got about what we expected. So, unless I have guidance from you about any particular way you want to do that, that's probably how I would advertise this, because that gets it on the nationwide. You know, these are both items that that, you know, might be bought from out of state. So we're trying to get as big an audience as possible for them.
What what would you expect to get for that 2,002 bus? I don't know. It's always working always somebody.
Just get us the information and bring it back to us and and let us know that it's a reasonable number and let's, you're to want to move those items.
Let's talk about But I mean, if we put it up for auction, you know, once we do that so I guess my question is, do you have any particular guidance on what type of vendor you wanna use for auctioning, or do you want us to use the same procedure we used last time?
How do you wanna approach that? Well, Eric, I got a question. Is there can we put a reserve on? Is there is there a way to put a reserve reserve on it, are they no reserve? I don't know the answer to that. Because my my thought would be, like, what's the Steiner mower worth of scrap metal if we just scrapped it? Like, I don't wanna give it away for a dollar, and then we could scrap it for, you know, $500. You know? Just figure out I mean, if we could get any money over scrap value, I'd be fine with it. Yeah. Okay. Let's go low, Jeff. Let's go low. Yeah. No. I'm not saying go low, but I'm just saying, you know, let's just not give it away for a dollar and then we could, you know, we've got a better scrap value to take it to the scrap yard.
No. I think Jay told me he thought that they would get somewhere around $3 for the signer. Okay. That sounds good. Or from off the signer.
Okay. Based on So what Jeff is correct. If you go to an auction and no one's bidding, you don't want to get less than $3. So if you got a reserve, put the reserve in it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you and Jay can put and figure out what a good reserve price would be, just put the reserve on it. And you know, if we can make the reserve, we sell it. Okay.
Not a problem. Alright. So 10 gs, the resignation of the town treasurer, we talked about that. It's a problem, but something we need to start planning for. Ten h, a legislative grant for Route 316 study. You also talked about that, Amir.
Right. I so I put what I proposed for an RFP in the packet so you could all read it if you guys have any questions or concerns with that RFP, let me know. Other than that, we'll put the RFP out there and roll with it. The reason why I'm trying to push this is it's unclear whether we have to give the money back if we haven't fully spent it by July 1. So my goal is to spend the money by July 1, which means I need to get cracking and we need to get the RFP out there. The RFP starts on around page 104, if you want, if you're looking for it. And so, it's clear what I'm trying to get out of this RFP is first, a design study to say, let's look at investigate the most logical groups and then where we can do it. And then once we've determined that, let's get the preliminary engineering design, as much of that done as part of the process as we can.
Because the next step for this is to give me enough of a document that I can go back and put in a grant application for a program called LOTSI, which is a funding mechanism through the Capital Regional Council of Governments for these types of projects. And we just frankly, because we don't really have any roads that are major collectors, We don't have anything else we can tap for LOTSIP funding, but this would be a perfect LOTSIP proposal once we get the study and preliminary engineering done. The great thing about LOTSIP is it funds 100% of the construction costs. The not great thing about LOTSIP is it does not pay for the engineering. So what we got to get out of this is as much as the engineering as possible, so we're pretty much ready to go with the LOTSIF application. And then if it takes us a couple million bucks to do it, well, that's what the grant is. So that's what this is for. The goal is to get us to that next step to the lots of application.
So, Eric, just a quick question. This I saw it said two to three different paths. This is gonna look at even acquiring private property to to construct this trail, this connector, or is it just we're just looking along the roadway because, you know, like, if you go to back of Sidermall Road and kinda come up that way, it's a little it's a little flatter. It's not as it's it's not as much of a grade. So I'm just trying to think, is that gonna be all is that gonna we're gonna be open to those kind of alternatives as well? Because the construction cost along 316, it may be offset just by, you know, acquiring private property
if the the Delayed owner would be willing to sell, you know, a a portion.
Yeah, well, that because Route 316 has a fairly, and much of that has a fairly wide right of way. Right of way. We should be able to put the pathway in along the right of way. And the other thing that's come out in our best interest is the state has just put out the director, department of transportation, the head of the department of transportation, just basically put out a memo saying finally that all projects on state roads have to consider complete streets in every effort for things that are in town centers will be to have basically sidewalks or multiuse pathways. So, think running it down three sixteen ties it directly into what the state's own mandate for itself is. So, I think it's probably a relatively easy approval process for the state, more so than in the past, because they're really starting to push that pretty heavily. But I'm not even saying that that's the best pathway. I mean, they may decide having studied this, you know, because they're going to have there's going to have to be public input, you know, and they may choose a different group, in which case,
you know, ultimately, it doesn't make sense for a consultant to go up and determine a route that the town, we can't take to a town meeting and get enough buy in to actually get it through. So, if that makes sense. So, the goal here is to do all the preliminaries now, go to the public, you know, study alternate routes, you know, pick a route, get as much design work done as we can, and immediately go to the lots of grant application.
Who's that, Michael? All right. Any other questions on the three sixteen truck setting? Alright. 10i, out of state vehicle registrations.
So, Jeff, you had asked me to examine what can be done about vehicles that are registered out of state that are present in the town and appear to be here. I know that's been a source of frustration for the assessor for a while. And one of the things he said to me is that if you know of specific instances in vehicles, let him know either, you know, publicly or anonymously, one or the other, and, you know, they will investigate. But he also said what they've been having a problem with is that when they do catch stuff and get it on the walls, people complain to the BAA and the BAA has been policing. So, you know, it's a difficult problem. If you have any comments on what he wrote, I attach the note in the forms that they send out to everybody that they see. Because what they do is basically go after everybody that they know of with the vehicle out of state and try to get them assess it as personal property. That's basically the approach they take for that. Hire hire the service that he recommended
and and take it out of the hands of what I mean, listen. There are plenty of out of state vehicles that are sitting in front of homes all day long every day. And even if you sat there and took a six month number, it's significant number. And to me, they're just stealing. So I I mean, I understand what he's saying about the the heavy equipment. I mean, did the same thing with Ash Blund. Great.
I I think that's And there's still bangs every year. I originally
here. And, you know, that's because their accountant ignores and pays, which is good. So take take it. But that doesn't that doesn't for me, that doesn't sit there and forgive the other view. If you're not if you're here more than six months to me, you live here. I mean, I'm sure there's another number. I'm sure there's some percentage, but, I mean, and I have specific things that really bother me because people who've worked for the town, and I have a problem with that. I mean, years, and don't tell me that people didn't know about it. So from my standpoint, I'd hire the service. Let the service go after. The service gets 50% of the first year's revenue, and then we get whatever is generated after that 100%. Okay. That way, if if that means there's too much work for the assessor's office, then outsource it. Okay.
Please find out, you know, what put a contract for that on on our agenda in the future. Okay. Item 11. Approval of minute needs. So I make a motion to approve the 08/14/2023 regular meeting minutes. I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. From what I'm saying because I wasn't here.
Okay. The tax collector refund request, I didn't sit there and see anything, but I'm sure I missed it.
There are. There are a total of five. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah. That total $2,543.85. And I can read them off to you if you'd like. Yeah. It's page one twenty eight.
No. All excess payments. I make a motion that you know, I I can't do this one. I'm sorry. Can't do this one. Somebody else gotta do this. I make a motion to
I'm trying to think how to say it now. Give a refund excess payments in the total of $2,543.85. I'll second that. K. Further discussion? All those in favor, aye.
Okay. And, Jeff, I know we talked about you coming in and signing some stuff the other day. Those will be ready for you to sign. There is one thing I do need signed rather quickly, like K. Definitely this week. I'll be there on my desk. Okay. That would be awesome. One other thing under tax collector's report, I did bring in the tax collector now that Aileen Curtin has gone. There was definitely some friction between Eileen and our finance person. So, that should be smoothed out quite a bit with Kate in the position. I did bring in the tax collector from the town of Fairfield, who interestingly enough is a town of Andover resident. And we spent about three or four hours last week going over policies and procedures in an effort to get that office running better overall, and understand like, you know, what you should do when you go to collection, you know, and go through all the how often you reconcile in what batches, you know, how do you get information between there and the so I think we've made some definite progress. I know I learned a lot. I think Kate did also. So that was very helpful, and I'm hopeful that that office will, you know, will get fully straight. There is some issues with the July deposits, And Kate and the town treasurer were trying to work on that today,
going back to the last batches for July. And then working out the procedures for finding stuff, like if a check gets canceled, you know, how they figure that out, or a check bounces, that kind of thing, how they figure it out and credit it correctly. So that is a work in progress, but that's definitely getting better. That's all I have for that.
Just as a just because you ask those questions, it just drives me. Like, are you telling me that when a tax check bounces, we don't get a notification from the bank that says this is the check that bounced?
No. We have a hard time getting, like, copies of checks, stuff like that,
which is Okay. I can't believe that that's not either available on a copy that got mailed or that it's not available through the website. So I would I would ask, you know, whenever any bank that I have to deal with sits there and puts a credit in, there's some kind of backup documentation that at least is attached to the website and to the transaction online. So I would just ask you to look at that. But that would be very problematic to me if you're telling me that you guys haven't been able to identify Bob's checks and apply them back to the appropriate customer. That's that's a problem. Yep. Tell me that hasn't happened. In at least a couple occasions, that has happened.
Okay. That one's got to be fixed. That cannot be that difficult to fix. That can't be that difficult to look online and communicate with bank as to what details they're giving you to support a debit that's hitting the account or a credit that's hitting the account. So okay. That's got to be fixed. So item 13, departmental reports. Are there any questions on any of the departmental reports that are provided to us?
Eric, just quickly, you need to let me in. I have to, off my laptop and go to my iPad. Okay. My battery's dead. So
Okay. I don't see you on the list. Oh, yep. There you are. Sorry. Thank you.
Okay. So if nobody has any other questions on any of the departmental reports, let's move on to item 14, correspondence. Eric, do we have anything?
We do have one thing that a resident asked me to read into the record from Stephen King. Eric, I do not see a reference to the boundary line discussion on the Board of Selectmen agenda. Can you update me on the current status and how the town plans to move forward with that discussion of that issue? Best regards, Stephen King. That is the correspondence.
Alright. Thank you. Well, that that definitely is on the agenda, and we're talking about having a meeting, there's some things that have to be resolved related to that. So let's keep going. Item 15 has been removed from the agenda, So we're moving on past that. And we're moving on to item 16, public speak. Anne Kerme, you're first.
Well, thank you. I had a good time listening, but I have nothing else to say. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Steven King.
Well, thank you for being recognized. And as, Eric mentioned, I'm here to find out how the town is gonna proceed. Is it the intention that, you're bringing this directly to a town meeting? As, Eric and I had a discussion that, there was gonna be talks prior to a town meeting in order to try to come to some resolution in advance.
K. As an answer to that, I know that we have authorized Scott, Roussong, and Eric to deal with the negotiations on that. And, hopefully, you guys can get yourselves together and come back to the board with something that's acceptable to both parties, and and we'll get it approved.
Okay. I greatly appreciate it. Just to let you guys know, I'm nine months into this and many thousands of dollars. I'm I realized this may be new to you, and I I just not aware of how new it is to you. So and it I didn't open this Pandora's box. It's unfortunate it happened, but, the town came to me and required it because of my licensing when I moved from Wales Road to Burnett Brook Road. So thank you for your time. Alright.
Okay. Well, I don't see anybody else on there. We're on to item 17. Motion to adjourn.
I'll second that one. Alright, anything else? We're good? Alright, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright, thank you very much. Excellent meeting. Nice and quick. Sorry that Adrian was.