Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Special Meeting
March 16, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
I'm going to call to order the Board of Selectmen special meeting for Tuesday, March 16. We're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag United States Of America and to the republic
stands stands nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all.
Thank you very much. Public speak. Mike and Kathy Palazzi, you're up. We're set. Jerry Wright. There you go. I'm good to go. Okay. Ed Srisley. You're muted, Ed. There you are. I'm here. Would you like to contribute to public speaker now?
Well, when it comes time, I'm the item for talk about the building. Sure, no problem. Linda Fish. No, thanks. Diane Choquette. I'm all set. Thanks. Okay. Louise Goodwin? All set. Thanks.
Sloan, I'm assuming nothing. Carol Lee, would you like to participate in public speak? Okay. All right. So we're going to move on to item three, Veterans Monument Park, discussion on the park upgrades. We had a meeting to or a site visit down to the Veterans Park Monument with Jerry Wright, Eric Anderson, and I am sorry, Scott or Adrian helped me with the name of the landscaper, Rondesong. We were trying to work through some of the issues that are going on in the Monument Park and at the Old Town Hall. We wanted to sit there and call this meeting to try to sit there and determine if we could find some funding for what needs to happen down at the monument to make it more accessible, better looking, and to do some long term improvements that are sorely needed. I know in some of the information that Amanda sent us, there is a drawing
from Jerry Wright as to what he would like to see, but
I think what we were after was there was probably about $30,000 worth of upgrades that would need to be made. Jerry and the fundraising for Agent Orange Monument have raised about 15, so there is a little bit of funding needed primarily for the electrical and the water and a new well for what we considered really more not just for the mining, but also for the old town hall. Know Adrian has some comments related to that, and Scott as well. Scott?
You want to go over first? The well, the well, well we got a, Eric got a price $5,900 And I think we established we have to put it between the museum and the poll, the suspect poll.
Eric, do we get any quoting on the electrical work that's needed for down there?
We had a quote initially just to do because the board had not wanted to proceed in the fall. The only thing I quoted out was what the costs were to do a new service drop to a pedestal with a meter and circuit breakers in it, because we didn't really know where we were wiring anything to because we didn't have well location, monument location, or anything else. So we had a quote just to do the initial electrical work. What was that service cost? I think it was around $4,200
Adrian, are those prices in line with what your thought process was being the most construction
oriented person on the board? Yeah, the well pricing is within reason. Should still try to get obviously a couple of quotes on that, apples to apples, same horsepower and all that stuff. The only thing I would like to see is, and I talked to Ron about it, he said he believes it's doable, he had done some digging down there, is I'd like to see us have one meter that does both the monument and the building. And this will allow two things. If we dig this going back, we can put water from the new well back towards the museum because we know that well has some limitations as well, right, long term. So this would allow us with the new well to supply both locations long term. It would also allow us to have one meter that would take care of the museum and the park. And it doesn't sound like much, just the base cost per meter is between $30 and $40 per month. So if you multiply that times twelve months a year, it's $40 that's almost $500 a year. And over time, that's going to add up. So, I'd rather have that $500 a year towards, you know, beautification efforts or you know, plants or whatever. So, if we can combine the two in both in both cases, that would make sense. Put the well, Adrian, between the pole and the museum somewhere in there. Yeah, that's totally workable.
We just got to find out where we can dig the trench probably, right?
Yeah, so if we go from sort of where the circle is at the end of it there. Kind of come in at an angle there if you start there and go up around the hill section and then coming to the museum, on the other side, it shouldn't be a big deal. You know where the meter is inside the or the box inside the museum?
I have not been in the museum to look at that, no. No, I haven't either, so. It It's really
near the main, what was the original entrance, which is closest to Route 6, the part of the building that is closest to Route 6.
Do you know if it's on the So is it the front If I'm looking at it from Route 6, is it on the left or the right? Neither. It's kind of in the center. Right in the center, Adrian. That should work then because we only need 18 inches for electrical to meet code. The water needs to be 48, you said? Yeah. Yeah, 47 ish.
Is there anything else that we would need or that was discussed? Because if we're the next and the biggest part is where are we going to get the money for this? The
other thing we haven't talked about yet is that if we put something in, if we put a new well in, you're gonna need some kind of vault for the pump and the equipment. And it's gotta be a lot bigger than the one we have now. So we would need to put in a vault somewhere for that. Okay.
And is that included in the price that we got for the well or they had No, that's not included. No.
What type of level of funding do we need to accomplish this?
Well, that's probably a couple of grand in and of itself.
Now we're at $12,000 Is there additional cost for any landscaping that we need to sit there and consider?
We have to redo the trenches and landscape around. Adrian, what do you think like a 500 gallon septic tank or something like that?
If you were to put it, if you would put a septic up there? No, no, a tank for the vault for the for the pump.
Oh, no, they can. I mean, honestly, it would make the most sense in doing this is instead of having a I would not do a large tank. Would do I would probably do a I don't know II probably would look at some type of direct direct drive instead of a tank plus system. I think we should talk to the well guy and try to come up with the correct solution for that, given what it's being used for primarily irrigation.
So Eric, let's sit there and say we needed $15,000 Where do we have that money available to us?
Well, you got a couple options. You could raid probably the coronavirus relief fund money. You could take it from contingency. You could go through the process of applying for LOCIP funding. Those are the three off the top of my head where you could come up with that kind of money. Or you could simply take it from the building, the building maintenance fund.
Okay. And the LOCIP process is just an application to LOCIP for funding for money that we already have available to us? Well, it's a little more complicated than that. We would have to rewrite
some of the planning documents to the town to indicate that part of our long term plan is to address the monument and get CIP to agree with that. And then CIP could also agree with a recommendation to apply for LOSAF funding as could the board,
and then we would apply. So you wouldn't consider the monuments the center of town? I'll guarantee you that's on your plan of conservation. Anybody else on the board not consider the monuments part of the center of town?
I think technically on the conservation, I think if you're gonna reference conservation, wasn't Center Street actually supposed to be?
I mean, you're asking me off the top of my head. I can't give you an answer as to this instance, what I would have to do, but we just did it for the transit It wasn't that hard. Thought it was Center Street. If
we did it, what's the If we did it and it went all the way through the process you're talking about, Eric, how long do you think that would take?
I think we'd have authorization in a month and a half, something like that. Okay.
It doesn't and really honestly, it doesn't matter at the moment because low SIP funds, you have to expend the money and ask for a rebate anyway. So regardless of whether you do low SIP funds, it's not like you couldn't do it now and then ask for LOSIP funds to replenish if you chose to do that. We're
almost at our April shift for funding. Where are we at on our yearly budget?
We're in pretty good shape on the budget. So you could probably safely tap it from contingency.
I would rather do that than use the blow some funds personally. That's LOSAB funds are, because of the flexibility of that funding, I think we should reserve that still. We have some other building repairs that may come up as well that may be a little harder to deal with. I think it's a safer bet to do some budget shifting and come up with the money if we can. I'd prefer that that's what we do, but that's obviously up to the board of finance. Also need to get an encroachment permit from the state.
Depending on exactly where you're going to do this, you may or may not. So, one of the things that's interesting is that the paperwork I had was the state signing a lease to turn the property over to the town. But within a few months of that, the state filed a quick claim deed with the town, which I was unaware of. So, we do own the property, which is encouraging. I only have the lease documents, a long term lease, but Jerry today showed me the quick claim deed. So we do in fact own the property. So depending on where it is related to Route 6 that you're drilling the well,
we may or may not need an encroachment permit. It'll probably be off the right of way from the highway then? All of it.
Yeah, it's got to be more than 20 feet back, I think. Yeah, and it all will be out of that. Okay.
Yeah, and I wouldn't put it any closer to the road, given the problems with salt infiltration and wells. I mean, I know it's deep and it's in the aquifer, but I'd hedge my bet and get that thing as far away from the highway as I possibly could.
So here's the, it sounds like Jerry has taken ownership of this and he's kind of running with it, but I'd like to see ownership of this. He's got the monument and landscaping already on his plate. I think we need some sort of ownership of the electrical and the well and the irrigation stuff. And I guess that's my concern right now is that we're talking about spending this money and I don't, this isn't a committee that's doing it. This isn't a, you know, I wanna make sure that there's a responsible party for funding that can answer questions and take ownership as we go forward, you know?
Well, I mean, you could re explore, remember I brought to you a request to empower a buildings or grounds committee, and you as a board decided not to do that. So you could re pursue that if that's what you want to do.
Scott, as a member of the board and having knowledge on the well and the irrigation, would you mind chaperoning this process through? With your help, Jeff, of course I will.
I will love to help you. You know that. Adrian, would you love to help Scott? No. Adrian has enough crap to do. Yeah, but so does Scott and so does Jeff.
It's okay. When you say that Adrian, I know that we end up doing this. Are you asking us to do it? Are you asking Eric to do it? Mean,
don't really care. When we come back to this later, mean, to be candid, I know I'm already going to be involved in this community center project. I'm not on that committee, but I know I'm going to end up heavily involved in it simply because of my background. I am also looking at, you know, Board of Education. So I do not feel like, I mean, gladly I will help, you know, find contractors and sort out bids. But beyond that,
you know, that'd be above my limit. Okay. Then, then I will sit there and work with Eric and Scott, Jeff Murray as well. As an electrical engineer, I will help with the electrical. Let's go. Let's just get this done. Adrianne, I will be moral support and I will ask you if you're meeting all your deadlines. Can you bake cookies? We need cookies. No. You will come down and sin for us. Jerry does need a singer for his event.
Okay. I have no electrical code. I can oversee what everyone needs to be overseeing.
Can I just clarify that what your goal at this point is to tap the existing meter and electrical in the museum for the well and for the monument? Is that correct? Yes. That's what your that's our initial
thought, Eric, until you come back and tell us it can't be done. What does the service look like there? I haven't even seen the service. It another It's a 100 amp panel currently running the well up there. Okay,
what else do we have for what else do we have for loads on there? Do we know how much? Okay, just the HVAC system and lighting. Okay,
so if we switch the well to the new well, it's gonna free up a breaker, Right, it frees up a spot. And then everything
we're talking about doing down there primarily is low voltage or LED anyways, you wouldn't do anything else. So, I have a question for you. If we abandon those two other wells, don't we have to put slurry in them and fill them?
That would be a question for Eastern Highland Health District. I don't think you need to. I think you need to change the caps. I don't think you need to fill them. I was told we need, I used told usually when you abandon a wall, you have to fill it. So we should probably check. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's a big deal though. No, they're not very deep. So part
of my question is if I get doing a new well for the Veterans Park, why are we are, are you doing that well in conjunction with the building because you think in the future you're going to bring water into the building? Is that what your longer term goal is?
We don't want to discount the fact that we might do that. Right, right, right. Well, it
really, you have a couple of things happening. You're already digging a well or drilling a well to use correct terminology. We're already drilling a well. So if you're already drilling a well and we're already talking about sharing electrical, you're digging the trench anyways, you might as well just dig the trench, be done with it, do it once. You can use a single trench for both. They're buried at different heights and they're just marked accordingly. So they'll do the waterline backfill and then they can do electrical with a tape marker that shows the top of the, just slightly above the electrical. So if somebody's digging, they'll know that there's electrical there. Yep, morning tape. Tape. Yeah. And then,
go ahead, Eric. So, and are you suggesting then still putting a standalone pedestal with breakers down at the Veterans Monument
just as a sub off the main? You definitely could do that. Yeah. And I realize this increases the cost slightly, but in the long term, it'll end up being cheaper because you eliminate that other meter, you know, don't and
have to pipe into the, I would just run the line for now to museum.
We don't even have to connect it at this point. If we have a need for it, we can connect it later. Yeah, mean, exactly. You don't have to tie it in currently if you didn't want to. There's room on that breaker box for another pump. And I think the other thing is too, this just gives us options. I just don't want to go back and have to if that other well goes goes to pot and we have to deal with this. I don't want to have to go digging it up if we're already digging a trench and the other thing too is it opens up other possibilities. If we know we have a well that's capable, we may be able to put bathrooms over there or some type of functioning,
even just a water fountain for people that are using the rail trail. Mean, it could be a variety of things, but I think it would be shortsighted to not connect everything
Yeah, I second your comments there because I think eventually we may end up with a grant or something. We can get some water to that spot for the rail trail or Yeah. Kind of proven grant, especially if we get that piece of property next to museum.
Right. It's just a lot. We're just trying to think a little long term vision Eric, that's all. Yeah. Like in the past we've been shortsighted. So we need to think of the future.
So is everybody on the board an agreement that we'll try to take any excess funding and either, obviously we haven't tapped contingency, but I hesitate to tap that.
Depending upon how close we are to it and how much we have in other areas, we may not need to. But if we figure that we need to shift say 20 just to make sure we're covered for the the extra cost of the conduit and our guys, our our crew can do conduit and honestly, if they don't want to, if if somebody else digs it, I can run down there and throw a conduit in a hole. It'll literally take an hour to glue it all together. That's not you don't need electrical license to do that. It's the electrical comes later when the guy actually starts snaking everything. So, you know, so we're just dropping condo in a hole and making sure it's it's sealed correctly. Yeah, I just our inspector just has to go make sure it's at the correct depth exactly. So he'll go down there and make sure it's done correctly and and and and you know sealed correctly and we're good to go. So is everybody on the board in agreement
that we sit there and support the upgrades for the Veterans Memorial Monument Park?
Yes, I am. Absolutely. Yeah, would make a motion that we support upgrades, you know, and the shifting of funds up to $20,000 to support upgrades to the park. I'll second that. So
I just just have one last one question or going back to what Adrian said. So this seems like because I can't wrap my head around it, there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle here. It's
the park in the middle of town. By the light.
Can somebody mute him please? No, I'm trying to support what you said earlier. Okay, be quiet. No, there's a lot of people involved. A lot of people are the pieces to the puzzle and I want to support this, but I want it to move along correctly so we don't have to look back and say, Oh, I wish we had done this. So we should we have somebody that's kind of checking in with everybody and saying, or come up with a timeline like I I work well with seeing like a big picture timeline and stuff. I think that that's a good job for you then Paula. Put together a schedule.
That's great. I like that. Something that you're good at scheduling.
It's a project though. You can all give me the input. I have no problem overseeing it and making sure that we're meeting the deadlines. Just I don't know the nitty gritty of this comes first, comes second. Know we were talking about well you have to apply for this, you have to do this. I just feel like if we have a big picture of timeline and all the pieces to the puzzle, it'll just make everybody's life easier so we can keep looking back at it. So I have no problem putting that together, but I need to sit down with two or three of you to say, this is what needs to be on that piece of paper.
Great. So we need to have a drawn out site plan and we need to have bids with the modifications that we've made or talked about, I would say by the end of April. And then you want to, we should be able to put in, we should still let the state know there's at least a notification if there isn't a permit required. That may take up May. And I think they were talking about doing most of the landscaping stuff in the fall. So we have to kind of have the electrical, the well, everything should be done by the fall. You're to do the well
June or July. But we got to, I think Jerry's, I guess the June 5.
Is that correct, Jerry? Yes, the June 5 is the monument unveiling.
So we have to be aware of that date. I thought you weren't doing most of the landscaping
work until the fall when we talked. We have to do the landscaping work where the monument's going to go. Right, exactly. So that's something with your permission I'd like to get started on that next week. Because we have to remove the cannon and we're going to remove the cannon bring it back to my house and secure it in the garage and then we'll go ahead and level that off fill it move the stone wall and hydrate it. We'll have all that done by by the middle of April. I didn't think he was hydrating until the fall. He wasn't
no it's where the monument's going to go so people can walk on it. They're not walking in mud when it comes to June 5. See that area that we're going to raise up where the cannon and the monument is going is where so it has to be hydro seeded otherwise we won't have any grass there. There'll just be mud.
Yeah but you're going to have you don't want people you don't want people walking on eight week old grass.
Jerry that and maybe what we need to do is get together with Ron Bassan again because that's not what I understood, Jerry. Understood that there was the initial, I mean, are we going to put irrigation system in there?
You're not. You're not. You can't hydroseat and all that until the irrigation's in and you're not going to get on a schedule that quickly. You can't do any of that until it will. We're not going to put the irrigation until fall. Yes. So why would we be? Wait a Wait a The only part we're hydrating,
okay, is from Monument Road down to the monument. That's it. That's all we're hydroseeding because there's a pathway going in there. There's pavers going around the monument. There's pavers going around the cannon. There won't be that much grass. Right. Here at all. We're just making that so there won't be mud when it comes to June 5. This has to be off if you do whatever you want. So
we're going to support this, but Paula is 100% right. We need a timeline to understand. Yeah,
don't want to be paying for hydro seeing Even if it's falling under you guys' budget, I don't want you guys to be paying for it twice.
You're not paying for it twice. I'm paying for it. I got it covered. I talked to Ron last night. We were down there last night and I got the money covered for Ron to bring in the fill and to put the hydro seat in or put in the pathway in and then I'm selling the bricks to raise money for the rest of it. Okay. Okay so it's not going to cost the talent any money it's all going to be donated money. But I think Jared,
Jared asking that because if we hydro seed and then we rip all that up to put the irrigation system and we have to see it again. Is that what? Yeah.
Yeah. Hydra seating is just out of a water hose or grass in it. And they just seed it and that you're done. It's not a big area. We're going to be a big area. There's not going to be a lot of money expended. There won't be a lot of money expended if we have to. It's about a buck a square foot.
Again, Paul is actually correct. We need a definitive timeline so that we're doing this correctly.
Here's my suggestion. Why don't I set something up with Jerry, Adrian, Scott, and I. The landscaper.
For the end of this week. Is it Ron or Rod? Ron. Ron. Okay. Jerry.
AJ. I won't be here I'm leaving for South Carolina on a speaking engagement for Agent Orange with Senator Graham and Representative Scott in Myrtle Beach so I won't be back till next Monday
at the latest. All right so let's let's try and set something up for Tuesday, maybe. Jerry, Eric. I'll send an email out. Who has Ron's email? Adrian, you have that? I do not. Jerry, I would assume you've got Ron's contact info.
Squeaky Farms. I know that much. Hold on just a second here.
Well, you can send that after we still have Yeah, why don't you send that after? We still have a motion on the table.
Is there any Yeah, there's a motion on the table. Let's move that forward and then let's try to get us scheduled together. Further discussion, Paul, anything else?
That's it. So what exactly are we agreeing to fund right now? What items?
We're agreeing to fund improvements to Monument Park up to $20,000
Specifically, the well, the vault, the electrical upgrades to include, if necessary, hook up to the existing meter at the museum, and a sub panel or pedestal system down by the monument.
So Adrian, are you envisioning tying in all the lighting at that point or no? I think we should be, yeah.
Is that going to be enough money to do all that work?
Well, underground Jerry, you wanted to do 12 volt, right? Low voltage? Yes. Yeah. So that'll be less invasive.
But the existing lighting is not 12 voltage. It is not. No, the existing lighting at the monument is one ten. Right.
Yeah. So we'll switch that out at the same time.
So you you wanna also plan on switching to all LED lighting, low voltage LED lighting at the monument?
Do all of it, yeah. Each monument, the can and everything should be lit up.
I mean, that's a fairly, fairly high powered lighting, even LED for the monument. I'm not sure that's really appropriate. And those are also long distances to be running low voltage power. Jeff, you can weigh in on this, but that doesn't seem like a good low voltage
solution. Yeah, we would have to go up on conductor size significantly and then just figure out what the line drop is. It's a simple calculation, but we'd have to. Yeah, it's actually, I mean, we do it all the time in landscaping. It's really not a big deal. Okay.
The current requirements of LEDs are not significant. So the line drop wouldn't be huge.
And coming from a dark skies perspective, I thought you would be happy about this Eric so.
Well, I mean, from a dark skies perspective, we don't light it at all. Then we got to have the flags down every night. So the happy medium.
So Adrian, are you including a box that's going to be in the vault for all the electrical?
It may be it may not be in the vault. It may be a pedestal setup. Yeah. Let's talk, let's figure out, let's find a vault first, see how much room we're gonna have in there and then we'll talk to, do we need to talk to an electrical electrician? Jerry, did you get an, who did you get electrical or Eric, did you get electrical number from?
I had Lenco price it out the last time. Okay. Alright. So we'll just talk to him about,
you know, on that. Adrian, what would be the thoughts of having a general contractor just GC the whole project?
I mean, it's going to cost you, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 generally.
No, no, I'm just saying it's just a general contractor just to do the sub work and, you know, the electrical work and,
you know, made general contractor do the excavation and everything but then have a you know, electrician as a sub. Well, Ron was well, Ron's already done some of the digging. He said he'll do the he'll do the digging for this. Okay. We talked about it the other day when we're down there. He's willing to do the digging. We can have our guys drop the pipe in and then our guys can do the the bolt placement as well, you know. Sounds good. The the the then really all you've got is, you know, Ron's doing most of the landscaping and stuff. We need to probably talk to a couple different people about irrigation, but, you know. As
a side on this is Jerry is fundraising with the bricks.
Yeah. Can we get that? What are we doing for that, Jerry?
He'll get us the information we can put up on the website. We've already sat there and said we will fund an additional $5,000 from what the request was, which is great because we should. But any additional money we will fundraise for. I will assist Jerry in the bricks to raise any extra money that needs to go into this project.
Yeah, let's get it on the website and if we need to, maybe we could get a table down at the farmer's market or something to raise funds for this or whatever.
I'll put time in for that. So we still have the motion on the floor. So are we all done talking about Yes. Okay. So all those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? All those who abstain? The motion passes five, nothing. Did Eric won't know?
Hi, Jeff. Yes. I just like permission to get started on the groundwork where the monument is going to go. That's going to take some time. I'm funding that. I just not need permission from the town to start doing that. Understood.
But I would ask you to make sure that you get with Eric and Scott and make sure that what we're doing is all lined up with everybody. Let's get started, but please
keep No, no. Let's have the meeting with Ron first so we're all on the same page.
Okay. Well, will keep you up. Jerry, you're going to South Carolina anyway. When he comes back,
when you come back next week, let's first day that everybody's available, let's do it next week.
Is that acceptable, Jerry? Yes, it is. Okay. I just have one more question. A couple of residents informed me that one of the flags was pretty tattered. Is that the case? The POW flag has been taken down and new one has not been put back up yet. Okay, that was just my question. Somebody said that one of the flags was ripped. That was all.
Yeah, the thing that held the flag onto the wire, the brass swivel snapped in a windstorm about a week ago. Okay. We ordered and got in the brass swivels and the replacement. I'll put that on my to do list to make Jay go down and put the new one on. It's all set. We have all the parts in is what I'm Sounds
good. Just want to bring it up since we're on the discussion of it.
Paul, Yep. I'm available on the twenty fifth and twenty sixth.
Okay. So we're going to move on to item four, community center building committee update. Jeff or Scott, which one would you I like to
think we should turn it over for the beginning to Ed, which is the chair of the building center committee. Maybe we can let him share his screen or we can show him. I'm
going to do it for Ed. Okay. Because I've got the prince. The host. And Ed will chime in if you have any questions. He's a civil engineer, so he can explain. He does some verification on the site and what have you.
So just to give a quick overview. You guys, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. Quick overview. As Adrian's pulling up the architectural drawings he composed, I did some work based off of a site plan from 2006, which we got from town hall on the addition to the then smaller town hall. So I was down there yesterday to field verify some dimensions to make sure the septic tank is where it is, to make sure the septic field is where it is. And what we're going to be able to do is get this building in here. Adrian's pulling up a 56 foot by 40 foot building. And we have some maneuverability and some flexibility as to where exactly how far back from the existing building we put it. But after verifying the field dimensions, we will be able to do it by simply moving the septic tank, which is what we had to do for the first addition to town hall. This will be Can everyone see the drawing? Did it come up? Yes. Yeah. We see us we see the floor plan. This would be going directly behind,
anywheres from 20 to possibly 40 feet behind, the existing community room. So go ahead, Adrian. And I'll answer any site questions if you have them at the end of Adrian's presentation.
Alright. So what you're looking at is the the actual print. It's broken down in a couple of different areas. If you follow the cursor that when you first walk in the building, and I will go to an overview so you can kind of see, this is the building, this would be the entrance. Obviously this entrance may change slightly, we'll go to a commercial door with glass on either side, But this is where you would enter. And it may be easier actually, if I just walk you through this way. So you'll enter the building. As you come in, have a hallway, you've got areas here for bulletin boards and kind of a gathering spot. Alright? As you rotate to the right, you're gonna see we have some bathrooms and another, another entry into a a meeting room. Straight ahead, there is a meeting room. As we rotate back here, you've got a little office area. Okay. And this allows you to have tax people come in, counselors. I mean, have a variety of things that could be anything from the dentist to a visiting nurse to come in and sit down and meet with the
community members. But just a little small office where you can have a couple people meet. And just I'll go back to the plants, you can kind of see it. That would be this area right here. Okay. And then I'll go back to the overall and just kinda walk you through. Just said North
is down or South is up on that floor plan. The existing building is above that floor is above. Yeah.
So the top of my screen would be where the current town hall is. Right. All
right, so again, as you're in the building here, I'll just rotate you back. This would be a community office. If we if we can get to the point where we can hire someone, this would be where their office would be. Okay? A little meeting space as well. You can put, about, you know, eight people around that table. We put some cabinets or bookshelves against that far wall. Okay? So we tried to use a lot of available light here. As you go straight ahead, you're going into a small meeting space. We have a storage room here to one side. We have a small meeting space here. This to be able to open up and use the space fully, and even the town could even rent the space if they wanted to by doing this. You have a kitchen with a serving area here. And then you would go through these doors would open. You could do glass or covered. It's up to the you know, up to you guys, but you go into this space. And again, this would be the biggest space. The idea is that you could actually divide this space in two by using commercial dividers like you would see in a hotel convention center. That green line just kind of represents, know, where you could, you know, just to one side, this line right here sort of divides it out. Folding doors.
Right. So you could separate, you could break this big space up into two, and then you'd have three meeting spaces or you have a big one and a small one here. And again, going back to that, as you rotate this room also has a serving from the kitchen. And just to kind of, you know, give you a little peek in, we factored in a, you know, a commercial kitchen space. So you've got stove, you've got sinks, you've got, you know, room for a couple of refrigerators and storage. And then you have two bathrooms on the plan. One is handicap accessible, one is not. So from the outside, just give you kind of a quick walk around. So from the town hall, as you came out of the, let's say you were voting and you came out that backdoor, you'd come around, you'd line up basically right here. Right. And this side would be facing the school and the parking lot. And this side would be facing towards the soccer fields. This final side would be facing towards the fire department. The idea and the construction here is to get as much bang for the buck as we could. Conventional materials rather than brick would allow us to hire the local contractors experience with this type of stuff.
It makes the project a little easier. We can trust the idea here is that we could trust the floor system, and you could have a walkout basement, which would give a whole another level to the the space. You'd have one big massive area downstairs. There'd be one section cordoned off for mechanicals, but it opens up the possibility so that when you're building this, you've got full usage of the space. So and I'll leave it to Ed and if anybody else has any questions, you want to see something, just let me know. Eight foot ceilings. Yep.
What else did we miss? Why wouldn't you make them 10 foot ceilings? You're not going to do anything on the upper floor. What's that? You're not going to do an attic or anything, right?
Well, it goes back to heating heating and cooling. The more volume, cubic volume you have, the more money you're going spend heating and cooling. You're also going to spend more money framing it.
To the basement will be down in the bottom right hand corner, which is the lowest grade on the site, which would the bottom right hand corner, you'll be able to get eight foot wide double doors to go out towards the existing septic leach field, which is a big beautiful grassy area where you could have picnics and outdoor activities and outdoor sports or crochet or croquette, badminton, whatever you want to do. And then we're talking about a small patio in between the two buildings, with possibly a picnic table or two so that you could have a paved patio in between the two buildings. With the possibility in the future, not now, but, making a over
overhead walk roof way so that you can go to one from one building to the other without getting wet. But Adrian, you can discuss the advantages of not connecting them now. Right for now, this has to be a standalone building. But we could be able to connect them, not heated, but staying dry and out of the wind at some point, right Adrian?
Yeah, mean, currently, we do this and we're building a completely separate building. If we do it as an attachment to the current building, we risk the fact that it becomes an addition. If it's an addition, our thresholds for Davis Bacon and requirements to go to union contracting for all of it
will be pretty quick. Or we may never decide to connect it. May not, we may keep them independent. But minimally, we could have a patio in the upper part of that. It's kind of a little eating area for employees to be able to sit out and be in the shade in the summer. This building is also very conducive. The way its orientation is the gable roof is perfect for solar panels, which we could eventually add to the roof on this so our town can finally go solar. Right.
So the basement area just as a, have you considered, have you guys thought about the vehicles?
We want to put 10 foot ceilings in there, Jeff, and have it usable for whatever.
It would degrade, Jeff, to answer your question, it'd be very hard to have a high enough basement ceiling to get the tall buses in there. Plus you get, you run into extra expense of having a gas powered vehicle stored under the building, which means you've got You'd have to have a complete fire break in a commercial building that would also require sprinklers. Understood. Yeah. You'd almost be better off by putting a small, if you want them in this area, we could put a small garage, a two bay garage down and back, farther back from the firehouse parking lot, could fit in a two bay garage there and have another separate small structure at some point to have. But we hear you, the buses would be nice to be stored right here for field trips for the seniors so on. It'd be nice to have the buses in the area somewhere. But the grade is not conducive. The grade is just barely gonna get us the benefit of that basement for walking, for pedestrians, not for vehicles. We wouldn't be able to As do it stands,
there may have to be you know, some step adjustments just to get the grade to what we need.
Yeah, and I talked to Eric today about the buses and storing those and we kind of agreed that maybe probably a pole barn or pole garage down at the town garage would probably be the better bet. Plenty of area down here. Yeah, for
the town crew to maintain them or clean them if they have to or do anything to them it's probably better that they're down there.
Okay. Any questions on the floor plan or the site plan? Oh, because Adrian, can you put up the site plan that I marked up from the engineer of 2006, please?
Yeah, hang on one second. Let me see if I can pull that.
We're working off of, and Eric's helping me try to find a better version of this or the original version of this, trying to contact the original engineer and architect from 2006. But we managed to find at least one eight and a half by eleven, one inch equals 20 scale to verify the septic tank location that had been moved originally for the existing addition. And again, yesterday I field verified the dimensions, they're looking really good. We have exactly 88 feet from the back of the existing building all the way to the start of the clean out for the leaching trenches. That gives us 88 feet of wiggle room back there. And so what Adrian's gonna pull up for us is the two separate locations, one load shown in red and then one shown in green. And probably the site engineer will come up with something halfway in between the two, maybe possibly 25 or 30 feet space between buildings. We have some wiggle room North and South. East and West, we put it, fairly close to the firehouse parking lot. We shouldn't have to disturb the firehouse parking lot at all. And it's flush with Okay, thank you, Adrian. So what are we looking at? We're looking north is to the right. North is to the right. You see above the engineer stamp, you see a north arrow to the right approximately. It's actually a little northeast of that. And so on the left you see SED, that's the proposed addition. That's the cutoff of the drawing. That's our existing community room. So in red, we have Adrian's footprint, 56 foot going up and down and 40 foot to the left and right. That would be the closest we'd ever put the building.
That's 10 feet off. Notice it's flush with the east side of the existing building. So it's lining up. So at least there's some alignment there. And that 56 feet then brings us within 10 feet of the firehouse parking lot. So that would be the most south we'd want to put the building. And then if you slide it 40 feet to the right, you see a green dash line, that would be about the most northerly we'd want to put it, which goes out almost to the end of the firehouse parking lot. That gives us about 40 feet between buildings. And again, we may end up somewhere about 25 feet from the existing building. I didn't want to put a third location in there. So that little funky looking box with the two eyeballs is the septic tank. That's the only thing that has to be moved. We moved it once to put the existing community room on. Thank you, Adrian. And all we have to do is move it again. We shouldn't have to alter this leach field at all, which is way off to the right, off of the drawing.
And so that should be a minimal cost to have to do that. And we could talk to the town sanitarian, we may even decide to upgrade with a slightly bigger, we have a 1,500 gallon tank now, we may upgrade slightly bigger than that. But when you're looking at a topo map, from what I can tell, the topo lines are pretty close to what we have. Ignore the GSF. The GSF is just a silt fence that was used for the original construction and is not there now. So if you go out there, the only thing you can see is the manholes to the tank, which there's actually three. There's three manholes ended up with the three manhole tank. And that's the only thing you can see. And then if you go 88 feet to the north, you can find a four inch clean out. Connect existing sanitary line to this clean out pipe that's there. Okay. And so we're salvaging in the bottom between the buildings, there's a catch basin, existing yard drain that is working well. And you notice the pipes feeding into it and feeding out of it have been verified. I'm looking down in that catch basin. The RCP reinforced concrete pipe is exactly the direction it is going. And so it should not interfere with this project at all. So we have no other utilities other than the septic tank to be moved. So it looks like I'm very excited about this because having to work several years on
attempting to use the school, the half capacity school and that not being approved, then now we have no other alternative for a new building. And this is a very good working solution. Feel that's going to be close to our existing facilities and for large events and large functions, can still utilize our one community room we have now. Any questions on the site or any other questions or any other members of the committee? I know we have other folks. I'm glad we all came. I see Diane on the committee here. Of course, Scott is on the committee and
anyone else from the committee want to say anything? I just want to make a comment that is just, This is not our final plan. This is just a concept that we're going to give to the architectural firm. Exactly. This is not set in stone. The color is not set in stone. Everything you see doors, windows, everything is just, we're trying to put something together to save money and give them an idea of what we're looking for. Yeah, we just felt like the
committee was looking for some way to conceptualize so that you don't keep going back to the architect a 100 times to try to say what you want. You give them a starting point and basically ask them if this is would functionally, you know, can we do this? What do you need to do to modify this plan to make it fit into the commercial code? I don't do commercial work, so I don't know a lot of the code, but I do enough residential. Figured I'd try to put this together as a starting point. Adrian,
I think you did a great job with the architecture drawing. You saved the town a lot of money, in my opinion. And by the way, this is all based on input from the community members. And also we went and talked with Kathy Pelosi to get some input from seniors. We haven't gone public of course, because we're not ready to go public with this, but we got as much input as we could and be transparent as we could to be able to get as much outside input as we could to save the town money. So the architect has basically a footprint to start with. And of course, I agree with Jeff. It may not end up looking anything like this in the final outcome because you know what architects can do, but at least it's something as a starting point, as a foundation, no pun intended. So does anyone else have any questions for the committee members that are present at the meeting today before you go on to the item five? Oh, well, okay, of course we're looking to expense some funding here to do preliminary drawings, schematic drawings based off of these sketches. And they wouldn't be the final design drawings yet, but whatever firms we hire to do the preliminary drawings, course, hopefully could transition to the final construction drawings. And we're looking to try to get something shovel ready as soon as possible. If any miracle's coming down the road in terms of grants or assistance from our senators and representatives, state representatives, we want to be ready so we can get some help building this. It's been a forty, fifty year outstanding need. If you go back to the POCDs, most recent I worked on, planning and zoning and the long term planning committee.
This has been a long standing need for the town and I hope everybody in town can get behind it because it's well needed. It's been in our documents for almost fifty years.
So the the two the two things you're looking for at this point are a site a site survey, so they have something to work with for the architect, so they know what the limitations are. And architectural drawings and renderings and some type of cost basis, right? That's
right. We gotta put it out to bid. Eric will be given these drawings. We put this out to bid for three bids for our firms. We could either do a firm that does both or have separately a civil engineer to go with a 56 foot by 40 foot footprint, do the site survey. You should snake, put a scope down these pipes to feel verify that they don't go do anything unexpected, and verify the storm drains and the sanitary drain, verify those and come up with a preliminary site plan and and an architect to come up with a preliminary floor plan. How much are you
looking for Ed to do this? Well, when we first met as a committee last summer, didn't we talk about it's about $500,000 building or what did we say, dollars 450,000 building? Yeah, I mean, you're looking at the square footage for construction costs. So 10% of that for design is $50,000 total and 10% of that or 20% of that is 10,000 to $20,000 for the preliminary drawings. And hopefully the same firm would transition them into construction drawings for $50,000 which is 10% of the construction cost. So we're looking not to exceed $20 at this point to do preliminary drawings in my estimate. Plus the site survey, correct?
Hopefully we can get the site survey done for that $20,000 budget. I'm not sure.
So, would it make the most sense to, so if we authorized $50,000 for? Engineering and architecture, yeah.
Yeah, and that certainly that wouldn't all be used in the preliminary drawings that would be transitioned. No, but it should cover all architectural and survey for the project, correct? Yeah. The total package, yeah. There's stage one, two and three of design, yeah. Yep.
Okay. And so everybody knows we have this money. It isn't a dedicated fund. So it's not like we're taking it out and taxation or anything. It's a dedicated fund that we already have.
Correct. So I would make a motion to authorize. Up to $50,000 for the creation of a site survey. And a full full set of construction drawings, including renderings cost estimation, with an engineering and architecture firm.
So are you looking for renderings? Or are you looking for a full blown architectural design?
Well, it's going to come in stages, right? You're going to start, you're going to start with a site survey to make sure what you've got is what you think you've got. And then that would need to be brought over to the architect for them to take this starting point and make something that works and come back to us with basically everything. Mean, we're doing this project. It's just a question of when.
So Hold we have on, hold on. This is five guys on the board of selectmen saying they wanna do this right here, right now. This is not the whole community. You know what, if it were me, my suggestion would get up to the renderings stage, you know, and bring it to a series of public meetings and get a bunch of input from the public and then start talking about pushing this thing through. Because I mean if you just show up one day and said that we're going to spend a half $1,000,000 and we're gonna do this,
you're gonna have some pushback. Well, I mean, to be quite candid this has been a project that's been in the works since 1969. We have money put aside for this. Need additional funds to complete the project. We're aware of that. And we have some ideas on how to move that forward, but behooves us to come back to the community with renderings, prints a cost estimation and then we move forward from there. The input from the community is going to be a basically a verification that they they do want a community center and let me let me know the number one thing on the survey when it got sent out was a community center. I don't think it's a stretch to say this is gonna pass as long as we
as long as we do this correctly. We're we're economical about it, which is why we're doing these types of things like I put in this time to get us a print, to get something to work off of so that we don't waste money with an architect. And again, let me reiterate, let's go back and review the history of this. I agree. So 1969
has been in five consecutive plan of developments for the town And the long term planning committee sent out a survey. They said, we need this as one of the number one top priorities of the town. They also said in that committee that they're used to going to our other town center, where the community center building is now in our town hall, and they wanted it there. The majority of the people wanted it in this location. So our first attempt, it's important for us all to remember, our first attempt two years ago was to use the unutilized 50% school capacity floor space. That was shot down by the Board of Education and the PTA. So again, we keep spinning our wheels. We're doing what the town tells us to do, but no one's allowing us to do anything until we
get these drawings forward. So whether we go the way to the approval
and community input that we're talking about is coming back to that once we have a cost estimation, we can come back to the community and say, this is the proposal. This is how we're gonna finish paying for it. The difference between what we have put away and what we need. And this is how we move forward. Okay, so just so we're all clear.
Over the last three or four budget cycles, the community has put money away and allowed their tax dollars to be put into this fund. Correct. What we're asking for is $20,000 of that money to do 50. 50. Drawings, renderings, and we're going to move this through stages. It's not like you're going to take the whole $50,000 and spend it day one. To go through the first stage to determine even if it can be built there as you believe it can be. Exactly. Then Eric, you're going to get the opportunity to sit there and get in front of the community with renderings and with an architectural firm behind this to say, listen, this can work, this is how it'd be built, this is what we can do, we can't do,
do you want to move forward? This is what it's gonna cost. And more importantly, we as a community have to figure out how we're gonna pay for the difference. Exactly. Jeff Murray.
Just how much is it gonna cost to put a concept together in a presentation to the town? Because that's what I thought we were originally doing, but I didn't think we were going to go $50,000 I just thought we were going to put a concept together with some renderings and
get the buy in. That's what I also have written down here. All right. So that's 20 out of the 50. All Adrian is saying, if it's gonna be the same firm at stage of construction drawings, we'd be going up to 50 if the town says, yeah, that's a great building. But 20 would cover the preliminary concept I wanna be on the hook for 50 in case it doesn't go through. No, I
know what you're saying, Jeff. What we wanna do though is we would like this, you wanna stay with the same firm if you can. And so if you put it out there to bid and you just bid for concept, and then you go back out to bid for the whole thing, you risk having a firm now come back and throw a bigger number at you. That's right. So if we put it out to bid for the whole thing as a staged progression, so survey concept renderings cost basis and then construction drawings.
Yeah, understand that but what I'm trying to say is I don't, if we go ahead and do that as a citizen and somebody that would be voting on this, I would feel like we're trying to ram it through. I would just wanna make sure that
Well, you're only gonna pay for renderings initially, you're gonna pay for renderings, the cost basis and the survey, which you you need the survey before you can do renderings and cost basis. You need the renderings to go to the community and you need the cost basis in order to go to the community with a number. I hear you, but do
we ask Eric just to come up? Do we do this in stages to authorize Eric? We authorize it for 50, but do we authorize just $20,000 to come up with the concept to begin with? Do it in stages. Most firms though are gonna look and see
if we've approved the whole If we go out to bid for something that we haven't approved,
they're gonna know that and they might not even bid. So it sounds like you're asking me to do a staged RFP. Yeah. Which is saying stage one is survey and preliminary design with the understanding that if the community accepts the preliminary design will go with that same firm for full blown plans. Right.
But we have to Some approve the firms won't even bid if we don't have the money put aside for at least that whole stage out, right? Well, but Adrian we've got $450,000 in that fund right now. So they're gonna look at the motion. They're not gonna look, they're not gonna go digging through our fund basis. They're gonna look at the motion that was approved for this process. So we prove up to $50,000 you know, and we do it as a staged RFP, we're covered. We're not suggesting you spend that now, we're suggesting that you come up because you wanna know what the cost of the whole project is gonna be even for that part. So you can go apples to apples because you may have a firm that comes in and says, they're really cheap on the first part and they're expensive on the second part. So we want them to break out the stages for us, right? That we're getting a
full picture of that bid. So Adrian, are you talking about just to bid the whole thing but only issue a PO for the first? Yes, absolutely. It's a staged RFP.
I wanna make sure that understanding I just didn't wanna make sure we're doing a full bid for $50,000 I wanna make sure it's a staged RFP upon approval by the town that we would release the rest of the money from Absolutely. The Okay, I'm fine with that. I just wanna make sure that that was clear
to everybody. So Adrian, believe you made a motion. Do you wanna revise that motion?
Well, I mean, would simply revise the motion by saying that it's the stage RFP.
That's fine. All right, who seconded that? I'll second that. Right. Further discussion?
Just a question what do we need to in the motion? Do we need to specify what fund this is going to come out of?
II would assume that that's going to be a board of finance decision, but it should be out of the community. Would you like that modification?
Yeah, just to say that we're going to we're going to work. This is to be expanded out of the community center fund. Alright, so I'd modify my original motion to spend $50,000
for the exploration of the community center building to say that it will be a staged RFP to include. Site survey. Renderings cost estimation, and with approval final construction drawings. And also that it is recommended that it come out of the community center building funds. I'll second that or does Scott already second? Fine, Jeff. I'll second that. Go for it.
I'll second that. All right, further discussion? Paula, since I can't see you, can you at least chime in there? She's there. I'm here. All right, now I can see you. So you're all good? Yep. All right.
Let me just ask, add, before we go, we'll put this out, I suspect we might get the best price for the site survey and offer the drawings of TO designs, the guys that did the original thing in 2006. Hopefully they still have the data file from this map we've been working off of. So it shouldn't be all that expensive, especially if that firm is asked to do the work on it and see how that compares with two other bids from a site engineer. Same goes to the architect. But I think, in my professional engineering opinion, Adrian's drawings are good enough to go to town with it. We don't have to spend much on the architectural part of it. We just want to make sure that the footprint fits the site with the existing utilities all we have, of all we had to go off of.
And so we we don't have to spend a lot of money on architecture to have concept drawings. In my opinion, we've got we've got a good set of concept drawings already. All right. With town input, we could add add more from town input. But the committee has been hard at work at this and we got a lot of people talking to the committee members, including the seniors.
Ed, we want to pass it, so let us go. All those in favor of the motion as passed. Aye. Adrian, I can't see you. Sorry. Yes.
Yes, thank you for verbalizing your vote. All those opposed. All right, motion passes five zero. We're now moving on to Item five, building and land use department. I'd like to make a motion that we move this to executive session. I'll second.
All those in favor of moving it to executive session and inviting the town administrator in say aye. Aye. Are
we going to invite in Carol Lee in the, Mattap?
No, I don't want to. I want to sit there and have this be a board executive session with the town administrator.
Okay. Given that that was their idea, I thought it would be appropriate to hear from them before we go into a discussion.
If you want to do it before we go into executive session, have at it.
I think it'd be appropriate to do that in executive session.
Should we go on executive session, listen to them and then Yeah. Ourselves? Yeah, then we can ask them to leave executive session at that point. Sounds reasonable to me.
So the one thing you ought to consider is that we're discussing a union position and you really ought to be negotiating
directly with the union or I should not with the individual. I don't wanna negotiate with the individual. I wanna hear what the proposal is exactly and get an understanding of what they would like us to approach the union to agree to. Correct. It's not negotiation. It's just a discussion to see what their thoughts are. But given that it's an employee, I think it's appropriate to be in executive session. I don't think this needs to be a public discussion.
Are there any other members of the Board of Selectmen that are in agreement with that? Paula,
Scott? That are in agreement? Is that what you said? In agreement with bringing Carol and Matea into the executive session.
Yeah. Because I I I don't know what the what all the details of the proposal are, so I don't know if I missed an email or something. So
initially yes yeah initially and then we'll ask them to step out yeah Paula do you have control of our meeting
I I will once somebody passes that over to me Amanda please.
Bye all I'm going to sign off bye all. Amanda I'll just email you when we come out of executive session. Okay thank you. Yep Thanks everybody for tuning in.
All right, so the recording is gonna be paused. Holly, you're now the host. If you could stop the recording. Should we make a motion to go to executive session?
The motion was made, now we've got a vote on it. Right, Jeff? Roll Yeah. The vote, Mr. First Selectman. Who seconded it? I did. Who made the motion? Thought Cola seconded it.
Mean, I know I made the initial motion to go into executive session, but okay. I'm going to revise this. I'm making a motion to go into executive session and invite the town administrator, Eric Anderson, and the town clerk, Carol Lee, and Matteo, and I'm sorry, I don't know your last name, but Matteo to join us initially for the initial stages of this. Who seconds that? I'll second it. All
those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? No? Okay. Passes five nothing. So now you can stop the recording, Paul, and we'll go into executive session. Who is