Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen- Special Meeting
January 17, 2024 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. I'm gonna call this town of Andover board of selectmen meeting or or regularly scheduled meeting for January for January 17, Wednesday, 7PM. And we're gonna start with item one, 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, with liberty and justice for all. We're going to move on to item two, which is public speak. And we'll go in order. Diane Greiner?
I hope you can hear me. Yes, we can. Loud and clear. Okay. You know, sometimes I have problems with all these buttons. Getting old is an adventure. A couple of things. One, I'd like to applaud Eric and Paula King for the video that they took of the new senior centercommunity room showing us the progress and what it looks like and where we are today and the plans. It's available on the town website, YouTube, I believe, and it was really good and I appreciate that. I think others enjoyed it as well. The other video, of course, is the ride along with Zach Zito that Paula King did showing us what it takes to be a snowplow guy. Very informative, lots of information there learn what it takes to be a snowplow guy. It's not an easy task and a lot of coffee required. So, I applaud that video as well. I think those are good and I hope to see more of those sort of things in the future.
The other one is I just want to shout out give a friendly reminder about the the stumps at the Townsend Cemetery. It just keeps going. We do have the finances in place for that to be done. The next step is to the town has agreed. The town tree warden, Jay Tuttle, has agreed that the last sugar maple is 80% dead and the town would take that tree down. Eric has told me that that is on the list. I hope that is on the list for early removal in the spring so that we can proceed with that project. So I want to make sure that it doesn't fall off the list and that that tree gets done. And the last thing, know Pocahini here.
No, no, no. I was laughing at your fall off the list.
No, it will get taken care of, Diane. Okay, fine. Thank you. And the last thing is I just want to remind everybody, I did see it was, I think Eric had posted it on the webpage about the veterans ceremony to be held on Monday, honoring those that served in the Korean and Vietnam War, 04:00 at the school. Susan Bisowitz is going to be there. And I did check the town calendar and it's not listed on the town calendar. And maybe we can have that put on the town calendar so that remind people about it. And that's about it. I applaud you all for all all the work that you do. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Linda Fish. All set. Okay. Fabian T. Hello.
Hello. What, are we talking about the, Joshua track now?
No. It's just public speak, so you can hold off. And so I'm assuming John Hankins is the same situation. Bill Penn, same situation?
Correct. Both Bill and I are here on behalf of Joshua's Trust. All right. We'll get to that during the agenda. Elaine Bucardt.
Hi. I did want to bring up the situation that we have over at Community Voice Channel, the public access television station. We are losing our funding because our funding that we get is directly connected to cable subscriber fees. And since everyone's cutting the cord and not cable subscriber fee anymore, and instead getting their stuff from streaming, watching television streaming, using the internet. We have to get some laws changed immediately so that we don't have to close our doors. This has been ongoing for a couple of years that we raised the flag and we're trying to get PURE to go ahead and straighten it out, but it keeps getting killed at the legislative level when it comes to laws being created to go ahead and fix the funding calculations so that we can continue to exist. And this was a federal mandate that there is public access television provided to the public and along with education on filming, making their own shows on programs. It's you know it's a freedom of speech thing. And certainly I know we're being filmed right now for you know community by community voice channel, and I'm going to be filming the veterans presentation that they have over at the school on Monday, and so Community voice channel has done a lot of work in trying to get people's. Communications out there in the world, So I will be reaching out to a lot of people directly and a lot of organizations to get some letters from people to send to the legislature to go ahead and let them know that this is a vital function and and we don't want to be closing the doors and not having anybody be able to do their own shows
or do their town meetings or whatever their high school sports programs and musical events and all of that is just not going to be done anymore if we run out of funding. So I just wanted to bring that up. It's like an alarm for us. The legislative session is a short one this year. We're working with a lot of the senators to try to get some new laws to straighten out the funding issue. But, but that's it. Just wanted to mention that. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Steven? Okay, we'll move on. Joanne Ebert. All set, thank you.
All right. Did I miss anyone? Okay. Well, let's move on. I'm just gonna ask Eric, the ag deletes, is it deleted because of special meeting? Correct. Okay. I'm okay with that. Let's move on to item three, treasurer's report. I
don't have anything to talk about with the treasurer's report, unless you have specific questions.
I don't have anything specific right now. Anybody, any of the other members? Okay. And, two things before we get started. One is Paula King is going to be with us at about 07:30. So I know she's working and she's got an out of office appointment. So she's gonna be joining us at 07:30. But I I want to, take Diane Greiner's point just aside, if everyone will let me. Not only was the information put up on Facebook, and I will be the first to admit that I am not a social media person. I don't I don't deal with it. So, if you ask me if I have a Facebook account, I personally don't. But I do want to tell you that I couldn't have been happier that Andover was presented positively in two articles in the last issue of the River East. And everybody understands the River East and what its value is, but I will tell you that one of the things I am so happy about the last Board of Selectmen and about this Board of Selectmen is we've never embarrassed the town. Not once have we embarrassed the town. And things like what Eric did and what Paula did are so positive and put us in such a positive light. I I can't be happier. So I wanna commend Eric and Paula when she gets on. I will let her know that personally, but I wanted to start that off. We
we as a board, have been extremely professional, and the things that have gotten accomplished, I think, speak for themselves. But, yes. Two positive articles. It couldn't have been a better week for Andover in the River East. So, anyway, there we go. So treasurer's report. Anybody have any issues? Alright. Eric, I I will have some questions for you when I can access what I need to. There are some things that I need to talk to you about as far as information that we need to get resolved, and I will be with you probably tomorrow on that. Sure. Okay. Board and commission presentations. We have the Garden Club budget request.
Yes. Hi. Hi. You know what? Let me turn on the camera so you can see who's here. Let's see if it works. Sorry
and I'm on the committee too but I decided just to hi elaine book I'm back home
I'm not sure what's going out with my camera oh wait hang on Oh, there we are. Hi. Hi.
I'm Jeff Ballard, and Grace is here with me. And we would like to review, our budget request for the community garden. Okay. Did you did you people receive the package that we paperwork that we gave you? Yes. There you go. It's in our package. Okay.
We need a fence around the garden, as soon as possible. The you the board of selectmen last year gave us $3,000, I think, out of a contingency fund, to build the raised gardens. Our budget last year was cut from 25 to 1,500, because, we were promised, a roofing gutter and water collection, which never happened. We need the fence. We approximately 400 pounds of produce was was turned over to the food pantry this last year, and we had at least 30% crop damage from critters. And so we are requesting, $2,400 for a fence to increase our our food pantry produce donations. And that would be that is something that we would like before, you know, before the growing season so that we have a chance to get it up and running. And for a budget, the request for 2425 is $3,675, which includes the thousand dollars for the roof and gutters that we didn't get last year. Andover Community garden sign, the one that we had is all rotten and then went off to the transfer station and bales of hay and the five gallons of certified organic neem. It was all laid out on on the pamphlet on the package that you people received. K.
And this information, Eric, you have it ready to go into one of the line items, or we don't have a line item for the garden?
There is a line item for the community garden, but they're requesting money this year right now. That's not. Okay.
That's not a me approval, but I would also say that I hesitate with the community garden and the construction going on right next door with the community center doing this right now. I just, I have an issue with that. Me, that's not a great idea. And this is a pretty close proximity to the leach field, which also gives me a lot of pause with, you know, jamming posts in the ground.
Okay. So understood. But this information is available for us. Your Jeff, if I understand this correctly, you're asking for money for this year that you don't have in the budget?
That is correct. Okay. Alright. That's $2,400 for, a six foot fence, 300 linear feet to go around the garden. And in the end of the the the request, we had asked that let me see if I can find it here. Did did the Legion Field pipe be marked at the beginning and end of that pipe so that we could make sure that we're clear of the lesion field when when we construct the post, then this would not the fence would be installed at the end of April, beginning of May just before the growing season.
Okay. So let let's put this Let's put this on to next since you're asking for the money for this year, plus you're providing us your budget request for next year. Let's put the current issue on for next month because I'm going to ask Eric some specific questions as to how it will potentially impact the community center and what's left to do on construction related to the community center. Then we can evaluate if we can find the money for the community garden group. We do have the information. Eric, you have the information for next year's budget. The information for this year's request will address on next month's meeting. Unless any other member of the board of selectman has an issue. Nope. Okay. Yeah. Jeff, what else?
I think that the Grace and I and and the committee have put together everything, all the information necessary in our in the package that you received with line items and costs and everything. I do have all the estimates, for materials and, for the fence if needed.
Okay. Let us put it on the next month agenda. And if, the members, need additional information, we'll communicate with you before the meeting. Thank you very much. Okay. Alright. Thank you. My phone. I keep thinking where is my agenda? It's on my phone. Sorry. Item five, Eric appointments. Do we have anything? There are no appointments. There is one resignation. Go ahead and hit us with it.
So Kelly Wood, who was elected to the board of finance, was, is not able to fulfill that role. So the it is being advertised right now in the paper. We put it on the town's website and social media. That will be up to the Board of Finance to fill that that vacancy.
Okay. All right. Members of the Board of Selectmen, we should discuss that and sit there and see if there's any residents that we might want to make sure communicate in that role.
Jeff, I've reached out to a few people that are interested, so we should have a few letters going in. Okay. All right. Okay. All right.
Item seven, town administrator's report. Eric? So I did not supply a written report. My apologies. I'm busy at the moment. But I will give you a verbal report. First things first, you will have the budget in hand, close of business on January 23. I know I promised it to you on the twenty second. I hope you give me an extra day of grace period. So given that, what I would ask is that you give me a list of items you wanna discuss at the first budget workshop, and that at this meeting, which is farther down in the agenda, we start scheduling the budget workshops, because you as a board have basically until March 1 to work on the budget before it gets turned over to the Board of Education. So you got about basically five weeks where it's in your hands. So that's kind of it for that. As far as the STIF account, this month we earned around $15,000 in interest on the money we have in the bank in the STIF account.
So kudos to the treasurer for getting that set up. That's looks like it's going to net us a fair bit of money on the money that we have put aside. I do have a meeting scheduled tomorrow with Tom Weldon, who's the bridge engineer doing the Bunker Hill Bridge project. We will probably be putting out an RFP fairly shortly. I think for the bridge inspection services. And for some strange reason, you always do that first hire that contractor, and then we'll go out to RFP at some point later for the actual bridge construction firm. We're basically at the 90% construction. We should be on tap for, you know, next winter's construction season. So that's good. Work continues on the community Center. That's going relatively smoothly, you know, a few minor delays here or there, but nothing really significant. The town is working hard towards a deadline for a LOCIP grant, which is in the middle of February. That would be for the Route 316 connectivity effort. Myself and the engineer from Bartlett Judas, whose name is Kevin,
have been meeting with all the affected landowners kind of one on one and doing what we can to kind of personally tailor the path to, you know, address the current concerns of the individual landowners. The timeframe is pretty tight. Hopefully, we got a meeting scheduled. We're trying for early next week with DOT to get their comments. And it's a push, but we'll we'll have a a decent grant application in by that deadline. How are the meetings going?
Reasonably well. I I've been, yeah, I've been pleasantly surprised. I mean, you know, a bunch of residents have concerns, which I would too if it was something that was going in front of my house, but we haven't hit anybody that was, you know, absolutely opposed to it. So I I consider that a good thing.
Lastly, Wait. I had If members understand how Eric is, that's high praise or that's fabulous news as from the resident's perspective because that's not normally how Eric would talk about those types of things. So, pleasantly pleased means they, they went pretty well. So just letting everybody know that one. So
Yeah. I mean, the really good news in this project is there's only around six homeowners that will really be directly affected by this. So we have the ability on this project to go out and meet with them all individually, you know, and kind of understand. We've given them all essentially a schematic of how it would look and how it would affect their property. So, you know, we're trying to make up, you know, and in truth, this is a project that would be right in the center of the town of Andover. So this is something we have to get right from an aesthetic perspective anyway. So, I think we can pull this off. I think, no guarantees, and we got to get it funded. So last I met with John Hankins and public works supervisor Jay Tuttle regarding building the parking area. If the Board of Selectmen agrees to this project, we had a constructive meeting, you know, trying to figure out where it would go and what the logistics are. If we do go ahead with it, we're going to have to make some decisions as to basically what the town's involvement in this would be, and how improved we would want a parking lot because it would be on town property if we did it. So we can have that discussion as part of that. And that's basically all I have, unless you have questions for me.
Wow. I have two. One is we got a significant amount of rain. Did we have any issues related to the rain
from a town perspective? Nothing major. I mean, we had little washouts and little issues, but we didn't lose any culverts. We haven't had any significant concerns. We have had the ball field did get flooded essentially twice in one week, once,
know, really badly. Are you watching it or not? Just a little bit. GoAnnie Burke, can you put yourself on mute?
So, you know, it's not that we've suffered no damage, but, to put it in perspective, last year, as in 2002, there were two rain events during the year where the town got more than two inches of rain in one event. This year, we've had 13 rain events of two inches or greater. So we've just gotten hammered this year with really big rain events, and the town has held up fairly well. You know, we've kept the catch basins clear. We've done a lot of work, a lot of shoulder work to address drainage issues. So we have a lot more to do, but but overall, I think we've done okay with that.
And I'm sorry. I have three questions. One is, because of the events that we've had, how has been, tree damage?
We have done pretty well overall. I mean, to some of the other communities, we haven't suffered. You know, we've definitely suffered some outages, no question. But we haven't had the whole scale damage, you know, we've had in the past. And that's partly because we are trimming, you know, we are cutting trees so aggressively in town, you know, where we've had, well, we didn't have distinctive in this year. We chose to do a lot more individual trees because we've gotten a lot of the really big pockets of dead ash and dead oak out. So that work continues, we've been pretty successful. We're not having the problems that a lot of our neighboring communities are having. On the other hand, I expressed a lot of unhappiness with Eversource several storms ago because we did have a tree come down on a driveway that was on Route 316 that took down the power lines, and the power line was on the ground actively burning, you know, for nine hours before the utility company showed up to even shut it off. And that's really unacceptable. That's absurd. You know, so I put in a formal, you know, complaint about that. And
to dovetail on the trees, and I apologize, I only got one last one. The trail, I know that there was I know that there was a significant I I what I'm after from you was a comparison of how the trees in town falling and damaging and having to be removed on the town roads are versus what you had to do on the trails?
So the trails have had a lot more issues than the town roads on a mile per mile basis. You know, the state has not done a great job of removing the dead ash on the trail. So every time we have a rain event, you know, the there is a fair amount of deadfall on the trail that needs to be caught up. Sometimes that's public works if we have time, and sometimes that's DEP, but that is an ongoing problem. And DEP really needs to start, you know, doing the same thing, which is systematically removing the dead trees on the side of the the, Hop River Rail Trail.
So we can sit there and take this as the the town's program of removing its dead trees and spending, additional funds on tree cutting has been successful.
Yeah. I think actually, I think it's made a huge difference. I think that's one thing we've done very well in the last, you know, three to four years.
Anybody else have anything? Because I forgot my last question. I know out there, I'll get it to some point in time to Eric, but anybody else?
Trimming trees out in Chaplin and Hampton along the Rails Trail out there, Eric. I saw like a 10 foot swath on either side of it going out, that all the trees are knocked down, you know, hundreds and, you know, probably thousands. Who is doing it? I'm not sure. I didn't see anybody doing it. I just saw the aftermath. They're all piled up. Okay. So on the trail, Scott? Yeah. No. They're piled up on the sides.
On the side. Side of the roads? No. The sides of the trails. Side of the trail. Okay. Alright. Somebody's doing it. We should find that out in case Chaplin had a way to get to DEP and get them to do something positive for the trail. We should ask for that to happen for us. K. Anybody else? Jeff? Anne? No? Okay. Alright, Eric. Thank you. Yep. We're gonna move on to old business. So we're gonna get into our Joshua Joshua Trust discussion. So, Eric, what do we, where are we at and what do we wanna, have brought in front of the board?
So at the last meeting, you had asked that the town notify all the abutters to the proposed trail via a letter, which we did send out. And I think probably Jeff Murray, you probably got a copy of that, I would assume. So, we did send them out to all the residents. The only thing that was unfortunate is we did change the the date for the Board of Selectmen meeting, you know, which was not what was in the original letter. Subsequent to that and in your packet, there are a series of letters from the Conservation Commission and other homeowners, You know, mostly positive. There are, and I believe he's here today to talk to you directly, Thomas Fabian did write a letter with a whole series of questions. There was a response posted from the president of Joshua's Trust, John Hankins, but I think he probably wants to address the commission or the Board of Selectmen himself. And that's it for my part. I said we already had discussed with public works building the, you know, building the parking area. The public works foreman does have a little bit of concern about making sure that whatever we put in there doesn't impact the existing drainage that's on the side of the road. But at the same time, that area is scheduled for pretty extensive drainage work this this season anyway. So I think we could probably do that as part of all the other drainage work we're planning on doing there.
So that's it for me, unless you have any questions.
Well, I would like to know how the meeting went between you and Jay over the parking lot and what your plans were and are going to be.
So the question is just, remember Jay is a perfectionist. Jay would spend a month building that parking lot, basically tear out everything that's there, excavated down 18 inches, bring in all new fill from the pit to gravel and then, you know, get process on top from point. I don't think we can practically spend that much time and energy on that, nor do I necessarily think it's appropriate for a lot that's basically a trailhead, you know, for a low impact trail. So I think we'll have to trim down his desires on how much he would want to do to address that. We also spent a bunch of time looking at the property and figuring out how we can get equipment back in there to remove all of the junk that's on the town's property. Because as you remember, there's a ton of tires, ton of rusted metal, some cans and a bunch of other junk out there. But in truth, it's town property and, you know, it's conservation land. So we should be doing that anyway. So this kind of will spur us to be doing that. It does look like there's the old
path that goes in there, that would be fairly easily accessible, you know, maybe not to a loader, but certainly to the smaller equipment to go in and remove the tires and other junk that are there.
So what was Jay's plan gonna be and what was the cost gonna be?
He has not given me a cost yet. You know, what we were talking about doing is essentially just charging Joshua's trust for materials and charging the cost for the labor, and then just using our equipment to do the work.
With the brush, to open it up, what are gonna do? Chip it all?
Yeah, we so that's an open question, what the best way to do that is, Jay feels that the easiest way to do it is just, you know, use the excavator with the thumb and just basically grab the brush and then feed it all into the chipper and chip it all up. And that's how he would approach it.
And Eric, the plan would be to clear it right to the roadway, so it would have an open sight line to the parking lot, so it wouldn't be hidden in the back.
Yeah. I think when we're done, it would be it would be visible from the road, so it wouldn't be a hidden lot for sure. Yeah. I just don't wanna have it hidden, you know, because people would park back in there and, you know, for other activities.
So Yeah. I would say the width of the the width of the lot should be the width at the road also So that you can see straight into it. Not a parking not a parking lot, just with a one car driveway going into it or something. I would like to see the same thing that Jeff Murray's talking about. Not sure I quite understand what you're asking. So that when you come down the road, you can see the whole parking lot,
not a hidden parking lot. Yeah. So it's not obscured by brush or trees.
Yeah, that that could definitely be be accommodated there. And we're not talking about a big lot, we're talking about probably a lot for four cars. So, you know, roughly a 40 by 40 lot with a drive in. So you drive straight in and you you essentially hang a right turn park, and then you back straight up and then you're out on the road. Well, so you're pulling forward when you're leaving the property. I mean, I can certainly get you more details before we agree to go ahead and get you a more fleshed out pin for a parking area
if you want to see that before we proceed it. Yeah, I would like to see the cost too and make sure that's acceptable to Joshua's Trust before we ever moved ahead with this. That would have to be settled too to make sure that those costs are acceptable. Understood. Okay.
I just wouldn't wanna get all the buy in from the residents and the neighbors and then go ahead and come up with a huge price of the parking lot and have Joshua's trust bulk at that. It's just we need to get that, we need to make sure that that is, that price is agreeable before we move ahead on something like this.
Jeff, to some extent, you know, that's kind of up to the Board of Selectmen. And by that, I mean, you know, what is acceptable to you as a parking area? Because clearly what I have in my head and what Jay has in his head, you know, for improvements to a parking lot are very different. You know, he would opt to do something like Lake Road, which took an enormous amount of brush cutting, an enormous amount of fill, you know, and an awful lot of process. And I would do something, I would leave the brush on-site. I wouldn't go removing all the brush, I wouldn't go necessarily stripping all the topsoil, I would just pile it up on the end, you know, and put a minimal amount of gravel in and go, because I think given the usage of this, you don't need something more. But part of the question is going to be, you know, because the town is the property owner of this, you know, what you as a board want to see. Do you want to see a full blown, beautifully manicured parking area? Or do you want to see a rough and dirty parking area that accommodates the usage but isn't fancy? So I'll get you a cost basis on it, but you're going to have to decide among yourselves what it is you want there before that can happen.
It's it's gonna depend on what's there when he opens it up. What's he gonna see? Is it is there a a high water table? Is it dry? What's the ground situation? What is going to determine what he's going to do there, would say. Like you're saying, Eric, some places you could go in, you could chip the brush right into the parking lot, park on top of it. You might be able to do that here, you might not be able to.
But aren't we just talking three to four parking spaces? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you're not talking what you're doing at Lake Road. You're talking 25% of Lake Road, if that. Right.
Yeah, but there's another issue. Coventry just acquired a piece down along the Skunkamug River. I believe it's on South River Road, and they opened up a small parking lot. But if you go drive by there now, it's completely rutted. It's a muddy mess. So we just wanna make sure that, you know, it's compacted and we have enough
fucking up that we don't have that issue, you know? I'm with you. I'm with you, Jeff. I think we should do it like Lake Road was done, but we're talking 25% of the space and the the square footage.
Yeah. We just need to come up with something that's acceptable that Joshua's Trust would be willing to pay for and something that we would find that would be suitable. And I think that we need to have that discussion too before
this is greenlit, just to make sure that everybody's on the same page. That's fine. We should do that. And then the other issue is all of the comments and the responses from Joshua Trust, they were provided to all the residents directly?
The only person that, responded in writing that looked like they wanted a had questions to answer was Jody Gross, let's go. Did he get his response? He did get a response from from John Napkins. Okay. That's all I need.
I mean Yes. If Jody wants He can certainly speak for himself and express his own concerns. Sure. Hello? Does that mean I'm up? Sure. Why not? Yes, sir. Well,
thank you for listening to me. I did get, John Hackens', memorandum. Honestly, it's basically a whitewash. But let me start by saying I'm not opposed to trails next door to me. I'm opposed to the misuse of those trails. There was a history of motor vehicles in those woods that that I've had ATVs barrel through my yard while I'm entertaining guests, and that stopped when I put the fence up. I see motorbikes ATVs on this unlicensed ones up and down the street. Where they come from, where they go to, I have no idea. And you're talking about putting a parking lot out in front of a trailhead and I'm thinking that's an open invitation for these people who are coming up and down the street to enter those trails. I further think that some of the misuse of those trails may well come from the abutting homeowners, their kids and or kids' friends. My, issue is and and perhaps John Hankins is right that it's not really a problem. Maybe Eric is right. There's this this won't become a problem. But what if it does? Who's responsible for dealing with it? Do I get to, be the the policeman here and make the call whenever there's somebody out in the woods, or am I just supposed to ignore the goings on?
Well, if you ask you keep going, mister Fabian. Go ahead.
And I'm not the only, I don't know if this, I I don't know this person, but I see one other house that is exposed. To this trail, I don't know if that person is here or even responded, but I'm not the only homeowner that would be impacted by this. Now I see that and I listen and I hear, sound like this is this got the green light. I mean, I don't see it not happening, but there's no plan here for any kind of surveillance. There there there's no suggestion on how, there there might be a, a way to stop misuse of the trails. So I'm asking the board. How can I be protected from having listening to these motorbikes cruise up and down through the woods?
Are you asking us to answer that or do you wanna keep going?
No. Well, let's say that's a rhetorical question. I don't have much further to go. I'm just trying to express, I won't call it an objection, because again, I'm not opposed to having trails there. I'm opposed to the misuse of those trails. And I see, or I'm not hearing how that could be prevented. Okay. I would like that to be in the plan.
Okay. So, one thing for you, we have not approved the trails as of yet. So I understand that you have not formally approved them. Thank you. No, but we, we have, sat there and, and walked through the property and, and are trying to understand and do what is best for, for the town and potentially make use of that. And we have to take your concerns into account, and we have to sit there and do the best job that we can to get you answers on that. You know as well as we do, we can't stop everything, but, this board is gonna work, the best we can to, to mitigate your concerns and to sit there and do if we do this, if this does get approved and get done, we're going to try to do it in the best possible way. And we're going to sit there and work with Joshua's trust to make this work for everybody. So not just for you as an abutting resident and not have it be impactful to you, but to make it a positive for other residents who want to get out there and walk in the trails that would be built by Joshua Trust. So we we will we we have not approved it. And,
the reason why we communicated with you is to make sure that we take your, concerns and and work on them. So and then I'll let the Joshua Trust folks speak because I know they want to,
they want to. I just want to say a few things, Jeff, if I can. Sure. Yeah, and Mr. Fabian, I can certainly, you know, see your point and, you know, I have not been a green light on this, and I've told the people from Joshua's Trust that I would not support this unless all the budding neighbors were in support of it. So unless was wrecked, these trails or this issue, the reroute that you had discussed was rectified to your satisfaction, I would not be in support of the trail system. So I don't wanna do anything that's gonna impact anybody's enjoyment of their property. So we need to make sure that everybody is satisfied to the plan and is gonna be happy with what happens. From my point of view, this is definitely not greenlighted at this point.
Well, thank you for saying that. Whether it's greenlighted or not, again, I'm not opposed to the trail. I I I think that it it could be a benefit. In fact, I even think that it would enhance my property values. It's what happens when things go wrong and things do go wrong. So that's where my concern lies. Not whether there's gonna be a nice parking lot or there's a benefit to the community. I agree with all that stuff.
It's just what happens when things go wrong. Yep. And as a board, we can create the trails and if it becomes a problem, we can shut those trails down. Well, that's gonna be harder to do.
How do you take it away from somebody? Well, and I have the same issues that you have with dirt bikes coming up and down the street, and I don't have an answer for you. I wish they did, but it seems to be kind of an issue all over town. So Yeah. Right. And they're hard to catch. You know, run off in the woods, they're hard to catch. Yeah. Absolutely right. Thank you.
Eric, I have a question. Was there was there any thought put into putting a parking lot up at the other end on wheeling? Wouldn't through trail? Well, just, you know
Scott, we discussed two years ago we weren't gonna make this a through trail, and we weren't in support of that. And and my reasoning for that is because all those trails on the other side of Wheeling Road are all multiuse trails with horses, mountain bikes, and hikers. And if this is gonna be a pedestrian only loop, we should keep those two segregated so we don't have any cross traffic going between the two systems. Right. Okay. So that's the answer for that.
John, you wanted to make some comments? Yeah, and the
ATV comment, we do hear that, absolutely. And I will say we operate trails on 40 properties in Northeast Connecticut, and ATVs are not a big issue for us. It does happen obviously, occasionally, but we've been super sick. Well, first of all, we don't see a lot of ATV use for a few reasons. The trails that we build on our properties aren't great for ATVs. They're rocky, they're narrow. There are things that we can do install to limit ATV access as well, such as coming out of the parking lot, for instance, making sure that the exit out of the parking lot is narrow enough so that an ATV can't get through there. Can they find a way around? Perhaps, But we've got one advantage on this property is there's only one way in and one way out unless they find a way to go across private property. And there's no readily apparent way to do that. So it's not, if people go in there, it's likely that there's a fair likelihood that they're going to get caught eventually. You asked about the role of neighbors. Joshua's Trust likes to know our neighbors and I think Mr. Fabian, we've met you out there in your backyard at some point.
What we tell all of our neighbors is if there's an issue, give us a call. We understand the police can't respond to everything, but if there's an issue, give us a call. What we've done on other sites, the few times we've seen ATVs is we, I think you mentioned they might be neighbors coming in from somewhere. Well, this is what I've done. I've followed the ATV tracks out to the neighbor's house and I've knocked on the door and had a little discussion with them. And that takes care of it if we are able to find the right house. In other cases, we put up game cameras, identified the individual, knocked on a few neighbors' doors and very quickly figured out who it was, gone to their house and had a discussion, took care of it. Those are unusual cases, but when they have occurred, we've been able to address it. And right now on our 40 properties, I can't point to a single property we've got where ATVs are an ongoing issue.
Are you referring to ATVs as the pods or the motorbikes or both?
Motorbikes can be more of a challenge and that they can find their way through narrower spots, it's the same principle.
Well, if you're that proactive about it, I feel better. I see it becoming less of a problem if Joshua Trackett has that proactive stance with regard to the misuse.
I'll also say this, Andover has a track record with policing ATVs. Look at your rail trail. That used to be ATV Super Highway and it was a real problem. Now that there's a fair amount of use on that trail, ATV use is limited to there's almost none. And if they're out there, it's in the middle of the night. But you don't see ATVs on that trail in the middle of the day anymore.
Fair enough. One thing I did want to correct you, John, is they can't get access through town property off of Wheeling Road. And that was my reason for not putting that trail in and not putting a parking lot there, because I do not want to have motorized access or any kind of equestrian access to this trail loop. It should be pedestrian only, closed loop, no other access outside of that. So that's why I would strongly be against that connector trail that we actually talked about preliminarily
connecting to Wheeling. Yep, and what you just described is the plan that right now there's no connection. Yep.
And if I can add something, when I walked that trail with the other members, I can't imagine any motor by getting through that. It's just a walking trail because you gotta be climbing over rocks and climbing around things. And I can't imagine a motorized bike getting through there on the trail that you're proposing to be made.
They can, they can if they want to. Yeah, yeah. There's
a of use. When I came here, that twenty five years ago, were loaded with motorbikes and quads up there because there was more access. Now the access is overgrown, the fence is up. I'm thinking once the access is recreated, it may become a problem again.
Well, thing, and this is what I'm gonna agree with John about is when you create these trails and you have recreational walkers and hikers on these trails, that usually keeps the ATVs off because they wanna go places where there's not a lot of that activity with people yelling at them and scaring them off. So when you have, the rail trail is a perfect example. Now that we have people parking and riding bikes on the rail trail, the ATVs just don't use it because they don't want to deal with the people yelling at them and the hassle. So trail is, if it's established and people do use it, the ATVs will not go out there.
We just got keep getting in there.
I did want to point one other item out. On the call, you might see Bill Penn. Bill is an Andover resident. He is the newest board member of Joshua's Trust. So you have representation on our board now. And he is also going to serve as the steward for this property. And there he is. So there is someone local that would be looking at this and being on the site as often as necessary to enforce things. Fair enough.
Yeah, mean, the one thing I would say is that like every trailhead we have, there will be some litter, you know, whether you're talking about Burnett Brook or Lake Road or the Andover Athletic Fields or Center Street, you know, there is going to be some trash that needs to be dealt with. I mean, we deal with it on most of the other town properties. It's an unfortunate reality today that a certain fraction of the population doesn't think anything of throwing what's left of their lunch or a couple of dips out their window. You know, that you can't prevent. You know, I too, I don't live all that far from this trail. In fact, if it was extended out to Wheeling, I would certainly be in the butter. You know, and I have had problems in the past with ATBs and motorbikes behind my house also on the old logging trail that was back there. It annoyed me, you know, we yelled at them enough,
you know, and they stopped. And, you know, periodically I go cut down people's, you know, hunting stands that are on my property that have no business being there. It is an unfortunate reality. You know, the one thing I would say about Joshua's trust is they seem to do a pretty good job of policing their properties and inspecting them. Far better, I would admit, than the town does on its own properties. You know, that's just a reality of they have more manpower than we have to do that. So I think while issues aren't out of the question, I think we can mitigate that. I would certainly hope so,
because I don't want any more motorcycles and ATVs behind my house that I have to deal with either. So I do get that point, certainly.
I have one more question for John and Tom. I know, Tom, you had questioned that one section of trail that went down behind your property, and I saw something in the packet about a reroute. Yes. Is that something that Joshua's trust was amendable to, or has that been discussed between the two of you?
Have not discussed it, but John seemed to think that a realignment could be done. And I think it would make the trail more walkable because the way it is now, it leads near to a cliff. I think there's an easier way to get around it and would I wouldn't have people at eye level with my bedroom window.
Yeah, it's very typical for us to work with landowners if there's something easy we can do to remedy it, and I think here there is. Thank you.
Yeah. Is there any possibility that the two of you could get together and work up a plan that Tom would be acceptable to? Absolutely.
Yeah. John, I'm here most time, so next time you're in a neighborhood, just stop in. Alright.
Okay. Obviously, we're gonna have to push a decision on this off till next next meeting, and, we'll
get it done next meeting, if that's acceptable to everybody. Yeah. I think the two caveats would be the parking lot estimate and just a response from John and Joshua's trust to see if that that's acceptable. And Tom's if Tom could send the select mail after he meets with John, with the outcome, and if he's acceptable to that and supports the trail at that point, then we could move ahead.
K. And I and I will tell you, Joshua's Trust did put it into their response that they would sit there and work with mister Fabian on the They did. They did. Did. Yeah.
Okay. So I'm gonna begin my question for the board is what specs are you looking for? What level of finish are you looking for in the parking area?
Well, let's agree on the number of spots. So Joshua's trust, how many spots do you think are needed at that spot?
We like to see four to six, something like that.
Okay. Four to six. So let's go four to make it smaller. Right? I
kind of disagree. I think we should probably go on the bigger side, make it six. We're still gonna have to make room to turn around and get in and out. I mean, if there's two people that meet to go walking with their dogs, I mean, you're talking two cars right there. So if we're talking six cars, you might have three pairs of people out there walking at one time. They might not have everybody come in the same vehicle.
I'm not sneaking. Else have a problem with the number of spots? Oh,
All And a diagram? Can we get a diagram of how that lot is going to be positioned compared to the street to see how it is? Is it going to be completely open like the one on Lake Street, or is it going to have a driveway going in? Let me get a map of that or a drawing of that. You can get whatever you want. I mean
But, again, what do you want? Argument's coming right off the road, and it's six spots off the road. Isn't that the easiest thing for you to do? Come in off the road. You're gonna take a right hand turn, and you're gonna park. You're gonna And you're gonna have four to six spots lined up. So you drive in, take a right into the spot, and then you're gonna back back out in the other direction and drive out the room. Okay. And if we wanted to make this,
less accessible for an ATV, you know, not necessarily a dirt bike because you're not gonna be able to. But we could put a fence similar to what we have down at the, and I know this is money, so but please, but a fence similar to what we have down at the, ball field to sit there and block off the parking lot. I and I know Eric is looking that that's money, and I know what it is, but we could do something like that to sit there and limit access if we needed to. So that should be the consideration is some type of of of space that is you know, it could be rocks, Eric. It could be anything we we have. But I would sit there and say, needs to be similar to what you've done at Lake Road. That that that looks great. I mean, and it does create a significant amount of access to the community to be able to get onto the rail trail. So if we're if we did it there and we did it, you know, reasonably,
we were very cost conservative on that. We we did it right, but it it was. It's done well. That's what you should try to do at this plate at this location if we're going to do this. So that's what I would ask to have happen. But other board members and I and I'm sorry. I wanted to welcome Paula King to our our call. You can see by the black box down there, our rectangle that she's also doing a drive along with us right now. So Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us. So, anyway, that's what I would ask is that, Eric, that you do it similar in similar manner to the Lake Road access, and give us the costs related to that. And so then we can decide what we need to do related to Joshua's Trust and what we need to do, as a town. So
Yeah. And and boulders are fine. Something similar like Mansfield Hall Parking Lot, something like that lined with a boulder so ATVs couldn't ride through there, just spaced together. There's plenty of boulders over there. Yep.
K. So we can do that. Be careful of the wrecked trees. Out of the the woods and line it with wrecked cars if you want. Make it historic.
Yeah. That's good. We're trying we're trying to move on, Eric. So does anybody else have any issues that they want Eric to address as he does this? No? Okay. Alright. Thank you very much everybody for for your time, and and we will eventually get this done, or or not, but we'll eventually get to an answer. So let's We we just wanna do it right. That's all. So Alright. Thank you. Alright. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Alright. So if we move on now, we're moving on to 8B, community center construction update.
So construction's going reasonably well. We're on hold for a couple things that should be addressed fairly quickly, hopefully, which is getting the design for the fire alarm system for the building. And then we're waiting on BSC or BCS engineering to do the stakeout of the septic system, because that's a requirement of Eastern Island health district before the contractor gets in there to put in the additional piping for the septic system. So those things are ongoing. No serious delays in the project, moving along reasonably well, all things considered.
Okay. Any questions from any of the members on the community center? All right. It looks good, Eric. 8C signs at Veterans Memorial Field. Hold on. Before we do that Gotta do that construction order.
Is a change order request. If you remember, the initial contract was the base bid that they provided us. And then the group that was looking at this came back to them with a series of revisions to that, that they wanted to see incorporated. And we started construction having signed for only the base bid. So, this is a change request that includes everything that we did that was not included in the base bid. So obviously I'm not signing that until you all agree to that change order.
And Scott and Jeff, but I'll go Scott, this is appropriate numbers as far as you're concerned related to committee?
Yep. Yeah. I've looked at it all over. Me and Eric have had many meetings over this with the construction people, and most of the stuff has already been worked into the number. Okay. So Eric could just sign it.
So do you just wanna make a motion on that?
Yep. I motion to have Eric sign the construction change order. Right. I'll second that. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye.
All right. Thank you. Five nothing. Paula voted in favor. So, alright. Now we're moving on to 8c, signs at Veterans Memorial Field.
So I'll talk about that, Eric. Okay? Planning and Zoning Commission, approved that. They approved it just for the ball field, chain link fence for 32 square feet. Manners only. So quick line in the, new changes, and and it's approved. But no. It's specific to that. Yeah. So four by eight.
Yep. Yep. Or whatever you want. It's 32 square feet. So Banner. It could be 10 by, you know, whatever.
Break. Now we need to sit there and see what what, if anything, we can do to organize that and to make it a way to fund some recreation recreation programs. Step one is done, we'll sit there and work on the other part of it.
And then the only thing I think we have to be a little careful with when we do that is remember that holdback wall is in the floodway, And the pressure of the water keeps busting the chain link fence out. So I'm a little concerned that we need to keep the signs up as high as we can on the fence. And maybe we don't. It's a five foot high chain with the fence. I'd want to leave at least two feet for the water, you know. So ideally, I wouldn't want to see signs more than about three feet high. That would be my preference to
decrease the likelihood of damage in a flood event. You just put them at the top of the fence.
Okay. We'll sit there and we have to come up with a whole outline and a whole plan as to what we're gonna try to do And who that will come back to the board this board and get approved before we And who we who we will allow to have their signed up there?
Yeah. We just, and I wouldn't sit there and say it exactly like that, Scott, but we what we need to do is we need to sit there and set parameters for what is it ex what what is acceptable as we go out and, try to solicit way to fundraise. So Exactly. Understood.
Okay. Eight d, dog signs and pet waste containers. And that is related to the field. So,
Scott, do you want to are we still getting I would I would be in favor of all of that, all the above, more signs and to have the dog waste
containers put up. So I took a I took a walk down there the other day and took a look at this. And, you know, I'm I'm supportive of the dog waste containers and bags on the dike side to the right of where the the new pickleball courts are gonna go down to the river, but I still think we should put signs up for no dogs on the field. I think putting the waste the waste containers and things down the ball field is gonna be an invitation to say it's okay to bring your dog down there. So it means somebody, you can walk your dog on the dike and walk down to the river and that's fine, but stay off the ball fields.
Remember that dike is gonna be a playground not too long from Eventually,
but in interim, mean, that's probably a year or two out, I would assume at this point.
Okay. So that's something that we're, know, Scott, I understand what you're saying, the signs and the containers, but if you're going to put a sign saying don't block your dog, you don't give them an opportunity to have a bag. They don't care. Then it comes into what we're doing now, what the town attorney was doing with Eric now with a hearing officer. Right. Because now we need to sit there, and once we have the hearing officer talk about for the blight side, that we would need to put in an ordinance, and I realized we'd have to put in an ordinance about, dogs at the field and the problems that were occurring there. Bolomanic But has a All stages. And finds. Yeah. It's all in stages. Right? Yeah.
K. So I'm I'm in favor of the sign for to keep the dogs off the field and have a waste container.
I don't have any problem with the dogs walking down there at all. Right. And what telling you is I'm okay with the signs and not the waste containers. But that's me personally, because I look at it as you put the waste containers down there. You're just telling them to walk their dogs Yep. And poop on the field. Right. But
but if you don't put them down there, Jeff, you're gonna have and you can come down and see it in the parking lot. They leave their bags of dog poop in the parking lot. So
And a lot of people bring their dogs down to swim in the river too. So I'm just Right. So not gonna get away from That that section allow dogs down to the Hop River, and that area is I'm I'm fine with it, just keep them off the field. Keep them off the field.
And to put the containers down there, Deb, because it's not gonna stop.
But how do you keep them off the field? Put signs up there there, Eric. More signs. Well, we're gonna have a full meeting, are we? In there without seeing the sign, no dogs, and everybody's ignoring it. Eric, I ignore one sign, are you gonna ignore two signs or 10 signs? Maybe.
I watched a guy walk past the sign. I took a picture of him Right. With his dog. So That's say put some more signs up so he he whoever, you know, these people are going out to the field, they see the signs. There's there's only a couple signs here.
K. Of course, you need more signs. So we have a special meeting coming up. Why don't we just add it as a minor ordinance? We'll have their Dennis draft it, and we can propose it at the next special meeting meeting.
Make it a $10,000 fine. You know, give half to the resident state trooper for everybody he catches. He'll be happy.
Know? $100 with $100. Escalating fees. I think that's what it is in Wyndham. If it's one time, it's a $100. And if it's two times, it's $200. And if it's three times, it's $300. So
That's not enough to stop it. A $100 isn't enough of a fine to change behavior. It's just like speeding. If you're gonna do it, the fine needs to be great enough that it hurts. A $100 doesn't hurt.
And Alright. So let's be clear about this before, so we don't have to have another meeting about that. We're gonna get waste containers, and we're gonna then we're gonna get signs that say no dogs on the field. Right? A few more signs in waste containers. Well, how many more signs do you want?
A couple more at least here. Couple more. Couple is two. Two. So you want five signs? There's three signs now. You want a total of five signs? I want them I want them there's areas in there where people can say, I didn't see the sign.
Yeah. You put them you put them more down there. Scott, can you make the motion so that we can all vote on this? Two two signs and two waste containers.
Okay. I motion to have two signs tell telling the dog owners they can't go on the fields any longer and to have waste to waste containers put down there for dog waste. That's like a. Okay.
All the Any discussion? Yeah. Any discussion. So where the waste container is gonna be located? They're gonna be located where the old shed was? Yeah. Down where you suggested, mister Gregory. Suggestions. Alright. Do we need two or just one? You think one's enough right there, that parking area? Well, put one over by the big parking lot over by the river. Yeah. But if do but if you do that, then it's it's kind of inviting people. Jeff, that's where they that's where they put their piles of poop. Alright. So they so they take their dogs swimming from there?
Right there? No. You you need one there. One at the bike and one at the place where they'd been chopping the poop bags up.
K. Okay. So that was, that so you Scott, well, let's vote on this. And and Scott, you work with Eric as to placement if that's acceptable. So any further discussion? Any other questions about waste containers and signage?
I think if you are gonna do that, you should go forward with the and it would not be a minor ordinance because it's a fine. So that by definition can't be a minor ordinance. You ought to propose that as an actual fine ordinance and make it a stiff enough fine that it hurts. What do you suggest? At least 500, a thousand would be preferable.
The air wants people people with dogs to to to feel the pain. Okay. So what we'll do after we vote I'm okay with you. After we vote on this, we will talk to attorney O'Brien about about how to execute that and get that done. We can do that now with the current situation with, a hearing officer. So let's. Jeff, I'm here. How are you, Dennis?
I'm fine, Jeff, despite the collapse of the Philadelphia Eagles. Oh, it was a total collapse.
Total collapse. All time great collapse. Anyway, I think the limit on a fine like that would be $2.50, but I'm not sure. Okay. But I would recommend I I agree with Eric. It should be more than a 100.
Okay. So, Dennis, you know what we as a board because we haven't even voted on this yet. But you know what we as a board would like to do, so we'll get that done, after the fact. And and and we have to have a Tom meeting, I believe, at some point in time on some other issues so we can accumulate all of the ordinances that we'd like to see happen. But what we need done is the hearing officer to get his feet under him on the blight side, and then we can sit there and put other things on it. Yeah. Well, that's that's that's good. That's coming up next, on the agenda there. Okay. Alright. So, all those in favor, Eric? Yes. I just wanna say I will be back in one minute. I have to go let somebody into the town hall. So Eric is leaving us, but we're gonna vote on the motion that's in front of us on the waste containers and the signage. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Five nothing on that. Okay. So now we're moving on when Eric returns to 8E, a discussion on blight and level of involvement. Dennis, why don't you express to the board where we are currently with the hearing officer so we'll talk Yeah. We're I'm very encouraged.
Mark Risley is the hearing officer, and I've been working with him through emails and texts and phone calls, we've met once and I've been training him. And I think he's all ready to go. He's very enthusiastic about doing it. It's a tough job, but I think he's just the right person. I'm really pleased with him, and we are planning on having our first hearing on a blight case on the February 13. So I'm very, very enthused about it. And I think it's really not easy sometimes to get somebody to agree to do that. And he seems to be smart enough, strong enough, tough enough. And I really enjoy working with Mark.
So that's very positive. Thank you very much for getting that executed because it allows us to sit there and move in a different direction, related to ordinances and fines to sit there and see if
middle Yeah. I I one of the things that Eric and I have talked about is me going through the the ordinances that we we have now and see and looking at them and seeing which ones that we we all think and, of course, you all think because you'd have to okay it would be a a good ordinances to add fines to so that they could be enforced by this system of having a hearing officer. And I don't want to go crazy with it. You know, we're we're just getting this up and running. But in any event, I I definitely want I've already drafted an ordinance that would allow us to do fines and zoning cases instead of go having to sue somebody in superior court in order to get them to comply with the zoning regulations. Got to bring that before the zoning commission. It's not necessary actually that they approve it, but I wouldn't go forward with it without their approval as a matter of courtesy. And that's what we did in Chaplin and we especially in Mansfield. Mansfield, I have a long history of doing that in Mansfield very successfully. It's a great way to save time and it's a great way to not so much to make money, but you know, to get compliance with town regulations
and rules.
All right. Eric, do you have any input on the discussion of blight and level of involvement?
Nothing specific. I do agree that we need to keep doing blight enforcement, but being reasonable about it. You know, I think as long as we keep going after just the worst offenders, that's a reasonable use of the statute. Yeah. That's all I have to say about that. Which
problem is that that Dennis is going after on February 13? Which case? At what case. Yeah. Six sixty four, Route 6. Okay.
I don't want to discuss the case, frankly, in in open session to any extent because it will be, subject to a hearing. And I don't I don't think it's a it's kind of thing that if you wanted to discuss the case, we'd have to go into executive session. No. No, it's fine. We don't need to discuss the case. All
right. What I would ask you, Eric, is next meeting, can you have the updated form on the blight cases in the package? I know you didn't have anything written for your administrator's report, but if you could include that, that's always helpful for the other members and for myself to understand where we're at.
Yeah. I meant to get one from Jim Halsey, but he is signing himself in The Bahamas at the moment. Good for him. Okay.
No problem. Next next meeting. Alright. 8 F Hendy Road, Buddhist Road impacts. Anything specific or just what we talked about last meeting?
Yeah. Paula asked that this be put back on the agenda. So I did.
Last meeting we were talking about, I guess there was a concern with a culvert or something over there. So I didn't know if we had an update on that or wanted to continue to discuss some stuff about this side. I put it on there to just continue the discussion because I don't think we came to a conclusion last month.
I don't think we came to a conclusion, but we did talk about the, the parking along that, along the road that is back there.
It. We were concerned about the parking and the weight on the road. So I don't know how, I don't think that we left off with, I don't think we came to a conclusion on how we were gonna handle that. So I felt like we had to continue the conversation.
We didn't, we did not. We talked about the condition of the culvert. We talked about the culvert collapsing if there's too much traffic on that road, and then shutting that road down and putting the entrance to that road from two sides, not one side. So we talked about a lot of stuff. I just don't think, Paula, we can unless we want to go to them and put unless you wanna work with Eric to get the access on the other side of that and close the whole road where the culvert is, what are we gonna do? I don't think we can do anything. What can we do?
Eric, is there any zoning violations with them having those, meetings there? In the parking and associated, people there?
Oh, I'm sure there's a number of violations there, and they've never come back through in and gotten a permit for using that for, you know, religious purposes, which is, you know, what they're obviously doing for it. You know, I have told Jim that's one of the things he's got to do is he's got to rattle their chain and let them know that they've got to fill the permits because they've already applied, you know, essentially for nonprofit status as a religious organization, but they've never done the zoning end of that piece. Now it's a use as of right, so they will get it. It's not a question of that, but they do have a bunch of things they have to satisfy for that. Okay. So One of them is marking. Jim knows that he's he's to tackle this?
Yes. Yes. He's well aware of that. But, I mean, it's just a question of priorities of what what you want done first.
Yeah, think the issue over the whole time has just been they've been putting these permits and applications in a week before their events, and maybe it's just time we do send them a letter saying they're out of compliance, please fill out your special permit applications on a timely manner, according to the town recommendations and the rules that we have. And if they don't, we'll have to start doing some parking enforcement or no parking signs like we did on Shawty Mill.
Or if they are a church, do they need to have, just because they're having a meeting every other week, do they have to fill out a permit every other week? Or if they're a church, can they just congregate? I'm, I'm not sure.
If they're parking in a town roadway and causing issues, then that would require some sort of permit. But again, you know, I've told them point blank that they need to put their permits in on time, and they put them in when they damn well get around to doing it.
Okay. So so this is another issue that we have to address in with our new opportunity to we wanna send out the letter, but we also wanna be able to find someone like this so that there's some teeth in what we're doing, and we're not just here talking about this stuff Sure. Meeting. So
But a thousand dollar per car fine ordinance, you know, on town roadways. Okay.
If that's how you want do it, we'll do the Eric Anderson max out fine, let's work with our attorney on that one to sit there and see what we can get done. I
mean, Dennis and I have driven it and looked at it and talked about it, but I don't think we've really come to any conclusions other than you could put in a fine ordinance, you could put in a fine ordinance for not pulling permits for events and find the organizer for that if you want. I mean, I'm not opposed to that. But right now, other than telling them you've been bad, what am I gonna do? Tell them you've been bad again?
No, nothing. We either, Dennis has been pushing us down the road to get fine ordinances in place and I get a hearing officer, which is the first step. And then if we actually execute that and that's done correctly, then we can put fines in for a lot of the issues that we talk about on a regular basis that we've never done anything truly about because we had no teeth. So let's just get through this, Paula. It'll stay on the agenda until we figure out exactly what we wanna do, and then we'll work with attorney O'Brien on an ordinance that will affect that that location. I forgot what it is. I mean, used to be called it was the tavern. What was the name of the place, Scott? The White's Tavern? Yeah. White's Tavern.
So the Whites Tavern property. And we should probably change the to, Hutchinson Road, Eric, instead of Hutchinson Road.
Hutchinson Road. Yes. I knew it wasn't Pendy, so Hutchinson's. Okay. So, Paul, if you don't have a problem with that, we'll just keep carrying that one over until we can actually get some teeth and bite someone.
Yeah. Do we wanna send a letter now to let them know they're out of compliance? Because we haven't officially told them, right? Well, we've I've had that conversation with them. Yeah, but we haven't done it in writing. Even the permits did not die. We haven't formally done it in the letter. Okay, but that's not, let's
go through the right process. That's not from us, that's from the zoning enforcement officer who it's on his list, Right? So Eric, it's on the list, get the zoning enforcement officer, write that letter, and then let's go through the, we'll keep going through the process because I would assume the group of us realize that until we get an ordinance in place and actually have teeth, it's gonna continue to happen. The only way we actually get any of this stuff to stop is to do the Anderson fine, which is a Max fine, and get them to understand that we're serious. And rather than continue to rack up a potential bill that we have to worry about collecting, we work on a resolution that makes sense. They come and apply on the time. They don't park in the street, so on and so on.
Yeah, and that is, to be honest, that's one of my reasons for wanting a really big fine, because the amount of effort we're going to spend chasing these things down is not worth it if you're going to find somebody 20 or $50. We're going to spend more time with that just chasing it down and getting paid. So if you're going to do it, make it worthwhile. No problem. I agree 100%.
So we'll when we get the opportunity to do it, we'll agree on the number, and we'll go from there. Whether we'll get a number, and I will advocate for the Anderson fine, which is the maximum fine. Okay. All right. Any other discussions on that one? Okay. Eight gs, further discussions regarding no, we already had that talk. Further discussions regarding pet waste and trash at the athletic fields. So that's on there twice. Eight, lot line agreement with the King property. So
I know Jeff, I've seen, I was seeing documentation back and forth with you. I guess I would ask one question. When I looked at these records, and it was page 32. Scott, is that the actual acreage 32.97, which was the original acreage? No. Original was 17.9. That's a huge difference. Isn't it though?
Okay. Alright. That's a huge difference. And I will tell you why I believe if that's the number, and it was supposed to be 17, if they wrote 17 in a document or they wrote 55 acres in a document back in the day, they knew what the hell they were given. So that's a big difference. The difference between 32.97 and 17.97 or whatever the number And
I told you, and I'm not gonna get into this too deeply, but I went back through the original parcel that was turned into a subdivision. I went through everyone's lot, through all the town records, and I calculated it out, and including his lot, it comes in within a half acre of that 55 acres that he was originally had. Now, you know, the, and I called the surveyor today and I asked him, did that lot line go north towards Burnout Brook Road? And he said, yes. So, you know, as hard as it is for me to say, I believe that that lot that he is living on is the remaining portion of the 55 acres that was that parcel that there, that that map was roundabout.
Okay. So now let's go past my question and Scott's question and go what, and I mean, this is what I I my concern. My my mental concern is my mental concern is not Scott's mental concern, which is we're giving away acreage. My mental concern is we're going to cause ourselves another plotline problem by signing off on something and somewhere else something's going to come around and we're going to get in another legal battle over some land. And maybe that's not the case. And if that's not the case, then we can talk about what value that extra 15 acres has or doesn't have. So is there anything here, Jeff, down on the property that is by the brook that concerns you? Because why doesn't it why doesn't it include the culvert? Which page are you looking at?
Same page I was on before. Thirty two? Thirty two. Yeah. Jeff Jeff must be looking at the culvert that goes under the railroad track.
Yeah. The the culvert is actually that is actually state property. Yep. That's part of the right of way for the rail trail. So if you look at that lot line that follows the the rail trail, that's the state right of way.
So that's the state right of way. So if you look at the you look at that line Okay. So I'm looking at the brook. So why aren't we dragging the line across the brook and down to the edge of the the right side of the culvert, even if it's state property?
Because he wanted to keep that piece of property when he's hunting over there, and we extended that lot up towards his property up Burnout Brook before the original proposal was shorter. It was a shorter, smaller piece. Yeah. So we just part of the discussion was to make the lot line the center of the brook. Okay. And so I asked Eric that question that there was a line on there, it's called the closing line. And I asked why that closing line was there and why it went over the brook. Then when the lot line is actually the center of the brook, and with the center of the brook in there, does that whole lot equal one acre? Because if it's counting that closing line, then it's not. And Eric said that closing line is just, Eric, maybe you can elaborate on that.
There's a nice wall on the other side of the brook there that you could use as a a boundary line. Yeah. We proposed that
during the discussion. Well well, okay, this is one of those that we I'm going to recommend that we communicate about this one because in unless unless the other three members because I know where Scott's going to go. That's a huge difference 33.97 acres to 17. That's a huge number. I really, just want to make sure that whatever we sign, wherever we're at, we are all in agreement that we're getting the right value back for the community for what we're doing, which I get that the brook is a value and the parking area is a value. We also need to verify that we're not making a mistake in signing this or setting a lot line agreement. And that's just my concern. Well, Jeff,
one thing to consider is we don't know if that original, what was it, 18 acres was actually accurate. We think it was more, and it was just always, that deed was filed with less acreage than it really was, and they were paying taxes on less acreage. So that was part of the argument too, is that
Yeah, but I think that that's what Scott was saying though, Jeff, It is that
can't be anything but what I said, I'm sorry, but
so what Scott did that I read was he went back through the original deed, which is 55 acres, which includes all of the housing developments, up on Burnout Brook.
Yeah. Burnout Brook. So who was the first selectman that lived over there? Ed Turn. Ed Turn. Yep. So Ed Turn's property and all of those properties were inclusive in that, Scott? Right. Yeah. Okay.
So that's the issue. If that totals 55 acres and, well, you know, I can't tell you right or wrong, and I can only tell you that now you're just, we're just in a situation of making a deal that's in the best interest of the community. I would ask for a month on this for me, because that is a huge difference.
That's a huge number difference. So, Jeff, just for just for argument's sake, if you scroll up to page 31 of our packet Yeah. If you look at the neighbor, I think their name is Cross. Yeah. That deed shows the king property is the abutter on the bottom side of that. It shows him owning the section, the southernmost part of that property. He's an abutter. And then if you look at where his barn is and the split rail fence, how it goes down towards the river, I mean, you got a better way that you think that that property should be, then I'm all ears because I've reviewed this a lot and there's really no way to tell for sure. I mean, we filed that deed with that adjoining property owner showing the King property as the butter. So there's no way that that line can be further north.
Oh, it could be. Mean But must be filed wrong. It's filed wrong. You know? Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of houses built. I mean, you know, I can give you two barns in the town that I know of that were built off the homeowner's original property. Happens all the time. The question becomes, how do you actually resolve this? And I come back to what I said originally, which is the board, if the board really can't decide how you want to proceed, then I guess don't, you know, and then either the homeowner just files it how he thinks it should be, you know, and you take them to court to dispute it if you wanna do that, or you both take it to zoning court and fight it out in court if you wanna
My whole point here, Eric, is that I believe that I'm right, and all I'm saying is that why can't we split the difference?
So, so Scott, that's his, his, his way and, and Eric, I don't think the, the, members of this board are looking to not find an agreement.
I, I am, I, can see the fact that the town is better off with that parking spot. And, but I just seems like it's a lot of land to be given away that's not mine to give away.
Where was the original line then that we the town thinks it was? Where did the town think the original line was? This only shows Mhmm. A new estimate survey. The original
line is the line that was that's on the town's GEIS.
Okay. And that's the line that goes more There's a lot of inconsistencies in what's going on. I had asked Eric, and Eric knows, I asked Eric way before, I said, whatever we're giving up, I just wanted to know the acreage. And so what is the acreage? And they're saying that is 32.97 acres. That's his stated property, which, Scott, I go in and, you know, I know from your discussions and my your discussions with me, you said 17 whatever. I knew it was 17 something. It's being stated as 32. My concern is, I still and I'll state it again. Somewhere we're making a mistake. There is a mistake here. And the question is, do we as a board have the authority to sit there and do this, which we probably do, but are we going to end up in another lawsuit with someone else? That's all I'm asking. That's all I'm after. I just want to make sure in my head I'm clear, because, Scott, it's a question of having a discussion that if the property I would ask for more of the brook, and to be really honest, if his number was supposed to be 17 acres, and that's what he signed originally when he bought his property,
then he should be more than willing to give us up more stuff because we're turning over, like Scott says, 15 plus acres. So to me, it's a question of what we're getting is valuable to us? Yes. Should we get more? Yes. Because we're giving up probably townland for the most part. Eric, you would agree that if there's extra land in there, it's town land? No, I wouldn't agree with that. Oh, so now you're killing me because this is what I fear is it's not our land to give.
I would say that there is enough disagreement between all of the surveys that cover this property that I am not comfortable saying this is our land. This is their land. I think the only way you can solve this, I mean, if it were that clear, we wouldn't be arguing over this for the last four months, five months, six months. Oh, okay.
But now you're coming to where I would, I would ask us to go. Who are all of the abutting neighbors and do we need lot line agreements with all of the abutting neighbors?
The only way to do that, Jeff, is to survey the property. If that's what you wanna do, then you gotta survey the property.
I don't wanna spend money. So please understand, I don't wanna spend money, but if we, I mean, didn't this surveyor like outline all of the abutting properties? Isn't that what's on, page 31?
But those aren't all a butters of the town. I mean, the town really has, you know, the co twos, they're in a butter of the town. The total opposite side, right? No, they're one point of the boundary line agreement we would be discussing is a line along their property also. Okay. I see what you're saying. So Lee and Kate. Okay. Right. So that's one. The state is the other. But as far as I know, most of the state surveys for the rail trail, you know, go back into the old hut or the old railroad surveys. Those were from either 1917 or I think they did an update in '27. And when they put the trail in, they tore out all the monumentation for it anyway. So, you know, I don't
That line down there, there's no need to even talk about it, Eric. That line is specified in a million different documents. Everybody knows where the rail trail line is up against Kings or whoever. A million dollar document. I know where they are. You know where they are. In the town,
you know, we spent a lot of money with Jerry Hardesty surveying a town rail trail interface- Yeah, down- And ended up throwing up our arms. And Jerry said, I can't tell you within 15 feet where the line is. Right. Down in There's that no monumentation anywhere. Not by Burnett Brook, that is clearly documented.
Oh, okay. So can we, we, we, I don't, I personally would rather get an agreement with him done. Can we, Scott, is it possible
for us I'll say Jeff, just to make it a little bit more easy to give away somebody else's plan on its own. You know, if you split the difference, how could you split the difference?
See, what you're doing to me is, and this is just me personally, I'm just sitting there thinking about that, you know, a portion of this acreage that we're talking about might be the towns and a portion might not be. Possibly.
That's my fear. So what I'm driving at is, if we took a big, swath of this and went to these residents, and so what Eric is saying, you have to survey it to sit there and see if it's the correct acreage that they signed on their deed. Okay.
Well, what does the board wanna do? Don't you think it's odd that I went back and checked all everybody's deeds, and it came out within a half an acre of what they said it is? Doesn't that throw up a red flag for you guys at all?
Well, it does for me. I'm not gonna speak for everybody else. It does for me, but let's just get an understanding of what we wanna do. What do the members or the other members of this board wanna do related to this tonight?
I mean, the property owner, I mean, Scott brought me in to talk about this and I met with Mr. King and, you know, I've walked the property line with Eric. I've walked it with Scott. And my personal opinion is that I agree with Eric. I mean, we don't know where that line is, and we're gonna have to come up with an agreement. And you keep saying split the difference, but yeah, we've gone that route and it's not palatable to the property, the abutting property owner. So do we want to tie this up in court? Sure, we could tie it up in court all day long. We might lose. We'll lose that piece of property across the street. It's up to you.
This goes, Jeff, what I'm after is, I would agree with you guys. I would agree with you, Jeff, that the property on the brook in the parking lot are more valuable than the interior wetlands of this property. Yep. I'm with you. Me too. What driving at is, are we making a mistake with some other resident coming
back and fighting? I don't believe so. No, there's no other residents that are involved. No,
don't have a problem with that. We just have to come up with a boundary line between Mr. King and the town of Andover. And it's really not our decision. It's gonna be up to the residents in town, whether they, at town meeting, whether they accept it or not. Understood. Our
goal, my goal when Scott brought me in was to try to negotiate something that was equitable and we both agreed to it that we could bring to a town meeting. And this is it. And I've pretty much done all I can. And if you want to meet with Mr. King and walk the property line and talk to him about it, you're more than welcome to. But I mean, I've been out there two or three times and spent a lot of time on this, You know? So
Eric, since you've looked at all these, and just for one last thing for me, what does mister Scott mister King's title or deed say the total amount of land he has is? I know It has to be it has to be 17 I'm not I'm not asking you. I was asking Eric because I know No. The the 17.5
or 18 acres or whatever that is is what is in the tax assessor's map. But I mean, the whole reason Mr. King surveyed the property in the first place is because I, as the town administrator, approached him and said, hey, we know our tax assessor maps for this whole area are screwed up. If you are going to buy your property and you are going to maintain a license, you know, an FFL license, you need to survey the property so we ensure, you know, we have an accurate database on. So, I mean, the whole reason they're in this place in the first place is because we asked them, I personally asked them to survey it. Now I really regret that right now. I'm sorry I opened that can of worms. Okay. But let's just
go back to where I was originally in my head is if like if I look at my deed for my property, it tells me I have 0.6 acres, 0.7 an acre, and Paula has a deed that on the deed and the documents that she has says she has so many acres, and Jeff, same thing. Well, we all do. That's all I'm asking. There's a document with it written in the document saying what the expected acreage is.
Yeah, because those were surveyed lots at the time. Yours is a surveyed lot, and so is Paula's, and so is mine. And those are really surveyed. But some of these deeds in this town, my old house, when I grew up in Cider Mill was, you know, walk along a stone wall to an oak tree and then turn, you know, north. I mean, they're very vague. And some of them are not surveyed to the level that our property is. So we got to keep that under consideration. Okay. All right.
I would ask you to go one more meeting on this one because I just that that number, because that's the only number I I asked Eric about, which was the total acreage of the whole lot.
If if if mister King didn't go so far up the hill on you can make up a lot of acreage across that line. So it's it's a thousand or 1,400 foot line. You can make up a lot of acreage. If he didn't go so far up that hill, Jeff, kept that line down where I thought that you asked him to put it, you could make up a lot of acreage across that whole line. A lot of acreage.
But what I'm trying to tell you is he is not amendable to that. And so if we go on that route, it's dead in the water. We might as well go to court. And that's where it's going go. It's up to this board to decide. Jeff, if you wanna try to talk to Mr. King before next month's meeting, you're more than welcome to. But like I said, I've met with him multiple times. I've met with Scott, I've walked the property. And like I said, there's no way we can determine a 100% what is town and what is his property. I think Eric agrees, right, Eric? I mean, there's just, we have so many conflicting surveys and so many property lines. I've looked at it quite a bit in-depth and I mean, I can't really say definitively whose property is what, whose. And that's why we need a lot line agreement.
Right. And I don't wanna keep beating a dead horse, Jeff, but- Because you can't- Why does a lot line have to be 180 feet up the hill? Why does it have to be up there? Why? If nobody knows where it is, why did they put it there? Because it's to his benefit. That's the only thing. It's to his benefit.
Eric can probably answer this question, but our surveyor put the lot line close to the King line, correct? Because we had that combined, we had that overlaid map that you shared with me and it had our surveyor's best guess of where the lot line was, and it was pretty consistent with Mr. King's survey. Correct?
Well, that was the lot line if you went back to the original post survey. The original post survey and the original town survey overlapped a lot. There was a lot of disputed territory between those two, period. Yeah.
Right. And like I said, Jeff, today, I talked to him about that line that goes to Burnett Brook, that 300 foot line from the Brook towards Burnett Brook. And he says that it is in there. It's written in our deed. It's written in another deed that that line is absolutely there. The one that goes north. Towards Burnett Brook. Okay,
so so I would ask that we put this on for a vote for next meeting, And and I would like to to meet with mister King and sit there and see what's up because I just don't believe if if if if Scott is accurate, and I'm only talking about the accumulation of a total number of acres. These old timers, they've, they stepped off what they thought they had, and they were really pretty accurate, you know? So No,
Jeff, if you just look at sheet 31 really quick, and if you look at the corner of the town property where it goes down, and like what Scott says, if we go down on that line closer to his property and we draw a line straight across, it's gonna go right through the middle of his split rail fence. And that's a problem for the homeowner.
Yeah, it can't be like that, I agree with You can't, so if No, you take I'm not gonna debate, I'm with you. What I'm with you with, Jeff, is that this is a mess. And my hope is if we do this and we get it approved by the town residents, that we don't screw up one of the other lots and one of the other residents' properties. I know, but if Scott is correct, then Mr. King's horse pen is on town property.
And Jeff, I came up with solutions for all those things. You know, you can, I can, you can move the line? I went down there. I found another wall down in the woods that you could run one line to that wall and then out to the other wall, and it would have kept all those things, all of his poor expenses and everything. You know, nobody wants to listen. All right. And I know that Mr. King doesn't want to listen either. And in the end, you know, if we give away 18 acres and everybody agrees to it, know, I'm gonna agree also. I really am. I'll agree to get that parcel of land, but I don't feel good about it. I think Anne wants to talk.
On this plan, I printed it out, so I'm not looking at it on the computer, but it says on that existing area, 32.9 acres and new area, 31.9 acres. So they're talking 31, 32 acres. Is that for this entire area that Mr. King owns? What is that referring to? Land that he wants to own.
Okay. What's the difference between the new and old? $31.31.97
is what he will retain, and he's giving the town an acre. Yeah. Out of what out of what he believes he owns.
Right. Okay. Now what was the number the town thought that he owned? And what's the difference on that? 18 acres. Acres? So instead of having 32 acres, he really only owns about 20, less than 20. Is that right? Well, that's what the town records say.
This is the dispute. The dispute is town records versus what he believes. Listen, just so I understand this and Eric, you understand this better. All of this is written word, stone wall going from one spot to another spot, marker in the dirt, a rod that's a pin that's marking this out. So it's all written somewhere, right? Might not be right, and it might be greater acreage and it might be twisted, but listen, just put this off for one month and then let's get this over because we'll beat this into the ground and it's either we're gonna go to court or we're gonna make a deal. So one month.
Anybody? It's like either we gotta pay the money on a survey or we have to go with his.
Dennis was there for the discussions with Mr. King. I would just like to get Dennis' input for just a couple of minutes. Sure. His thoughts for the board while we're talking about
Yeah, I was there. I don't know enough about it in terms of who's right and who's wrong about this. I can tell you this, I am not an expert on real estate, but I have done a lot of real estate work over the years. And a lot of these old plots of land are all, you know, they're it's hard to tell. So, as Jeff says and as Eric says, it's really hard to know what's right. But I have I'd have to see all the documents And I'm not a surveyor. I really don't know. So we don't have a survey of our own, right? Because if we go to court, who, who's, who's threatening to go to court? Is King threatening to sue us?
No, it'll be No, it's Just knows that this is, you know, if we don't come up with a, a law line agreement that this will go to court.
But on on who who would who would bring it to court? Us? No. Not us.
Well, King would then. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I'm saying. So King is So basically, I didn't hear him say it at the meeting, but I thought he was very aggressive. And, he seems to be saying, that if we don't come to an agreement that suits him, that he is to bring us to court. And if we go to court, obviously, we're going to need to have a survey done. Okay. I have been involved in one of these cases before, kind of as co counsel, not as the main counsel in the case. And I can tell you that it took a long time and cost a lot of money and the attorneys made a lot of money
and surveyors made money. And I don't think the judge in the end, I don't think the judge absolutely knew that he was right about what he did. I just don't think so. And I think he was in the same situation that we're in right now. So we haven't had a current survey done. Correct, Eric?
Not current. I mean, we're working off a boundary description from, I think the early fifties.
So it's not that old, but it's not new either. Well, it's old. I mean, it's just not old. It's not that it's not ancient, but so we're we're working off a description that I haven't seen it. Is it part of any packet that you have that you can send to me? Or well, I can go I can I can come down there and take a look at all that stuff with you if you'd like, Eric? I would be happy to do that. One month. But right now, I really don't have enough to go on. And based on what I heard at that meeting, frankly, in the fifty or so years I've been an attorney in situations like this, I have a tendency to want to make a deal if we can, that makes sense. And I understand where Scott's coming from. I also understand where Jeff and Eric are coming from and
it may well be that acreage may not be the most important factor depending on what we're getting in return. But the question then becomes, what we are getting in return actually within the power of King to transfer to us legally? Does he have the authority to do that? See, I don't know. But I'd be very happy to look into it, meet with Eric and spend some time on it. But again, I'm not an expert at reading surveys and plans. And I like I would like to see the the map though, Eric, from the fifties that you are you are basing your view on, the town's view on. And apparently, Scott is basing Scott, that's that's what you're basing your view on as well. Right? Look. There's there's no map,
Dennis, that says that his line is where he wants to put it. There's no map that says that. That's just where he wants to put it. Okay. I get that. I get that. So,
Dennis, I I I urge you to get with with Scott and with Eric and with myself and with Jeff Murray and Paula and Anne, anyone anybody. What I'm asking the board members, are we voting on this time? If not, let's move on and and move this to next month. I mean, it seems to me is that you're not in any position to make any vote on this thing. I
mean, I don't I I unless unless there's a willingness to go forward without knowing to a certain level of certainty that what's right and what's not right, it's pretty hard to decide.
And I, I certainly can't, I certainly couldn't do that. I like, I'm, I'm, in, I'm in, I'm the hill. Dennis, Dennis, board of selectmen, are we, are we gonna vote on this tonight or no? Paula, yes, no,
in one month? I say no, no. Oh, I personally don't see what a month's gonna add because, I mean, Dennis was in that room when we were all in the negotiation, I don't think we're gonna get any more. So, you
know, I think we're kind of at a dead end now, and adding a month is not really gonna do anything, but if you wanna do it.
Jeff McGuire, what do you think the steps to take in the next month would help for us to get further than where we are right now? I kind of agree with Jeff Murray. I think we've talked in circles about this for a long time. I don't know what another month is gonna make a difference. I mean,
from my standpoint, it's the first month that I've seen the total acreage. So this is the first document that anyone's ever come back to me and told me here's the total acreage of what he's asking for. And so from my standpoint, now I finally have something in my hands and I'm going, well, that make sense or not? Because I think the issue is not just Mr. King, the issue is the other butters. And, I mean, if you ask me right now, probably vote no right now because I don't have enough information. But I agree that in my mind that it's valuable to the community to get what Jeff Murray had negotiated. And we just have to understand the rest of it. And it would make me more comfortable if we waited a month long.
Yeah. Yeah. And like my discussions with Mr. King, if we move the property line down, that Burnett Brook parcel was off the table. So if we were wanting to quote split the difference, like we're talking that Burnett Brook parcel is off the table. Okay, understood. Just so you understand that.
Jeff, are we sure that, you know, and I I'm again, I'm fairly ignorant about this. Are we sure that, the property that he's offering to trade to us is something that he owns?
Yeah. I think that's something that's pretty confident that he owns that property. You're confident in that? I mean, it's Yeah. I mean, Scott, you're confident too. Piece of property.
It is something, you know, that the you know, on the Brook, I went out there with Eric and looked at it, and I was very much impressed with it. You can't always go just by acreage. You all know that. I mean, some property is worth more than others. Obviously, if you're talking about wetlands, I don't know how many how much is wetlands of of the 17 Let's or
just not get into all of that right now because we're not negotiating with ourselves. We're not negotiating. Yeah. That's right. All all I'm after is this the first time that I've seen the total acreage, and I'm not prepared to vote yes today. That would be the issue. I I do believe that we need to work with Mr. King to do the right, do right for him and to do right for the community and the town. And all of us need to understand, we have to explain this at a town meeting to get it approved. Because you and I could talk about this. And if we don't have Paula King marketing behind this wrapped up and buttoned up by the time we get from to town meeting, we're gonna lose. So I'm just asking, I'm asking you for one month.
Yeah. Thought is that if we bring this to the town meeting, people are gonna want to see on a map where the town thinks the line is currently and where the line that Mr. King wants is. We just see right now in this paper where Mr. King wants it. The town is people are probably going to want to know where was the other line. To be able to understand it a bit, or if they're not going to vote for it.
Well, that's the problem we have, Ann, is that the documents are inaccurate. What we have to do to the community is express what we believe we're giving up and for what we're gaining. That's all this is, but we have to be in agreement. If we are not in agreement as this board on this issue, it's not going to win.
Yeah, mean, if you get off tonight, if you look at the WebGIS mapping of this property, it shows the town property, we basically own his whole lot. I mean, that's how bad the lines are off. And his neighbor is down the street probably 500 feet. I mean, it's completely screwed up. Okay, and that's all understandable.
We can express that to the community, and I look at it as a board, we've got to be all on the same page to sell this properly at the time of meeting. It can get approved if we're all on the same page. If we're not, then it is not going to win. To me, what's our point? Our point is not to just make an agreement, an agreement is to make an agreement that wins at the time of meeting.
Maybe we need to another for that one. So that's just my request is one one.
And if anybody wants to make a motion, let's make the motions. We can vote on it now if we want to.
Jeff, I sent you, you and the town's attorney, all the deeds, all the mapping. Feel free to peruse them at your heart's content. You got it.
I'm assuming if no one's making the motion, we're gonna move this to old business and put this on the agenda for next month as well. All right. Let's move on to, well, eight I, Eric reviewed the stiff account and interest earned. Andover, eight J, Andover Volunteer Fire Department tree removal. Did we agree to remove that tree?
No. Just punted it to this meeting and said you'd make a decision at this meeting. Okay. Are we gonna cut down the tree? Did anybody talk to anybody directly at the firehouse?
I did not. I mean, to be honest- I did. Oh, go ahead, Scott.
They said that it's a mess and the leaves blow into the firehouse in the fall.
Well, I mean, I got trees all over my property and they just blow in. It's just, I mean, even if we cut that tree down, it doesn't mean it's gonna solve the leaf problem. Right.
They blow into my garage too, I'm constantly cleaning my I garage know, and I really don't, I'm really hesitant to cut down a perfectly healthy tree. It's a beautiful tree. I know, and
for leaves that are gonna fall off, you know, two or three weeks in the season, you know. So, I mean, if we cut this tree down, they could still get leaves in there from all the other trees, you know, blowing up. Exactly. So I don't think it's gonna solve the problem. It's taken off the agenda.
Okay. So does anybody wanna make a motion to cut it? Nope.
I know you don't, and I know Jeff does it. Anne, do you want to, or Paula, do you want to? And if we're not, that's fine. We can just move on and we're done. I mean, it's funny. I looked up it on the map and that's aiming at pretty much the same direction as my garage is, and it's just the way the wind blows,
the leaves get in the garage. And Anne probably knows too. The leaves just get into the garage where we're facing. It's just the wind direction.
Okay. All right. I'm good with moving on. So eight ks, Eric, this is about the budget priorities, current documents, determined budget schedule for February and early March. Obviously, we could discuss the priorities at our first meeting. And when you say current documents, Eric, what are you talking about?
I'm not gonna provide you anything right now. I should have put it in this packet, but I didn't, so it's too late. You know, all I wanna know is what your budget schedule is, when do you wanna have meetings, and what do you wanna discuss at your first meeting?
Okay. So the first meeting is discuss priorities. Okay? So when do we wanna meet? What day would we like to meet?
Now don't we usually doesn't it make sense to work backwards? I feel like we've done this and that works best. Right? What's What's the drop dead? Yeah. What's March 1, as Eric said earlier. Right, Eric? Yep.
K. March 1. Is that what you said? You need to approve a budget by February 29. Okay.
Can we just schedule Monday meetings other than our our regularly scheduled board meeting in February?
The only exception is president's day is on the nineteenth, which I don't know if that is an issue because it's a holiday and Eric might not wanna be on a call that night, but just bringing that up. President's Day is not a town holiday. Okay. We gave that up for Juneteenth.
I remember that discussion. Although, you know what? It is a state holiday, so you will run afoul of, FOIA regs.
Well, can, let's skip that day then. So we're talking the twenty second, twenty ninth, fifth, twenty sixth. And if we have to put another one in there, the twentieth, twenty first, twenty second, or in that timeframe, let's put it on later.
Well, you're not gonna have the budget on the twenty second. I said I'd give it to you on the twenty third. Okay. So do you want to schedule?
But if you wanted to schedule a meeting on the twenty second, I dump you everything I have up to that point and you can start, cogitating on it. So, I mean, theoretically, we could do a meeting on the twenty second.
So a meeting on the twenty second for priorities and the first data information, and then meeting on the twenty ninth to review the data and start building what we wanna build out. And then the fifth and then we have a meeting on the twelfth. Well, we don't have a meeting on the twelfth yet. Do we, yes, we do. We have a meeting on the twelfth because the calendar we have to set is for next fiscal year. Right, Eric? Am I incorrect?
What is No, you've got to set the meeting schedule for this calendar year. So right now, we don't have any calendar meetings scheduled for the next year. So everything right now is a special meeting until you set your calendar for next year for this coming year. We're gonna do that today. We're gonna do that.
Let's February 12 would be our first meeting if we followed the same Exactly. Monday schedule. Right? So let's do a priority meeting on the twenty second, a budget meeting with the details Eric has provided us, and a review on the twenty ninth, a meeting on the fifth, to continue that review, and a meeting on the twentieth. We'll have to move one till Tuesday because you said, Paula, that's a stay. Right? Yeah.
Unless, Eric, I would rather schedule it for the nineteenth because I like consistency because if I have to plan on being away or not being away, I can make sure I'm here on Mondays. So uh- That's a Dennis FOI question.
It's not a, I, I will be working that day. I just left the room. What's up? Dennis. So the question is the twentieth or correction, the nineteenth is President's Day. Per FOI rules, can we have a Board of Select meeting on President's Day if it is not a town holiday? Is it a state holiday? Yes.
If it's on the list of state holidays, you're not supposed to have meetings on those days. The meeting actually, the if you if you have a regular meetings well, this would be a a special meeting. Right? A regular. No. No. Specials. No. Special. Special. Yep.
Okay. If it was a regular meeting to fill on a holiday, it automatically flips over to the next day. But that's what it's supposed to be anyway. That that's that's more honored in the breach than in the observance. But any, yeah, FOI, you're not supposed to meet on a state holiday. And the state holidays, I think Lincoln's birthday and President's Day are both state holidays. Yes, they are. Well, Lincoln's birthday we've already passed. Oh, no, we haven't. February 12.
You're telling me the twelfth and the nineteenth are both state holidays?
I can look it up right now, but I, I, I'm pretty sure. I was gonna look at these maps Eric sent me, but I'll look it up right now. I'm almost positive they are. I'm pretty sure Lincoln's birthday is still on the list. Used And to be when I was a kid, it was the twelfth and the twenty second. But now it's twelfth and whatever president's day falls The twelfth and the nineteenth are
on the state. The twelfth is Lincoln's birthday. The nineteenth is Washington's birthday, but which is celebrated as President's Day a lot. Correct.
So those are both state holidays, so you're supposed to have a public meeting on those days.
Okay. So what would everybody like on those weeks? The Friday before or the Tuesday after? Well, isn't there there was twelfth
you're right, Paula. The twelfth, we're not having a meeting because we have regular board meeting. Yeah.
So it's just the question of the nineteenth. We can't do it on the nineteenth. Well, you can't have a regular board meeting on the twelfth either because that violates FOI also.
That's Correct. But we're but what I was saying is we weren't going to have a meeting that week anyway. We're So gonna schedule that meeting for the thirteenth. Well, we'll attempt to schedule it for the thirteenth. So we're not having a budget meeting that week.
When is planning and zoning? Because Scott and Anne had gotta twentieth. Okay. You would say the twentieth.
So the thirteenth would work if we had to push that regular meeting, but the twentieth is an issue for the budget meeting. Correct. So
if the twentieth is acceptable, we'll just do the twentieth. So the budget meetings, let me just give dates and then you guys pick the ones that are problems. Well, let's just go, let's verify the twenty second. Does anyone have a problem with the twenty second? January,
correct? January, yeah. Okay, so that's a no. Does anyone have a problem with the January 29? So that's a no. February 5. Does anyone have a problem with that date? No. Okay. The week of the twelfth through the sixteenth, we have a regularly scheduled board meeting, or we will have a board meeting, a regular meeting, special meeting, whatever it is, but we're going to have a board of selectmen meeting, so we're not going to have a budget meeting. The nineteenth is a state holiday, so does anyone have a problem with twentieth? You guys do. Planning and zoning. Okay. Planning and zoning. Okay. So now do you want to do the meeting on the sixteenth or the twenty first? Probably the twenty first.
I would be late, but I can do the twenty first.
Okay. All right, the twenty first. And then the last meeting would be the twenty sixth. Okay, so if nobody has any problems with those meetings, I'm just going make a motion that we have that we schedule Board of Selectmen budget meetings January 22, January 29, February 5, February 21, and February 26, all to start at 7PM and to last as close to an hour as possible. I'll second.
Okay. All those in favor or any further discussion on this? Anything? Aye. Aye. Okay. All right. Put that aside.
So we did the budget schedule. Eric, you're going to get us the documentation at the first meeting on the twenty sixth, and we're going to discuss priorities at the meeting on the twenty sixth. Okay? Correct. All right. Let's go. Nine, new business discussed and act upon the following. Vote on a meeting schedule for 2024. So let's go back to our calendars. So we have a current schedule of the second Monday of the month. All right, so let's go through the actual days and determine if anybody has a problem or a desire to move it. So the first one, we've already passed. The second one would be February 12. Anybody have a problem with that date? That's a state holiday. State holiday. All right, the thirteenth.
I would be late for the thirteenth, but majority rules.
Do we have a planning and zoning meeting? No. Right?
No. That only conflicts with the rec commission meeting. So that's fine.
Okay. So, Paula, we'll accept you to be late, and, hopefully, we can do a drive by again, and you can get seen and come alright. Till the twelfth. The next one would be, March 11. Anybody have a problem with that? Okay. April, April 8. Anybody have a problem with that? Next one, May 13. Anyone have a problem with that? June 10. Anyone have a problem with that? July 8. Well, I guess if we're still doing, do we wanna have a meeting in July? Can we not have a meeting? Is it against any rules if we don't have a meeting? Nope.
We can skip every other month. We could not have a meeting the entire year if you want. What the hell?
In mind, in mind, you skip a month, it's gonna make the following month longer possibly. I'm just saying, not to be that person, but just saying.
Okay. So does anyone want to schedule that for the eighth or do you want to move it to the fifteenth?
And are you, are you saying Just for the holiday. July? Yeah,
July. And you're saying that because you're concerned of fourth of July weekend? You're July weekend and where everybody would travel. I would assume if people are going to travel, they're going to travel that first week through the eighth. But we can do it on the eighth. I'm okay because we'll do it from wherever we're at. Or we can skip it.
Can we put it on the calendar and then as it gets closer, skip it? Or once we set it, we have to stick to it? No. We're two weeks late this month, Paula. Right? Can do so bad.
No. I know. I'm I'm just anytime you want. Okay.
I'm just saying it it's easier to put it on the calendar and remove it than to try and
Okay. Then let's put it on the calendar for the eighth because then it just follows the same sequence. And if we need to change it, we'll change it. I think that's safe to say. Yeah, that's So the next month is August, it's the twelfth. Any problems with that? No problems? I'm assuming the next one is a state holiday as well. No, September 2 is the first Monday. Okay. So September 9. It's not a state holiday. Everybody okay with that? It's good. The next one would be October 14. That was Columbus day, so that you can't do.
And what happens if we do it on the seventh? Doesn't give the treasurer enough time. Okay. The fifteenth. Anybody got a problem with the fifteenth? Landing and zoning.
Landing and zoning, of course. Okay. So we're moving to the sixteenth. So we're either the sixteenth or the seventh. What would everybody rather do? I can do either day.
I I rather Mondays than the middle of the week, but that's just me. I would vote from Monday as well. Yep.
Alright. So then let's put October as the seventh. We'll do the first Monday. Okay. Alright. So November, it would be November 11. That's Veterans Day, so that's a holiday. And I'm sure if we move it to November 4, is that the day before the election? Yes. Oh, yeah. No.
No. Wait a minute. Yeah. Yeah. That is you're right. It is the day before the election. Yeah. That's not that's not a great The election is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Okay. So
In November 12. I'm assuming November 12, you guys have a meeting? I think planning is going be the nineteenth.
Okay. So then let's do the twelfth. And then December is December 9, which is a good day. Okay. So Eric, let's run through those again. So we decided to do in February, what did we come up with? So we said February
13, March 11, April 8, May 13, July or June 10, July 8, August 12, September 9, October 7, November 12, and December 9. Okay.
Anybody have any major problems? Any other issues? Anything that we want to discuss relate related to that? All right, then I make a motion that we submit the following meeting schedule to the town clerk for posting. I would rather not repeat the days. Eric, you will include those days in the motion. Okay? Correct. Okay. And that will be our meeting calendar for 2024. Someone want to second that? I'll second. Okay. Paula King seconds. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Alright. Alright. Let's move on.
The only question I have is budget meetings in person or virtual.
What are we doing? Virtual? Either way will work for me. I have no problem. I mean, if we meet in personal for that, might be easier to go through documentation that you have. But it doesn't matter. It's up to the board's discretion. You want to meet and do it in the community room or
Eric's office? Or do you want to do it virtually? Well, whether we meet in person or not, we still have to offer a packet for the public. So if we meet in person, are we still offering it via Zoom? So just something to think about.
Well, we don't have to meet via Zoom. We can offer the packet online. Under the calendar invite. Well, let's just do Zoom because it's what we're used to right now and it's easier. And We've done budget meetings via Zoom and it seemed to work.
Sure. Yep. That's fine by me. I have no problem with it. So we voted on schedule nine
b, discuss addition of stop sign at Shadlow, Dogwood, and Woodfern Intersection. Mhmm.
No. We've talked about this. Why is this on here?
Nope. Nope. We haven't talked about that. When did we talk about that? For sharing all kinds of moments. From post concert bliss. It's Dennis.
Dennis is listening to WEEI or whatever it is in Willamette. How did this come to us, by the way? What was that? Stop
sign? Did the stop sign proposal come to us? Well, I I requested that. Okay. And
I know some of the neighbors too had also had requested this. Ever since the neighborhood was built, we have thought it's weird that when you come up Shadlow to the T, there is no stop sign. I used to give people directions, go up the hill to the stop sign, take a right. And there's like, there's no stop sign there. Then why not? And there's only stop sign is on the Wood Fern Way and which is a straight through route. And it doesn't make sense to stop there. I would like to have see a stop sign on Shadlow or a stop sign on both, and either you can save money and move the stop sign from Woodfern to Shadlow, or you can put another stop sign or you can put in all three streets, but I think it really is necessary on Shadlow. We've seen near misses of people almost hitting on that intersection, and it seemed to really make sense. So I thought I'd bring it up.
Okay, Jeff.
We have a diagram in our packet. Trying know what page it's on. Not sure.
Okay. I didn't think I saw that. But anyway, Jeff Murray, you live there. What's the issue with that intersection?
I've never really had one personally, but if you were going to prove that intersection, I would probably move the sign from the Wood Fern Way and put it on Chadwell, and then just have uninterrupted traffic going both ways on the straight. Because, I mean, to make that corner anyway, have to go, you can't take that corner doing over 25 miles an hour, else you're going to run-in the neighbor's front yard or in the culvert. I mean, a sharp corner.
Page 88 of your packet. A fine drive by yours truly,
just for the record. I mean, if you were gonna make a change, I wouldn't add a stop sign. I would just move it to the other road. Yep. That's what I would think too.
Why not get rid of all them? Make it a free for all.
If we chose to do that, if you're moving the stop sign from one spot to the other, what does that take from us, Eric? We are the traffic authority. Do you have a problem? I'm the local traffic authority. I am your local traffic authority
designee. I have duly taken all the training required to do that role, you don't have to. So if you decide you wanna move the stop sign from one road to the other, make that motion. Is it problematic for you? I don't care. I don't drive up that road.
I know, but I'm asking you. I mean, if it wasn't such a disaster and such a hardship for everybody to change their driver's license, I would just get rid of Woodford altogether and just big dog would go all the way up because it's like you got two it was the dumbest thing. I don't know whoever created that, but I mean, got two houses with 15. I mean, I'm 15 and we're four houses apart and it's just crazy. People go up to deliver all the time. They deliver to the wrong house. So it's just, you're never gonna fix that. But
I mean, in my head, I have that shed blown dogwood is just the loop, and then you have a cul de sac off of that, which is wood fern. Yep. So from my perspective, where it's signed, where the stop is now makes sense, but I don't live there.
Because it doesn't feel like a loop. It feels like Shadlow comes up and ends and it's a T. That's why it makes sense to have a stop sign on Shadlow and have the other two roads go straight through. Like Jeff said, it seems like that's a straight through. Dogwood and Woodford should have been one street instead of two names even.
I mean, the only other way the only the reason I think the stop sign is where it is is because it's a pedestrian crosswalk going across there. So that's why that stop sign is there in that location. Because there's a little apron and you have to cross over the other side there to walk is a stop sign. And that's the only reason it's there. If you move the stop sign, you're gonna impact that crosswalk because somebody could be walking across the road and you could be coming down and not stopping.
Of course, with that, you might say, well, then you need a stop sign on Dogwood because people come off that way and there's the crosswalk.
It's right in the corner. Don't probably all get pissed off and steal the sign anyway because they don't wanna stop. I mean, I I almost have to come to a stop when I'm coming up Shadlow anyway because the corner's so tight. I mean, you can't go over there fast anyway. So It makes sense to have the stop sign there.
I find it, you have to really think to slow down because of that stop sign, it's on Woodford. It doesn't make sense to have one there, but I come to a stop because it says stop, but you know, doesn't make sense where the Shavlo does make sense.
I'm making Eric's point that it's a cul de sac, you know, I get that point, you know, that was added at the end.
Okay. So are we making a motion to put a stop sign there or are we making a motion to remove the stop sign from where it currently is and put it in a new position? What are we doing? So Anne, make a motion that you want addressed so that we can
vote on it. I guess I'd be bold and say I'll make the motion that we move stop sign from Woodfern to Shadlow. Okay, does anyone wanna second that?
I'll second, but I wanna have a discussion about it. Yeah, seconded by Paula King. Yes, Paula.
I'm just trying to understand what the picture that I'm looking at. What's the, I wanna hear from Jeff and Anne, what would be the bad side of moving, going forward with the motion?
Is there any, I wanna hear like the pros and cons because I'm still trying to understand. So so, Paula, if you look at if you look at the picture, Paula Yep. You see you see that you see where the sidewalk is that it crosses the road?
Oh, the picture changed. Hang on. Okay. It's on 88. Hang on. 88.
Well, go ahead, Eric. Put it up on the screen. Okay. Hang on. I'm back. I gotta go back to Zoom here. Right. So, Eric, that's where you wanna put the one stop. That's where Anne is
making a motion. Where is the current stop sign? It's right where that cursor is. See the light cursor? You see the stop bar right there. The stop bar right there and the stop sign right there. And that's Woodfern?
Yep. Woodfern. But Woodfern and Dogwood are the same road? Correct. Yep. Keep going.
Are they really? I mean, when you zoom out, it looks kind of like a Y to me. It's the same road. Okay. So Long
Hill is on the left of where you don't see it on this photo, but it's Correct. Okay. Yeah. One goes down here somewhere. I
would say I do agree with Anne on this one. Yep. It's it's much better. Jeff m m Murray was right. That's one road. Just keep it the same. Put a stop sign. Just move it across the road. Makes more sense. It
makes sense. Okay. So now I understand where the other stop sign is. I did not understand where the other stop sign was. Okay. Any other discussion on this point?
Anne, can you remind me what your motion was again? Now that I'm now I understand where the stop sign is. Can you sorry. Just repeat My what was
to move the stop sign from Woodfern to Shadlow Corner.
Okay. Which Shadlow is the left, is to the left.
Yeah. This is Shadlow. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Can't imagine why somebody would have put the stop sign where they put it. You know? I didn't know why.
Well, because that's a cul de sac. You know, you got a stop sign coming out of a cul de sac onto, you know, another rope. The real question is why they named that loop two different names.
They got it from the rope. That escapes me. I I don't know why they just didn't continue dogwood all the way to the end. It's just Right. Yeah. Mhmm. Looks like it's one road to me, and the other one's another road. Yep.
Okay. So, do we have any further discussion on it?
Yeah, I'd like to amend Anne's motion to where that stop sign is. That's where the street signs are. So that post where that's gonna be located, if you come to that stop sign, it's off to the right and you can never see which street is Dogwood and which one is Woodfern. If we're going to go and do this, I would put, if you take Shad Bogong straight up and you come to a stop and you look straight across, there would be a sign pointing Dogwood to the left and Wood Fern to the right. The way that sign, where the sign is now, it's so far over to the right that you can't really see it. Yeah. It's attached to the stop sign. Right?
Okay, so we're making a motion to move the stop sign,
but Jeff, you want Eric to sit there and put additional signage in there too. No, just take this, take that point. If we're gonna take the stop sign off that post, we should move that move the we street signs probably 20 feet to the left. Correct. Straight in the middle of Shenpel.
So you come out of the intersection between dog where the where the roads change. Wood ferns to the right. Yeah. Yes. Wood ferns to the right.
Lower right in our picture right now. Because it's once you take the stop sign out, it's gonna look silly with the street signs there just off to the side. They should be more towards the center of the road as you come up Shadwell to the stop sign. Okay. So, Anne, do you wanna make your, amend your motion to move the stop sign and to adjust the positioning of the street's hunt? Yes.
Okay. I'm in my motion to move the stop sign to Shablo and to shift the street sign, the street name signs over to the left so they are more visible. That's appropriate.
Paul? Okay. And so where do you want to put the new traffic signal ahead signs? Because if you're changing stop bars now, you need to have the new you need to at least six months, you're gonna need to resign it so people know that that's coming. So you want one on each of the three roads?
I don't know. Say that again, Eric. Doesn't really affect dog Whenever you put in a new traffic
pattern or signal, you're supposed to put in another sign ahead indicating that there's a new traffic pattern ahead. So you're gonna need to put in at least one new traffic pattern signs. My question is, do you want one, two, or three? And if so, where?
Coming up to the stop sign. Coming up to the stop sign. Coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on Shablow, we put stop ahead. Mhmm. Yeah.
Eric, you're the authority on this. Why are asking us? You need that for six months. Right?
Because you are the decider. I'm not the decider. You're the entity that makes the decision. Okay. We're deciding to change the stop sign.
You're the person that is implementing the rules of us doing it. So you know there needs to be a sign that sits there and says that traffic pattern is changing. Right.
You know where it needs to go. Okay. We'll tell you. It should go on to Diablo, but if you overruled us, we should listen to you because you've taken all the training. Right.
Right? So if you overrule us, Eric, on that, it's fine. Just No. I don't See, I don't get to rule. Because I took the training, you can make whatever decision you want.
You're you're our designee and we trust you. So our recommendation, my way I understand what you're saying is I would put it on Shablow. You believe it's been put on Steinbau, you put it there. If you don't believe it should be, you believe it should be put on Woodfern, put it on Woodfern. Okay, that's fine. Right. Not a problem. So did we all vote yes? No. I don't think we voted. Okay.
Can we all vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Five nothing. Okay. Alright. We're still, we're moving on. We're almost there. Contract with LNC Park Consultants. We just make a motion. Is this related to, the the field feeding? Rich Kolarkas Consultants. Yeah. Make a motion, Scott. A motion to, let Eric sign the contract for LNC Park. I'll second.
Okay. Scott, you're all good with all the services you've been providing? Yep. Okay. Further discussion on the contract? Is this just I have one question. Is this extra money or is this in our budget?
Well, it's mostly for next year. So well, no. I guess technically, it fits in our current budget. It's I thought it was February
started in February, January 2024 and terminated December 2025. So it's going to calendar year. So what I'm asking is we have the money for this fiscal year. Yes, we do. And we we're gonna put in the money for the following fiscal year. Okay. Right. And and anybody else have any other questions related to this? Alright. And if no further questions, all those in favor, aye. Aye.
I have nothing. Okay. 9D, right, 9D, contracts for municipal complex upgrades, RFP update for the fire department. Eric?
So I put a whole bunch of stuff in your packet. I'll tell you where it starts. Just earlier.
Yeah. So go ahead. No, it's in there. Right? Yeah. So there's basically
What we're trying to do is kind of annoying and it's kind of complex, and I'll walk you through it. So we did meet the other day as a commission or as so the Board of Selectmen empowered a group to come back to the board with a recommendation relative to a couple of RFPs that the town put out. One was for updating the HVAC at the fire department, one was for updating the HVAC at the town hall. The fire department's relatively simple because it is a standalone project. The one at the town hall is more complex because we can't do all the HVAC upgrades without doing a whole bunch of electrical work at the same time or doing a temporary panel, doing the HVAC upgrades and doing the major electrical work later. So my suggestion is that we kind of do, we authorize four things at once.
The first is accept the RFP for the fire department HVAC upgrade, accept the RFP for the town hall HVAC upgrade. And I don't have an RFP, but I do have, you know, four quotes for the propane installation of multiple propane tanks. The complex part of this is we also need to do a lot of piping between where the propane tanks are, where the new community center is, where the town hall is, and at the same time, we got to bury all the future conduit for doing the electrical because we want to eventually be able to back up the town hall and the new community center. So So what we're talking about doing is public works, do the excavation and build the pads for the the concrete or for the propane tanks. We use superior propane as the contractor to put the tanks in and run the gas lines in conduit. And we use either Public Works or LENCO to do all the conduit runs
from where the tanks are to both the new community center and the town hall. Or we do so we either do Lenco or Public Works. If we do Public Works, Rick Langley will still work with Public Works to make sure they get the handholds, the in ground holds and the bends right in the conduit right that goes in the hole. So it will be cheaper, but it will be more work on the part of public works. The problem is that, you know, this is what we're putting in the ground is at least four copper cable. So when we so we got to get a big conduit and we got to get the bends right, because this is super heavy wiring and it's hard to pull this stuff through the ground. So, but that basically future proofs us. So when the community center is done, there's no more need for excavation as part of either project. And then, you know, we're planning on putting in a FEMA grant for a new generator to cover the town hall, the fire department and
town hall fire department community center. And then that does everything. Now, the only problem we run into is we got serious electrical problems in the town hall. And it's going to be expensive to fix. We can't do it unless we do the the HVC upgrades first because the tank has to come out and a bunch of other stuff has to come out. What are you asking for? So
I'm asking whether you'll consider approving both RFPs, the installation of the propane tanks, running of the conduit, and doing the electrical upgrades at the town hall in one shot. So we don't have to put in a temporary subpanel to do that part later. Here's the downside of it. So, you know, as far as the RFPs, we've gone through our process, you know, we've made, we've done a good job of that. So that's easy. Propane tank install, you know, that corresponds to our purchasing policy because we've got multiple bids from basically all the local vendors. Putting in the conduits not a problem because essentially we're doing that if public works do it does it, we're basically doing it for the cost of materials. So it's expensive, but it doesn't really matter. We're going to buy this stuff from Target. You know, we got a bid from electrical wholesaler and then Target and Target's cheaper. So we'll go with them. The only real thing that I have not bid is the upgrades to the town hall electric. And that's going to be around $50. That's going to be a lot of money that really,
per our policy, should go to RFP. However, the town hall is really a cluster. And because Lenco actually understands and has worked in this building a lot, I think we have a pretty good chance, 100% chance if LENCO does it, that we get it done right. And I really hesitate to try to send this one out to RFP just because, you know, it's interfacing with multiple other contractors. And getting this building right, to be honest, is going to be a pain. So I would prefer just to go with LENCO, but that would take an exception to our purchasing policy. And so that's one of the things I'd like to talk to you all about.
So your concern with the electrical and bidding it out is that you get a lower bid from somebody and they they don't know the building and they don't do it the right way, and you're fighting them all the way along.
Yep. Right. And we're we're trying to make this work and do a lot of things at one time, you know, tie into some major HVAC upgrades, redo our main meter feed into the building, Change out a stab lock panel that's no longer legal and make basically create a new pony wall in there to mount a lot of stuff and clean up our existing old IT wiring that's still in the building. So that's really my concern. And I get that I should be sending it to RFP, but I would be really concerned with getting bids and getting a contractor. I know if Lenco does it, you know, it will go smoothly. I'm concerned that if we send that out to bid, it's going to be a lot more problematic. That's my concern.
Okay. So Lenco on page 82 provided us their estimate of the work. Yep. Okay. Jeff Murray, you're our original This is coming to me. Jeff, what do you think?
Eric and Mark Williams and I met last week, discussed this, and I just had some concerns about scheduling this work. I mean, the electrical work's a year out because we're gonna have, we got some transfer switches and some hardware that's long lead. So if anything we do at this meeting, we need to probably approve that hardware and at least get that hardware on order because that's gonna be our pacing item. And like talking to Eric, we want to avoid doing a temporary panel at all costs. Number one thing is what we should do is get the furnace switched over to propane first thing, and then get that tank out of there and all those pipes out of there. That'll
give us room to put the new electrical panels in, and then all our HVAC will tie into those new panels. And then we would just do a master switch over at probably one point and then move all the other feeders over into the new panel. Having Linco do it, yeah, I agreed to it, but I just worried about just violating our purchasing policy. And if we got bids that were probably close to Linco, probably make a justification to have them do it. But just for the record, we should probably get some other bids just to be safe, just to prove that their price is appropriate. That's my only concern. It's just sole sourcing something like that of that size. I would just make sure that we had a couple competing bids. And I'm sure they're probably gonna be close. And probably, Lenco does have a bidding advantage because they know the job. Hello?
Yes, What what I wanna say is is that unless unless there's something in the purchasing policies that I don't know about or I don't anticipate, you know, you don't have to take the lowest bid. You can take you ask for the lowest you accept the bid of the lowest responsible bidder. And in terms of responsible, if somebody has a track record of working in your on your property, knows the property well, and you're very confident that they'll do it. You can, I am not telling you should, but you can accept a bid that is not the lowest bid? And that I have actually been involved in a project in Ashford where I actually went and got some training on bidding law. And it just so happened that Ashford did not accept the lowest did not want to accept the lowest bid on a construction project. And so I went to after going to this training program, I looked at my training materials and I saw what I thought I had heard at the sessions that you do not have to accept the lowest bid. You have to accept the bid that's in the best interest of the citizens. And that's not and price is not the only factor. So, the interesting part about it is we were threatened with a lawsuit and who was the lawyer that threatened us with a lawsuit? It was the guy that gave me the training, the guy that wrote the materials and I just cited it back to him and he just dropped out.
So, it is not necessary to accept the lowest bid. That is not the only factor in bidding. And you'll see that most bid packages that will meant they will say that reserve the right to accept a bid. There's all kinds of language you can put into your RFP that guarantees that you have discretion. The bidding law there's cases that say the bidding laws are not there to protect bidders. The bidding laws are to help ensure that the citizens get the best deal under all of the circumstances. And all of the circumstances includes more than just price.
Okay? Alright. Thank you. Scott, Eric, what would it require from you to put that piece of it out for RFP?
Four months? I mean, I'm not doing it during budget season, that's for sure. So, what I would suggest is that we just, in that case, just approve everything but that, and we'll put in a temporary electrical panel
in the short term until we can do the major electrical upgrade. I thought you had to do all the other work and pull all the tanks.
Eric, that's like even if it takes us four months, we're not gonna be able to do it anyways because that trade that 400 amp transfer switch is gonna take a year anyway. So if we get that on order, we've got plenty of time to get the contract in for the electrical work.
The transfers, no, the transfer switch is not four months out.
Only thing that's really No, was twelve, you told me the other day that that was twelve months out, that won't switch. No, that's not twelve months out.
The 200 amp one for the community center is twelve months out. They can get the 400 amp ones. One that's really far out is the replacement meter socket because the building official is gonna require us to meet current code because we gotta replace the connectors to it because they're so badly corroded.
So Okay. That was the discussion. That was a long way out. But we still have we still have to switch that out for the town hall. Correct?
Yeah, eventually. But what would happen is if you were doing the whole thing now, he would set the panels up the way they should be set up and just keep the permit open because you can keep the permit open for a year or two. And eventually when you get the and put the ATS in when you get that and then do the meter socket when you get that. So, it sounds like if you want to go to RFP and I'm not arguing against that because I agree in many ways, that's probably the correct way to do it, but it's going to take me a shitload of time to write up an RFP that's comprehensive, that explains exactly what we're doing, you know, and do it without stealing all of LENCO's work. Okay. So, so can we do it? Wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, So it'll take you a long amount of time or a significant amount of time? Yeah. It's not something I'm gonna do now a budget season. That's for sure. Okay. I'm just worried about my my time, my my language thing. A long time. It's gonna take me a long time. Okay. Now, Jeff Murray, ask your question. I The was,
we're doing this with propane, right? You didn't have an RFP for that. You basically just kind of said, need a couple tanks and lines. Correct? He got quotes. He got quotes. In our package. So why couldn't we walk through just a couple electrical contractors and just get some budgetary quotes? And just to make sure the link goes in line with the competition. I just wanna make sure we have a sanity check to make sure that their number's good. And if their number's good, then I'm fine with it. Well, not only that I'm fine with that. I'm just saying that that's
that is going to delay everything else, and that's okay. And the alternative is really just doing a temporary service to feed the HVAC upgrades so we get that actually going. Because remember that RFP is almost a year old already, and it's already been requoted twice because time has gone by and we've changed what we wanted.
So I don't wanna stall that any farther and at least get that portion going. Yeah. But what I'm saying is we didn't we didn't do an RFP for the propane. Correct?
No. We didn't because I figured that was gonna be under the tanks themselves would be under $15,000, which they are. So I've got three three competing bids, which meets our policy. So there is no exception required for that. As far as the conduit, I mean, that's basically just materials cost. So I just don't see a need to go to RFP if we're just talking about materials. So to me, the only thing there where it's questionable with our policy is the electrical work. And I think that legitimately either you and the Board of Finance both have to agree to an exception to our policy, or you don't, and it goes to RFP when we get around.
And Right. Why and, Eric, I'm just asking this. Why can't we move another local electrical contractor to get a quote, a similar quote to what LENCO is giving us? Yeah. Because they don't have a statement. Just to have the piece of paper. All we're trying to do is not violate our own purchasing policy so significantly.
We're asking you for your help. Understand what you you want. Want. No, no. What I'm saying is that if that's what you wanna do, and I'm fine with that, then we just sit we just we commit to doing an RFP for that. And I don't have a problem with that because that's what our policy you know, if I go out and get free quotes, we're still violating our purchasing policy. So what's the difference?
So we're our purchasing policy on a vendor who's done multiple other things for us over the years and has proven to be a friend of the town. And I'm not saying that lightly, and it's not like we're getting something for it, but we're just trying to cover ourselves from any criticism that residents and, maybe other boards would give us for violating our own policy.
Right. I get It would be easier to sell to the board of finance if we had a baseline from another contractor. Eric, is the purchasing policy on the town website? I don't know. You you reviewed it.
I can I reviewed it a long time ago? I I just, I'm just trying to find it now. Okay. Well, Eric, what's your timeline?
For what? To get if if we wanna do this all together to to make it as efficient and the best possible outcome, the quickest best possible outcome that the town can get, when do we need to have an answer for you on LENCO? And today? Tomorrow? Five days from now? Next meeting? What's your, what's your timeline? When are you gonna start all this work? When's it gonna, what's the timeline?
Well, public works is already digging for the propane tanks, so that's already going on. You know, as far as the conduit goes, the only decision you gotta make is whether you wanna sub that out to LENCO, or you want public works to do it. I'm assuming you're going to want public works to do it because that will be cheaper. It will tie up more of their time, but it will be cheaper. So
And when you say it'll tie up more of their time, what are you taking them away from if they do that? Just like other projects, the parking lot.
How many people are we talking about? The whole crew is going to be digging the conduit?
That's a J question. I mean, there's like 4,000 feet of conduit going in. There's an awful lot of pipes and an awful lot of bending, you know, and we're going to end up pulling in, putting in a couple of pull points. It's a fairly annoying project.
Okay. Then so then you're probably right. We're gonna ask you to do it, and then we're gonna worry about what we're not getting done because they're doing the conduit for a long term project. So okay. We're we have them do it, and LENCO supervises. The question comes down to me what to me is what's the timing? Like, if we give you the authority we're probably not gonna give you the authority just to go with LENCO without some other documentation because probably help read the board, but I don't want you to, you do it, you don't, okay, you need to start working with us to sit there and make this happen the way you want it to happen, rather than throw your arms up and sit there and say, then we're just gonna put up a temporary panel. That's not But, yeah, that is the correct solution, Jeff, because we That are not going the
technically correct solution, but might not give the town the best, quickest outcome. Okay.
Right. So you don't wanna sit there and do the best, quickest possible outcome, which I think everybody else was talking about here is, just get two more votes from an electrical contractor, any electrical contractor to sit there and and allow us What? Allow us to sit there and say Lenco is is extremely reasonable, which we already know what he's going to be. It's just, we're just trying to be able to go to the Board of Finance with something tangible.
Okay. So I have a quick question. Like what defines an emergency in town? If something, let's just say the boiler breaks or something expensive breaks that we have to get an emergency repair. Because I would consider switching this panel out in an emergency and getting that oil tank out of their emergency because that oil tank is illegal installation, the panel is a fire hazard, the work needs to happen. So I mean, I wouldn't wait. I would try to get that changed as quick as possible.
Creativity. I love creativity. Excellent work, Jeff Murray. Well, I'm just
posing a question because, I mean, if we have a major failure of a piece of equipment, we're not going to spend two months trying to put an RFP out for a replacement. Right. And it is a problem, that panel needs to be replaced. It is a fire hazard.
But it's not a true emergency. Mean, it probably won't burn down.
I bet you you get three members of this board that say it's an emergency. Yeah. Especially
since you have oil tank lines going right over electrical panels. Yes. Are completely illegal. Yeah, it's legally, it's illegal installation. Listen,
don't think there's anyone here knows of what LENCO has done for the community that For free. Willing to sit there and do that quote or approve that quote for you. What we're just trying to do is figure a way so that we were we're reasonably in compliant with what needs to happen. And again, no one here works for LENCO. Right? Right. Nobody works But for
what I'm saying is if you want a reasonable apples to apples comparison, you know what you're going to get in, you're asking for, you're gonna have to sit down and spend a couple days writing out exactly what you want for specifications, you know, and telling them exactly itemized everything you want done. And that's basically an RFP.
Okay, then it's just going to an electrician and say,
make the building work. I'll make a motion that we approve Alenco's quote to do the emergency repair required for the electrical work related to the HVAC and the town hall offices. Second. Second that. Okay. Two seconds.
Anybody anybody wanna have any further discussion on the issue? I just putting in electrical putting in a temporary panel is gonna probably add about $10 to the cost. So even if you got another contractor coming at $40, it's just not even going to be, it's not even for discussion because it's going to cost you more in the long run too. I'm temporary panel, because you're doing it twice.
All right. I'm sold. Anybody else? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay.
Let's move on. Okay. So for the record, I will go to board of finance with this because it does technically take both your agreement and board of finance's agreement
to modify the purchasing policy. That's fine. Please do that with them and tell them we consider it to be an emergency repair that will benefit the town in the long term. Okay. We're now moving on to item 10, approval of minute meetings for the December 9 special meeting and the December 11 regular meeting minutes.
I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes for the 12/09/2023 special meeting and the December 11 regular meeting, twenty twenty three.
Should we do those separate since we weren't all there? Good Should we try to do them separately?
Okay. I will amend that. I make a motion to approve the 12/09/2023 special meeting minutes. Seconded.
I got to ask a question. Who wasn't there? You weren't there and Scott wasn't there. That's right. Eric, Scott and I walked the property after. Okay. I'm trying in my head to figure out which one was the special meeting. So, okay. So you seconded, right, Jeff Murray? Yep. All All those in favor? Aye.
No, you can't approve it, Scott. You weren't there. No, no. He
waited. He waited. He put it down. So it's three, all those opposed? All those abstained? There you go. There we go. Now we're legal. So it's it's 302.
302. For the record, while most people do, you do not have to abstain because you were not at a meeting. Well, I abstained because I'm at this meeting. Hey, Paul.
I gotta vote. It's either I'm gonna reject it or I'm gonna abstain. I can't vote in favor because I wasn't there and I don't know what you spoke about. Yeah. Well, it's okay. Can't call the minutes because I'll you weren't next. So Paula, make a motion for the December 11 meeting. I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of the 12/11/2023 regular meeting.
Seconded. All right. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Let's move on to item 11, the tax collectors report. Do we have any? So it doesn't look like we're having any problems there. Do we have any refunds to offer back? Doesn't look like it, do we?
No. The previous month, you did approve one, which is still sitting on my desk waiting your signature,
but I don't think there are any more. Alright. Then I'll be in tomorrow to sign that. And if I'm not there then, I'll be in there Monday, unless it's a state holiday. Is it a state holiday? No? Okay. Probably. Pretty much every Monday is. Right? Alright. Department reports,
listed here. Any questions on any of the reports from any of the individuals? Okay. Okay. Item 13, correspondence. No correspondence? Okay, we'll move on to item 14, public speak. Diane Greiner, you are remaining from a public standpoint.
Yeah, I'm still here. I just want to comment on a couple of things that you spoke about. One was the Community Voice Channel. I'm saddened to hear that they're losing funding, and I would like to support them, and I hope that you do as well. I applaud the work of Elaine Bucardt and all the filming she does, and the training that they provide. It's very important. I've taken the training and I'm surprised at how many people watch that station, the Community Voice Channel. Santa and I did an event there and many people in the community have spoken to me about they've seen that on TV. So people watch that station. And I think it's a great community service. And I applaud them and thank them for doing that. I think they do a good job. The other one is the community garden. I hope you guys can find the funding that they need for their fencing and such. Again, I think they do a good job. It's a good group there. They've done a lot of work over there. Think the community garden and what they do is something that all Andover residents can be proud of. And I hope you can find the funding that they need. Would be a wonderful thing. And finally, I'd like to applaud this Board of Selectmen. I think you guys do a good job. I'm always amazed and impressed by the number of items that you have to take up and the things that you're juggling. Eric in particularly, I don't know where you find the time to handle all the things that you do. But I'm very impressed with all the different things that you do. And, thank you very much. I think all
the residents, find, what you're doing very good work. Good work. So thank you. All right. That's it. Thank you, Diane. Joanne Ebert.
Yeah, thank you, Jeff. I do, definitely want to make a comment. I know it was a long meeting. I think I'm going to you know, I do have something important that I want to say. I wanna be intentional about it and, you know, get my thoughts out correct because I don't wanna be critical in any way. And I feel like if I'm gonna say something like that, I'm definitely gonna face the camera. So it's not critical about anything that you guys sorry about this crazy computer. But I just have a little bit of concerns about the whole LOSIP situation in general. I understand grants and I'm always in favor of anything that will benefit the town, going you know, everyone does a good job in trying to solicit grants and bring things into the town. But if this meeting taught me anything tonight, it's the amount of time that people are stretched. You know, and definitely Diane just gave compliments to Eric and all that he tries to get accomplished. Obviously all of you follow through in all the meetings as I do myself and make sure that I listen.
But this whole LOSAB thing with the connectivity grant and everything going through the middle of the town, I just think it's a huge undertaking. I'd like to know a lot more information about it. I started listening to all of your meetings and have been trying to follow it. And I know that there was a rush to get it done. And I'm not opposed to it at all. I just think it's probably going to take a lot of time. You know, it's going to affect, you know, I'm saddened to hear that it's going to affect six homeowners that have to make decisions about their property. It's, you know, and I will take the time and not take up a lot of your valuable time tonight. But in speaking to other residents too, I'm not hearing the drive for the town to be more trails and let's get the trails connected. I think it is a wonderful thing, but right now we've got the community center, we've got the playground, we've got the garage thing that's going on. I mean, that's just from my memory after a long night of listening and trying to. So I just want to project to you that I know that there was a rush to get this done. And from listening, I learned that when the deadline was, that Eric wanted to get this done by. And I'm sure it's taken a huge amount of his time to prepare the grant and to get the input from the DOT and everybody else that it's going to affect in town. And I
think the negative that Eric had pointed out a couple meetings ago was that if we don't get it this time, we can't go for a year and a half. I think about a year and a half might be the amount of time people will have available to devote the amount of huge attention that's needed to a project of this magnitude. So again, I applaud all the good work and all the time and dedication that all of us volunteers, you volunteers, put into the town. But, you know, I'm not 100% on board with this without it going before the town and the town weighing into that this is something they wanted. So thank you.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Joanne. I don't think we have anybody else left on the line. So let's move to our final item on the agenda.
Before we do that, can I just ask one quick question? Is that are there any board members going to next Monday's Veterans celebration? What's the date on that one? Twenty second at 04:00. It's at the school? Yes. Correct.
Yeah. I sent Susan an email earlier saying I was gonna try to make it. It just depends on my testing schedule at work. So if I get stuck there, I won't be able to make it. But if we get done early, I'll I'll I'm gonna try to go. I am going to attempt to make that. Can
I just interject a little something? I talked to Susan, there's 47 veterans that are gonna be honored on that day from Andover. So I think it would be appropriate to have somebody from the Board of Selectmen there. I mean, we have Susan Biceiewicz coming to town. It would be good to see some from the Board of Selectmen. Representative Have we Ware and Senator Raman?
I believe they have both been invited. Senator Raman, as far as I understand, is coming. I don't know about Steve Weir, but I do know he has been invited. Okay.
Yes, I will attempt to make that as well as Jeff and whoever else. I mean, we're all I'll try to be there also. Yeah,
it's just the time is difficult. If it was 06:00, I could definitely go, but 04:00 is a tough one for me to try to get.
Okay. I'm not traveling till later in the week, so it's a good day. Okay. So I actually, I dropped my phone off of that. So where are we at? We're at item 15, adjournment. Motion to adjourn.
Okay. Jeff Murray got that one. We'll give Jeff Murray the motion. Paula, are you gonna second that? I'll second that because he expertly
gave the meeting minutes for the special meeting on December 9. So good job. Okay.
All right. All those in favor of adjourning? Aye. All right. Thank you very much, everybody, for attending. Dennis, thank you for all of your time. And Diane, thank you for staying on with us, being the last person standing. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll Yep. See Good night.