Meeting transcript
BOS Regular Meeting
May 11, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Since this is, May and Memorial Day is in this month, we may as well do the pledge of allegiance. So, I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America. You're very good.
Something like one of those AT and T commercials where they have everybody from around the world say something at the same time. Sure and I think it's more like that Geico ad.
Okay. We're going to get started with public speak. Anyone who would like to participate in public speak, please unmute yourselves. And Amanda, you might as well go through them because we don't have that many additional people. Okay. Joe, would you like to go first?
Yeah. Yeah. I'll go ahead and go first. First, I wanna thank you all for all the hard work you guys have been doing on the budget and the transparency with that. With being a new town resident, it's it's good to see that type of transparency, especially during these times. But I wanted to touch on something different. And I'm not the pitchfork and torch kind of guy, so I kind of gathered my thoughts down, wrote them down, so I'm just gonna read them out. But so my name is Joseph Goblin. I'm a resident here in Andover. Me and my family moved to Andover because, well, while home shopping, we fell in love with the area. But we liked that we saw Lake Road neighbors out walking, jogging, bike riding, taking their dogs on walks. Just about everyone waves to each other. It's a pretty friendly area. So we liked it. We fell in love with it. We did our research. School ratings were great. Reasonable tax rate, low crime, and the lake amenities nearby. We love that. Alright. This meant a lot to us, and we decided to to move in. We moved in last November,
and we we plan on staying. Fast forward now. We're on Lake Road. We love our neighborhood. But recently, we've made some concerning or some concerning observations of some of the current traffic habits, which I'll get into. I figured that's a sensitive topic with some folks. But we've made some concerning observations, and some of the observations have to do with speed. And I'm not talking about the occasional speeder. I know that happens. It's the constant flow of speeders on Lake Road specifically. So this consists of residents, non residents, contractors, triaxials, trucks, cars, motorcycles, the postal service, UPS, FedEx. It seems like everybody has a little bit of skin in the game. And because of that, I can't let my kids play in the front yard. My property is a little bit sloped, and the scenario of the ball rolling into the road is all too real. And I know if that were to happen, there'd be a likelihood that one of my kids would most likely be struck. So just crossing the street to get to the mail turns into a game of fraud, unfortunately, sometimes. I've almost been taken out by side mirrors with cars going 30 plus miles an hour. I've taken kids on walks, which turns into a nightmare when two cars pass by the opposite directions
and usually well above the posted speed limit. And lastly, for the same reasons as noted previously, taking my child out on her bike becomes a dangerous task. She's still on her training wheels, and her margin for error is very low if she were to tip over while we're riding her bikes. No activity feel safe in the late mode, unfortunately. And I've seen people yelling at cars. I'm not the one to yell at somebody or wave my hands, but I've seen other people become pretty upset. So with that being said, you know, there are those that argue that the road's not the place for people, and I would disagree. Neighborhood roads have historically and culturally been a place where children play, bike, skateboard, rollerblade, etcetera. That's how I grew up. I grew up in Groton when I was younger, and we were kind of out and about. We'd ride our scooters, ride our bikes, and we'd clear out when the car came. Unfortunately, here, I think it's a little bit more difficult because there's a lot more speeding going on than what I remember as a kid. And with the lake so close by, this can't be our attitude. I think we all benefit from safe neighborhood roads.
And I'm sure that others feel the same way in other parts of the town. In light of these observations, I decided to reach out to a very small portion of the community representing about 20% of Andover's population on Facebook, social media platform. And I asked them if they noticed this traffic trend. And I know a couple of select men that are on tonight have been there and read some of the comments that have been made. Some people, you know, they they get angry. They don't have a solution, and, you know, they just kinda spill it out there. But I wanted to come to you guys officially and, you know, address those concerns. People gave out dozens of examples of how people blow through stop signs. They speed, obviously, pass pedestrians dangerously close, and not just on Lake Road, but other parts of Andover. There were some, which this is hearsay, unless it's already on the record. I I don't know. I am new to town. That they say they've approached the trooper and the selectmen in the past looking for solutions. And from their perceptions, the status quo has continued. Nothing's been done.
Others mentioned how this board of selectmen is new and with the interest of in hearing about the problem. We, as a community, have identified it. It's a public safety problem in its simplest form and an opportunity to make Andover neighborhoods a little more safe for everyone, especially as we approach summer and more people are out enjoying the weather. And while it might be easy to say the trooper will take care of the brush off the issue because there is not a clear solution, I'm contending that there might be a solution in developing a public safety committee with some of the board of selectmen to address the issue. Stop sign speed bumps, radar speed limit signs, more trooper presence ticketing are all components of the solution, but organized, collaborative approach is necessary. The trooper can't single handedly provide a solution. In fact, once you pass the trooper on six or three sixteen, it's the safe bet you can speed without consequence for the remainder of your travel within town. So this isn't something that I think is gonna be solved instantly. I don't think there's any magic formula to control individual behavior. I think there will always be those who think about themselves and and continue to go about their ways.
But I know that there's mitigation and engineering controls that can be implemented over time and in course to encourage drivers to obey the posted speed limit and create a safer neighborhood frequented by pedestrians. So this is my official plea for the record to form a public safety committee with a minimum of two selectmen to address the speeding problem or any subsequent action deemed more appropriate to address the problem. And I understand that these things cost money, and I know that it's not gonna be done immediately. And I think that is good to be expected. But I think that would be money well spent in the future, whether that's next year or the year after. So thank you for your time and consideration, and I'll forward my thoughts to you guys to have on record. All right. Thank you. Amanda. Jeff real quick Adrian, before
it's public speak. Let's finish that. We want put it on the agenda, put it on the agenda. Amanda let's go.
Are you gonna stay on? Yeah, I can stay on. Yeah, as long as he stays on and I just I wanna ask him a couple of quick questions about some people had ideas but I didn't really understand what they were saying so. Amanda, let's go. Okay. So next up we have Wally. No comments tonight. Thank you. Howard.
Michelle. Michelle, would you like to participate in public speak? You say Sorry,
I'm muted, I think. We can hear you. Oh, you can hear me? No, then I have nothing to say. I'm sorry about that. It's okay. Melissa Letuska? Is she muted from us?
All set. Thank you. Thank you. Diane previously said that she's all set with public speak. Joe, is that your other phone there? Katherine? No, I'm all set. Just listening. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you. Barbara Griffin? Barbara, would you like to participate?
She must be away. Let's go to the Okay, next next up we have Joanne Hebert. Said thanks
thank you okay Julie Victoria hi I'm just here to answer questions about the library if anything comes up okay thank you Kim just listening at this point thank you
thank you Okay, Linda. Just listening. Thank you. Steve? Steve, would you like to participate in public speak? Okay. Amy? Amy, would you like to Hi. Just listening. Thanks. Thanks. Okay. And the last one is 8603350264. It's cheap, Mike. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I think that's it.
All right. We're going go to agenda item three additions and deletions to the agenda. Adrian did you have anything that you wanted to add?
I wanted to add the motion for I'd like to add some some conversation or motion for a minor town ordinance addressing public boards and commission appointments.
Why don't we consider putting that under new business? Does anybody else have anything else? Jeff?
I would like to can we modify the agenda? It says cool on it and cool isn't really the thing we wanted to discuss it was the end of our summer camp. We have that changed modified. It was changed. Okay I have an old version then.
Okay. It was changed? I don't have the change. I'm looking at the one on the website. It's the updated version.
So the one you sent to us is not updated?
Right. The one I sent on Thursday was the original.
Okay. That explains it. And Adrian, would we like to discuss the traffic issue in town?
Yeah, I'd like that. That was my next thing is can we put the put the idea of maybe a safety committee on?
Sure. So can we make the minor ordinance seven H and then the safety committee seven I on the agenda? Anything else Paul? No, I'm good. Scott? I'm all set.
All right. Seven H and seven I. So seven H, which one did you have first Eric the safety agenda or the other? I would have said the ordinance first but it doesn't really matter.
While we're working this out Dennis did you get a chance to look at the revision that Eric may have sent over to you? Yes I did and I I edited the revision. I didn't see that from Eric.
I I did CC you on it but you may not have got it I don't know. All right. Let me check my other email. We can go to town. Okay. So since we're all set with that, do we have someone that wants to
second the motions for the additions? Or I'll make a motion to add seven H as minor ordinance related to, elected official appointments and seven I, discussion regarding the safety committee. I'll second that. All right. All in favor? Aye. So we're gonna put that on the agenda. We're going go to Item four, Boards and Commissions, Presentations and Appointments. 4A is Board of Selectmen Community Senior Center Building Committee.
Jeff or Scott, either one of you want to discuss that or are we all set for right now? We haven't got started with that yet. Yeah, one thing I did reach out to all the members. I've only heard back from two and only one was sworn in. All right. So I don't know what headway we're going to get. I'm still kind of waiting to see if anybody's going to get back to me. Okay. 4B, Website Development Committee. Paula?
We have a meeting this week. And Amanda, feel free to chime in. From my from what I understand, the site is being migrated over. So we are
cooking. We're cooking it. Do you have a live date yet?
Amanda, did they give us a date? We do not have a date, and I Adrianne, I did push back a little bit to see when that would be. Unfortunately, it won't be before this upcoming committee meeting, but they are working on it. And, I put a couple of the mock ups in the packet for everyone to check out. I think it looks wonderful, and, they're gonna get back to us about training the staff.
Well, more importantly, before we're live, I haven't seen a beta version for us to check out yet. I had sent out the mock up for the home page and I know we got mock ups. That wasn't the question. We want a beta version that we can go and play with before you go live.
That's not available yet. Yeah. That's not that's not in the work. Yeah. It's coming. That's what they're working.
Before we go live. Adrian, Adrian, we will do that before we go live. So Thank you. Pages, the slides that you put in Amanda look great, but Adrian is correct. We should sit there and see it and be able to get to it. So but it does look it looks very nice, Amanda. Nice job.
Yeah. It does. And I can't wait to show you guys. And I think that it would make sense for the committee to work on it and then present it to the board and make sure everyone's on the same page before we launch. Has the committee had a chance to to play with it at all? No. No? Okay. No. It's not ready yet. No. It's still in the migration
process. Listen. I I agree with Jeff. The mock ups look great.
Just wanna see how they interplay with the drop downs. That's all. Once we have that, we will get that to you. Okay. And and also keeping in mind, it's not gonna be perfect. You know, it's even if we see the beta and we go live, we can we'll update as we need to. But we don't I don't believe. Don't wanna be and Amanda working on it, it's gonna be perfect.
Oh wow, okay. So we will get it to you as soon as we can and then just keep in mind we can update as we go. We don't wanna be hasty pull the trigger, but we don't want to keep holding it up and try and make it perfect and perfect and perfect. Yep, yep. It's
a work in progress. It will all come together. It'll be better than what we have now. Exactly. All right. So is that all from the website committee? You all set? Let's move on to item five, town administrators report. Eric?
Let me just share my screen here real quick. Okay I'm not going to go through most of this because it's posted and you've already seen it. Can everybody see that? Yep. Okay so what I'm going to do is just talk about the things that have changed since I originally sent this out. First one thing I missed is originally we had agreed to authorize the library to overspend by $1,500 when they needed to do their whole water system, pressure tank, all that repair. So I'm going to have to go through with that. It looked like maybe we could avoid that but they also need to buy some plexiglass shields and some other things as part of their plan for reopening. So just letting you know that that's going to happen. We're also putting the building officials have been putting a lot of time in lately. We have redone completely the racking system in the land use and building department and we're going through kind of a major file reorganization down there, which is coming out awesome, but we're burning a bunch of staff time to do it. Right now we're okay on hours because he was under on his hours up to this point for the year. I probably will have to authorize some overage at some point in the next month or so because we are going to run a little over on that, but we're not going to run a lot over on that. Eric,
isn't that really the building department secretary doing most of that? Well, she's doing some of it,
but it's really her plus Carol plus Ed plus Jim because they have to all be able access the information and right now without all of them working and doing it collectively it was going to be kind of a cluster. So that's kind of what's in the way. So that the
money that or the measurements and everything we talked about as far as the slide racks to get rid of all the file cabinets? Exactly. So that's finally That
has happened. We're just doing the cleanup make it work. I have started discussions with a labor attorney. Right now I'm just using CCM's free consult. We'll see how that goes and see whether we need to We have enough money in the legal budget, but as we start to do negotiations with reducing hours for union employees, we're going to need the advice of a specific labor attorney. So I'm starting that process now. We're going to see how it goes. I'm not saying he's the person we're going to use, but we're at least going to I'm at least going to examine that. Next up, we got the initial bid back from the Connectivity Grant. So I asked, so I tried using EZIQC, which is the bidding process from Capital Regional Council of Government, the one they've negotiated. And the bid actually came in way under what we were expecting, which is wonderful.
Other than that one, you know is basically pass through money from the state anyway. So what I'm looking at now is seeing whether we can run a couple things as part of that grant and get a little extra out of it since the initial bids did come in under. So thinking about possibly a gazebo and maybe a couple picnic tables and maybe a bike repair station. I haven't really worked it out but I'm thinking along those lines for the connectivity grant. On the flip side of that, the all up costs for doing the transfer station look like they're going to come in somewhere around $80,000 which is quite a bit over the original budget that CIP had allocated but CIP also wasn't really contemplating any serious electrical work as part of the problem or as part of the work done there And one of the things which is clear is that one of the primary things we need is an overhaul of the electrical system that does that. And we can talk a little bit later when we get to that about the RFP for that. The other thing I got today which was a little annoying was a notice from KIRMA saying that our ransomware policy, which is included free as part of our KIRMA membership,
basically they're jacking up the deductibles from 10,000 to a 100,000 and decreasing their maximum liability from 2,000,000 to 1,000,000. And they're doing that basically because they're paying out a lot of money And since it was just kind of a freebie for membership, they are doing that. We could pursue a separate policy and we can talk about that. But I just found out about it about an hour ago. So I have not done much research on that at all. What's the cost? For what? For the ransomware? Mean a standalone policy? Well through them.
Nothing. It's part of they do that just for free for all the KIRMA members. So they're not gonna have they're not gonna have a policy available through them at all? No. They they have a policy, Adrian, but KIRMA doesn't charge extra like that. They they put it in. If we're paying a $105,000, it's all included in the policy. Correct. What
Eric is saying is because they have upped their deductible. I mean, a $100,000 is ridiculous. I mean, that's a joke. You do need it, Eric, to look at a separate policy or a rider from another insurance carrier that, you know, we might figure out what it's gonna cost us, but it's probably gonna be extremely expensive. Sure.
But we're There's no extra cost. No, but we're talking about ransomware here, right? Yeah, hacking. Yeah, generally hacking, ransomware, that kind of thing. You know, their point is just that this is, you know, the claims both within Kerma and also countrywide are freaking skyrocketing. And, you know, they had to renegotiate with their reinsurer
and No, get all that. I'm just, you know, let's see what the prices come back at and then we'll discuss it. I just don't know that we as a small town, as small as we are, need to be kind of worried about that. If somebody packs us and tells us we can't have our computers back, we just bought the paper files at this point. Know? Just don't I don't I don't see us paying 5 or $6,000 a year for ransomware policy thing when we can go back to last week's backup, you know? What was what was the deductible, Eric? The change from 10,000 to 100,000?
Correct. Okay. Correct. Let's move on. Let's, Eric, Adrian See what the policy looks like. Yep.
Understood. Okay. So if you want me to pursue an independent policy, I certainly will. We can do what it costs. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Don't crazy, but get us a number.
Right. Okay. So the other thing is next month we had to think about doing two things. One, you ought to do your administrative review for me and you ought to do the same thing for Attorney O'Brien. And you should probably make a decision at this meeting whether you want to do that in an open forum executive session. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter to me. It just depends on what you want to do. I think it should concern you. Yours should definitely be an executive session.
Mean, think it should be an executive session and we should sit there and public put your review out or whatever we put out as a public document so that Tom can see it.
That that's a great idea. I would vote for executive session as well. I would vote for an executive session also.
Okay. And do you wanna do the same thing for attorney O'Brien since technically we are supposed to be reviewing his performance yearly and now would be the time. Do at the same meeting.
Yeah. That's fine. I mean, have no preference one way or the other on his, but I think given the amount of feedback for you, might be more appropriate to be an executive. Okay.
That is fine. And I would also say that I think it would probably be appropriate for the ordinance we're contemplating to do that next month, not this month. This month just gather feedback, make sure you all get to read it, we should publicize it and then do it next month since we didn't really put it on the agenda. So it's not really fair to the town to pass an ordinance without really having a review.
Well, do we need to add something to our We probably need to set up some sort of review amongst the selectmen prior to the meeting, executive meeting. We should be prepared for your review and Dennis's as well. How do we want to do that? Any ideas?
I'm confused if you Eric was talking about the minor ordinance.
Yeah. He just got done talking about his review and Dennis's review. We need to set something up in order to do that review. Otherwise, we're just gonna go and say what? We love you. You did a great job but blah blah blah. Yes.
I I anticipate doing that. I don't know that that's Adrian, an appropriate way to Adrian, we we can we can get together, outside of this and communicate amongst ourselves and come up with a format that will we can give him as a review appropriately. In the interest of transparency,
that would not be appropriate, mister McGuire. We're doing this in executive session, aren't we? His review, but we need they the folks need to know exactly what our format's gonna be for his review and, you know.
Okay. Would you like to sit there and put together the
checklist and the, outline for his review? I will gladly do that and send it around to folks to get feedback so we're prepared going in. That sounds like what I was thinking. Good job. All right. Before
we did it. You got it. Thank you, sir. Okay.
So next up some pictures. That is all the electrical crap that was torn out of public works as we rewired for the lights and worked off the vast majority of the OSHA violations we had in that building.
Did they take that dumpster or was that ours? That's our dumpster. Will get hauled to John's scrap Did next time
we pull the ballast out so we can get aluminum prices on that and not get dinged for chemicals?
No, we didn't go through and tear the ballasts out as far as I know. That would have been probably a good idea.
Might want to call John Scrap, see what he wants us to do. Because now you've got a mixed dumpster.
What's the dates on those ballasts? That's the scary part. Right. Yeah. Some of them do have PCBs,
the older ones. I mean, he might not care. I just don't want to make sure that he knows what he's getting. All right. Sorry. Okay,
it's only time. All right, so there's going to be an item later. One of the members of the audience wants us to put up a notice board that was purchased at some point in the past under the reign of Bob Burbank. And so I took a quick picture from the owner's manual of what it looks like. It looks something like this. And here is the full size unit with basketball and the four court so you can kind of gauge what size it is. It's roughly four feet by four feet. That's not the front is not actually white. This is plexiglass. This is just a protective coating. I didn't want to peel it off until we put it in. If you open this up, there's one of those black
background browns with the little slots that you can stick numbers in. That is what is that is what was purchased
for the town's notice board. Now this was a wreck wasn't this a wreck commission thing? A couple of years ago.
I'm not sure who that's what I heard it was purchased Absolutely from the wreck the wreck commission.
But, you know, so maybe Jeff can weigh in on where it was originally intended to be at. It was intended to be at the town hall. Okay. But
there's if there's no space for it and that's not where you want it, I know that the Rec Commission had said it go the field down at Long Hill, it could go to the transfer station. That's on the agenda, so we'll talk about it then.
Would that be most appropriate for the Rec Commission to decide considering it's their sign?
Well, they just want us to give them approval as to where to put it. I mean, Eric, we're gonna we'll have that conversation when we get to it. Thanks, Michael. Yeah.
So next thing I wanted to show you we are talking about as we do the transfer station we are going to add kind of two things to the right side as we do it. The first is this is this part right here where my cursor is is the original wall and we're going to cut this wall back a little bit and add a spot potentially for a future fourth compactor and wire it for a fourth compactor. The second thing we're going to do is where this slopes straight here, we're going to cut this wall back as a 45 degree angle. This is actually where that shed is right now and all the bins or all the Salvation Army and stuff like that are lined up there. So we're not actually really losing any space. The goal is to put the mattress cargo container right there So it can still be pulled out in this direction. This is drawn a little incorrectly, but it's sized so this can go there. We can get at all four compactors in the future just to free up a little space above on the other side. So when we start getting overloaded, we can have full rows of dumpsters on the other side. The next picture over, that is our new server that is actually in and running and we have for the first time in many years done a full backup from both our two existing servers,
and we have a RAID something something something array. And the objective of that is that lower unit right there that the cursor's on, that one is password protected, but you can't basically, it's set up so that array has to be manually configured if you're ever going to take the data back off of it. And the objective being that that data is not corruptible from the outside world. So that is the town's backup. We are going to consider an off-site backup storage too, because the one thing we really couldn't recover of is the UFO hitting the building or a major fire or something like that. So in the future, we need to think about off-site backup in addition to this, but we at least now for the first time in a long time have a real backup system for pretty much all the sensitive data in the building. So I'm quite happy with that. The lower two pictures are the new sliding shelves in the building department. If you walk into the building department now, it's incredibly open because we were able to take out an enormous number of the storage units and replace them with a much more efficient stackable, slidable storage units. So that's what those pictures are right there. And that's it. That's all I got for administrators report unless there's something you want other other questions that you have. Selectman, you guys have any other questions for Eric? No. That's it. How low are the bids on a connectivity grant?
About 100,000 under budget. So about two thirds of the budget.
Oh, so we need to make sure that we use that money in some manner.
Well, there's some limitations on it. There's only so much you can because you bid for a certain thing, you know, I think I can stretch it a little bit, but I can't like do something completely separate somewhere else with that money. So I'm still, I got to call into the kind of program manager for that. We're going to talk it through. And I got a meeting Friday with the contractor because I want to make sure absolutely sure you know that bid has everything that's in the drawings and we're not missing anything too. Yeah that's good news certainly.
Let's sit there and see if we can find out from the people managing that that grant what our our opportunities are to sit there and extend and make use of those dollars as best we can. Even if we sit there and draw the connectivity down to the field more and and get something done down there that, you know, maybe we can help the the entities that are there, whether it's the library or the food, even though I know it's not a town organization, but the food pantry and the food. So let's be creative and try to sit there and see if we can use those dollars. Yeah, it certainly will. Anybody else?
Worst case, mean, anybody's ever been down to Church Street in New Vernon, I think that's kind of what Eric had in mind with his suggestions. Am I correct, Eric?
Yep. Yep a little eating pavilion and a bike repair stand and a few other things just because it's the pathway for a lot of people. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a very nice, that's a very nice addition in Vernon. If we could afford to do something like that in Andover would be a great asset. Sounds great. Okay,
I will keep plugging on that. Okay, let's go to number six, old business. 6A, town personnel policies.
So I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion here but I sent the all the selectmen got a copy of Dennis's revised version of the personnel policies and do any of you have any questions or comments or concerns about those policies?
I'll have to admit I haven't read them. Sorry Dennis. Oh. We'll have to sit there. I will promise to read them for next meeting. Any of the other selectmen need to sit there and have this discussed today?
No. I I think I think, if we just have any notes, let's all forward them to to Eric to sort of cobble them together and Okay.
And Eris before I forget, just want to, you want to thank, Carol Lee for facilitating getting the, that worked out for the building department downstairs. That was really something she jumped to help in on.
Yeah and she's been spending a lot of time down there with Ed and Susan and Jim helping them get the place cleaned up and in a reasonably
well organized. She got it measured for us and moved it forward so just we want to thank her for that that's all. Yep absolutely. Yeah it looks great down there. Yeah it really does.
And Susan thought I was crazy when I brought it up. Yep.
Okay. Six B is the community connectivity grant. I mean Eric is there anything else you need to add to that? Nope. Not at this point.
Alright. Six c, the email provider Office three sixty five? I don't have anything to add at this point.
Are we moving forward with that now that the website's getting close? Eric?
As far as I know, the last time I left, the selectman still had some objection to it. So No, I had last meeting you At the last meeting you brought it up again and I withdrew my objection. Actually I thought the objection was monetary.
It was monetary. I told them that we looked at it, there isn't a cheaper version anywhere. I did look at some other options as far how to structure it but it's too involved.
Okay. All right let's leave this till next. I mean Eric we don't need to do this at this meeting anyway let's do this at the next meeting. Nope we kind of do so that way they're not reprogramming the website. Adrian I understand that. Wait till next next meeting and you'll be able to do it if if we can't do something I I disagree with that. This is the whole briefing.
Adrian, I'm asking you nicely on this one. Let it go for one month. You don't need it right now.
It's on the agenda, Jeff. Right? It's been on the agenda for the last four months. Can we make a motion to move forward with the email provider?
Eric is smiling because he knows that Google he knows he's looked at Google. You know you've looked at Google. You know that we could sit there and potentially do it. And if we did it, it would be free and everyone would get emails. If we go with three sixty five, we are not getting emails for everyone in the community that needs emails.
Eric, I thought there was an issue with Google. We had to pay under theirs as well. We do. So Jeff, what are you catching that he's not?
I'm catching that the way that the school does it is the way that the town should do it because the school does not pay for their emails.
So are we looking into it? What I'm I guess I'm confused.
Are we looking into the Google? I was supposed to be looking into it from this meeting. If you give me one more call, get you an answer.
Well, can we get an answer before the next meeting so that when we go into next meeting, we're ready to move forward?
Absolutely. I will schedule a meeting with Eric and Amanda with the technical individual from Google that we should have met with three months ago.
Fine. I'll move it till I I will withdraw till next meeting. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Six d annual report. Amanda, do you want to add to that or Eric, whichever one of you wants to talk about?
Mandy you can take that one. Yeah, just wanted to pipe in, we're still waiting for the well at least I'm still waiting for the auditor's report until it's posted. I can I'll try to post it unmute.
This is Barbara. It's done. The last copy I have though still had draft across it. So I just emailed Mike today to remind him that I do need a final with that draft logo taken off each page. And then Amanda, I will get it to you as soon as I receive it. Thanks. Barbara,
can you, when go to present, when that gets presented to the Board of Finance and accepted, can you also,
is the auditor gonna do a presentation for that? I was just talking to Eric about that today. That would be my suggestion that maybe not in May because they're still finishing the budget perhaps in June if they're meeting. Could check with Michael and the board if that date works out to have it as a Zoom meeting.
That's perfect. I have no objection to that. What I would like is for you to have ready for that meeting so that the Board of Finance can put it into the record and the auditor can add anything to it. A checklist that we need to have completed for audits going forward for that for that office. Because my understanding is one of the things that held this up was just some minor check offs that we probably should have mailed out right away at the close of business last year. So we need to Okay. Probably get a formal checklist together for that.
Yeah. The only one I'm aware of is those the attorney letters, which is something they initiate, but I will definitely check on that. Well, whether it's them that initiates or us, we need to need to have a list from him
and understood by you as to what that office is required to do so that we don't keep having these delays on the audits. That's all. I will definitely
include that. And that way it can get put into the record and the board of finance will be able to follow-up with, you know, yourself or whoever's in that position however many years down the road to be able to say, these things done so the board of finance can do their job a little better as well. Thank you. Got it. Okay. Oops. June is the Memorial Day parade. Paula.
So I had a conversation with John McCall. He is the chair of the committee and they had originally contacted us and said that they wanted to cancel the parade. I had a great conversation with him this weekend. So far since school has been closed there's been two parades that have kind of been led by the school and I said to him I have an idea how we can have the Memorial Day parade do it safely And I shared my thoughts with him that we could, rather than having people march like we've done in the past, everybody can stay in their cars, follow a similar route that the school
use, not the same one because from what I understand it took them about an hour and forty five minutes because they did a really big loop in town. We would revise the route and he liked the idea. He said, you know, everybody can meet at the school and revise the route. Whoever's in the car together has to be from the same household, stay in their cars, they can mark the outside of their car with whatever organization they're with. And we talked a little bit about the speeches. Kind of shared with him we could do some pre recorded speeches but he felt that we would skip that part because when they decided to cancel the parade they didn't get a speaker and he felt that whoever the speaker was would really be kind of shuffling or you know they don't have a lot of time to pull something together. So I also mentioned after the parade is done we can still hopefully do the laying of the wreath at the memorial And Amy Knox's family, I kind of threw it out there and this is up to the committee or whoever. I said maybe one of the kids can lay the wreath and then she's got a kid that plays the trumpet, maybe her daughter plays the trumpet. And then he was kind of saying well maybe I can reach out to the minister in town and you know the ideas were kind of flowing and I offered a generator and a speaker and a
microphone and we can stream that through our Facebook page, do it live so that after the parade is over people can kind of watch through Facebook. So I shared with him you know these ideas. He was going to talk to the committee and send out an email this weekend and I told them that I would update the board tonight and I would like to move forward with it because I think it's a good thing for the community to look forward to. A lot of the fairs are being canceled and even though the parade was more specific with the teachers recently, I heard that other community members came out and we're excited to see the
cars go by because something to look forward to and brighten their day. So wanted to get the thoughts from the other board members, but I think it'd be a good feel good event and a little bit of normalcy hopefully. And I think we could do it safely and smart. John seemed to be excited about it. And I'd like to update him on what your thoughts are.
I think that's a great idea, Paul. Jerry Wright is planning on doing something related to since he's not participating in Rolling Thunder he's planning on doing something to honor veterans over Memorial Day weekend. If you can sit there and keep working with the parade committee, that would be great. I think that would be a positive thing to do for the community. Anybody else? I'm all for it also. Good idea, You're muted. Jeff, anything for you? I'm good with it. I'm all set.
Paula, if you can keep coordinating with John, if there's anything that I can do to assist, I will.
Okay. Thank you. I'll give him a call tomorrow and tell him that the board's supporting it. I'll find out what his committee thinks and we'll hopefully move forward with it. Okay.
On to new business. We have 7A, the town accounting software. So do we want to just combine this with 7B, which is a meeting of the Board of Education to discuss the combined finance department? Okay. So, we have a decision to make regarding town accounting software.
Hey Jeff, can I just interrupt real quick? Sure. Going back to the Memorial Day Parade, do we need to pass a motion or anything to get that in the works?
I wouldn't think so. There's already a committee. Okay. So I mean, you're offering to facilitate with the committee and Eric's in place, so you should be fine.
Well, we did make a motion to cancel the parade.
No, actually you didn't. You made a motion not to cancel the parade and to punt on that. So you still have not canceled anything. So I guess you don't need to uncancel anything. Thought we
canceled it Paula. No, the committee canceled it. Remember we said we're gonna wait and then we got the email from the committee saying that they canceled it. Okay. So the committee needs to uncancel it.
All right well I'll talk to John tomorrow and is that the best way going forward from here? Whatever you think is appropriate. You could tell the committee, the
Memorial Day committee that we're okay with them on canceling and making it a car parade or motorcycle parade, a vehicle parade with no gathering point to sit there and have people congregating. Okay, so we won't do that.
No, I'm assuming that means the Board of Selectmen's going to support that by being in the parade? I already have my car ready, Eric. Excellent. Yeah. Me too. I am out of town. Jeff
should ride his motorcycle and our one veteran I'm sure is going to do whatever he needs to do if he participates or not. But we appreciate all his service let's not oh, and Eric also, thank you for your service. We'll give you that little thumbs up already. Thank you. Jeff, you weren't in the military, were you? No, I was not. And Scott, you were not in the military were you? Because I don't know about No, no.
Eric It had to have been the Civil Eric War,
and Adrian get Civil War. Eric and Adrian, thank you very much. We appreciate all the things that you guys have done during your time in the service. Thank you very much. Let's see. Tom accounting software. So I'm just going to give you my take on this whole thing. I've been on this board for five years. Ever since the first year, I believe the town should be on QuickBooks. I know Adrian and Eric have been in multiple meetings related to the Calm accounting software. And we have to start making we have to make a decision related to this. If it was up to me and only me, we would make this decision right now and be done with it. But we know we have to be involved with the Board of Education and our own internal finance department. So
I'll let Adrian and Eric talk as to where they're at with what they want to do related to the software. Either one of you, go to it. Eric?
Okay. So what I think at this point is the goal would be to have a combined meeting with the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Ed because what we're really talking about doing is having a combined finance office and figuring out what software is reasonable for that combined finance office. Now at the same time, we have a fairly local QuickBooks consultant who's been a town bookkeeper and used QuickBooks, who's also a CPA and accountant that will present to the combined entity and be able to give the town essentially a proposal on what it would cost to incorporate to essentially transition over to QuickBooks and what that looks like from the town's perspective and the school's perspective. And I think once that presentation is then done, then the combined board can make whatever decision they want for whatever software they want.
Okay yeah so I mean we can put it off to the presentation. Mean it's pretty much a no brainer for the town to be on QuickBooks. The school is a little different but it's definitely doable And there there are a variety of reasons for it, but primarily most schools have more than one location. You know, even if you have a grammar school at a at a high school, that's considered two locations. So we don't have that because we're part of RAM. So it lends itself to us being able to use QuickBooks for the school. Know, if we if it was a little different situation, we had that other school, we might want to consider a different program, but with just the one it should be very doable and certainly long term it's going to be more cost effective for us. The biggest thing will be for the finance office is much easier to go out and find someone that is a very good QuickBooks bookkeeper than it is to find someone to go out and be
knowledgeable in your individualized financial software. So that's one of the reasons that it's a much better idea overall. It opens up your hiring pool tremendously.
Who would get the final say on the software? Would it be mean does it have to be a mutual agreement or what if there's not an agreement?
Well you know I don't know to be honest with you. If the agreement's already been made to to look at combining the finance offices, it would make the most sense to have the town and the school on the same software. There isn't any reason that the school cannot be on quickbooks. We think it's appropriate to have a meeting so that we can inform them of what we're looking at and why. Know, but ultimately probably should be the towns, but I think it's appropriate for the for the town to include the school board, you know, and and try to bring them along and explain to them why and how it would work. Basically comes out of this. We go to QuickBooks and we don't like it, to something else, we're not really at much of a loss. If we go to something else and then go to QuickBooks later, it's going to be a more expensive proposition. So
Right. And QuickBooks is more cost effective. Correct? Long term, yes. I think the initial in cost is pretty close to the same, like the first year setup. But then every year after that, QuickBooks is literally half the price of the other software.
What what did they tell you the software cost was for any of the options that they were taking? They're thinking about Eric?
About 10 k, right? There's really two that we were looking at near the end. One was a company called BMSI and one was Edmond Scientific. BMSI was first year cost including transition was somewhere around $15,000 and then it was about $10,000 you know per year thereafter so not inexpensive and Edmonds was in the same ballpark other than a little more cost up front but the final cost depended a lot there were so many options you know you basically got to choose which parts of its package that you wanted wanted but they were definitely going to be considerably more expensive software packages than QuickBooks. Long term costs for QuickBooks are definitely lower. We're
somewhere in the neighborhood with support of probably five ks for QuickBooks on a I yearly
mean, the upfront cost upfront cost for QuickBooks can't be greater than $2,500. I mean,
the installation, but the software cost. It's yeah. But there's you have to understand it's software and training. So we're gonna be paying for training our staff, bring everybody up to speed.
So that's the in cost. And the positive thing is at least at the I don't know in the treasurer's office right now but I know at the school they're at least using they're at least familiar with QuickBooks to some extent from doing the student activity funds and some of the other funds that even the preschool program I believe is run currently on QuickBooks. So they at least have some understanding.
Our current our current building department is on QuickBooks and the treasurer's are the and the town clerk's office used to be on QuickBooks.
Well, they used Quicken and, yeah. Close enough. But I the school I know uses uses it for the student activities on the end for the preschool program. Program. Yeah. They did actually. They're doing invoices with it. Let's get to the point of scheduling this meeting. We got an email with dates. Yes, we have an agenda item number seven. We have a May 15, May 19, May 21, May 29, June 2. I'm assuming
that Eric Bees were from the school or the board of ed? We got those from the board of ed as what their times were available. I figured since our meeting was before that it would be easier for them to give us dates. We pick dates. You adopted at this meeting, their meeting comes in two days. You both have adopted it and then we'll line up the the vendor to give us the spiel on QuickBooks for the combined meeting.
How about 05:19 or 05:21? Anybody on 05/19? Either day.
I can do we're talking what time? Do we have a time? 6AM. 07:00. Well then you're out.
So presumably those would be evening meetings. That would be the presumption. We'd be looking at a seven, I would assume we'd be looking at a 7PM meeting. Although honestly I didn't ask him to specify an exact time.
Okay. It's going be a new meeting so nineteen. 7PM on 05/19. Okay. I motion to hold a combined meeting of the Board of Selectmen and Board of Education on May 19 at 7PM to discuss forming a combined finance office as well as discuss software implementation for the combined office. I'll second that. Anybody else? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Five-zero, so five-nineteen. Hopefully, no one has problems down. Okay. Is there any other discussion on that point?
So these are the dates that the Board have already talked about, and they said that they're available, or should we give them another date just in case they talk on Wednesday and somebody okay. Alright. So they they've already agreed on these dates? They've already agreed. Yeah. Those yes.
Those dates came from Shannon as the dates they could make. Okay.
Okay. 7D, plans for reopening. Oh, sorry, 7C, transfer station operations.
Okay, so I wanted to talk about two things in that vein. The first is we held an RFP for the electrical upgrades at the transfer station. Just quick backstory, somewhere around six years ago, something like that, a decision was made. We at one time had a rotary phase converter that ran all that provided three phase current to run our compactors. It broke. A decision was made not to fix it, but to go with static phase converters because they were cheap. We've had problems pretty consistently since then, both with reliability of the units and them not properly driving the three phase motors. So they basically have a capacitor start. So on startup, they drive all three legs, but when they're actually running, they're driving two of the three legs. So they're producing basically two thirds the total power that they're rated for. It's been a problem. We need to address it. We need to go back to a rotary phase converter, one big enough to run two compactors simultaneously. So that's what we put in the RFP and that's what we bid out. The problem is, we're in COVID-nineteen
and this is one of those kind of awkward projects that even though it's not a huge project, because it has to be done along with trenching, the electrician's gonna be tied up for a lot of days, not necessarily working eight hours a day, but he's gonna have to keep coming back as the project moves along. And so what we did is we specifically sent the RFP to all the local electricians that have worked for the town in the past, which is Lenco plus Akert plus Sea Ward Electric and then we put it on the state site and put it on our website. Unfortunately, LENCO was the only guy who bid on the project. So we have a single bid for that. Now I'm confident LENCO can do the work, but you know I'm a little disappointed that we only got one response back
from the What Eric's trying to say is he threw a party and nobody came. We did reach out to the other contractors. I I reached out to one myself personally, and he really just didn't have any interest because of the way the project was structured as far as time. He would have to have somebody on-site for four hours one day and then maybe two hours another day, and it just dragged out for too long for him to be interested. So, you know, there it wasn't an issue with the way the bid was written. It wasn't an issue with anything structure wise other than that the fact that it was just multiple days on-site kind of spread out.
It just wasn't a good fit for them so. I have a quick question is there any way that so what kind of window would we need to do to do all the trenching as far as a time window?
Is that is that why he has to come back and go and Well, now so that the electrical guys that have to be there for trenching to put pipe in, then they have to come back for when the walls poured so they can put their pop throughs, then they have to come back to do knocks against, then they have to come back again once everything's placed to do wiring, you know, and then they can after that, they can come back and do their finish up wiring. But, you know, you have the the account crews doing one thing, somebody else is doing another thing. There was a bunch of different moving parts that they just weren't comfortable with.
Okay. I just didn't know if it would be worth it to close like to close at Wednesday or just have a full one week window to get some of the work done as an option. Not really because it's it wouldn't be that quick. Okay.
Just throwing it out there. Eric Eric actually discussed that, asked me the same question. I don't know that that's feasible
just with the amount of stuff that they have to do and you know. You know what the issue is they're going get in there, they're going work for two days and they got to get out of there then they got to come back in two days. Exactly. And then they got to clean up and get ready for Saturday. Right. Inefficiencies of this project.
Right We made it very clear in the RFP that we intended to run the transfer station Wednesdays, you know, so the workdays would be Monday, Tuesdays and Thursday, Fridays for this project. The thing I would like to consider also that we can talk about that separate from the RFP but I would also like to consider because one of the problems we're going to have is what we have to do basically is cut off all the compactors, disconnect all the electrical so we can do all the walls as fast as we can and do the trenching. So we're going to be running about half the transfer station open. Unlike the last part of the wall where we could only do a quarter at the time. This time we really can't do that. So what I would like to do is get an agreement to shut down bulky waste and metal only for however long it takes, but preferably less than thirty days. So I'd like to throw that into the discussion also as we talk about this because that's the other issue we're going to have and if we're going to do it we're going to have to put the notification out to the public pretty soon that that's going to happen.
I did ask Eric about this. Yeah it's going be tough with all the cleanups.
It's about, it's about $300 for a mailer to send a mailer out to everybody. The thing is honestly, bulk bulky has been crazy the last. Eric you said we had a huge number of hauls out right? Yeah we're
way up on bulky and we're way way up on cardboard because everybody's ordering their stuff from Amazon so the amount of cardboard we're getting in is spiked and I think everybody's because they're home, know, they're all cleaning out their basements and their backyards.
So but if we gave everybody two weeks notice and then close it for the month that we're gonna work, The problem is if we try to keep it open, our hall fees are gonna go up dramatically because we're gonna be you're gonna have to pull that one dumpster you have every time you've got anything in it Because otherwise you're gonna fill up halfway through your next shift. If it's a quarter full, it's gonna fill up on Saturday automatically. So we'd be better off telling people to hold it and then come in at the end of the month, you know, rather than trying to pull a dumpster every Wednesday, pull a dumpster every Saturday, and then hope that we don't run into issues.
Now these dumpsters have have indoors, right? Like swing open. Do. Could we park them down by the green shed since carts closed? Just open the back end, we'll have people throw things in, then when it gets to a certain point, close the door or we'd have throw it all over the top. It it's not advisable. It's a safety risk for people because they're gonna have to go into the dumpster,
and then we're risking. Some of these dumpsters have kick holes in the bottom and and sharp edges. Just asking the question. That's all. No I like Can go over the top of the dumpster or throw things in? Yeah, can I sue for my rotator cuff? Yeah, that's the thing it's Most mostly people come in in a pickup truck and they're halfway there right?
The answer is no. You can't sue for your rotator cuff. So any other questions? Okay.
So Eric, do you think it's worth trying to have an extra dumpster there for people that want to pull up with a pickup truck and offload halfway? I
think Eddie and I have been talking about where else we could shoehorn a dumpster in, you know, and get at least one or two on-site. I mean, if we decided we wanted to run and we had to have bulky and scrap metal available during that whole period of time, what I would plan on doing is having to pay a public works employee to come in in the middle of the day with the backhoe and crush, you know, in the middle. That's the only other thing I could really think of, which is kind of our emergency fallback on the Saturday if we start getting, you know, overbooked anyway. But, you know, then you got to pay an employee to come in just to to crush a dumpster. That's that's a tough sell for me. So we're paying about a $100 because it's a four hour minimum, right? Yeah, three hour minimum but
Jeff, do you feel that strongly that you want to try to look at? No I'm just I'm just thinking the fallout from that for a month's period is going to be significant.
You're probably going to have some angry residents. We are going to have some angry residents I for don't disagree with that But I mean, the transfer station has to get fixed.
Yeah, agree with you. I'm just saying if we provide dumpsters and people want to put the stuff in and if there's really heavy items that scrap metal that people can't get in the dumpster, guess we could put it out at the side and how it works to put it. I'll get into that. Well, don't want to get into that.
Listen, moving ahead and moving forward we're always going have people that are angry. It is what it is.
Just thinking a month. I think a month is a long time. Is there any way we could do something done at the transfer state? Mean at the town garage temporarily for scrap metal and bulky like build you know where that sand berm is you know excavated or just you know bring them in on the side so we can use them down there. Do we have any temporary blocks or something we could put up? Just a thought. Another location. I just think you're asking for other problems. Who's to monitor that site? Paul, would you just volunteer?
Sure, I just eat my bonbons all day, I get told.
Paul is gonna check for Like you're allergic to bonbons.
Making sure it all works. I think if we could get it down to two weeks, think it would be doable, but I think a month is excessive. Or if we could just get one in there and alternate them every week, we could have bulky waste one week, scrap metal next week. That's
gonna be somebody's gonna get their week wrong and they're gonna be up At for least you're trying to provide.
I think it's easier for people just to know for this month you can't bring anything down.
How about you promote Adrian and my social media friends on the board? How about we promote the fact that we're gonna make some changes and adjustments and we would appreciate the residents to accommodate the upgrades that we're trying to make?
I mean, have been talking about the transportation repairs for over a year or I don't think it'll become supplies. No.
Now you're gonna get to us sending out the mailer for $300?
No. I I don't have a problem with that either. Alright. So I'll I'll make a motion that we authorize,
Eric to send out a mailer with notification of closing the transfer station for thirty days to facilitate the repairs on the right side and close bulky waste for that time period.
So so you're not okay. Let's go backwards. We're not closing the transfer station. We're Sorry. Closing bulky waste. We're not gonna have bulky waste for thirty days. Or metal. Okay. Bulky waste or metal. Yep.
Just better get the town crew ready because they're gonna be cleaning up stuff on the side of the road. For a maximum of thirty days. Yep.
Will another town allow our residents to go in and use? No. No, they will not. Like we did? Yeah. Paul, you got any spare stickers for Columbia?
No. Well, come to your house Adrian and we can dump it at your house. You've got a long driveway. Yeah, wetlands would love that. Okay.
All right. Does anyone want to second that motion? I'll second it. Okay. Do we want to discuss this any further? Eric, just let's make sure because you're going to be on the front line of this. What is your take?
I think if we shut down one side, the reality is, and we're going with an open topped, unless I have a public works employee there ready to crush on a regular basis, there's no way we can have open topped dumpsters just on one side, take all the household waste and all the recycling and all the bulky and all the metal.
That's the thing to take into account too is we're not going to have a compactor for household trash during this period. So we're going to need that extra dump their spot just for household trash. Okay. So
Eric, so you are in favor of closing bulky waste and the metal? I am very definitely in favor of that. That's all I needed to know. All right, anybody else?
Eric, can we just also put something on that residents should be aware to try to break down their trash as much as possible during that time period because we will not have compactors available for us? Sure. We can put out a general message.
We can't use a portable generator. We can't run a generator to run the compactors on Saturdays and Wednesdays. Where would we put them? Just a portable generator a three phase generator. To do what bring in relocate
one of the compactors to the other side? Yes. Is that what you're suggesting? Well you said you have to cut you were saying you have to cut all the power right? We're not gonna be able run the compact. Yeah but we need them on the other side to get wired in. Not wired if we temporary connected them. We were gonna do temporary connections in the beginning. Yeah, on the other side that was the original plan.
So what would you do like some type of like plug system?
Well they just put in a welder generator with a plug on it.
I haven't looked into the cost of what it's going to cost us to put a three phase generator for you know for that period. Be about at least $3 for the month.
What's the difference if what do we got paying tipping fees if we don't do that? What's the delta?
How many tips do we have a week right now on household?
Generally most weeks we can just about run one tip a week for household. It's not a ton.
So you're to go to three though if you don't have a compactor.
Well, but remember we're going to come in and we're going to have multiple dumpsters and we're going to come in and do like what we did when we had to use household and recycling a couple of weeks ago with open dumpsters because the compactor wasn't working again is, you know, we just came in and crushed it intermediate. And so we get fairly good compaction by crushing it. But the problem is is that people fill it up to the top, then you crush it down to the third the next time. So you need multiple dumpsters to do it efficiently, but you can get pretty good compaction if you just keep mashing on it with the backhoe, with the bucket. And how many tips did you have that week? I don't know. They're fired.
Okay so if you get if you get that number then you can go back to Jeff's Delta and figure out if it'll work. Right. Just a thought, that's all.
Like Jeff, do you have any idea what size three phase we would need for that? Because you had looked at those at one point didn't you? Not very much. Very much size wise or not very much you didn't look at it that much?
I'd have to go back and look at it. It's been a while since I took a look.
You need a 12 to run one you need a 12 to 15 horse you know, three phase power source. So you need 15 ks?
Yeah, but the other problem you have, I keep thinking this is that you really can't just put them in place and the ones we have are all set up right now to be either, I think there's one that we could come off the back of because most of them are side load so we'd have to disassemble the feed chute and reassemble the feed chute on the other side you know for a week because now we're changing the orientation by 90 degrees and you really need to bolt them in place too. So we'd have to probably bolt them into the existing wall so it's certainly not trivial to just reinstall the thing on the other side and connect it up with power. You
don't withdraw your idea. Was a good idea it's a good thought. Mean, now I
we're going through the thought process trying to figure it out. Yeah,
so if you don't need anything that big, we could get a three phase for about 2,200 a month.
Okay. Eric, we're going to still go through with the motion that is on the table and vote on this about closing bulky waste and closing the metal for the thirty day period. But if you find that there's a way that Jeff's idea can work, it might be beneficial for us. We would like to know what the change is, like how many tips did you get? If you could send us out an email during the week that you crushed, that would at least help us if we could afford Adrian's $2,200 a month. So
Oh, and you got 2,200 a month plus you're gonna need public works. Correct. To move all that stuff. Alright.
So the motion is still on the table. Are we voting?
Correct. We're gonna vote right now. All in favor of the motion as presented regarding the elimination of the bulky waste and metal for the month, aye. Aye. Okay. All those opposed? I'm opposed. Okay. Let it be noted that Mr. Murray dissented,
and we're gonna move on. Okay. Before we move on, we never voted on the original motion, which was to accept the bid from Lenco, if you're comfortable with that. Or if not, tell me how you wanna proceed.
I'll make a motion that we accept the bid from Lenco. I'll second.
Alright. Further discussion on the bid from Lenco? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Okay. Mr. Bernie is two for two. We're gonna move on. I think we should have multiple bids on anything no matter what. I totally agree with you. The only reason that I even sit there and would do it is Lenco has been very good to the town for the Public Works building and
the town offices so I don't have a I mean I agree but we put it out there and we did try. Did try. Okay Let's go to 7D, plans for reopening.
So we are coming to the point where the governor is starting to slowly reopen portions of the economy. The one thing I wanted to discuss initially is plans for senior transportation because I would like to sometime in June begin to go back to opening senior transportation back up to provide medicals only. I don't think it's appropriate to start the senior luncheon program yet because I think that's still too high risk an environment but I think at some point we're going to need to start going back to doing senior medicals. And so I would like to get the board's feedback on that. And then if you guys have any particular ideas about what you want to go first in terms of the town or any priorities you have for this.
So when you say medicals, you mean non emergency, you know, just routine eye exams and physicals and okay. Yes,
yes. Because now you will have gone like basically two months without having any senior transportation medical services. So there will be a backlog of work for that.
The governor's orders allow us to open that back up what after twenty something,
twenty third? Well, remember it's transportation. So we really closed it on our own. I mean, we could have, I mean, there definitely are towns that are still running transportation systems. So it's not that we can't do it. It's just that we don't really, it's a high risk environment right now.
They're not having doctor's appointments anyways to some extent. I mean, Adrian would know more about that than the rest of us, but I have no problem with you opening up transportation for senior transfer for medical visits. Yeah, I think the thing to do at this point would be to reach out to the drivers,
see if they're comfortable coming back on board and let's see what their take back is. If they're on board with it, I think, you know, we we could be without any issue personally. Okay.
So As far as the remainder issue, Eric, I I don't I don't sit there and I mean, what would we even think about opening up?
We can open back up town hall within limits, right?
So we could consider opening parts of town hall back up to the public. That would probably mean us putting some physical controls and barriers in place plexiglass walls like everybody else is doing and stuff like that. If you know if that's the direction we're going to go then I'm going to start figuring out what we have to do to get those built and acquired. The library has the same concerns. Their plan is basically to, or what we've discussed, is initially opening as a essentially curbside pickup service so if you know what you want you can kind of make the deal with them over the phone and then pick it up outside. Know and then within say three weeks after that then transition to the library being open with controls on the number of people that are there, removing all the furniture so people can't sit down and stay, and then have shielding between the employees and the visitors for safety. You know we still obviously have problems getting PPE in general. We did finally get an allotment from the state and that allotment was a grand total of 10 KM95 masks for all the employees collectively in the town
and a couple of bottles of hand sanitizer. So the state has not exactly been great about giving us you know supplies so that's also an ongoing issue with that. I guess I'm just trying to get a little guidance and see whether you've got any specific feedback or you're looking to expedite the process or you're looking to slow it down or what it is that that you would like.
Mean the buses the buses also have to be made safe also right you're gonna have to put some division between the driver and the passengers.
I don't think it's There's no practical way to do that because the majority of people that are getting transported are either wheelchair bound or limited mobility anyway. So the driver is going to end up interacting with those people. So the only way you could do it would be to require both the person being transported and the driver to maintain wearing a mask the whole time the transport is in place and then have a disinfection protocol, you know, afterward. That's your only kind of practical way you can run that. Not ideal by any means but definitely doable.
Well we're going to have to require that the driver and the residents that are using the transportation wear masks, I mean, just as a bare minimum. Far that as one, I think we have to do because people have been putting off regular doctor's visits for multiple months, multiple weeks right now, let's sit there and say, to avoid coming in contact with anyone that might have COVID-nineteen. But there's a lot of visits that people are gonna have to take and gonna have to do and we need to assist those seniors
to do that. I think my only concern right now is we're talking about doing this. You said other towns are still running transportation systems. Where are they getting their PPE from?
I don't know. Mean the buses are still running, right? I mean Mass Transit's still running. It's not really any different.
I know Mass I I know I don't know about other towns. I know Warmanta cut back dramatically on their runs. Sure.
Ridership on all public transportation is down 75% minimum. I mean, so
Yeah and the buses so the buses are shielded with the driver shielded and they're only letting passengers get in the back door of the public buses so Exactly, yeah. Right but we just physically can't do that with our setup
because the majority of people we're transporting need the liftgate ramp to get in the vehicle. So for most of them, that's not really an option. Some good.
Listen, this is going to be our new reality anyway. We're going to have to figure out how to do all of this. If it was me and we could push this off another month, I would push it off another month, but I do think that you have individuals that are in need of those services. We have to find the best way to be as safe for the drivers and as safe for the passengers as possible, but this is really the new reality, so we better figure out how to help these residents. As far as the rest of your stuff, Eric, I believe that transportation should be the first thing you would do. I wouldn't even open up the town hall until our next meeting.
You know, I would let it go past the May 20 deadline, move it into June, and then we can decide because are you having Eric a tremendous number of complaints from residents that you're not accomplishing their needs?
No we're not actually. We're okay I mean the town hall is the in a sense I think it's not the least important public service but we can you know there are workarounds for almost all the face to face interactions the only thing that's really going to be an issue in the next month is issuing the bloody permits for the transfer station because it's time for new stickers and we got to work through exactly how we do that. Then let's be creative
and have a line through the the school parking lot and you know let's be creative as to how we do that. But as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't open up the town hall right now. I mean, what do we still have? We only have five residents that have COVID-nineteen confirmed cases. There's no reason Within the town.
Seven now or six? Okay. Six. Yeah. So you guys failed and lost an extra one. Know, we're not I mean,
you know, as far as like the stickers, we can either we can make a decision to extend the stickers for another month till we get to the end of July. Something as simple as that when more PPE is available and you know, whatever. I would more in favor of that.
Would even make a motion right now to cover that so you don't have to address it any further. I'd make a motion that we extend the transfer station stickers for an extra, you know, thirty days or sixty days whenever people feels appropriate. Suggestions? You're making the motion.
Oh, I'm gonna say thirty days, but Jeff's already voted no twice. I gotta get him on board with something. So he wants a hat trick. Right? If
I was Jeff, I just vote no just for fun. How about sixty days a day? Ninety day ninety. Ninety. Just like the taxes. We'll do it Alright. I'll go with Scott. Sixty days. I'll second that. Okay. Sixty days. Discussion on that? You're now bumping into September. Well, it was June 31. Now it's August 31.
Correct. But if there's a fall rebound, it's gonna come in September, right? So maybe we should try to get this done in August.
Well, it's gonna take twenty one days for that to show up, so we're good.
Okay. All right. So, any further discussion on, what was it ninety days now? Sixty. Sixty days.
Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Jeff Murray. Good job. Patrick Murray.
Three I just don't think sixty days is gonna get as much I think we should do a little more Patrick Murray all right like we're gonna be revisiting this but it's your choice like
like Jeff Maguire said at some point we have to have to just accept that we gotta move on with some stuff and deal with it. Right? So
I'm surprised I'm surprised mister Murray didn't vote just to open everything right up right now. Come on. All right, so let's move on to our next thing. We have 7E. It's the Andover Youth Summer Camp. Who wants to sit there and go with this one?
I'll take this one I guess. I don't know if anybody's aware of it. Amy Knox is trying to get the summer camp up and running in Andover's in compliance with the governor's recommendation of June 29. Her plan is to run it for two months. And she has some issues trying to get PPE and she's dealing with the school at the moment trying to get permission to use the gymnasium and the music room. What I'd like to ask the board of selectmen is will we be willing to help support that program using rec money and not using Tom funds but using recreation commission money and empowering if needed to try to locate PPE for us it is needed for the camp.
Well, just a question, why would we need rec commission money for the summer youth program?
Just in case we need to get well for games, toys, things like that to use outside that they used in the past, used last year. Yeah. Recommission last year bought pools and stuff, I think, for them, right? Is that right, Jeff? Yes. I
personally believe we need to support that program. Personally, I believe that program needs to be a total Tom program down the road, but for this year, it absolutely needs to be supported. I think it's a benefit for all of the parents with younger children to allow them for a place to go, And we absolutely need to make sure that they have access to the gymnasium for the summer for the period that they're running this program for. I'm not sure that it would probably be more like six weeks on the gymnasium, but I do believe they did finish all of the work that they were going do at the school already for the summer.
Yeah, I think the response that Amy got, she cc'd us, the response that she got from the school at this point is they're waiting for the guidelines from the governor that come out on Friday. That's fine. They're gonna think of
I have no problem supporting a motion to allow the summer camp program to move forward and to have access to the gymnasium. Sponsored by the rec commission.
Sponsored by the rec commission. The rec commission. And I just had another request is if needed to use our town attorney because if she needs to draw up any kind of documents or anything to review prior to the camp. A waiver or something. A waiver for COVID. I don't know what recommendations we're gonna get from the governor. So I just wanna make sure that we have those tools in place and we're ready to go and hit the ground running once those regulations come out.
I would say as long as I'm in favor of what you're talking about as long as we include that the appropriate PPE is available for the duration.
And that's where we may need some, we may need to get some help from selectmen and the town administrator to help locate
or the refugee. I I can't even get it for my employees. Know, it's And tough to be
I'd hate to not be able to open because we can't get PPE.
I mean honestly the majority of PPE that the town employees have I got from my father's girlfriend who still is in quarantine in Shenzhen and she can go down to the local drugstore and buy you know M95s in bulk. The only problem is most of them got stolen in shipping so we only got a third of what I you know I got through her but that's the majority of what we've gotten in this town right now other than the fire department
has got some because they have some independent channels. I mean hopefully we got six weeks before camp theoretically starts so you know hopefully things get a little better as far as supply chain.
Do you think it would be inappropriate anyone that we sort of put this out there on social media that we're looking for PPE to support the cool program for the summer? Donations you're asking for donations? Anyone that can source them for us you know?
They're putting up social media that we need something. I mean I'll sit there and try to do what I can and find some resources. I
just want to put it on for discussion today just so we know what the challenges are going forward and I think there's a lot of parents that need to get back to work and they're not I mean with channel three kids camp closing this year it's going to be very difficult for you know parents to working parents to return to work if they don't have any place to take their kids this summer. Yeah and
even for the people that are lucky enough to still work from home that their kids need a change of environment.
Not that I'm speaking from experience but you know. I mean, we're working from home right now with all that interruptions you get.
As somebody is interrupting now, yeah, okay. But yes, I think we need to support it for sure. And I think asking for donations, if parents are seeing that there's a need and that's going to help their kid in a program, I think they'll be willing to donate
supplies if they have the means. So let's see what the recommendations come out with on Friday. Then we'll plan on either over the weekend or next week putting something out there saying this is what we need to make this happen.
I mean, may come down to the point that parents actually have to provide PPE for their children. That make it may come down to that and hand sanitizer too. Well let's see what we can do. Yep and we don't know what the requirements are going be yet. No so wait till after Friday and then throw it out. Okay.
Okay. So 7F, recreation sign request by Joe King, who is The a member of motion didn't go through.
We didn't make a motion on them. Yeah we didn't make a motion yet.
For the summer camp? Yeah if we have to if we have to down the road in the next couple in the coming weeks we could probably get together and have a special meeting and do that. Jeff doesn't want to have to vote yes on anything so no motions for Jeff. Well, I don't know we'd be voting. I just don't know what the required. I just want to have the discussion to make sure that, we as a group would support it. And if we are and we have to run into a roadblock that we're ready to act if need be. So,
Amanda, Jeff is actually in favor of this and he wanted to see if the rest of us would come around and support him in this issue, which it appears the rest of us have graciously sat there and said we would support this. So it would be a it would be a unanimous vote on this.
But we're not gonna take that because Jeff doesn't want to have to vote yes after he just voted no three times.
We want to push it off to the next meeting. Alright so seven seven f recreation sign request by Joe King who's a member of the recreation commission. Before Joe gets, we let Joe speak, this sign has been out there for two years. It needs to go somewhere.
Would Listen, I don't even think we should be talking about this. Let's just let the rec commission decide where they wanna put No, no, no. We have to and it would go to Eric. Eric, where do you want that sign?
No, this is the rec commission sign. It's the rec commission sign but it's our land. Where do you want it? It's town's land. I understand We
they authorize the rec commission to buy the sign why wouldn't they decide where to put it? Eric is not going to agree for them to put it anywhere they want.
Honestly, if it were me, I'd leave it stuffed in the back of Public Works and I'd never put it up because I don't really see the utility of that particular sign because there's not any one spot where we can put it up where we're going to get the majority of town residents to really see it and then if you think about good locations, know, one you could put it outside the community room as a notice board public notice board that's reasonable if you chose to do that. You could put it at the exit of the transfer station other than we would have to buy bigger letters and you're really only going to get a couple sentences or two but that's okay. That might be a valid spot for it. Or you could put it out front of the town hall somewhere where people could walk up and read it if you chose to do that. Those are So you're saying it's not big enough to be a drive by sign? Well, mean it's four foot by four foot. So I mean I was looking at the other drive by signs and you could get a long sentence, one long sentence. So you could if you wanted to do for instance board of select men meeting Wednesday night you could do something like that but you're not giving detailed information certainly with it. I thought
and I may be misconstrued on this is Joe King on is he on tonight? Okay.
Maybe he can jump off and try and jump back on. I don't know if he's on a computer or a cell phone, but Joe, maybe try that. You're robotic. We can't really hear you. So don't know if it's your internet connection or what. I
would tell you that the best in my mind, the one place that Eric didn't mention for the sign could be the Veterans Memorial Field down at Long Hill in the driveway area. Scott, would that type of sign work down there? Yeah, it still has its limitations. Yeah, that's I mean you drive by how
quickly can you read it? Yeah you're not I mean I think more about it for people that are going down there to use the field or you know when we get to the point where we can have you know sports again and parents are going down there it's a place where you can post you know it would be perfect for that Jeff. I I still
think this is a recognition decision I think we're discussing something that's not really it is that what they did It is a recognition decision. The decision should be to come to us with this is where they'd like to put it and we vote on it. Well, did the recognition first want to put it up? Still can't hear you. Can you hear Can you hear now? Okay.
Jeff, do you know do you know what the first what did the rec commission first want to be done with that sign?
You remember? Yeah. They wanted to put it in front of the tunnel.
And I thought that is what he wanted when he asked about this getting dug out.
He did but but if you it was it was vetoed by putting it in front of the town hall either by the last board of selectmen or by the the previous first select.
I mean, it could go in the front, but it's not going to be you can't really set it up so it's drive by visible. So So we have to be like a walk up notice board. Correct.
That's why I was saying the parking lot at the field would be a reasonable place for it. Because even at the town hall, the only place you can put it at the town hall, where do you walk up when you're entering the town hall? It would have to be over near the community center and I don't think it would have to be in the flower bed. Yeah, would beat you up. I know Joan and she would have every right. That's the only place in the town hall that's like a walk up area where people could see it as they're walking in the building.
So I have a question for Eric. Eric, know what the inside look but does it have provisions to put up pieces of paper like eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper like posts notices and things like that inside?
Not really it's that kind where you put the individual letters and you stick them into the black backboard that's got like little slots for for letters.
Okay. So the only other the only other possible place I would consider that would be a good spot for that would be the pond at the bottom of School Road for the trails.
Well how about we sit there how about we do this how about we put this off to our next meeting we ask the recognition like Adrian wants to come back and say exactly where they want it and we go forward. Done. Thank you. All right let's move on. Seven gs the discussion of the senior transportation vehicles.
Okay so you should have all had some information that I sent around to you. So basically there's a eightytwenty statefederal grant that will allow us to purchase a vehicle, potentially two vehicles for senior transportation. So my suggestion and so we have to make a decision whether we're the board of selectmen is in favor of it or not and whether you're in favor of purchasing one vehicle or two and I'll give you this to you very quickly. Really what we need right now is another minivan because we have enough medical calls normally that we're often using like a 12 passenger bus and sometimes a 20 passenger bus to transport one senior to a medical appointment.
So having the van gives us having a second van makes that portion of transportation much more efficient for the medical calls. So that's our most obvious pressing need. And if we only had one vehicle that we could get, that would be it. It's going to cost us somewhere between 9,500 and 13,000 for our portion of it, depending on what we get. We get a couple different options, basically Toyota minivans or Dodge Caravans. My preference would be the Toyota because I own the Dodge and it's kind of a piece of crap. But that's just my personal opinion. Our existing one is the Dodge. It's a six year old one. So that would be the option if we were interested in one. We probably, even if we requested two, we're only likely to get one,
but we can request two this year. If we were gonna request two, we would replace our 20 passenger one with basically a 15 passenger unit to get us under the threshold where we absolutely had to have a CDL driver, which the 20 passenger vehicle requires, we could just use an F endorsement on your license, which is the same thing that like taxi cab drivers use for the 12 passenger one. So that's really my question. Is the Board of Selectmen in favor? Oh, and as far as funding goes, if it's just a single vehicle, because this purchase is likely to happen probably next June because once they get all the requests from the town, they got to write a state grant to the federal government for the money, then the federal government hums for, you know, four months, gives them the money, the state twiddles their thumbs and passes it down. So we're looking at, you know, roughly a little more than a year from now before we get the thing anyway. If we get a single vehicle, it could be done if there's excess money in next year's budget, it could be done by a transfer or the Board of Finance, it's a small enough amount,
could approve taking it from unencumbered fund balance. If we go for two, that's probably over the threshold and that would take a public meeting to actually get the funding.
Well, couldn't you do them individually though? Different vehicles, you're buying two separate pieces of capital. So technically it would be two meetings or two requests. So you would I don't think you'd hit the threshold.
I would have to have our town's attorney weigh in on that one before I said yes.
Our town attorney is gonna sit there and say there are two separate requests.
No, well he's right there. Let him answer Dennis. Oh, I didn't see him. Sorry.
Oh, I was sleeping. What is the question? Can we make a separate request? So exciting. I know it's hard for me to resist doing something else, but I just lost
me after the recreation department signed. We're we're looking at the possibility of purchasing two vehicles through the state grant program. I got that part of it, yeah. One or two. Yeah. But my suggestion is that they are two separate vehicles, therefore two separate appropriations,
so they wouldn't hit the threshold? It all depends on, you know, what the grant conditions are. You have to look, I'd have to look at the whatever the state put out, you know, in terms of the details.
Well, we're having to do two separate applications if I understood the paperwork correct.
Is that right? It's only a single application. We can apply for one vehicle or we can say this is the one we really want but if you give us enough money for two this is the second one we want.
So those are basically our two options. Listen, I would say very pointedly we've as a board have, you know, felt that we have not been able to spend money on the seniors at all. I think we know we need two vehicles. At any rate, we've got to get rid of the 20 passenger bus. So let's just put in for two and call it a day.
Yeah, and the 20 passenger bus by the time this passes will be twenty years old.
Yeah. I would just make a motion that we put in for the two. What agency in the state is putting out this, Transportation. It's Department of Transportation section five three ten grant.
I can send you the particulars Dennis. Why don't you work out the particulars but I you know you can probably apply for you know two vehicles. I mean, I unless it's, you know, specifies one. I mean, I don't
I mean Look, let's let's just get the motion through and figure out the details later. I can't help you much unless I see the This is gonna change to the whole you know, we need to apply now and hope we get both of them because in another year that It might not be there. Program cannot be there and then we're stuck. So I agree with Adrian that we should apply for both of them and we should sit there and
Adrian, you making the motion? I'll make the motion. Motion seven g option two. I'll make the motion.
I motion to authorize the town administrator to apply for section five three ten grant for the Connecticut Department of Transportation for the acquisition of a configuration h five passenger minivan and a configuration d bus capable of transportation of 12 passengers to provide an on demand transportation of senior and disabled residents through the senior transportation program. The second vehicle will replace a two thousand and two twenty passenger bus that will be retired. The town will pay 20% of the cost for the vehicle estimated to be between 22,228 thousand. I'll second. Further discussion. Eric, is that
for both the vehicles? Yep. That is for both the vehicles. Okay.
Any further discussion? Further discussion. All right. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Jeff Murray. I know I couldn't believe it. I
figured you would just vote no just for fun. Yeah just to see if it's a no brainer. That is a no brainer.
Jeff Murray, the seniors vote. Okay. Can I make a motion that we have Wally move his camera down? I've been looking at his hairline for two hours. Oh, boy.
It's got to be on public access. So okay, let's move on to our next item. We have 7H in the ordinance regarding elect replacement resignation and replacement of an elected official.
I forwarded the revised version of this from Mr. O'Brien to everyone at the beginning of the meeting. So if you check your email, it should be there.
So if you give me a sec, I'll share the screen and pull that one up. Thank you.
I have too many windows open. Oh, black hell, it's that one. Okay. So that should be the revision. Scroll down. Yep. Yep. I think that's the right version.
Yeah. That's the one that, Adrian wrote paragraph five and I changed it a little bit, but, you know, whatever. I sent I sent I sent it back to both of you. Yeah. Eric, do you want to pull up his corrected version?
I think this is his corrected version, is it not? No. I don't think so. No, it's it's not. It's not much different but.
Okay. Any number five is any applicant to fill an interim vacancy on an elected town border commission must submit in writing or by electronic means to the town clerk a letter of interest and such application shall be made available for public inspection before any meeting to consider filling the vacancy is noticed and held by any such board or commission.
Yep. So that's not the correct one, Eric. Okay. That's the right one that you just read, Jeff. Yes. Okay.
So this is related to, filling of some vacancies that, you know, may not have, may have been done in accordance with the rules, but not may not be as transparent as, we as a board of selectmen would like to see in the future.
So, Basically, what we're looking for is a paper trail when someone applies to a board. It's it's collected by when someone resigns that the town clerk is notified correctly and it's a public notification and a timely notification. And when someone applies that it's both timely, it's recorded, and most importantly, that the town is made aware of anyone applying to any board so that if Paula applies to a board and I want to go in and say, hey, Paula is a great person. I'd really like to see her on that school board or I'd like to see her on that inland wetlands board. I can do that. Or I can say hey, know Paula is really doesn't know anything about wetlands. Know, lives in the high ground. It's dry up there. I don't want her on that board. I can do that as well. So this is really just about transparency
and giving the public a chance to have a say just like they would if someone was, you know, in an election or or what have you. It's we have some guidelines in the town charter. It's just not clear enough, and that's why I I was looking to do something with this.
So if I may, the town charter makes it, you know, sort of clear that when somebody applies for, or when somebody resigns that they have to submit a something to the town clerk doesn't say that and kind of implies it. Yes. But that's, you know, that's the problem. You know, I'm a former town chair. I was town chair and win them for many many years and there's all kinds of things that go on and there, you know, there's a loophole here. Somebody could get a find out that somebody a lot of times when people resign, they send the resignation to the town chair or to the chair of the board or commission and not to the town clerk. And it's possible if I'm a town chair and I do, I wanna get somebody on there that I really wanna get on, I could sit on and then and you know, and recruit somebody. And the other thing that comes into play is you have a rule in your charter that says that if the board or commission where the vacancy exists does not fill the vacancy within sixty days of its of the resignation, then the authority to fill the vacancy goes to the Board of Selectmen. And that's what something that might have happened in this situation that Adrian brought to my attention.
This is just an effort to try to tighten it up a little bit. And I did not, Adrian, apply this to appointed officials for a reason. My feeling is that when somebody runs for office, they're out there putting themselves on the line and exposing them to this kind of process is the same kind of process you all were exposed to when you ran for the Board of Selectmen. But when you're going for an appointed position, it's a little different. And you know, there's something in the FOI that says that we've had this issue come up in a much different way in Wyndham recently. And the FOI seems to say that,
and I think it's geared more towards employees, but it says employees and officials, you know, there's supposed to be some sort of confidentiality regarding people who apply for things, especially employees. Because you know, you may be holding down a job and you may be applying for another job and you don't want your current employer to find out about it. But the way it's drafted and the way it's in the state statute is kind of unclear, but it does include officials and your officials and people who are on appointed positions are actually officials as well in my view.
But you know, just didn't want to include appointed officials. That's a little different point. If you're an elected official, you cannot be removed from office, for example, until you're up for election again, you either don't run or you're defeated. But an appointed official can be removed the interim if they don't do what they're supposed to do. There's all kinds of provisions and I'm not sure what your charter says, I didn't look into it. On removing people who were appointed, I think there's a provision in there that people can be removed. But you cannot remove an elected official. That's different.
As far as this resolution goes, just so we all understand this is a minor ordinance, we can sit there and pass this. And
it does not have to go to Tom Meaney. That's a judgment call on your part. I mean, on my part as well, advising you. I mean, obviously it's your call in the final analysis. I can't make calls for you. I can just advise you. But yeah, there's a provision in your charter that allows the board of selectmen to pass minor ordinances. In my, you know, it's not, it's not clear as to what a minor ordinance is, but I seized on some language in the minor ordinance definition. It says to ensure the orderly day to day maintenance of the order of the town. And I think this is really kind of a minor, a minor thing. It's a very fine point. It's not something that's gonna come up very often, but it was something that Adrian brought to my attention earlier. And then I found out today from Eric that he wanted to have an ordinance drafted and so I did it this afternoon. Okay. May be kind of rough but it's not bad. It's not bad. So Eric,
it looks like Mr. Mandeville is frozen on us. So there's a reason why he has not been talking.
Oh, there he is. Oh, he's not frozen. He's just There he I was listening intently.
Intently. Good. I like that. That was unbelievable. After sitting after being here for two hours, I kind of wanted to say something. So If I'm wrong. So listen,
as far as as far as I'm concerned, this does need to get passed. But Adrian, do you have a problem with Eric posting this on the website and getting any public input before our next meeting? No, I think it would be appropriate for the public to weigh in if they have any concerns or language issues but Do any of the other members of the Board of Selectmen have any changes that they see or feel need to be made to that draft? Scott? Looks good. Alright.
I have a couple of changes myself that I see in the paragraph that I edited. Okay. Paragraph five. That is yes, that's it's up on the screen now. Yeah. It says commissions. There should not be an S on commissions. This is this is these are fine points, but
I'm a I consider myself a wordsmith and it's very important to Okay. We'll let you worry about the editing, and we'll get that done. And once you edit it Okay. I'll send that version to Eric. Eric, you can post that up on the website so the community can weigh in on it, and then next month we can sit there and vote on this. Hopefully hopefully, Jeff Murray will vote with us on this.
Oh, come on. You guys are killing me here. I am gonna try very hard to get his approval.
Can you can you email it to Jeff first so that he can go can it before it goes up? Well, like I said, I just wrote this up this afternoon very quickly.
All right. Well, if you need to make some changes, make the changes here
and we can all see them before they go on the website. So I have part of launch at least for a while. Okay. Great. Thanks. So
7i is the safety committee. So we had previously one of the new residents, Joe I forgot his last name because I can't see him up on the screen. He has brought some issues related to Lake Road and just as we all know of it. Eric, can you get rid of the sharing screen please? Yep. The Thank state trooper has, well, up until the COVID-nineteen issue had been doing a significant number of patrols specifically around the lake as far as I'm concerned since I live on the lake. So I had seen them out. I have no problem trying to put a safety committee together to sit there and see what other items we could do to sit there and improve safety around the lake or in any other area of town.
Always turn Lake Road back into gravel. That usually slows traffic down. Yeah.
I'll make it a one way. I would sit there and tell you that Lake Road has had more pedestrian access in the last two months or pedestrian usage in the last two months than it's seen in the last fifteen years. So it's been awesome to sit there and see all the people walking the lake and getting around it. So it's a great thing to see. But can we make it safer? Yeah. But, you know, I think if the Board of Selectmen wants to appoint a safety committee to try to sit there and look at options as to how to improve safety,
I would be in favor of it. Well, let's, Joe, you're still on? Yep. That's correct. I'm still here. Do you have any specific ideas or are you looking to try to get feedback from a bunch of people to see what they want to do? Like do you have anything you've thought of or talked to other residents that they brought up?
It's a little bit more complex, right? Because you can say, hey, let's put a stop sign here. And then you have somebody else that says, well, people just run right through the stop signs. So it's got to be a combination of different things. That's why I suggested a committee to get together to suggest and really to price out and and and get an organized thought process going on what needs to be done. You know what can be done together? Do some research on what other towns have done. You know, along those lines. You know, there are some intersections where there might be an extra stop sign that would help in the interim. You know, I don't think that if there's some, you know, some areas that are identified in the meantime, you know, that we should wait to to do something. But, you know, an extra stop sign in a couple different intersections. I know on island that connects the lake, it's kind of blind if you take a left off island on the lake. You kind of have to hope and pray you're not going to get your front end taken off.
It almost happened to me a couple of times. Then identifying some other areas where an extra stop sign could be handy on the opposite side of the lake as well. But again, I think it needs to be a collaborative effort. That's why I suggested a committee be put together. Okay. So Adrian, do you have any more questions?
How many people do you think should be on this committee, Joe?
I don't know. I mean, we could say up to six to eight, I think is a reasonable number. But, any more than that, I think, it might get a little bit muddy trying to figure out a solution.
Now are you talking specifically about the vicinity of the lake? Are you talking about town wide? What is your area of focus for that? There is an existing Alma or Alpoa safety committee.
Okay. Yeah. So from my perspective, obviously, I I live here on Lake Road, and and so that's been a majority of my observations. Now when I reached out to that Facebook page, just just to ping to see if anybody else had noticed this trend. Know, other people from different parts of Andover also voiced their presentation in their parts of town. So I can't speak for them. However, on Lake Road specifically, you know, that's that's my area of concern, especially with the lake being here and there being higher pedestrian traffic
on Lake Road. Well, like I you know, he's talking about other areas of town. I know the residents on Boston Hill got together and petitioned the post office in Hebron because it's a state road to allow us to switch our mailboxes to the opposite side so that we weren't crossing the road to get our mail. But you know, know we have a speeding problem everywhere in town. The question becomes would it make, you said that POW already has a committee do we know how often they meet or who's on it?
That's just that that is a property owners group and I have never Eric, have you heard anything from that safety committee as far as report back to us?
Yeah, they really were last year they were definitely advocating for one of the recording stop signs that flashes the speed. They, a couple of years ago, were pushing very hard for, you know, for speed bumps throughout the district. You know, and you know, several of them had had conversations with me. When I was still chair of planning and zoning commission, I had a bunch of conversations regarding sharrows and signage, you know, designating that as a bicycle and pedestrian friendly area. I had also tried to get a couple years ago them to do a road mural because the one thing that's been kind of proven long term to anything you can do to make something appear more residential and appear more narrow tends to lead to reduced speed limits on the road. That's why you see in Europe in a lot of cases, even if the whole road is paved, they color the sides of the road. So it feels like you're on a really narrow road even when you're not. So there's a lot of things that can be done in that district. I mean enforcement's part of it, but enforcement only works if you're giving out lots of tickets on a regular basis.
And every time we do that, we get everybody bitching that they're getting tickets. So, you know, some of its education, you might remember a couple years ago, we did a mailer to all the town residents explaining what sharrows were, talking about low speed zones around the lake, things like that. But they have fairly limited effect. You know, there's some kind of radical solutions you could consider, but they you when you try interesting things, you start to run afoul of the Uniform Code of M UTA the Uniform Code of Traffic Authority whatever they're in you know in yeah shoot Dennis go.
I mean you have a local traffic authority. I think the first selectman is is definitely a member. I don't know who else is a member of the traffic authority in Andover, but each town has a local traffic authority. That would be You might wanna just right?
Right. You might refer the matter to the traffic authority and I understand, you know, creating a commission of six to eight people is in a town the size of Andover is not easy. Although you may have a lot of interested people like Joe. I
think that Jeff just found out he's on the traffic authority. Oh, Adrian, I knew I was on the traffic authority. You're probably the chairman. I I don't know because you haven't been doing. You've been laxing I your duties don't know if you guys know, but I'm a pretty big deal. Are you saying you've been laxing your duties? I am the chief of police. So
you need to apologize to mister Goodwin for the speeding issue that you're not addressing right now.
I'll have to tell Mr. Goodwin, I'm on one side of the lake and people do speed. But listen, even from what Eric said, we need to be creative. How are we going to be creative? The only way to do that is to sit there and have some type of committee, you know, five person committee, but it has to be town inclusive. It cannot just be the lake area, and but we need to sit there and come up with some ideas that might work.
You know I agree with you but sometimes when you do things on a big scale you know it makes it a little harder. I kind of feel like you have a resident who's here who's saying, you know, he's he's interested. And if we ask him if he could come up with four other people that'll volunteer for this thing, he's probably gonna tell us yes. Would that be right, Joseph?
Well, don't have anybody in mind right right yet. I'm still getting to know all my neighbors, but could You're help me. I could mess around with some folks. The
answer was yes. You're going to find a few Yes,
I could. You will absolutely be able to find five people from the Lake area that are concerned enough about the track situation that they could get on a committee. And and look, the the Lake District
candidly does pay a lot of taxes in town. Although, I want the rest of us do too, but the Lake District specifically given their view tax and all that fun stuff over there. If we do it on a small scale over the Lake District in the next year, year and a half, let's see what they could do and then we can expand it. You know, of trying to go in 10 directions at once, because if there is a cost factor involved in this, we're never gonna be able to do it for the whole town anyways because the town will shoot it down. Let's start small, see if it works over there, and then we'll we'll move it out from there. Expand it as if it works. Okay. Then make a motion. Alright. So I'll make a motion that we start a committee of five people, A traffic safety committee specifically within the Lake District. I'll second the motion. Any further discussion on the committee?
All right. The only thing I'd like to say is that I'm a member of the Coventry Group, Bolton and Columbia and every town has got a thread similar to the one that's in Andover. It's a problem in every town. I've read up about speed. I know somebody just posted they wanted one way but if you're on the end of that one way and the fire truck has to get to your house and they have to go all the way around and do that one way street to get to you, it's gonna be an issue. And just a couple other things like speed bumps, it's an issue with fire trucks and emergency vehicles sometimes to try to get down the streets such as speed bumps. He said said earlier, the stop signs hardly anybody stops for and you know I researched this quite a bit you know after the discussion on Facebook and the number one thing that actually stopped all this was people put signs in there you are like the slowdown signs and that actually proved to be the biggest deterrent for speeding of anything that they did. Just know just a kind
of thing, right? Yeah like your child my children live here slow down and you know you put them up and it becomes like a reminder to people like okay this is your lake slow down type of campaign. And those seem to work the best out of anything, police enforcement, everything because most of those solutions are just temporary. But like they said, a lot of people that are speeding are actually residents down there. Very much Last year the mark. Yeah and it's gotta be like a community involvement to say, look, we're gonna police ourselves. I mean, there's gotta be some pushback on the residents down there to say, hey, look, let's all slow down. Let's just knock it off and slow down. We'll get the signs up and try to have an active work together as community to get the speeds down. I said the police and everything's just, it's a temporary measure from everything I've read online and the signs like overwhelmingly work better than anything else. So that's just my 2¢. Thank you, Jeff.
And look, we know we have a speeding problem in town, you know, and just like if you talk to the resident state trooper, you know, he was canning out tickets left and right, and he practically wasn't getting giving anybody a ticket that wasn't going at least 20 miles an hour over the speed limit. And if you think about that, in the Lake District, that translates to somebody doing 45. And the reason that's important is, you know, there's a very simple relationship between vehicular speed and chances of killing somebody if you hit them. And, you know, if you hit a pedestrian, you know, and you're doing less than 30 miles an hour, your chances of killing them are pretty small. They're down around 10%, you know, and at 45 miles an hour, they're roughly 90%. So you have a huge difference, you know, in impact potential with that difference in speed. That's why, like if you go to Europe, you'll find in little boroughs, I mean, they dropped the speed limit down so low, it seems crazy. Yet you get out on the Autobahn in Germany,
you know, and you can drive as fast as your little car will go, but as soon as you get into the village limits, you're throttled right down. And that approach does work, but only if you have community buy in. And I hate to say it, but we really don't. I mean, I got hit right in front of my house six, seven years ago by somebody doing well over 100 miles an hour that hit me airborne because he went off the hill by my house drunk at 04:00 in the afternoon sideswiped my vehicle almost ran over my neighbor, you know and the only reason the cops caught him was he tore his bumper off on my car going by and his bumper had his license on it, you know it's a problem and as a cyclist it's you know it's really a problem because you know you're very vulnerable same with walking same with little kids.
I've been riding, Eric to your comments I've been riding a ton this spring and it's every town. Everybody's speeding. Mean Coventry has what, half a dozen police officers and then people are speeding rampantly over there. Long Hill and Hendi have their problems. Mean, but it's got to be the lake number one. You could solve that problem by making a community effort.
I feel like the Lake District is small enough and the houses are close enough together and there seems to be a push right now over there for this. Let's see what they can do and then we'll figure out how to copy that for the rest of the town. You know, that's all.
Okay, so we have a motion on the floor to form a five member committee for the late meeting And let's vote on it. All in favor? Aye. Paula, you up? Paula. Paula, you awake? She's frozen too. I'm yep I'm He's
doing the Adrian. Wow. Wow. All right. So Paula did you vote yes? I voted yes. Okay we missed that. Okay. We thought you were pulling a Jeff. So let's move on to item eight on the agenda approval of minutes from the Monday 04/13/2020 regular meeting.
Do we have a motion? I motion to approve the minutes from Monday 04/13/2020 regular board of selectman meeting. Second. Seconded.
Right, further discussion on the minutes? None. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Nine is the treasurer's report. The treasurer on with us or is she gone? I'm still on.
Do you have anything you would like to add Barbara to the floor? I'm sorry did you hear me? Yeah we can hear you go ahead. Okay.
Just a couple of things on the treasurer's report. The TAR money came in. I don't know if Eric had mentioned that. Two payments totaling about 187,000 And that'll get posted. It wasn't posted as of last week when the report went out. And the only other comment to make is about expenditures. Eric and I are still monitoring budgets. I'm scrutinizing them, watching them and getting a sense of where the money might be toward the end of the year. I did have a conversation with the registrar this morning setting aside a little bit for supplies that may still need to be purchased out of this year's budget for the elections in August. Still working up some numbers on what can be turned back transferred to another account department before the end of the year and I'm going to be looking at a little more closely at senior transportation. So the discussion this evening was informational because Eric and I'll kind of regroup and think about what might need to be spent out of that budget still before June 30 because otherwise that's a budget that will have quite a bit of money left in it. We'll be working up, we did a handful of over expenditures throughout the year and that system worked very, very well. But now we'll be regrouping on that and doing the actual transfers looking for money to shore up the accounts that are overspent. That's about it. Otherwise, it's kind of same old same old. We did get the ECS money for April. Again, we got that right at the end of April last day. We'll be posting that. That was a million plus. So we're on target to get
our state grants. All I can think of unless there are any questions.
How do we do with collections for the April timeframe? I haven't
been able to analyze those yet. I'm still, I think the tax collector is finished putting posting things putting them in an Excel spreadsheet. I usually like to get the bank statement and compare her numbers with the bank before I post them to the system. From her conversation with her I don't think it's noticeable for April. So the next few months will be more telling especially June. So definitely by next meeting we'll have the April information.
I had a conversation with her a couple of days ago. She said April's receipts were basically typical. We have not seen any effect of people not any increase in people not paying on time at this point. Again that's very possible that will change. You know clearly we have a lot of people in town that are unemployed so I imagine a fraction of them will not be able to
pay their bills on time. It's just about 10% of our population currently.
Barbara, a question on educational spending. Have you and Eric been in communication with specifically AES about where they're looking at being at the end of the year? I have not had any information from school.
Okay. Because right now, you're $1,300,000 under expended. I would like to know where that's going to fall out. I'll get more information, Jeff.
Thank you. Are there any other specific accounts that we should look at or you you want to point us to?
Yeah. Is there is there anything else that's tracking down?
No. In terms of income streams or in terms of expenses?
Expenses where we may have some extra funds to shift to other things if we need to.
Yeah, there's a bunch of places we're going be able to raid. I mean, the Board of Finance legal budget, we can take pretty much all of that. We will probably be able to take a little bit more out of the assessors legal budget. We are going to be able to get a lot of money back from the registrar in the elections budget because we frankly didn't really have any elections. So all of that got postponed so that's going to be a big chunk. We look like we're going to be under in planning and zoning legal budget so we'll be able to grab some money from that. So yeah, we got a bunch of pools of money within the town that we're going to be able to reallocate towards priorities.
All right. So do you have an ongoing priority list that we can match up to expenditures that we can encumber this year to make sure that doesn't roll back into the general fund?
Yes, I've started we've started to put that together. You know part of it is I'm still trying to figure out that one of the beauties of what I proposed for the board of finance and if that gets approved is by having permanent funds at the end of the year the unused funds can get transferred into the permanent funds and then it's basically socked away for that purpose. So we have essentially an unlimited sink for excess money. So I would say we're going to try to free up what we can for you know get the transfer you know, transfer station project done. We're going to need some of the excess money for that. We still need to buy the thumb cards for when we eventually open up the library and the town hall and public works for the, not bookkeeping. Time clocks, payroll, payroll. Payroll.
Late at night. So there's a whole series of things I've got money slotted for and if CIP meets again reasonably soon I have one other thought that we might request since we're not buying the mower this year. So yes, we have to watch through. What you're saying, Eric, as opposed to
that terminology, there is potentially monies that can go to the priorities that this board has established that Correct. We're going to try to get done because we know we did not fund them moving forward for next year's budget. Correct. Just so everybody understands that. It's not like we're just trying to understand what is available and then sit there and go through the priorities that the board has established so that we can sit there and make some headway now while we have the opportunity. Right.
Okay. Barbara, if you can make sure that you get with Eric and give him as much information related to what the line items are that we can look at, that would be great. Talk about One last thing, Eric, in your report, you talked about the priorities you were going to do. One of the reports that you had given us about chip sealing and doing some different programs. I'm assuming that with anything extra that we have, you're going to make that happen toward the end of this fiscal year. Is that accurate?
That is. In fact, I had a couple motions that I gave you all that I would If you want to just tell me to do it, I will just do it and I will sign them. But if you want to counter sign those motions, that would be fine. And the first would be one extra day of crack sealing by Indus in this year's budget. And the second thing would be to authorize the chip sealing program that I sent around to the board but now I have kind of hard numbers and we've reduced the total number of streets we're going to chip seal just so we can fit it in to the money available.
And this work would be done prior to July 1 if at all possible.
Before we go to try to make those motions if we need to, is this the maximum that you can do or is there an opportunity for us to do more than this? Well,
I mean, given the amount of money I have, this is a reasonable So you're always playing off. You've got all these different things. You got to do a bunch of crack sealing. You probably ought to do some chip sealing. One of the problems we have is that in really, in the neighborhoods with a lot of traffic like the Lake District, you're better off doing what's called a cape seal rather than just a chip seal. So I'm allocating some money, basically reserving some money for the micro slurry that gets put on after the chip seal. So basically what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to do a little bit of paving, although not much, know, and we're still discussing that right now what we can actually slide in, but putting most of the money towards pavement preservation.
Okay I understand that but what I'm asking you is if you and Barbara look at our current budget and you determine there's unexpended dollars can you do more than what you're laying out in the motion? Like I don't want to make a motion and tie you to a number if you have an opportunity to do more work because that is the most important thing for the community is to make our roads, well not the most important thing, but it is one of the most important things for us is to improve our infrastructure and our roads. So, I don't wanna make a motion and it ties you to something and you could do an extra $25,000 work that will improve another neighborhood.
Right, so what I would say to that is if it looks like we're going to have excess money because going forward if the budget passes we're going to have a series of permanent funds established, We simply transfer that money to the permanent fund and then it doesn't matter whether I spend that before July 1 or after July 1, I can roll right in and spend that in the next budget year. So yes, have thought about that and that's part of the reason why we're structuring things with permanent funds, so we can make that process easier.
Keep in mind though you're dealing with two fiscal years. So if that fund isn't set up till July 1, that's a problem because we wanna move the money in June. So we need to move the money into some existing fund or get a fund set up in June. I think you can do highway. I think that's something we I will continue to work on fine tuning what can come out, get firmer dollar amounts. And I'm definitely hoping by June meeting, couple of things pending and then come up with the actual account numbers and then we need a place to move that into in this fiscal year. Okay. So let's get that done so we can Yeah. Properly.
I agree with that. I don't necessarily I I'm going to speak for myself to the other board members. I don't think we need to make a motion to Right. To do any of this work.
I don't think there's anything to do at this time because we just don't know the dollar amounts right now.
Yeah, Candlelight. What I'm telling you is that I'm about to sign a contract with Comer for chip sealing and I'm about to sign a contract with Indus for the crack sealing. If you guys are okay with just having me do that that's fine. If you want a motion and authorize it that's fine too. Eric I mean I think as
Jeff said we don't feel as a board we need to make a motion. You know what needs to be done, you know the amount of money that you have to do it, and if it's beyond that, you know, we'll figure it out. Okay, that's fine. Okay.
Just as long as you promise to seal the track at the field also. The track at the field will be sealed.
Wow, that's Scott just laying it out there. Okay. Does Jeff Murray need anything over in the Woodland area so he can vote yes on some things going forward?
I think he laid out one of his streets, didn't you? He did. He did. Oh, that's why he's gonna go Stanley to San
Drive. You notice, I know nothing's gonna get done in front of my house. Doctor. No has a weak spot. Seriously, I just want to know when I signed that check for the mailbox, whose mailbox was it? It's really all I want to know. You're getting the bill soon, trust me. All right. Let's move on to the budget. Listen, we all have been on meetings for probably about fifteen hours or not necessarily that long but there was a long brought out budget thing. Do we need to talk about anything about the budget? No. Okay. Now moving on, tax collectors report. I think there was one Yeah
one is so basically there's one transfer there that is from the equipment maintenance line item in elections, and we're going to use that to replace two old computers that the registrar has. Now we will probably get rebated 100% of the money we're putting into this back from the state because right now they have 100% match, but we have to buy the stuff and get rebated. So, A, I'd like to transfer the money in, I'd like to buy the computers because they definitely need it and we're going to end up getting rebated the money eventually by the state. So that's that appropriation transfer that's there.
Okay. Does anybody have a problem with that? Do we need to make a motion on that one? No? Okay. It's right at $2,000
Per charter, yes. The Board of Selectmen would make a motion on that. Yeah. To authorize that transfer.
Okay. Does somebody want to make that motion, please? I'm trying to find it. This is for the Okay.
I'm going to sit there and make motion. I'm gonna make a motion for an appropriation transfer moving money from account 14. I don't know what number you put there Eric. Is that a 430? 0121Dash438. Seriously. Come on man. That's why I type everything.
Okay. I can't read that number but budget account number for me. All right, Eric, here's what we're gonna do. You make the motion because you can read your writing and it'll come from me.
Okay. The money is being transferred from budget account 12038 to 12035, which is from equipment maintenance elections to computer replacementservices in the town office. And the appropriation amount that's being transferred is $2,000
Okay. So that is the motion that I made for the Board of Selectmen. Anyone want to second that? I'll second that. Okay. Further discussion on this $2,000 transfer? None. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Mr. Murray, we're good. Four to one? I just was so late. That was a late. No, no, no, no. I got you. I saw you point the finger. I got it. No no no that was it that was yes. Oh you did a yes?
Yes. I was not opposed I just caught I caught you late. Okay so so that's a five five nothing. All right so let's move on.
Okay so the tax collector has three tax refunds. All three of them are for vehicles as far as I can tell. So there's two possibilities for a motion. One, you can motion to approve and authorize me to sign for Jeff who's supposed to sign for it or option number two, you can make Jeff come in and sign it himself.
I can come in and sign, but I got a question on the tax collector's report. So, we're looking at March's information. So, it's May 11. So, we don't have a tax collector's report for the month of April. Barbara?
Good question. I'm gonna unmute. Yeah, because these are prepared last week. So she was finishing it up and I haven't even seen the bank information yet. I mean it is the eleventh but this was like the fifth or sixth we were trying to put these together. So the reconciliation isn't complete.
So you held up us seeing the potential collections because the reconciliation isn't complete. That's it, yeah.
Okay in the future can you sit there and please just provide us what you have so that we can sit there and see what's
she can definitely provide it I just don't have the bank information that early that's fine
It would be helpful if we could sit there and see it. Mr. Mandeville, do you have something to share with the rest of us? No? Okay. We're going to move on to the assessor's report. Eric, do you have something you want to talk to us about? No, we have to vote on our tax collection, our refunds. Does someone want to make a motion on that one? And I will come in and sign.
I don't have a problem. So that's option number two for the motion. And Jeff, when you do come in, I've got a couple other things that you really need to sign. So that would be a good idea anyway.
I motion to approve the tax refunds for April 2020 outlined in the packet.
Second. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. All those opposed? We're good. All right. Department reports. Actually, let's go back to the agenda. The assessor's report. Eric, is there anything that we need to discuss related to the assessor's office? Not really. There's not a whole lot happening at the moment. All right. Department reports, fire department, resident state trooper, town clerk, building department, assessor's office, town garage, transfer station, library, senior transportation, registrars. Do we have anything specific to discuss in any of those departments? Nothing that's critical.
Okay. One thing that I would sit there and address, Barbara, related to the state trooper, can we try to get the bill from state before the end of summer? It would be nice if we could sit there and see that because we have a huge line item on our budget and we have no expenditures related to it. So, if we could try to get that, that would be great. Item 14 resignations anything related to resignations Eric?
Not that you don't already have not not for this month at least that I know of. Any correspondence that we need to talk about? Nope.
All right. The only thing I would say is I just want to make a note that the presidential primary has been, postponed, to August 11.
Okay. All right. Anything else? Any other members of the board of select before we move to public speak? We good? We good? We good? All right. Let's go to public speak. Okay, you can go through these, Amanda. I don't think it's necessarily poor. If you have nothing to speak, just please unmute yourself and let Amanda know. We can move forward.
-I think Catherine's got her hand raised here. Should we start with Catherine? -Yes,
do. Can you hear me? -Yeah. -Okay. Hi. I have an issue with re upping the contract for the town attorney without anyone in town having any kind of say so without having their concerns addressed. Okay.
I've addressed it before, but I know that there are others that would like to address it as well.
Okay. When we have our meeting related to our reviews we will sit there and take all that input into consideration.
Yeah. We would encourage anybody that's part of the public that has a concern to submit a letter of concern and we'll take that into account. Seriously you will?
Catherine, Catherine you don't trust us. No. Okay. Well then we can't help you. We'll take into consideration we may not all agree but we will do our best to take it into account. All right, Catherine, anything else you'd like to bring forward? No, that's it. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anyone else in here? Joe?
I've got nothing further. I'll be available if you guys require any more input.
Well we expect you to be on the board Joe on that committee.
Absolutely I can I can do that? All right. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for sticking with us.
Thank you. Hi Amanda. Can you hear me. Go ahead Elaine. Okay.
Just as far as the senior transportation, the only thing that I see that we need desperately right now is just a small grocery shopping trip because those shopping trips that the seniors used to take depended upon that for transportation to be able to get to a grocery store. Right now, what we have to offer them is calling in and calling to me Sunday through Tuesday. And I take their list of grocery needs, and then we send it off to Ted's in Hebron. And then on Saturday, CERT goes ahead and delivers the groceries to them. And only people with credit cards can do that except we do have one senior who is able to we we pay the town credit card pays and then she goes ahead and writes a check to pay for it back. But she has an EBT card which she isn't able to use through Ted's program and people who just have debit cards and not credit cards can't use Ted's program. So there's a desperate need to be able to just give them a ride to a grocery store, you know, maybe one or two people, maybe during the senior hours, early in the morning so that there's very limited exposure for people.
I know we'd have to talk. We only have two senior drivers now, senior transportation drivers now. We'd have to talk to see if they'd be comfortable, you know, taking one or two people to a grocery store. But if there's I mean, it's a very limited thing that we could offer, but it's something to keep them from having to just have Ted's insert delivery at this point.
Elaine, we had had at the beginning of this, we had had a lot of people reach out and say that if seniors needed something specific, they were willing to step up and volunteer. If if, you know, Have you coordinated at all with Roberta or Kathy Palazzi or anyone with Eric to let him know the list of people that need to be addressed? This has all been through Eric and Roberta.
Okay. Wow. We know of literally, there's only two people currently in Andover that were doing this Ted's order and cert delivery. So if there's just some way we could just bring them to the grocery store. Okay. Then that wouldn't have to be done because I don't know how long cert's gonna do this,
you know, this Eric, I mean, can we can we just get see if we can put it out there, if we can get one or two people to volunteer to take the two people for a trip?
Well, but at the point where you're gonna have volunteers do it, you know, if you're if you're adding the exposure anyway, you might as well do it in a controlled environment with an employee and just run senior transportation to do it. And I think I do have a meeting on Friday with CERT that's one of the things we're discussing is how we transition back what we're doing right now to something that's sustainable because CERT can't continue to do everything they're doing right now for months and months and months. So that is a topic that's going to be under discussion at the end of this week And we're looking at putting a plan together how to move in that direction. And I agree there it's not a ton of people, but there's at least a couple there's at least a couple cases where we don't have any real alternative support right now other than CERT and we need to figure out how to accommodate that.
Elaine just email me or reach out to me and I'll bring the two people to the store at this point. Mean. You Well, that's
not the issue. The issue is exactly how Eric just put it. Just looking for an official way to get back to that service. You know, it's not bringing the seniors to lunches. It's you know what I mean? It's just that grocery shopping trip that didn't seem like a big deal way back when is kind of a big deal. No, we realize that. And Eric's trying to adjust that on Friday. So, you're saying they can wait until this happens or what are Well, you asking for still doing it. We are still doing it for the next few weeks. But it's just a matter since the discussion was tonight senior transportation and getting back up and running. I just wanted to point out that it almost seems like a minor thing, but we should do it kind of as a town officially instead of just, you know, because volunteers have gone and picked up stuff for these people. Are you invited to meeting on Friday? So,
what you're asking, just so we all understand is, if we're going to restart medical trips, you're asking us to restart a grocery trip. At least arrange some kind of a weekly or every
two week grocery trip. I say maybe weekly so you can do like two people one week and two people the next week so that it's a limited number of people in the vehicle. But but Elaine, you're you're part of the meeting on Friday. Correct? No. I I wasn't told about the meeting on Friday.
Okay. Is there but there's someone from CERT there? Yes. Yes. And they're aware of this concern?
Yes. Okay. They're aware of the concern that CERT can't do it forever.
Okay. So, I mean, Eric's aware and Eric will bring that to the meeting and and, you know, Eric will move forward with this. You know, that's really what his role is here is to sort of facilitate these things. So Right, right. Let's give him a chance to do that. Yeah. So I just wanted to reiterate
that that is an important thing right now is to All right. Grocery shopping. Okay. Okay. Eric, it's on the list for transportation options. Yep. Yep.
All right. Okay. All right, everyone. So very briefly, I just wanted to share, since we're talking about food, our Farmers Market Committee has been having meetings, we're planning for our season coming up starting July 1. So I'd like to put it on the agenda for next month, but I just wanted to share that Elaine and our committee is working on a safe plan on how to host the market. We have guidelines and regulations from the state that we're going to follow, and farmers markets are seen as essential and actually very important right now. So we're excited for the season, regardless of the situation. So I just wanted to share that.
Have you reached out, with the farmers market to any of the dairy? Because dairy seems to be things that people are concerned about right now. You know?
I've been in touch with Mountain Dairy. I know that they're delivering. I'm not sure that they'd be able to be a part of our market, but if there's any other, dairy farm that anyone hears of, any recommendations would be great. Okay. We do I know people are concerned about meat. We do have a meat farmer. They're actually opening up their store on 66 in Columbia this weekend. So very exciting. That's great.
Okay. Is there anyone else who would like to participate in public speak? So have you unmuted everybody, Amanda, that they could unmute themselves if they wanted to talk?
Yes, anyone can unmute themselves. If you'd like, I can still go through. No,
listen, we can hold off on that. If they can unmute themselves and they would like to speak, anyone who would like to participate one at a time will if we see your little mute button go off and you want to talk, we'll call you out. Okay. If it appears that no one else wants to sit there and participate in public speak, I think we're over that part of the agenda. So we are now on to, well, I believe the last item, which is German. Is that accurate? Okay. Would someone like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting. I will second Paula's motion. All right. Further discussion on that motion? No. All those in favor? Aye.
I thought that was going to get one more in. I'm so disappointed. Disappointed
that you chose to vote in favor of that. I think you should have voted no. But if not, that's great. Everyone be safe. Eric, I will be in to meet with you at some point in time to sign those things. So you let me know what day works for you. Okay. Perfect. Whatever works for you.