Meeting transcript
BOS Regular Meeting
July 13, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay.
So I have a question for Eric. Do I talk now or will I get asked questions later? Talk now.
Michelle, you can speak to the board. Go ahead. Oh,
okay. So I'm requesting that we have a road closure in my section of the town would be from Lakeside Drive, the corner of Lakeside Drive and Lake Road to the corner of Island Street and Lake Road to have a community gathering for the neighbors just in our area. It wouldn't necessarily be open to the whole town because that would not be safe. But if we can close the road off and have people feel safe to come out with lawn chairs, listen to some music, they'll be requested to bring their own beverages. If they want a snack, they'll bring their own snack and request not to share. They will be advised to stay in their own area. Basically, I grew up in the city, and our communities were block communities and they're all different. And what each community would do will close off a section of the block and have a party where kids can feel safe to color in the street, come out, listen to music, have chairs, not be interfered with cars or traffic going by. And I think with this pandemic, a lot of people feel confined. And
I believe we can maintain social distance because the area of the road that's going to be closed is going to be long enough. And I know we have some neighbors who are willing to either we have a one of my neighbors who has a band who's maybe willing to have the band come out, or we'll just play music and we'll just sit and socialize for a few hours, which is really what I'm requesting. You're muted, Jeff. Thank
you, Michelle. I know that's on the agenda. We'll discuss that later and get that going. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Okay, we'll go through them. John Collins. I'm muting. No, I'm just here to listen. Thanks. Kurt Darling. Okay, Kathleen Barnett. I'm all set Jeff. Thanks Kurt. You're all set? All right. Barbara, we're waiting on you. Louise Goodwin? I'm good. Thank you. Okay. And Samsung SMG9. I'm good. Okay.
Alright. So let's get started. Additions and deletions to the agenda.
We need to add an action for the transfer station. Shed?
So can I make a suggestion? Add item four f senior center slash community center report. Seven F hiring of inland wetlands and water courses agent Joe Wagner. Seven gs transfer station shed orientation. Seven H athletic field usage contracts with Hammer FC North in adult soccer, seven I running races on the rail trail and seven J senior services planning. Okay.
And then the last thing I would suggest is that we change agenda item 17 to executive session to discuss interim union collective bargaining issues. Sorry, that should have been corrected in the original. I did not realize the email died before Amanda put my corrected version in the packet. So that was my error
Alright, so I'll make a motion to add all those items and then to change agenda item 17. Seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Do we wanna take bets right now as to how long Jeff and Paula last outside? Like, who's gonna be the diehard on this? I'm voting Paula, but I'm just saying.
Oh. I mean It's gonna get dark soon. I think if you put that up and you tell Jeff that he he's got a bet in front of him, I bet you he survives.
I don't know those those skeeters over Paul over Jeff's house are pretty thick. Paul's got a little bit more clearance.
All right so let's get moving. So boards and commissions presentations and appointments, the conservation committee or conservation commission. Do you have appointments out there for that? No? Okay. I know that Mike Pelosi is on. Mike, are you looking to give a presentation for the Conservation Committee? Unmute, Mike. Unmute. Okay, you hear me now? Absolutely, yes. Okay. I told Amanda earlier today, we have to pull back that presentation. There was a glitch in one of the pieces of land. And I don't want to move forward until I get this thing resolved. Okay. Does any of the members of the board of selectmen have any questions to that letter we received or want to talk about that at all? Good? Okay.
Website Development Committee, Paula or Amanda, whichever one. By the way, the website looks great. Thank you very much for all your hard work.
You're welcome. Very exciting. It launched on Thursday. So we're relieved and really happy with how it turned out. Paula?
Yeah. No. It was it was a great job, great effort from everybody. I think it came out awesome and still work in progress. I'm sure there'll be things that we have to update but Amanda did an awesome job so thank you Amanda. You
you were the backbone of the committee so thank you. Yeah thank you all and I know it'll definitely be a work in progress as we go on. There's a lot of different suggestions for, you know, more great info that can be added for residents now that it's easier to navigate. I think people will get on there and peruse it and have more ideas. So feel free to just send them my way.
So you're that you're you're gonna be the contact point for changes? Yes. Okay. I've got a list. So That's a surprise.
That's surprise. That is surprising. Yes. But thank you very much. The website does look great.
That was Amanda. Looks fantastic. It is light years ahead of where we were. Hallelujah. Yes.
Okay, traffic safety committee. I don't see John here. I know Michelle Vail is on that. I'll give a presentation on that. We met Saturday, two Saturdays ago. I do not remember the date. All five committee members attended along with Eric Anderson and the state trooper. We discussed about how to proceed forward. And I believe we have another meeting scheduled for July 25 to do a walk around the lake or a ride around, depending upon how we do it, to sit there and see what areas of the lake we might be able to assist and improve with traffic flow and traffic speeds. It was a very good meeting. Any of the other members of the Board of Selectmen that would like to attend that meeting, feel free. We'll get you the information out. It's a very good group of people, and hopefully we can come up with some ideas that we can put forth to improve primarily the speed that people go through. I mean, to just let you know the status of that meeting, we were all at the stop sign
between Lakeside and Lake Road. And that has been a very problematic stop sign. There's been a lot of residents who complained. And the state trooper was there with his car in his, it was raining that day in his yellow raincoat and there were at least two people that blew right through the stops. Did he go get them?
No, he did not. But it was laughable that people just do that. Anyway, we'll sit there and get on it and try to sit there and see what that committee can bring forth to the board for the board to approve for options that might help. Jeff Murray
you had had a thing on the whoop deeds was it from Coventry or somewhere. Did you forward that to the committee?
No I did not but that was in Mansfield so yeah if they wanted to talk to the town of Mansfield they would Mansfield has a lot of those speed humps.
Can you forward that picture though? That was pretty cool. Yeah I could to who do I shoot I forward it to? Send to McGuire. Send to me too. Okay. Yeah.
To just to Jeff or to Yeah. Send to Jeff and Eric. Okay. Yeah. Because they they may be the expert to talk to just to see the effectiveness of those and see how they work and how they're working out for them. It might be just good to use the experience of another town just to see. Well, and how they work now for plowing because that was the other thing. Right? So Yeah. That that would be good to so I said Mansfield would be a good
subject to talk to. Mansfield's trying to control the traffic around the university so you know. Both
UConn and there's other areas of town they tried they've actually put them on so. Sure. So I had a I spent about an hour on the phone with
their public works director talking over the various pluses and minuses and what their strategy is for traffic calming, know, where they use them, why, what their results were.
You know, their results were mixed. Their public works director is incredibly anti speed hump. But there are some areas they've had success using it and other areas that they failed miserably using it. So and you know we can certainly go over that and where it's appropriate and where it's not. I also have there a copy of their you know, essentially their plan for speed bumps, where they allow it, why they allow it, what they do with them. So we can share that. You know, we talked through basically how you bulletproof them so they don't get torn out because the first ones they put in when they first did it all got torn out by the plows.
And he said basically what they realized is they had to go in and they had to index them into the pavement. So they do basically a pavement cut like you would when you're starting to pave something, you know, so they knock it down and they start about an inch and a half below the road surface. So they have enough that the pavement doesn't get torn out by the plows. So we can certainly address the pluses and minuses in where they would be effective. Okay, so you've got some background on that, great.
Okay, all right, we'll move on to, four d the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee. I guess I'm going to sit there and Where did my friends go? Oh, Kathy Palazzi is probably the only member of that committee that I see. Oh, no, Catherine Magaldi Lewis has joined. Catherine, would you like to sit there and give a presentation for the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee? No, okay. I would sit there and tell you there were two, I believe we all received an Eric. I don't see these here. We received two additional appointment Excuse
me, Jeff. Yeah. Catherine is chatting with us. She's what? She's she's unmuted, but she says she's here. You can't hear me. So I think she wants to say something. Okay.
Catherine, looks like you're unmuted, but we can't hear you.
Looks like her audio is connected, but maybe it's just your volume, Catherine.
It says she turned it up. Okay. Yeah, we can't. Unfortunately, Catherine, we can't hear you. I don't know if you're on your phone or your oh, she says, never mind. Just let let Jeff go ahead. No laptop. Okay.
So on the January, we had additional requests. And Eric, did you receive those? Amanda, did you receive the requests for the additional members for this committee? There were two.
So I got an email to that effect. And I set you up with a motion to appoint Susan Slater and Anne Marie Daigle, I think I pronounced that right, to the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee, if you so choose.
Okay. So let's make that. We have two people that are willing participate and volunteer in a committee. We need to take advantage of every resident that is willing to do such good work. I'll sit there and I'll make that motion. I motion to appoint the following members to the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee, Susan Slater and Anne Marie Daigle. I'll second that.
All right. Any discussion on those appointments? No. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. All right. I know the one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee had a meeting. Catherine Magaldi Lewis was nominated and accepted the chairperson's role for that. Hopefully, they're going to do an excellent job. Would tell Katherine, I would tell anyone if there's more members that want to join that committee, I feel like that could be an extremely big job and it could do a lot of good for the community. So if they have more people that wanna get appointed, I'm more than happy to get them appointed. All right. 4E is the Board of Education Combined Finance Department Committee. I is the Town Accounting Software. I know we received in our packet a breakdown of the three softwares that they've reviewed. I looked at it, and I'm like, that's not I mean, I know there's a lot of no's in the QuickBooks column, and that's not reality. If you've worked with a software, you know that's that's not it. So there are definitely workarounds that need to happen with any of these softwares. That is something we're gonna have to make a decision on. When is anyone from that committee and Adrian, I know we're supposed to be on it. Is anyone on that committee or Eric made a decision and said what they want to recommend to us?
Are Laura had reached out to us last week when the email was down, but we I got it in my email today to try to schedule something this week. She wanted to have a meeting either Wednesday or Thursday.
Okay. So Wednesday is a board of education meeting. What time on Thursday?
I'd have to pull up the email. Hang on. Well,
let's figure that out and get that going because I know we also have another committee meeting on Thursday, Correct? I think we have a meeting for the other committee, combined finance department committee meeting this Thursday. Believe it's No. That was we should have Excuse
me? That was last week. I thought we scheduled another one. They were gonna bring it to the board of education. Eric, is that correct?
I don't think we scheduled a we had a follow on scheduled if we did I missed it. Yeah I didn't either Jeff.
They were gonna have they they talked about the position that I gave them the Eric's job description for today. They're gonna vote or hoping they're gonna vote on that on Wednesday or Thursday at their special meeting.
Correct. Thought that's what I thought they were going to vote on that, Adrian, and then come back to us and we were gonna have another meeting. But it's okay if we don't. We Well, I I thought they were gonna vote on it tonight, but they they kicked it down the road. So Okay. Alright. We'll get that done too. Added a is there anything else from those two finance department issues that anyone wants to discuss? Adrian, Eric, do you want to discuss anything related to those right now?
No. No, I think we need to have some discussion during the meeting regards to which software, but other than that, I think, you know, we'll have a decision by the end of the week on the software. We may or might not have a decision by the end of the week on the combined offices. Generally, it sounded favorable. It's just a question of the nuances of the who, what, when, where. All
right, so we added to the agenda item four f, a senior center community center committee report.
Right. We we had our first meeting. Five of us attended. And we talked over, you know, what the goals were. The the goals were multiuse building. And then we talked about all the different places that we could have the new multi use building and I guess we all talked over to different places and went over the pros and cons of every one of them and we all decided in the end that at the town hall would be probably the best place between school and the town hall. You know, for a bunch of different reasons. We don't need to get on into all of them right now. And we're looking for a which I'm not sure if we're ready for that, but we're we're looking to get an approval from the board of selectmen for a feasibility study.
Eric, just on that topic, did the state a steep grant information come out today?
So I got an email. Yeah, we finally got the stuff from Martin Heft. So yes, we do have some details. They haven't flushed out yet. There's a lot of stuff. All they've said basically is that we are offering steep grants. They haven't actually published all the rules or all the stuff that go along with it, even though the beginning of the enrollment period starts today. So
Well, just from a standpoint of, that Steve Grant, I think, all of the members of the board of Selectman, we should get together and figure out, how to currently deal with Robin Green and and Steve Casano to make sure that any application we put forth related to that, if they're going to put out Steve Grant money, we should sit there and try to get that lined up because we have enough funding put aside for that building. If we could get a steep grant and assist, maybe we could get that done sooner than later.
I think we should go over. Said you had the opening date. Do we know when the closing date's gonna be?
I wanna say it's August 14. So it's basically one month out. Not lot of time to do a feasibility study.
No, you're not getting a feasibility study between now and then, but you should have Remember the last application the town put in for a steep grant was done by Dan Moore and myself, and it was for a community center, just not in the location we're picking now. So the good news is that we are applying for the same thing we applied for last time and you're always more likely to get it the second go around. The bad time is this is the fourth time we've applied for a community center because the community room was originally an application for a community center, which we got funding for And then in 2010, we applied for funding again for a community center, which we did not get. But in 2013, we did get more money for a community center, but then the town of Andover decided to combine that with another steep grant and spend it on the athletic field. So it's kind of a mixed bag. I think that's the most logical thing for us to put in a steep grant, but I wonder whether the state is not going to look on that particularly favorably since we have a habit of applying for the same thing. How
about we sit there and positively think that we're going to sit there and get to the people that make this decision like our friends that are in the state house of representative and
the state senate and we try to make this happen. I don't think Eric's being negative. I think he's actually just trying to realistically tell us the lay of the land so we can be aware. No, I totally understand, but the
number of applications that Andover's put in and the number of applications that Andover's been approved for in the last twenty years is small. We have done a terrible job of applying. And so last time they opened, they put forth an application and yes, it was for a community center, but
I Let's ask the better question. Eric, what do we need to do or what does that committee need to do so that you can put in an application again?
I mean, think the only real, honestly, don't think there's anything we need to put in an application. Ultimately, I suspect we're not gonna wanna wait till the very last minute. So we're talking about a special meeting at some point to approve a steep application submission because that has to come from you, not from me. Although I will prepare it. I don't see a big problem with it. I think we can put together a good application and make a really good case for why we need it since our previous community center has been, you know, condemned because of mold. So I think we have a valid reason for applying for it. And I think the fact that we've applied for it once, you know, and Ben rejected, you know, the last go around strengthens our case because you tend to get funding, you know, when you apply for it multiple times, you're more likely to get it on the second or third go around.
So I think we have a reasonably strong case for it. I'm just pointing out that, you know, we have the one negative we have is that we have applied for something very similar and been granted it multiple times and didn't necessarily
complete it. What is it that you, why do we need to do a special meeting? Why can't we approve this here? I
suppose you could approve it right now if you just wanted to let me have that applying and didn't wanna read it or agree with it before I sent it or you wanted me to just send it to you informally. I think that's fine too. If you're all comfortable with that.
Yeah, I mean, as we know there, we can make, if we need to, we can make adjustments if we get approved, right? So Sure. Save us a special meeting. Is everyone all right with that? Make the motion. I make a motion that we approve that Eric Anderson be given permission to apply for a steep grant for a community center. I'll second that. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Anything else on the senior center? That's it, Jeff. Good. Okay.
So we're going to move on to item five, which is the town administrators report. So Eric, you're up.
Okay, a bunch of things. One, we've been very fortunate in that the town of Andover has not had a new case of COVID-nineteen in more than eight weeks at this point. So that's a really good thing. Health district as a whole, which is nine pounds is averaging about three cases per week. So our infection rate in this area is very low. I'm not suggesting that we relax, but we're obviously doing a reasonable job of social distancing and what we put in place as a town and a community has worked. As most of you know, the website is live. A special thanks to Amanda and Paula and all the other members of the website committee for providing a lot of really good guidance, and carrying it off. The one thing unfortunately, when we converted to the new domain, we did screw up the town email for a couple of days. We appear to have solved that, which is a relief. Since the last meeting, we've taken a crack at an awful lot of roadwork. We've done a lot of chip sealing. We have done some rejuvenating fog sealing of a series of roads, and we've started doing what's called cape sealing, which is applying micro slurry over the top of a chip sealed road. That project was delayed a little bit and we didn't finish everything we wanted to today. The contractor had kind of assured me that they would be done and gone today and, they're going to be back at it tomorrow. So the end product is coming out pretty well. I'm happy with what we're getting,
but there have been some delays in timing. The other nice thing we just found out yesterday is we officially got our number for bunker, our project number for Bunker Hill. Yay. And the project number implies that it's fully, the federal funding is fully in place for it. And the state has agreed to handle any right of way acquisition necessary for that bridge process, which is another thing we don't have to do. So I was quite happy with. The transfer station project is going slowly, but it's coming out reasonably well. We are pouring the slabs. We poured half the slabs today and the other half will be poured tomorrow. We should be able to start putting the compactors back in place at the beginning of next week. And hopefully bolt them down over, you know, it'll be a while to install them. It's pretty labor intensive to put them back in place and bolt them down and readjust the shoots, but it's moving in the right direction.
And we'll get to later. There's a little controversy about the orientation of the shed.
Eric, I just have one question. Sure. Was the pouring of the green building, is that just an add on? I know that was dirt in there. Do we just add cement in there? It's just a nice to have to finish. Part
of it was we had to pour slab because we had to put the rotary phase converter on something. Okay. If you're originally just going to pour a little slab, but it would be kind of stupid because half the building already has a slab and then we're going to point port another, you know, six foot by 10 foot slab or something for all the electrical stuff to impose the little room. And it just made more sense while we were doing it just to pour the slab and be done with it. Okay, I saw the panels were on that backside of the garage.
That was kind of a change. Thought originally we talked about putting them in that small room, but that looked like a change. So that was just a question I had. So but I'm glad getting done because that makes more use of that building in the long run. Definitely. Yeah. Good idea. Yeah, good decision.
Yeah, I think in the end that was probably smarter to do than not do. And regarding the transfer station a little bit later, we're gonna get to the town's attorney has a couple of recommendations for us to address your concern with, you know, poor behavior at the transfer station. Other work we did, we, you know, it's been a while, but we finally got the lighting on the flagpole at the town hall. We also addressed some lighting issues at the Andover Museum, including security lighting that points towards the parking area and also wiring for the camera system that's being installed at that location. And I think we can all appreciate now after the mural, the advantage of having a reasonable security system
installed. Are you getting the electrical done, Eric, now? Yeah, the electrical should be done
for that. So now we just got to finish installing the cameras. And hopefully in the next week or so, the camera system will go back in at the transfer station also, because remember we do have a camera system in place there. Veterans Memorial Field, we were having a problem with the well and the water pump unit. It's I think a fairly simple fix. It's just basically not the float switch, but the pressure switch, the contactor itself was sticking. We freed it up temporarily, just by whacking the crap out of it. And then we asked M and M Oil to replace the float switch. So hopefully we'll get a permanent replacement for that. It appears that's all that's wrong. I also asked Lenco Electric to just evaluate the electrical system there because we've had numerous trips on that over the past couple of years and it's been pretty problematic and it ends up getting reset.
Is this the field? Are you talking the field or the memorial? I mean the memorial, sorry. Okay, thank you. So
we're gonna take a look at that and just try to understand what it would cost us to get the electrical system there functioning well. The other thing I really don't like is there's a photo sensor attached to it and the housing for the photo sensor is broken. So I got to imagine that's gonna short out and stop working at some point. So I'd like to just fix it and get that done and over with. As far as town hall goes, as you know, we are fully staffed, but we're not open to the public at this point. This has caused some aggravation with the unions over the requirements for the reopening. And maybe we can talk about the resolution of that in executive session. I also have a plan that I sent and put as part of the packet for a gradual reopening of town hall. And I would like to have a little bit of a discussion about that later about whether you think that's appropriate and under what conditions would you want it to proceed. And we should also talk and we added to the agenda talking about senior services, senior luncheon, and the other things that we provide for the senior community that we've kind of put on hold. And we are, you were also provided with a basic
plan, an outline of how we start providing some services again for the seniors and try to do it safely. We should get our new radar speed sign in the next day. I was all excited. I thought it came today, but the only thing they shipped me was the spare battery. But it should be, should the rest of it should show up pretty. We can power it now at least. You're all charged up. Yep. And, the cameras and all the equipment that we purchased through the Penpecia grant, I placed that order through B and H photo and hopefully we're gonna get that in the next week or so. All of you know that the mural at the Andover Library was vandalized. The resident state trooper has identified
and there are warrants out for all the three individuals. One of whom wrote us a letter of apology, which we have. The question becomes what we do with it. So I had a long conversation with the paint manufacturer and they sent me a bunch of information about what has to happen to clean it. So there's basically two possibilities, one easy, one hard. The easy one is you start with paint thinner, and you hope like hell it takes it off and if it does you're home free. And if not, then you're stripping the outer layer of varnish, which would be a very intensive position or a project. Totally doable, fairly safe to the mural, but pretty labor mural, So right now what I need to do is find a painting contractor that's got some credentials in terms of restoring artwork and see whether I can get them to estimate what it's gonna cost. And how far have you gotten with that?
Not really far. I've got the manufacturer's guidance. And I talked to the guys at Jerry's Art O Rama, which is like the local art supply place. And they were hoping, you know, I asked them whether they had any contacts for any local people that do art restoration. And they were supposed to get back to me, but I haven't heard anything back from them yet. What about
the person that did the mural originally? I know she had a baby but can we find out from her what her recommendation is? I agree with Adrian 100%.
Yeah, I mean, she gave me all the we got from her all the information on the paint. But she basically said, she just got a child like four days ago, three days ago. So she's not in any she has no desire to come out and attempt the restoration herself.
I don't necessarily know, Eric, that that's the issue about having her come out and do it. But being a mural painter and probably having people that she knows that have painted murals, maybe there's someone that has had an experience of one of the other murals getting defaced and how they solved it or who helped them to solve it. If we could do that, I think that would be what we're asking about is It might be
be worth reaching out to, Wyndham, the city of Wyndham. They, I believe, have had some mural issues in the past. And if not, worst case scenario, I'm sure Hartford has so, you know.
Unmute Dennis and let him tell us about Wyndham on that.
Yeah. There's a guy named Ben Keller, who's done an awful lot of muraling here in town. And, he's really good and, he's in great demand and I I would talk to him if I were you. Can we throw your name around Dennis? You can. Okay. Thank you very much. Anytime. Anytime Adrian. It information for him by any chance?
Do I have contact information? Yeah. Right now, but I can get it like pronto right after the meeting. Awesome. Thank you. I might be able to get it during the meeting.
All right. Well, put yourself put yourself back on mute. I will. I will. Thank you, Dennis. Thank
you. Eric, do you know if it's harder to remove the longer it sits?
I asked that question in the the woman at the paint the paint rep said she didn't really think so. The The question is either you can remove it with something that won't affect the underlying varnish or you can't. And the way this painting was done is that there was two types of varnish applied with the idea that if you have to strip the first layer of varnish completely, like it gets too yellow or faded or whatever, you can do that safely and they provide the remover for that. But that's a really labor intensive process. So
the answer is it's already dried at this point but with the humidity and the heat that we've had, it's already set. It's not gonna change at this point. That's really the answer that you're looking for, unfortunately.
No, was just asking because you got a lot going on, so I was gonna say if I can help out and start calling people. I know two people that are friends of mine that might be able to have some answers. So I'll call them. Will you be able to call the contact that Dennis just shared? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Let's reach out to them tomorrow.
Alright. I'll I'll call the other two people in the meantime too and ask Yeah,
it's obviously something we want to address sooner rather than later because it's certainly, you know, it's got the whole community, you know, fairly upset. Hey but the governor showed up. Yeah. There's that the governor's been Andover. Okay you're still up Eric.
So the last couple of things and it's on the agenda, so I don't wanna belabor it now, but we should have a, should all have a discussion as a board about the rules for utilizing Veterans Memorial Field. And then also Jeff Murray has some stuff he wants or he has some requests for running a time trial on the rail trail and just talk about that. And that's basically it unless you all have questions
for me. I do. Cash payments to the town hall I saw we have an ad in the paper that says we're not taking cash payments. Correct. Correct. Is there a reason for that?
Well, there's a couple reasons. The important reason is that it's much faster for us to just take deposits to the bank and deposit them ourselves rather than use the Brink's security guy and haul them in that way because we don't get the information back. And when we were trying to get every month, the reconciliations between the treasurer's office and the tax collector's office that was causing some problems because we didn't have all the receipts back in a reasonable timeframe. So from our perspective, it's both safer. And the other thing is that if you don't take cash, you take away a lot of the incentive for coming to the town hall yourself and that implies there's no transaction you can't do without going to the town hall.
Personally like paying in cash. I know lot of residents actually do. We took in quite a bit of cash and I just kinda feel like you shouldn't be taking that away from residents personally. I don't, you know, I think we should revisit that. I don't agree with that decision at all personally, you know. Okay.
If you as a board wanna reverse it, you can tell me and I will very definitely reverse that.
Does anybody else have an opinion on this? Have no problem with
eliminating cash. From my standpoint, it just an issue that's out there. It does eliminate an option for people, but it's like a direct deposit for payroll. I don't want to ever cut a check for an employee if I can possibly avoid it.
Yeah. But we're still a cash society. We're not off of it yet. We're
not a cash society the way that we were, Adrian. The reason why business owners like to take cash is different from why a community like Andover who want to take cash. So I have no problem with that decision. Paula, you had a comment?
Yeah, no, I personally like to pay in cash and I know that maybe the old population does too. So I think it should be an option.
Yeah. So I would say that if it's going to be an option then the town hall has to be open because right now you can't pay in cash because you're not really allowed in the building. And we certainly don't want people putting cash in our deposit box because then there's no way to, you know, if you're implying cash for implying a personal transaction and getting a receipt.
Well, you have that big clear you have that big clear bin by the door. We could just put it in there.
Yeah. Floating around. Nice. Not even an envelope. So Jeff and Scott, do you want to bring this to motion? Do you want cash? Because if either one of you vote for cash, it's going on.
No, I think with the current situation, I think Eric's approach is correct. Scott, you're in. Come on, I don't have any cash.
Come on, Scott. You gotta back us up. We need to vote here. I don't have any cash. I'm sorry. At least allow people to make an appointment to if they want to pay in cash or something. Well can you pay by check? You can pay by check right? Yeah, sure. I mean
most people have checking accounts so you can write a check. I don't want to pay by by check. When
you cash your checking account and pay by check. I don't have a checking account. I want to pay in cash.
When when are we planning on what's the date for the town hall? Is it after taxes are due? When when are we talking about opening again?
Well, to some extent, that's up to you. My assumption was we were going to shoot for around August 1, but it also somewhat depends on your comfort level and whether you want a gradual reopening or you just want to say as of this date we're reopened. I mean it's kind of that I think needs to be discussed as a board you know where you want to sit on that issue.
And as far as the cash is it indefinitely or do we have a are we saying never again or we're saying until this date?
I don't know that I've thought it through that far. It just served our purposes when we made that decision. As far as I'm concerned, it would make our lives easier to stay cashless, but you know at some point we can certainly revisit that. Certainly for small transactions like a dog license, I think eventually going back to cash makes sense. So Adrian, what do you think?
I would like to see us go back to it as soon as we open the town hall.
Well, think for things such as the dump, the transfer station permits and Eric said dog licenses. I still don't know if we do fishing licenses but that type of thing cash is probably okay.
Yeah so what's the difference? I was just gonna say that yeah if it's $20 or 200 still cash. I think it's just it's just a miracle for $20
of cash. If you're worried about a cash payment you can always go get a money order. It's cost me that's costing you money. Listen,
let let's let's all bring this up. I mean, we get to a point where the town hall is open, then we'll we'll we'll bring this up. So Eric, the first when the first time we talk about the town reopening fully,
then we'll talk about cash. Here's the thing though, we already have cash in the building. So let's at least now at least agree that when we open back up, we go back to taking cash.
You gotta remember, we have a third of our residents that are older and they still, in general, like paying in cash. I'm fine with that. I I agree with that. If you open back up fully, then we can take cash. Right. I don't have any problem with that either. Alright. I can live with that. Yeah. But for the meantime, at the beginning meantime, have to kinda make do with all the time. Right. So I would make a motion that we
don't wanna move forward and get into the twentieth century or whatever '25.
I would make a motion Go ahead. We Yeah. It's it's cash. When the town hall's open again. Cash is not king anymore. No. It is king.
It will scoffish Cash is not king. King. I I agree
with them. It's just it's a transactional issue for for the you know, we wanna become more efficient. That's one way to make that department even a little bit more efficient is to not Cash is cumbersome. Cash is cumbersome. Adrian, Adrian's gotta be sitting on a chair full of it. So let's go. Let's have that vote. You made the motion. Let's all vote for it. Let's go.
I well, I didn't hear him because somebody else was talking. Can you say it again? I made a motion that we when the town goes back to fully
reopen, that we go back to accepting cash. I'll second that. Alright. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Let's go. Eric, you're still up.
That's it for me and again, unless you have other questions for me.
Okay, anybody else? Adrian, you got any more? No. Jeff, Scott? All set, thank you.
I will. Timeline on the roads and the ceiling and your evaluation of how it's going by the way.
So I think the chip ceiling went off very well and was very successful. Comer did a really good job. I thought the rejuvenating fog seal was very successful, looked to be a pretty good application and I thought that came out well. I think the, where they've applied the micro slurry, which when you put micro slurry off over the top of a chip seal, that's referred to as a cape seal. I think the areas that they finished came out pretty well. I wasn't happy with the time it took them, but I think there were some things that they were not anticipating. One, they were counting on us having a much faster method to fill their water tanks than we have. You know, they were trying to fill a 3,000 gallon water tank with a hose from the public works. So, you know, that was a lesson learned on their part. The contractor told me that the next time they, if they came back to Andover, they would very definitely sign a contract with, you know, one of the pool filling companies and, you know, show up with a water tank instead of going through that again.
You know, the one thing I did differently this time is before we started any of the roads in this last go around, I went around personally and flier to every single house on the road that we were working on. I'm not sure that really cut down on the number of complaints I got for people who said they weren't informed. So I think maybe in the future, we need to go back to doing that plus the town wide alerts plus Facebook and everything else because there's still a bunch of people that didn't get it. But I think we made a really good faith attempt at getting everybody the information. A certain fraction of people are gonna be unhappy with it no matter what. Eric, I don't know that I would encourage you to go
get one level further. I mean, could be something as simple as, you know, I went to the mailbox, I pulled out the flyer, didn't tell you know, Sure, yeah.
Cannot get, no matter what method you use, you're not gonna get everybody.
Yeah, no question, no question. I mean, was just trying to do an A to B comparison say this time we're gonna use the emergency alert, this time we're gonna flyer everybody, are the responses similar? What is the best method going forward? That's all I was trying to figure out. Okay.
So now Okay. We're going go on to old business item six. 6A is town personnel policies. Where are we with this?
So at the last meeting, we agreed that at this meeting, if you had any feedback for myself that you would give it. And Dennis is also here to answer questions about the personnel policies if you have them for Dennis. Because the addition the latest addition you got was the one that had his corrections in them. Any others? Anyone? Anyone have any other issues? Yes. Oh? I wonder if I want a cup of tea. I wonder if you do too. I think Katherine wants tea.
Katherine, what kind of tea would you like? Hey Katherine, walk on over. I want some.
Yeah. I want some cheesecake, but I don't ever get it. Okay. So the town personnel policies are done. We we need to vote on that. We're gonna vote on it at the next meeting. Why are we kicking it out of meeting? Why are we voting on it now? I want to vote on it next meeting. Why? If you want to vote on it in this meeting you make it.
I'd like to make a motion that we vote on the town personnel policy. Second.
Okay. Anybody else for the discussion? Anybody read it? Yes. We all read it. We it's been it's been circulating for a long comments for many of us. No. He did Dennis did a great job. You know, you complain when I have comments and you complain when I don't, so I can't win. Eugene, you have to have a comment. Jeff Murray, I expect to be quiet and somber. You will have a comment. Right, vote on it. Let's go. All those in favor. Aye. Aye.
All right. We can get that one off the list. 6B, community connectivity grant. Eric, where are we at with that?
So I'm a little annoyed. We're waiting on the state to give us a letter that basically says they will grant us a, what do you call, an encroachment permit to do work within their purview. And I was a little annoyed with the guy and he wouldn't exactly tell me what was holding it up. And then I found out from another state person, that she was the one holding it up because she wanted to have a meeting with me before she had the other guy issue the permit. So I went out there and met with them on-site again this week. Hopefully that solved that problem And that's kind of the next hurdle we've got. The contractor that is doing the electrical portion of the upgrade, which has to be done before that, he and I have met on-site again also. And he still won't give me any kind of firm date, but he says it's likely they'll be done somewhere the end of August, beginning of September. So I realize that's pretty unsatisfying, certainly unsatisfying to me, but that portion has to go first. So we're waiting on kind of two things. We're waiting on Ducey Electric to finish their portion and we're waiting on the state to issue us a letter saying that later they will issue us an encroachment permit. Is that still District 2? Yes. Is it District 2 or District 1?
I think we're District 1 aren't we? Depends where in town you are that's why I'm asking. I think that's District 1 territory there.
For the rest of our knowledge, does District 1 and District 2 matter other than who you have to deal with?
I know the engineer in District 2, I could have called. Try to get a firm date, that's all. Okay. All right. Anything else on that, Eric? No? Nope. All right. 6C email provider Office three sixty five.
So that's another frustration of mine. I emailed again today, you know, and I emailed his boss and said, hey, we need to execute this.
I did get an answer from Scott Roberts. His email is we are working on it right now. We're dealing with an issue with Microsoft and the Office three sixty five license. I will follow-up with the staff tomorrow to see what we can do. We have the reseller working on the issue now. I will respond to you tomorrow with an update.
Is there a reason he emailed you though instead of Eric?
Yes. Because I asked Eric last week for his email address because I've been without town email for a while and I wanted to email him directly.
Just curious. Wanted to make sure Eric wasn't getting the short end of that. Eric, did I ask you for that email address? Absolutely.
Did you provide it to me? And I was happy to provide it to you and let you rattle his chain too. That's So so you know what? I I I am Adrian, I don't know if you know this, but I am the first selectman. So I send an email off. Okay? So hopefully that can get solved because I would like to get back on the Andover Town email.
As long as you start reading them, we'll be good.
That is true, isn't it? Alright. Well, Jeff Murray just swatted a mosquito. I don't know if you noticed it, Adrian. I saw it. I saw it.
60. It's a little darker at Jeff's house. I wonder if he's not in Andover. That's because I'm so shiny. I'm like the sunshine.
He's in the middle of an open field not one tree. Jeff Murray has nice foliage around him. It's nice. I've got a suntan so I'm a little darker. All that golf you've been playing.
Alright, it's 60. Three times a week. 60 transfer station operations and policy.
So, Jeff Murray had asked that the, Dennis come back with a recommendation for a modification of the existing ordinance regarding the transfer station. And Dennis provided that and he also provided a bunch of commentary from a couple of years ago when a similar question arose and that was included in your packet. I think Dennis can probably speak to what procedure would need to happen if we were to modify our existing ordinance to do what Jeff is interested in.
Okay, if I may, Jeff did all the hard work, came up with all the details and I just put it into a slightly different format and I softened it a little bit and looking it over again before the meeting tonight I think I got too easy. I think Jeff is right. What I did was I oh, I said that if you had two offenses within three months that you could be you could lose your you could lose your privileges. You know, a few weeks ago, did a we did something that Andover hasn't done in many years and that is to pass an ordinance by the Board of Selecting because it was obviously I think a minor ordinance. And in discussions with Eric earlier this week, very brief discussions, Eric was saying that because I my first my first inclination was just to take this and plug it into the old ordinances that are right on the books right now that go back to nineteen ninety, ninety one. There's two of them. The first one was regulating the transfer station. The second one passed a year later in response to the state law regarding recycling came in 1991 a year later. So there's two ordinances there.
You know, there's some overlap but they are mutually exclusive though related. And I thought maybe it would be a good idea. I found a place where we could plug it in. The problem is that we'd have to go as Eric pointed out is we'd have to go to town meeting with. To go to town meeting with something like that, which is I think it's relatively minor except for one item. And that is the item of possibly taking away somebody's privileges at the transfer station, which is a loss of, you know, of an important benefit for a resident of Andover to lose that. Of course, you know, another way I softened up, excuse me, Jeff's, proposal was I used the word may instead of shall, which meant that Eric as top administrator had discretion.
So, you know, you would hope that something like this, nobody's ever gonna lose their privileges. They're just gonna they're just gonna shape up because they're gonna have to get warned at least once and probably won't lose their privileges unless they get warned, unless they commit two offenses. So it's it's fairly soft. So the question then becomes can we just pass this as a board of selectmen minor ordinance? I think you could And the reason I think you could is because there's language in the current ordinances which are thirty years old that seems to suggest that the town has the authority to implement regulations that would make these ordinances run smoothly. So I think you could. I think you could pass it in the form of a regulation instead of an ordinance. And I don't know that you have a list a set of regulations in town. I've never seen any. But the ordinance, these ordinances do provide for regulations. So you don't have any. So this would be a regulation.
The only additional thing you'd have to do in addition to what I'm now going to suggest is to appoint Eric, the town administrator, which of course we didn't have thirty years ago when these ordinances were passed. The second ordinance I believe it is the recycling ordinance. Yes, it is the recycling ordinance. The 1991 ordinance says that you should appoint somebody to be the administrator of the transfer station. I don't believe the, I think the attendant is not the administrator because the attendant is defined in one of the ordinances, you know, in the way that, you know, given the responsibilities that the attendant now has. So I would just add to this and this is one thing you could do, it's up to you. It's a little bit of a risk because you know, you're a town meeting town. So when you pass ordinances under normal circumstances, they're supposed to be passed by town meeting. But what I'm telling you is you could pass a regulation under this ordinance without going to town meeting. Because you know, you go to town meeting with something like this, who knows what's going to Right. And this makes perfect sense. This whole thing makes sense. If somebody is going down there and giving a hard time to the attendant, and the attendant is so upset with it that he goes back and complains to Eric. I mean, that person needs to be, you know, gotten into line as Jeff has been saying through his writing. And so I think you could pass this as a regulation and at the same time just add one thing to it. And that would be to give
Eric the responsibility as he is the town administrator. So why shouldn't he be the administrator of the transfer station? So that's my that's my basic spiel on this. But I did add some items that Eric put in his packet, which a couple of years ago we had an issue over the board of the then board of selectmen passed a resolution. Adding fees for the transfer station. You have to pay $40 for a sticker and $20 for a second sticker for a household. And people were upset about it and I looked at the ordinances and I found in the second one, there was authority for the Board of Selectmen to exercise this discretion and to charge a fee. So in so doing, I worked with Carol Liana,
who has, you know, a lot of interaction with people, you know, especially when they buy stickers. I guess they have to go to her to get the sticker. And Carol Lee came up with a proposed, you know, these ordinances are thirty years old. And I don't even know if they're correct in terms of their definitions as to, you know, what is recyclable, what is not. I live next door to Tom DeVivo, who's the president of Willy Waste and he knows a lot more about that than I do and probably than most people. But but I would think that we Carol's right that we do need a, you know, an update of those two thirty year old ordinances. But they said, meanwhile, the the matter at hand is simply Jeff's proposal, which I'm going to suggest to you go out on a limb a little bit. Not the first time I've done that. And know, you get older and you reach a point where you don't care as much. All right. So I don't care as much. Jeff knows I like to Dennis. All right. All right. So we know we need to update
the ordinances. We do have to go through That's fine. Jeff Murray, is the way that this is written acceptable to you since you led this? Let me just tell you what I took, I changed, I took out some language that
I added to Jeff's language and it made it softer and I'm good. But Jeff Murray, have you seen this new update? Yes, I read it and you know, I'm kind of fiftyfifty on the three month window. I mean, I think it should be within that sticker renewal period. You know, if we have habitual offenders within that three times within the sticker renewal period, that we will not be able to renew their sticker. And I think the final decision would be on the board of selectmen. If we had somebody that, you know, violated the ordinance three times, I think the final decision would probably should rest on us. The first two decisions could rest on Eric. But when we decide that we're gonna not renew a sticker for somebody, you know, and not allow them to dump at the transfer station anymore. I think that's probably that responsibility for Billy should rest on board of selectmen.
I agree with Jeff that should rest on board selectmen. I also agree with him that it's probably be within a sticker renewal period. Do we think that are there any steps in between sending a letter and actually pulling the sticker? Is there anything in there or no?
Well, there's warning. There's warnings. Oh, yeah. You know, Jeff put that into his proposal. And all I would suggest is that if you're looking at it now in paragraph five was I had a second offense within three months. I just deleted three months. A second offense after a first written warning may result in a letter, a second letter. The town administrator, oh, that would that would impose a two week suspension. Okay. Two weeks you'd have to find somewhere else to. Well, I'll leave it at that. And then for the third offense, I put within six months. Maybe Jeff would like to change that to within one year because the sticker periods one year. Well, third offense
So my concern is if you if you suspend them initially,
are we Jen just get are we getting We're not sustained here. We're not suspending anybody initially. We just issue a letter to them saying, you know, they violated the the ordinance and that, you know, this behavior is not gonna be tolerated and then we would spell out the additional steps we would take if this behavior continues. And my hope would be after the first time and then actually that we have this in place that we wouldn't have any additional issues. So then we have a two week suspension the next time, right? Yep. Then
the third time, for a third offense after a second written Then you pull this Then you go and select May the issue a letter including a suspension for one month and a warning that any additional offense that would be a fourth offense may result in a six week suspension and depending on the gravity of the offenses, possibly a permanent revocation of the permit to be determined by the Board of Selection.
So Jeff, is it possible for you to get with Dennis and get this because we should pass this ordinance? I mean, we should regulation. Yeah,
Yeah, I can get with Jeff and I think I need to
fine tune it just a bit. Mr. Murray. Just keep it keep it within the sticker period. I think we'd be fine.
Well, Mr. Murray, do you think we should ramp that up a little quicker? It just seems like to get to four fences before we pull their sticker is just kinda I I think it's I think three strikes is fine. I
would hope that I would hope that the first time we wouldn't have any further issues. I I would support it if we did it after three. Okay.
So would I. That was my original proposal. Okay. Can you come back to it and maybe in a little while I can just mark it up and make it different and make it just the way. I know just what you wanna do. Okay. Do we have take out the third step? I
know Mr. Mandeville is interested in voting on everything immediately,
which I'm okay for. Do we wanna vote on this today or do we wanna vote on this next month? Well, Jeff has got some time or Dennis has got some time if he's willing to do it because we're gonna need him later anyways.
Let him do it. Yeah. If he if he has a completed, it's satisfactory to us all. Let's vote on it. Yeah. I'm gonna stick I'll
stick around for a while. This is there's nothing better on
television and Jeff always likes to listen. We can come back to this. Well, there's the there's the Ford Bronco reveal started at 08:00 if you're interested.
I'm not. This is this is more fun, as long as it's only once a month. All right. So we have a tremendous amount of things in seven. So let's do, seven.
Alright. I'll be back with you. I'm gonna mute myself now. Go. So seven a, plans for reopening town hall. Eric?
So give me two seconds and let's see whether, I have the correct version.
Well, you want to jump to something else or? No, I got it. So basically
here's my suggestion, you know, when I'll give you the highlights, I can share my screen if you want to see the whole plan or I can send it to you. But my suggestion would be starting eightthree, which is August 3, we transition to appointment based reopenings. So basically we keep the door locked. If you need an appointment, you call, you make an appointment, we let you in, we go through the safety protocol, we do what we need to do, and then plan on around September 1, reopen to the public, you know, reopened, front door only unlocked, if it looks like we have continued low community spread of COVID-nineteen. If that's acceptable to you.
We are gonna have to get some additional stuff and make some additional physical changes to the building. I have talked to essentially all the offices, the clerk's office, the assessor's office, the tax collector's office, the building department, you know, and the financial office about what they would need to feel safe reopening to the public, know, because part of the issue is just simply the reticence of employees here to have that much contact with the public under these conditions. So Can I think
we back up though and just can't we just time our opening contingent with stage four for Connecticut?
Well, we're not even at, they haven't even run stage three. Three, yeah. So the state has delayed the phase three reopening, based on some of the results from other states. So you tell me, what do you wanna do? I mean, I basically wanted to make sure I had a plan in place because at the last meeting, you know, you decided to bring the staff back and I was not prepared for it. So that was my fault. And I'm just trying to be proactive and have a plan if you decide that's what you want to adopt.
I'm open to whatever people want to do. I just looking at it and saying, you know, if you know, what are we not accomplishing right now that we're going to accomplish by opening the door? Taking cash payments. Open tomorrow. Touche.
You know, mean we're going to need to cause we're sometime in August, we gotta start issuing stickers for the transfer station. Well, that's a that's a whole another conversation because
Carol Lee had some concern that we're we're asking her to reissue stickers at the same time that they're also doing a primary, you know. So there's already traffic issues for her that she's dealing with, you know. Well,
primarily her office is the one that's responsible for opening the door for people. So, you know. That is true. And so that's interrupting her that's interrupting her process. And then we're also asking her to go out and get in people's cars and put on stickers and stuff. So, you know, I don't know if we want to kick that can down the road as well. Thoughts?
Anything push the push the sticker renewal? Yeah maybe another month.
I already bought my sticker. Wow. I couldn't pay in cash so I can't buy it yet. I I sorry. I paid in cash. $40 to put it on. Oh, exceptions?
Are you the conservatism now in town? I did it before I did it before the rule was put in place. Was I I was I had to go in. I got it done.
So I'll give you 40. You can go buy mine.
I'll get yours tomorrow. I need to, I had asked Eric to do by appointment only if residents really needed to get into the town hall. I thought appointment only was acceptable. I figured that reopening at the point in time the school hopefully gets back in session would be an appropriate time to reopen the town hall because to me, and I've asked Eric, there's nothing that's not getting done.
Well, except for these stickers though, because there is no, you can't do appointment only for stickers. There's too many people that got to run through there. No. I would think if you're gonna do stickers, gotta do something outside.
You gotta do it, you know, on a weekend. You gotta try to be creative as to what you're doing with the stickers. Yeah. Is there any chance we could do it with the transfer station just on a Saturday? I had talked to Kara about that. I had asked her what information she would need. They have to access the database to verify registrations,
right? Yeah. She but she said that there were some alternatives that she could use as to get it done. That's something that we'd have to ask Eric to sit there and spearhead to sit there and see what we could do. But that was my thought is that we do something along the lines of stickers outside at the town hall offices or at the transfer station to sit there and expedite the process. Now listen, I have no problem extending the transfer sticker window an extra month. I mean, you've got to believe that we'll be out of this toward the beginning to end of September. We'll never be out of it. Granted, Eric's laughing. We'll probably never be out of it, but we have to be in a position where we have to get back to it come September. So if you guys want to extend the sixty day window that we put in place for another thirty days, I would support that. But I do believe we need to, maybe that's even a bad idea because if we wanna do it outside, we really should be doing it in August and September.
Well, I have no problem if we can come up with a solution that does it at the transfer station or outside, have no problem with that.
So then Eric, can you find out from Carol what it would take to sit there and do the transfer sticker program at the transfer station if we can sit there and find a way to get that done?
You could get some of them out of the way.
Yeah. Most people are gonna be there are gonna have a sticker anyway so it's just a renewal. Right. So it's not really, do we really need to see the database?
We had problems last year with people that had moved out of town coming in for renewals. Yeah, unfortunately, yes.
But I wonder whether given the totality of the circumstances, you know, we can accept the fact that we're gonna miss a few people, you know, and to speed it up. The problem comes in is that, you know, now you're asking them to take cash or checks at the transfer station and
Why don't we get would be fine. Why don't we get Square and sit there and take credit cards?
Because Square is gonna charge us a fee. About Venmo. It's still you're still paying two or 3% some of that.
And we don't have Internet access to the system. So I People don't have access to Venmo, everybody. No. So I have a credit card and I and I and I and it would have to be a swipe of a credit card. I'd lose, it's 2.75% on $40 That's square? Dollar. And then that way they don't have to have cash. I mean, it's just an option. I mean, listen, as a town, we should have a credit card option. It's as easy as possible. So
Carol just collect the numbers and just like swipe the card with an old school you know the carbons and the swipe and then just run it the next day. Mine don't have the thing to do it anymore. It's more expensive.
Jeff it's more expensive. Just to hand key them in? Hand key them Yeah. You don't want well, here's a question. Eric, do we even have town phones that can plug in a Square app too?
You mean like town, like we don't have a functional phone at the transfer station at the moment. We put a conduit in so we can put one in the transfer station shed eventually. You know, we're
to Jeff's Jeff's Square app is it's it plugs into the bottom of your phone and you just swipe. You Adrian, you can get a you can get a little adapter.
Yeah. Not not not just the adapter. No. My point is we can't Hold on. Hold on. You know, I was dealing with this today. So here's the adapter. Yes. Wait. It does plug into the phone. It's not a Yeah. But we can't we can't ask an employee to use their phone. I understand. But there there's a there's a little reader, it fits in your hand, it's a chip reader, it would just go in, it would take a little bit of time. I'll get some information to Eric to sit there and look at it, how much money it would cost. But you're talking a dollar, we'd lose a dollar for fees for every one of the people that paid with credit card. Now, don't like that. I don't like losing that money, but if it allows Carol or whoever has to do this this not to carry cash around while we're trying to get through this, it might be an option. I'm not saying that the best option, but it's a dollar and 10¢ in the fees if somebody swiped their card. Anyway, it's just an option. Let's find Eric, find a way if it can be done, that would be great.
Yeah. Let's try to do something. Let's let's agree to this now so we can informally do something if we come up with it later. Okay, so
you want me to do online renewals? Can we do online renewals? And then we just send them the stickers? Exactly. Well, that's 52¢ we lose but that's fine. That's better than a dollar 10. But then they can do that right from the town hall. They can just send out the they can send them out through town hall. Correct. I mean, if it's just a renewal, I'm not talking about new ones. I'm talking about renewals. Yeah. We're asking to
send in a $40 check, no cash, a $40 check and they sit there and they give them a renewal.
Or we do it through PayPal or we do it through PayPal or credit card. Yeah. Why can't we set it up with the website vendor we currently have now? Just through e commerce. Yeah.
And they can put in there in the comment section, they can put in their current sticker number and then we can verify it that way.
That's fine. Eric, look at ask Carol to sit there and go through that and see what's up. And then Paula, the one thing that you and Amanda could do is if the if our our website provider has an e commerce solution, that would be great. Yep.
We'll look into It will be all about the fees for the transactions. That That will be the basis. Okay. Upcoming road maintenance project 7B.
So at the moment, nothing. I'm as soon as this gets over my next thing is figuring out what we need to shim. For those of you interested in reading it you can go on the Andover website look on the administrators page and I posted a thirty minute video discussion of the current roadwork plan if you're so inclined to review what our plans are. Just because I know you've asked me to be more visible to the public of what we're doing. So I thought I'd start with that one because that's the one I get the most questions on.
Any questions for the Board of Selectmen members to Eric on that?
Eric, do you know what might be appropriate? Maybe we're getting close to the end of this current blast of roadwork, right? Correct. Maybe you could write a letter to the river east thanking residents for their participation and courtesy during it and you know tell them how great it went. Tell them if they're interested in learning more about our roadwork plans. You can point them to your video on the town website. Get the town involved.
And then maybe just copy that to the Facebook page, etcetera, etcetera.
Okay, 7 C is the Agent Orange Monument. Jerry Wright, who lives on Lake Road is on this call. So I believe it's appropriate to allow Jerry to speak related to this issue. So Jerry, if you would. Hi, Jeff. Hey, Jerry. How are you? Good.
Just to let Adrian know that I just got a Facebook message that Pizza Hut is doing cashless. It's strictly credit card, just to let him know. But the agent orange monument the agent orange monument, do you have the paperwork in front of you? Do all the selectmen have the paperwork? It was in the packet, Jorg. Yeah. And have you all reviewed it? Yes. Yep.
Okay. And you see where I would like to put it if that's okay with with the town and selectman seems to fit nicely up in that corner. To keep in mind too, that there's also going to be two granite benches. They'll be set on an angle so you can sit and look at the front and then you can angle one in the back but you sit and look at the one in the back. The reason for this monument is the picture of the Agent Orange Heart and that monument is what I saw in Texas two years ago. And I did call them and talk to the grounds of maintenance man who had there thirty eight years and he said they'd like to see one in every state. So this will be the second one. And what's going to make this difference? Different than any other Asian orange monument is the back of that monument will have an etched laser etched scene to explain the front. And I'm not really divulging what that is yet. I'm working with two artists, one to please sketch artists from Coventry PD and
one is the artist from Nolan's Monu ment. The stone is black India granite. It comes from India and it's very expensive. But they like to use it because there's no there's no blemishes. There's no white in it. And the etching comes out absolutely beautiful. So this is going to run around $21,000 I talked to Ron Bisson and he is going to do the groundwork at no cost. The groundwork will be to dig a hole for a concrete base and set a granite stone on top of the base, and then the monument is glued to the granite base. And he said he does this for several monument companies. He knows how to do it. And so I thanked him for that. There is no time limit. I talked to the young lady who does the laser etching and she is booked right through till January 1. She etches for 34 different companies and she is absolutely, does absolutely beautiful work. So it's probably not going to happen much until next spring or early summer. Once the stone is in, it takes them quite a while to put it on the face. The colors Yellow and orange are the hardest colors to put in and fade quickly. The paint they use will last ten years. And then it has to be touched up and we'll of course we'll get all the paint codes and won't know how to touch it up. As far as raising money for this, I contacted American Legion Post ninety five in Hebron that I belong to and they are a 501c19
and I talked with the adjutant from the American Legion and they are willing to funnel the money through there. So what they'll do is once you approve that the stone can go in there and it's in the meeting, what I'll do is I'll contact the Legion and we'll start advertising that people can send donations right to the Legion. This stone will be owned by the town. So when we're all done, this is your monument. I wanted this to be one of a kind. I wanted this to be the only one like it in the country. And with the laser etching on the back to tell the story, it's going to be awesome. In fact, the stone is a little bit bigger than the one out in Texas. And that's about it. You know, I'm very passionate about the Agent Orange. I just found out today that there is a good chance that the VA and Congress is going to bring our bill to the floor by the end of the week. And so we're working with about 60 standards right now to get that bill up and get it passed. The state of Connecticut has a SJ-eighteen, which the state of Connecticut will support our bill through the Agent Orange and it passed the Veterans Committee. And I testified before the House on Veterans Affairs, I passed unanimously. And then the virus set in, and of course, it hasn't gone to Senate or hasn't gone to the House to be voted on, signed by the governor, and then off to Washington with that letter.
But the stone will be absolutely beautiful. I think it'll accent the park. And I'd like to propose something, and I maybe go a little bit ahead of myself, but the park needs help. This sits on a very busy highway where thousands of people drive by there every day. And I think it looks horrible. It's not mowed right. I don't think it's mowed right. It needs to be irrigated. It needs a new flagpole. It needs to say Andover welcomes veterans. I mean, we have a nice little piece of property there that could be dressed up. And
I'll talk to Eric a little bit more about that, but I'd like to take him more of a hand. Jerry, you're sort of preempting another group in town. We have a committee that's got a lot of ideas for that already that they've been talking about. So they actually have a a proposal for irrigation, and they're looking at redoing the lawns down there. So
so Well, they've been doing that for about four years now. So Well we'll see where that goes. I hear you. But they're they're rightly Lee's moving in the right direction.
Okay. So so Jerry, thank you for that. Do any of the selectmen have any questions for Jerry regarding this monument?
Jerry, so the the four cones, that's where the the monument itself would go, and then the bench would go from the the two on the left back. Is that correct? Correct. K.
K. Anyone else? Personally, I have zero problem with the monument. I think it would be a nice addition to that area to support a veterans cause that is near and dear to one of our nicest residents in town. So I think we should sit there and get out a vote on that. The only question I would have, Jerry, is I know you're keeping the back of that monument close to the vest, but it might be something you want to share at some point. Well,
I can give you kind of an insight in about six seconds.
Or would you like speak? I'm not ready to share it. I just sit there and think about it from the other members and Eric's perspective. We'd have to We
to follow-up with if we vote this in and it gets voted on, I think we should see that before it's it's finalized. Just sharing What are worried about, Jeff? He's not gonna do a self portraiture or nothing. We're good. He's fine. I and he'd look good on that too, but, you know. Okay.
Anyone wanna make a motion on that? I would make a motion that we move the, monument forward at Veterans Park for the agent Lawrence. I'll second that.
Further discussion anyone? All right, let's, let's vote on that. All those in favor? Aye. Jerry, thanks for the presentation. Thank you. Thanks, David.
Alright. Seven d, the Lake Street block party. I know Michelle Vail spoke to this earlier. Does any any of the select men wanna make comments on this?
Eric, do we know is the is the trooper currently scheduled to be working that day?
Well, at this point, since the original date has come and gone before this meeting, I don't think we have, Michelle can speak to that, but I think the date is still a little up in the air depending on what your decision is. Michelle, do you have a list of dates?
Well, we were looking, hopefully to do it the third or second Saturday in August. Since you already have something going on this past July. And so I think the August 2 and August 15 would be a great weekend to try to put it in place. Okay.
I mean, my only thought on this is that if if the trooper happens to be working that day, that would be beneficial only because if there is something that goes south, it'd be better to have him in town than not in town. That's my own personal take on it, but I don't want him to be working overtime either. So it has to be far enough out that we can ask that that be one of his days for that week.
Okay. Yeah, that that would work. Of course, always the biggest thing is if there's a thunderstorm. Yeah. We can't we can't like, you know, move around. So I would go for the eighth first. And if it happens to be a thunderstorm, push it to the fifteenth. And if there's a thunderstorm again, then we'll just wait until next year. Okay.
I guess the other thing would be is given that there are other residents in the area besides just your if you have a band or something, there should be a limit as to what time they're playing to, you know.
Oh absolutely. We were thinking about maybe going from four to nine the latest. Don't want to go past 09:00. That's about five hours to close the road. It may even be beneficial just go from five to nine. Just make it four hours and make sure the band stops at 08:30 and gives everybody time to clean up and get the signs out of the road and so forth.
Any chance we could keep this during the daylight hours because what my concern is is if we is anybody is I just would be concerned about somebody not seeing the signs at night and how are we going to mitigate the traffic after sunset?
Yeah, I think think it starts getting dark like right now it's 08:39 so it's just starting to get dark. We can always make it start at from two to six doesn't have to be from four to nine.
Yeah I just wonder if it'd be safer for everybody if it would be like you know towards sunset we kind of wrapped it up a little bit. Oh absolutely. They ended by 08:00 Jeff.
No I'm just saying whatever sunset is on that day that we end by sunset or you know within within twenty minutes of sunset just because you know that way we don't need lights or any you know the sign at the signage may not be visible at night. That's what that's one thing I'm concerned about somebody coming down there and not realizing the roads closed. Correct. I totally understand and agree.
Do we want to set a limit on how long the road can be closed for and then just give them a time like maybe we say the road can be closed for no more than five hours and they can hold it between twelve and eight p. M.
That would be acceptable. All right. One other thing I'd say, would we go with our event paperwork you know for a special event like you know we have to have to we use those guidelines where we have to notify the fire department in case there's emergency. Absolutely. So that would probably be one of the things that we should request. Right, would I'd make
make a motion then that we, upon submission of event paperwork to the town administrator, the block party be allowed, to start not before twelve noon, but to end no later than 8PM, and that it needs to be coordinated that the state trooper is working on the day of the event not in overtime.
I'd like to make an addendum for that that we actually dished that the special paperwork is filed.
Yeah that's what said contingent on paperwork to Eric. Okay okay okay okay yep I'm sorry maybe I said it quick. Yep so you would second that Jeff.
I'll second that. Okay I got it I got a quick question for Michelle. Michelle I know you always do your homework so you're probably gonna you're probably gonna answer yes. So everybody that this is gonna affect on that street there they they you've contacted them and they're in favor of it and okay with it.
Well, not everybody has been contacted yet, but I will definitely set up a flyer to pass it out from residents from any area that it's going to affect the traffic. We are leaving Matheson open. Those residents on Rockledge and Brown will can go up and around. And the most area that we're going to block is from 187 to 164, which is the flattest and most shadiest area that we'll be in. But I will definitely make sure that all the residents know
more than three weeks and it'd be Just to be clear, Michelle, when we originally heard about this, we were told all the residents were in favor of this. I want to make sure that Yes.
Well, not Yeah, I didn't get to every single resident, but the most residents that live on this street I can name at least 10 of them. I connected with Facebook and then I talked to others. They're fine with a short period.
Okay. Well, let's make sure that I think it might be appropriate that you have assured us that you've contacted everyone on the event paperwork. Okay. I will do that.
Because God forbid we get somebody that gets landlocked for five hours and it's not gonna be pretty. Don't really matter
what event you would hold, there will be at least a few people that object to it and I'll tell you that right up front. I'm more concerned about someone getting trapped on a street that they can't drive on because it's closed. Right. Yeah. I'm exactly.
Yep. So Totally understand. I mean driving around because the street is closed as long as they can get there, I don't think that's the end of the world. But being locked in on a street that's got a whole party going on, that's not great. So you're
saying that if a single person objects you don't want me to issue a permit is that what you're saying just so that I'm clear? No. I would not go ahead.
I'm gonna say no because the way it sounds is people can still get around but you're asking why?
If they're in the closed section Yeah. Not it not in the drive around in the closed section. I mean, you're talking about what 10 houses somewhere in there,
Michelle. But what I what I worked on is that Jeff Ballard lives at 187, which is the bottom of Brown. And his house would pretty much be the only one really locked in and he's fine with that. So, from Jeff's house down to my house, even though the road is closed, these neighbors here will still be able to get in and out. Okay. I will probably park my car to block any any further traffic going over. Yeah. And then from 01/1964, remember where that house burned down a few years ago? Okay.
So, from there on, even though the road would be closed, those neighbors will still be able to leave. So the only one that we're really blocking in, which is Jeff Ballard, and he really doesn't have a problem, you know, being blocked in. He's actually, you know, looking forward to letting us even use part of his lawn.
I don't have a problem with it, but everybody needs to be notified. Everybody needs to be notified. Exactly.
Yep. I will get working on that. And get to the other residents that I didn't to talk to yet
okay any other questions okay Let's, vote on the proposed motion for the block party. All those in favor? Aye. Jeff
verbally, are you in favor of the block party? I'm in favor. He's back. He had his hand up. Well, I figured he was moving inside.
The mosquitoes. Nope, I had turned my lights on so you could see my face. The mosquitoes are getting to him.
Nope, just had to turn the lights off. I pulling them out of their hair as we speak.
The protein. The administrator's overpayment. Eric, do you want to discuss this one with us?
Do I want to? No. Am I willing to? Yes. So as I alluded to earlier and I told you, we as a town screwed up my pay pretty badly. I was overpaid fairly considerably since the day I was hired. So my way of reconciling that is basically to skip the next three paychecks and then pay the rest off over a period after that. Unfortunately, that was a screw up when I got hired. And what happened was this year while we were setting up for the next fiscal year, Barbara looked at it and she calculated what I should be making a month and then looked at what I was making a month and said, we got a problem. So that's my method for addressing it. Know, shouldn't have happened. Reality is I should have caught it a lot earlier, but I didn't and we screwed up and that's where we are.
So your remedy is to forego the next three pay periods and then take the rest out over how long of a period?
Between now and December, so I keep it all in the same tax year.
Do any members of the board is likely to have a problem with that?
Well, least we're not playing finders keepers, so I'm good with it. He's not saying IOU, so Yeah. Good thing we're not paying in cash.
Absolutely. So the only the only thing is well, Eric, if that's how you you you worked it out, that's fine. I I don't have a problem with it. I mean, as I discussed with you before, it shouldn't have happened. Corrective action needs to make sure that we don't do this in the future.
I think what Jeff is trying to say is that we appreciate you trying to come up with a reasonably quick solution for this. And although it's above and beyond, we realize it's above and beyond. Beyond. Thank you.
I don't think we necessarily need to make a motion to approve that. Eric is just gonna put that in place. Okay.
All right. Let's see. We had all of these items added. So let's sit there and see if we can get through these. 7F, the hiring of the inland wetland agent, Joseph Wagner.
So what I'm telling you is that we found somebody that's a good solution for a employee that we need, which is an inland wetlands and water courses agent. So I would like to hire him. I'm just notifying you of that. The last time I asked you to make a motion to hire him and you told me it was my authority. So I'm telling you unless you have an issue with it, we are hiring Joseph Wagner as the IWWC agent. What day does he start? Today? Effective this meeting.
Okay. Anybody have any issues? I'm good with it. Everybody good with it? We're good. All good. Seven gs transferred transfer station shed orientation. How do you want it oriented?
I'd like it turned 90 degrees. I'll make a motion as such. I'll second that.
Alright. Further discussion. Why does it have to be turned 90 degrees? We don't need to discuss that. Okay. That's perfect. I guess I get to vote for that then. Anybody else? Jeff Murray? Good. Paula, good. All right. Made a motion to put Scott seconded it. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? All abstain. All right. So we're going to go to seven H of athletic field usage contracts with HAMR, FC North, and the adult soccer program. So I know, Eric, that you put in the HAMR contract, I believe. Correct. So for everybody to understand, HAMR is utilizing the softball field there or the softball field, they're donating all of the time and energy for all the meetings related to that field. So the reason why that contract was for a dollar is because they're putting all the time and energy to it. With Scott Persona, because Scott Persona has helped them with some of the heavy lifting. The other ones are FC North and the adult soccer use the
soccer field. I reached Eric. FC North has not communicated with you on the contract?
So, I reached out to Kyle. I sent him a contract, a copy of the contract with $10,000 in as the fee required and told him I expected it as of this meeting. However, I would say that since the town didn't have functional email for four of those days, which was shortly after I sent it, I don't know whether he sent it and it got bounced back or he didn't send it.
I did not reach out to him today. I should have, but I just was kind of buried today. I reached out to him and I texted him and I asked him where it was because we had asked for it prior to this meeting and he told me that he's still working on it. We have to put a timeline for COVID and this has to be resolved. So it has to be resolved before, absolutely before the end of this month. So I will stay on top of them, Eric. If you communicate with them, we have to get that contract signed and all of the insurances in place or we have to eliminate the usage of the field for that organization.
Most importantly, have the waivers been signed and given back to Eric? We don't have any paperwork back from them. How about for ham from hammer? You have waivers? You have all the waivers?
We in discussion with the town's attorney we we decided to go with the same waiver format that Hebron was which was to allow them to sign a blanket waiver as an organization and we do have that. Good. Makes it simple. Dennis, your hand is up.
Yeah, I'm connected to the little league here in Willamantic and in fact we play against Hammer quite often And they have the same situation we have. They're required to be insured. They cover all the players. They cover the coaches, they cover the fans. So in that particular instance, I was satisfied with the Hebron waiver. I changed the contract somewhat. I wrote the contract, it's different. But as far as the waivers went, decided, Eric and I decided that we would not require a waiver from each individual ball player. That they did not wanna do that. It would be a administrative nightmare for them and I didn't see any need for it. Knowing what I know about how the National Little League operates and they're affiliated. So I'm comfortable with that.
Okay. FC North I know is involved with Connecticut Junior Soccer Association. So they have insurances for the individual players, but we have to get all of the paperwork from Kyle or we have to, like I said, eliminate access to the field. So that has to get done. The men's soccer, the adult soccer program, Eric, where are we with them?
So I reached out a couple times to the guy that's running that whose name I can't pronounce. Ken Sudlowski. That's the one. And I'm still waiting. He sent me some of that information, but frankly I was having a really hard time emailing him. This last time. I also included Fred Oliver, and asked him to forward it to him. Again, I have not followed up on him today, but most of the time between now and when the last time I emailed him, we haven't had functional emails. Again, it's possible. He's tried to send me the information. I don't know. I need to reach out to him and follow-up with that. All right. Since most, I'm
pretty sure most of those people are town residents, we should probably have that organization sign waivers. That should almost be like a recreation program and the adult soccer program can participate in that. Mean, that's how we should look at that group.
So you don't want them to allow them to do a blanket waiver?
I'm not sure how that like that they're not part of a little league organization they're not part of you know, are they? I mean you tell me are they part of an entity? I didn't believe they're part of an entity. Yeah, no they are. They're part of an adult soccer
overall organization and I have the insurance stuff for them.
So I have a fair bit of paperwork, but I do not have signed waivers for them. All right, if that's acceptable, I don't really have a problem. I was just thinking it would be more like a recreational program sponsored by the town. Go ahead, Dennis. Perhaps I should look at that paperwork
just to be safe and to make sure that if somebody gets hurt, that we're not on the hook.
Sure. Yeah. So I so I play with that group sometimes and I think it's it's just a pickup game here and there. So I don't think it's an organization.
So we should look at the paperwork and if we need to get them to sign waivers, we should. All right. Do we have any more issues on that? Any of the other members have any issues on that usage issue? Okay. Seven I running races on the rail trail Jeff.
We originally approved this. This was through Ken Platt Platt Systems. He has actually got permission to use Ben Franklin and the rail trails. So he's not really using town property. So I don't really think there's anything we could do to really stop him from running the races. I mean, it would be a state issue. As long as he's following state guidelines and he's limiting the participation, I think we're good. But I just wanted to make the selectman aware that he was intending on having two events at Ben Franklin and utilizing the rail trail. And just to mention it and to see if anybody had any issues with him doing that. I don't think so.
It's gonna be a time trial format so they're gonna have social distancing. They're not gonna be allowed to congregate after the event. He's just basically gonna put the results out online so people can see how they did. Did we lose Paula?
She went inside. You were you were the man. I know. Citronella is my friend.
Oh there is there's the loser. There's the loser of the Iron Man. He won fair and square. Was getting in bit.
I saw you doing this. I'm like, oh, yeah. She's getting bit. It's coming. See, Adrian. I bet on the right horse. I know. She she owes you know what? I'd say she owes me but she does so much for the town I can't say that so. Oh so so yeah I don't think we need to make a motion on this
this this event I just I just want to make everybody aware that he was still he was still planning to have those events. That was all. Right. More used to the
town assets the better even though they have to go from Benjamin Franklin's property to town property to the trail. And that was part of the discussion we had before about
the connectivity grant making the changes at the Center Street. He made those changes. Okay.
All right. So seven J is the last item on new business senior services planning, Eric.
Okay, so in your packet was a summary of the COVID-nineteen ops plan for seniors. And at this point, there's basically two things. One is we're opening back up the grocery shopping weekly trips. We're trying to do it with the large bus so we can spread people out and meet the state guidance, which is basically one person per row staggered, you know, and put in some safety precautions so seniors would have to wear masks on the bus. And we're going to try to do it either one or two days a week depending on how many seniors we have that want to do that and Roberta's doing the notifying. That's the basic plan and you know it's basically what we're doing now other than we're going from one senior that we're transporting at a time to a maximum of four seniors that we're transporting at a time. You know, and again, I bring that to you because I think ultimately, you know, you should have some say in that. So, and the second thing is we're, you know, opening back up the transportation to medical appointments, because I think it's getting to be an issue now
that we've we've put them off long enough that we have a kind of a backlog of people that need medical transport. And then the last thing, know, that's gonna occur we would like to do between now and the next meeting is on July 31, hold the senior luncheon again, which is a Friday, but do it outside. So if the weather is good, we order pizza from Andover Pizza and we supply the drinks, ice cream, stuff like that, everything packaged and we serve it safely. So we have just one person doing the serving, transfer it to paper plates, transfer it to the seniors, and then we practice social distancing. So we use the tables that are outside, plus what we have inside, so we can spread everybody out. Couples that live together can both sit next to each other at a table. If not, we have essentially nine foot tables. We put one at each end of the table. We spread everybody out and, you know, we try to bring some semblance of the senior luncheon program back, but at an outside venue where it's likely to be safer. Safer. What about if a couple's just dating can they sit together? I'm just saying.
It can also pay cash too, Adrian, just a question it. As a point, I mean, we're going to try to social distance, but it's a good idea to try to get that started. The seniors obviously need to practice social distancing for their own benefit. So I have no problem with you starting up the activities. You have to get back to driving people to medical visits. Absolutely. Yeah, think everything you're proposing sounds reasonable. Good, Eric. You're gonna continue to move that forward? Yeah. Okay.
Where's that outdoor, luncheon gonna be Eric? The town hall.
Town hall? Yep, Scott, you're a senior, aren't you on the list?
Oh. I will be attending. Are you talking to me? Because I am a senior. I said Scott. I'm talking to Scott. Scott is much better looking, much younger looking than me. So I will be attending that and social distancing from the plazis, but I will be there. All right. So can we, move on to aid approval of, minutes? Someone wanna make a motion on that one. Oh, before we go to approval of minutes, can we go to attorney O'Brien? Can we get this, transfer station operation policy?
Do we want to give Jeff a chance to run inside or
No, absolutely not. Jeff is going to get through this whole meeting outdoors. I expect you to sleep outside tonight, Jeff.
All right, Dennis, let's go. If you would find this proposal in your packet, it would help a lot. But anyway, I've retitled it to Board of Selectmen Regulation authorizing suspension or termination of transfer station privileges for certain prohibited behavior. That's the title. It's a regulation. Okay, and then there's a there's an opening paragraph that I've written a new one, which says these regulations are authorized and promulgated pursuant to the ordinance to regulate Andover disposal area number 90 Dash 01 and sections two and three e of an ordinance regulating the recycling of solid waste in the town of Andover number 9103. Okay, then you go to paragraph two. The town administrator is hereby appointed to be the administrator of the town's solid waste recycling program. That's the new paragraph two, one and two. So the current para the old paragraph one becomes three, just the way it reads, transfer station users shall not threaten blah blah blah.
Paragraph two becomes four, Paragraph three becomes five. Paragraph four becomes six. Paragraph seven is, five becomes seven and is changed as follows. Within three months is deleted in the first line and and at the end six weeks is deleted and it's changed to one month. Then paragraph six becomes paragraph eight for and, within six months of is deleted and after is substituted. So the first line reads, for a third offense after a second written warning, and so on and so forth. And then towards the end, I'm going to read the whole paragraph because it's changed a little bit. Okay, for a third offense after a second written warning, the county administrator may issue a letter including a suspension of participation for one month, and a warning that any additional offense against an attendant may be referred to the Board of Selectmen for their consideration of a revocation of the offender's permit. And then the last paragraph seven is now nine, and that stays intact. And that's all I wrote. And I'm just going to ask now that I've read that into the record,
I believe you can legally move move it. I will type it into the draft I wrote before and send it into Amanda. She'll have it when she gets to work tomorrow morning. I'll do it after the meeting if I have to, whatever you want. So somebody needs to move that if they or
amend it or tell me Yeah, to Jeff, you okay with the changes, Mr. Murray?
Yeah, so like, so the, not punishment, but the what's gonna happen for the infraction is first time is gonna be a letter second time is two weeks and the third time is a month.
Well, revocation for the fourth time is, yeah, the fourth on the fourth the fourth violation, that's right. There's a possible revocation by the Board of Selectmen. But you know, that's that requires a referral to you by the administrator. He has discretion all the way through it and so do you. Because obviously you want to you want to, you know, you want to look at what the gravity of the offense was and whatnot. You want to leave discretion. But, you know, the bottom line is for violations and you could lose your privileges as long as you wanna take them away.
I guess my thought was that we were gonna cut it back to three violations and they could lose privileges. That
was my thought as well. Yeah, we had said three strikes and you're out Dennis. Wait minute, let me see. Maybe it's three warnings. Hold on. On. You
get a warning. It should probably be a warning, a one month suspension and then a referral to the selectman for action.
Okay. Instead of a two week suspension you want to eliminate
that. First, you want to just make it two, you want to do two weeks or a month Adrian for the second? I would do a month for the second. Okay. So it's a warning and then you can do a month so you can just say you're not allowed in thirty days. Yeah, you're gonna be not allowed from September 1 to October 1 or something. Third time you get referred to the Board of Selectmen. Could get referred to the Board of Selectmen. That's up to that's going to be up to the administrator. Right. Yeah, but once it's in your hands, then you can do what you you know, you could you could pretty much do anything. So with that change, I would move it forward. So if you if we change, eliminate the two week and just it'll be a letter, one month suspension and then a referral at the town administrator's discretion on a third action. Will do. I'm comfortable with that. Alright. I make a motion that we will accept that as modified. I'll second that.
All right. Further discussion, Eric, just so I understand you're the one that's gonna put this in place. Are you comfortable with a letter and then two weeks and then? No, no. It's a letter, it's two weeks and then it's the Board of Select. That's what's It's a letter, it's a letter thirty days and then a One month and then Board of Selectmen. One month, sorry.
Thank you. Yeah. Okay, here's my question. Oh, sorry. Eric, answer that and then I have a question.
I mean, do I really want to be throwing people out for a month? No. And hopefully it's not something we have to do very often. Hopefully the threat of that will be enough to prevent us from having to actually do anything. Exactly.
Right. I mean the whole point of doing is so that we don't have to do it.
That's why you give them the letter you give them the letter you tell them next time it's gonna be a month. They don't get in after a month then if they do it again then you know.
So what if they come back within the month? So what if you suspend them for a month? You tell them that and they come back the next week. Well then, that's your referral. You might have to go to the police? Yeah, that's your referral to the board of selectmen. Yep, that would be a
third. You have discretion, Eric. You can do or not do depending on the gravity of the offense whether or not you think the offender is going to be, you know, get straight so to speak. And,
you know, give you lots of discretion, gives the board a Send them back a check for their $40 and tell them to get garbage service. I mean Eric this was
a complaint of yours. I think this just gives you some teeth to do some enforcement if you need to and that's what the whole intention is. All right Paul your question?
So we've got two people down there on the weekend and is it just one person on Wednesdays? Correct.
And do we have listen I've witnessed things down there right but what if you have a resident that says I'm being targeted right do we have cameras or anything to back the town employees and up so if the resident says I feel like I'm being targeted, can back it up with some sort of footage or something?
So we do have cameras, but honestly the likelihood of something occurring directly in front of the cameras and we don't have audio so honestly I don't think the cameras are definitive enough to say one way or the other what's actually occurring.
I mean, the three incidents that I dealt with Paula before Eric got hired in that one month, had three incidents and in that month, all three residents admitted that they had done the things they had done but they felt justified like it was okay to do it.
Yeah, I'm not saying it doesn't happen because I was down there two weeks ago and I saw two people blatantly, ridiculously rude and I even said something to somebody but they didn't care. It's like a little girl talking to them.
Well, and in most cases there are other residents around. Yeah.
Stand up for one side or the other. Right, I mean Saturdays
is not going to be an issue. It's just Wednesdays, but I think more of the violations are happening on Saturday anyway.
Agreed and I think most times the residents that are there will stand up for again one side or the other and Eric and us when it comes time if it comes time we'll have to take that into account. Yeah okay. Just a thought.
Whenever you're dealing with a situation like this, and I was a judge for twelve years. So I had a determined credibility based on all kinds of factors. You just know, you just size the person up, you situation up, and you make a call. You're not dealing with a criminal matter. You're not dealing with something that's really, really super serious. If you do, you're gonna have the police involved. Yeah. And I think it's a deterrent just like the police here in Willamantic are. I mean, that's that's their greatest value. They deter people from breaking into my house. And, you know, this this this should be a deterrent. You're probably not gonna get a breakdown situation
unless some person is, you know, has lost it. And, you know, I just, okay, I just wanted to mention that I forgot. I didn't realize until I read the minutes over from last last meeting that Paula that you asked me to consider doing something like this with regards to the town hall. All all town employees. Yep. All town employees and you know we did do something like that in Mansfield when I was there and I tried to find it and I couldn't find it. So I've got a I've got a call into the town clerk who was the who was there when I was there and she would know if it's still in place. I couldn't find it on my computer, but I know we had some really unruly people coming into town hall and threatening town employees and we did have to put something like this in place in for town hall. I think it worked really well. Maybe they don't force it anymore. But, you know, there's always these breakdown situations. People get angry. Can we get that in place for I was reading that ball and I also
thought the same thing. All right. We need to vote on this motion. This is We've not voted on this motion yet. So further discussion on anything else related to the transfer station motion?
Just my question is how are we gonna get it out to the residents? Are we doing a mailer or are we just putting it up with transfer station or?
Well, let's get let's vote on this. Maybe Dennis can come back at our next meeting and get the we can do the same thing for the town hall. And we could put it out as just a courtesy, you know, just something that's about respecting town employees rather than about the transfer station. That might, you know, be a little better. Okay. That be right, Paula? Yep.
Okay. Let's vote on this. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Five nothing. I do think that maybe what we try to do is maybe get this into our local publication. And when we pass the next part and have them do some type of story on us trying to improve the how our public employees are treated and we can incorporate the town hall issue and the transfer station issues into some kind of story so that we let residents know what we're trying to do. Sounds like a good idea. Okay.
Now let's move to item eight, approval of the meeting minutes for Monday, 06/08/2020. Somebody want to make a motion?
I'll make a motion to approve the meeting minutes for was the date?
June 8. 06/08/2020. Somebody want to second that? Second. All All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Treasurer's report. The Treasurer's Barbara is on the phone. I don't know if she wants to sit there and speak to us on any issues that are up related to the Treasurer's report.
I've talked about revenue in the past. And you're going to be you know ahead of ahead of the game on that the ECS came in higher. Also just conversations with the tax collector, she had very healthy collections in June, relative to last year. So I know revenue is going to come in very solid. I mostly came tonight just because I had put together the appropriation transfer request worksheet that is in your packet. I talked earlier in the year about budgets that will have surpluses. And Eric and I spent quite a bit of time in the last weeks and months tracking all of the spending and all the budgets. So through the appropriation transfers that are being requested tonight, We're trying to use up some of that surplus and transfer it to projects, some projects that have been overspent. That's ongoing, especially the transfer station work. Bills will continue to come in. There's a sixty day rule with accounting invoices dated before June 30. You've got till the end of August to deal with them in the old fiscal year. So we talked again last week, Eric and I and we're going to make sure we try to reallocate as much of the surplus from individual budgets as we can into those projects.
So if you had any if you had a chance to look at the appropriation transfer worksheet, you have any questions. The other thing that was part of your package is I did not submit the overexpenditure report, but I did provide a separate Excel spreadsheet that just shows what accounts were approved to be overspent and where they ended up at the end of the year. And then that formed the basis for some of the appropriation transfers. And then we had just additional transfers for things that came in toward the end of the year. So if there are any questions about that, otherwise, was pretty much why I wanted to hang on till this part of the meeting.
Barbara, from my end, two things. We still have not received the bill for the state trooper.
It just isn't. You can't shake it out of them. It really they do it at the end of summer. Think they want to get make sure they've accounted for overtime, make sure they've accounted for benefits and do the apportionment. So I, I've never seen it come in early in any town.
Okay. The Board of Education line item is overspent by 150? Working on that one.
She submits a reimbursement check to the town toward the end of the year for expenses that she's paid through her accounting system, grant related things. And I was a little surprised today when I saw that because generally, she'll have done that by now. But she is in the process of reconciling her system to our system, only found one adjusting entry that we need to do. So informally, I can check back and see if that's ready. And when it's ready, if you're interested passing it along to you.
Please pass that to all of the members of the board. I will.
So I did speak to Laura about that today. She apologized for not having written the town a check from the board of ed. She assures me that they will not be running in the red. They just haven't made their final payment for the stuff written off of their grants yet.
Okay, so if I understand this correctly, there is going to be a check written from the grant account?
As far as I understand, yes, to the town of Andover, to our general account basically, to make up for the difference for what they have expended relative to grants but has not yet been charged. So
it's posted as a revenue. So it just hits the their expense account. It's posted to that expense account. So it's a credit to that account. And that's the offset against the overexpenditure now.
Okay. So you were saying that we're we're our revenues are looking healthier. I mean, see $44,000 in what I see $44,000 is the amount of owner collection and revenue lives that accurate $46,009.68 56.
Yes, we're still working on posting things to last year. I just came across a small grant today that hasn't been posted to the system. So that's still still a work in progress. The education costs sharing number you're looking at. So why don't we reconcile the cash still? I'm sorry,
Jeff. When is the last month we reconciled the bank accounts?
May. Working on June. Okay. All right. You have the cash accounts in front of you, correct? I probably have April there because I just finished May today. Okay any other questions anyone else?
No the only outlier I saw was the field maintenance but oh yeah. What was that Eric?
A lot of it was the sprinkler stuff. We chewed up quite a bit of money doing that. You know, that's plus the other thing is we signed a contract with, Clarko the spring transfer the mowing, to kind of our side of the ledger, which is the reason we're running, we're charging Kyle for use of the field. Okay. I'm good.
Okay any other questions? Okay so now let's move on to there's a section there appropriation transfers. Does anyone want to talk about those? Okay.
So I would suggest that you make a motion to approve the transfers outlined in that document, which is delayed 07/09/2020, because most of them you don't have to approve, but some of them you do. Instead of approving all the ones that are over a certain amount and technically you have to approve and then send on the board of finance. If you approve them all en masse that takes care of that.
Fair enough. I'd make a motion that we approve the is it July 2020 document? 07/09/2020 document. 07/09/2020 document for the appropriation transfers in mass. I'll second that.
All right. All those in favor or further discussion, all those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. We'll move on to the tax collector's report. So June, collected $78,647.30. We still have yet to collect $365,998 related to past tax years. Of that $210,000 is for the last tax year. So we have some old receivables and hopefully we can collect them. There's only one tax refund request. I believe we need to make a motion to pass that or to approve that. I don't think I saw that on your motions. Was it? Yeah. Yeah.
11 A. Paul, you want to read that one? Sure. I make a motion to approve tax refund for June 2020 outlined in the packet for a total of 7,190. Anyone want a second? I'll second. All right.
All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Eric is there information related to the assessors report and the revaluation services
no not that I mean nothing major there was a little report in there from the assessors office oh I don't know why that didn't make it in there.
Anything that we need to talk about from department reports?
Can I backtrack a little bit? Do we know what the total dollar amount was for the ECS difference?
Give your revenue report because I didn't print mine out.
Give me a second, Adrian. I'll tell you. I'm sorry. What? I'll tell you if you give me a second I'll get to it. Yeah I looked and I'm just missing it, I'm sorry. It was in the top, no not there. Education ECS budgeted at 1,992,005 and 54 and it came in, it looks like it came in at, no, it was budgeted at 1,921,253, came in at $2,000,055.02 96 so about $130,000
That's what I was gonna guess. Thank you, Jeff. Anything else you want related to that? No, no. Thank you.
It also looks like That's why I was really looking at this and going at the total is only a $46,000 increase in revenue but the ECS number is 134 and then there's another intergovernmental revenue for education at 130 Well, that's probably the total. 132 is the total educational over reimbursement. I didn't understand why we only got down to a total over collection or our revenue increases only by $46,000 The report is not exactly user friendly as Adrian will just attest to. Yeah, I agree 100% with that. All right.
Can we ask Barbara to maybe give an explanation of that at some point, maybe just send out an email?
Yeah, I can look through the whole, I can pick the revenue apart, show you where the surplus is. I know that one shortfall was the transfer sticker fees because those are issued in June. So the amount budgeted for that was significantly less.
Yeah. That's about 30 k on a good Yeah. Season. So just trying to make up the difference. Let's try to figure out where the difference went between the two. If you could just give the highlights, that'd be great. I sure will. And maybe send it out to everyone as an email, please.
So let's go to the department reports. Eric, is there anything you wanna highlight to us? Not really. Nope.
Moving on. Mike went to sleep. Poor Kathy's over there by herself now.
I woke him up. I woke him up. I think he was having ice cream earlier. I was very jealous.
Oh that's it. That's what I'm in the mood for. I'll be right back.
All right. So let's move on to we'll get down to fourteen. So there's a request to accept the resignation of Maureen Bercato effective July 21 and George Knox effective June 30. Anyone have any issues with accepting those? No? Okay. Do we need to make a motion to accept those? There is a motion.
So let's Paula, if you can read that, that would be great.
Make a motion to accept the resignation of Maureen Bercado effective 07/21/2020 and George Knox effective 06/30/2020.
I'll second it. Let's go. So all those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. Is there any correspondence, Eric? Nope. Nothing worth. Alright. Public speak. Go through it. Kathy, since you sat with us for the entire time and you were most gracious and you didn't fall asleep or eat ice cream in front of us, Would you like to say anything? Okay. I'm fine. I'm listening.
All right. Thank you very much. Michelle would you like to say anything?
No it was very entertaining and I got a lot of puzzle pieces together while listening. Perfect. Is that a 1,000 or 2,000? No, 1,500, right? I just got a fifteen hundred. That
is a good use of time during a board of selecting just got it today.
Don't do that because Jeff Murray will go back into his secret stash.
Okay. Hey, just say just remember who's still outside right now. Exactly.
Total, total respect for Mr. Murray. I'm hardcore. I'm hardcore. John Collins, would you like to say anything? Thank you. It was entertaining and informational. I got my exercise done too. So that was good. Puzzles and exercise. We should, we could get like activity hour here. It's mentally
fit or physically Let's do it. Can I can I just ask a question quick question? Are you in a state of your own town state of emergency still or not?
We have not rescinded the declaration of public health emergency at this point. Okay. Thank you
Kurt Darling Kurt All set Come on, Curt. You can do better than me. What have you done during the meeting, Curt? Just listen to everyone. All right.
Catherine, are you still on or are you I'm on. Dipping her tea. Would you like to say anything, Catherine? I have have a new How
was your tea? It was very good. Thank you. Now I'm all set. Thank you for voting in our new people. Good luck on the committee. I'm gonna need it.
No, you'll be fine. Okay. And I do not know who the safe educator, safe students, safe schools, safe communities is. Would you like to say something? That's Dan Foran. Dan Foran. Dan, would you like to join us? Okay.
Since this has been a another long one nine thirty. We got executives still right.
Are we still doing that Eric? We have to. If you so choose, yes. You're not obligated to but you certainly can.
Okay Adrian do you have reason to do the executive session and you want to? I think it would be appropriate. Okay, fine.
If I tell you why, then it won't be an executive session. Understood.
So, let's make a well, we can't adjourn yet, can we? So we have to go into executive session. How do we actually do that correctly?
Everybody's got a so everybody who's not a board member and Eric has to leave the meeting.
Okay. Dennis The first thing you do is you motion to go into executive session and I would motion to go into executive session to discuss interim union collective bargaining issues.
We may actually need Dennis and yourself in there, right?
We can invite them to be be in the executive session.
Yeah, it's probably a good idea. I would like to see them in executive session.
Fine. Let's do it. So someone can make that motion to enter executive session. I'll do it. I motion to enter executive session at 09:37 for agenda item 17, discussion of interim union collective bargaining issues. And I request that we invite in Eric Anderson and attorney Dennis O'Brien. I'll second. Okay. Amanda we're going to stop recording this. Yes Paula should I pause or stop?
Stop because I don't think we're going to make any motions when we come out of it. Am I correct?
Yeah you can make me the host if you want. We can always record start the recording again at the end either way. Perfect.
Okay. And just for clarification before you stop recording, this is a root beer float, not a beer float because I just got texted by a resident.
So I may have to ask Barbara to leave the meeting. Looks like
she's You can you can remove her if you have to. Okay. I will do that now. Yeah. You just go to her name and There you go.