Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen- Regular Meeting
November 13, 2023 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Late. So we're gonna get started with today's meeting at 07:05. And our first this is our John of Andover Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Monday, November 13. Starting at 07:05 and our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, before we get started I want to tell you I'm dealing with different ear things, if I touch myself, I apologize. The election, I want to sit there and, you know, thank everyone for participating. We had great turnout. It was a. It's good to see the community come out and vote. And a creme congratulations on being becoming a member of the Board of Selectmen, but I will sit there and tell you you have big fills shoes to fill. Adrian Mandeville was a very
productive member of this board. He, helped us through a lot of the issues, and I don't think the community understood, this board and its makeup as to how it was. You know, you have someone from public relations, someone from Jeff, is it mechanical engineering or electrical engineer? Come on.
Scott person, forestry background, Adrian Construction and myself accounting. And and this being the last board meeting for the previous board, I do wanna let the public understand that this was a very good board, and we got a lot done. And while and I'm happy that you're joining us, I'm very sad to see Adrian go. So I'm letting everybody know that. Alright. We will move on to public oh, and by the way, before I even move on to that, we're gonna do everything possible to keep Adrian involved in this community in this town. He does add a lot of value. So I hope the other members of the board are all aware. I'm making you aware that any opportunity we can to keep Adrian involved, we will.
Good. Alright. Public speak. Let's start with applause. Kathy and Mike. Nothing for me.
I do. I have something. Sure. I wanted to say congratulations to our board of selectmen on the reelection, and, for another four years. And I wanna welcome Ian to the board of selectmen and say to Ian that, well, I was going to use your terminology, Jeff, but I decided to skip that. I want to say that you're now a member of an excellent committee representing our town residents. So, luck again, and good luck to all four of you. Kathy. Elaine Bucar. Thanks, Kathy.
I just want to say that I'm encouraged to see that we're looking at RFPs for a plan for the multi use connector path to connect 316 Rail Trail, the new community center, town hall, school. It's been a long time coming, but it's really exciting to see that money's being put out there, now we're going have pen to paper and some plans to go ahead and look at. That's exciting. Also, the Andover Farmers Market, unfortunately, Amanda Gibson, after several years of very hard work and what I thought looked to be a very successful market, has stepped down. So, we are now market master list again. So, that puts us back in our court, Kathy, for the EDC that we now have to go searching for new market masters. Maybe you might want to do it again. That would be very cool. But anyway, just to kinda put it out there, we're we're gonna be in search of a market master to go ahead and regroup and and do
market next year. Thanks. Thank you, Elaine, for all your efforts, and Amanda's done a great job replacing Mike and I. Remember, she had to replace two people. I know. She's done a great job, and we've supported her wholeheartedly, and I am sorry to have heard that she will be stepping down. But I'm sure Elaine with all the enthusiasm that you have you'll find someone. Okay Diane Greiner thank you Elaine.
Yeah, hello. I too would like to congratulate all the
new board of selectmen here and also all the other people that participated in the election, whether they won or not, all the other
boards and commissions that needed to be filled, that's a tough job to do. Throw your hat in the ring and take the abuse that some of you take. I'll offer No thanks many times and it's a lot of hard work and I appreciate it. And I think most of the residents in Andover also thank you and appreciate all that you do. Like I say, not only this board, but all the boards and commissions in town. So thank you all. Okay.
Eric, before I go on, I'll just go. I know of community voice know Brian Avery is gonna speak on the Joshua Trust issue, correct? Correct, as well John. This is John Hankins. Bill Penn.
I have nothing to say in this section. I'm here also because for the Joshua Trust section.
So yeah. And this is John Hankins. I'll do I think I'll do primary speaking for this one. I'm the president.
Okay. No problem. It's not right now, John. It's this public speak. So I just wanted to verify who I needed to ask. Carly's iPhone. Hi. That's me. Hi.
We're here we just moved to Andover, and we live at 554 Lake Road. Our neighbor told us What?
Daryl. Yeah. But what about the like, what's it called? You guys own 15 feet of our driveway, and there's a catch basin? That will be up for discussion later. So Okay. Stick around. Okay. Thank you. 104. Yep. Alright. Joanne Ebert?
Thanks Jeff. I just wanted to echo congratulations to everyone that was recently elected in the, you know, on all the boards, wishing them all the best going forward. And I'd be remiss to not also say a nice word about Adrian too. I've been involved the last maybe four years and I do go to a lot of the meetings, so it's nice when you see a board that's made up of all, you know, they bring something so unique to the table. So watching all the Board of Selectmen meetings that I've been lucky enough to watch or listen to so that I could get information,
Each person on this board had a unique place on it and a lot of expertise that was shared with the town, so we've been really, really lucky. So, you know, I know that maybe each person is unique and not for everyone. Definitely having worked behind the scenes with Adrian on a, you know, a few matters and committees, I know he he gave his all to the town and you know, with, you know, not looking for any praise. So I just think he needs to get his just due as well. So good luck to everybody. Good luck to Anne joining and, you know, continued good work.
Thank you. And Eric, I'm going to clarify this with you. Is this has the new board been seated? It has not been seated, correct? It has not been seated. It will be official as of the twenty first. Okay. Anne Kermeh, public speak. Mute. You're on mute. We can't hear you.
So, Anne, I I apologize because I have computer problems as well. I had to fix that one.
And you might try logging out and logging back in and see whether that clears it. Sometimes that works.
And we'll come back to you once you get audio. Okay. All right. So let's get started. Additions and deletions to the agenda. Does any of the members have anything they want to add? Paula King?
Yep. I've got an addition. Can we please add under old business item H, Andover's Finest? Okay. Anyone else?
Jeff, I have two. Delete item 16 b, which is the discussion revolving the King property boundary line because that's gonna be Thursday's special meeting. And I would also consider deleting 11D, which is appointment to CIP and senior center committee, and I would postpone that one one month.
Okay. And I see Andover's Finest is in executive session. So we need to remove that from executive session and put it 10 H, please.
Okay, Jeff anything? No I have nothing tonight. Scott anything extra, anything you want deleted? Nothing, no. Alright so the motion on the table is to delete 16 c from executive session Andover's Finest and move it to old business item h Andover's Finest And we're, deleting 11 D appointments to CIP and other committees and delete item 16 B, the King property boundary line discussion. I'll make the motion that we do those. I know Paula did part of it and Eric did part of it, but I'll make that motion. Paula, you wanna second that? I'll second. Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Alright. So let's get, moving on this.
We have Jeff Jeff Ann's back on. Do you wanna
Ann, can you try your audio? Still no. Nope. No audio. I had the same problem, Jeff, tonight. So they must have done an update on Zoom. I I did as well. Yeah. I had the same problem. My Mac microphone wasn't working. So and just as a suggestion, what I had to do is run around and find a pair of earphones that might connect into the computer. If you have any headphones
or something like that. Okay. And if you're using an external mic, you might wanna unplug the USB from the back of your PC because that's what fixed mine.
Okay. Alright. Anne, we'll come back to you if you get it fixed. So we're going to move on to item four, the treasurer's report. Eric, is there anything specific that you want to call out to us?
No, the only thing that's really in the packet is the interim budget or the current budget versus actual. The check register is not in the packet. The treasurer is working away trying to get the audit ready, making good progress on that.
Okay. Alright. Does anyone have any questions regarding that information? Nope. Okay.
Just as a side, Eric, has, the reconciliation of the Qatar, account been provided, and can you at least provide us that information for the next meeting? Of which account? Town Road? Town Aid Road. Yeah. Okay. Reconciliation that was being performed. Okay.
Alright. I'll move on to, item five, board and commission presentations. Eric, do we have anything related to that? Oh, and I apologize. Dennis O'Brien, I want to say hello to you. Know you're on the call. Hello.
Alright. Board and commission presentations, is there anything that is required?
No. Not at this time. You had asked at the last meeting for a summary of what members were appointed and what all the terms were, and Carol put that together and that is in your packet. But there's nothing at this very moment. The only one was a nomination to the Norton Fund condition, but that's been taken, or commissioned, but that's been taken care of. So there is no action at this time.
Okay. Well, we'll have to thank Carol related to that. That's very helpful. We'll try to put that into a little bit different format. So maybe the boards and any future boards can have this information easily accessible so we know what we need to do on a consistent basis. Okay. Item six, any appointments?
There are no appointments or resignations at this point. Nothing for
item seven. Item eight, discussion with Joshua's Trust with the potential for the Skinner Hill Preserve.
Okay. And at this time, I would like to introduce the president of Joshua's Trust, who is John Hankins, and I will turn this discussion over to him. And if you would like, I can put the proposed map up on the screen if that makes your life easier.
Other than that, it's your presentation, Doug. Yeah, Eric, that would be helpful if you put that up because I will refer to everybody for giving us a few minutes on your agenda. I'll try to be quick. I know this was on the agenda last month, we had to postpone it, but Eric has indicated you talked about it a little bit, so this won't be completely new to you. Joshua's Trust, as you might know, operates in approximately 14 towns in the area. We haven't been that active in Andover in the past, but we did get the opportunity earlier this year to acquire 32 acres of property on Skinner Hill Road. And we are now the owners of that property. That was transferred to us by the Manchester Land Trust that had owned it for several years.
And they spun it off to us really because they wanted to focus on their specific area, which is Manchester, and Joshua's Trust is much more regional. We've looked at this property, it's 32 acres. And although it's not enormous, it does have some potential for open space recreation in the form of a low impact trail. As we started looking at that a little bit more, we realized that there were two big challenges if we wanted to make this property available to the residents of the town of Andover. The first one is that there's really no parking. If you look at the map, the green area is the preserve itself. And if you look at where it intersects Skinner Hill Road on the top, it's only got about 10 or 20 feet of frontage, something like that. Certainly not enough to park a car. The other challenge we were faced with is that right smack dab in the middle of the property, there's a pretty good sized wetland. And that would largely prevent without an extreme level of effort, a trail that would run from north to south through the property. You're probably aware the blue on that map is Town Of Andover open space land that you own because of the Route 6 Expressway transfer to the town a couple years back. We looked at these two properties together, and if they are considered together, if there was a collaborative effort between the town and Joshua's Trust, we believe we could put something here that would be pretty attractive and useful to the residents of the town.
That would include two primary components to make it happen. The first one would be a parking area on Skinner Hill Road on town land at the location of a former residence that was located. It's a fairly overgrown lot today, that would need to be cleared and smoothed out. We're talking about typically our properties have room for somewhere between four and six cars. The preserves we have are generally pretty low use anywhere from a handful of people a week to maybe 20 or 30 people a week, they're pretty low use. You can see the red line on that map shows that the proposed trail, which is a solid red line, traverses land owned by both Joshua's Trust and the town. It starts, if you look at the line on the left, it swings into a sort of a ledgey area that's on the property owned by Joshua's Trust, and then it hooks over to town land primarily to avoid a large wetland that's on the Joshua's Trust property. Then it swings back on Joshua's Trust property and loops around and takes a high route that's completely in town of Andover land back to the parking area. I have not measured that specifically, but I would guess that's perhaps half a mile to two thirds of a mile around. Another interesting feature that we're not necessarily proposing at this point, by showing dash line at the bottom, this property, the town property actually connects through to Wheeling Road. So if it was in the town's interest, that trail could be extended all the way to Wheeling Road and potentially make a connection someday to the Nathan Hale Forest.
This would be a pedestrian only trail, no bikes, no horses in general, you're too sensitive for that. The maintenance of the trail would be done both on town land and on Joshua's Trust land by a steward and Bill Penn is on the line tonight and he's the person that we've got in mind as the steward for this property. We own about 40 properties or we own about 70 properties and about 40 of those have trail systems. So we've done this quite a few times before and we are pretty good with the maintenance portion of this. The one other item that's in the ask column, the town property itself, there's a fair amount of debris, things like tires and vehicle parts, I would say, just various pieces of automotive debris. What we're proposing there, because that is town land and that junk that's on that property is on town property today, we would like to collaborate with the town to clean that up. And what we've got in mind there is that the town, this is an idea, it's open for discussion, the town would supply a dumpster and we would use Joshua's Trust volunteer support, perhaps with some help from volunteers from the town to basically pick up, to the extent we can, tires and other debris, put them in the dumpster, and then the town will be responsible for disposal. So those are the three asks that we've got tonight to locate a trail
that spans both Joshua's Trust and town open space property for the benefit of the residents of the town and your visitors. Second, to put this part, the parking area, the loop trail, and then the removal of the debris. Those are the three things. If the town is interested in doing this with us, we'd love to implement this in the spring. If you're not so interested, we simply can leave this property as open space conservation land, and there likely would not be in a trail in it at all. So that's our offer, and I'm interested to hear whether the board is interested in pursuing such a thing.
All right, thank you very much for the information. Does any of the members of the board have any comments related to this? I personally think it would be a positive idea for the town. It would be a use of land that is nothing's going to occur there, really from other than a passive recreation standpoint, but it's a question of, is it the right use for it and does it impact any of the other residents in any negative way? Jeff, I know you probably have been out there and walked this, so what is your take I've been out there numerous times and I know what
John is referring to by the junk piles that are down there. It's significant. I mean, my only concern is that I've been hiking in there a bunch. It's, I mean, I own, you know, my house is on the bottom left hand corner down towards the bottom of Wood Fern Way. I mean, right now I can't even bring my tractor across my grass because the area is so wet and the trails, the land back there is very marshy, so it's difficult to try to really put a sustainable trail in there. Like John said, going be close to mountain biking because if bikes go through there, it's just going to be a rotted mess. So I'm kind of torn between putting the trail there or not. Has nothing to do with my proximity to the land, but we've had a standing issue lately with trying to maintain the trails that we have. I mean, the ones in the back of the elementary school, continually overgrowing and, you know, it's just we're having a hard time trying to get volunteers to keep those trails clean. And it just brings, it brings in the point of we have Creaser Park nearby less than a mile away with a big trail network. We have Nathan Hills State Forest, which has about 15 miles of trails. We have the, you know, the the rail trail down right down the street. We have Bishop Swamp, and then we have the property behind the the elementary school. So I'm just, I'm questioning whether we're gonna, it's gonna get that much use and if it's gonna be a sustainable trail or not. So those are my concerns. We have a ton of recreational trail opportunities in town.
I would like to see some more volunteer effort maintaining those trails that we do have. And I know Bill Penn's offering to maintain this one, but I'm just wondering if it's a good fit for that property. That's all.
Scott, I am sure you have some history with this property. So what is your take?
You know, I I feel the same way Jeff Murray does. This trail's not gonna be in my backyard, so I'm just gonna go with, his feelings on it, because I have a trail in my backyard, and, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not so good. But it is very wet through there. I've been through there a lot. I went through there with Eric, trying to mark the boundary lines down in there. And, and it is a pretty wet spot, but- if, I would not be, I'm not against having trails in there per se, but you know, it has more to do within, what I feel like, you know, the neighbors, Jeff Murray, is gonna be impacted by this. And it is a wet area, but, you know, it would be good if it was used for something, I think.
Paula?
Maybe these are obvious answers, but I'm just trying to decide based on what Scott and Jeff are saying. So I see what Jeff's saying about our existing trails are overgrown, right? So if we go with this and it's not taken care of, the downfall is it just doesn't get used, right? What's, can somebody explain to me the absolute downfalls to the town and to the residents? So it doesn't get used, right?
So. Could I comment on a few things I've heard? Sure. As far as the maintenance of the trail goes, Joshua's trust would take 100% of the responsibility for that, both on our side of the property line, as well as on the town's side of the property line. We're quite comfortable with doing that. We maintain something like 40 or 45 miles of trails already. We've got a robust volunteer pool to draw from. And I've got no doubt we can keep these in great shape with regard to brush growing up and so on. The second question, which is a very valid one, is how wet are these trails going to be? And I will tell you that the majority of the Joshua's Truss side of the line, there's a great big wetland in there. That's not a place I would think of putting trails. Most of the land, a good portion of the land on the town's portion, particularly in the North, it's high and dry. The land climbs substantially. And we would work to get this trail
in as dry a location as we can. We're using some existing roads that are in there that look to be in pretty good shape. We have the ability, although we don't like to do it, we probably wouldn't do it unless we really had to, to build short sections of bog bridge, basically planks. I think the first step for us would be to take another look at this property to see if we could put a trail in a place that would not be soggy, because we don't want that either. A Those nightmare to try to maintain.
Yeah, and to John's point, if you look at Laurel Marsh in Manchester and the Hockingham Trail in East Hartford, there's a significant amount of wood bridges and planks that are put over the trail. I And think East Hartford this year, last year got $250,000 to repair the bridges that they have. And then some of the areas of Laurel Marsh are actually closed because they're in such disrepair. So we wouldn't really want to build wooden structures to go across any of the marshy areas. So we would want to try to keep this as dry as possible.
Yep, that's fair. And I might recommend that we take a walk on this with Jeff and anybody, I guess there's a couple Jeffs here, but Jeff Murray and anybody else that wants to take a look at this to see if this could be done in a manner where the trail stayed dry the vast majority of the year.
This was kind of my forte, this kind of stuff. And I would like to see the trails mark, and then we could walk them.
Yeah, just GPS mark them, and we can walk the trails.
Probably the best thing we could do, Scott, would be to get out there with some flagging tape. Flagging and yeah. Ribbon ribbon them so that we can see where the trail's gonna be going.
And just in consideration, I would try to keep the trail away from the the the development to the south and the house to the and the houses to the east. So if we can minimize that impact, because, you know, we're going to probably have to advise these landowners that there would be a trail probably going behind their house. And if we could minimize the exposure of people walking, you know, close to their backyards, it would probably be much easier to put in. Yeah, and I think,
Jeff, we've done that to a large degree. If you look at the way we've laid out, that is, it's a long skinny trail
that, and we purposely kept it out of the wetlands and we purposely kept it out of the backyards as well. Yeah, now that we're into the fall, it'd be the perfect time to walk it just to see what the site impact of the visibility of the trail to the neighboring homeowners would be. So
I guess my take would be we as a board would probably not be adverse to sitting there and seeing a trail put into that land, but we want to sit there and see what it looks like. So if the Joshua Trust folks could sit there and work with the members of this board to sit there and see where it would, the trail would fall. And maybe we can do that before our next meeting and then come back in our next meeting and make a decision.
And could I basically, so if we get going on this, could I coordinate it your town administrator if he would communicate back to you? Is that the way to do it? Sure. That would be great. Okay.
Okay. I just I have a couple of things. One, I do have the abutters list for both the properties. So if the board wants to specifically inform all the neighbors and get feedback, we could certainly do that if that's something the board is interested in doing to open, to widen up the discussion.
I think, Eric, that would probably be the next step. I think probably the first step would be probably Scott and myself, and anybody else who wants to come along, we walk it and look at the feasibility, and then we can discuss the impact because I think that's kinda putting the cart before the horse right now. Understood.
K. So I would would say a couple things is that I've
walked over the years a number of the Joshua's Trust properties. So given they tend to be, you know, well labeled, well marked, and well maintained. That's my personal, so I wouldn't have any issues with Joshua's trust having a property in a trail in the town of Andover, but that's my take on it, yours may be different.
All right. So John, if you can sit there and work with Eric to schedule the trail layout and the walk around and we'll get Scott and Jeff situated with you so that we can sit there and see what this trail would look like. That works for us. Thank you. All right.
All right. Anybody else have any other questions for the Joshua Trust folks? Okay. We'll move on and then we'll move to item nine, the town administrators report. Eric?
Okay. I'm gonna stop this share, and I'm gonna share my screen. So
first of all, I apologize for getting you all my report late. I'm just going to go over the highlights. We have had lately a kind of a flood of complaints from residents in the Hendy Road area, a flood being like three from different people complaining about a number of different things, but they're all traffic related, just to give you a heads up on that. We do have a very significant roof leak that's developed in the fire department. I did send that out to bid. There's one that seems to be pretty acceptable with a contractor that seems to have a pretty good reputation. I'm probably going to put that out and give them the bid for it. It's under the threshold at which it has to go through a formal bidding process. So, I think that should get done. I want to wrap that up before winter because it is an active
roof leak. We are working on the RFPs for the fire department and town hall HVAC. We had a meeting with the lowest bidder contractor. We gave them a bunch of feedback on the proposal, and we asked them for a return, essentially a final proposal for both, because we had some questions about locations of equipment. We are doing an additional walkthrough with him as well as the, you know, Samsung manufacturers rep. So I'm meeting them tomorrow morning to go through that. So that should be good. As you know, we went to RFP for a pathway or a multiuse path to connect the town hall down to the existing rail trail. So, we got six bids for that initially. And at the last meeting, you put in place a review panel that consisted of myself, Jed Larson, as the chair of planning and zoning, and John Gee, who's the town planner. So we narrowed it down to three applicants, and we brought in three firms for presentations. All three of the firms I thought were excellent, but in the end, we kind of unanimously decided that the best fit for us in this situation was Barton and
So when it comes up a little later in the meeting, I'm going to ask for a motion to hire Barton Lejudas. We are under some pretty extreme time pressure. So I think they're going to have to begin the work before we even have a final contract, because a contract will have to, we will have to deal with some state agencies regarding that contract, but we know what the price is, and we know what contractor we wanna hire. So we can get going with that with your permission. So we'll talk about that a little bit later. This is a fully funded project. The money's coming from a legislative authorization, and we're not spending the whole authorization. So once we pick the final route and have preliminary engineering, we'll have some money over to do survey and more, engineering work,
before that. Jeff, would you like to just go over there at right now while we have the motion up? Sure. We can do that.
Okay. I did put in your packets under that line item, which was new business 11 b, the, packet of the presentation by Barton and LaJudas. So, hopefully, you had a chance to review that. If you wanted to make the motion, the motion is up up there. You could make that motion or do something else if you wanna do it right now. Let's just do it right now.
Just a second. I have a I've just got this you you spoke before about the starting work without a contract?
So February 21, we have to do a lots of submission. So this is an enormous ask to fit this in in under three months. So, yeah, the contractor is probably going to start working on it tomorrow as soon as I give them an authorization because there's an awful lot of legwork they can do. Whatever contract we do, you know, I'm gonna make sure the town's attorney signs off on the contract before we do it, but we do have to go quickly on this one.
Can we have Dennis weigh in on that really quick? Because I have concerns about a contractor starting work on town project without a PO or authorization.
Well, before you go to Dennis and before Dennis, isn't this motion to authorize them to to move forward and they're just doing this before they have a signed contract? Isn't that what this is about, Jeff? We're authorizing them to move forward?
Yeah. But we don't wanna authorize a contractor to do any work without a contract. K. And
I just Before before we vote on it, would like to keep you Dennis. Good idea.
It's usually a good idea to have a contract in place even if it's a preliminary type simple contract. It is good to have a few things nailed down. I don't even know what you're talking about now. What kind of a project is this? An engineering project, Dennis. Okay.
I would say you could probably chew up a month trying to get authorization for CHRO. And if we do that, we're not doing that, we're not going to LOTSIP this year. So the whole reason why we're pushing this is because we've got a hard deadline of less than three months to get planning documents in place for a LOTSIP application.
And there's not gonna be any in '25 and '26, so that's why he's trying to get it going now.
Right. I'm not saying I couldn't find some other funding mechanism, maybe. I mean, I looked at something called TAP, which is a transportation alternatives proposal, but LOTZIP is our best, our most likely avenue to fund this.
How long would it be till you got the contract, so Dennis could look at it, Eric? I mean, are you talking help them write the title. Are
there any materials on the on the in the packet on this?
Yes. The proposal from Bartlett Judas is is in the packet. Under under what? New business? It should be under eleven days.
While while I understand while I understand Jeff Murray's concern, I'm I'm sitting there siding with Eric on a on an attempt to do this timely. So my concern or I'll go to Jeff Murray's issue. Is there anything of substance that these guys that the contractor is going to be doing? I mean, they're gonna be doing survey what are they gonna be doing, Eric, so we understand just briefly? I'd like to know.
So the the first thing they're gonna be doing is giving us back essentially engineering opinions on two potential works because there's really two possibilities. The first is to run this all through town property and deal with the grade change when you get down towards the trail. And the second part is to run this down loosely down Route 316. So, the first thing they're going to have to do is they're going have to get in touch with all the neighbors around 316 and talk to them. That's the first thing that has to happen. And then they have to give us a very preliminary engineering look at both alternatives. And then we have to schedule a series of public meetings to get public interest. Because, you know, this is something that's going to be a long term thing for the town, and we need as much public involvement as we can prior to going to preparing the LOTSIP and any kind of more formalized plans. So right now, the first, you know, really between now and the LOTS of application in February, the goal is really public engagement, figuring out what the route would be and getting a bulk proposal and a set of bulk costs. So we know roughly what we're going for for funding and how we would do it. Because there's two kind of very different possible routes, both with advantages and disadvantages.
Okay. So and and if you go through that and you you the engineering firm does that, if we don't do this, if we wait until we get the contract, your concern is that you're not going to be able to go out and get the lots of funding that you're talking about here?
Well, it's not that I wouldn't be able to get it eventually, but it's not going to be in this fiscal year and it won't be in next fiscal year. So we're talking about potentially waiting, you know, between two and three years to apply for funding. I was originally assuming we were going not for this year's funding cycle, and we were not trying to make a February deadline. However, in talking to the capital region, the program administrator for LOTSIP, whose name is Satoria, told me flat out that there will not be a LOTSIP submission application next year, and there probably would not be one for the year after. So this is this year, they will allot the money that they have for the next three years. Therefore, if we're going to get in on it, now's the now's the time to do it. Okay.
Didn't we do a project recently where we started with a preliminary agreement and then we moved on to a master agree a major agreement? Wasn't that, the community center? Yep. He did do that for the community center.
Well, I mean, you can always there's always a way to do it. But I as as you know, I'd have to I would have to educate myself pretty quick on what, you know, what has to be done in this first part. You'd have to somehow come up with some sort of a a price. He has a Okay. $57,500.
Okay. That's okay. I'm looking at that now. That's for the whole that's for the whole whole project? For the for That's for You
can kind of think of this as a two phase project.
The first phase Well, I'd like to if you're gonna do it this way.
The the first phase is to get a solid proposal through to LOTCEP. And then the second phase is to use the remaining part of the $100,000 to get as much of the engineering work we can done on the trail because the while LOTCEP potentially will pay for all the construction dollars, the town will be on the hook for some engineering costs. So, the goal is basically to stretch our money as far as possible, but the reality is we've got to get the public on board with this, and we got to do the public engagement if we're going to, if this is a project we're going to get, you know, off the ground and go.
So, Jeff, would you be okay with it if Dennis does a preliminary agreement with the the engineering firm? Yes. Correct. We need to get some kind of documentation in place with deliverables and price.
Okay. Just for the section of the town. I I I Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, go ahead, Dennis. And and it probably won't be too difficult. Okay. You've got a lot of stuff on the the packet here, and I can I can read? And I can talk to Eric, and we can figure it out. We're not talking about a lot of money for the first phase. Right, Eric? Yeah. $57,000.
That's the fur that's that's all for the first phase. Correct.
Okay. You say it's it's you you call it loss it. You're talking about loss it? No. I'm talking about LOCIP. You're calling it Okay. We mechanism. We say LOCIP and and Willimantic. Same same same program. But this is a Two two different programs.
Dennis. Different programs. There's a LOCIP program and a LOCIP program. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
So anyway, we make this motion, listen, just so we can move on if we make this motion. So Jeff, if say I motion to authorize a town administrator to sign a preliminary contract.
That's fine with me. We need to put something in writing for price and deliverables. Or at the end, could just put preliminary proposal to be reviewed by the town's attorney prior to signing.
Yeah. Well, I'd have to I'd have do more than review it. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to draft it. I'm I'm gonna try to do it in as few words as possible just like I whenever I speak to you guys.
But remember that I cannot sign the contract, and we cannot put a contract in place with them without this being reviewed and approved by CHRO. That's the part I'm worried about, you know, and that could take a while. It certainly has in the past. So I think if we gave CHRO a contract tomorrow, you might have a response back sometime in December, and we don't have that. So the contractor is going to have to be doing some work on this prior to us signing a final contract.
That was my point. Okay, okay, then that's fine, but what we're trying to do is we're signing a preliminary contract. Just to understand the timeline, we're going to sign a preliminary contract that Dennis is going to draft and we're going to deal with the engineering firm. And then you're going to have a final contract that's going to go in front of the state agency for approval. Correct.
Right. Does any member of the board have a problem with that?
How it's going to work? As long as we have the funds to cover it, I have no problem.
It's have $1,000 sitting in the bank, States already paid into it. Alright. This is fully funded.
Okay. So I'll motion to authorize the Todd administrator to sign a preliminary contract with Barton in Lagodis I can't say that one. Lagudis. Lagudis. Lagudis? Yeah. For the Town Center Multi Use Trail Master Plan and preliminary engineering for a total of or a maximum of $57,500 to be paid from a legislative grant. The proposal and the final contract to be reviewed by the town's attorney prior to signing. I'll second that.
Okay, so we'll give Jeff Murray the second on that one. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on to let's move on, Eric.
Okay. So we need to advertise for an assistant panel clerk. We're hoping to do that sometime by the end of this week. As far as the finance office, we're still really struggling with M and T. I asked Cheryl to set up a meeting with Jewett City Savings Bank because she said there's an account. They've had some good luck with using Jewett City as a municipal savings bank. Not saying we're not going to look at other options, but it's worth at least starting the conversation with them. We're still struggling a little bit with Barnett property and Route 6. We have the an application into planning and zoning and weapons for adding the two propane tanks behind the fire department to convert the town hall as part of the HVAC project. Further in your packet, there's an agenda item to discuss animal control services and a potential to change to a shared service with Columbia
and Hebron. Can you go back to the propane tanks for a second? What's your timeline?
I think it'll take me another month and a half to get through both regulatory agencies, the wetland agency in planning and zoning. So I'm guessing by sometime in January, I will have permission from the three entities I need to, which is health department, fire marshals already signed off on it, so I still need zoning, wetlands, and health department.
Okay. So that gives you the permissions to do it and timing to actually get a pad board and everything in place?
Right. So what I'm trying to do is do it the next time we have a site, the site contractor in place for the community center build to do the trenching for the project. That's what I'm trying to do, but it's going to depend somewhat on pricing, you know, from them on what it's going to cost and whether that portion goes up to RFP or not.
Okay. So you're not gonna have this in place until the spring? Probably not. If I'm lucky. Alright. So we are we are dealing with oil for the town hall for this heating cycle. Correct. K. Correct. And we're we're okay there?
We're not in bad shape there. I mean, the current cost of oil is about what we're paying under contract, so it's not a huge difference at this point. It would be a problem if, you know, we got a big spike in the cost of oil later in the year. You know? But at this point, we look like we're okay. Alright. You can keep going. Sorry.
Okay. So I talked about animal control. We did kind of not blow up. That's a bad term to use when you're talking about fuel systems. But the control and monitoring system for the the public works diesel tanks has failed. We're trying to get pricing on replacing that. I mean, that was pretty old. In fact, we had to maintain an old computer with like Windows 3.1 on it just to use the old program because it was a, you know, twenty or so year old controlled program anyway. So we're still working on getting quotes for replacing that. We can still get these a lot of it. We're just we just can't get generate reports. So we're having everybody write down how much fuel they're actually using from the manual counter. So that's that. Bunker Hill Bridge design, that's basically at the 90 design stage.
They sent around the preliminary paperwork for the 90% design stage, which I forwarded to the Board of Selectmen about a month ago. Anyway, that's, you know, tracking reasonably well. The Long Hill Bridge design is still moving towards the 30% design phase. And if you remember the 35 or 30% design phase is when they give us proposals for what the actual span is. You know, what the, you know, what it what they propose for a design and how it would fit on the site. So we're still working towards that. What are you expecting on Bunker Hill construction timing?
I'm guessing that they are gonna start not this winter, but the following winter. Because I don't think they really have to start that when it's frozen, because they have a fairly narrow window because of the essentially, there's two threatened species that have been found right in that area, and they have overlapping seasons. So, there's a fairly short season in which they can do the clearing and grubbing, which is when it's frozen, so like January. And I don't think there's any way we're getting to the bid process because they're probably not going to finish the 100% design for three or four more months. So I think we're looking at going out to bid this summer with the contractor starting physical construction in January, and then the bridge being closed starting probably March with the summer construction season and reopened late that fall. That's what it's looking like right now. So you're talking January 2025? Correct.
Correct. And can you dovetail these or time these out where Long Hill gets done in January 2026? Well,
yeah, that one's gonna proceed, know, there's unfortunately there's too much out of our local control, So that's going to proceed at whatever freaking rate the Department of Transportation ends up moving it. You know, I think that's more likely to be a 2027 construction season for the Long Hill Bridge. That's my guess based on other projects have been running. K. What what were the two species, Eric?
One of them is a turtle, and I think the other one's a bat. Yeah.
Small bridges and culverts. We did have a long presentation today at the Capital Regional Council of Government's Transportation meeting. The thing I found that was interesting is that when they've tracked their data for construction between 2017 and 2023, the average cost of small bridges and culverts run under that program has gone from 600,000 to 2,200,000, you know, per, and there's no real difference in the size of the structures that are permitting. Part of that is permitting costs have gone through the roof, you know, due largely to both state and federal, you know, standards increasing, and the rest is the construction costs have gone through the roof. So that's
What what's the cost what's the estimated cost of Bunker Hill? Around 1,800,000.
So a a small culvert, a smaller bridge, a smaller local culvert is now gonna cost 2,200,000.
You know, crazy as it's saying now, this program goes up two bridges with spans of 20 feet. Mhmm.
So but, yeah, it's, you know, it's it's nuts. It's physically nuts. But, you know, we live in a pretty heavily regulated state these days. Community center, for those of you who haven't been around, the footings are in, the foundations are in, first floor framing is well underway. It sounds like they're planning on putting roof trusses on next Monday. So they'll have all the framing other than the roof completed by Monday. So that project is going pretty well. Myself and Scott and Ed Srisli toured it today, spent about an hour on-site looking at the current construction. You all know by now that the library wall was damaged. We have an active claim open with Kerma. Kerma is going after the owner of the vehicle. We do have an estimate from Ron's Landscaping to fix it, and we're hoping to get them in
in about two weeks to get that damage repaired. He thinks there wasn't any damage to the sprinkler system. It's pretty close to the line, but it doesn't look like it affected that. So it looks like it's wall and soil repair only for that. Unfortunately, it missed the crosswalk post barely. So as far as the senior transportation vehicle, I did speak to the manufacturer's rep last week. They have actually received the chassis for it, so assembly can begin. They do have a pretty good backlog because they didn't get any chassis for a couple of years. But he seems to think that they can deliver the vehicle first quarter of twenty twenty four. So that's really good news. And again, that's about $133,000 vehicle at today's prices, and that is 100%
funded. Right. What chassis did are they using? Do remember?
Not off the top of my head. No. I mean I mean, I got the paperwork. I can That's alright. I'm just I don't remember. It's either a Ford or a Chevy. I I honestly don't remember. Yeah. As far as what? I'm just saying it's a very good news. Yeah.
Yeah. It's nice that that finally I mean, it is two years late, so that part's not great, But it's nice that it appears that it's actually going to happen. So the steep grant, the 2022 grant to pay for the the senior transportation, like hub over on Center Street. We have made a fair amount of progress. We finally got through SHPO, the State Historical Preservation Office, and we got a reasonable set of requirements for them to agree for us to demolish the existing building. I am right now working on working to get a bid from a salvage contractor to salvage the original timbers prior to demolition. The one problem we're running into with that, and I put the letter in your packet, is the Department of Labor is back to saying that this is new construction
or this this is not new construction, so prevailing wage rules do apply. I am still trying to figure out how to appeal that because it really annoys me and I think it's inappropriate. I'm also trying to work in the background on a legislative solution to see whether we could do something about that, because that is going to increase the cost of that project significantly, you know, and there's no reason for it, at least in my opinion.
Dennis Dennis O'Brien, can you work with Eric on that one and see if you can assist from a state level? Yep. I've worked on issues like that before. Appreciate it. Okay. Alright. Thank you.
Okay. 2023 STEEP grant, we have we've received the grant and and signed the original paperwork. Remember, we still need to go to schedule a town meeting sometime relatively soon in the next month or so. You know, to be because it requires a town match, we technically need a public meeting to accept that grant. So we're proceeding as if the public is going to approve it, but before we sign final paperwork, we should have a town meeting and handle the approval for that. Concurrently, there is an application before the Planning and Zoning Commission. You know, among the things I'm asking them to do is to change the lighting regulations because our current lighting regulations would prohibit field lighting for a soccer field. So that meeting is November 21. If that's something you all have interest in, I urge you to all attend the public meeting of the Planning and Zoning Division and weigh in on it. I suspect there will be some public opposition from the people that live nearby, and there, you know, there's obviously pluses and minuses to the lighting at the field. Also, I think probably later this week, we should start publicizing and asking for volunteers for a committee to work on that, you know, exact amenities that we want for the field.
Can we make that motion right now, or didn't we make that motion last meeting? We
We did. Made a motion to look for volunteers for that committee for that field. Correct?
Yes. And I sent you all a what I would put out for the meeting announcement, but I really haven't gotten any feedback from the board on whether you think that's acceptable or not. But, yeah, I think that's what we should. The next thing we really should be doing is soliciting more feedback. I just don't want to do that too far ahead of the actual meeting, because I don't want to say to the public, oh, we've already decided accepting it. You know, that's really the town meeting is the body that makes the decision that we're going to accept that point.
So I think we need to do both relatively close together. So we have had an issue down by the ball field with dog shit on the field and near the spiel, dog poop excrement, however you wanna call that. Thank you. So couple of options, you know, option number one is simply to pass a minor ordinance and prohibit dogs from that whole property and be done with it. And then try to figure out if you can actually enforce it. And then the second, you know, possibility is to bow to the inevitable and say, okay, regardless of whether we'd like to block it, we probably aren't going to be able to. So let's try real hard to keep dogs off the field itself, and then put up, you know, poop dispensers on both ends of the fields. So at least people are more likely to be, you know, deal with their pet waste, and it doesn't get left on the walking track or left in the air. I know Scott and Paula both had, you know, have been involved in this issue. I know that's been an ongoing concern with the soccer people. As many of you know, all the towns, you know, no dogs allowed signs got stolen from the facility down there.
In some cases, the post got stolen too. We have subsequently put back up three no dogs no dogs on the field signs.
So, Eric, we should talk about, you know, what, how we should proceed with this. I'm in favor of, as, as much as I don't think that we should be putting up those containers for that, I believe it's probably the only way it's gonna, we're gonna make any progress on this.
Well, here's, here's what, here's what happens. The opposing team comes. They don't know that they can't bring their dog. So they bring the dog. The dog does whatever on the field. I think if you keep the signs up, it's just, they're gonna continue to bring their dog. So at least if you put a container out, maybe they'll be responsible to take care of it. But then who's in charge of emptying the containers? Is that public works? Public works, you'll have to empty them. Okay.
I've had that discussion with Jay, and Jay's feeling is that he ends up having to deal with the field enough that it's not you know, they take trash from the Andover Museum once a week anyway, they can do a every Wednesday run and do both dispensers at the ball field. He seems to think that in the end, it's probably less work than dealing with the violations and having to go pick up the dog shit on the field then excrement.
Eric. Eric. Excrement. Sorry. Come on. Well, don't need a term. If we keep the signs up, I mean, we don't have somebody patrolling every time there's, you know, all day. So we're, we're kind of stuck in.
I thought Scott raised his hand. He said he was gonna do it. He's gonna The only issues I have is it's gonna get filled with coffee cups and all kinds of other garbage because people are just gonna throw their stuff in there if there's no trash cans. Well, then maybe the smart thing to well, I hesitate to put a trash can down there as well. Too because people are just gonna clean out their cars and throw all their garbage in there Yep. Is what's gonna happen. And then, you know, what's what's the what's the maximum fine we can put in for a minor ordinance? You can't do a fine for a minor ordinance.
Is there any way we can fine whatsoever for this or with it without going to town meeting? Not without a real ordinance. No. Dennis,
we had this discussion No. You, find somebody, I would have to say that based on my reading of the charter, you would have to go to a you can't do it with a minor ordinance because you'd have to set up a system whereby anybody who's fine has a right to go to a hearing with a town hearing officer. We do have a hearing officer. We haven't used them yet, but we might have to. And, I I I'm hesitant to say that a minor ordinance could could you know, I think that's we'd have to we'd have to change the charter if we wanted to do that.
Eric, get the price of those two units and let's sit there and and carry this on till next month. The units are Paula, are you done with are you done with soccer right now?
I think this is the last week of practice. So there's no games left, it's not even Jeff. It's not even the people playing soccer. It's people walking the trail during the day or the evening when there's not a game there. It's multiple.
Eric, I would be in favor of adding a couple more signs and the waste cans. But if you have the signs, isn't that confusing?
Like, kinda you're it's kind of a split split message there. Hang on. Hang on, Jeff. Hang on.
Nobody on no dogs on the field, period. That's what it says. K? If they're gonna walk with dogs on the outside of the field, they have to use the waste cans.
So is the majority of this activity happening at soccer games or is this after soccer games?
I think it's I think it's it's both because when when Vail's down there, he, Kyle's picking up stuff at, before practice at night during the week. And when I'm down there for games, I see people with their dogs all the time.
I mean, I I know Ram soccer has, you know, they they put out a thing saying no dogs on the fields whatsoever. Right. So why doesn't he send out when they send things for opposing teams coming? Just say there's no dogs allowed on the Andover Ball Field. Yeah. I mean, we can ask them to.
Then you have the people that don't read the email or they choose to ignore it. So it's, I mean, it's just another level of reminder we can ask them to, but I- You
see an awful lot of other obviously Andover residents with their dogs, you know, that walk them in that area also. Yeah. So it's not, this is not laying at all on the soccer peoples, you know. Right. I see dogs down there constantly.
Yeah. It's it's during the day when they're not practicing, it's it's all it it's constant. But Eric, were you answering somebody's question about how much, these units are? Do you have a price? Yeah, they're about $200 a pop. They're not expensive.
And I think we could fund that out of the existing leftover money from the connectivity grant. So it's not cost isn't the issue. The issue is just what do we wanna do,
you know, going forward. A lot of the poop is on the, track around the outside. You put another sign down on both ends of that, so when people come into the parking lot and they go onto the track, they see the sign that you have to use the dispenser. Period. If it doesn't work, then I have no problem with having no dogs down there, but for this, think the right thing to do is to allow them to have their dogs down there and see how they do. Right now they leave their poop in a, in a, pile, in a spot there. Who's gonna fill the bags, by the way?
The owners are. No, who's gonna fill the bags in the stations? I mean, if Public Works has to go down there once a week to empty it, you know, I think they can refill the dispensers. I don't see that being an issue. Is this a hassle? Yes. Do I really wanna do this? No. But, I mean, the question is, are you can you enforce enough to get people to stop? Know. Don't I mean, there have been signs there for years. It's not that every Andover resident doesn't know he's not permitted to have his dog in the area. It's just that they don't care.
That's the problem. They're not respectful enough to pick up their own dog poop. They're not. That's exactly right, Jeff. So so But That that that is a that is you're putting these down. There will be people that think it's, an invitation to go out in the field. And will they Right. I agree. Bag. Will they I agree with Jeff. Will they go take a bag and will they actually use it correctly? K. That's the next question. So, okay. We gonna sit there and police this? Even if we gotta fine, who's gonna go down there and be the poop the poop cop and say, hey. You know, your dog you know, I just watched you. I sat in my car and watched your dog poop on our field, and here's a $50 ticket. Good luck collecting that.
Yeah. But what you would have to do is you would have to power the resident state trooper to do it, and you'd have to make it the fine high enough to make it worth everybody's while, so just make it a $250 fine for having dogs down on that property, and give Sebastian $50 of it every time he gets somebody. You know? There you go. Alright.
That's why I was asking about the fine amount. Know, I think maybe the signs we could be a little stronger worded, you know, like no dog's law, enforced type of thing.
Well, that's the issue, Jeff. You know? What does strictly enforced mean? Well, I'll just say, you know, strictly enforced cameras in use. K.
You know? Because we do have fewer penalty attached to it. Doesn't matter. It might help with might help to deter a little bit. Well, let let let's
talk about this one. This was something we were going to have this is going to be something that we're going to have to deal with over the winter, but we're going to sit there and push it into the spring when soccer becomes more active on the field again. So let's push this one off till next month to sit there and see what other options we have because I would be interested, Jeff, in your point, if we could get cameras down there and we could get on the wifi.
We do have cameras, we have cell phone cameras. We still have two of them. Yeah, but they're not active right now. They're not working.
Either the battery wasn't wasn't working or somebody wasn't checking it. So Okay. Well, let's get them working then and let's get them up. You know? Let's start enforcing this. Okay. What else you got, Eric?
That's all I got. Unless you have other questions for me. Okay.
Anyone else have any questions for Eric? And any of the topics? Nope.
Okay. We're gonna go move on to item 10, old business. 10 a community center construction update. Eric, you gave that in your report, or do you wanna give any more?
I don't really wanna say anything other about that, other than we have one issue that we're going to need to address sooner rather than later. And that is we had the annual meeting with Kerma, our insurance reps, at which point they informed me that they had canceled their builder's risk policy. So, up to this point, they have had a policy in place that covers things with that cost less than $2,000,000 for construction automatically. But apparently, they've had several really big claims against that, so they have dropped their automatic policy. I was not aware of that. So, we need to figure that out sooner rather than later. Are they giving you options?
I've I've gotta file an application. So and they will cover us for building risk, but it's a separate application. So I I intend to fill out that questionnaire probably tomorrow and get it back. But I was a little annoyed to find that out. Alright. 10 b, discussion of blight and level involvement.
Yep. Do we have anything? I do not. That is in your packet, the update from, from Jim. Unless you have questions for me, I'll happily relay those questions to to Jim.
Where do we stand on the Barnett property? Is he is he, working to clean that up at all? He is,
but way too slow in my opinion. But the reality is he doesn't have the money to clean it up. So I think he's trying to sell that to keep it from getting foreclosed on at the moment. Trying to sell the property? Far as I know.
Okay. Any other questions? Okay, 10 c, the STIF account update.
So, I put this in the packet also, basically last month, October, we made about $13,000 in interest off of the account. We currently have just over 3,000,000 in that account, three, three and a half million. So that's been pretty successful. By contrast, from M and T, I think we got $51 in interest on our remaining So, our plan is basically just keep the money in there as long as possible, and we should get somewhere north of, you know, dollars 100,000 this year by the end of the fiscal year in interest from that account, presuming The 13,000 was over what length of time? One month. One month. So, yay, Cheryl. Yay. Good job. Nice job. 10 d traffic concerns.
So I've put this on. I talked about it a little in my report. I have had a number of people complaining about Hendy Road. I've also gotten one more complaint about Lake Road and sight lines, which Jay and I are looking at to address. But I think the homeowners essentially asked us to put a mirror on the other side of the road so they could leave their property safely. But I think the more appropriate thing is for them to just trim some of the trees that are imposing their sight lines that are on their property. So that's kind of where I'm going with that. Those are the only things I really wanted to talk about unless you had other concerns.
On the on the traffic thing, has have you has anyone spoken to the state on a light at Hendi? Not in the last three or four months. No.
Haven't we gotten rejected for that because of the traffic concerns?
No. They haven't actually made a decision one way or the other. They're still pondering it.
Okay. And they know a bridge is going up, right? It's gonna change traffic pattern?
Yep, they do. And, you know, we are pushing that as part of the, you know, we basically asked the engineering company to build in the cost of the new traffic signal, you know, as part of the work on the bridge project. Whether the state DOT will buy that, because obviously there are different divisions within DOT. But, you know, that was part of our original ask. We should know a little bit more when we get to the 30% design phase, whether the DOT accepted that. But if you rem remember, we also had a stand alone request from the board of selectmen as the local traffic authority, you know, for that. K. And then They have not made a decision. They have made the decision that they will at some point lower the speed limit on that section of Route 6 from basically from Bunker Hill to a little past Route 87. But when they get around to doing that, that's they kinda work on their own time schedule. Right. 10 e, a welcome sign.
So in your packet, there is the proposed sign and the visuals from the sign. And Elaine Bucard is on representing the EDC, so I think she can better answer your questions for that.
Yeah, we had this is the sign was the final design. It's very simple. Initially, years ago, when we started with the sign that was going to be similar in cost, it was way bigger, and there was steel involved, and it looked like the bridge, and costs have been overrun, unfortunately, to the point where we could never afford that sign anymore. But the spot that it's gonna go in on the little hill up the drive to that town owned lot right next to Over And Over and across from the museum is a good spot for it. It's basically going to be pointed mainly toward the traffic coming from Columbia.
And then, as it goes well and we like the sign and it looks good, then we will propose next year to go ahead and put one, say over at the end of Shawnee Mill for traffic coming in the other direction. But with all the connectivity on 316 that we're working on, and we've got the Veterans Monument, and we've got all of that area there, I think it's a great spot to welcome people to Andover.
K. Has anyone looked at how that visual at the above welcome to Andover of the bridge is going to come forth a sign on the road? What was that question, Jeff?
So you have the bridge as a visual at the top of the bus sign. And my question is, how well is that going to be seen from where this sign is gonna be located?
It's pretty much the next thing you you see when you go ahead and come to the intersection and look left. There's the bridge.
Think he's- I'm asking that. I, yeah, I was thinking the same thing, Elaine. I think he, the concern is, I would even suggest removing it off of the sign because it, it just blends in. So the covered bridge on the sign on the top above where welcome is. Yes. It it's kind of taking it, it takes your eye to look at that because you're trying to figure out what it, what it is. And it's taking away from what the sign is trying to say. So it's because when somebody's driving, I think they'll just be looking at that, trying to figure out what it is. And then they're not reading welcome to Andover.
So I think Jeff's just saying, is it clear on the sign what that is? And it might might benefit us to even take it off at the top.
Yeah. Actual painted bridge, it looks like it's less than a foot. Like 18 inches, two, three inches maybe.
Well, at the top, Jeff, it's four feet. Yeah. The picture's not very big. It it well, it's more of a it was always a branding question. You know? Because when it comes to doing signage, you've gotta look into the branding. And years ago, it was kind of decided that, you know, the covered bridge basically is the most exciting thing going for us right now in Andover when it comes to branding. But that is what goes there is kind of what we're going to have as a branding theme. I mean, certainly it can be anything. It can be anything.
I would put the crest of of the town. Maybe that might stand up better. I I Elaine, I thank you. I know you've been working on this very far. Oh, and and I know we're now we're having a conversation about something that you've been working on for a long time. I love the sign. And I I'm I know why that's there. It's to brand it for what Andover is known for the covered bridge. Correct.
I'm just, I'm just thinking it just takes your, it, it brings your eye to the top. So you're missing what the sign is saying. So I don't know if it's, I don't know how everybody else feels, but maybe we put the crest or whatever we call what what's on the sign down at Veterans Monument Park.
I I'm I'm just gonna this is just a personal opinion. I would remove it altogether. I think the sign looks, it's an appealing sign, the welcome to Andover established 1848. I I know what we're thinking related to the bridge, and but I don't think it will work on that type of sign. That's just me.
Yeah. I was So so we're sitting there As an art student, I can I can agree with what Jeff's saying? It's you you will not see it from that distance. Right. And and it blends in too much. I
I mean, if you were gonna take that whole thing, Jeff, and and graphically design it, it can't be a picture like that. And if you're you know, there's a difference to what you would attempt to do with, you know, if we had somebody designed, a bridge logo for us, obviously, off of the it cannot be a it cannot be a picture like that. It's not gonna work to me. And so if it was me and we were just gonna try to do this, I would take that the image of the bridge off the sign and just say welcome to Andover, established 1848. I think it looks really nice. Yeah. Well,
I'll I will definitely discuss with with Art who's creates the signs. I'm sure and and I totally understand what you're saying. I do, because I, you know, just recently there's been some signs along the road, and I had to come to a full stop at a stop sign and really take a good look at it to try to figure out what is that sign saying, you know? And, you know, and it's a picture. And so I do think, as you're saying, and Jeff Murray is saying a simple graphic as opposed to something that looks really actual.
I would just say, I would just leave the text down there like Jeff's saying, Jeff Maguire. I would take off any, any photo or branding. And I would just, I would leave it as text welcome to Andover established 1848. Think it, I think it would look great. And then that gives more room on the sign to make the, the copy bigger. So, okay. I think it's just otherwise you put, you put something there that's a, a logo or some sort of branding it's you're, it you're driving by and it's just, it's too much to try and read and process at the same time.
That just my thought and opinion as well. So I think it's a great looking sign. Think it's a great looking sign too. And then the lettering, can get the lettering closer to a white There's I know there's a lot of green into that lettering, so it will blend. Mhmm. The brighter you can get those letters, the more it's gonna stand out. Mhmm. Okay. So Alright. Well, I'll I'll work with Art.
Yeah. And and ask him. I'm I mean, I know he doesn't he doesn't live in Andover, so he can't picture where this is gonna be, but
Oh, no. He's the one who picked it out. He's the one who went he he's the one that talked me out of my original thoughts that, oh, that's not gonna work. It's like, oh, okay.
We lighten it to a white, we'll get washed out. If the sun's hitting it at a certain point in the day. And, you know, ask him what his suggestion would be for white or maybe a lighter yellow or something.
Cause at one point it was gold leaf, but you know that, like I said, that was more, you know, nobody can afford that anymore.
Okay. I will Well, maybe maybe solar backlight, Elaine. Yeah.
Well, we did talk about that, and we know we have electricity too, also right there at the parking lot, and it's in it is town owned. So
some kind of lighting would be lovely. Well if the plan would be to put up two signs and one sign has electricity and one sign doesn't have electricity, solar backlit would be, if they could pull it off would be great. Right, But it does look nice. I actually think it would give a nice recognition of where people are driving through.
Right. And we and we do I mean, it is we we have to get it right the first time because we will continue with the coloring and the whole theme on any other signs we do. Yeah. So we've gotta we've gotta get it right the first time. But no, I I really appreciate your
your input. Thank you. Elaine, one other concern I have is this pressure treated post cemented. You're probably gonna get maybe ten, fifteen years out of those. So you may wanna I don't know if we could look into a fiberglass or something else that we could cement in. Because it says pressure treated. That's wood. So we're gonna we're gonna cement in wood into the ground. So we probably I don't know if you could look at an alternative to that, like a fiberglass instead of, wood, because that will rot out. It will rot in time.
Yeah. I will I will I I mean, I will have you know, we'll we'll more seriously sit down and talk to Art about it because, I mean, he's he's been doing this for forty years, and and he's done a lot of town signs and business signs and stuff. So, you know, I kinda appreciate his experience and expertise on things. And I know I did have a discussion because somebody did ask, well, how long are these meant to last and all that? And he pretty much said, well, they really do last quite a while. And, you know, and mentioned that a lot of the signs he put up forty years ago are still fine. So, but I will discuss that
and get some assurances that it's gonna last. Yeah, I just replaced wood on my porch through my house with composite fiberglass and the price is not bad. Then, I mean, they're gonna be there for a hundred years. Yeah, yeah. So even if the sign goes bad, we still have the post there. We can put you know, we can put another sign on the post with a lot of increased costs. So just a thought going forward. Alright. Yeah.
Yep. And and and Elaine, thank you for, sticking with us. You've been at this for about, I don't know how many years, ten years. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Once these things are planted, that's it. I retire. No. And
so at some point, we're gonna need a signed application to planning and zoning. I'm happy to apply on behalf of the town once the board is happy with with the design and what you're doing. Okay.
Know, it's because we've already yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've already proposed it to Jed a couple of years ago and said, is this size okay? And they already did a preliminary. Yeah. It's fine. Follows all the rules.
You're 16 square feet, so you're, you know, you're within the dimension. So you will will get approved, but you do need to apply. Exactly.
Yeah. If if you wanna do that, that's great. Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it. Yep. K.
Let's move, to 10 E or I'm sorry, 10 F, the Stein drainage issues.
Alright. So at the last meeting, you asked me to go back to the town's attorney and have the town's attorney weigh in on this. I had an initial conversation with Matt Willis, who is Mark Brandt's partner and who deals with this area of law more so than Mark directly. He sent me back to find a whole bunch more information. I spent several afternoons going through the land records and found quite a bit related to it, which I then sent back to him. The thing we still have not located is the stipulated settlement that the previous Board of Selectmen entered into with the applicant. And he basically said, without that, in his opinion, it's a town responsibility. He said, if you can actually find that and get that out of the records, then that will clarify it one way or the other. That's the document where that should have been spelled out. So far, we've been unable to do it. I know Kate has tried to get it out of the court system, and we asked the old town attorney for the town of Andover, was Finkelstein, who was in place at the time, whether he had it and whether he could get it, and the answer to that is no. So you have two options. Either the town accepts responsibility
for it, or I get Matt Willis to go try to get it out of the Rockville port system himself. Those are really the two options at this point. If we do accept responsibility, you know, we certainly can. We have an awful lot of other drainage projects. Probably what we would do is we would just make it safe with a couple of blocks and nobody can drive out, and then put it in the queue to get repaired. You know, how long that will take, you know, there's an awful lot of drainage structures in the queue. So, those are really the options that the town has at this point. Do you want to burn a couple hundred hours or a couple hours of the attorney's time trying to find this, or do you want to agree that it's county responsibility? That's kind of his Matt's judgment on this. So
so, I mean, the letter that we received that's in the packet, you know, I know it says, TON agreed to take responsibility, but you're saying you can't find any record of that?
No. So there's a lot of things that should be in the record. You know, one, we should have a copy of the stipulated settlement because it clearly went to court because the Board of Selectmen clearly appealed the Planning and Zoning Commission's decision. So we know that, and we know because in the notes from the Planning and Zoning Commission, they've referenced the settlement, but we don't have a copy of the settlement. And the question is, can we actually find a copy of the settlement? Because it should be in our land records, and we should be able to find it in, you know, the Rockville Court or the Tollen Superior Court, one or the other. And so far, we've been unable to. So, the question is just can the attorney go there directly and do enough of a better search for the records being on-site to get that or not? What should have been filed, because this would have been quote unquote, a municipal improvement, Planning and Zoning Commission has a standard form that gets entered into by the Board of Selectment when we take responsibility for something that somebody else does. In other words, we have a subdivision, we take responsibility after it's done for the drainage system that was installed, the sidewalks, and the road network. You know, we sign a formal agreement with it, that goes to a town meeting, it's accepted as a town meeting. So there's no record of us ever having done that,
which there should have been if the applicant did a drainage project that was on town property. So we just don't have that documentation. Now, do we not have it because we lost it? Or do we not have it because we never got it and never entered into any agreement. I don't have the answer to that. So, that's the best I got at this point. The attorney who reviewed it said, as far as he's concerned, unless you find the stipulated settlement, the town probably owns it. If you find the stipulated settlement, he said he didn't see any reason why the town would have agreed to own that, but without paperwork to prove you don't own it, since it's on town property, essentially we own it. That would be his take on it. So that's where we are.
And can't we go into the town clerk's office and understand if there was a, when the the there was if there was a town meeting somewhere in the range of 06/09/1989
that voted on this? So you can figure that I probably spent fifteen hours in the town clerk's office going through town meetings, order of selectmen meetings, planning and zoning meetings in every place and the land records. You know, if you want to see the packet I sent to the attorney, it's about 60 pages of documentation. If you want to read through everything that's been filed relative to that, I'm more than happy to send it to you. Okay, okay.
With all that work I still don't have a conclusion to be honest.
So the question that is, there's two questions on my mind is what's the cost to send the attorney to do it? And what's the cost if we vote to assume maintenance responsibilities?
Given by basins we've done in the past, you know, you're probably looking at by the time you buy everything because it was it was one done by San Martino. So everything's going to be, you know, you're going to take the thing out completely. You know, the pipe under the road is concrete. So that's probably okay. But you're going to assume the entire basin, you know, the sump, the riser, everything comes out and gets replaced with a modern concrete precast structure. So I think that's a couple thousand bucks to buy all the parts, probably three or four days late, realistically.
And the labor per day, $1,000, $2,000? Yeah. Something like that. No. That doesn't mean that's I mean, I've I'm give me a number. Is it $2,000? Is it $3,000? Is it just give me an I mean, I'm just looking for a ballpark so that we all can evaluate what we're doing.
Okay, assume you're going to need three public works employees. I would say ballpark, you know, three eight hour days. So, if you said twenty five hours a piece, say seventy five labor hours are costs by the time you average it out. You could say it's somewhere around $60 an hour, you know, something like that. And the cost for the attorney?
Presuming Matt charges us the same as Mark Brandt's, which I think is the case, you know, we're paying in the neighborhood of 190 an hour, something like that, the attorney's fees.
Okay. Can you I mean, listen, I don't I I personally don't this one bothers me because it is not it may be in the right of way. It may be in the 10 foot rule, but it does not it's not a town basin. It's not. So it's for the benefit of of the individual homeowners, and so I have a problem.
Is there any repair that could be done for an air?
I mean, yeah, you could take the basin top off. So you would have to cut the you would have to cut the pavement. You'd to take the pavement off, then you'd have to take the basin top off, remove that with a backhoe, and then you'd have to repair the block wall because those were made in those days, they were cheaper to make them out of just, you know, masonry block, and you could repair it. The reason why I would suggest you don't do that is because it's at the base of a steep hill. And the real problem you have is as vehicles come down the hill, you know, they're kind of braking pretty hard just before they get to this thing. So, you have a little bit more push than you normally would, which is kind of why it's failing and it's pushing in, you know, because there's essentially a breaking moment going on top of it. That's my guess, from looking at the failure mode. So, could you? Yes. Do I think it would be smart? No. I think once you're going to commit to cutting the top off and replacing the base on top and repaving it, if we are going to take responsibility, we're better off just doing it right. But I would also say, you know, I'm not convinced we don't have 40 or 50 other basins as bad or worse. I mean, I would say every single basin on Ridge Road is worse than that one, you know, from a driving and structural standpoint. So, I mean, this is not something that's immediately going to rise to the top of our priority list. But if we decide we own it, you know, we'll make it safe temporarily,
and, you know, we'll address it when we can.
And you can't sit there because I mean, I haven't looked at the driveway specifically, but for the residents to get out of their driveway, they have to land on this basin. Can they avoid it? Well,
so that's a good question. I think we would end up at least to even make it safe squeezing them going out the driveway. But if you look at the original as built for the driveway, the as built for the driveway had the driveway going around, not going over the basin. The basin was separate from the driveway. So at some point, they kind of widened that out anyway, or they did it originally and just filed incorrect aspills, one of the two. But, I mean, it's a San Marino job. So So does the board does the board,
I mean, listen. The only way we're gonna get to an answer is to pay the attorney to sit there and look for the documentation. Right.
Say, do you have a problem with us not asking the attorney to go find the documentation?
If it's available? Yeah. I don't have any ground for it. It'll take a couple hours. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Investment. Yeah. Okay.
So I make a motion that we authorize Eric to request that the planning and zoning attorneys go look for the necessary documentation at Rockville Superior Court.
I'll second that. Can I break in on this? Sure. Go ahead, Dennis. Please. Please. Yeah. Go ahead. My understanding is that those old files are not at Superior Court. They are they are kept somewhere else in storage. And I don't think I've ever had to dig anything up that old, but I'm pretty sure it can be done. I don't know how you go about it, but there's gotta be a way if the if the file still exists. And I don't know what the retainage rules are on files like that. I would think they go back, you know, they would have to keep them for quite a while. And I think they do. And and I, you know, I could make a phone call over there. And I I I you know, this is this whole thing is I don't know. I don't don't wanna exaggerate. So so how about how about annoyed by this. I'm annoyed by this. Let's put it that way. Okay. How about we do this I'd like to see this.
How about we ask you, we authorize you, Dennis, to look for them first?
Yeah, I think so. I, I, you know, it won't cost you anything to have me do it. It'll cost me some time. That's all.
Dennis, if it wasn't filed, did, if it wasn't filed, would that indicate that it didn't go through the court system?
So Eric, didn't you tell me that you had a case number that you thought was missing a number?
We have a case number, whether the case number is correct or not, whether it was filed correctly or not, you know, I don't know. I mean
Where did the case number I'm come gonna have to come over and meet with you on that on that preliminary contract you guys want on that item we talked about earlier today earlier this evening. So why don't you why don't I sit down with you on that as well? I'm kind of intrigued by this thing. And I don't know. I'm I'm not sure. You know, I think you thought it was more of a zoning matter, but I don't know. Alright. So so then I'm as annoyed as you all are by this. Alright. So, Dennis, then let's sit there and I can try to help. I'll make I'll make
a motion that we authorize Dennis O'Brien to sit there and do an initial search. And based upon his recommendation, we authorized Eric to sit there and allow attorney Willis to make a secondary search if necessary. Second. Go ahead. I can't follow.
Any other questions? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Alright. Let's move on to the next item.
Okay. Next item is preliminary thoughts on the budget. So I put two things in the packet. The first was a, which has a few errors in it, which I see already, A proposed budget schedule, which just gives you the dates at which we could, you know, roughly how the budget process has worked in the past for your, you know, awareness. And basically, what that means is I agree to get you a preliminary budget workbook ready to go for your perusal around January 22.
Okay. Does anyone have any problems with the timeline that Eric's put in our packet? No.
Okay. Okay. And the second thing is, so one of the things I've done the last couple years is kind of started from the top down and said, okay, what what does the town actually do? You know, and then based on that, everything in the budget fits in a bucket based on, you know, like, so this doesn't talk about, for instance, the tax collector's office. But that's saying basically those are the focus areas that the town has, which is education, housing and land use, transportation, community support, recreation and health, safety, and additional infrastructure. And the reason why I'm doing this is I'm giving you kind of a list of all the things that fall under that. So, when you get the budget, everything in the budget should kind of relate back in some way or another and support one of these areas. And I will also give you the next month, basically, the list of the active grants. And you'll see that the list of the active grants we have also kind of supports and fits into one of these buckets.
So, this is just kind of a preliminary before we get into the budget, just starting big, big picture thinking about what we do as a town and seeing whether there's anything on here that you want to emphasize in particular when it comes to your funding priorities as a board. Anyone have any questions regarding the priorities?
Eric? Nice job. Okay. And then the last discussion is one of, so at some point in the next couple of months, we're going to have to make a decision and lock in a contract for diesel fuel for the upcoming year and also for heating oil. Prices right now have been up and down a little bit, but they've been running a low of about $2.95 a gallon and a high of about $3.10 a gallon. I was going to say that if we start seeing any prices below about $2.90 a gallon, that we would enter into a contract. But I still need to sit down with the public works and start forecasting what we're going to actually use next year for fuel. So, my question to you is, are you comfortable authorizing me to sign the contracts now? Or do you want to wait till the next budget meeting and see like field projections and stuff like that before we start thinking about contracts? It's just a question of how much flexibility you want to give me in terms of picking a contractor and actually signing a contract or signing a Have
you heard of future prices on fuel? Heard anything from anyone?
You know, so I've been watching, for a while, you know, globally, there's kind of two things. One, globally demand seems to be softening. The real question is the instability for the fact that we have two kind of active wars going on, and then where the overall world economy is going, because those are really the two things that end up dictating the price of oil. Right now, OPEC has said they're going to keep, you know, production cuts in place for at least another six months. So that tends to make the price go up. But then global demand and the economy has been going down, tends to keep prices lower. Those are kind of the two big things that that affect it. Typically, historically, sometime in December is usually when the lowest prices for a lock in six months out, which is a fuel contract that starts July '5 the following year.
I would say if you could get if you did what you said to $2.90, because that's like a dollar cheaper than usual, isn't it? Fuel oil. Well, but remember we're not paying taxes. Right. So that's,
you know, the, the futures contracts have been running, they're certainly under $3 right now. They're, I think when I looked today, it was at $295 something like that. So I feel like they're going to go a little bit lower, but they're not going to go a lot lower. Right. There's also a risk to waiting too long and, you know, the Israelis nuking a bunch of people and all of a sudden the prices are so, you know, there's a bunch of global instability. So
so what flexibility would you like from us? You had your wish.
So I would like the flexibility to sign a contract if it is appropriate, if, you know, if we have what looks like a reasonably low value for the town. So I would say anything under $2.90, you know, I'd be authorized to just sign a contract when it occurs.
Alright, I'll make a motion that if diesel fuel prices fall below $2.90, we authorize Eric Anderson to sign a long term contract for the Ton of Inverter. I'll second.
Okay. Anybody have any issues? Anybody wanna comment on that, Jeff, Scott? No. I made my comments. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. Okay. Alright. So you're good there, Eric? Yep. Okay. So we have 10 H, and that is 10 H is Andover's finest. It was added to the agenda. Over the past six months, the Board of Selectmen has been reviewing candidates and this is something that this Board of Selectmen has put in place to attempt to identify residents of Andover who have either accomplished something of significance or have added great value to the community. And, as we were evaluating the candidates, we decided that we were, going to look historically at some residents who have added value to our community, and we actually selected three individuals. The three individuals that we selected were Percy Cook, Jean Gasper, and Kurt Darling. Percy Cook was a first selectman and he also was a town roadwork foreman. He donated a significant amount of time to the community and also Prissy Cook also donated the land that Andover Elementary School is currently located on. And we thought that that donation and the work that he'd done previously was worthy of his nomination and moving to be selected as one of Andover's finest. The second, Jean Gasper, she was town secretary for sixteen years. She donated a significant amount of time to our community. She served on the board of the Andover Library, Toms End Cemetery, and as an active member of the Congregational Church,
and she served as a church historian. Jean also was involved in the initial structure of the Andover Red Cross, so Jean donated a lot of her time to the town of Andover and we'd like to recognize her. And the third individual is Kurt Dowling. Kurt passed away recently, but Kurt was a lifelong Andover resident. He served with the Andover Volunteer Fire Department for fifty three years. He was fire chief for twenty two of those years, served on the Board of Fire Commission for twenty one years, and also was a member of the Board of Finance and the CIP board. Kurt donated a significant amount of his time to Andover and to assist the community and we'd also like to recognize him. So Andover's finest is something we hope that our board will continue with and we will sit there and identify other individuals with the town that need to be recognized. We're working toward evaluating how to memorialize this and we're looking at the Andover Community Room is is somewhere where we can actually do this, and we hope to make this more of a
something that goes forward for a long time. So those are the three individuals that we would like to recognize and we all believe they've brought significant amounts of themselves and value to the town of Andover. Anyone else on the Andover's finest from the board? No? Okay. Thank you very much. We're gonna move on to new business. 11 a animal control officer discussion.
Okay, so I put in your packet a potential memorandum of understanding, that eventually would be between the town of Andover, Columbia, and Hebron about kicking in and doing essentially a three town regional animal control facility and animal control officer. As most of you know, we use NCOG's animal control officer and service now. The problem is that we're well beyond their real effective range. So, I don't think we've really gotten particularly good service from them in terms of time. And they're very limited in what services they provide the town. So, we started off about two years ago with the Capital Region, and we, one of the things that we suggested is Capital Region submit what's called an ARPCIP grant to the state, which is basically a regional performance incentive. So, other words, we've got state funding to kick this thing off and get it up and running between three towns. Part of the reason that's needed right now is the new regulations regarding animal control facilities make it much more difficult to comply with state law. Like our facility would, we would basically have to scrap it and start over with an animal control because there is nothing about our facility that complies with the state law. Not the septic, not the fencing, not the structure, not the HVAC.
None of it is compliant. So we're kind of out of luck, but both Hebron's and Columbia's facilities can be modified to meet what is current state law for that. So, what this proposal would do would be to transfer from us using NECOG as providing animal control services to shared one between the three towns. Now, the downside of this is that while initially it's about the same cost, it's only the same cost because CROG is funding it through the grant program. In the end, it's going to be, you know, somewhere around $6,000 a year more than what we're paying now through NECOG, depending on where they are in terms of price increases the next couple of years. So I want to put it out for discussion, because sometime in the next couple of months, if we're going to go this route, we're going to need to budget for it. And the other towns need to know we're on board because that's may depend on whether they're able to go forward with this also. So anybody have any initial questions or concerns with this approach? Do we have any options?
The only two options that I can see right now are staying with NECOG, or this is the only other real option that I can see us doing. Because at the end of the day, you know, we could potentially find our own animal control officer, you know, although getting 20 fourseven coverage would be difficult. But what we can't do is we can't come up with a compliant animal control facility to take the animals to, because we're just too far out of date on our facility. And I got to think it's, you know, a pretty expensive proposition to build a whole new animal control facility. So, I mean, to me, it seems like our two reasonable options right now are to stay with NECOG or to establish a joint facility
with, you know, with Hebron and with Columbia.
So what are you really asking us for permission to continue down the road?
I mean, I wanna get feedback from you because if we're going to do this, we're going to have to make decisions fairly quickly because all three towns are going to be in budget seasons, you know, pretty quick. And Columbia and Hebron are going to have to know whether they're cause all three of us are doing different things right now. Columbia is in a shared agreement with four other towns, but not near here, so they're in the same boat we are. You know, we're with NECOG and Hebron is kind of doing their own thing. So what this basically involves is Hebron upgrading their facility to be the primary, you know, animal control facility, Columbia upgrading theirs, but just as a backup facility, in case we get overwhelmed, which happens from time to time. And then, you know, us not, you know, us not in over not having its own animal control facility, and then us basically just paying for this as a shared service. But in future years, the cost in the initial cost basis will be just on a per capita basis. But then going forward in a year or two, once we have data, the cost to the town will be based on the average number of claims,
you know, in each relative town. So essentially how often the animal control officer has to get called out for Andover stuff. And do you have those statistics right now?
Not really. I mean, you know, we have some statistics from all three towns, but we don't it's not really comparing apples to apples because so our current animal control does not respond to any nuisance wildlife things, doesn't really respond to anything other than, you know, basically dogs, domestic dogs running around. You know, they don't deal with cats. They don't deal with any rabid animals. So, in the other two towns currently have much more comprehensive service than Andover. So I'm trying to figure out what our relative numbers are versus theirs are difficult right now.
Well, I'm in support of shared services on something like this. I just don't want to sit there and see our expenses raised too significantly. But, again, I asked the same question, what options do we have? We really don't have any options because to be compliant with the state, we'd have to upgrade our facilities.
Or stay with NECOG, but just accept the current level of services. So I look at it this way and say what potentially we gain is faster response time because an animal control officer is likely to be closer and a greater range of services provided, you know, by the animal control officer than what we have now, you know, in exchange for probably somewhat higher costs. But I don't have a firm cost estimate for what what we're getting charged per capita next year any. Is the public either.
Is the public calling town hall and complaining that we're not offering services that we would get if we did the shared service?
I mean, we've definitely got a bunch of complaints about rabid animals, that we haven't really had any good mechanism to deal with, You know, other than call the state police who generally don't respond to that anyway. So, we've had some complaints. Don't I'm not saying my phone is ringing off the hook with complaints, but I do get complaints from that from time to time.
But if we pay, but you're also saying if we pass up on the shared service in the future, we might not be able to join with them. So what if we stay with NECOG and they join together? Do we have the option to join in a couple of years? Possibly.
Yeah, I mean, us not being willing to join this year doesn't mean maybe we couldn't ever join. But the problem comes in is that part of this thing is if you're actually going to staff it, you need essentially, you need 24, you know, you need coverage around the clock, and somebody willing to respond 20 fourseven. And the economies of scale with that go up. So, I'm not sure this really is viable without the town of Andover. Because even though we're not the majority of the costs, you know, we're still a chunk of the costs associated with this project. Frankly, I don't know whether Columbia would opt to give up their existing arrangement without the third town. So
And what's what's the timing on this? When when do they want us to make a decision if we're going to join them?
Well, all three towns are going into budget season. So all of those towns need to know whether this is going to work, whether we're going to do it or not. You know, we've been working on this for, you know, a year or so, but longer if you take the grant portion of it. But. You know, and part of it has been. One of the kind of drivers has been the fact that the the cost to update the facilities, you know, a year ago, we weren't really talking about the cost of updating facilities, you know, we would have spent that portion of a grant on a vehicle for the animal control officer.
But now, you know, both those towns are looking at pretty significant investments to make their facilities compliant, you know, to current state law. Now, Hebron's got to make the investment anyway, because they don't have any partner, they've always had their own ACO. So, they're going to make their facility, you know, but does that answer your question? Sorry. Did Crogg get the, funding specifically for the three towns?
Initially, Andover was one of, I think about six towns that was, had expressed interest and shared, you know, shared services for animal control. But the other three towns are not in this portion of the state, and it doesn't look like they're going to go through with it. So the grant money is sitting out there and we're going to spend majority of the grant just on our three towns. So basically what happens is the grant offsets 75% of the cost of running the facility the first year, then 5025%. So it's basically your your fourth year you're paying the full bill from there on.
So of these costs, how much of this is facilities upgrade? How much is just regular expenses?
If you look at the a exhibit cost share Mhmm. The column that says facilities upgrade is the cost, the combined cost for the upgrade. So there's about $80,000 built in for facilities upgrade costs, the majority of which are grant funded. And then each of the three towns pays a prorated portion of that based on population. So of the 80,000, our hit is about 3,500 for the facilities.
Well, what what is the take of the board as far as this?
I think it's a better idea. That Neecock facility is out by the Rhode Island border. Terribly long distance out there to have somebody that's close. Seemed to me like it's a better idea.
So, Eric, just as if we look out into the future, we're sitting there saying our portion of the 2627 fiscal year would be $14,310 Correct. And that the cost that we're currently spending is?
So I looked at that. We're currently spending just under 12,000 this year. Okay.
And we're assuming we're going get an increase from them anyway, to some extent.
Presumably, presumably. I mean, you know, this year's increase was like 7.5%. So I can't really predict what that increase is going to be.
Okay. Well, based upon those numbers, I I really would sit there and say we we should continue to go down the the route of the shared services agreement.
I agree. And we're getting get a better service too.
Well, I mean, that's the whole reason why I'm kind of cautiously in favor of this is because I think we should have somebody to deal with, you know, rabbit deer or rabbit animals, and we should have somebody, you know, when somebody injures a deer and it's flopping around on somebody's state, front, somebody's front lawn, you know, we should have an animal control officer to address that. And we just don't have that with NECOG. NECOG is very narrowly interpreted their range of services. So what do Perfect example was,
somebody down at the lake last week, right, that had an injured deer. Yep. So so if this if this helps us with our services and gets the residents a better product for the you know, for what we're spending, that's then I'm all for it. Okay. Do we have to make a motion? Eric?
Need a motion? I I would make a motion to, you know, to authorize me to pursue it. I mean, I'm not gonna sign a final contract until I have a a final contract to bring back to you, but this is the bones of a regional shared contract. We're supposed to be meeting again Friday. All three towns are bringing it back to their board. So presuming the other two towns are on board, we'll keep proceeding and try to come up with a final set of documents.
K. I'll make a motion that we authorize Eric to pursue the regional service contract for animal control services. I'll second.
All right, all those in further discussion none. All those in favor. Aye. Okay. 11 b, select a contractor for the town multi use trail master plan. We did that. We already did that. Alright. 11 c, vendor permit for Sunrun. Yep. Has that been done?
There is should be in your packet an application for a vendor permit for Francesca Brown, who is seeking a, you know, a vendor permit through the town. And ultimately, per our charter, that's a town board of selectmen decision. So she is a salesperson from Sunrun,
and they are for And didn't we just didn't we just do this for someone else? Yep. We did. Same same exact type of permit? Yeah, different company, but same same concept. Same concept.
Yep. And so this is the same fee, same structure? Correct.
Okay. Anybody have any problem with this? No. Alright. I make a motion that we approve the town of Andover vendor permit for Francesca Brown representing Sunrun starting November. When would we start the permit, Eric?
You could start it whenever you want it. Start it November 15. Run it for one year starting November 15. Starting November 15 for one calendar year. Or sorry. For for one twelve month period. Yep.
Anyone second that? No? I'll second. Paul? We don't need to vote on it. Paul, second it. All those in favor. I was waiting for Scott. Alright. Alright. Okay. Done. We, deleted 11 d, the, appointments to CIP and the senior center building committee. 11 e, dogs at, Veterans Monument Park. We discussed that already. 11 f, parking enforcement on Hutchinson Road. Eric?
I think Jeff Murray asked for this one to be on. There's been some concern expressed about parking on Hutchinson Road by the Buddhist temple goers when they have events.
So I guess I can speak to this. If we remember, we got a we had an application probably two months ago over for for an event, and it came in probably five days or ten days before the event was supposed to start. And, you know, we we do require ninety days for these these special event permits. And, a resident had actually, stopped me one day when I was driving to work and gave me a earful about it and said, you know, they're they're really nice people, but they're having large gatherings on Hutchinson Road, and there's you know, we're talking three to 400 people and hundreds of cars. So I don't know if the board wants to take any action about, this activity that's going on and and they the failure to file permits on time and in the parking on the road. So I just wanted to bring it to the board's attention that it is going on.
We had a similar incident on Shottie Mill with a with a church that was operating out of somebody's home. And a large amount of people that were parking there. It's not that we don't wanna we wanna stop them from having their events, but they need to follow the process and they need to file their permit paperwork on time to have these events. Just if an event happened on that street and something happened, an accident, a medical emergency, I mean, fire department is unaware that there's that many people and that the road is actually congested with so many cars, on that roadway. I know it is a dead end, but we should probably advise them that they need to follow the process when they are gonna have these large events at the property on Hutchinson Road.
Sorry. I did, yeah, I, I did a little research on this and just doing some looking around on Facebook. So they have a, they have a Facebook page and they're, they're promoting their events on Facebook and there's some videos out there of the events and it it's a large group of people. So it's not like, you know, twenty, forty. We've got some videos that we can look at for information. So I've got those videos if anybody wants to take a look at them.
Okay. Eric, have you had, have you had any specific complaints about this?
I have not. I have told them multiple times that they need to submit their permits, you know, ahead of time because they have had a bad habit of not doing that. Overall, they seem like a friendly group. They have applied for nonprofit status. I have, we have also told them in no uncertain terms that they need site plan approval from Planning and Zoning Commission because they are in effect acting as a church. Now, a church is a permitted use because that is a commercial zone. So there's nothing at all that precludes them from doing that, but they need to file the site plan. And supposedly they are filing the site plan with planning and zoning, in which case it will be reviewed by planning and zoning. I'm sure one of planning and zoning's issues, because it always is, is parking. So that's something they're going to have to address as part of any site plan for that property.
Okay, so you are in communication with them and you have access to them to talk to them about permits and timing and everything else that's required. I mean, I've talked to them a few times.
I mean, I don't I'm not saying I talk to them on a regular basis.
And and the status of the culvert on Hutchinson's room? Still bad. That's the problem. That is the problem.
Well, to be honest, that is something that concerns me long term with that much traffic on the road is that, you know, of that, I would say that has a priority of zero in terms of replacement. But with them there, you know, we are looking into whether we can connect to the other end of the road and just access it directly across Route 6, and basically abandon that culvert completely. In fact, remove it. Because I think in the long run, that's cheaper to the town than trying to fix the bloody thing and spending, you know, a million and a half plus dollars to replace that culvert, which crazily seems to be the going rate for those things.
That would that would that would be a disaster if there were 200 cars on that and that culvert gave way. It would be terrible.
Not necessarily because they still remember that that property has direct Access to driveway on the Route 6, you know, which is one of the reasons why I haven't been overly concerned about, you know, fire and ambulance access because A, where they're parking is in a cul de sac, which there are no houses back there behind it, and B, the location itself where the temple is, has a direct access on the Route 6. So you can, an emergency responder, first responder can get directly to that property. Although could they get through the property and then get out the road, if somebody had a heart attack, for instance, back in the cul de sac? The answer is probably not. So there are definitely some concerns there that would need to be addressed.
There's one house there that has to go over that over Adam's Yep. Right? And then the farmer goes in, that's their main way into that faraway.
Right. But whether they come in that way or whether they come in directly off of Route 6
There's no there's no unless where are you assuming that they would come in off of Route 6?
I would come in near where the existing dead end cul de sac turnaround is, but not quite that far, if that makes sense. And I, you know, I've walked to that with the town engineer and talked about the pluses and minuses of it. And what we're trying to do is get a meeting with DOT to get them whether to see whether that's even feasible, you know, whether DOT would consider it, because that would make our lives a lot easier. And it's a heck of a lot, you know, less costly if we get permission from DOT to do it than it would be to repair that culvert.
Right. So so just as a let's sit there and see, Derek I would ask you to go to the residence and ask them to file their permits earlier so that we're aware and that everybody is aware of what's going on And if they don't do it, then, Jeff, maybe we go back and we explore what parking enforcement really would be about related to that property.
Well, Jeff, we had we had denied that permit that they had filed, I think, two months ago, and they still held they still held the event regardless. Mhmm. I'm sure. So it's just it's just it's just an equal playing field for everybody in town. If you know, we can't expect people to file permits for special events if we're not enforcing, you know, noncompliance with this resident. They have an event down there almost every weekend.
Yeah. I mean But but they're applying for status as a nonprofit and as that we're not gonna have any I mean, they're in a commercial zone. Are we gonna have any what is our enforcement going to be related to that once they apply, Eric?
Well, I mean, if they get site plan approval, then they have to meet the conditions of site plan approval. But to this date, we don't have any we don't have any zoning fine ordinance in place, and we don't have a permit fine, you know, in place. We still need to get Dennis to draft that, and then we got to go to town meeting. We'll get the town to approve that, you know, and then you can fine them for violations. Right now, we don't have any real enforcement method other than taking them to court,
and we're probably not gonna do that. I think the solution with the Shoddy Mill issue was putting up no parking signs. And if we just did that on maybe one side of the street just to kind of keep the roadway open, that may be acceptable. I mean, they're parking almost down to that culvert that is damaged. There's a lot of cars on that road. I mean, they're not it's it's it's it's not about the people or anything. It's just about following the rules and making sure that they file their permits before these events. That's all. And we've been getting them late for years now, and they basically ignored our permit procedure. Yeah. I'm right now. There was some have been The quality of breaking up.
I agree with Jeff. We we gotta set a standard that, you know, everybody's Follows. Just gotta follow the rules of what the town's
So if we put no parking signs up on one side of the road, can the state trooper issue tickets? Eric, asking you.
I don't know. Dennis? Or does that require an ordinance?
Do we have a parking the parking is already in town. Is it the board is it the, First Selectman?
No. The board of Selectman acting as a whole is the local traffic authority.
So Well, the park traffic authority is a parking authority, I think. We don't have a parking authority.
Well, you do. You you have you do understand why I just don't know who it is.
It's us. So let's say it's us. Let's say it's us. If we if we authorize Eric to put up no parking signs on one side of that road,
can the state trooper issue parking tickets? I'm not sure if it is you. I don't know, but anyway,
go ahead. That's it. That's all I'm after because if Jeff Murray's solution is is the correct one, which is put up no parking signs and they they have an event without a permit issued, right? You're protecting the culvert, which to me is the biggest issue because if the weight of all those vehicles collapses that culvert, then we have other problems.
What what are they doing over there? Is it church?
It's a yeah. Let's sit there and say it's a Buddhist church. Okay. And they have a 100 cars parking there. I would say I would say over a 100.
Over a 100? Correct. I'm not familiar with the with the with the street. Sure. I know who it's named after. It's a it's it's it's parallel to Route 6. Hutchinson Road. Okay. Yeah.
And there's very little there's very little homes on it. Very few homes on that road. Mhmm. Anyway anyway, what there's this is something that we're gonna have to address and come up with a better solution. I don't think we're gonna we're gonna get to it tonight, but we're gonna have to figure that one out. If. Now you have three things Yeah.
No, that's that's four, I think. But, but, but anyway, yeah, you're, you're loading me up again. That's that's okay. Sorry, Dennis. I gotta get over there.
Maybe talk to the maybe talk to the church owner and just ask them if they could, you know, park on one side of the street instead of both sides and maybe keep it open a little bit more. Just as a solution before we just say, hey. If, you know, you guys don't comply, we're gonna have to take some enforcement in the parking situation.
Well, you certainly need to keep them from parking on, that culvert. That sounds like a real problem to me. But I'd like to see the area, and, I just I sent, Eric a text earlier. I'd like to get over there and meet with him on this contract thing among, among other things and, spend the day over in Andover. Eric, if you have time this week, I can't do it tomorrow, but Wednesday or Thursday would be good for me. Parking on the road is not gonna be
part of the planning and zoning. They they have to have their own parking.
Well, but remember, as part of a site plan review, you should be establishing what the correct number of spots are for a facility like that and requiring them to comply with that. That's what I'm saying. They shouldn't necessarily be taking up the whole road to park there. They should be accommodating parking as part of their application or apply to the town and, you know, ask the town for permission to park on the road.
Because they're not going have room to park 100 bars up on that property. Okay.
So Dennis, if you could work with Eric and just sit there and see. Yeah. I I I I'm I'm glad to. Just need to get over there and I I I if you're dealing with any kind of land or anything or roads, I I really need to see it. I don't live in town and I'm not familiar with it. I can't can only just, you know, guess that what it looks like, and I think Eric's Eric's right about zoning. That's a good you know, they will have to file a site plan, and maybe the zoning officials can help. But I'm not sure. Anyway, I'll just put that on my list.
Alright. We're gonna move on. Is there anything that I'm missing in our additions and deletions to that section 11? I don't think so. We're gonna move on to item 12, approval of the minute meetings for 10/10/2023. I make a motion to approve the minute meetings for the 10/10/2023 regular meeting. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Tax collector's report refund request office policy for delinquents.
Okay. There is a tax collector's report in there, and there is also one, two, three, four tax refunds that total $2,316.66. Listening Yes. Into these are Go ahead, Paula.
I make a motion to, send out the tax refunds, listed in the packet for $2,316.66. I'll second.
All those in favor? Aye. K. So the delinquent policy?
So there's a policy in there that came from Kate. She is in the midst of going through all her trainings to be a fully certified municipal tax collector. She and I had a discussion about what up to this point has been done incorrectly in that office and what needs to be done to protect the town's collection abilities going forward. So, that's what she's saying that she's going to implement as a policy. We also have had a conversation about when and where it's appropriate to be more aggressive with tax collection, know, because I think, I mean, if you looked at the master list, there's like 300 pages of delinquent taxes in one form or another, but a lot of them are very small amounts and heroic measures to collect the last couple of bucks is not worth it, but we certainly ought to be going after kind of the bigger offenders. The previous tax collector's argument was essentially that the reality is it's the best loan in the business because every bit of that
unpaid taxes is accruing 18% interest. So even if it takes you ten years to collect in the interview, meaning time, you're making a lot more money off of it than if you collect it upfront. I mean, there's some merit to that argument too. But this is what she is planning on doing. You know, she wants to go after, certainly for personal property, much more aggressively. The alias tax warrant gives a state marshal the ability to actually seize bank accounts and seize assets to pay the taxes. So understand if we do that, that is a fairly aggressive move on the part of the town, but you know, maybe warranted.
What's our cost? What? What's our cost related to that service? So we don't pay for it
because the state marshal tax on his fees on top of whatever they owe us. So we get our money and he gets his money and whoever owes the money pays a lot of money is how I would describe it. Okay. Anyone have a problem with those policies and procedures? All for it. Let's go. Okay.
So you are essentially signing off on the preliminaries for doing a delinquent tax sale going forward for real estate, which would take place sometime probably in the spring at some point.
Can I ask you, Eric? I've never recall any tax sales being done while I've been there that I was aware of, but I'm sure you must have done some.
Yeah. We have. Know I was here planning and zoning the last time it was done, so I'm guessing it was around 2017 was the last time we did one, so it has been a while.
Okay. There's an attorney in that. We've done a couple. We've done a couple. And Donna Donna was the tax collector Yeah. The last time we did it. Because I went to the last Yeah. Last two. Yep. And so Adam Cohen? Yes. Yes. Cohen's always the guy. Yeah. He's
very good at what he does. He specializes in that. And, like, with the alias tax warrant, you know, his his fee is comes out of the proceeds from the tax sale. So it's it's it's a good it's a good way to deal with it. And I I I know Adam very well. And I've worked with him in many other towns and he does a wonderful job. So that's the way to go. The only other thing you need she needs to know and she probably knows it already is that I believe tax liens are only good for fifteen years, and we can't wait. There's there's a certain there's a statute of limitations on it, and I'm sure she I'm sure she's aware of it by now.
K. We'll sit there and, you know, with the procedures that she's putting in place, let's continue to develop processes that we can sit there and improve upon. So let's keep moving down that road. Understood.
So you're okay with this basic plan for enforcement and more enhanced collections than what we've been doing previously? Yes.
Okay. Because I'm sure you will get a bunch of pushback from a bunch of people once we start doing it. So I'm just making sure you're aware that we're doing this so when you start getting people complaining,
because when people get their bank account seized, they will be bitching. Well, pay your taxes, and then you won't have to listen to us, sir. You won't even have to talk to us. Right? No doubt. No doubt.
We'll deal with it when it comes. So department reports, is there anything that you want to bring to our attention?
Nothing really major that I want to bring to your attention. The reports are there in the packet. Anybody
have any issues with anything that was on any of the reports? Okay. We'll move on to item 15. Any correspondence, Eric? Nope. I'm going to shift public speak up because I'm assuming we still want to go into executive session over personnel contracts. Is that accurate? I think that would be appropriate. Okay.
So we'll move on to public speak, which is item 17, and we'll do that beforehand. Diane Greiner, you're first.
Looks like I'm probably one of the only ones that left on here. We've got three.
I've been very patient. I don't have a whole lot to say. I'm always impressed and wowed by the number of topics that you guys have to address every month. And I applaud you. I think you guys do a good job. I'm sorry that Elaine Bucard is not still on here. I had a comment about the sign. And I don't know if it's too late to change it or if you guys even agree, but the sign at the Monument Park is that cranberry color with the tan lettering. The one at the library right down the street is took note from that and theirs is also that cranberry with the tan lettering and the church has got the white congregational church with the cranberry banner on the top. Again, keeping with the library and the Monument Park and maybe the town sign should follow that same thing since it's on the same street all within a half a mile. Have it be basically the same color scheme rather than going with the green.
We will sit there and make her aware of that possibility.
So Yeah. No problem. Because if for for whatever it's worth. And that that was basically my only comment. And thank you again, for all all you do and ladies. Good job. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. All right.
Joanne Ebert left us. So Ann Cremier, your last is your microphone working? Can you hear me now? Yay. I
changed from the computer to the tablet and got that to work. Got it.
Yeah. I, you know, listened to everything, and my only thought was also about the signs and that welcome to Andover sign and most towns seem to put the signs near the town line. So when people first come into town, they see the sign. I didn't know why we weren't considering doing that instead of putting it in the middle of town. So, that was the question and I've even noticed going to Columbia on Route 87, they're welcome to Columbia sign is before you leave Andover. It appears to be still in the town of Andover. It says, welcome to Columbia. Which is a bit of an oddity. But I would think that we should put our signs just over the town line and put them on Route 6 in two places, maybe 316 and 87.
I know it needs more sign. I think the thought was when Elaine shared this a couple months ago, when you're driving on Route 6, she figured the, the spot that was suggested that we talked about tonight, it's close to where the park is and the, you know, kind of like the, our center of town, so to speak. So she, and she figured it would be more, you could read it better in, in that area rather than when Route 6 is just a fast people pass on that fast. So you wouldn't even notice it if you're going at the speed that you would on Route 6. I think that was her, her thinking on the placement when she shared that in the beginning. So,
but it sounds like you're thinking of putting more signs in, in the future, maybe. So,
the EDC very much wanted to put in at least three signs. They wanted to put one in on each end of Route 6 and then one on 316. This is probably the sixth or seventh year that EDC has approached the town for funding for doing this. This is the first year the town finally approved some funding, and it happens to be enough basically to do one sign. So that's they kind of scaled back their proposals from what they would have liked to do to what the town will actually pay for them to do. So I think that was the reason why they chose to go a little bit more closer to the center of town. Mhmm. And I'm not I'm not on the EDC, so I have no dog in the hunt where the thing goes. As far as I'm concerned, it goes wherever y'all want it to go.
Okay. Alright, Anne. Thank you very much, and make sure your microphone works for the next meeting. We all good. Alright. Okay. I think that's it. I'd like to make a motion that we move into executive session to discuss personnel contracts and invite in Eric Anderson and attorney Dennis O'Brien.
And my suggestion would be you invite in Anne Kremay since she's gonna be here when the contracts get signed. Alright. We'll invite Ann Kerme as well.
Alright. We eliminated community voice. We're the only ones left on. Right, Dennis? Yeah. Okay. Alright. Eric, have you stopped the recording? I have not. Thank you.