Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
March 8, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
The Board of Selectmen for Monday, 03/08/2021 to order. We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Why we're not hearing anybody? I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America to the republic
for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all. All
right, public speak. We're gonna go around my board. So Kathy and Mike Blazi, you're first.
We're all set. Thank you. I turned it right over to Eric. Okay, you got it. Diane Greiner. No, I'm all set too. Thank you.
Jerry Kerme. I'm here. You all set? You're ready? You public speaker now? Sure. No, I'm all set. Thank you. All right, no problem. I do not have a name for the individual here. That's Jay. Hi Jay, how are you? Would you like to say anything Jay? Just hello. Hi. I'm on. Good to see you. How's everybody doing? How are doing Jay? Anything to say, Jay? Yes,
are we starting the meeting? It's public speak. Okay, well thank you. You were probably given out a paper that came through by Eric Anderson. I sent it over to Jeff McGuire on the update of the Monument Park that we'd like get the irrigation system in, the looming, the poles, the new well to sustain the irrigation. As you know I'm very passionate about the Monument Park. You know there's over 250,000 cars a week that go by there plus and it's a gateway to Andover. And I believe that it should look really nice And with your help, and I'd be more than glad to put time and could even raise probably some money to help with this. I don't know what are your thoughts on it?
Well, you, Jerry. We'll get to that. It's on the agenda. So Joan Foran, you are next in line. Would you like to comment during public speak? Not at this time. Thank you. Okay. Diane Choquette. I'm all set. Thank you.
Sloan, would you like to come in public speak? Okay. Catherine Magaldi Lewis, last one on my board. No, thank you.
Okay. Let's get started. Any additions and deletions to the meeting?
Jeff, I have a few. I'd like to add item 6B, resignation of Susan Magri. Item 9I, which is Man, I can't even read my own selection of town budget meeting dates and item 4A one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary commission report. And Adrian has texted me multiple times saying he can't get on, he's gonna try to get on in about five minutes. He's got a computer issue. Jeff, you're muted.
All right. I was trying to type during that, Eric, so I could remember all these. So 6B was a resignation of Susan. How do you say her last name? M A G R I. M A G R I. Just everybody knows it, resignation from where? From the building department as the building admin. Okay. And then what was your next one?
The next one would be 9I, which is town budget meeting date. And the last one?
And the last one is 4A, one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary committee report.
Okay. Paula, do you have anything you want to add? No, all set.
Jeff Murray? No? Scott, do you have anything else? All set. Thank you. Okay. So I'll make a motion that we add 4A one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary report, 6B resignation of Susan Megre from the building department, and 9I town budget meeting date discussion. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. We're going go on to item four, boards and commission presentations. Do we have any boards and commissions that are presenting tonight, Eric?
For a one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary, I believe Kathy wants to speak to that. Kathy, the floor is yours.
No, I believe that Katherine will speak for us for one hundred seventy fifth. We are trying to add a member and I believe the board of selectmen has to approve that and that is Maranella Villach Chaffone would like to be on our committee. Catherine, would you like to speak about that?
Sure. Sorry, I didn't know I was going to. Yes, we had Maranella. She was at our last meeting last week and she was great. And when we first started out we didn't have more than seven. I believe we had nine. And someone moved and someone else had to resign. So we just thought forget it. We'll just stick with the seven and we'll be fine. But she was very helpful and had a lot of good ideas and we would just like to have her as part of our committee. Okay could you spell her name for Amanda? Yes I apologize Amanda. Hold on.
Got it. Thank you. So you do it all good. Okay,
good. You're all set, Amanda? Or do you need an Amanda? You good?
Okay. So somebody want to make that motion to add that member to that board?
I make a motion to add Marinella Chalfant to the one hundred and seventy fifth committee as a member. I'll second that. Okay.
Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Marlaina, I believe that that is how our name is. Thank you very much for participating.
Thank you so much, you guys. She's it'll be a big help. Thank you. Anything
else? Any other committees? Eric, we're all set with the committees and boards? That's correct. Okay. Five, we're going to appointments. Sherri Holmes is the Finance Director. Has Sherri started? Not yet. She starts officially on the fifteenth.
Okay. And as a side question, when you did the position for the assistant to the finance department? Correct. Is there a contract signed with her or anything other than she joined the union in that position? There wasn't a contract because it's a union position. No, no, no. I just wanted to know if there was a contract or something we wrote out about that individual participating between the Board of Ed and the Board of Selectmen?
The only thing we have for that position, we had an offer letter and we had a memorandum of understanding with the union covering her job responsibilities.
So in essence, we don't have anything between the Board of Education in that position?
Probably not. I'm not sure exactly what you're looking at. No, no, no.
Read what you sent us. And so my question was, is there anything reciprocating on the opposite side between the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen?
No, I mean, what really needs to happen is there needs to be a shared service agreement between the two entities of some sort. All right.
Does anyone have any questions related to that contract or any concerns related to what is currently out there? We all read it. Biggest issue in that document is, in my mind, it has nothing to do with anything other than termination of that position. I don't believe there's any we have nothing we have no say in termination of that position. Eric and the town have evaluation privileges, and that's pretty much it. So we have to determine the way that contract is written or that agreement is written. The Board of Education is responsible for the compensation. We are supposed to pay $1 to the Board of Education. We have to decide if we want to make adjustments to that contract or do we sign it right now. Because I don't mind her working for us. Eric said in his email that we need this in place for the individual to start working for
necessarily know that's accurate. But other members of the board have to decide what we're going to do related to that.
I don't know. Is there really much we can do at this point? I mean, they've already moved forward on that contract unilaterally. So I don't know that we can modify the contract at this point, certainly. So it's really a memorandum of understanding issue as far as oversight. If we were to make an adjustment in oversight, would it conflict with the contract? I don't I mean, I read the contract, but I didn't read it close enough to see if there would be some sort of conflict there.
Well, personally, I think the only thing that would happen is, you know, it would be an interesting thing. They terminate, let's sit there and say the Board of Education terminated that position. We'd have nothing to say about it. Could terminate it either.
Well, we could we could terminate services on our side. They could terminate services on their side. It's the overlap. That's the issue. Dennis is raising his hand. Hey, Go ahead. You're muted, Dennis. You're still muted. Dennis can come in on There
it is, it's a mouse. Thank you. You mean my mouse was moving but nothing was coming out? All right, that's rare. Unusual for a lawyer. Unusual for me especially and you know, we had a big problem in Wyndham with that, huge problem. We had a charter provision that covered it and it didn't work out. There were issues that came up and we had to change it. We changed the charter and caused a huge furor in town. If you read the Chronicle, you saw allusions to it. So, you know, I think you need to be careful with this. I'd be glad to look at the document you have and offer some suggestions if the horse isn't already out of the barn. I think that'd be a good idea.
Dennis, you already reviewed the shared services agreement. Did I? You did that when they first gave it to us, which was the original holdup with me giving it to the board was I asked you to review it prior to the board getting it. So that was a Dennis, I sent you the contract.
I just forwarded it to you. With the board of ed? Yeah. So you can look at it. It's a very simple contract. I didn't know it. Answered your question. No major problem with anything other than the fact that there's no procedure for termination.
That was the problem here. Was a question that came up about termination of the director of finance here and who had the power and whatnot. They shared the power and they couldn't agree on it and it was pretty horrible. So I don't know and I don't recall seeing that but if you have a email from me saying that I looked at it and said it was okay then Dennis, was some time ago. No, the original Well, I never throw anything away.
Original document Dennis was just about what we were trying to do. It didn't get into the nuts and bolts of the contract. It was
MOU or something like that. I'm gonna look for it. Well, ahead. Why don't you just go ahead. I
thought the provision was that we had a say in the review process but ultimately hiring and firing was decided, had to start at the board of ed. I mean, that pretty much suggestive Eric?
Yeah, mean, how could it not? It's ultimately a board of ed employee. Yeah.
So the department was supposed to be a overall town department. That was the concept.
Yeah, but I think the point in as much as we may not like it, it kind of does make sense in the fact that the primary responsibility in this case, there is a lot more work at the school than there's at the town hall which you and I both agreed to as far as hours and workage. I agree. So I'm not gonna debate that one. No, so I think leaving it in the board of education hands is legitimate. Think the issue becomes that if we do have a problem, we have to be very systematic about documenting what our problem is. So that way, we have something we need to bring to the board of ed addressing an issue that we're clarifying what it is. Can't be a personality conflict or something like that. It needs to be a legitimate concern. All right, other members of the board. Rory opinion? I've already made my opinions known I believe.
What do you think we should do at this point then?
I don't think we can do anything unless Dennis said we course have of action. And I have the same opinion as everyone else.
Adrian doesn't have the same opinion we do. I don't necessarily. I do have a possible solution though if the board of education agreed to it. They have how many members? Seven, is that correct? Yep, they got seven. And we have five, which really does still would leave control into the board of education hands. They'd have a higher number of people that maybe we could do something where if there were to be termination, it had to be by a majority of both boards voting in favor of. Just no. I
agree with that and that's where I would go but I would make it two members of the board of education, the superintendent Eric and one member of the board of ed. Say that again. I think you said board of ed twice. Three
members from the board of ed, so the superintendent and two members, and then a member from the board of selectmen and Eric. Eric and the superintendent are the person supposed to be working with this individual and evaluating them.
Then you'd have two and one. Okay. You'd have to have 60%. I'm okay with that. I mean, simplifies the process versus having a joint meeting to drive So the
gonna basically you want to enact some kind of combined committee to do review and evaluation?
No, you are responsible for review and evaluation. This is just related to termination. No, just for termination. Termination and discipline.
Go ahead Dennis. I found it. It looks like you can get out of the contract on sixty days notice. And that's a problem in and of itself. Yeah,
wrote an email to Eric saying this is fine, but I pointed out the problems that we had in Wyndham and I said that if you have any need for any additional I don't know who wrote it. It was written by, I'm sure, the Board of Attorney.
Dennis, it was. Dennis, do we have any problems? I cannot believe we would, but are there any problems if we wait on the contract and try to bring this forth to the Board of Education for next meeting? Was this approved by Board of Selectmen? No.
Okay. No. My No, then I mean if you want to review it, it hasn't been This moved individual is starting work. We have absolute needs for this person.
Well, saw her today. I was over there. She starts in two weeks, right? Eric, I thought she started this week.
She starts on the fifteenth, the fifteenth. All right, a week. That's her first day of hire.
Do we have a problem if we don't have this in place? I'm not asking you Eric, I'm asking them. Yeah. So you're asking for,
so you haven't approved this yet. So you but you could approve it tonight. We could approve it tonight. Alright, well, me look at it and we'll come back to it later. I'm just gonna look at it. I think my suggestion would be that
we offer as part of our shared services agreement with the board of education, we offer them your makeup for a marina disciplinary or for the top level position that's a school board employee, we offer what you suggested, Jeff. And for the town based employee that splits and does some time at the school, marina's position, that we flipped that. And so on the town side, have two select board members, superintendent Eric and one board of ed. And that that would seem like a fair split. Yeah. I have no problem with that.
And that way, the primary employee for them, they have the most say in, primary employee at the town, we have a saying. But also at the same time, they can make a case if there's an issue with with our employee as well. Mean, this isn't just an issue of the top level employee. I think this is an issue of I I think their board needs a say in in our in our in the in the second level position more so than they currently have. I agree. It has to go both ways. I have no problems with that.
I mean, that's why I was asking for the contract. I wanted to know if we had signed anything with the board of ed related to that position. I
think there was some back and forth on it. Don't recall don't recall I a vote in favor or against. I remember there was some lots of back and forth, but Okay.
So I have no problem with making that offer to the Board of Education. I think it's fair, and I do agree. I believe that the treasurer will spend 60 to 70% of her time at the Board of Education, 40 to 30% of her time with the town, it's a little bit flipped. I mean Marina probably could be fiftyfifty. I would imagine Eric, how much time is she spending now?
Probably a little more on the town side than the school side. But part of that is the school is still filling in more heavily with their old business manager just paying per diem. Okay.
Do we wanna get some feedback? I mean, do we have Board members here at all right now that if they have an opinion that we should wait,
can point us in the right direction? I honestly don't think that's fair to them. Let them go back to the board. They're meeting next week. It's a fairly simple concept. It's not trying to step on anything. It's just trying to outline what this is. There's a treasurer for the town. It's a business manager for the school. Fine.
Dennis, what do you got? Yeah, I don't wanna say too much but one of the reasons why I said this was fine and then with a big long caveat was because they're paying for it. And the other thing is that you can get out of it in sixty days and get your own finance director. Eric said she's in a union, which union would it be? It'd be the board of ed union, I'm sure,
right? No, he's talking about the second level employee, not that particular. Second level employee is Marina?
Yes. And Marina is being paid for by the town. The town, yes. That's very similar to what we have in Wyndham. All right, but let's go back. We ended up with that. Let's go back. It's all town money.
Yeah. Every time No, agreed. I think this is just about where someone is spending the most time and where an issue may come up and needs to be addressed. And
I have no problem with the sharing termination. I think that's a smart, makes sense. It's just common sense. Well,
she's gonna be in their union. She's not gonna No,
no. The second level employee is in our union, Dennis. The second level employee, that's Marina, right? She is in our union. Whose contract isn't about her, it's about the
Yes, but because the two positions are basically flip flopped as far as time served, that's where it comes up.
It was never addressed Dennis, that's the problem. Well, this is where we ended up coming out when we had our big controversy. We had one, finance director is an employee of the town and the assistant finance director is an employee of the board event.
In ours, it's a flip flop. How about we minimize our controversy in the future? Eric, I don't know if your contract has a clause in it. If we chose to I mean, there used to be a clause somewhere in the time. You had to have four out of five board of selectmen members determine Still does. Yep. You can fire me right now if you wanted. All it takes is four of you. Alright. Motion on the table. Alright. But but that that that was the point that it took. Don't get me all excited. And and that's the same thing that should happen with with the the town and with the
with this position? So first of all, remember the assistant's a union position. So I think you would be hard pressed to just decide to get four people to decide to vote to Terminator and make it stick. Could you do that with the finance director? Sure.
According to this contract, she's an employee of the board of education. She's not an employee of the town. Correct. The shared services contract, you're paying a dollar. That's one of the things that influenced me saying, okay, fine. So basically what you're saying is Dennis, have
a problem and we end up letting her go and the school board decides to keep her, it's on them.
Well, think you're under this, the way this is written now, remedy would be, that's right. Your remedy would be to, you have sixty day, you can cancel a contract with sixty day notice. Then what was the point of doing any of it, Adrian? The point of doing it? No, Dennis, I didn't ask you. Asked I'm sorry. Once you get me going, you know. I asked Adrian that.
If that is truly the way that this is going to go, what was the point of doing all this? We were doing this to try to make the town more efficient. Well,
think we're doing it with a little bit of optimism believing that this isn't gonna be an issue. Mean, if we look at everything, I mean, obviously you always look at a contract from its worst point, never from its best. But I think optimistically, we have a good candidate, they seem very well qualified, their long term positioning where they would like to be fits with the town and the school. So I think, I don't think, you know, we can look at every contract from the worst point of view, but I think in this particular situation, we have to look at it from the best point of view. I do think that there should be some commonality as far as determination, but, you know, again, part of the problem is that maybe the board of education made some decisions based on what they got for a feedback
and their timing of their meetings versus the times of our meetings didn't line up in order to iron some of that stuff out before the hiring was done. So
Okay, so where does this board wanna go? Do we approve the contract that's out there for Sherry and hope for the best?
I don't think approving the contract precludes the disciplinary action position.
So you're talking about the shared services agreement, I presume not the contract. Yes. Correct? Okay. Yeah.
But then the shared service contract agreement needs to be referenced in the contract.
You know, I'd have to pull up, unfortunately my internet's not working nicely. I was trying to pull up this contract to look at the provision on termination. There
isn't any. Yes, sir. Is. It just allows you to terminate, you know, your end of the deal and within
sixty days. What about actual termination from the board of education? Well, is there something in the board? I understand that Dennis, but is there something in the contract that says what the terms of termination are for the board of education then?
I don't think so. By mutual consent, terminate this agreement at any time.
It said simply mutual consent? Yep. Mutual consent of the board of education or mutual consent of parties involved?
No. The board of education. I would I I mean, I believe that's why they left it so vague is it's a contract with the board of education. It's not this contract If it says mutual consent
and the board of education She's employee. She's an employee of the board of ed. I understand that, Dennis. But if it says mutual consent and the board of education agrees to a shared services contract that includes the town on on both and them on both sides of it, then it would be allowed. It would not counteract the contract as long as the contract does not specifically say board of ed. So
the shared services agreement can be terminated by the board of ed or the board of selectmen as they so choose with sixty days notice. She is an employee of the school board. So it is the school board's responsibility to make a decision whether she remains an employee or not. It is your right as the board to terminate the agreement with the school board. You can't duly employ somebody with the town and the school board. A school board is its own entity, right? Yes.
That's what we did in Wyndham and it did not work at all. That's why we had to go in this direction and do this. All right, Maguire, I see you smiling.
Yeah, disagree. I think you can, if the school if the board of education agrees to it, then it would be allowed. If the board of education did not agree to it, then you can't force the issue.
Is she a union employee? I ask again. No, she's not in a union employee of theirs. No. She's just an employee without Yes. Whatever personnel policies Executive level employee. Okay. So she's an employee at that will? No. Not not a public employee. You're never an employee at will. You always have you always have some degree of rights to a due process. Are you talking about municipal, a municipal clause?
I'm talking about a municipal employee. You have constitutional rights. Can be fired, but you can't. They have to give you a right to a hearing. You have to go through a process, even if you're not in a union. If government you're employee. Government is regulated by the constitution. Constitution is to regulate governments not Yeah, so the question is,
can the board of education, it's a mute point because it really just, we're discussing something that's really gonna be up to them.
Whatever you guys want to do, it doesn't matter. It is but you can opt out in sixty days notice and then hire your own person. Sixty days notice. It doesn't do any good for us to opt out.
It's not the point. Point is Breakdown situation. The point is, if we don't like what's going on, we get out of the situation. And now the town has to pick up an extra $60,000 of expenses. That's
the point. Point was- It's downside. Yeah, but if you have the same The alternative is that you both She has two masters and then you end up fighting over whether one wants to terminate her or the other doesn't want to. We had that problem here.
Dennis, evaluation, the finance director shall be evaluated by the superintendent of schools with input from the town administrator in accordance with specific procedures established by the superintendent. That's what it says, valuation.
That's in the same agreement I'm talking about here? Yeah.
All right, that's the cooperative agreement? No, that's not the car. That's a contract for the I don't have that I in sent it to you. Check your email.
All right, we're going to circle Jeff. Look, I mean, does anyone else on the board wanna fight this or I shouldn't say fight this, address this in some other specific level or are we agreed that this is the way it's gonna be and we're just gonna move forward? Well, will we be able to bring her to our
board meetings and talk to her about the budget at the school?
You're gonna be able to bring her to the board meetings and talk to her about a budget at the town, the budget of the school and anything else that has to do with finance. About the school and town. All of the above.
Yes. But remember when she works for the school board, she represents the school board. When she works for the town, she represents the town. Are times when there's always gonna be a conflict
between those two. I don't see how there's a conflict. When you bring someone to a board meeting, you're asking them to answer questions. You're not asking them to defend a position. That's what I'm It's
like we don't ask you for your opinion, like your deep down and your deep seated opinion in a lot of what we ask you about. We ask you to present the numbers, with intelligence and with transparency. Look,
Valerie's job as a superintendent is to defend the budget, which she has been doing. Shannon's job as a board of education chair is to do the same thing for her board. The finance position is to make sure the numbers are correct and the numbers that we are getting and they are getting are correct. We're asking her for factual information. We're not asking her for her opinion on the school. She's an administrator, not a policymaker. Right. Just like Eric. So
so it does not matter who she's quote, unquote working for in that ten minutes because hopefully whoever she's working for, she's giving honest information. How much is online a section c? How much is online a section b? How much interest? How long are we gonna have to pay? Is this viable within the budget? Okay. Okay.
We're going we're talking about something that that's not really helping us make a decision so.
But Paul that's really the essence of the whole issue here, that we need to,
that's why we did this whole thing Paula. I don't see how she has quote unquote, Go ahead Paula, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, I just don't, I don't see how,
I understand Scott. I understand you feel that way. I don't know how to, I don't have an idea on how to fix that.
What are we trying to fix? I'm missing something. What is Scott's question that needs fixing? What is it in his question that he needs fixing?
Sounds frustrated about something. No. Scott I'm all set as as long as what Adrian's saying is factual.
Yes. She's not a policymaker. She she does it. They The school board goes to her and says, we would like a budget based on A, B and C. We would like a budget based on C, D and F. We would like you to figure out X, Y and Z. She does not set policy. The board of education sets policy. The the superintendent sets policy. It is her job to make that policy fit into a budget and to adjust the budget accordingly. So when she comes to us, we're asking her for facts. We're not asking her for anything else.
And under the shared agreement, she has responsibility to you as well for it to do the work,
the financial I personally look at it. See and I look at it totally different. Opinion on this that her responsibility is to the numbers. We're looking for factual information end of discussion. You know?
Okay, so as opposed to continuing do we want to approve this contract tonight so that we can get it signed and she can start on the fifteenth without any issues?
Does anybody have any objection to that? Let's start there.
I'm fine, let's go. So we'll make a motion. I'm fine.
I make a motion that you accept the contract as submitted to Eric and reviewed by us. I'll second it.
Okay, further discussion. We've had enough. All those in favor. Aye. Okay. We are moving on to appointments, the Beautification Commission appointments of Kathy Derozier, Bill Derozier, Lauren Westenberg, Lorraine Liss Well, Joan Ross, and Valerie Jervonta.
I'm sorry I blip my Internet's going in now. Do you want me to make the motion Jeff. Yeah go ahead. Just make a motion to appoint the beautification commission. I'm a motion to appoint the following members of the beautification committee for a term to expire on 06/30/2022, Kathy and Bill DeRosa, Lorraine Westenberg, Lorraine Liswell, Joan Ross, Jim Ross, and Valerie Gervonti. I'll second that. Okay. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye.
If you don't call and opposed. Excuse me? Is a legal vote if you don't call opposed abstains? I'm just curious. Dennis, do you know what mean? What's question?
I was still mulling over the agreement. I think it's wonderful. I'm glad you passed it. I wish I had known it was on the agenda because I didn't. Anyway, what's the question about votes?
Jeff has a habit of saying everyone in favor or anyone in favor or calling those in favor and then he doesn't always call opposed or abstained.
Is it still legal? That's because I'm sorry to my esteemed colleague Mr. Mandeville voted yes.
You should have a the votes are supposed to be recorded in the minutes. That's one of the things that's required, absolutely required in minutes is the vote. Back vote. Amanda, what was the last vote total? Five-zero-zero.
And you know that because Jeff called, abstained or against? Everybody raised their hand and you said yes.
I'm not on video so how did I raise my hand? You said yes. Said yes. No one else could be saying yes. We don't know that. We're all raising our hands. We're on video.
All right. Oh my gosh. Would prefer you to call
please. So there's no question. There could be a deep fake out there. I don't know what's going on. Remember what Adrian, Adrian, can you see my face? Unfortunately,
yes. Okay, good job. All right, so let's keep going here. We have, 6A, Megan Lally resigned as the chair to the Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Commission and she's taking a position as a regular member. Eric, he stepped away but are we, having luck filling that chairmanship? No. George has taken that.
The chairmanship is already filled. You don't have to do anything with that. That's just she's she had to step down because she's having vision problems. Whether it's permanent or temporary, nobody knows, but the commission's in good hands. No
action needed on your part. Okay. And then we have 6B, Susan Mangari from the building department resigned effective when, Eric? Effective today. Today.
Okay. Do we have any discussion that we need to have on that issue? We shouldn't, so we're not going to. Let's go on to Section seven, Item seven, the town administrator's report.
Okay. So let's cover the highlights for the first time in a long time. We are under the 10 threshold. So we're actually no longer one of the red towns. Right now, our COVID infection rate for the day is about four times lower or five times lower than it was at its peak. So we're in pretty good shape there. As I mentioned, Susan Magri, she sent me a letter of resignation today at six stating that it was effective immediately. I told her hand her keys in and good luck and called it good. So the F550 dump truck, we've gone back and forth. They bought a couple other units. I think we're going back to the original plan, which is get the red one that's right next door. They had another one that we could have gotten that was green. And there was one in New York that was green. Advantages and disadvantages to all of them. Right now, we're just gonna get the red one and be done with it.
We're making progress on the connectivity grant finally. We do have a meeting scheduled with Rick Zulich of Datum Engineering to go over the forestry stuff. We are also making progress on the town alarm situation. As you know, TN is no longer gonna be monitoring. We will have ended up bringing in four companies to do evaluations and we're gonna try to go through the reports and make the best recommendation we can about, we're getting, gonna end up with four fairly different concepts. So we'll have to go through and choose the best path
forward after that. Are you weighing those out to CIP or what's the route for that at this point? I haven't even
really decided that. There's kind of two facets to it. The first facet is what company we use for the evaluation. And the second part of that is what upgrades do we do? So those are kind of two different parts. I don't think CIP needs to weigh in on what method we do for the monitoring, but certainly would have to go to CIP for the potential upgrades to public works in other locations. We are currently the we had an issue with the alarm in the library not calling faulting, calling out to TN. When we I asked Paul Cheney to come in and evaluate it, he did. He looked at it. And I said, for 's, why don't you actually set the alarm off and see if it calls out properly? So we set the alarm off in the building and it didn't call out to TN. So we have a problem with that. There's no telling how long the library has been without an alarm system that actually calls out. But it's clearly not functional at the moment. We're working on it. It's not going to be inexpensive to do the work at the garage, but we're not far enough along to have firm estimates. We've only really got one firm estimate
at this point. We did get the new sign for the transfer station that came in and looks awesome. So we have a sign that's actually, you know, readable again, which we haven't had in quite some time. Public Works has been out patching with cold patch, getting some of the bad potholes that have been reemerged. And that's pretty much what I have, unless you have specific questions for me about my report or other things. The pictures you have of the roadwork on the
where is that? That's on Skinner Hill Road. Yeah, those are some of our deepest wheel ruts. Skinner Hills in pretty rough shape.
Did you get that culvert cleaned? Is it running now? Yeah,
yep. Not me personally. I just took a bunch of pictures, public works.
How did they get in there to clean them out?
What's our decision? Sorry, I'm sorry. Go ahead and finish answering Scott's question.
What was the question again, Scott? How did they get in there to clean them out?
Carefully. Well, in this case, they're just shoveling the leaves that are blocking the entrance to the pipe.
Eric, is there a protocol that we have to decide whether we're cold patching or hot patching? I know we're talking about getting a hot patch unit. So does cold patching now preclude hot patching later?
Well, I suspect that's a better question to ask Jay Tuttle, who's also on this call. Jay, you wanna answer that?
Can everybody hear me? Yep. Okay. Didn't know if I had to be unmuted by somebody else. Far as right now the plants aren't open yet. If you really got to get some hot patch, you can schedule it here and there depending on what plants are open in the area. But this time of year, the cold patch, we can go in and take care of those potholes and there's some more popping up that I've seen and got to go out and pay attention to and I also rely on anybody calling them in. As we drive around and if we see them, we mark them down and we try to go out and take care of them. And there are more that we need to take care of.
Yeah, think my question was just whether if we're doing them now with cold patches, it's gonna screw us up if we wanna do a more permanent patch with hot later.
No, the cold patch, I mean, you put hot over the cold patch in different areas, the tool will blend pretty well. It's not like it used to be long time ago where the dissimilar materials, chemicals, can kind of interact with each other, not work so well. That doesn't quite happen so much anymore. Okay. I'm just curious.
Thank you. Jay just because you're on what other issues are going on at the public works department that you'd like to share with us?
Well, we're moving along with getting equipment ready for the season. Kind of calling it our dead zone area between waiting for the weather to pop so we can get out on the roads and just anticipating getting going. Okay, and your new sweeper?
Yep, sweepers in, we're getting the parts that we need to get it going. We've got, that's underway. More parts came in today, some stuff that we got to get going.
Jay, I know what one of the things we used to do we got away from because we didn't have the staffing to do it was we used to go around and knock down the sides of the roadway where the sand built up on different town roads. Is that something that we could address now if we're kind of in that dead zone? You mean as far as like at the intersections?
So we get, we've had like I mean, this is one of the reasons that like Wells Road needed to get redone last year is that we for a while, we just weren't picking up the sand at the end of the season. Yeah. And so it would build up on the roadways on the sides and you kind of get that mounding, it ends up holding the water on the, you know, and what
it almost makes a curb. Oh, edge, you mean you're talking about edging? Yes. Scraping the road edges. Scraping the edges, right. Yeah, no, we are going to be going out and doing that. Just not quite ready to get out there and do that yet because we're trying to finish
up a few pieces of equipment. No, that's fine. I'm just asking because to be honest, it hadn't been done for a couple of years very well. And lots of residents have asked why we weren't doing that more as sort of a way to help maintain roads a little bit better. I'm just curious if it was something that was in
our No, that's in the wheelhouse. My hope is that once we get underway we plan, well, we're planning for this year but as we move forward, we also try to work that in a little some of that before winter starts and then we can wrap things up in the springtime as when winter's ending that we start our road work in the fall is kind of what we kind of want to deal eventually in preparation for the following year's work, the following construction season. So if there's points during the wintertime where the weather, there's a weather break, we can go out and continue some of that work.
Right. And Jay, was about three weeks ago you were out and I know you did a big section on Long Hill, you scraped the sides on Long Hill and also on a big chunk of bear swamp. So they were out doing that about a month ago when it thawed and they had a warm spell. Yeah, just know we're getting nice weather this week so that's all. Yeah.
Well, we're still working on some equipment right now so we gotta make sure that stuff's ready to go. Okay. We'll
squeeze in the road work. We'll get it done. Anybody else have any questions?
Jay, thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. No problem. Thank you. All right. In the old business section, Eric, you've already given 8A, which is a COVID-nineteen update. I'm assuming you don't need to give anything else.
No, the only question is Chamberlain Pond cleanup. I saw that Jeff Murray had requested that the Inland Wetlands Commission rule on what they wanna do with Chamberlain Pond in terms of pond cleanup. So I'm just bringing that to your attention. I know the board of selectmen was already on board with that. It's next month. It's table till next month.
Yep. 8C was disposition of old equipment. Anything to report on that, Eric? No.
We haven't actually disposed of the equipment. So I think that can be tabled for now.
Okay. All right. Nine is new business. 9A is the town budget discussion. Do we have anything else we want to discuss related to the town budget?
The only question I had was the board of selectmen had said they wanted to present to the board of finance. Did you as a board still want to do that at one of the meetings or are you just leaving that to me or how are you, do you wanna proceed on that?
Well, does this board wanna sit there and jointly have a meeting with the board of finance?
I know Jeff Murray If did that, it should have been before the last meeting because they pretty much discussed the town budget at the last board of finance meeting. Well, I think they're still going through it, aren't they? No, they pretty much went through that. I think they're gonna look at the school board proposal next meeting. I mean, they pretty much went extensively through our budget and Eric assisted. So, I mean, I was on the meeting of what it went until about 10:30 Eric.
Yeah, I suspect they're gonna have that the town a couple more times before this is over.
Well, mean, so what's your take on it, Jeff? Do you feel like there's still room for us to input and explain our methodology or do you think Eric got that across already?
I think Eric was a good focal point for the answers and basically the feeling I got from the board of finances, we've gone through this multiple years and we've pretty much whittled it down to a bare bones budget and they didn't, they really felt like there was not too much that could be done with the proposal that we sent them. So,
I mean, that change but that's kind of pretty much the message I got from the board
as they went through it. And Eric, does the board of finance need any other assistance on the capital
requirements they were asking for, the road work and so on? No, I think they're, you know, we've, because I've been talking to them about capital requirements all along, you know, long before we got to budget season. So I think they pretty much knew what the budget was going to be and what was coming at them. So I don't think there's any, there's no real surprises from the town's side, at least as far as the Board of Finance is concerned.
Okay. All right. 9B, updates to Veterans Monument Park. Jerry Wright had provided us a letter that I believe everybody saw. There are some additional upgrades to Veterans Memorial Park. It's not Veterans Memorial Park. It is the Monument Park, excuse me. There's a different Veterans Memorial Park, which is down on Long Hill, and then there's the Veterans Monument Park, which is on Route 6. The question is, are any of the items that have been requested within our purview to sit there and move over to the board of finance to sit there and try to get in? Eric, is there any money that we've left laying about that could be utilized for this?
I mean, if it's if the board decides it's a priority, then the most logical place to go for funding for this would be to use LOSIP funds.
Well, I mean, I think there needs to be a discussion about this candidly before we do that. Yep. Can I ask a quick question, Eric? What's the status right now with the electrical?
Are we trying to move forward on that yet? Or are we still, is that still getting kicked around? I mean, CIP has approved it, but nothing I have not, I certainly haven't given the electrician the go ahead because you had one idea about what you wanted to do there. And Kirk wanted another shot at the utility company to see whether they'd let us do it off the existing pole using the existing conductor. And I don't have the answer from either of those yet at this point. So, I mean, that's on hold until we have more information. And I would presume that if, because it's essentially a permanent thing, we're adding a meter that should have buy off from at least board of finance or board of selectmen and board of finance.
Well, I mean, still, my question really went back to just whether or not what size panel do we have at the museum and would that handle, you know, would that instead of having yet another meter, you know, if that would handle what we wanna do lighting wise. So,
you know. There's a 100 amp panel at the museum. A reasonably good condition, 100 amp panel at the museum.
So it should be able to handle what we're talking about, but So, you know, I understand there's a list of things that we would like to do down there. I think my concern is that we have a habit of, you know, and I've had this conversation with Jerry, that we have a habit of town of running into things and trying to do them, not really understanding the consequences of the cost of what we're doing. For instance, you know, we were talking about doing irrigation down there before we talked about fixing the soil, you know. So now that's gotten backed up. And now we're like, okay, well, we need to do, you know, soil and then irrigation and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I just feel like we need to have a more comprehensive plan on how to utilize that space. You know, I think it's great that we have a a monument and we have a, you know, nice a nice space down there. What I'd like to if we're gonna be spending money, given that we, you know, we don't have a great playground in town. We don't have a great, you know, we don't have a we have a lot of opportunity down there that I think
we're leaving on the table if we move forward with this right now. I I love to see if we can try to purchase that property next in the museum, and then develop all of this together, you know, so that we do something more with the trailhead. Maybe, you know, maybe that's a place that we talk about putting a playscape or something, that's accessible to people adjacent in property. So it's near the trailhead, gives us more parking. We have a little bit more going on down there and then improve that park, maybe even put a walking area around there, put some type of separation between Route 6 and us, even if it's just low bushes to break the sound a little and to give a barrier between the road, you know, and the monument without blocking the view of the monuments. You know? So I I'd like to see a better vision of what we really want down there versus let's just keep band editing this thing and you know? That's my own take on it, but I know there are different opinions. So Anyone else?
You know, thought that Eric had gone over this pretty well and decided, and you know, I was involved with it and Jerry was involved with it and some other people got involved with it and I thought that we came up with a plan for the whole area. And I haven't heard anything about the trailhead. No, we're just talking about the Memorial Park.
I understand that. But to be honest with you, I'm just being honest, I don't want to spend $30,000 on a park that isn't friendly to the whole town. I
think the gym or whatever the play area where it was going to go at the Memorial Park.
Yeah, Adrian, I don't think putting a playground on side of Route 6 is probably the best choice.
Whatever it is, I mean, whether it's a picnic area, something, and again, I understand your concern, but if you put a break, if you put a low break between six, you know, and that and that park area, that actually make that a nice little park, you know? Whereas right now, we're we're basically putting up monuments, you know?
I would sit there and I would tell you one thing though, Adrian, that I have been at this six years and the one thing that always bothers me is the visible areas that people see of And that location is one of the two visible things that people see related to Andover. There's a whole section over the post office, which I realize is not our property, but Lerrick is smiling. I've been saying this for six years that that property makes me sad every time I drive by it, that it looks so poor. And it's not that the Veterans Monument looks poor, but it could look a lot better if we gave it a little bit of love. I think that's all
that's being brought up by Jerry and by No, and listen, I don't disagree that it needs some love. I think it needs, but I think the love that it needs is a long term plan of care, you know, and it needs to be, it needs to become that space. If we're gonna spend $30 on needs to be a bigger part of this community and not just a signpost.
Can you first clarify for the public that exact amount of money that we're talking about first Adrian, I think. I mean monument is one amount and the rest of it is a different amount. The rest that the town is going to be taken care is only like how much is it Jeff? $18,000 or something? No, it's $34,000 to be really For the whole town side?
Yeah. Well, that's what Jerry's asking, which listen, I'm not sitting there saying Jerry's number is accurate. I'm just telling you it's been brought to us. We need to start thinking about I'm going to be honest with you. Think Jerry, this number is low, to be honest with you. Well, I'll sit there and I'll go through it. He's got $4,200 which CIP has supposedly put forth for an electric upgrade. He's got $6,000 for a new well, dollars 14,000 for hydro seating, 5,000 for an irrigation system and $5,000 for three new flagpoles. And I know from other things that have been discussed, the flagpoles are potentially being put forth on a grant and, but listen, this just us, us as a deciding that we want to make we want to put some resources into something that is so visible for this community. And that's it. And I'm not sitting there saying that we need to decide that we're going to do this right now, but we should, as a group, decide that we want to do something, whether it's from LOSIP. Adrian, I have no problem if you want to work with Jerry and Scott and come up with a more detailed plan as to what you're doing. I'm with Jeff Murray. That is not the place for a playground.
But it's not about a playground or anything. Point is when we start talking about 30 in a budget year when we already have issues, if we're taking lots of funds to fund that, then that means we don't have those lots of funds available to do repairs on town buildings that we know are suffering and we know have some issues that we need to address. And just like we know that this monument park has issues as well. I mean, I can't tell you how many times
the previous beautification committee resigned just saying they wanted water so they don't have to throw buckets all over the place. They didn't
have water. I get that, but we literally have buildings that need repair that need We to be will
always have buildings that need repair. Right, so let's start by trying
to catch those up before we spend any more on something that, you know, has had it's, you know, Jerry has done a great job getting monuments and things together to spruce up that park. I know it needs more than that, but, you know, we already have a pretty hefty budget. I I can't support it. Listen, a vet, it's not that I disagree with that. With that, I just don't think that now's the right time to be going to the public to ask for $30,000 for the park. Jerry, what would you like to bring to us?
Well, I'd like to chime in and say if the town or I should say probably Adrian is not willing to support the Monument Park then wouldn't it be kind of embarrassing if I went out and solicited the money and got donations to fix that park for our town? I think that would be a sad sad day that I would have to go to veterans groups and ask them for money to fix up a town park. Now I understand what Adrian's saying acquire the state property but isn't that something that's been in the works for quite a few years now? Why does it have to fall on the back of the Monument Park to get that spruced up? Let's do it in sections. It may be another two or three years before you get the right to have the other state property. Yeah, it can't wait that long. Yeah. For me, it's I'm talking Adrian. So, right now, let's concentrate on making our Monument Park look really nice. The irrigation and the loaming and the hydro seating will not be done until probably September or October anyway.
Okay? But I am working also with an organization that is could possibly come up with some money and if that happens, I I would have to say shame on Andover for not kicking in some money on this. It's your ground when I'm done on June 5 that monument is given to the town of Andover. As of today I raised $900 more and I am $100 shy of $30,000 I
think so I do have a nice little nest egg put away to maintain that monument. We are going to I'll be talking to Jay Tuttle. I'll be talking to Jeff and Eric. We're going to move it down a little bit from where it was and maybe put pavers all the way down to the cannon. So that lessens the fact of having more loan done and some more hydroceane done. I would think around the flagpoles there shouldn't be grass around the flagpoles it should be pavers. Okay? I
have enough money put away to probably do that. So I'm willing to put extra money into that.
Jerry, we absolutely appreciate everything you're doing. This is really Listen, I understand what Adrian is saying, but I do believe that we have to look at things that are There's a lot of things about image, to me, that is one place that is about the image of our community. It's right next to the most thing in our community, which is that walk, that covered bridge that hasn't been maintained since we got it. If I would read Diane Greiner's mind, it hasn't been turned back over to the state, so we have no idea if that was ever done correctly. There's a lot of things about that area that we need to sit there and take care of, and we should put some resources to it. Now, I understand what Adrian is saying. I think every year is going to be difficult for us, but I think we need to make it a priority and maybe
we're not going to invest. I mean, I would tell you flat out, Jerry, I don't think there's any way that we probably get all of it done this year, but we can take it in steps, and we should take it in steps, and we should sit there and get the electrical and to me get the well drilled at a minimum. Exactly.
You know, see that Jerry Wright's been working for years on this monument thing for years and all the time and effort this veteran has put into the town to get this looking nice. And I think that we need to step up and do our part to make that place look nice. So Jerry, can I ask a question? You're saying you have $30,000
that's to cover your, that's to cover the monument itself. That's not towards this work. Is that correct?
Yes, it's only to cover the monument. I have helicopter coming in. It's a 1968 era. It's coming in on the June 5 to for our ceremony and we'll be picking out an LZ for him to land close by and I'd like to donate some money towards that helicopter. We may need that again. There are a couple other things you gotta understand I ran a business for like you Adrian for thirty one years and I did not spend except for what I had. So, if I need a new truck, I saved the money. I bought the truck. I didn't anticipate the work coming in. I made sure that it was there before I bought the vehicle. So with this park, I really love Andover, okay? And I really like the park area down there. Is Jay Tunnel still on? Hi, Jay. Yes, sir. I'd like to ask you for and Erica for a favor. I have a a sweeper and I'm willing to come down this spring with about six veterans and rake and sweep that park
with a sweeper, the grass area and put it up on the road. Could I get your dump truck for a day to haul that debris away and I'll bring my tractor down and I'll load it in your dump truck if you can get it out of there. Is that possible? By all means. All
you got to do, just give me a call Jerry and we'll get together and plan it out. What we need to do.
Yep. I've already talked to the veterans. We're going to spend the day down there. We're raking, cleaning and make it look nice. If you look, I just sent Scott a picture yesterday of when we put all the flags in there for Memorial Day. That grass was green as could be. There's only certain spots that are really bad and that's because it needs to be irrigated and the the well needs to be put in first because they make a mess. When they're they're drilling, they make a mess so you can't loam in the hydro seed until the well is done That has to be a priority. Yeah.
Jerry, when you get some time, just give me a call and we'll get together and
bang out some thoughts. You got it. Thank you, Jay. Yep.
All right. So we have to keep this one in front of us. Maybe next meeting we can talk about utilizing some MOSIC funds related to the well. I think that would be beneficial. I think the rest of the members of the Board of Selection should get together and communicate with each other regarding this to sit there and see what level of spending is.
Well, if you're gonna do the well, need to do the figure out the electric. Those two have to go together. I
agree. So to me, those would be the two that and the electric was approved by CIP. So it's already in front of the board of finance. Yeah,
Unfortunately though, the electric was approved without There's a couple of things in there. I just wanna find out if instead of putting another meter, we can pull off a panel we already have in place in a meeting. I understand.
Definitely understand what you're trying to say, Adrian. I think it's a great idea. I just think that we need to look at those areas that are image issues for the town and do everything we can to make them look good.
That's a personal opinion and I'm only one of five voting members, but that's what I believe. I don't have a problem picking some of those things off of there. I have a problem with 30 ks this year. Understood.
I don't think anyone else is gonna have a problem with it. Well, if we had a plan five or six years ago, this wouldn't be a problem. There you go. So Jeff says
it exactly the way it is. I need to plan. And you know, one thing is, Adrian, I know you wanna pull up a panel, but wouldn't it be cheaper just to put the meter socket on the pole and sort of have the trench all the trench all the way over there?
Yeah. But here's the thing. If you if you put a meter socket on the pole, you are gonna pay for that meter socket from now till the end of time. Whether you're using enough electricity to justify it or not, you have a minimum socket requirement, right? And so I mean, I did the math and basically two and a half years trenching paid for itself. That monument is not going to be there for five years or ten years. It's going be there for thirty or forty. Alright, just a quick it was just a question. That's all. I'm just asking the question. That's why I'm asking for it. And that's and I guess that's what I'm talking about is that we want to look at this as a long term project so that we do it in the right way so that it's efficient for the town so we'll still have the money to maintain it. You know, keep
it looking good. Does Jerry need electricity where he's gonna be putting his monument also? He needs low voltage lighting.
Right. Yes. Yeah. I'm putting the lighting in. It's all it's all volt, low voltage lighting. So that's already figured into our budget.
So if we do the, if we, if we did, if we do an outdoor panel or sub sorry, a sub panel versus a meter socket, they may that may give us or it should give us what we need. The question is whether or not the panel is good enough. It sounds like it's 100 a panel, so we just need to figure out what the load is on it right now. But there's no well to museum, so it shouldn't be an issue. There is a well. There is a well. There's a well at the museum? Right right in back. Yep. I thought we didn't have a septic for the museum.
We don't have a septic for the museum. We have a well. Yeah. Well.
Okay. Now I'm really confused. So we have a well, but no septic.
Correct. I think there there is a septic there. There is a septic.
Well, we don't have a bathroom in the museum, do we? No, we do not.
The museum until Up until the time where the new town hall was built, that museum had an outhouse. It was one of the last outhouses permitted in the state of Connecticut because it took a special, you know Dispensation, yeah. A special dispensation to get permission to put in an outhouse. Why am I not surprised? That's
a piece of history that we need to share on our Facebook page. No, we do not. Question is, is well operational at the museum? Yes, it is. Absolutely. Why
couldn't we trench and just put the pipe in and not drill another well?
Eric, Scott. That well is not good at the museum.
Is that separate from the well that has the, is that the one that has the underground bank, access bank? I'm not sure So what you're talking
is there a second well for the park? Yes. Yes. So we actually have two wells down there. Right.
Neither of one, each one of them really are no good. They're not they're not deep wells, either one of them. So they're both shallow. Yeah. Okay.
No, no, no, no. The one at the museum is deep, but it doesn't give up the amount of flow that we need to have. So we did have that tested? Yeah, we put a new pump in it. Okay. But we're not using it for anything else, correct? Yeah, no, they use it for watering at the museum. For watering, but that's Yep. Okay. Correct. And it keeps up with that, but.
So why can't we just set the sprinklers at the Veterans Memorial to run a different time? You run a different day.
Because it doesn't provide enough flow, because it's just in flow. Me and Eric already went over this whole thing with Just asking a question.
Yeah. Neither of those Wells has, they both have a very short, a very lousy refresh rate. Right. Neither one of them are really sufficient for any kind of serious irrigation system.
Do we put one in for both? Do we put one in for the museum and the park? Just one well, feed it from the museum and then pipe down to the park?
Well, if you're truly thinking long term, you should because I mean, I'm trying to think long term here. I'm not mentioning Eventually, at the you're going to get the state property that's next to it to put a reasonable septic system in. If we had a long term plan, we would put a bathroom at that. I
just want to say thank you to the Board of Selectmen for reinforcing my point that this maybe hasn't been a fully evolved plan.
It could, but we have trouble getting anything done in our community. So we have to take what we can when we can. So yes, we should think about putting a well on that property and we should really think about putting a well that will sufficiently provide for an irrigation system, watering at the Old Town Hall and a potential bathroom at the Old Town Hall. What a novel idea. This board actually is fairly creative and has a lot of good ideas. I don't know if you know that Mr. Mandeville. We do, we do. I'm learning every day, Mr.
McGuire. Yes. So, but I mean, in all honesty, you're trying to save money. Do you really want the mission creep? So now you're gonna take the old town hall and you're gonna put in bathrooms, which means you're gonna heat it except it's not insulated because the building was built in the 1800s.
Eric, did we say we were gonna do this today? Said we There's a thought five, six year plan
down the road. I would tell you that building is if it was lit properly during the winter, that building is really kind of pretty. It is. Very nice looking. A really nice thing. Do you imagine the Christmas decorations that we could throw up on that building and make Andover look kind of cool? Imagine if you could use the museum as a welcome center on the trailhead. Oh my God. You could have bikes in the back that people could rent and we could have a recreational group that participated in this town? Think of all those things, Eric. And Eric, that's why you are in your position because you are the friendliest Andover person ever. You will do a great job there, Eric, right? But listen, this is not anything. This is just things that we could think of. I would love that property to look great. I think that building in winter would look wonderful. So do I think I would like to put a bathroom in that building, Eric? Yes. Do you think I'd like to figure out how to do it? Yeah. Do I think I can do it tomorrow? No.
No. But we can, if we plan this out correctly, pick off some things we can do this year and look towards a long term plan.
Like adding to your comment, would pursue a well at the museum and actually pipe the water over and because if your feeder's over there for power, it would save a lot of costs and it's irrigation pipes cheaper to run than bearing a line for a well. And then we're gonna end up with a well issue at the museum down the road. So if we can get a well that'll supply them both, let's look at it and let's get it done.
I if Jerry has time, I'll reach out to Jerry and maybe we can go down there and walk a little bit and see what what his what his vision of the park is right now and, you know, maybe how we can do the most effective things if that's what we decide to do,
you know, and then move forward from there. All right. We'll keep this on the agenda moving forward. So, 9C, let's see, go back up here. I got to do 9C is a Library of Mural Vandalism Restitution Update. Diane, do you have anything? You're muted.
The last I heard was that the Board of Selectmen in the library had sent a letter to the court. You have that in your package. And the court date was February 24. And we didn't hear the answer. I was I don't know how we would get the answer. Dennis, maybe you can tell us. I called the lawyer. I called the court. And I was told to contact the supervisor at the Attorney General's office. I did that, and that was two weeks ago and haven't got a response. Not that we need to know, but it's just we're curious as to did they accept any of our terms or things like that. So that's where I am, is just waiting to find out how. And maybe Dennis, you could tell us how we could find out what the result was. Probably the prosecutor would know.
That's why I called and they referred me to the-
Attorney General. Attorney General's office. No, they're two different. Attorney General just deals with civil matters. Prosecutor is criminal. Maybe maybe they referred you to the state's attorney's office.
Was there a victim? A state's attorney, I'm sorry, it was the state's attorney's office, yes. Yeah, well,
from what I read in the materials in Eric's report, these guys were applying for accelerated rehabilitation. Yeah. Yes, only one. One of the three.
Yeah, okay. What about the other two? Are you just talking about that one guy?
Only one asked for it. Really? Other two has some more serious issues attached to them. So want talk about one. How can we
get the information if there's any available to the library and to the Board of Select? Well,
prosecutors should know. I mean, you want me to get it, I'll get it for you. Okay? Excellent. Have one. That would work for I have connections in certain places. That would be perfect. Know, in Andover, you know. That's right. All right, nine I'll put you on the top of the good boy list. That's not always a good thing, but okay. I will work with Diane on that. Thank you. You. All right, we'll find we'll get to the bottom of this. All right, 9D, roadwork review. Eric?
So Paula asked that we put on two items under roadwork review. The first was road line painting, and the second one was paving review and future plans. So I assume the question regarding painting was my unwillingness to put a line stripe in the Lake District. I assume that was the issue that you wanted to discuss? Correct.
Okay. I mean, we discussed it before as a board. Yeah, can we just get a quick review of your position on why we didn't continue the line striping after the roadwork? Just so every
Sure, my position is simply that it's safer for pedestrians in a high pedestrian and cycling usage area to not have a strike than it is to have a stripe. Because a lot of people will not cross the center line to pass and due to the road widths that we have, that puts them inside the three foot required distance that they're supposed to keep with a pedestrian or a cyclist. And therefore it's better not to strike than to strike in an area that has low traffic speeds or is supposed to have low traffic speeds and has high counts for pedestrians and cyclists, which is really the Lake District. That's my take on it. Okay,
well, couple of my concerns and this, and I got a couple of emails from a couple of residents and I drove down there on a couple of those really dark rainy nights where it's really hard to see. And unfortunately we don't have a lot of reflective material or anything on the roadway marking curves and turns. And I mean, when it gets dark down there and foggy and wet and that real black, dark nights, it's kind of hard to follow the road sometimes especially if you don't know where you're going. So, I mean, I've even had problems on Long Hill coming up the road. I mean, the line actually tells you, if you're over far enough with an oncoming car, that's kind of, it's not more cyclists but cars. And I think the state law allows you to cross the yellow line, right? To overtake a cyclist or a pedestrian. It absolutely does. So I mean, don't
consider that. Doesn't matter what the law is. Matters what behavior is. And go stand out there and watch cars and pedestrians interact and cars often do not cross the center line. They squeeze the pedestrian because that line is their spot. And by removing it, you eliminate that issue.
I mean, you know I'm a cyclist, Eric. Mean, I run it. If people are gonna run next to you, they're gonna run next to you. It's kind of the way I've kind of figured it out. I mean, most people will give you the room 99% of the time. Most of people down there are residents and they give you the room, but I'm just more concerned about safety and be able to follow the road when it's dark and wet. It's a really hard road to follow when it's dark like that. And there's curves like if you didn't know where you're going, mean, could end up right in the lake some nights if you know where you were going. I mean, I don't know, just think going forward we should consider striping the road. It's It's my opinion but there's somebody that's drove down there a couple nights and just to see what it was like. I consider it kind of a safety issue. I'll sit there and I'll give you my
take from someone who walks the lake every morning. And I will tell you that people do not move over. But there's no line there now. It's not everyone, Jeff. It's not everyone. And maybe they knew who I am. That could be quite possible. But I will tell you that it is very difficult. There are a lot of total rule followers and that yellow line is meant to keep them on their side of the road. It is difficult some mornings, especially walking my dog and trying to go out there
Are you proposing that you want a line or don't want a line? I'm just trying to follow your I would not do a line. You don't want a line? I don't want a line, no. Okay.
And I realize and I have talked to other residents in the lake area that want a line because we don't have very good lighting around the lake. And I do understand that. And that is the one thing that I will sit there and say that is quite true. But you have to take good with the bad. So you got to make a decision which is the worst way. There's
not a lot of good curve markers down there. There's just and I've run onto it. I've got a full size truck. And when you're sometimes on some of these roads when there's oncoming traffic, that yellow line is your only gauge to discern where the center of the road is, where there's oncoming traffic. So you're saying your carbon burner is too big for the lake. Maybe that's the issue. I'm just saying some of these roads are very narrow. Even long hills narrow in parts. Lake
Road is even narrower now at the buildup of the leaves on the side of the road. So there are certain things that happen.
So are we talking about putting lighting in down there now? Is that where this is going?
Actually she was like, what's our policy going forward? I'm gonna sit there and ask this question because it's a financial issue. And Eric, would ask you this. Previous boards of selectmen had been very anti lighting because there's a certain charge on lights. And now with the efficiency of the lighting, I would like to know what Eversource charges us for individual lights and if we could rethink putting lights in different areas again. Because on Lake Road there's really one light.
Apparently you missed the dark sky initiative that was passed by the Exactly. The planning and zoning commission.
Must Yeah, have I'm not sure the zoning let you. What's that? I said, I'm not sure the zoning commission would let you. That's a special permit application. Yep. And
Jeff, do you want a light right outside your garage there or what? No, but I don't know if everybody knows I have one.
I didn't put it there. Did you get a permit for that?
No, it was, you know, I'm a youngster in town. So I've only been here twenty years, I guess or so, but it was here before I moved in. You beat me by four.
So just to sum up, I would support line striping.
It is something that there's good and there's bad with it. We should make a decision which way we'd like to go. And if the decision of the board is to have Eric stripe the line when he finishes the improvements up on Lake Road over this next spring, we can line stripe the road the next time we have. Looks
like Jay's still unmuted. Let me ask Jay real quick. Jay, does anywhere in the state of Connecticut that we're getting resources from and work? I mean, wherever we're grabbing from whether it's a Wyndham or Chewitt City or whatever to get material from? Do any of them offer, like the recycled glass option in the pavement? Oh,
I haven't heard of that. You're talking about trying to brighten up the pavement? Yeah. To be honest with you, I haven't heard about that in a long time. I know there was a test on that quite some time ago and beyond that to the best of my knowledge, it didn't go anywhere. Okay, I'm just curious. Yeah, know Willie Waste was crushing glass for quite some time and that was quite a while ago. Are there any other
enhancements that we can do that would address some of these concerns that are being brought up by Mr. McGuire and Mr. Murray?
Nothing that I'm aware of at the moment other than striping and doing some signage, something to there is a current program out there that Eric and I are working on with the state. We are not sure where it's going to go yet but to put some signage in our areas of town where we got some bad curves and that's through a state program, a grant. But that's something that we're working on. We're not sure where that's going to go yet. We're gonna line them all up right in front of Diane Grenier's house.
Really, for the record, it was Ms. King that wanted this issue on the agenda. No, that's okay.
All the thoughts that I had have been already brought up. Apparently Mrs. King is letting Mr. Murray carry her well water today.
I mean, as a cyclist, I don't really have an issue with most of the cars on the road. Most of them give me the room. Maybe as a pedestrian Jeff, you get a blinky light, a flashing light because No, it's that jacket that says number one selectman on it. Being visible is number one. People can see you, they get out of the way. I walk around with a hood on. Yeah. Do you wear your deputy badge? So, why did you want this on the
on the agenda? We Paula and I had talked about it. I
asked Paula a question. I'd like Paula to answer. Why did you want it on the agenda? Well, because I've driven around the lake when it's foggy. I don't live on the lake as you know, Mr. Mandeville. I do the speed limit and sometimes, you know, around the sharp corners around there, it's a concern because I know that there's people walking at night or, you know, all hours of the day. So I'm thinking it's a, I agree with Jeff Murray. It's a concern, if you have residents that live on the lake and they know the roads and they're speeding. And then you have people that don't live around the lake that don't know the road as well. So I think that kind of overpowers the thought process of don't putting the line, don't put the line there because you're gonna, you're giving the cyclists, you know, their room.
So I agree with Jeff Murray. I think it's So are you saying you have a hard time following the road? Or are you saying that, like Jeff was saying or do you like in other words, would would the curvature with the curvature signage that Jay has possibly mentioned, do you think that's enough? Because Jeff actually said something about it's actually hard to just follow the road.
I think that would be enough for me, but you get somebody who is not paying attention to the sign and maybe they're looking, I don't know.
I will not So Jeff not paying attention to the sign is the issue? I'm
not saying that. I'm saying somebody who's driving, you can't get into somebody's mind and say, hey, they're gonna look at the line over the sign or the sign over the line. I don't know. I'll
back Paul up driving that road from Route 6 up to my house on a bad night. I'm in the middle of the road. The problem that you face without having a line is not that you can't still follow the road. It's when another car is coming down at you and how close to the edge of the road you need to get. I will tell you, and Eric, don't, any accidents in the Lake area, Eric, over the last six months?
I don't have current crash data. There were a couple crashes on the historic crash data. There were a couple crashes.
So we'll get that for our next meeting. And I will tell you the lines cannot be dealt with now. Why not? Here's your crash data. Yeah, that's kind of blurry. If
I understand the paving review and the future plans for Lake Road, Eric, you're planning on chip ceiling or doing some ceiling as you did the Lakeside?
Correct. And Jay can review the upcoming plans a lot better than I can. It's
not like we're gonna go out and get the line strike today. No, but if we're talking about doing it, then it probably needs to be put in the schedule for the ones that we can do.
My concern about this was Long Hills on the list for next year, but I didn't wanna have the road get paved and not have the center line put it back in. So going forward, I wanna make sure we do that. Jeff, remember there's
really only, so there's two areas that we've elected not to put a center line in the past. The first are cul de sacs, short road sections that are fairly narrow. We haven't bothered line striping. If you want to line stripe every road in town, you can line stripe every road in town other than the dirt one, that would be kind of pointless. And the area directly around the lake. Remember we put line striping on the approach up the hill from Route 6 all the way to the top, which because that was the concern that was brought to me was a visibility concern coming up the hill in foggy conditions. And since that's not the area that's commonly walked, we striped that. We only really did not chose not to stripe about a mile and a half in that loop around the lake. If the board feels that we should strike it, next time up we'll strike it.
Then It's six, because every other, like I said, any through road should probably be line stripped. Any through road. And I'm also in favor.
Through road that's not line stripped. Do you know of any? Lake Road.
So then he just told you the areas that were not line stripped.
I I wouldn't have an issue with cul de sacs. Mean my road is not striped. Why not? The is so low on that road.
It's also a lot wider, ain't it? Yeah, it's a lot wider. Sure. And it's in Jeff's backyard, so.
Okay, so the plan going forward is the board of selectmen generally speaking wants to stripe the Lake District. I'm in favor of it also. And do
want epoxy paint or regular paint and you want retro reflective paint or not? What do you want? Difference?
Epoxy paints two and a half times the cost but it lasts a lot longer. Usually the reflective stuff is in it if you go with epoxy paint.
Are we talking $10, $20 difference? For the town? No, for that area.
Well, I mean, you're not gonna just do epoxy for one little area. So what you decide to do, you do for the town. So I think the town spent about 9,000 last year on striping and painting. So if we went with epoxy, you can probably double that ballpark. I'd be in favor of that. I'd be in favor of taking that $9,000
and putting it in the Veterans Monument Park. I was just going to say that. I knew that was coming. There you go. I was just going to say that. Maybe if we needed stripes at the Monument Park.
We don't really care. We a line painting schedule, right? Let's just use what we're doing and just put Lake Road on the painting schedule. That's fine. Why
don't we ask Jay to weigh in on that since he is in public works. I
can probably help you out a little bit on the striping part of things. So Eric and I have discussed this quite a bit and
we both have our thoughts on that but Are you saying you disagree with Eric? What's that? Do you disagree with Eric? You think it should be striped?
Understand points I also understand Jeff's points, Murray's regarding the center line striping. So I have experienced this myself in my previous employment. So just to get back to the striping, if you go with the water based paint, you're lucky you're going to get a year out of it, year and a half you're going to end up striping again. With the epoxies you can probably get three to four years out of it without a problem. Sometimes you get five just depends on traffic and how well it wears on the center of the road.
What have we been using up till now? Water based paint. So we've been using the cheap stuff?
Yes. Yep. And you also do a single line strike which is not recognized by MUTCD. It's technically not enforceable. It's just basically a guideline down the center of your roads. Double yellow lines recognize and it's also enforceable.
Jay, I want people to move over. What's that? I want people to move over. I know.
I mean, the lake is just trying to get a guide down the center of the road. Yeah. On a foggy night, someone doesn't go off the edge. So Jay you're saying But it's
a decision that the board has to decide and if you just do a center line which there's many towns that do that, still do it, but if you go with the epoxy you can put the glass bead in it and it's much more reflective at night. It's a lot easier to follow and you don't lose that line so much in bad weather where a water based paint, you tend to lose that line a lot quicker. And
it's sometimes difficult to see. So a question for you is, do we paint every year? No. I
don't believe that you have. Pretty much every other year. So if we did the epoxy paint and got four years out of it, it'd be pretty much cost neutral.
Pretty much. So you're saying there wouldn't be money left over for the park at that point? Funny, funny, funny. Are we ready? I'm pointing
out. No, mean, Adrian, we use Town Aid Road, right? That's what it's for. Yeah, but it'll itself. Pay It pays for itself. I mean, more reflective and it's cost neutral. So why wouldn't we do it? Exactly. Yeah.
Well, I mean, to me, the biggest reason you don't do it is if you look at areas that have been paved, the difference between the water based paint is the water based paint goes on very thin. It bonds to the surface, but it flexes with the surface. And the epoxy paint is a much more rigid paint. So if you go back and look at roadways that were painted years behind, like on the side of the road, the pavement underneath the paint is usually messed up four or five years later. So it decreases the durability of the underlying pavement. That is the disadvantage of using the epoxy paint. It has a lot of wonderful qualities. It's certainly a lot nicer. It looks like hell when it flakes, but usually it's okay.
That's my take on it. What does the state use? Epoxy. So Route 6 is epoxy?
Presumably, yeah. I think, are they using epoxy or are they using the thermoform paints? Thought the state was mostly using the thermo. Well, it depends on where.
Now trying to you know where they're milling out that sixteenth of an inch and then putting the paint in so it doesn't wear. So that's a little different too.
When do you guys have on schedule to paint lines next fall? When?
Yes. Well, it would be early fall. Early fall. Once the road work is done. So
you have time to come back and report to us which paint type you'd like to use? Because it appears that this board will vote to sit there and strike the roads. Well, let's say strike Lake Road. Right. So can you come back to us at a future meeting and tell us which type of paint you want to use? Yes. Okay. Anybody else? I'm preferably the epoxy one.
Does anybody else have any questions related to this? No? Okay. Thank you. Is there anything else you want to talk about DWI, the paving review and future plans? Is there anything specific that you can address Ms. King's court request? There's more. There's more, Adrianne.
Sit tight. So Eric put some pictures of Chester Brook Lane. I had some concerns about there and Eric and I have kind of talked about this a little bit but I wanted to have a little discussion with the board. Lay it on us. Some of
the projects that we've done last year and especially the cul de sacs, just concerned about that because on Chester Brook Lane, from what I heard from a resident and Eric you can jump in whenever it wasn't sealed correctly. When plowing was happening this season a lot of the road material was getting pushed up onto lawns and you know I feel like we're paying all this money and I hope that whoever we contracted to do this they did the best job they could but I'm not really convinced that they did a great job. And even with our road, our cul de sac where I live,
was not a big fan of the work that they did on my cul de sac. So I know that we might not be able to go back and fix these issues, but I guess my question is moving forward with, you know, the work that's coming up, are we number one, are we using the same contractor? And then number two, how do we learn from this and fix it in the next coming projects if we do use them?
So I would say their first question is, is Chester Chesterbrook and Old Farms or Oak Farms? Yep, Oak like the tree. Oak Farms
were two different contractors. One was a chip seal surface that was not fog sealed afterward. And the other was a, what's called the Cape seal, which is chip seal and micro over it. So if start with chip sealing, I put the pictures in the problem with Chesterbrook is just the very turnaround in the cul de sac did not get fog sealed. The contractor and I argued over that a little bit but his point is that if you're trying to do tight radiuses you can never get the material overlapped properly and it pools and it looks like crap. And so they typically don't ever do just the turnarounds with the final fog seal over. So yes, that very end of the cold, the sack did have higher chip loss than other spots. But if you look at the close-up picture I picked and I took a half dozen of different spots in that cul de sac you can see that
you've got like 95% chip retention there. So that represents actually a pretty good chip seal job which has suffered very little stone loss. Where the one person has a problem is because of where the driveways are all the snow in that cul de sac gets pushed into one little corner. And so it looks like there's a lot of stone but if you look at the snow all the side, the rest of the cul de sac, you don't see any black into it. And that's because the material isn't plowed up there. So you're always going to get some stone loss with chip seal, you know, that is inevitable. You know, that's why chip seal is a low cost technique. There are some downsides to it, but I think overall the chip seal job from my perspective was pretty good. There's very little stone loss. The cul de sac represents the worst out of any town road
but even that there's not really if you look at that pile while it looks ugly it's because the snow's melting you know and you have a dark material on the outside. So as far as I'm concerned that cul de sac came out fine. You have one customer that's unhappy but you know that's I hate to say it but that's kind of life that's chip seal. And remember until we started going to all salt this year, last year we would have put 1,500 tons of sand on town roads and probably over half of that would have ended up on the sides of the road and on people's lawns. And we're not doing that anymore. So we're putting, you know, one one hundredth of the amount of junk on people's lawns that we used to, it's just more noticeable because it's black stone as opposed to sand. So I personally don't see the problem. I've looked at that cul de sac, you know, a half dozen times since they've done it. Maybe Jay can weigh in, you know, yeah, there's been some stone wasps but
you know. Well, mean, be clear, Eric, it's not that you don't see that there's a problem there. It's that we acknowledge that the problem is part of the, it comes with the material that we've decided to go with.
Well, I mean, I don't see that as a problem.
That's just stone loss. Eric, Eric, the alternatives are to do what? If you don't like that probably to pave it.
So, reality, we're talking about a low cost alternative to pave a lightly traveled road or to care for a lightly traveled road where the alternative is to spend additional money to do it in a different manner. Correct. Correct.
So it's not ideal, but we're saying we think it's acceptable given the the limitations of of what we're working with. Paula, does that help your concerns?
So I'm getting back to my other question. When we have our next set of projects coming up, are we number one, we're not using that contractor? Because you said that there was an, it was a different contractor that did Oak Farms, correct? Well, because there were two different surfaces.
Because there was two different- The contractor there was two originally
and chip seal that a different contractor came back and microed over it. Okay. We're not likely to do any micro because frankly we can't afford that. What we did on your road was way too expensive for what the town can afford to pay for. We can't afford to put that good quality surface on your road. But Paula appreciates the job you did Paula, don't you? The question is what was wrong with the job Paula? Because I heard about Chesterbrook, I haven't heard about Oak Farms, what's wrong with it?
Listen, it's before it was redone, it looked better. So just the cul de sac, first of all, when you come down the road, there's a big seam in the road. So before you get to the cul de sac it looks like two little two pieces of the road and then when you get to the cul de sac there's divots in the cul de sac so it's not I don't know I mean I'm not a paver.
Are the divots where the drainage basins were? Because there's several basins in that cul de sac if I remember correctly. No, it's when they kind of curve around where the mailboxes are. So before the drains there's a bunch of,
it's hard to explain, I guess, looks like a tire mark or something. So but but it's not functionally harming the road. It's just a looks issue.
Yeah, I mean, I my concern tonight was, we're spending money on this, right? We're spending town money and are we getting the service that we're spending our money on?
So you were asking if it was done correctly. You're not assuming that it's done correctly. Correct. Eric, did we have any issues with the Oak Farms contractor or are we okay with what was done there? Know that actually preceded you so.
No I was I was there when they did that. When you did a micro or when we did the Yeah when we did the we microed it this year. Yeah but it was tip sealed prior.
Yeah but just shortly prior. Yeah it was done Yeah pretty close together.
Yeah I mean I thought both the chip seal and the cape seal came out fine. I mean none of these techniques give you beautiful smooth pavement that you would like. And if we could afford it, I would never chip seal a road. I mean, I'm a cyclist. Personally, I hate chip seal. The last thing I want to do is have to chip seal roads. But, you know given what we have to spend and how much stuff we have to accomplish our only practical alternative is chip seal. We cannot afford to pave we
can't afford to pave our way out of our problems. We just don't have that kind of, we don't have the kind of money to do that. But Paula, it's actually a great point that you're bringing these two up because this goes back to the fact that even though we are asking for an increase this year, we're actually asking for an increase and and trying to be very frugal about how we're spending that money, you know. So
Yeah, mean, I would love to, I like the surface, the micro surface much better as a cyclist than driving down or riding down a chip seal road. Chip seal kind of sucks but it's affordable and it's a great preservation technique. In other words for very small dollars you can prevent a road from getting worse and that's that's basically what we're doing trying to restore surface to make all of our roads drivable again because we've got some that are pretty bad without being able to afford going through systematically repaving. I mean, if you look at it right now, about 40, around 40% of our roads are, you know, poor, you know, or failing. And we really correct that. And I think Jay has come up with a reasonable plan for doing that but doing that relying on shimming and then chip seal and we're accepting that we're not going to have great roads, but to get all our roads to the point where they're drivable. You know, and as far as future plans, Jay's probably a much better guy to explain that than me because you know, he's the foreman.
Is that my cue? Absolutely. Okay so listening to everyone's views on this so basically again Eric and I have been tossing this around and for about $40,000 per mile versus you're in the neighborhood of 125,000 per mile. So, know, in a reclaim and pave. Now, is there techniques in between each of those? Yeah, there's different things. So, it's wide range of cost to improve your roads. So what we've been talking about is basically some preservation. How long would it take us? Because there's, as Eric mentioned, there's about 40% of the roads that are in poor condition and then it goes up from there. But that being said, if we can go roads
go through through the roads in three, four years and preserve them, do a shim and chip process, which I did in my previous employer's appointment, we can put some shape back in the road. We get the water running off the road, getting back cleaning up our road edges, making sure the water that's on the road gets off the road because that's important. A lot of the problems is you're having water staying in your road in those wheel ruts and it's penetrating below the road surface getting into your road bed And you're constantly gonna have those failures, the potholes. Again, if we get some shimming done, we chip seal, seal it off and we move on. I propose this year approximately nine miles of roads with about roughly $440,000 knowing that we need a little bit of leeway that depending on those primary roads to get done, we might have to cut back a little bit on some of the roads that we want to get done that were as part of next year's program. If we can start into that, we're already ahead of the game. Just a lot depends on how much we spend in shimming because shimming is where we're going to add some pavement to those poor areas and then we're going to chip seal over it. Because you don't want to have to chip seal over a wheel rot. I'll leave it at that for now if anybody's got any questions. Paul,
think to answer one of your questions, We know we're not trying to approach this with kind of premier techniques. What we're trying to do is stretch techniques as far down the pavement schedule as we can. I mean, the ideal thing to do for a lot of our roads is basically to come in here with a giant machine, grind them up, reestablish the base and start paving right from scratch. But that is horribly expensive. And we could probably do a mile of that a year. And if you look at, if you've got 34 miles, that means we come back to your road in about thirty four years, which is about fifteen years after it's not drivable anymore. So the ultimate goal is to take some of the really high trafficked roads, you know, like Long Hill for instance and say, okay, there are some spots where we're going to have to commit to reclaiming the road and repaving. But in general, what we're trying to do is first
get everything drivable but with the chip seal surface on the top. It's in one of the things we have to discuss is there are people that are gonna be unhappy with that. There were a number of people unhappy last year with the Gypsiel because it's not great surface for walking your dogs and kids have problems skateboarding on it for a year or two and it's not a great smooth surface but given what we have for resources it seems like it's probably the most cost effective thing we can do to the roads.
Are you happy, Eric and Jay, with whatever we did in this past year? Are you happy with the way things went and the way it looked? Because my expectation might be different than yours because you understand the process better.
Well, will tell you that what you see out there is a lot of people's concerns with the chip loss. And as Eric stated that that's a common thing. You're always going to have that especially the first year after it's been done. And sometimes it's a little worse than others and sometimes not. In a cul de sac tends to be always tends to be a problem area because again, you're plowing, you plow the snow to a certain spot and that's where all the sediment ends up in that snow pile. So, have to go back in when the snow melts and we might have to sweep off the lawn a little bit. It'd be no different if it was if we were putting sand in there. But being able to go in and sweep after the fact the following year and then anything that gets left in the cul de sac when you go around, you pick up some more of that loose stone. It will get better over time.
Is it necessarily a failure? I don't think so.
Okay. We going around are we going around doing that? Because I know the state doesn't do it for me. They don't they don't clean off where they leave stuff. Are we doing that as a town? Well, I wouldn't say that we do it everywhere, but some you know, when you get a pile of So if there's if there's a heavy a heavy concentration. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, it's just like when you you know you plow up your at your intersections and you you know you turf the edge a little bit. Well you'd like to go back up and clean some of that plow damage. Right. Does it get down every year? Maybe not everywhere, but you try to pick out your bad ones. Okay, cool. Or mailboxes in case that might happen, never know.
Jeff, how's your mailbox intact this year? It's not replaced yet. I guess Jay still has a job then. Anyway,
think, Paula, the one thing from my end is I would love to sit there and have more money to do a lot of things. I know we made choices to spend our money in different ways to try to extend what we could do. It's not perfect. It'll never be perfect unless we had an unlimited budget and we could pave every road and we can get it all done quickly.
I I think Paul is being disingenuous. I've driven her driveway. So
No. She's not. She is she she is representing her the residents that are speaking to her, which is that's what you're supposed to do. Right. And Eric is
They've had ShipSeal and MicroSeal on that road. They have been taken care of. Eric is representing the town by trying to
frugally utilize resources and do the best possible job that they can. Now, we know it's not perfect, but it's what we can afford right now. I would tell you the one thing that I would ask you to do, Eric and Jay, is please post what you're expecting to do in the next six to twelve months on the website so people can understand that their roads are on the list. I mean, I know we have a big project coming up for Shoddy Mill in Long Hill, and I know you're planning on doing some other things, around the lake over where you did the the shimmying project. So if you could just post that out there, Eric, that would be beneficial to everybody.
Yeah. We're pretty close to having, essentially a three year plan to present that kind of shows what we're doing over a period of time. I I think I think we're
maybe I'm I'm misspeaking here, but I'm gonna speak for Jeff anyways. I think maybe what Jeff is pointing out is that we're looking for it. You know how you've doing the announcements and stuff to say what roads are going be worked on and stuff, something along those lines. Let's have a permanent location on either pop up or something on the web page when you hit it that says, by the way, this is what we're working on in the next thirty days. These roads are being addressed, whatever whatever, and just keep rolling that. You know? You've been pretty effective with that on the Facebook page. I think we just need to carry that to other places, where you people aren't doing social media. I know Jeff's not on social media really. So he's not getting message. So we need to find a venue that we can hit Mr. McGuire on.
No we do tend we have been posting on the River East and last year depending on what we did a lot of times we actually flier ed all the mailboxes on the road prior to doing road work on it. That met with kind of mixed results. I got accused of stealing somebody's mail that was kind of an unfortunate confrontation, but, you know we're working hard to keep people informed and we've put stuff in the River East. So we've done a pretty good job of notifying the public, you know, when we're gonna be affecting them.
And as Amanda's pointing out, people can still sign up for those notices on the website, right?
Yes. I mean, just simply because it's the law that from a town budget perspective, it's the largest slice of what we spend our money on. You should put it up front and center on the website
say this is The new website that looks so much better. Let's I utilize
sit during the meetings and I scroll through to see where things are. It's a great job. Okay. So are we all set with roadwork, Paula? Yes. This
was a good conversation to have. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thanks, Jay. Thank you. Have a good night. Yep. Thank you, Jay.
We 're going to move on to 9E Charter Revision. Anybody have any issues related to this tonight? Okay. Then we're going to move on to 9F, the Ethics commission. Does anyone have anything related to this tonight? Okay, we're going to move on to nine gs, revisions to the personnel policy that Eric sent out to us. Does anyone have any issues related to that?
So do you want me to send that on to the attorney for review? Are you generally happy with that? Or how do you want to proceed? That was basically the major thing in there was a change from twenty to twenty six hours minimum to be eligible for healthcare and retirement benefits.
Does anyone need any additional time on that? No? You want to send it on to the attorney? Send it on to the attorney, Eric, and let's sit there and get feedback so the next meeting we can sit there and vote on it. Okay. 9H is the time clock policy.
Yep. So I sent that to you also. The board had expressed to me that they were unhappy that we weren't fully implementing the time clock, and the board wanted a method to make it clear to employees that we were serious about using the time clock and proposing a series of penalties. So that's what the policy reflects what you asked me to bring you back at this meeting.
You you expressed that you had some concerns, having worked at some different places that you didn't know, maybe how enforceable or what have you those were. Can you elaborate on that?
So I did two things from what you originally asked me to do. The first was I made it kind of two tiered in that you give the employees the option essentially to review their own time card, realize it's incorrect and notify you well ahead of time that that's the case, in which case there wouldn't be any penalties. So that's an employee that looks at their own time clock at the end, own PrimePay record at the end of the two week period, realizes it's incorrect, notifies you ahead of time that it's incorrect, notifies your supervisor. The second is, you know, that's far more what I'm used to. I can tell you as a Tesla employee, wasn't, I don't think there was ever a pay period when at least one person that reported to me didn't screw up their time card.
They were required to notify me of that. That particular software allowed them to correct their own time card. But when it showed up on my screen, it showed the revised as well as the original and they had to put in an explanation and the onus was on them to correct and send it back to us. I don't think with PrimePay, I don't think we can turn that same permission on for all the employees. We've kind of looked at that, but I think we can put the onus on them to report back to us and say, Hey, this is screwed up. Here's how it's screwed up.
Here's what it should be. And as long as they do that ahead of time, I don't have a real problem with that because punching in, punching out, somebody is gonna forget sooner or later. And I don't wanna get punitive any more often than we have to, because I think that's, you know, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna Not worth it,
but my personal take on this was not random punching issues. My personal take was chronic offenders. So that that's that's me. I I just feel like we bought the time clocks, people need to use the time clocks. It's one thing if you miss a punch, you know, a couple punches a month even, right? But if we're talking once a week, twice a week, that shouldn't be happening really. So personal, you know, you come in the building, you walk by it, you know, whatever. So do you still have concerns with what you put together or do you feel like what you put together is workable and or do you do you feel at least at least be modified to be fair?
I still think it goes too punitive, but that's just me. Mean So how would you correct it? What would you do differently? So,
I mean, I don't think I would go past a written warning. I just don't see it being enough of an issue to justify, taking, sending an employee home for a day. Okay. But that's just me.
What threshold would you put in there to send employee home for a day? 10 punches a quarter?
If you have a problem with 10 punches a quarter, that's one-two a week. I'll tell you what, before we put this into place, Eric, can you report back to us for the next meeting how many punch problems you have? Right. Let's do that.
Just for the next month, thirty days, tell us how big of an issue it is and then you have to put something in place. I mean, this is just a behavior correction. This is changing someone's behavior that they've had over
years that they do these crappy pieces of paper and scratch out their number and put their number in. It could be though that the people we currently have in place are much better than the people we have had in place in the last six months. Correct.
Adrian, you're 100% correct that we bought a punch system to use the punch system.
Yep. I don't have a problem with removing the sending someone home part, but it should be at the very least written after a certain number, whatever that number is that we agree to. Personally,
I have no problem with a delay on their paycheck. If they don't follow the rules their paycheck gets delayed.
I mean, to me that is the penalty. Right. Mean, but believe me people recognize when their paycheck is short but I would also say it would not surprise me if we get grieved over it. I think we're gonna win if we get grieved but I'm just saying understand that we're gonna chew up some fees dealing with it. Follow the rules.
So let's take out that part of the policy then.
No, let's do it this way, Adrian. Let's find out how big of a problem we are and then Eric change the program to the way that you think will work the best for your group of employees. I'm fair with that. Then let's get this approved next meeting. Great. Right. Let Eric decide.
As long as there's some technology for correction I don't have an issue with it.
All right. So we have that was H. We have 9I, which was added, which is town budget meeting date.
Okay. So I've been going over this today with the town clerk and the town attorney. Dennis, yeah, Dennis is still on. So basically we Dennis wake up.
He's awake. Dennis has been up. I'm enjoying this immensely. I always do. It's his mustache that is sleeping. This is entertainment for me. So there's two things that came up, which I think we need to be aware of. We were originally talking about holding an online budget meeting with a drive by vote. The problem is the governor's executive order will expired by that point. Governor's So that's going to make that questionable to do. So what I'm going to suggest is that we go back to the old ways of doing it and we do it, you know, we basically use the gymnasium, we space everybody out six feet and we have a conventional budget meeting with a vote, if that's okay okay with you.
Well, we could do a corral section and everybody with us with a COVID could all go to one side because according to that today. Let
Dennis find out if we can do a virtual meeting because the last meeting worked well and do it on- We're
allowed to have what, at least 50% capacity now. Is that correct, Eric, on the gym?
Yeah, the latest is 50% capacity with a maximum of 100. Oh, it's max But one
you know, this is in the state of flux. I wanted to talk to some folks I know in the governor's office to see if there's any likelihood of change. But my understanding is that most of the executive orders expire on April 20, which is a couple of weeks before our town meeting is due. And those executive orders are what allow the virtual meeting. And,
you know If we're at our COVID number, we may not, we may not have to worry about it if COVID stays where it is and
Right, unless there's a blow up that's unexpected and it could there could be, you know, there are people burning masks in Idaho, you know, you don't know. Yeah, the way things look now, you know, the executive orders will expire. My understanding is that Ned is not going to issue additional executive orders that he's been put under a lot of pressure to work with the legislature on these things and not do it by himself anymore because the situation has become ameliorated. I believe that Dennis, if
we just pick a date, hold the gym for that date, and if it has to, we switch it to online. Is that is there any reason we can't do that?
There's no reason under your charter that you can't do that. It says present, they have to be people have to be present. I think being present online is okay, but Eric and I and Carol discussed it for a while today. Even if we try to do a virtual meeting from the gymnasium, we may not have the capacity to do that. I don't know. One thing you have to have, you have to have 25 people present. This is not the kind of town meeting you had back in January where it doesn't matter how many people show up. This is this requires 20 at least 25 people to be present, given the you know, the increase in your budget, Board of Ed's budget, you're likely to have a lot more than that. But, you know, that's part of the problem. The other problem is, Jeff, is that you can't really do it on a Saturday because your charter says it has to be done on a business day.
We operate the transfer station on Saturday. You can do it at the transfer station. We operate the transfer station on Saturday. It's a workday.
Actually, at Carol's request, I spent time, since I'm not on the clock, I spent time and I was intrigued by the issue, researching the issue of what is a business day. And Saturday is not a business day in The US Of A, maybe in Europe, Jeff. It's not every every indication is that it's not a business thing. You well, it's you can do it. You know, you don't have to listen to me. I'm just an advisor.
Dennis, this is a new administration. Everything's up for grabs here. This you mean your administration?
Yes. No, we have a new we have a new where's a new sheriff in town that president is gonna lie, you know, there's some leeway here. Biden he has nothing to do with. No.
Our meeting that we did a public meeting that went extremely well. That was a tough Saturday. It was done on a Saturday. It was done on a Saturday. Worked rather well. I know.
He's saying the charter addresses that we can't do it on a Saturday. The charter says
a work day. I will question what a work day represents. Business day. I work seven days a week, but I get it that it's a Saturday.
Unfortunately, though, your your your town attorney has given you an opinion, which now if you go against I'll have to write you an opinion. I argue with my town attorney that Saturday is a workday. We have to You're ignoring the legal advice of the town attorney. Closing
Closing the budget passes or fails. Well, still has to go to referendum. Don't think Somebody files a lawsuit. Do it on a Monday night.
No, I love doing it on a Saturday. I just want to know that we're all agreeing that we are going against the advice of the town attorney. It should be very It's
almost certain that business day does not include Saturday or Sunday. But that's really only an issue if somebody complains.
Right, but if somebody doesn't, things don't come out the right way, as an attorney, I have to advise you. If it goes, somebody that has a little money hires an attorney sues you because you didn't hold on the right day, because they didn't like the outcome of the budget vote. I agree
you agree with Dennis? We should do it for the charter just to just to
cross our t's and dot our i's. I you know, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to tell you, you know, what to do to protect yourself from my I'm not going against Jeff Murray, so I I agree. I'm not either. I I I know. I I you guys are you guys are right. McGuire's wrong. Yep. I wish you could be on a Saturday. If I could for work, Jeff, I would come.
I think I can't vote. The suggestion is to hold it Thursday, May 6 as the date for the budget meeting. And then if it does that and if it passes, it goes to referendum on May 18. If it doesn't pass on May 16, there would be another budget meeting on May 13, and then the referendum would be on May 25. So that's where we're at if we do that, both those because what you want to do is you want to do it early enough that you can get at least one rejection and still get in on time to have a normal to get the tax bills out on time. So that's that's kind of the best scenario we came up with.
Well, it's a tentative solution. I mean, when we talked today, you said you'd give me, you would ask the board to decide finally, two weeks from tonight at the next meeting. I wanted to talk to some Lamont people and see what, you know, what the real lowdown is on that because of my, you know, my right now, it looks as though those executive orders that enabled us to do a virtual meeting and are all going to go down, going to go out on April 20. But I don't know that for sure. But we have to plan.
Have to One give or the other either the executive orders are holding and we can't do it internally because of a COVID limit. So we'll have to be online. It's gonna be one or the other. And we could still pick the date, can't we? You could pick the date. I'll figure out the logistics later. The
May 6 date that Carol actually Carol Lee picked that date, I think, with Eric. Yep.
I hope it's not foggy because without the line painting and we have to drive late at night to the town hall offices it could be semi dangerous.
Would you stop turning this? Oh jeez. It's saving time. As you can probably I'm gonna volunteer right now to pick up Paula so that she gets there.
I think you should have it outside at the transfer. Five. With you. You
could start early. You could start at like six. Let's set the date. Let's set the meeting date and we'll work out the logistics later. I like that. May 6, 07:00.
Can't have it any earlier. Let's move ahead. Let's get it done. I'll pick you up at 06:45.
Okay. Are we gonna vote on that to give Eric the approval or do we just say Eric that's the day? Eric, that's We're
gonna have to sign off on it at some point to notice but we'll save that for two weeks from tonight. Just in case I'm gonna dig into it a little deeper. Okay.
But I think the result probably going to be the same. You need a big venue. You know, I just hate to see anybody turned away. That's why I would suggest doing a hybrid meeting with everybody who shows up and anybody who doesn't show up or can't get in can be on their phone or on their You can have it in the parking lot.
Okay, we'll work on it. We'll work it out. Yeah, that's something to be worked out. Before we move on to item 10, which is approval of meeting minutes from Wednesday, February 10, Tuesday, February 16, and Tuesday, February 23. Someone want to make a motion to approve those minute meetings? So moved. Meeting minutes. So moved. Seconded by Seconded. Adrian seconded. Excellent. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Does anyone abstain? Adrian, Yay, no one he did it. There you go. I follow instructions incredibly well. So I'm assuming, Amanda, that Adrian abstained because he didn't say anything at any of those points. Finance department report, revenue summary, town budget summary, town aid road, town cash report, and over expenditure report. Does anyone have any comments on the information provided in the package? Eric, do you have anything that you want to bring forward? No, nothing at this point.
Any accounts that are in trouble of being overexpended or that we should look at?
Nothing at this time. There are some that are overexpanded, but nothing really critical.
All right, I'm going to ask because I accused Dennis O'Brien of clicking his pin.
Which one of you is clicking their pin? I'm not. Eric? I don't even have a pen. Eric. It's Eric's Sorry.
I was clicking. Is that the one? That's me. I
was just writing my speech. Just thought it was my town attorney having a little senior moment but I apologize. Wow. Let's move That's the old termination. I would like an apology on behalf of I
apologize, Dennis. I texted him to stop clicking his pin. We get back on the agenda I thought you weren't serious. Jeff Murray, you've got to be kidding me. All right. Does anyone have any questions related to the finance department report? Jeff, any questions? No. Jeff wants to get moving. The budget appropriation transfers and over expenditure requests. Eric, anything? Nothing this month. Okay. The tax collector's report. Any questions related to the tax collector's report? We collected $170,000,019,421.65 dollars last month in January, actually. So what is this? This is March. So in January, that's what we collected. Okay. No one has any other questions related to that. Eric, any issues related to the revaluation services?
No. So the only thing I wanted to say is that it is spring and they haven't really changed the executive orders. So the next thing that's going to go out is we're gonna send out a letter to all the residents stating that they either have to decline an interior inspection due to COVID, which they can simply by calling the office and say, I don't wanna do it, or they have to schedule with one of the people to come in and do the interior inspection. So we're anticipating putting that letter out in about a week to inform the public. Now we're also anticipating that an awful lot of people are gonna say no, which is certainly their right.
Okay. Any questions for Eric related to the revaluation services?
And if you all proposing to send out for the letter, I can certainly send that off to the board. I just got that draft of it this afternoon.
Eric, quick question. Are we gonna take the opportunity given the change in personnel for the building department to adjust those hours?
So if you would like to do that, I suggest we go into executive session and ask it out. If that's something you want to pursue.
Well, given our new employment policy as far as insurance, that may be a good thing to look at because that was something that, you know, we wanted to address at some point previously, just didn't have a chance to to do so.
Okay. So do you want to go into executive session, Adrian, to address that today?
Well, we're if we're gonna advertise for that position shortly, which I would think we are, we probably need to have that discussion.
Dennis, can we go on executive session at the end of this meeting to discuss that? Because what? Hiring somebody in the future?
So the reason why is it would require a union negotiation because it's a union Okay,
there you go. Yes. If a union negotiation item, yes, you can. In fact, you can even discuss it, you know, elsewhere. It's not a meeting. But you can go into executive session and you need to you need to do it outside of the public view.
Can we add that Dennis after public speech public speaking before adjournment?
Yeah, you can add it. You can add a as long as it's not. Is it on the agenda at all? No, Dan. No. Notification just happens We
the resign resignation of Susan to Susan. Yeah, this is a regular meeting, so you can add to the agenda and you don't have to have executive session identified on the agenda. You just have to move, add it to the agenda, then move to go into executive session. And you need a two thirds vote to do that. The other is
because it's a union negotiation, and that is something that actually falls outside of the FOIA statutes. You're right. We could pick a date and discuss this without it being a public meeting. Correct. So the reason why I didn't originally tell you to put it on executive session is because we just got it this afternoon. And I thought I would at least speak to Mr. Maguire first, and then see whether we wanted to have a discussion with the Board of Selectmen at some point. But we can certainly do it tonight. I'm not opposed to that,
if that's what you want to do. We could actually do it tonight and not even do it through executive session.
Just go to the room. Okay, fair. Let's sit there and see if we have enough votes for it after public speak and see if we can do it. The departmental reports 15. Anybody have any issues with any of the information provided us, which there really wasn't a lot? So we got building department information. We got a little bit of information from the state trooper. I don't really remember seeing very much else. Any other questions? Okay. Eric, is there any correspondence that we need to review? No, nothing that's of any real importance.
Were there any, tax waivers that we have to vote on this There
are no tax waivers in this go round. That's a good month.
There we go. All right. The last one is public speak. So we're going to sit there and go around our list of residents and sit there and see who wants to participate. Kathy Palazzi, you're first on my screen.
Yes, I just want to make sure that I misheard you. I believe you've just reported on the department reports that you had not received quite a few of the reports. And I know that for a fact I sent mine in.
Yes, you did. Yes, your report for the senior transportation has been provided to the board of selectmen. Thank you. And if you would like to go over it, we certainly can. No, I don't want that. I just wanna make sure you have it. Thank you. Yep, we absolutely 41
total passengers. Thank you. Anything else? Nothing. No. All right, Diane Gragnier.
Oh, yeah. I have a a couple of things. One, you talked about the, bridge not being maintained since its, inception. I just wanna let let you know that next year, 2022, the bridge will be ten years old. It is our ten year anniversary of the new bridge, the covered Bridge. So ten years nothing has been done. So just a piece of info for you. Also delighted with the new sign at the dump. The dump in general is looking Transfer station. Transfer station. Oh, transfer station. You know? Thank you. Slash dump. Transfer station is looking good. I like the sign. I like the lines on the road. The litter is all picked up. I find the staff is very friendly and helpful every time I go there. And it's looking good. Thank you, guys. And the third one, I just want to chime in about the stripes on the road around Andover Lake. Yeah, I'm for it. It's hard, those rainy, foggy nights, to make sure I stay on the road when I'm drunk. So if we could have that strike there, it would be wonderful. So that's it.
All right. Thank you very much. Joan Forum. Okay. Joan's out. Shannon Louden.
Good evening. Thank you. My apologies for my delay in joining this meeting late. I was on the RAM Board of Education budget workshop about their use of their $754,000 audited surplus. And just an FYI, it sounds as though Andover will be receiving some $94,000 from RAM. They have the $754,000 audited surplus. It sounds like instead of putting $300,000 into their 1% non lapsing account, They're going to reserve 210,000 of that for air conditioning for RAM. And so there'll be another 94,000 added into the already 449,000. So we get 17.34% of that. That'll be great for Andover. And I ask that more
money be returned to Andover instead of being put into the non lapsing account. Second, thank you very much for agreeing to the Cooperative Agreement tonight. For the record, I just want to note the following because I think there's been a lot of back and forth and misunderstandings, and so I want to clear up anything. First of all, the town was very well represented on the search committee for the finance director by Eric Anderson, Jeff Maguire, and Mark Brinker. Eric then represented the town, and Valerie Bruno represented the board of ed in negotiating the contract with the finance director. We then learned that a cooperative agreement was required by statute for such a combined position. On January 11, I forwarded to the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Education and the town administrator a draft of the Cooperative Agreement and the contract for the Finance Director that had been negotiated with the Finance Director at that time by Eric and Valerie. On January 13, I then forwarded to the Board of Selectmen and the town administrator
the final cooperative agreement to which the Board of Education subsequently agreed, and I think you have agreed this evening. I don't believe that I owe. And on February 11, every member of the search committee, the three representing the town and the three representing the board of ed, were forwarded a copy of the contract with the finance director who has now been hired, and I signed her contract about two weeks ago. So I don't believe that I ever heard back from the town administrator or the town attorney or any selectman with regard to either the cooperative agreement contracts with the finance director. And my apologies if I'm wrong in this regard. But the Board of Selectmen had copies of the cooperative agreement and copies of the contract. And I believe it was stated at some point that you did not, and you have. You also, through your representatives on the search committee, were provided with a copy of the contract that our finance director has now signed. We hired a wonderful new finance director who I believe will be in attendance via Zoom at the Board of Education meeting on Wednesday evening. I learned during this meeting, because I peeled off a little bit when you were talking about chip sealing and spoke with our superintendent. And although Sherry does not officially start in person until next Monday,
she will be doing remote Edmonds webinars this Thursday and Friday to before she even officially starts get up to snuff on Edmonds. So, finally, neither the superintendent nor the board of education had any input whatsoever into the contract for the assistant finance director position, nor do we have a copy of the current contract with her. We don't know if the superintendent has any supervisory authority over the assistant finance director, which is a courtesy that we showed to the town administrator and the board of selectmen in the finance director cooperative agreement that we entered into and you affirm tonight. So please forward us a copy of the contract with the assistant finance director. There isn't a contract that she's union. Pardon? There's
the union agreement, but there's no contract because she's As a union
was requested of the Board of Education by the Board of Finance, I would like the town to provide to the Board of Finance the following specific information for our budget considerations. And that, I mean the town. How much savings did the town accrue in last year's budget because of closing due to the pandemic? And how much has the town received in ESSER I and ESSER II, and coronavirus relief and America relief funds? All of that information has been provided to the Board of Finance by the Andover Board of Education. I asked for that information from the RAM Board of Education this evening. And I believe it's incumbent upon the town to provide the same information for the Board of Finance's consideration. Thank you. Okay Diane Choquette I am all set thank you all right Joanne Ebert Okay Brian Briggs.
Jeff just one one question I mean one one comment after Shannon just spoke. I just would like to see both sides work together. It's one town. We're all together like you addressed earlier. I know she pointed out a lot of things and said something earlier. But yeah, it's one town, one fund, everybody wants good for the town and it's a good thing. Let's hope this is a great employee. No, no, we had a mockery to just hearing that. Thank you. All right. Brian Briggs.
Yeah. I would have just had a question about the nine what is it? Nine new business discussed and act upon the following in regards to the ethics commission and the charter revision committee. There was really no discussion and no act upon following. So, I'm wondering, are you guys going to discuss that later and decide or is it just going to go away and no one's going to act on it because nothing really happened. So, I'm kind of confused.
Okay. All right. Would imagine I know. I emailed Eric and he never emailed me back about Brian, at some point in time, we will do a charter revision. It's just not right at this point in time. We're in the middle of trying to deal with our budget. So, it's not something that this board
I wouldn't have put it on the agenda to be really honest. What about the ethics commission? It's been on it was a law that's back I don't know if the attorney is still on there. That was a law that was back in 2006. So, I think that's like kind of pertinent especially after the lawsuit that was brought upon the town. So, I don't know. I just I know you guys are busy but like it's been a long time and I brought that up like a month ago.
Yeah. Well, we appreciate your involvement and we will sit there and sit there and take all that into consideration. Okay.
All right. That is it as far as people on my list. I don't see anyone else. If I missed anyone, I apologize. By a show of hands, and I can't see Adrian, and I really don't know if we'd rather do this outside of this meeting than not go into executive session and just to have conversations amongst ourselves. Eric, just from a timing standpoint, when are you anticipating posting this job? Muted, Eric.
Eric, you're muted. I got the resignation at six this evening. So I will be honest, I haven't put a great deal of thought into this.
I would rather table this until another day and we can all get on. Dennis, if I understand this correctly, because of this issue, we could have a meeting by telephone or by Zoom at some other point in time. If it involves
potential negotiations with a labor union, it doesn't even count as a meeting. So you can do it pretty much any way you want to do it. I you you could, I think you've done it before by going into executive session, that's okay too. But yeah, it's something that can be done privately among the selectmen.
How long is it going to take? How long is this going to take?
I don't think it takes more than five or ten minutes. Let's just do it. We're all here.
We can do that. We have another meeting. We're here. Let's just get it Before
we do leave, we have to sing to Scott Person. Oh, cut it out.
His birthday just passed. It just happened a few days ago. Everybody, if you wouldn't mind, I'm sad Shannon left us because I know how good of a voice she has and she would have changed. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Skyperson.
So who's making a motion to go into executive session? I will. I'll make the motion that we go into executive session to discuss. You want me there?
Yes. Invite Sir. Invite me. I may Might as well invite me too unless you don't want me there. Yeah. You should definitely should invite Eric. He's the Don't invite Eric.
Alright. Motion that we go into executive session, including the town attorney and town administrator regarding possible union negotiations for the resign position in the building department today.
All right. We have Amanda, we have five minutes. Right. We're going to stop recording. Did someone second that? I did. Yeah. Thank you. Vote on it? Yeah. Yeah.
Do we have any abstentions? No? Okay, good. All five in favor. All right. Are we going to go to another meeting or we're to stay? Let's stay in this one and go We to
get Okay. So we're coming out of executive session at 10:28 and the only thing left in our meeting for today, March 8 is adjournment. Someone want to make a motion? Motion to adjourn. Second.
All those in favor aye aye all those opposed all those that abstain. Okay. So we're all good. Everybody have a good night. Thank you. Eric, thank you very much for everything you do. We appreciate you. Yep, thank you Eric. No worries, Eric. Right, thank you. Good night. Cheers. Bye.