Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen- Regular Meeting
September 14, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Machine-generated transcript — check the video if in doubt.
K. How is everybody doing? It's 07:00, so, I'd like to get started. Our first order of business is the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag, The United States Of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay? Like to get started with public speak. We're gonna get started with Jasmine. Okay. I'll move off her. Eric, I'm gonna no. Jasmine, I know you came off mute. Yes. Sorry. That's okay. Hi. Hi. Thanks for holding.
I am looking to join. I submitted my letter of interest to join the rec commission, and I was told that I needed to attend this meeting tonight. We appreciate that you're here. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Erica, I'm gonna skip you because you're gonna talk later. Grace Kustanian? I'm all set for now. Thank you. Got it.
Roberta, I'm gonna skip you, and I'm gonna move on. And I realize that a lot of the people that are here are here for the Rec Commission, and that's great. You can participate in public speak if you have something else that you'd like to talk about, or if you'd like to talk about the Rec Commission, that's fine. Ben Harp?
Yeah, I'm here for the rec committee, as well. Other than all set. Okay. Liz Loketch? Nothing for now. Thank you. TL Hastings? All set. Thank you. Melissa Teska? I'm just here for recognition. Thank you. Joanne Heber?
Hello, I just have two quick things. The first one is that I wanted to say that I really think that the chip seal that's done on Wales Road and Townsend Road is amazing. I would, you know, as a person that lives on a road that used a different kind of surface that had a lot of dust and everything in the past, those roads look spectacular. I mean, I love driving on them. Kudos to that choice. I would love that to keep that company. And then I'm hoping when you get to the Long Hill Bridge update as someone that's affected directly by it, if we could have a And I understand there's a lot of work involved, so everybody has inconveniences in life. But it's at least ten minutes added every trip. And I do a lot of trips in and out of the house all the time, the family, everybody with gas prices and the miles we're putting on. So if we could have a realistic you know, end date of when that might, you know, something to target of when it might be done. I go up north a lot and I see bridges wash out and different things and I see repairs done a lot quicker, but I realize there's a lot to this that I don't know. So thank you for that when you get there. Sarah Zitney. Rec commission as well. Megan Lowley.
Hi. Just here for the rec commission tonight. You got it. Tess Grouse. I'm all set, Jeff. Thank you. Wayne Kasasik. All set. All right. Kimberly Persong. All set. Thank you.
All right. Phone number ending in 3815. K. And phone number ending in 2345, which I believe is Dennis, but I'll let him say. Hello?
Okay. Dennis, you're good? Unless you wanna say something. I am good. I'm good. Yes. Alright. And then we'll put you back on mute. And then phone number 3815. Does anyone? Hi.
Hello? Hi. Yes. Can you hear me? We can. Hi, this is Leon. This is Leanne Hutchinson. I don't have anything for now. Thanks. Okay, you got it. Did I miss anyone? Well, let's ask Ashley if she'd like to participate.
I'm also here for the Rec Commission. This is Sarah Zitney.
Yeah. No problem. Ashley Johnson, we're in public speak if you'd like to say something before we move on. Oh, I'm good.
Okay. All right. If I missed anyone, please let me know. Going once, going twice. All right, we're gonna move on. Item three, additions and changes to the agenda. Anybody else but me? I have a couple of things I'd like to deal with. Okay, I'd like to make a motion that we add discussion and possible action on the appointment of someone or some company to for cleaning of the town office buildings. We're gonna put those under old business. So k, 10 k, and then 10 l discussion and possible action on the appointment of a maintenance person. And then I would like to go so those would be 10 l and I would like to add under new business d 11 d discussion regarding the prior AES and town operating bank account procedures or process. And 11E, and these won't take long discussion and possible action of, well, we'll just call it discussion. No. Discussion of possible action regarding the temporary light at the intersection of Route 6 and Hendy Road is 11e. I would like to add those to the agenda. I will second that. Dave Gustavian seconded. Is there is there anything else that anyone would like to put on the agenda or take off the agenda?
No? Yeah.
We've gotten an email about the Boy Scout troop about possibly allowing the Veterans Committee to be supervisor. I forget what they called it with them. So maybe that should be on our agenda too.
What would you like to call that? We'll call that 11 F and so discussion
Discussion of the Boy Scout troop. Discussion And Veterans Committee. No, I don't want my hand raised.
Leeann, if you could mute yourself. Okay. So that would be five things, 10 ks, the town office cleaning contract. 10 L, the town maintenance person. 10 D, discussion regarding the AES town operating account procedures and process. 11E, discussion and possible action regarding the temporary light at the intersection of Route 6 and Hendy Road. And 11F, discussion regarding the Boy Scout troop and Veterans Committee email. Okay. I have somebody with their hand up. You can come off mute. I know Diane Greiner joined us, so I'll let her do public speak. Now you're late. Diane, you can wait till the end. Does somebody does the phone number 300815 I guess that's Leanne Hutchinson. Do you have your hand up for a reason?
I think she said she didn't know why it was on. So I think she's trying to figure out how to turn it off. Let's see if I can do it.
You should be able to through that, Jeff. Yeah. It's already gone.
She already figured it out. Good job, Leanne. Alright. So Dave, I'll second the eleven F or we'll let Dave second. Dave, do you have a problem with eleven I will second all of them. Second all of those, great. All those, well, I'm gonna have to go around. Anne Kerme, how do you vote on putting those on the agenda? Great. Dave Gustanian. Aye. Scott Person. Christine Randazzo. Aye.
And Jeff Maguire. Aye. So that's five nothing for those. Okay, so let's move ourselves through this. Okay. Item four, Board and Commission presentations. Matt, I don't believe we have any. Okay. There's no Board and Commission presentations. Item five, Department presentations. This is something new that I would like to get started and have on a more consistent basis, is providing the department heads an opportunity to come talk to us about what they're doing, what's going on, and what they need from us to sit there and make the town more successful or a better place to drive around or to live in. And hopefully what we can do is we can move from the Department of Public Works and the town clerk to RAM to AES to anything else that we can sit there and have the departments give some information to the community. So we're gonna start this with Eric Johansson, who is our director of public works. And in our packet, he has provided us information. So and I know Matt is gonna share his screen and allow the community to sit there and see the information. Eric, all yours. Thank you very much.
I'm sure the board has had a chance to look over all this stuff. Has does anybody have any questions before I get started?
No. But, Matt, I know you're one second. Matt, I know you're operating two computers. So do you want me to share my screen?
Oh, is it is it not showing up on there right now?
Well, I don't know if everybody else is looking at the same thing. I'm looking at two screens. One is a small Let me, try this one. What is everybody else looking at? Just so I understand. Two screens. Two screens. Right? His his his big image and then yeah. Okay. Yeah. K. Road project update. Okay.
But you can't barely make it out. I'm trying I'm trying to fig figure that out right now. Mhmm. Just the layout.
I'm gonna stop that share for now. There you go. You had it just I am. Just at the end. Okay. Well, everybody, if you the residents, if you go to our packet and you pull up the packet, you can sit there and see what Eric is gonna go over.
Can't do it? No. No. I'm not doing it. Okay.
Alright. We're gonna get better at this. So, Matt, let's go, and we'll move on. Eric, you can go ahead. Okay,
I'm just going to give a broad overview of it. As you can see, what the fund balance, what the fund balances are at the very top, what we've spent, what's left over from last year, and what's remaining. I'm gonna the rubber chip. That's something I'm gonna really push for in this town. As as I've told some of you, this is how we're gonna go about chip sealing our roads from here on out. It's a much better product. As long as the road's in good shape, we should get seven to twelve years out of it. The only drawback to it is like everything else, it's more expensive. But the end of the day, we can just we can put this down as long as we prep the road correctly, and we can walk away from it. There's no dust. It looks like we paved it. There's minimal sweeping. And, again, it's just it's it's a way better product. Instead of chip sealing, let's say we chip seal six, seven roads a year, maybe we can only do five. But, again, it outlasts it outlasts everything. This those roads, we did Oak Farms Road, which is a dead end. Some of the things initially that I looked into, they said dead ends weren't a good seat for this. This road was, like, right on the tipping point of doing something. So this is kind of an experimental road to see how it's gonna hold up over time. We also did Townsend Road and Wales Road. Then again, I've heard nothing but good about it. In the picture, you'll see that Townsend Road is one, and the other picture is Oak Farms.
We also did standard chip this year. That was on Aspinall, Bailey, East Street, Hickory Hill, Shawty Mill from Wales to the town line of Webster Lane. The reason why I did these roads like that is because they're basic they they should be reclaimed. But, at some point, I didn't want I didn't feel the need to put the money from the rubber chip into these roads because we're gonna have to do some major work to these roads down in in the near future. We ran a different type of stone with these roads. It wasn't as dusty as it normally is, and the emulsion sticks better to it. We still have to we still have to sweep them, but not as much. We're actually going to go out probably in the middle end of this week and do a second sweeping on those roads. The third part is reclaiming of Ridge Road. Hold on. That road is totally like
I'm sorry. Sure. Hold on. Sorry about that. That's all right. Good job. I like it. Can you give us an understanding of how the rubber chip seal is priced out versus the standard chip seal? I know you gave us total dollars and that's great. But is it by square foot? Is it by square mile? What do you how do you how is it? They
do it a square yard. The rubber chip is $5.75 a square yard and the standard chip is $3.25 a square yard. Okay. And then There's also an escalation built into that as well because as you guys all have driven by a diesel pump, we're paying 6 and change a gallon right now. What you see at the pump is what the cost is for the oils that are used for any asphalt product or crack sealing product. So in their contracts, build in, if it goes over X amount, then we have to pay more. But again, the rubber chip, it's a much better product. It lasts a lot longer. As long as we crack seal it and shim it correctly, and the road is in good shape for the most part, we shouldn't have to touch it from anywhere from seven to twelve years. Again, the standard chip, you're going back every five to eight.
Wow, I can tell you that that's not happened on Lake Road. I mean, I'm complaining. Mean, Dave, I know you live on it. I don't think Lake Road is bad. But that chip seal was done at least seven, eight years ago. Well, what I was after more than what's a square yard get you per mile? Like, if you can do this next time you come, the standard chip seal at $3.25 versus the rubber chip seal at $575 how much it costs per square mile so that we can sit there and understand if we sit there and request that you go to rubber chip seal, we're just going to get so many less miles. Because the price is almost 40% of, you you're paying 40% more to do the rubber chip seal and it obviously better product. I mean, that's the difference between, we did this back when
Eric did Lakeside. He did Lakeside in a rubber chip seal or in an alternative format. And then he did Lake in the standard format. So, and yeah. So okay. So it's about dollars. And if you could give us that the next time Okay. How many miles you could get doing each one and how many miles you are planning on, that would be great. Okay. Go ahead. Yep. Ridge Road's a mess. Yep.
It's never been from what I can see, it's never been chip sealed or crack sealed. It appeared to be just put in, and nobody ever did anything to it. It is beyond any type of chip sealing methods. It needs to be totally reclaimed and repaved. With that said, we went in this summer. We've we've you do a project like this, you go in and fix all the catch basins. You put in new tops. You fix anything in the catch basin. Even if you think it looks bad, you replace it. And that's basically that's what we did this summer. We repaired and replaced 14 catch basins. We're actually if you look at the photo to the left, that's Burnout Brook. We're actually putting in a basin to the left of that picture. What that's going to do is there's kind of like some drainage ditches on the side there, and it was just kind of a mess over there as well. So we're cleaning that up, adding a catch basin. So the water coming down the road will run into the catch basin and then run into the other two basins that you see. Then it goes out to the right into the woods. So they're gonna reap what they're gonna do is they're gonna grind the road up, grade it out to the to the catch basins this time. I don't know if anybody on the board has ever driven that road. Whoever put those catch basins in,
they did not match the grade of the road. So every time we drove up there with the plow truck in the wintertime to plow it, it really beat the plow and the driver and the truck. So that's gonna be a plus in itself along with everything else. But anyway, it'll be ground up. It'll be regraded. It'll then be two inches of binder will be put down. It'll then be totally curbed. They'll put down another top coat of two inches. We're gonna come in and backfill all the curbing with loam and any driveway aprons that need to match the new road, we will do that. The contractor that's doing it has actually because of the weather lately, keeps getting backed up. He told me somewhere the end of August. I called him actually last week. He's probably looking at the end of September, beginning of October now. It's still not too late to do anything. I've actually paved with my other job and personally up till the beginning of November. So I'm not I'm not overly concerned about the pavement going down. If this was a chip seal product, would have said absolutely not because you need some time for that to melt in.
Getting into the crack ceiling Wait. Oh, sorry. Estimated.
I know you have up to the top, like, final numbers, like Yeah. A guesstimate of what Ridge is gonna cost us.
So just bear with me one minute. I do have some
And why he's looking for that, I know Wayne is on the phone. This road was never put in properly by the developer that did that project. And this is one of those things that we discussed at our special meeting that, we need to hold anyone who does a project in town accountable if they're going to build a road and to do a development and then turn it over to the town because this was not done correctly from the get go. This is one of things yeah.
Go ahead. So Some of the things I heard was the the catch basins were put in on a weekend in order for just to get get the project done that much quicker. The subsurface on on some of these places is is horrible. So grinding it up will actually give us a better base forward as well too. So I've done this in other towns like this, and sometimes you have to haul stuff out when they grind it up, and other times you have to bring stuff in. I'm hoping, looking at everything, the way we angled the basins in the road, I'm hoping that we have enough material when they grind the asphalt up to reuse it as a base to do that. Worst case scenario, we'll have to haul some stuff in to
to help fill in some of the spots to get the grade we need to those basins. I
have the numbers here. Again, these are preliminary because these were all given to me before the price of oil went up. To reclaim it is 18,000. Two inch binder is 61,000. Two inch top coat is 48,000. And to curve it is 21,000. So all in all, we're looking at a $150,000. There's some other costs as well because we're gonna have to buy some loam to backfill. I bought some seed this spring for other projects that we've done around town, backfilling curbing. So I believe I have enough of that. All the catch basin products, except for the two that big ones that you're looking at at the bottom of the hill, those were all purchased, I want to say either last year or the year before. Because again, this project was supposed to be started before I got here, but with the staffing changes that happened last year, it never got done. The catch basin products I put into it is the two double basins at the bottom. Those were the worst two that we had. The good news is all the pipe in the ground is cement, and it's all in good shape. So we don't have to There was no metal piping or anything in that project. Does anybody have any questions? Alright. Crack sealing. We did I crack sealed all the roads that were done, outside a ridge that we, that we chip sealed, this year. We used a new vendor. I used the Crog. It was on the Crog bid, which we're part of. I actually Matt and myself actually know the vendor too, so I he did a he did a phenomenal job. I was very happy with what he did, and he put us first on the list. So we were able to get get our other
shimming and chip sealing done earlier. Shimming of the roads, that's done by our an outside contractor, Abby Construction. We pay for the asphalt. They pick it up, and then they they put it down. There was a lot of shimming work this this year that needed to be done prior to the to the chip seal would be done. What that does is if there's problems in the road, they have a small reclaim machine, they'll actually grind it up, we can explore what's going on in there, They grade it out, and then they they repave it. We used they they used 279 tons this year at the cost of $74,000
altogether for all the roads for all the roads that we chip sealed. That also includes all the curbing they did as well. I'm not going to lie, we tore some curbing up this past winter just because it was a horrible winter. Catch Well, some mailboxes. Oh, I'm sorry, Dave. What? Also some mailboxes. Maybe.
Catch basin cleaning. This is done yearly by an outside contractor. Again, same thing. I I got he came off the crock bid. He was really cheap. He was actually cheaper than what I I thought it was going to be. We actually save money there. We did 478 catch basins. We have 200 more to he's coming back within the next few weeks to do about 200 more. We usually hold off doing the catch basins that we're going to chip seal because there's no sense in cleaning them out twice. We start around the lake, especially this year. I got them in super early because we, as you guys know, we were running real low with the salt. So I got I wanna make sure the lake got done first before all the sand got into the lake. Let's see. Okay. Guardrail replacement. As you guys know, you've seen the old rope guardrail around town. Half of the rope's missing. A lot of the poles are are broken. So I'm doing my my predecessor slowly is replacing it little by little so we don't get hit all at once. It's being replaced with the metal flex beam, which is way better crash rating. We replaced twelve thirty seven feet,
and we did one section on Lake Road and two on Bunker Hill Road. Line striping, we lines we did the library parking lot. OSHA came through last last year and actually told them that they had to have a walkway going in the bottom of the library. And there was the cement curbing that was put in there. The OSHA inspector actually tripped over that curbing to get into the bottom of the door there. So we removed that. But in order to have a walkway there, we had to re stripe the whole parking lot. So we took one of the handicapped spots from up top and we moved it down below. So there's a handicapped spot there, and we restripe the whole the rest of the parking lot. We did line removal. So any chip sealed road that we had, we had to remove the lines. If you don't do that, the the emulsion or the rubber chip will not stick to the epoxy paint. So that has to be removed. If you look in some towns where they don't do it, what'll happen is they'll run their plow down the center and you'll see a nice bright yellow line on a brand new chip sealed road. It actually happened in our the last town I was in as well.
We're gonna start putting I'm gonna start I'm gonna have the company come in and install stop bars and lines for the roads that were chip sealed last year. So that's Skinner Hill, Gilead, Cone, and I think that's it. That's what was done. We're also gonna next as long as the catch basin project on Burnout Brook goes well, next week, we're going to start prepping the area for the handicap spot down at the new park at the pick wherever the pickleball is. We're going to have to have that lined as well to mark that out for the handicap spots. We use a again, we use a high reflective epoxy paint. It lasts it lasts two to three times longer than the regular conventional paint. And if it's done right, it is and put down the year after, it should last many, many years. Materials. We use this year to date, well, processed stone and topsoil, $8,600. Catch basin products, pipes, cement, fittings, etcetera. It was $6,000 Pending projects that we have. Again, like I mentioned, we're gonna we're gonna pay, get, prep and pave the handicap area down at the new park. We're also gonna run some conduit for cameras. I've talked to Bob Downer. I met with him to see where the cameras will work. So before we go pave and everything down there, we're gonna run the conduit to the to one light pole into the pavilion. There's already conduit coming out of the shed that's down there. I had the contractor put that in prior to him to him putting the shed on on top of the electrical panel down there.
As you can see, our salt, we're gonna repair our salt shed. The walls are starting to come apart. Over time, the salt, the water has gotten into the cracks of the cement and starting to pop the concrete. I didn't notice that it was this bad until this past winter. Again, it was too late to do anything because it was, as you guys know, it was zero out. So we're we're kinda lucky that we didn't fill the salt shed because now we can move it out. We can repair half of it, move the other half over, and repair that half. This is just a temporary fix. That long term, we're gonna have to do something because the as you can see in one of the pictures, the the salt's already gotten into the rebar. Once it gets into the rebar, it it rusts and it actually will pop the concrete and pop sections of the wall out. Chamberlain Pond, that's another project coming up. That's further down on the agenda in my monthly report. You guys are going to cost that all out. You'll see what it's going to cost to do that job. We're not going to to it before winter. We just have too much other stuff going on. We have to start prepping for winter. We got to get the salt shed done. We got to pave, like I was telling you, the parking area down at the new park. If we get a warm winter, if you guys approve this, we can we can start it this winter or we'll get it, like, late late spring. The fuel system, they actually started installing that today. The pump is up and running. They I was they showed me how to enter in everything and how to how to retrieve information out of it.
That's still in the, what we call the default mode right now, because we have to enter in all the keys for it and for all the vehicles. And then we have to, everybody needs their own pin number so we can track who's using what, where for that system. So for the time being, probably I want to say for maybe another week, we're still going to have to write it on paper. And then once all the keys are handed out and everybody has a code, we'll just cut it off and everybody can start using the pump. Future projects coming up. The AES town hall and fire department parking lots, they've outlived their lifespans with AES being the worst. I'm gonna start getting quotes on to redo all three parking lots. The there's the curbing shot. They'll probably do the same thing like we do with Ridge, have them come in, reclaim it, pave it, line it. There's I believe in the Upper AES parking lot, there's tour there's one one or two basins that we can't do. They're just they're too deep and we don't have the equipment
to actually fix them. I want to do the same thing. Again, thing like on Ridge, where I want to repair everything. We fix it. If it needs it, we're going to put it in. Then we can walk away from it for twenty years. But they're the most of the basins we can do. We actually had to fix one this past summer. We'll look at the piping. We can backfill everything as well. That's another another cost savings. Another future project is the DPW generator. The d the the generator is actually from the Vietnam era. It's very unreliable. We have to shut many circuits down in that facility so we don't burn anything out. One of the things, especially we just spent $30,000 on a brand new pump, our fire alarm system, we're going to have to do something with that. And this generator is not, it just doesn't have the surge protecting in it or the capability to even keep up on most of the building. In the end, I'm gonna ask for an additional pickup truck. This summer really showcased we had a lot of work, and we were driving around for transportation transportation using $300,000 trucks. These trucks nowadays are not designed to just putt around, they're designed to work. The emission systems on these things are very expensive, And if we're just using it for transportation, they're gonna load up and create all sorts of problems in the engines. We've had to take one of these to training. It's we we we really need another another pickup truck. If we do get one, like to put a plow and sander on it. That would be the truck that I would use in the wintertime.
So when I'm out doing parking lots or if I'm helping somebody do a dead end or even if I'm doing a small road around the lake, I have material on, I can hit it and it's less time somebody has to come back. We do have money in tar. We could get it out of that with your approval. I do have some numbers from probably six months ago that I could could give you guys if you would like just to see. But like everything else, as you guys have seen, everything's gone through the roof. Those numbers probably aren't even real numbers right now. The tree work, we're gonna have to increase that line item as well. The cost of the contractors are going up as you guys know. Again, you've driven by a diesel pump. I saw it out on Route 6 today, it was $6.19 a gallon. My predecessor did a great job with removing trees and doing canopy work. I can say since I've been here, since November, I've gotten two calls on trees coming down. The last job I was at, at least minimum twice a week, that town was going out to pick trees up off the road. So I'm I'm very impressed on the on just the tree work alone that's been done here. It keeps the public safe, and it helps us too if we can do canopy work, if we can get the sun in there. It dries the road out so you don't have a wet base.
We don't have to put as much salt down. We don't have to plow it as much because, again, the the sun gets in there and can actually melt the snow better than putting the better than putting salt down. We have, I believe, we have we have two payments out there for our debt service. One's for our '24 John Deere roadside mower. There's two payments left on that. And then we have one payment left on our full size plow truck, a 2024 Freightliner. Again, we have one payment left on that. Once these are paid off, I'm going to come back to the board and start discussing what other piece of equipment that we would need. I'd like to start talking about getting another full size dump truck. Our oldest one in a fleet is a '98 Ford, and we can't even get parts for it. So it's one step away from basically being just a boat anchor, unfortunately.
That's my that's my take. Do you guys have any questions?
When do when do we make that last payment for this year for the plow truck? I believe October. In October?
That's when it gets made. I mean, the That's when it comes up. Yes. The Don Deere has already paid. The payment for the Freightliner is is due now. And then we'll have one more after that. Correct.
Yes. He's just doing next fiscal year. Part of it is in the report that's coming up with his information. One thing I would sit there and tell you, if you guys have those classes or anything like that, could you please get with Matt and get with a test to sit there and see if there's any of the vehicles available from you know, the the fleet, the senior driving fleet that you might be able to use, would have been better for you to take a van than take the truck. K. Alright?
We get that new van, you guys could take the old one, drive people around with that.
Let's sit there and get For now. Let's get test engaged so we know what can and can't be done. But, I mean, you guys have all the certification to drive any of those vehicles if you needed. Yes. Yes. Okay.
So, you know, from starting from page, you know, nine down, these are all of the July transactions for public works. So go ahead, Eric. I don't think I don't think there's anything really need to say other than if somebody has any questions. Page page 11 and page 10 are reversed. Page 11 should be before page 10, but somehow they got switched.
A couple big purchases in there. One of them, I bought a spare loader tire for our loader. Again, in my last job, since our loader is the primary piece, we as it was in my last my last job, we we wrecked the tire doing, moving some stuff off the road in emergency, and it took four days to get a tire for it and then another day to get it put on. This way we have it. If something happens, we can call the tire service and we're probably back up in two or three hours instead of three or four days. So that 275562 is a spare loader tire?
Yes. K. What typically, what happens is that's through Pete's Tire Barn. We're on a state bid. So if you were to go buy that tire, it'd probably be almost $4,000 So we get government pricing for that. Typically what they always tell you, oh, we can get it, we can get it. Then when you need it, they're like, oh yeah, we can get it in like three days or something like that. Again, a snowstorm, in any type of emergency, that's basically our frontline piece. If we need it, we have it. Then I can just call them, they'll come out, put it on. Like I said, within two, three hours, we're moving. I've talked to some of you guys. I'm not a prepper, but I like to be prepared in case something happens. Another thing we another thing we did was we I bought a last fiscal year, I bought a 100 gallon gas tank and just to have a 100 gallons of gas at our facility. This past winter, twice, when we had those big snowstorms, we went to go fuel our trucks for our gas, and both gas stations were out of gas. They got it in like the next day, but again, if we're plowing at night and we need it, we have it. Power goes out. It's out on Route 6. You're not getting gas. So I'm gonna always have that tank. It runs off a battery so we can if, again, our Vietnam War generator dies, we can still pump gas into our trucks. The other big item was two on that for the vehicle maintenance. The tires on
my truck were gone, so I had to buy four tires and have those mounted as well.
Does anyone have any questions for Eric regarding any of the transactions in the month? I know it's a small month, but the month of July. K. Eric, page of 12 is your the fund balances, the capital reserve funds that you're responsible for. This first report, we need to make a correction to it from the cycle of it shouldn't be July 30 to July 31. So there's no there's very minor changes. That's not the information the board should look at or the public should look at. You should look at pages 13 and page 13. Those are all the transactions that Eric was talking to us about related to Abby's and Hanes and the materials that he bought for the chip ceiling that he put down. So that's all under the Road Improvement Fund. And then Scott, you can sit there and see the John Dare payment was
$47,808 And the credits are the amount that the residents funded through taxation for these. So the equipment reserve fund was funded $125,000.47000 for the John Deere, and then the other payment is related to the truck. 385,000 funded for road improvement, and then $50,000 for the tree removal fund. So anybody have any questions related to those transactions? Okay. Eric, thank you very much. It's appreciated. The the roads look good and thank you for, for everything that you do. Yeah. Excellent report, Eric.
Thank you. Alright. We we also have a Roberta Doherty, who is our town clerk on. So Roberta, if you can come and join the meeting. Yep, I'm off mute.
There you go. All right, Roberta, here you go. It's yours. You can go through your presentation.
I worked on the annual report, which is due anyway, which gives you an overview of everything that our office has done in the last fiscal year. So, if you have any questions about that, we can go through that. I'm happy to answer everything that I'm familiar with. Otherwise, I just have some other fun and exciting things to talk about that we've been working on since I got elected in this office.
I do have a question. So when you're doing your statistics for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six, that ran from July 1 to June 30, correct? 07/01/2025 to 06/30/2026. And
so we had seven marriages, twenty three deaths, and 18 births. Yes.
And the births are calculated or how are they how are they reported so we know? So the births come through a website through the state of Connecticut for anybody
that was either born in the town of Andover or parents were residents of the town of Andover. So 18 births to residents
who live in the town of Andover. Or lived in the town of Andover during that time or used the address. So they could be residing at their parents' house, it's just that's the residence they put on the birth certificate when they fill it out. So our town is contracting by five residents.
I don't know whether those births, those new babies still live here or not. I just know that they were residents of the town when they were born. No, no, no. I was talking the deaths versus- Oh, the deaths, yeah. And the deaths also are the same situation. It's either if you've died in the town of Andover or if you resided in the town of Andover when you passed away. But if you were like living in a nursing home and not using, but still owned a home in Andover, we might not get that death certificate because your residence isn't considered Andover. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Any other questions about this report? Okay.
So if there's no questions about this, I'll talk about the other things that I have going on in the office. One of the things that I did once I got elected, and first of all, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you and let you understand what the town clerk's office does, and I'm happy to answer any questions while I put out this information. So one of the first things I did was I wanted to get the contract for the land records program that we use. And we were just recently renewed to a five year contract, so I think I think I have three more years left three or four more years left of this contract. But our contract included a cashiering system. This information is not in the it's not in the, you know, report because it happened. I started working with this stuff after the fiscal year. So our our contract with the Land Record System offers a cashiering system with a cashier drawer
and a validator and a receipt printer that we were not using. And so, we had contacted the company and we've gotten those products into our office now, and we're learning how to implement them for our land record system. If you come and record a document, you'll see that we have the volume and page and doc number will be stamped on with our validator instead of hand stamped like we have done before. It us, it will allow us to run state reports with the system and not have to hand count every month like we've done previously. It should be able to help us in the future with all our cashiering needs, not just land records, and be able to run reports back to the treasurer's office to figure out how much money we brought in for different things that we charge for in the office. So that was exciting for us.
Every year, the town clerks are offered a grant for historic preservation. So this past fiscal year, we got a new revolving fireproof vitals cabinet. Our vitals cabinet that we had in the vault was so packed, it didn't have room for another book, Vitals book. So we have a brand new cabinet that locks and it it doubled the space and then also gave more space to the cabinet it was in, which could be used for something else in the vault. Public works helped me and rearranged my vault so it would all fit. It gave me the opportunity to clean up the vault and organize the vault. So that's really exciting, this new locking revolving cabinet in my vault. With transfer station stickers, we are now always putting it automatically on the Excel spreadsheet at the time of selling the sticker, so we will no longer have to reenter all the information from a handwritten sheet at the time of sale. So that should help later be able to search more and find the information regarding people with the transportation stickers a lot quicker, and not have to redo the work twice. Lauren and I have gone through and tried to organize all the drawers and cabinets in the office, and see what we needed and what we had that we didn't need.
We had Willie come in and paint the office. He rehung our bulletin boards, he made some other repairs, he painted our ceiling and all of our door frames and window frames. So it's made a noticeable difference in the office. It creates a really nice work environment for Lauren and myself. And a number of occasions residents have come into the office and commented how wonderful it looks. So that's really good. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our process. I've been visiting other town clerks across the state. I just had the town clerk of Cromwell come in two weeks ago and help me with the land record systems. We're also working on documenting, creating manuals and checklists of all the procedures in the office. So in the very far future, if we have a new town clerk or a new assistant town clerk, they can take over the office without a lot of guidance. So those are some of the major things that we've done since I've been elected in November.
Okay. Why don't we slide down? Your budget isn't that significant, but is there anything that we should be thinking about or you wanna bring us bring to our attention?
The only thing is that during the spring, June is the same month at June is the dog licensing month. We've licensed two zero seven dogs in the month of June. Most of those were people that came into the office to get licensed, but it's also the same time that people come in for transfer station stickers. And it just makes the office extremely busy with vacations and everything like that. It's a time of year where we might need to bring in some extra help to lessen the burden on the office with both those things at the same time, or talk about at another time maybe changing the date of the renewals of the transfer station stickers. But it's something I'm exploring, and when I have a better plan, I will bring to the board of selectmen.
Okay. It would be good to bring a plan to spread it out. I think it would work. So whether you change the date of the dog licensing or you change the date of The dog licensing cannot be changed. It has to be the month starts the month of June, and there's nothing I can do about that. That's state. State statute. Okay. Yeah. Let's look at our transfer station stickers and see if we might be able to spread it out in some manner. Great.
Alright. Any of the other members of the board have any other questions for the town clerk? Report Roberta.
Say that again, Scott. Very nice report Roberta. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, it was interesting to look at all those numbers at the end of the year to see how much we do in a year.
Roberta, the office does look very nice. The new rotating file system is a nice addition to the vault.
So thank you, and it's appreciated. I can show that off too. I can if you want, if you take me off shared screen, I could
maybe Well, how about we have everybody come into your office and say hello? I am hoping to do another
open house like I did last year after I got elected. I'm hoping the whole town hall will work with me this year and invite all the town residents in to see us and talk with us. I always say it's always an open house in the town hall, just we don't always have food to share, but when we do have a formal open house, we do have food to share. Okay. All right. Any other questions from anyone else?
All right, Roberta, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yeah, reach out to me anytime if anybody has any questions. Thank you. Got it. All right. All right.
We're gonna move on to item six resignations. Matt, I don't believe we have any. And if you can stop sharing, that would be great. Okay. I don't believe we have any resignations this month. Item seven, appointments. I know we have the rec commission. I would sit there, this is to the board members first, and then we will sit there and hear from the members, or the residents that are applicants for the rec commission. There are 11 applicants for the rec commission. And I'm just going to read them because we had gotten their information. There's Ben Harp, there's Grace Gustinian, there's Jacob Gudomski, there's Megan Lally, there's Jasmine Baralt, Linda Armstrong, Melissa Lateska, Haley Proto, Tori Goldberg, and Sarah Zittney. That's ten, Jeff.
That's ten? Did I miss did I did I miss anyone? Nope, not so I have to.
I thought I had an email, it's at eleven. All right, as long as I didn't miss anybody, what I would recommend is that we appoint everyone to the Commission. That would be me. The Rec Commission is an organization that always needs volunteers. And I'm ecstatic that we had that many people put their names forth for the recognition. The way I see the recognition moving forward, its primary function will be to sit and deal with youth recreational sports, and then to assist with direct involvement from the community center director to do functional activities such as concerts and Veterans Memorial Day. So having as many volunteers as possible would be, I think, a valuable thing for the community. So but how many
go ahead. How many of these of the 10 are directly related to the youth sports? Are they all?
Well, everybody would be, but I mean, why don't we don't we ask? And we want to appoint everybody, we don't need to sit there and go and have a significant long conversation. But why don't we go through and let the individuals say a quick hello and what they're interested in, and we'll go from there. Right? Is that okay with the rest of the members? Yeah, sounds good. All right, we'll start with Ben Harp because he was first on our list.
Hey, just wanted to say hi to everybody. Yes, I have a daughter in the youth basketball program, but I'm also interested in just recreation in general for the town. I would like to potentially, in the future, start a farm farmers market again, and I do like the the concerts and stuff. Just get the town recreated. That's all for me. Grace Gestanian.
Hi everyone. I think I know many of you who are on this meeting right now. So I, you know, I'm all for the kids. I think it's really important that we support youth sports, but I also want to represent the adult community as well. Many of you know that I play pickleball quite often and have been very active in the program in Andover. So I'd like to see more activities for our older adults perhaps. Thank you. All right.
I noticed that I just let in Jacob Gudanski, so I'll let Jacob speak. I will come back to Jacob. Megan Lally.
Hi everyone. Yep, I'm Megan Lally. I've lived in Andover, I think fifteen years now. I have two kids in elementary school. So I am definitely interested in the elementary school stuff and I've been coordinating basketball over the last month to keep things moving along. But I kinda echo Grace's thoughts at the same time too as, I don't know if I'm gonna classify myself as an older adult, but maybe a younger adult. I think the town, we have some great things going on, but I think we could certainly do more for our adult community as well. So I'd love to help try to come up with ideas along those lines as well. Happy to answer any questions anyone has. I did just wanna point out, Jeff, that there's technically five regular member seats. So if you appoint everyone, you may wish to decide who the five regular members are. So there isn't confusion there. And I know Linda Armstrong, who is the one person left on the commission was interested in moving from an alternate to a regular member. I don't think she's on the call. So I just wanted to mention that.
Is that in the charter? It is. K. Alright. Jasmine Baral.
Hi. I agree with, Megan and Grace. I have children in the community, but I also would like to offer other programs for families or the adults. I do have, I am interested in the sports aspect as well, but I'm just looking to make this town even more more activities for them.
That is all. All right. Thank you. Linda Armstrong. She may not be here. Melissa Lateska.
Hi, Melissa Lateska. For anybody who doesn't know me, I have been a teacher at AES for almost twenty years. So I have been directly involved with the youth of this community for a long time. Now my children have also been involved with basketball since they were in preschool. So I have directly been a part of the youth sports as well. We're looking to bridge the gap between the collaboration between the community and the rec department and have our rec department become cohesive with the community in the community center. Haley Proto.
Hi, thank you so much. Yes, definitely interested in youth sports. My son participates in the basketball and also interested, just as everybody else has been saying, in the community events. I really enjoy being in the community and think that these events give a lot of opportunity for people to mingle, meet one another, and it just makes Andover stronger overall.
Okay, thank you. Is Tori Goldberg on with us? Okay. And I know we have Sarah Zidney. At least I thought we did. Okay. So I actually have asked the town attorney to look at the charter, Megan, I'm gonna sit there and say you're right. Okay.
So I didn't mean to come off that way. Just I think
the committee should embrace all of the individuals. And, you know, I'm not a big believer in in limiting, you know, volunteer groups. So I hope they all can have a vote. But I'd like to well, I'd like to open it up to the other members who who who I mean, I could tell you who I would sit there and and put on if there was just five members that were and then I would leave everyone else as an alternate. I'd appoint everyone else as an alternate. But anybody? How about I go through my people? I would sit there and I would put would put Megan Lally, Melissa Lateska, Haley Proto, Grace Kustanian, and Ben Harp, because I think it fills out the group of people
that are there's a lot of people there that are related to youth sports and athletics. And and I know we also have Jacob Gudonski. He I know he his son is in in AES and is in the basketball program. But I think that would fill out rounding it out to allow people to have different interests, like Ben having an interest in the farmer's market, Grace having an interest more in pickleball, Megan and Melissa focusing on the youth sports aspect, and Haley having previously worked at the community center. Anybody else? Anne, go ahead.
A pretty good start. I almost think that we might want to let the whole group meet and then sort of see who's got strengths among the group, instead of just us looking at it. And they might feel like they want to shift that by one or two people.
Well, if any of the five members didn't want to sit there and continue, they could sit there and resign or turn over their seated position to an alternate.
Right. Yeah. That's why I think we should leave it sort of open to being able to do that, and not just say, well, this is the five. Well,
our role is to appoint the best group of people. I would like all 11, or all 10, to be full members. If by charter, which Dennis is telling me, well, I had already told Megan she was right, Right? So I have I don't have the charter in front of me, but I asked Dennis to look at it. Dennis said that's accurate. There's only five Okay. Needed members of the rec commission. We need to appoint five members. How many alternates? Two? We can we can appoint I I I don't I will violate the Charter to appoint all the alternates. Yeah, that'd be good.
I also, I mean, in part, I do agree with Anne in that, that I thought maybe I misinterpreted Megan she had said that Linda Armstrong wasn't on the call but she was interested and she was one of the only people left on the commission when the rest of the commission had resigned I didn't know if she was interested in holding one of those roles, so I didn't want to leave her out, but then again, maybe based on everybody's time and what they have to put in it, maybe they want to tweak, maybe one or two standing members.
While I understand that, and I do understand that, Christine, I'm just looking at the overall group and trying to find the right people to fit and to at least have a voice for of different the community. So Ashley, if you can put your hand down for one second. Okay. So five members who shall serve two year terms. Okay. Thank you. Matt? No. Okay. I mean, Matt, I'm assuming you're doing that. I am. Yes. All
right. You can put that down now. Thank you. Alright. So yeah. So we're not gonna wait. I think we need to appoint the five members and then we appoint all the rest as alternates and hope that they all participate. So Ashley, I'm not supposed to, well, I'm gonna let it go. Ashley, what would you like to say?
Okay, so I just have a quick question. Is there a reason that we have to appoint the five today right now versus allowing time for all 10 people to get together and maybe present themselves to you guys as who they would
rather be? Like So just as a point of order, I'm not supposed to, don't, you know, it's only supposed to be the Board of Selective members, but I'll answer your question. So right now we have a Veterans Day program that has to get rolling, and we have Halloween coming up. So it's in every and basketball program starts in October. So it's really in our interest and the committee's interest to get this started, because they're going to have to appoint a chairperson, and they're going to have to make sure that all of the functions and the I mean, I'm sure Megan, you're also taking you're taking applications now. There's a lot of issues going on with basketball, as I well know. But, you know, we do need to appoint this. This has to be moving. Yeah. Listen, we may not, might have someone that doesn't want to be a regular member, and then it's gonna be the committee's job come to us and say, we're going to change this. So again, I just want to know, I understand Linda Armstrong, Christine, she is the one that I sat there when I looked at the list. And I'll tell you exactly why. Was like
Grace Grace is more pickleball, which we really need to focus on getting more. I mean, that pickleball court is probably the most used thing in the community right now. So it would be good to have her because of the Lids, she's the one that I know there. And like I said, Megan has been involved in basketball forever. Melissa is a direct link to the school, which we need to improve our relationships with, and she has young children. And she's a very positive person to put on that board. Haley has worked at the community center, so she has a direct link to Tess, who I expect to be highly engaged in this. And I mean, I'm not going to I need a male on the committee. Not Ben, it's not a bad thing. Could put we could put Jacob on that committee. But I do think Ben has asked to participate in other things, and it's about time that we give him an opportunity to participate in something. That's my take. That's how I look at it. So those are the five people that I would put on to the rec commission. Second that, Jeff. I
just have a question. Sure. With this, I'm not really familiar with how this committee works. If we have five people on the committee, but the other five who are alternates can still be very active. Isn't that correct?
Correct. If somebody doesn't attend the meeting, that one of the individuals would be pointed to the seat and have a vote. Listen, I have said to Tess many times that her job is a volunteer coordinator. And to be really honest, if the rec commission can have as many people participating as possible, it's a volunteer function. And we need people to volunteer in this town, we need people to continue to move into different positions, so that we, you might grow from the rec commission into, you know, planning and zoning, and from planning and zoning into the Board of Selectmen, who knows? But I think all of the people that I named, there's reasons why I would put them on the board, on the recognition.
Enough decision, but if you got to do it, let's vote. Anything else?
Okay, so I'm going to just state it for the record, Scott, and I know it, so I'm going to make a motion to appoint as regular members to the Recreation Commission, Ben Harp, Grace Gestanian, Megan Lally, Melissa Liteska, and Haley Proto. And then in addition, I would add as alternates Jacob Gudomski, Jasmine Burrell, Linda Armstrong, Tory Goldberg, and Sarah Zitney. I'll second that, yeah. Okay.
Further discussion? All right. Anne, how do you vote? Anne votes yes. Dave Gustanian? Aye. Scott Persone? Aye. Christine Randazzo? Aye.
And Jeff McGuire? Aye. Okay. And now we're gonna move to item, eight of town administrators report. That was a second dairy packet that was posted up on the line. Matt, all yours. All right. Do you mind if I put that on the screen? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay.
All right. Hopefully it came up. So, good evening everyone. So the first thing I was that this past week, there was a meeting at the, the Rayham Regional School Board and, they put rolled out capital projects plan for the next ten years and. Basically, there's a $28,800,000 in high priority items and another $13,000,000 but it was really just, as I probably explained it to the First Selectmen, they're just throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall. These are all the things that they're considering. They obviously have to whittle this down, and they're probably going to be looking at about $30,000,000 or so of projects. The superintendent Colin McNamara is interested in doing outreach to the different communities because obviously there's going to need to be stakeholder buy in. And we would like to try and get him in here. I think that perhaps the day after Columbus Day, we don't meet that Monday, but we do the Tuesday. Or if we at the worst, maybe in November. But I think that it's important that, you know, there were meeting tonight, to talk about some of the items. I'm sure it's a fluid situation with which projects. At the end of my packet, there are a lot of information, all the information that was provided to the, from the Board of Education. It's in the I mean, I'm looking at page 53 now, which is a spreadsheet of them. So it's it's high up there, but if yeah. We're not gonna go into the weeds tonight. It's just to let you know that this is something that was there. Rob England was at the same meeting, and they're talking about possibly going out to a target referendum date either in November '27
or May '28. Now, they do have some items that are on there that I don't think that. They're urgent items that probably don't wait to calendar years basically school years. Someone has to do with the their Wi Fi at the school campus and then there's also in the gymnasium there's a partition that's giving them trouble. So those are a couple of things that are on the capital projects list, but they may have to come back and do those through their regular annual capital projects.
If you could break page 53 out and put that up on the town's website, that would be appreciated. $43,000,000, Jeff.
Yeah, I know. But what doesn't tell you though, is it doesn't tell you any potential state funding, doesn't tell you how our representatives are going to work together to sit there and get this paid for. It's a capital projects plan. This is what we, as a town, should be preparing. This is what the school should be preparing. This is this is a start. It doesn't mean you're gonna get all the money, but it also doesn't tell me how they're planning to pay for it.
Yeah. So I I think that, you know, in the a lot of the details, there's projects that are are have some anticipated reimbursement, and there's others that aren't basically that number that Scott was talking about that 41,000,000 for all projects in 2026 dollars because we know that they're planning they basically did a 4.5% per year increase over time. If none of these projects get done, they're looking at, like, $63,000,000 in 2036. But in that $41,000,000, 16,000,000 of that would be anticipated reimbursement. So the district cost for those would be $24,900,000. Basically, anything that's is re, like, a replacement or renovation, Anything that's not new is, something that will not have reimbursement, but there are items like, some of the roofing costs, some of the safety systems. They have some
of the items even have the tennis court needs some replacement. I think that actually may have some reimbursement. But the HVAC product, projects,
there's too many to go in and I I could bore you, but it it I'm not prepared to really go through line by line, but Jeff makes a good point that, you know, there's a a lot that still has to take place, especially if they should really concentrate on the items that do get, the maximum reimbursement from the state. Is that a list of in priority?
They have certain ones that the high priority, if you were on the page 53, I could. Don't want to jump too far ahead. Guess I could. Some are high priority and then
broken out into lower priorities. Yeah, so if you can see there, they have the high priority items and then there's like they're talking about a middle school generator, they're talking about sidewalks and stairwells and they're placing deep bleachers at the high school. So I think that you can see that this is a so even if they went to went out to referendum and say, fiscal twenty eight, you're talking that the projects are just gonna continue to escalate. Don't
get let's not get stuck in the weeds on the individual projects to me. I mean, you what the town should get kind of in their heads is we represent about 15% of RAM. So the total, if it all came through to fruition, you know, at the, and I think I did it at the projected district cost, $3,750,000 So it's not a small and never happen once it will never happen all in one shot. So it's a it's a it's a guide, it's something that we should be aware of, we should let the community know this is being discussed. And so we can go from there.
So the next item was that we did have a member of the finance committee asked to attend. Well, they were asking if there was funds to for trade, to go to this, FOI convention. It's $90. I'll pay for it. They can go. Okay.
But I also want to say if anybody else was interested, it's Friday, September 25. It might be something worthwhile, but if, you know, people wanna think about it and, let us know. I'm sure that, we can find $90 for a few other people to go. This past week I had Jim Cole from Conservation Commission come in. Obviously I've only started here a few months ago. They want to bring me up to speed that there was a project called the Joshua's Trust Path Plan, which is on some town open space that was originally land that was taken for Route 6. Was a few years ago. It sort of was placed on the table, I guess. But he was interested at least to let me know about it and if there was still any interest from the select board. I do not know all the history to this, but there was about 11 letters of recommendation and there was one
letter that was opposed to it, but I'd be happy for if somebody wanted to, at some point, give me an update, but they basically want permission to build a a path on that abuts their property on some town open space. Don't know if anybody wants to talk about that. Speaking of some space, Stephen King had come in. Couple weeks ago. Now that the parcel swap between us, be meaning the town of Andover and himself have been completed. He thought it might be a good idea to put some out some sort of announcement or press release to let the people know that there's that one acre parcel that's, could be used for parking alongside the Hop River Trail. Just so I know that, you know, obviously, we've already appointed people to the rec commission. I just wanna remember that Veterans Day is past the project, so hopefully they will get together and roll up their sleeves. But I just didn't know if there were without that, if we had anybody that was interested in trying to help spearhead that coordination to pull that ceremony together. Sounds like they'll have the they'll be able to do that.
I was asked by multiple members of the fire department that the public works to move the they got their new air tank, the compressor system and they wanted to inquiring whether the money could come back to them. Typically, we sell a piece of apparatus, an old fire truck, the monies that are proceeds from that we put back into their fund. This happened to be a capital projects, paid. So at the time, I was didn't wanna speak for the select board to say that those funds, the public works brought it today to for scrap in from what Derek tells me, was about $250. Typically, when we bring in scrap metal, those funds just go into the general fund, miscellaneous receipts. But then again, it's $250. I don't know if the will select where to have that go to the fire commissioners or not. But I will leave that with you. Let's see here. The Long Hill, River Bridge project, we did have a member of the public ask about, for some detail, the, they are sort of running behind a little bit. Only because, they've had some trouble with the pilot. Micropiles on one side of the bridge on the East side. But from what they understand is that they're going to Trying to see where the, they said here,
the update on schedule. The project is slightly behind schedule, based on what they had originally submitted. They did get a little behind earlier with the utilities, but they, for the most part, have caught up. This issue with the micropiles has slowed things down, but, they still plan to complete most of the work this year. The only problem they anticipate is if they run into any weather issues. So, it'll they'll just have some minor work. So all anticipate, what I've told from, SLR is that, middle of December, they're still planning for the bridge to open.
So I know that I talked to Matt and I talked I talked to Alan this afternoon. He said that the West side and I went down and looked at West side abutment is all done. They're forming up the East side. Micropiles are done. And he wants that to be done the beginning of December. That's why I said the middle of December. On Bunker Hill last year, we we paved at the beginning of December to get the road open for the winter. That's what he's hoping for the same thing to happen down there this year. They're gathering days, as they're working through this quicker and quicker to try to get everything done and he's he's gathering he's already gathered two or three days to to push this ahead. They're starting to work on Saturdays also.
Yeah. So this was the picture from Friday. You can see this side that that that pretty much gives that they're working on the the far side.
So you you you need, we need Scott and Matt. We need to push them because, you know, they don't if they go farther than that, they're gonna have a problem paving. So we can't have that bridge closed
all winter. They want it open, Jeff. They want it open. Trademark wants it open. They wanna be gone. Just come back in the spring and finish up some light stuff. Okay.
Two other items I have is that they are opening burning officials. Scott Yeomans got recertified, but he also informed me that he's looking to step down from that position by the end of the year. So that would be something that we would want to look into. Perhaps the, you know, select board has an idea. Now we can talk to the fire marshal or the fire chief about, you know, anybody that may be either with the town or maybe from another town to to cover that position. And, I had also submitted, our tree warden had asked about a vegetative management plan. We had re he had, drafted one back in, I believe it was July. I think I'd have to look back. But we've, banged it around a little bit, and, I think he's got it finally. He just wants the final blessing prior to implementation. So that's attached for your, perusal. Let's
see here. I got yeah, so all the backup paperwork for the next pages are all the dealing with items from the report here. So, I can just scoop through here if there was some pictures. That was the open space plan. This was okay. This this is a met when I went back to January about going back to the, Joshua Trees on the Skinner Hill Road property. Let me just go into the square.
Sorry, if everybody could take the time to read the vegetation plan, we could put that on for next meeting. Yep.
Alright. And then there's a lot of information as far as the open burning. So, with that, I know, I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. All right.
Any, members have anything for Matt? Okay. Let's move on to item nine, treasurer's report. Lisa is here. Hi, Lisa. Sorry it's taking this long, but That's okay. All right. Starting on page 21 of the packet starts the treasurer's report. So Lisa, go ahead.
Yeah. Your budget to actual, this is for July. We are still finishing up July. Not nothing more can be purchased, but we just wanna make sure we have everything in there.
That that's August. We're finishing up August. So listen. The the reason the way that this is going to work, it's when I was at the last Board of Finance meeting, is the Board of Finance meets at the end of the month, they're going to get the information first from a financial perspective. So at their meeting in September, they will get the August information. And then we as a board will get our August information at our October meeting so that the finance department can stay on top of reconciling and have everything ready. So yep, this is July.
Any questions on the budget to actual? Not a lot spent yet because we're early into the budget.
You see, you have a real number in the open space fund now.
Yeah. You're talking about on the budget actual or these other reports that we have that I'm going get to report. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As far as the cash balances, I'll just go go to the cash balances. We have 8,700,000, but that is that's, you know, a lot of that is earmarked. So it's not like it's, just to spend. We have the stiff account, that's getting 3.76% interest. The M and T investment account, which transfers over from the operating account is two and a half percent. So we're getting interest on that. What was the interest for the month of July?
Hold on. I have August right here. I did hold on. I'd have to look in here. Hold on. So $15,801
in interest earned between the two accounts for the month of July. Yes. But there's more for August. So
I didn't know if you wanted for August also. Yes. There's almost 21,000 in August, but we'll get to that next month.
And that makes sense because, you know, not only do we is our bank balance x, it's x because we've collected in advance the taxes for our first cycle. So July is always the biggest month for collection. Right. Okay. Let's go.
Check register. Are there any questions on the cash balances? The check register. Any questions on the checks for the month? And then we get to capital reserve funds that everybody's been wanting to see. Scott, is that what you're speaking of? Page 35. Is anybody there? Scott's open space fund comes later.
Oh, okay. Alright. So this is just the capital reserve funds. Right. And everybody was interested in seeing the capital balances. We worked on that and the change in it, several of those are what we've allotted for this year's budget. Those were added into the amount for 07/31/2026.
So if we're on page 35 Yep. All of the positive numbers in the change are what was added from the budget. The only one that The only one that the only two that have had a decrease are the equipment reserve fund because we paid for the John Deere tractor and the AES Capital Fund has decreased because we paid for the bathroom. Yep. And
then everybody was curious during budget season about the bridge and culverts. That next page 36, the non major capital projects funds. I wanna point out that the Bunker Hill Bridge Fund really should be changed to the bridge front because that also includes Long Hill. And what everybody was wanting also in budget season was the breakdown of all the smaller funds that we were holding. And that page 37 that you have, that is your non major special revenue funds. Those are the special funds. They used to be called liability accounts. Right. The l accounts is what everybody called them. So, Scott, here's your open space fund. Right in the middle there, Scott. 280 or something?
311. 311? 364. That's the same thing as in the TAR account. TAR account is 333141. Right. Yep.
And we haven't received any town aid road funding in July. So that'll increase as we get our state money in.
And the veteran veterans field fund includes, like, play the playground? So
that's That needs to go to that that that $10,000 was the grant that was received from Hartford for Foundation. Hartford Foundation for Giving. And that's gonna be moved to offset the cost of the pickleball court and the playground project. And some of these need to move. We need to sit there and see what we can do with some of these dollars. So now that we actually see them, these are coming off of the audit, and a lot of these don't change. We still have a farmer's market fund for $1,000 So there's a lot of these that need to be adjusted, and we need to decide what we're going to do with them and closed out. The ARPA things need to come off of our financial statements for those small amounts, and we just don't need to see them. So there's some transactions that I'm going to sit there and recommend that the treasury gets done, so we clean this up a little bit. And
then we have page 38, non major permanent funds. These are basically the Norton funds and a breakdown of the Norton funds.
One of the things that needs to happen for July is these are the funds that are going to get credited for interest income. So, the Brown and Brown, the Diane Greiner scholarship, the Irene Mooney, the Norton children's library, the school fund, and the library fund. Well, I'll break the school down separately. All need to get credited with interest. So the only one that had a transaction was the Norton Children's Fund. And the school fund, just so everybody aware, there's $80,000 in the school fund, but $65,000 or somewhere in that ballpark is related to the value of the stock that is held by that fund. So there's Bank of America stock held. And the reason why there's three seventy two dollars added to that fund is the dividends. All right, let's go next one. Oh, that's it. Anybody have any for Lisa? Lisa, thank you very much. Appreciate it. You can
go enjoy your rest of your evening. I can have my apple dumpling now. There you go. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. You're welcome.
So we're gonna move on to alright. Item 10, old business, discuss and act upon the following. So review the senior transportation garage status. It's still open. It needs to get work done. Needs to get done. Scott, we need to get that pushed through with Matt, and we need to have that get done before the end of, I would like to get it done before the end of next fiscal year, but that's gonna be tough. But we need to do that. Anybody have anything on that? Nope. 10b, the status of the Long Hill Bridge project. We've had that discussion from Matt and Scott, so I don't think there's anything else related to that. 10c, the status of the Percy Cook Trail preliminary plan, but just the status of the Percy Cook plan. So everybody understands we paid for the engineering related to this. There is a program that if we apply for the next grant, we will get that funded.
I
believe that's correct, Scott. Is that accurate? You already paid for the engineering again?
No, no, no, no. Not again. It's been paid for. We actually have the plan. We just need to sit there and go to the next step and get that built. So, I mean, that that plan would connect the rail trail up to the fire department in the town complex. So it is something that we should do. It would be beneficial to the community. It has to be followed through on. So we have to sit there and get that done. There's not much else to sit there and talk about that. These are So is the engineering all done now then?
I don't believe they finalized it because I don't think we've actually told them that we agree with exactly the layout of where it's proposed to go, which I'm good with.
Good with it too. K. We need push point person on this. I called the lady in Maine one time to talk to her, the engineer. She said we owed her some money.
I'm not aware of that, but Matt should be the point person on it, So we need to push that through.
So I got an email from Anya Chandler, actually today. We're setting up a meeting in the next week or so. Just to go, you know, bring it to see where we are. So That's good. She's with that Gaidus and Barton.
Yeah. I I don't know of anything that's outstanding, Scott, but that's a good question for the treasurer when we see her. Attendee, update on the AES bathroom renovation.
Is it completed? We all good? I heard is it'll be completed in a day or two.
There's just one one or two tiny things left, and it'll be done. There were just a couple punch list, a few cracked tiles, and things like that. All all cosmetic stuff. Everything is done. I had asked for some pictures, but they didn't come in time to get on the I still have. I want to include them in the report. K.
10 e, discussion and possible action on the Huff River Homes contract. I believe somebody asked for a meeting. Is that accurate? I don't know if that was from Matt or from Scott. Yeah. They asked to have another meeting with us.
K. Let's get that scheduled so that we can sit there and decide what we're gonna do related to that. Yeah. Marie Holman was in my came to my office about a week ago. She would like to urge that we try and get together.
Okay. So, Matt, I can get that scheduled and do it at your convenience so that one of us can sit there and participate with that. You know, that's that's a little tricky thing, but let's sit there and decide what we're gonna do as a board once we have the documentation in front of us and we all can get some information. 10 f, discussion of possible action on town administrator's contract. Does everyone have a copy of the contract? Yeah. Alright. You finalize it this weekend?
We can't finalize it. Is everybody okay with most of the documentation? Any problems? Yeah. Alright.
I know that what I'll sit there and recommend is that we agree to get it done, and we make sure that it has a once over review again from Matt and from attorney O'Brien so that we can sit there and get it signed. Do
we approve that tonight so we can get that going? Sure, let's do it.
Anne, why don't you make the motion? I move that we
approve and finalize the contract for Matt Streeter as the town administrator. I second. Christine
seconded. Okay. Further discussion? All right. And Kerme, how do you vote? Aye. Dave Gestinian? Aye. Scott Persson? Aye. Christine Randazzo? Aye.
Jeff McGuire, aye. So five nothing. So let's get that off our list. 10 gs, a discussion and possible action on the Missoula Road culvert. So I know we've gotten information from Howard, I forgot the engineering firm. Matt, you got it in front of you? From or Jacobson, Nathan Jacobson. Nathan Jacobson. Sorry, was on mute. Nathan Jacobson. Yes.
So he he and I had discussions this week as well. He's he shared some emails, and I shared some emails with him. We have to get with the town attorney and get the the biggest problem that we have right now to sit there and just get this moving forward in an appropriate way is to get all of the easements signed. So Howard sent us an email with some preliminary or some draft easements, easements from other projects that he's worked on. So I'll get with Attorney O'Brien, Matt get with Attorney O'Brien, we need to push these through. I would recommend that we go after the easier ones to get done. I'm sitting there trying to get a meeting with one of the residents who has a more significant easement. Get over this weekend? Over there?
No. She her and her husband were ill and sick, so they pushed it back and trying to just get a face to face just to say hello and let them know that we're going to do our best to make this as easy as possible and to get their property back to the shape it was in before we sit there and do this project, because it's beneficial for the community to have that road done. And what I would like to tell them or let everybody know is that Culvert is not in the best of shape. And if it does collapse, we have bigger problems. And there won't be a lot of options at that point in time.
Talk to that guy, Howard. He said that he's gonna get the surveyors out this week to start mapping out on the ground with stakes where the actual easement is going to lay out. Then we'll know better who we need to talk to and what and what trees and things are in actually in the easement and out of easement or on town property.
Okay. Well, is something that I need to Matt, that needs to be communicated to the residents there. So you might want to take a ride out to primarily the two residents that are on the if you're going up Basola Road on the right hand side, there's two residents that would have, a temporary road going through a portion of their yard. And Christine
I think it's McNeil's is the biggest impact one. Correct. McNeil.
Here, hold on. I'll tell you. And Christine, this would be something really positive for you to help us with, because if you can, it's gonna be a lot of not just engineering, but a lot of landscaping work that needs to get done once this is Sure. The other I'm sorry. This thing is a little small for me. I can't read it. I have to blow it up on my computer. But yes, it is the McNeals. I know it's the McNeals, and I can't read the name of the other resident that has a small sliver taken related. Not taken, I shouldn't say that, a small easement needed to sit there and get through the project. Temporary easement. Temporary easement. Okay. So we'll get that done. 10H, a discussion and possible action on the Dorsey Chamberlain Pond signage. It'll be in the packet from Public Works for his monthly report. He showed us pictures of the parking lot for the Dorsey Chamberlain. So that'll be in his thing. But the signage is something that we have to decide. We talked about this last month. Did we pick
side? To decide where you're going to get the money from.
Yeah, Jeff and I were going to talk. We'll find the money somewhere. Okay.
So Did we pick a sign? Yeah. We picked number two. Okay. Matt, so sign number two. Let's get a quote on it, and let's there and figure out where we're gonna find and utilize the money from to get that done. Okay. 10I, discussion and possible action on the town attorney contract. I know we talked about this last meeting. I looked at the minutes, and it appears that we did not vote to approve the contract that was presented for the town attorney. He does have the same fee as is budgeted for, which I believe was $13,500 or somewhere in that range.
I'll make a motion we approve his contract before he changes his mind.
K. I'll second that. Further discussion on his contract? No. Okay. Anne Kremay, how do you vote? Abstain. Excuse me? I'm going to abstain.
Abstain. Okay. Dave Gustanian. Aye. Scott Person. Aye. Christine Randazzo. Aye.
And Jeff McGuire. Aye. So that is 401 with Ann Cremay abstaining. Okay. All right. Ten j, discussion and possible action on hybrid meetings is on our agenda. So I would tell you, Matt, if we're really gonna have discussions on that, on this issue, you have to sit there and find out technically what would happen, where we would host them, and what's the technical needs required to sit there and get that done. I know I would recommend you go to the school, because the school does it and make sure that we have all the equipment necessary. So if we were ever intending to go and do hybrid meetings that we actually have the proper technology to get it accomplished.
And zoning does hybrid already, and they do that in town hall. What are you using?
I believe they use the OWL the same as the school does. I could talk to the zoning. Is
more advanced than the Board of Selectmen. So let's make sure that we're getting it lined up. All right. Ten ks, the status and discussion on the town office cleaning contract. Matt, where are we?
Well, we had a. We're trying out a person that we've cleaning. Who's done it twice so far they were brought in the middle of August. We initially had them come in, every other week. So that's why it's only been a couple times, but, I think that there's, you know, some things we still have to work out if that's going to be, I think that we have, we may have to just re, Repivot and figure out if we want to do this weekly, we want to have them do it, if we want to, you know, check out another person that might be interested in doing that. You know, I've had mixed reviews. Some people are, you know, whether the town hall is clean, but it's not sparkling, yeah, I agree that, you know, probably needs to be a little bit more,
more done there. So Susan and Willie were there twice a week. Why what what is the change? I don't I don't understand why you're you've changed that.
But They were only at the town hall one day a week when I was here, and then they were over the community center. And they charged you know, there was one and a half people that they charged us. So we did get a little bit of a deal.
Well, listen, this is something that I'm just going to sit there and say, Matt, you got to sit there and get organized, and you got to get it done so that we have the appropriate level of service being provided for what has been budgeted. We are not going to get what we got from the prior group. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to get that. And it doesn't mean that if we have to be creative, we need to be creative. We can't not just do something. So you have KT, if that's not enough, find other alternatives and bring them to us and get them executed. Excellent. Thanks. Get those stairs clean.
He did a great job on the stairs. Discussion of possible action on a maintenance person, because I know we talked about breaking this project into two things, because the prior group also did maintenance for the library. So we had talked about getting a handyman in place. Matt, where are we?
Well, I have a gentleman that is interested in doing it. We just have not connected yet. So, but, I have not heard of anything that we're, that's not being done in the meantime, but we will I will get you some answers before the next meeting.
Okay. Alright. Item 11, new business discussion discussion and possible action A. Discussion and possible action on the establishment of New Town Bank accounts. I had requested Matt to get with M and T Bank to potentially set up town accounts related to the library, the fire department, and the Board of Education. And I just wanted to let everybody know that that planning was in place to potentially do a better job shepherding and looking at and overseeing TownCash and the TownBank accounts. So there's nothing really other than I wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that this was happening. The accounts may or may not be used, but I don't want to waste any time if there possibly is an opportunity to do this better. So I have a potential. I'm trying to get I talked to Wally Barton, who's the chairperson of the fire department. I asked him to schedule a meeting with Sean Coval, who is the treasurer for the fire department. And I do believe Diane Greiner was on this. I need to get with Diane and make sure that I get with the library board chairperson and with Amy Ormolowski so that I can sit there and make sure that
we're all good related to that. And related to the bank accounts, well, I actually put this on the other agenda, so we'll talk about it at a different different yeah. We'll talk about an 11 d. So 11 b, discussion and possible action on the land use application fee and cost charges. This is what we had at our special meeting on the third. I don't necessarily did everyone read this? Everybody read it? We're all good. Matt, did you get this posted at the town hall just so the residents could see this in advance? It was posted at the town hall? Okay. Yes. We did.
Then And I have a motion, Jeff. Go ahead. Let's go. Motion to approve the town of Andover land use application fee and cost charges ordinance as written. I second.
Good. Further discussion, Anne? Or were you just trying to second? Just trying to second. Okay, that's good. All right, further discussion? Anne Kerme, how do you vote? Aye. Dave Gustanian? Aye. Scott Person? Christine Randazzo? Aye.
Jeff McGuire? Aye. So Wayne, thank you very much for all the work you did on that. It's greatly appreciated. Hopefully Good job, Wayne. Make sure that we don't get the town doesn't have any costs related to any of these projects that potentially come Thank you. Alright. Got it. Okay. I might have put the initials out of order, so I'm going to go as I did the motion 11D discussion and possible action, but it's mostly discussion regarding the prior AES town operating account processes. So at our special meeting, Anne had sat there and made a comment that my understanding of what was done in prior years related to the AES and the town having a combined operating account was inaccurate. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody had gotten the information that I sent over today.
Going back as far as 2014, where the records that I had, through 2019, the town and the AES accounts were transactions were all run out of the same operating account, which is the current operating account we still have, which is still the same account number 5111, which is the operating account that we currently have in M and T. At the time and the information that I sent to the board, it was Farmington Bank, but it's changed multiple times from bank consolidations over. So I provided everybody with the work that I had done when I first got on the board, which was to reconcile that bank account from 2014 through 2017. I provided the transactions. And the biggest issue for you to really look at is the bank account to sit there and see that the checks that were clearing through that account were both town and Board of Education account. So that's how it had been done all the way up in 2019, where I ended up becoming First Lechman. And because we were having trouble reconciling the bank account, because we were operating on two different accounting systems. It was difficult. So the decision was made at that point in time
between myself, Eric Anderson, and the superintendent to sit there and separate the accounts. And I also provided you with the bank account that the superintendent set up that you can sit there and see. It was from March of this year, and you could sit there and see the balance that was in that account, which is really the whole issue that I have related to all of this. So anyway, I didn't put that out in the packet. I'm just letting everybody know that, because I didn't want to share bank information. I'd be happy to go over it with anybody who sits there and would like to learn a little bit more about it, though. But anybody else have any other questions related to, you know, the transactions and how they happened?
The way you said the last meeting was very accurate then. I'm an accountant. I know
nobody I know not everybody on our board likes that I'm an accountant or that I understand these things, but it's just the reality of life. Just like I don't understand, Christine, all of the issues that you deal with when you have to go out and do a project. So okay. Anybody else? No? Okay. Oh, before I leave that one, I think everybody saw also the emails today that we got. We had gotten the revised complaint from the Board of Education to the Department of Education. That complaint was answered this morning by Attorney O'Brien. The request from Attorney O'Brien and myself was that we actually have the state board of education schedule a meeting so that we could potentially work together. That was granted in one day within probably about three hours, because I think it's appropriate that we work together and not have this adversarial issue that's going on currently. So the request from the letter was to explain our position, but also to ask for a meeting. And the Department of Education has granted that meeting. So Ashley, I'm not gonna call on you. You can wait till public speak so you can put the hand up. Okay. Attorney O'Brien, if you'd like to sit there and say anything, now is your time. Hello? Yep, you're good.
Okay, well, yeah. I wrote a letter with Jeff's help and a lot of information from Jeff to the State Board of Education because they had they had filed some information and Jeff and I worked together and we agreed that the best thing to do would be to ask the State Board of Education to have us the two of us, go down and meet with two people from the Board of Ed and maybe one person or whatever they wanna do from State Board and try to work out an arrangement that, you know, resolves whatever issues we have between us in this matter. I think it's important for us to work together. Jeff feels the same way and I'm looking forward to the meeting. Anybody else have any? And if anybody has any questions at all about the details, it's probably all in the letter, but I would be happy to answer any questions.
Anybody on the board want to sit there and have any discussion right now in public? No? All good? All right. Thank you.
Yep. 11E, discussion and possible action regarding a temporary the temporary light at the intersection of Route 6 and Hendy Road. The reason I brought this up, and it was supposed to be on the agenda, and that's my bad, I honestly think that we, as the local traffic authority, need to make a request to the state of Connecticut to make that a permanent light. The State Department of Transportation has has been reluctant to make that a permanent light because there's been no deaths at that intersection, which I think is totally incorrect thought process. But from driving through town, since that light has been up, it seems as if the traffic flow has been better, and that the people coming out of Hendi can turn in a more appropriate manner without trying to run the gambit of making it through. So I just wanted to put it out there that I would like to make a motion that we request that we ask the town administrator to write a letter to the Department of Transportation requesting that that light be made permanent.
I can touch you. Okay.
Further discussion, because this is just an issue that I
I'm in favor of it all, so it's a good idea. Anne, do you wanna go first? Alright.
Thanks. My only comment would be possibly instead of having a red left turn arrow and having to wait for that, that maybe it could be like a blinking yellow, so that you have to watch out to make the left. Making people always wait for that green arrow has been a bit of a problem. Biggest problem from that recently is they somebody painted in a stop line in the last week, and they put it so far back that if you stop at that line that line, you don't trip the light. And you can sit and wait through many cycles and never get your green arrow. So you have to go up beyond the line.
The one on Route 6. But the one coming out of Hendee is the quickest light I've ever seen in my life. That's sometimes
you wait a long time. Depends on the traffic on Route 6.
But the one on Route 6 coming out of Bolton to Willemanuck, you have to go a car length past the Yeah. The thing. They they should repaint that.
Yeah. Chris Or adjust the signal of one or the other.
Well, those are issues that we can get to. Yeah. More But still. Yeah. Does everybody believe that it's a good idea to make that a permanent loan?
We do. Christine, go ahead. Yeah. I I do I do think it's been helpful to be able to turn left out of Hendi onto Route 6. I do know that when the bridge is open, there'll be a lot the traffic counts will have decreased substantially from all the cars traveling back on Long Hill. But as Anne said, they put the the stop bar way too far back. You don't get over the leak detector to be able to take a left, so you sit through three cycles of lights when you're trying when you're sitting on Route 6, trying to turn on Dahendi, that a lot of people just will end up driving through the red light or go past and turn into where the hotdog stand is so they can take a left because
the timing is off or the leak detector isn't being tripped because of where the stop bar is. Mhmm. So so there is there is a problem, and it is it yeah. So it's and it's usually during rush hour that you just get stuck there, and then there's no traffic coming at you where you could be taking a left, it's wide open and clear, but you're waiting for the signal to change.
Okay. So I guess the issue ends up being, is it still a good idea to have the light? Because you guys live over there. My traffic is this way, going down six, I just know the flow of traffic. It almost feels like the speed is different because of that light.
I think it holds some cars back, because I think they were all bottlenecking as you approach the library and 316. So I think having a set of lights, you know, a couple miles prior to that, it kinda breaks down the groupings of traffic. Mhmm. Because now I I do see a lot of traffic, you know, in front of the Andolan Landscaping where I had never seen that before. It's just kind of pushing the bottleneck, you know, dispersing it maybe a little bit more uniformly. I don't, I think that the state doesn't only look at deaths when they're doing a traffic analysis, I think they're also looking at the travel counts, how many people are using the Collector Road coming out to Route 6, and maybe we're under the threshold, but it is dangerous for the kids and for myself when I'm driving a truck in the trailer trying to take a left onto Route 6 from Hendi, but like myself and my family do,
if there if we do have to take a left, oftentimes, if it's during rush hour, we'll just go down Long Hole instead so we can go to the light. So I think it's a fiftyfifty, personally.
Well, it might not get approved. This is just like a request, the issue for the board has to be, is it a legitimate request or not? If it's not, it's okay. We are the traffic authority in town, if we don't put forth the request, it won't get approved. If we put it forth, it might get approved or it might get rejected. So my personal opinion is it just seems like the flow of traffic on Route 6 has been better since that light went in. All right. So I do. Scott, you did second that, correct? Yes. Okay. So we'll go around. Anne, how do you devote? Okay.
Dave Kustanian? Aye. Scott Person. Aye. So that's three. Christine Randazzo. Aye.
Okay. And Jeff McGarf. Aye. Five nothing. So, Matt, if you could have drafted a letter to the department, and you can look in previous correspondence from Eric because he has requested this in before.
Take care of that. I'll get that right away. Thank you.
All right. 11F, a discussion regarding the Boy Scouts and the Veterans Committee email. And Ann, I'm going to let you take this one because I haven't seen that email.
Let's see. It came yesterday. And what it is, is the scout troop here in Andover had been sponsored by the Andover Congregational Church. They're not doing that anymore. So now Michelle Lorenz and the troop leader have approached the Municipal Veterans Committee and asked if they would perform that duty. So they have agreed to that. I guess we have to vote to allow the Veterans Committee to do that. So they had sent us yesterday three attachments. There's a memo for the Board of Selectmen memo regarding This to open it. Requesting. Susan Cameroda and John body are requesting permission to engage in an agreement with scout troop or Scout PAC and Troop one hundred twenty four and the Connecticut Rivers Council of Scouting America. That would designate the Veterans Representative Committee as the chartered organization
for Scout, PAC, and Troop one hundred twenty four? That is their question.
So I don't I mean, basically, just reading it quickly, I don't really have a problem with it. What would like to sit there and do is just make sure it's contingent upon the town attorney taking a quick look at the agreement. So if you want to make a motion to get it approved contingent upon the review of the town attorney and his approval, that would be great. I make the motion.
Okay. So Anne is making a motion to approve the memorandum requesting permission for the Andover Municipal Veterans Committee to be the charter organization for the Andover Scout troop and pack one twenty four. That was Anne's motion. I'll pick on that.
Dave Gestadian seconds that. Did that that that come from Susan Camerota?
It came from Veterans Affairs. I do believe it came from Susan. Yes. Susan and John Lee was signed by both of them. Okay. Further discussion? Alright. Anne, how do you vote? Aye.
Dave Gustanian, do you vote? Aye. Scott Person? Aye. Scott says yes. Christine Randazzo? Aye.
Jeff Maguire? Yes. Okay. That's the fastest one delay turnaround on something like that we've done in a long time. I just have to say something, and I can't raise my hand. This is Michelle Lawrence. I am the pack leader, and I am so I'm the cub master and the scout master of Andover. I just I want you guys to know I we need it done before October 31. There's a deadline. It wasn't written in the letter by Susan, just because that's when our recharter is. And so alright. I just wanted to let you know. Thank you so much for considering us. Thank you.
Right. So now we're gonna move on to item 12 approval of minute meetings, 12 a, the August 10 meeting, and 12 b, the nine three special meeting. Anybody have any issues with either set of minutes? K. Then I make a motion that we approve both the August 10 regular minute meetings and the September third twenty twenty six special minute meetings. Seconded, Jeff.
Scott Persona seconded. Further discussion? Anne, how do you vote? Dave Gustanian, how do you vote? Aye. Scott Persona? Yes.
Christine Randazzo? Aye. And Jeff McGuire? Aye. That's five nothing vote. In our packet, there was information from the tax collector. Oh, I gotta find my packet. Here it is. So the tax collector was talking to us about various things. So you can sit there and go in through and sit there and see on page 58 what the tax collectors paid in her pie charts and how much is uncollected and collected. And then she she put in the information for July and August. So July, there was $3,308,000 collected. As I was saying before, that July is our largest collection month. August, which is on page 61, we've collected $467,000 during this month, and it will drop off again in September and then pick back up again in October as next quarterly payment comes due. Any other questions related to or thoughts related to the tax collector's presentation? Okay, on page 64, there's $813.54 in total tax refunds being requested. So I'll make a motion that we approve tax refunds requested in the amount of $813.54 Second.
Ann Creme seconded it first. I heard it. Sure. So further discussion? Nope. Ann Creme, how do you vote? Aye. Scott Persung. Aye. Christine Randazzo. Jeff Maguire. I. Five nothing. Okay. Then you get into your departmental reports. We had the community center. There's a lot of stuff going on in the community center. I know that Tess wasn't feeling well today, but the system is up and running. And if you as a resident haven't stopped in to get your barcode key tag, whatever for participation at the community center, you should. I have mine. I scanned it onto my phone so I can use picture. You go in, you sign up, you pick the events and activities that you want to go to. And as the community center and the director get more familiar with it, they'll be able to provide us with actual information as to how many participants are going in and using the community center and what we need to do to sit there and improve participation.
But I'm very happy that Tess and her team have gotten that up and running, and I think it's gonna help out a lot. Going really well?
Yeah. I was at the they had an ice cream social to end their they had done an ice cream tour with some of the seniors, and it was very nice. And we do have a lot of participation, and we even have resident, who I believe is our oldest resident, gets to the community center on a regular basis. She's 102 years old, and she was there for the ice cream social. She's there every week? Yeah.
I I was I'm I can only hope I'm that active because she's still getting around. Mhmm. She wasn't in a wheelchair. She was getting herself around. So, anyway, I believe Tess and her team are doing a really good job and it's growing. So we want to continue to move it in that direction. Okay. We have the assessor's office has a packet in there. Anybody have anything that they want to talk about related to that? And then the building department is in there. So all of the collections for the month of of this actually might be August. She did she put the month of August in there. So total permits and bonds for the month of August were $5,187.80. We need to keep looking at that and keep looking at how to I did. I looked through them all. Yeah. They look good. K.
She has a lot of information in here. And then the DPW starts on page 94, and you can sit there and see where they were showing. He was showing us the Chamberlain Pond parking lot on a rainy day. So I believe Scott that all of the appropriate permits were filed so that we could get this done and put down millage and put down stone.
It all drains out into the road, though, you know, all that water. Believe it or not, doesn't drain back towards the pond. Drains right out on 316.
Okay. He put in this is Eric Johansson on page 100. He put in a projected cost on that project of $24,000. So, Matt, you probably should work with him to sit there and see if that's appropriate number or if there's something that we should do to make that a little bit less expensive. So Yep. We'll we'll go over the numbers. K.
And then I think the last one we have is the Andover Public Library. Well, the Andover Public Library and the Register of Voters. So the Andover Public Library is on page one zero six. The Register of Voters is in one zero seven. And just so everybody understands, the registrar of voter voters conducted seven days of early voting for the primary, which is something that the state has forced us to do. And I think Nine voters.
I I knew I read it. It was, like, I thought it was 17, but I might it might have been New voters. No. It was 52 voters that came only out of one ninety hundred six voted on primary day and 52 voters voted over the seven day period. So in effect, seven voters a day. It's not a lot of voters for $4,000 in total expenditure for the town. Now the town did get a grant, but the question that I have for Wally is, is that the grant for the entire year for early voting? Because we have more than one election. Will we get another $5,000 for the election in November, or how does that work?
But it is an extra cost that the town has to pick up for early voting. So anyway, that's it. That gets us down to correspondence, which I don't believe we have any, Matt. Is that accurate? That is correct. Okay. If nobody has anything else to discuss or anything that we need to do, I'm going sit there and move to public speak. We good? Okay. Ashley Johnson, you're up first.
Hey, okay. So a quick question about the school and the budgets and all of that. I'm just kind of wondering why you, how do I say this? Why does the town and the school not get along? Like, I know I'm new, but I mean, you would think that y'all would work together way better. I mean, you guys use the school for the meetings and, you know, part of the whole reason that we even moved here is because the education is excellent. So I'm just wondering why this seems to be a thing year after year that it seems like y'all are just always button heads, and it doesn't make sense.
We try not to. We gotta keep working on it, Ashley. I mean, try and do. Do. Let's do. Yeah. Okay. Diane Greiner.
Hi there. Another great meeting, full of meat and good stuff. You guys worked really hard on lots of things. Particularly delighted with the reports from the new presentations tonight from the town clerk and the public works. I think that's a good idea, and I encourage you to continue that. I also support the idea of the veterans sponsoring the scout troop. I think that's a good plan. And the light at Hendi, I think, well needed, well deserved. The people want it. I know that the DOT has multiple times done their traffic survey and decided that we don't we don't need it. We don't meet the accounts. But I think it's good that you continue to request it, and people really want that light. So anyways, good job to all. Thank you very much for all you do. Have a good day.
Right. Jasmine? Okay. I'll come back to you. Liz Loquetch.
Hi, great meeting tonight. Very productive. I was always fiftyfifty on keeping the light, but I don't have a problem with keeping it, but I think definitely somebody should evaluate, how well it's functioning just because of what I've heard, all the complaints I've heard online about it. But other than that, I'm good. Good job, guys.
Alright. Ben Harp? Yeah. I'm all set. Thank you. Alright. Wayne Kasaysh Wayne, how do I say your last name accurately? Masachic. Masachic. I got it next time. Unlike my cousin Cory. Mhmm.
Kasacic. Our former cousin. Anyway, on the light at Hendi and and Route 6, I I I would wholeheartedly support keeping the light. Being a resident of Bear Swamp and now having good on Hendi Hendi, I I really do like the light. K.
Eric Johansen, if you're still available, if you want to say anything.
I'd just like to thank the board for having me on. And if anybody has any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you. All right. Joanne Hebert.
Yeah, just two quick comments. As someone that has to use the Hendy Road Light two, I'd probably be in the negative of keeping it only because it's so scary when you are sitting on the Route 6 coming from the Manchester location and you're backed up. And as someone who has been rear ended at a stoplight before and suffered from it, when I see those cars whizzing by, it's just a very scary place to park, to be sitting. I've got that in the back of my head. Are they paying attention? Do they see us because we're lining up, we're lining up, Lights are going. I'm like, what is going on? There's been like four cycles. So thank you, Christine, for bringing that up so that I can understand it because I don't wanna break the law, but I don't wanna get rear ended. So there's that problem. The other thing is thank you for the LongHill update. Although I'm sad to hear about it, I appreciate the honesty. Again, as someone that is very active, it adds and time is the essence in my day. It's twenty minutes added to each trip that I take in and out of my house, you know, from where I go, if I'm traveling the whole way around. Then if I have to backtrack, like you said, the two miles that I'm making up,
you know, once I get on Route 6. So that coupled with all the gas and all of that, listen, I'm not gonna complain about that. There's a lot worse things going on in the world than me suffering a little bit with time management. But hoping that we can get that done and completed by December, as you've all said. So thank you for that. Hey, Tess Krausz. Dennis O'Brien.
Yes, I just want to thank the Board of Selectmen for voting to continue me as the town attorney under a new contract, which it's actually it's for $12,500 a year. I love working for the town. I've been with the town for, oh, twenty three years or so, and the people here are wonderful. The public officials are great, and the board of selectmen is doing a fine job. And I was really pleased by the, as Diane Grender was, the meeting and all the good information that came forward. Thank Okay.
Tess Kraschow, I know she's probably not still listening, but okay. Item 17, I'll make a motion to adjourn. And second. Anne, how do you vote? Aye.
Dave Gustavian, how do you vote? Aye. Christina Randazzo. Oh, I went out of order. I'm sorry. Scott Masson. Aye. Jeff McGuire. Aye. Five nothing. Everybody, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And we'll see you guys later.
This transcript was generated by Deepgram from the meeting recording. Names, numbers, and other details may be inaccurate; the video is authoritative.