Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen Regular Meeting
December 12, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Start rolling. Thank you very much. I'm gonna call to order the town of Andover Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Monday, December 12 at 7PM with our first order of business, the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it is formed, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. We will get started with public speak. We'll start with Kimberly Hawes.
Hi, I am here as a representative from the Rec Commission. We're I'm just here to go over the cool memorandum of agreement when that comes up on the agenda.
Okay. And Amy, I'm assuming we'll wait for cool, or would you like to say something? Nope. Nope. We can wait for cool. Thank you. And Kerme? Just here listening. Thank you. And
then we have CBC, and we have Department of Public Works. So I think that's everybody. Is there anyone else that would like to sit there and participate in public speak if I'm missing? Okay. So we'll move on to item three, additions and deletions to the agenda. I have one deletion to the agenda item five, executive session, the union grievance. Ask me the union is the union and Eric have agreed to put that off. Right. And then I would sit there and say, let's move the truck up so we can get where was that item? That was 11 AI.
11 AI. So let's move that up so Jay can go first. Alright. Anybody else? Paul, you good? Good. Scott, you good? Good. Good. Good. Somebody second that. Let's vote. Second. I second. Alright. All those in favor. Bye. Bye. Good. We're going to start with 11a I, discussion of the Freightliner of Hartford Nouplau. Jay, you're up. You're muted, Jay. Sorry about that. Yep.
So good evening. I was able to get the quote updated for the plow truck for this year. I'm assuming you got everything in your packet for the Freightliner.
And did you have a it's the same same truck that was quoted last year.
And I don't know if you have any questions on that. The, you know, basically this, know, just updated in pricing. Everything remains the same. The one thing that I didn't have at the time when I got this quotation was the municipal lease payments options for a four year or five year. And what were they Jay? The lease payments?
For a four year payment it's $71,772.46 five year lease payments $58.08 $8.09 $5 And
those prices are valid till January 5 and then they would have to be updated, you know, again, in case there's any adjustments to interest rates and whatnot.
Okay. Eric, are are we do we have this in our budget? You're on mute. On mute, Eric.
Okay. I'll start again. So what we have in the budget is we have a public works equipment fund. So we don't have enough money and we won't in next year's budget to outright purchase this. And the reality is even if we agree to a contract now, we're not going to have it until the next budget cycle. The objective with telling them we're going to buy it now is that we stand a good chance of having it for next ball's plow season, which is the objective. Because we're not going to have enough money in the public works equipment fund to fund the outright purchase cause it's around $260,000 My suggestion is that we pursue a, you know, our lease options for that piece of equipment. K. What's the payout at the end of it?
There should be no payout. It shouldn't there is it's not listed with any payout. It's just $5.05 well, depending on what you choose. It's those payments are equal payments.
Oh. But basically, it's $30,000 of interest in the four year note and probably about $40,000 of interest in the five year note.
Yeah. I didn't add them up. Yeah. What I do what they did tell me that if the contract was agreeable and all parties signed the first pay excuse me the first payment would be due at the time of signing the contract and held in escrow till delivery of the truck. So currently there are build slots right now available. He said that he currently he's got 12 build slots for next year, which it's the fall, you know, if we were able to act on this soon. We could see a truck before winter.
Okay, and it's gonna be a silly question, Jay, but you're gonna tell me you need the truck, right?
Well, that's the plan. Yeah, I mean we have two trucks that we fixed up this year and you know, one of them will become the spare. The other truck, you know, will send down the road.
Okay. And when is the date that you need an answer by to get on this contract?
To get on this contract within the next There's couple a deadline on the quote. Oh, this January, for the January 5 for this quote, which I doubt will happen between now and you know the end of the month. So, and typically between now and you know the next couple of months he's seen that prices doesn't you know as far as interest rates they don't really change that much, so it may not have much effect on the bottom line as far as the lease goes.
Well, we should put this on the top of our agenda for the next meeting. And so Eric and Adrian and Jeff can all weigh in on the financial ramifications of what we're doing. So what I would do is go back to the Freightliner gentleman and say, hey. Listen. The board of Selectman would like to go past their next meeting with this quote. Unless it goes down, of course, and then I wanna take advantage of it calmed down, which it won't go down. Yeah,
the only my question for the board, you know this is a state bid price and we went through the looking for trucks last year, do we have to go through that process all over again seeing that this truck meets the qualifications as far as purchasing, or is that for finance, CIP? Do we gotta because I believe I got on their schedule as well. Well,
let them tell you what they want done. I mean, I'm assuming we have to follow certain parameters within this new purchasing policy. And the question I would ask is just come prepared with the information from last year. What were your numbers? Are they higher? Is it much higher this this quote from the state than what you were getting last year?
This one's the new quote is just under the second bid for last year. Although It's
high it's higher than the bid we had last year for the one, you know, for the Freightliner. It's about, last year's price was $2.40, for the truck and this year for Freightliner we're at, maybe $2.59, think we were at. Many papers. Yeah. $2.59. Alright. It's about $20,000 difference.
So unless the other members of the board want to sit there and
push this forward here, we can push this off to our next meeting? I think it would be wise to wait till next meeting. I think there's going to be maybe some questions or just to give the other two members time to look everything over.
Okay. Okay. Alright, Jay. Do you have anything else you wanna share with us? Nope. That's it for tonight. Jay, thank you very much. That's good. Thank you. You, Jay. Thank you.
So we're gonna move to item four, the treasurer's report. 4A is the audit finding corrective action plan.
So that wasn't meant to be in the packet. Sorry, that was my bad proofing of the packet before it went out. You've already seen that. So it's in there, but I don't think we really need to discuss it. And I don't have the sets of summaries to provide you. The only thing I would really like to talk about in that group is item B6, which is the chart of account display options, which I did put in the packet. And so one of the things that had come out of the last So we know we were going to QuickBooks and the question is what is the data you're going to get every month look like? And this is what the treasurer has suggested we provide, you know, just a profit and loss statement, which shows the details, you know, for both revenue and expense. And there's not a lot of detail there. There will be by the next time you see this. And then the other question is how do we actually organize
the data to present it both to the board and to the public? And this is my best guess or thoughts as to how it should be presented overall. So I wanted to put it in the packet so you guys had a chance to look at it. Reordered some things. The actual numbering scheme comes from uniform chart of accounts. So, most of the numbering isn't going to change, but how it looks could change. And so I've suggested this and we rearranged and grouped some things. So everything is there. It just, it doesn't look like it did before. So I want to make sure you guys are all okay with it and the Board of Finance is okay with it before we lock that in as our final, you know, how we're going to present it.
I have no problem with it, but you have to realize, Eric, that it's extremely easy to present the data in QuickBooks in multiple formats in any different way you want it. The only thing that I would tell you that I would want on a monthly basis is a check register. So I would like this information plus a check register provided to us so that we can sit there. If we're not signing checks, we can actually see what disbursements the comm has made. Sure. Yeah. Other than that, Eric, it looks great.
Okay. That's how it will be presented to you in the future. There's a lot of information
that's not I mean, obviously it doesn't, you know, we haven't put deposits in. There's a lot of things that haven't been put in yet. So, and I'm assuming what the treasurer has done has done journal entries to sit there and post all this?
That's what she's in the process of doing right now. Okay.
Okay. And then for next month, can you give us a report of what the status of the bank reconciliations are? Sure.
Mhmm. That would be helpful. Hopefully, you got it all done. It's all up on QuickBooks and everything's right. So We're getting there.
Looks good. Anybody got any questions? Nope. Okay. Alright. So we're gonna move on to well, we're skipping to item five because item five has been deleted. So item six, board and commission presentations. Eric, do we have any? We do not, as far as I know. Okay, excellent. Item seven, appointments. Do we have any? We don't have any appointments. Item eight, resignations. No resignations. Okay. Item nine, town administrator.
So I don't have a formal administrator's report. What I wanted to spend my time going over is what I told you I would do at the last meeting, which is present a budget overview just of the things that are likely to have a significant impact on the budget coming up. I don't want to do that right now. If you have any specific questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them, but I don't have a formal report for you.
K. Anybody got any specific questions they wanna ask Eric today? Even though Eric hasn't been feeling well today and his stomach bothers me. So anybody? No? We're done. Okay. Item 10, old business. Finance department employment, status of the finance official. Eric?
So we still don't I left that on there as a placeholder, but you as a board had asked me to hold off and advertise basically right after the holidays. So that's still my intention.
And, Eric, next month when we do this, take the old business, right, and take the a away from discuss and act upon following. Just do that for me, little side note. Alright. So we're about to see status of the community center RFP.
So we're fairly far along. We've committee that you we've committee that you appointed has sat down and met and reviewed all of the submissions that we had. We had five total submissions. And we have a meeting scheduled, I think on the nineteenth to bring the contractors back in, at which point the goal would be to announce who our preferred bidder is, and then have a start contract negotiations so that we come back to the Board of Selectmen to approve a contract for it, a design build contract, potentially in January. Adrian's the committee chair, and that's what he was looking to do. All right. Can I ask one question?
For all the participants on this call, can you mute yourselves, everybody? There's some feedback coming from one computer or phone. All right. So Brian, if you are listening, can you mute yourself? Thank you. I muted him for you. Now we oh, you got it? Okay. Yep. So do you need us to sit there and make a motion at this meeting to give you permission to start contract negotiations? I know we we have to get the contract back and approve it, but do you need anything from us?
Well, I I think if you're going to empower the commission to make that choice and bring you back a contract to sign, then you'd have to make a motion allowing them to do that or allowing me to do that, for that matter. Well, I don't think
when you say a contract is signed, I mean, the Board of Selectmen has to approve one: whatever final contract is out there. But I'm just asking you, in the interim state, do you need anything from us?
Well, think if you want to so I was originally assuming that the Board of Selectmen themselves would want to take a recommendation from the Commission and then formally pick the bidder and then go into contract negotiations. But that will take an extra month if we do it that way, as opposed to you authorizing the committee to make that decision and then bring it back to the board at the approve a contract stage. It kind of depends on what the board overall is comfortable with.
My recommendation is we move this along quicker and we allow the commission pick somebody that they would like to sit there and start contract negotiations with, and come back at the next meeting with a contract that they want us to review and approve.
Aren't there there's two of our board members on that committee already, I think. Correct? Correct.
So I I would feel comfortable with having the committee decide, and like Jeff said, come back and give us an update.
Well, come back and give us a contract that they believe they've negotiated in an appropriate fashion. Yeah. So, okay. So I make a motion that we allow the Community Center Commission to go through the bid process, pick the contractor that has the appropriate bid, and to start contract negotiations. I'll second.
Any further discussion? All those in favor, aye. Aye. So if it gets to the point, Eric, where you have a low bidder or a bidder that you guys or a contract you believe is qualified, negotiate the contract and then bring it back to us, and we'll talk about it at our next meeting and approve it. Okay. Okay. 10 d, the Hop River Homes update.
I don't have an update for you at this point. I know that's something we gotta get back on the burner.
Oh, it's gonna be January. October, recognizing Andover residents. Paula?
So maybe I hate to push it off, but I wanted to get everybody's thoughts and ideas on this program again. We were talking about, the criteria, how to how to have people nominate other individuals and and then how we were gonna decide. I I think we were all on the same page with how we were deciding we were gonna go into executive session and vote about it. But do we do you feel comfortable talking about this and setting standards, or do we wanna talk about this next month again?
Let's talk about it offline, and then we can all sit there. Even though we're a public board, this is one of those things I don't think we we can do in public, so we have to figure it out. So maybe when the town attorney returns from Hawaii, we can sit there and get some advice from him. Good idea. Yep. Don't wanna drag it out. No. Let's just do it. Try to do something nice for the community, and we'll figure out how to do it correctly. Alright. So, 10 f, a cool program contract. I know we all have the contract in our packages. So I see that we have some cool members. So Jessica, how are you? Know that Amy is here. So I think what we'll probably first do is, Jessica, if you can, just for the benefit of everybody, just walk us through the cool program quickly and what you guys do, and then we'll talk about your contract and what you can talk to us about what issues you might have with the contract.
Sure. So Amy and I feel that the COOL program before it's a before and after school program. It's separate from the summer camp, so we run that. We have two classrooms in the school, and we run that out of there. And then the summer camp, we started a couple of years ago, and we had partnered with the Parks and Rec Department for the purpose of licensing and insurance. The first year that we ran the summer camp, we held our own insurance, and then COVID happened. And then last year, with the parks and rec department, they said that we didn't have to have insurance. That's why we didn't. However, we have insurance policy now, which covers us twelve, months out of the year. Our insurance policy was, due December 1. That's why it took so long to get a policy that covered the whole year. I outsourced with another insurance agent, but they wouldn't look at our policy.
Our current policy, agent wouldn't shop around until we were due. So initially, it was gonna go up $3,500 just to add the summer camp program. However, we, were able to secure a policy that I emailed Eric Anderson on Friday, and it has a coverage that you guys request. Okay. So our question is why all of a sudden do we need a contract with the town? We've gone to, we've gone to the board of ed. We've gone to, town meetings when we were starting this program, and there was, not an interest from the Board of Selectmen initially. So just wondering why all of a sudden there is a need for a contract.
Well, you have to sit there and and look at this board as a board that's trying to improve everything that's going on Mhmm. In the past. And we really do need that contract to sit there and tie up all the loose ends and all the things that haven't been done correctly in the past because school should have had a contract for all of these years.
We school is run out of the school, and we we talk, and we have the support of Vowel, and we have the support of the board of education. So the cool program, I don't understand it's run out of classrooms in the school. So what does the board of selectmen have to do with classrooms inside of the school?
Well, you're not wrong, but when you're utilizing the recognition and some of the things that you're using,
we Not for cool. Not for cool. We don't use recognition at all for cool.
Okay. So when we are sitting there looking at this and in the advice of the town attorney and what we're trying to do is just make sure that we're taking care of everything from a board of selectmen standpoint that we possibly can to protect the school, not the school, but the town and what we're dealing with. So initially, our problem with the contract is
pool is mentioned several times in the contract. Well, who's who's the who's the entity? Who's the insurance in? Our insurance is I gave Eric a copy. It's Well, what's the entity name? What do you mean? Like, who is the policy carried under?
It's community organized and operated. Cool. That's why we would name cool. Right. But I think what what Jess is saying is that we basically rent a space from the school. So if rent If this is space possible from from the the school
Ladies, if you would like the first section of the contract to be taken out, we can talk to the town attorney on that. The second part of the contract, which is where all of the insurance is required, is under the second part of this. So you tell us. If you would like that done, I'll sit there, I'll send it back to the town attorney.
Well, when you said at a board of selectmen meeting back in the spring saying that you have talked to Eamon, you've talked to the board, and that basically you think that the town should run the program. And maybe you talked to us in 2017. And then we have a contract in front of us that says basically that you guys can if we do not if we do not fulfill its obligations under this agreement or the best interests of the town, you guys can stop our program within seven calendar days. I I This program is for working parents as myself. Yeah. This program is for working parents as myself. Amy and I have took this program. We've created the summer camp, and we've done very good things with it. As of right now, we do not need the parks and recs help at all. We have secured our own insurance policy. We've been partnering with Val, our superintendent, and getting summer grants for our summer camp program. So at this point, we don't need any help from the parks and recs department. We totally appreciate them helping us initially starting the summer camp program for the working families of Andover so their kids have a fun and safe place to go to. But moving forward, if you need us to sign a contract to rent the space for the summer camp program, which would be the gym, which the board of selectmen or the town has ownership of, we will be happy to do that. But as far as signing a contract for cool, if there's any contract that should be signed, it should be with us and the board of ed, not with the town. Okay. So, Jessica, just so you understand,
my family took advantage of the COOL program before you guys were even there. So I totally respect what the COOL program is about and what it's doing. If you understood when I talked to you about why I thought the town should have it, it's because the town could sit there and have an employee such as Amy, which I talked about, involved in the rec commission and and doing other things for the community. That is what I spoke to everybody about. That's what I still believe, but I understand the problems of trying to run that within the town, and that is why we're sitting there working with you guys in the way you're doing. You guys are doing a great job. Please do not take it the wrong way, and don't even think about it. I'm not sitting here questioning what you guys are doing. What I believe, and I do believe this, is that if you look at most other communities around, all their after school programs are run by the town or by the Board of Education, and the individuals that are part of that are working with the town in other areas. So that's my that's my personal belief. I'm not here to sit there and say that that's happening.
We don't have the resources or the time to dedicate toward it. So what you guys are doing, what Amy and you are doing, greatly appreciate.
So don't take it the wrong way. Look at it from We a try to keep things minimal, and we try and keep it affordable for the parents of our town. You know, possibly, if you start having it run by the town, then the fees go up because now you're worrying about paying someone's insurance policy. You're worrying about paying salaries where we intentionally work at bare minimum and keep it affordable for our families.
Isn't so so I'm a I'm sorry. I'm a little confused. So Jess Jessica, the the cool program is a nonprofit. Right? You have a board. Correct? Yes. So I how I don't and, Jeff, maybe this is a question that you can answer too. But we we're not looking to take over the cool program. I don't even know how we could. Right? Because you guys have a board, and it's a nonprofit. So it's not like we can go in and buy it out or anything like that. So I don't I don't see where that could happen. It would have to be, you know, conversations that would happen over time. And in the contract so did Dennis put in the contract? And forgive me because I this was updated on Friday, and I'm just looking at this now. So where it says if it's if we're in failure if cool is in failure of you know this agreement the town can shut it down it's we're just talking that's just talking about the summer program and then having cool be a part of
No. It's for both, Paula. It's for both. Yeah. Listen. It says it separately.
I'll sit there. I'll sit there and I'll tell you. I read this this afternoon. Mhmm. I didn't like that. Yeah. Don't understand. So
I'm just here I wasn't going to approve this contract today at all. I'm having a hard time It's time to understand what this board is saying. That's a those are certain things. That's why I asked you, what do you have problems with the contract? Okay.
So that's why I was confused. Wasn't understanding how we could say that we can have that language in there if
if Why would we ever why would we ever do that? The only the only time that anything would ever happen is if you had a catastrophe. That would be the only time that anything like that would ever be executed, but it's still something that you know? Anyway, just tell I'm gonna we we don't even have to have this in public. Please communicate with Eric. Let's sit there and get changes made to this. And if the changes need to be made and if you don't believe it's a question for me, do we have any authority over the regular after school care program? Probably not, so it shouldn't even be in the contract anyway. That's fine. Listen, this board is reasonable. We're not here to cause tremendous problems. I mean, I'll still have the discussion with you, Jessica and Amy. I'll still have the discussion with you as to what the after school program would be better served under a community umbrella. There's no doubt about it. I mean, Kuhl has been active in some form before my children, than my children were here, in some form. Is that the right way? That's questionable, but it's worked and it's done really good things for the town. Making recommendations on the contract, let's get them in place, and let's move forward because, again, as I said, we do not have the resources to do it. It's not something that
I see happening in the near future, so we're gonna rely on your organization to sit there and continue to do it.
So far moving forward, if we could have this conversation about the passenger van, Do you, does the town of Andover still have the 16 passenger van? Eric, yes.
So Eric and your email to me, you had written that, if Amy got her CDL, she could potentially drive the 20 passenger van because is there going to be a problem with in the past we've used a town driver, but is there going to be a problem because they might not have a background check? Driving the kids to and from the link lake? So believe it's a 16 passenger van. You just need an endorsement. You don't need a CDL. So if we could use that, that could solve the problem of the, town driver not having the background check.
I'm not trying to tell you what the legalities are revolve resolving with the cool program driving. I mean, if you want the 20 passenger van, that definitely requires a CDL. What the requirements are for the 16 for driving kids, because it's not directly school related. Honestly, I don't know. It's just a public pastor endorsement.
I mean, you know, I keep, I heard that, you know, several people tell me that, and then for other things. And then when I actually re looked into it, I realized we had been operating illegally for a long time. What I'm saying is I don't want that liability. I want to ensure that whoever's driving the kids, if it's a town vehicle, you know, is legal to drive them in that situation. And for me, the cleanest way to do it is to make sure if you have somebody with a CDL with their passenger endorsement, you know you're covered. So that's my perspective. That's the cleanest way to do it. And I don't necessarily want to use town personnel to do it. And the reason is I flat out don't have enough drivers
to do that and meet the needs of senior transportation. I mean, we still technically only have two drivers. One of them is sick right now, so we're already scaling back for a couple of weeks
what we're doing internally. So so, Eric, that makes a lot of sense. Jessica, let's find out about a 16 passenger van. Okay. It's acceptable that Eric can we can all come back on a decision to make, if it works, that he can drive a van. Okay. We can sit there and not have an insurance issue with our insurance coverage our insurer, then fine. So let's find out the the rules and what's required, and let's try to see if we can do that. Alright. Our current policy,
covers the kids and drive they they know that the kids are being driven places. So I know so for our primary policy,
it will cover that. Correct. And your policy would cover it, and then our policy would end up covering it because it would be our vehicle. So let's make sure that we're legally driving the vehicles correctly. So if it's a certain type of licensing, then let's get the licensing done now. In the summer, you guys can deal with that and reduce your costs even further and have an individual take them back and forth. Okay. Anything else related to the cool program that we need to talk about? Scott, Paula, anything? Okay. Alright. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, ladies.
All right. Eric, 10 gs, the zoning changes to the town property on School Road.
So I'm just giving you the heads up that we, the Board of Selectmen or the correction, Planning and Zoning Commission does have a public hearing coming up, which I believe is January 19, and hopefully they will approve at that public hearing the zone change that will enable a community center to be built on the the town's property. Okay. Just as a secondary thing, the survey.
The survey, I have not checked in with them in the last couple of days. At the beginning of last week, the surveyor was in doing the legal research in the town's records and they had preliminarily walked the property. They had been planning on starting, I think, last Friday. So hopefully they're out there surveying now.
Okay. Anybody else have any questions related to that? Nope. Item 11, new business. Item I, the Freightliner of Hartford, the new plow. We have a discussion, 2023 meeting schedule.
So you have to select meeting dates for the upcoming year. My suggestion is to go with the essentially the same ones you've picked this year. But now's the time when the board decides when it wants its schedule for next year's meetings.
The dates in question are always the Mondays with holidays, right?
So July 10 is the second Monday, so that that should work. And you get July August 14, September 11. I don't believe that's the holiday. So holiday is the third, the fourth. The holiday is the fourth, so that's good. The ninth, the thirteenth, when is election day? The seventh or the second Tuesday? When is election day, Eric? 2020? May.
Election you're talking about November election day? Yeah. It is is November 7. 2023. So that's a Tuesday. Okay. So we can still do the thirteenth?
The did you talk did you talk about October 9? Is you already talked about October 9? Is there a there a problem with October 9? That's, Columbus Day.
Okay. So that's our one problem day. So when do you wanna do it on the tenth?
I think we usually I think for that month, we usually bump it to Tuesday, or we could do the following Monday. I don't know if you wanna push it off a week or a day.
Just push it off a day. So that that appears to be the only problem month is October then. Looks yep. That's the only one.
Okay. So, Eric, if you can go with the second Monday in every month except October, we'll have a meeting on 10/10/2023. Okay. Okay. Okay. Move on to item 11, triple I, opioid settlement allocation to towns, the 820 some odd dollars. Eric, do we need to talk about it, or what do we have to sign to get our allocation?
So, we have our allocation. We have the money. It's sitting in our bank account. The problem is that we have a hard time spending it because it comes with a lot of strings attached. So, I put in a memo. We first asked, you know, all the towns had asked the health board to come back to us with recommendations of what the most logical and effective way to spend that money. You know, so that was that's starting on page around 47 of your packet. That's the memo from Rob Miller that talks about, you know, kind of what the possibilities are. In our case, I think we're probably, I mean, going to look at something like either just a straight donation to a treatment center, like community health resources
potentially, or seeing whether we could talk into running some kind of program and donating the money to them. Frankly, it's not a lot of money and it's too complicated to try to figure out how to spend the money ourselves on our own harm reduction program. So the best thing we can
yep. Find I mean, all I had in my head was does have any program that could qualify? And donate the money to them. It's 855. It was a huge, huge number. $8.56. Let's round up, Scott. So, 56. Let's find somebody to donate it to. Is that times two, Eric? No.
No. I think we only have one allocation so far. We'll get basically one per year for like five years. So, okay. So, you want me reach out to and see whether they have a program that that would work for? Yes.
Okay. Elevenfour in the 824 referral to P and Z committee. So that's the meeting the public meeting this month? Correct.
So I put a letter in the packet, which is a memorandum I gave to the Planning and Zoning Commission on behalf of the Board of Selectment. Because the Planning and Zoning Commission has to do what's called an eight-twenty four statutory referral before we put out a contract for the community center, what has to happen is zoning commission has to decide whether it's consistent with the plan of conservation and development or not, and then report that back to the board of selectmen. So I sent this to them on your behalf since I know that you all want to get a community center built. So, they should be discussing that at the December meeting. My guess is they'll approve it right on the spot, but I'm not positive their commission's, you know, responsibility.
Okay. Any questions on that? Okay. So let's move to eleven point five. The twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four budget proposed time schedule, major factors affecting budget. So, Eric, you wanna put this off?
Yeah. So I'm gonna share my screen here for a sec. Okay, so I just wanted to go through before we get into the real nuts and bolts of budget season, is just talk about kind of the big picture and what things are likely to be driving the budget. Obviously, this has been a tough year for a lot of people because of the inflation rate. So, these are the things I want to talk about briefly. One is personnel and administrative costs. Two is capital equipment, building and maintenance, bridges and culverts, roadways, energy costs. And then the last one is electrons. So, under personnel and administrative costs, we do have a reasonable contract in place with MEIU
and we are starting negotiations with AFSCME on a retired contract supposedly the first week in February. Per the healthcare consortium, the last number they gave us was to anticipate an increase in the healthcare costs of up to 8%. You may have remembered, last year our healthcare costs actually decreased two to 3%. But they're anticipating it will go up about 8% this year. The other thing is that we don't have the state is has not even talked about what number the towns are going to have to come up with for MRF participation in the retirement program. But given that the stock market is pretty well down, I would anticipate we'll see an increase in the town and individual contribution to MRF. But I really have no idea what that's likely to be. And we're not going to get that from the state till like June at the earliest. The second thing is changes in personnel. There's really a couple of things we have to be aware of. The tax collector has formally notified me that she will retire in the fall of twenty twenty three. So, as a group, we need to start talking about the possibilities for replacement and whether we try to hire somebody that's a tax collector already, or do we hire somebody with the intention of sending them through the training to become a tax collector and how we want that transition to look like? So, I think this spring we're going to have to tackle how we want to go about that.
The Chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission indicated to me again that he's going to be advocating with the board for a part time town planner. So, you're aware that you'll probably get that request. And then the question is, what do we do in terms of staffing for the community center once it's finished? That's something the board is going to have to consider how you want to address that. Next item up is capital equipment. So, if you look at the capital equipment plan for public works, we've talked about purchasing a plow truck every five years. So, we maintain three trucks that are 15 years or older, and with the reserve truck that's less than, you know, 20 years old. That's been our goal. We've been working towards that over since around 2014. So, bought one in 2014. We bought one in basically the winter of twenty nineteen,
and then we'll have the next one, the twenty three-twenty four budget cycle if we get on the bandwagon fairly quickly. So, would be the big ticket item that we would be looking at. You know, the fire department has indicated that they're probably going to present the town with a proposal for purchase of a rescue engine combo, which would basically take two of the large public works or not public works, large fire department vehicles out of service and replace it with a single combo unit. But they're pretty expensive units. You know, so I think the board has to anticipate that coming. Whether the Board of Finance and Board of Selectmen agree with it or not, that's up to you. But I think you will kind of see that from the fire department. I also think we should still consider a Bolt EUV for senior transportation. Just because I think this is, you know, over the long term, it's a more economical way for us to be providing, you know, medical transport, which we do an awful lot of. So, and this would be roughly a $30,000 expenditure if we considered it as a town. So building maintenance, you know, the community center, we are proceeding with the RFP review at this time. The assumption is that we have the funds currently from the ARPA funds and potentially some money from the Multi Use Building Fund.
The construction of the senior transportation garage at 15 Center Street, that's largely grant funded. However, it is anticipating the use of about $75,000 from the multi use building fund for the town's portion of that. The renovation of the old town hall, which will be done to satisfy the Connecticut, the SHPO office, So, we're able to tear down the other building. And then HVAC updates to the Andover Fire Department and then also to the town hall. The fire department would be paid for out of the, basically the fire department capital fund. The HVAC updates to the town hall would be paid for with LOSIP funds. You know, those are both would, they would technically be in probably in this budget year, but they're the next big, two big things coming up in terms of building maintenance. Next item up is bridges and culverts. So the replacement for Bunker Hill Bridge, you know, we've been very fortunate to secure complete funding for that. We currently have around $450,000 in the bank to help pay for that. We're not going to be able to release that money because we'll have to pay that money to the contractor initially, but we will get fully reimbursed for that bridge as well as the Long Hill Bridge. The good news is we should have enough swing money in that fund right now that we don't need to add anything in future budget years. And when both bridges are replaced, we should be able to roll that money back into the general fund, which is good. So we are proceeding with the design for the Hutchinson Road culvert replacement. I'm hoping to meet with the engineer next week to start the ball rolling again on that. At this point, I'm anticipating
we're going to use the state local bridge design program for that, which provides 50% funding. However, I've been hearing some rumors that I know some of the COGs and also the Council of Small Towns are pushing the state to use some of their federal, you know, COVID relief and federal IJA funds to backfill the culvert programs for the towns. So, want to get to the point that we can set ourselves up to take advantage of that if they do increase the percentage funding that the state will pay for those programs. If I can get the state to pay for all of that, that would be even better.
But as it stands right now, we're looking at 50% funding for those. We have enough money sitting in the bank to do the Hutchinson Road culvert replacement. And then we kind of go from there and just keep doing them as we can fund that project. Roadways, I think we're basically going to continue with our existing program of shimming and chip sealing roads. We should again be working in the northern half of the town and fully complete shimming and chip sealing all the roads in the northern half of town. We're kind of working our way around the town counterclockwise. And then we're also working on a trip grant that will cover the cost of reclaiming and repaving Skinner Hill Road and Hendy Road. So, you know, it's a fairly long shot grant, but I'm sure there's going to be a lot of towns applying for it. But I think we can make a pretty good argument for why that should be funded. Next up, energy costs. Obviously, and oil have been incredibly expensive for a lot of people. We've been very fortunate that we've been locked in this year at around, I think $2.29 a gallon for both diesel and heating oil. If we locked in today, we would be locking in at around $3.8 a gallon for next year for heating oil as well as diesel. The price has been coming down a lot this fall.
It seems like it's kind of bottomed out when it's going up a little bit down a little bit. If you look at it on a day to day basis. So my guess is it's about bottomed out. But, know, I don't know. Obviously, there's a lot of geopolitical factors that go into price of that too. But if we locked in today, we would still be looking at about a 40% increase in costs for both diesel and home heating oil compared to what we're paying now. Gasoline, budgeted last year, we budgeted about $4 a gallon. And when we started off in June, we were averaging about $4.30 a gallon, but obviously it's come under $4 and, you know, we're currently paying, you know, $3.50 $3.40 sitting on the same chair. And it still seems to be coming down. So, I would say next year, my guess would be we would budget about $3.50 a gallon. So, we should actually be able to reduce our costs a little bit compared to currently. Electricity, you know, it's very hard to predict because the utility companies basically, you know, they bid out in six month intervals and they haven't, there aren't any bids in for next year for electricity. So it's pretty tough to tell what
our, you know, forecasts are electricity costs at this point. So that covers utilities. And the last thing that's kind of a big unknown is the state adopted a constitutional ability to hold early elections. In other words, to keep the polls open some length of time before the actual day of elections. But there's nothing right now about how that's going to be done or how it can be done. Where that comes where that's a concern to the town is we have pretty old voting machines. And if we end up having to use the voting machines, you know, and keep elections open for multiple days, you know, potentially even multiple weeks, our voting machines aren't capable of doing running tallies.
So, we may actually be ending up looking at having to purchase new election, you know, counting machines depending on what the state decides. And, you know, I have no idea whether that's realistic or not. Just, I don't know where the state's going with that. So, in terms of the kind of overview, that's what I have. I'll send all this to you. I'll try to send this all to all the Board of Selected members tomorrow. You know, that's just all food for thought as we're deciding where we go with next year's budget. The good news is it's not nearly as bad as, you know, I thought it was going to be. We're now starting to look at locking in potentially heating oil in the low $3 a gallon, whereas a couple months ago we would have been locking in at something in the fives. So, we're definitely better. You know, that's all I got with that. Unless you have any questions or concerns about anything there. All right. Anybody have any questions, Paula, Scott? No. No. Thank you, Eric.
Okay. Okay. We'll move on to item 12, approval of immediate minutes for Monday, 11/14/2022. Somebody make a motion.
I make a motion to approve the meeting minutes for Monday, November 4 was it fourteenth?
Yes. Yep. 11/14/2022. Second. Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Item 13, the budget. Eric, do we have any appropriation transfers? We do not. Any overexpenditure requests, sign b? Nope. Not at this point.
Item 14, the tax collector's report. It was in our package. It was a heavy tax collection month for October, so we don't have the November numbers ready. That accurate, Eric? As far as I know, that's accurate. All
right. There are four refunds to be processed, all small dollars, probably totaling under $400. $332.51 total.
Yeah. Looks about right. Anybody want to make a motion on that one?
Scott, do you have it or you want me to do it? Go ahead. Okay. I'll make a motion to set up tax refunds totaling in $332.51. Do I have to make do I have to say the names? No. You're fine.
Scott, you got a second then? I'll second that. Yeah. Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Item 15, department reports. There were various departments that submitted their reports. Do we have any questions related to any of them? Eric, I have a question. How is the building department program going? Do like the report that they're providing?
Think it's going very well. You know, overall contractors are all used to it. I mean, we do definitely, not me personally, but Lynn does have to do a little handholding with some applicants that are putting in, you know, building permit applications because as a lot of people know, a lot of contractors get the homeowners to pull the permits so they don't have to go through the hassle. So, but overall, I think it's a huge improvement. It makes it really easy to track what's happening, which is really nice. And it makes it very easy to show, you know, what we've pulled and in what category, you know, and to see both wetlands and zoning and the building department all in one sheet. So, overall, I think it's great. The other thing is because the assessor's office has access to it, it's very easy for the assessor to see what permits, you know, are pulled so we can go out and do inspections. You know, and we've actually found a fair bit of stuff lately when we went out to inspect for one thing and found a whole bunch of other things that either didn't get permitted or weren't inspected when they were done. So, it's a good check. It provides a good check and balance that the assessor's office has that information directly.
Have you heard anything, Eric? Any complaints about if somebody calls and it rolls over to Bolton that some of the permits that are in Andover are not showing up in Bolton?
So, we had an issue. So, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. So, we had an issue that I think we've gotten corrected now. We had updated our phone tree, but we correctly updated the message. So, if you were typing in the extension, the extension went correctly. But if you were just using the prompts, there was one prompt that was off. We had repeated one prompt twice. So, there were things that were going to Randy Heckman's cell phone, rolling to his cell phone, that had been meant for the zoning agent. And that was causing some issues. I'm pretty sure we've gotten that straightened out now.
Okay. What about specifically the permit, looking up a permit? So I had a contractor that called town hall. It went to Bolton, and they said that they looked up the permit for the Andover resident and they said in Bolton, it didn't exist. But then Andover had it in our system. Did you hear anything, any other I don't know if it was just one situation, but did you hear anything like that?
That I haven't heard about. I mean, if the contractor wants to look up his permit, he should go on Permit Link and look up his permit, and he'll see everything related to his permit. He shouldn't need to ask the building department to look up his permit. He has access to all that information.
Yeah. So, guess the email never came through saying the permit was approved. So, but you're saying even before it's approved, they can look and see if it's in the system in Permit Link? Yeah, absolutely.
You know, once you put a permit in, anybody can look on Permit Link and see that. But you as the individual can log back into your account and you can read all the notes in the exact status of that permit. That's kind of the beauty of the system is that, you know, it enables information to go directly to the customer, you know, as long as you put in the correct email address and it's sending the stuff to the right spot. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Any other questions related to any other reports that were in our packet? Okay. Item 16 correspondence. Any correspondence that we need to deal with? Okay. Nope. Not that I know of. Alright. We're gonna go on to item 17, public speak. Let's start with there's a phone number that's unmuted. 742-5475. Okay. We'll move on. Joanne Ebert.
Hello, I just have a quick comment that I it's unrelated to what's been said tonight. I think someone said it before, but I'm very happy that Dollar General is in our town. I think the whole building site it looks really nice well kept inside and outside it's the cleanest one I've ever seen. I've heard a million positive comments about it I know from looking on forums and different things people were really against it. And I know the ins and outs but with going through the budget process tonight and everything and then hearing you know already the increase that happened this particular year plus you know, going forward, it's nice to have commercial tax bases in town and I think they for what it is, they did a really nice job. It looks good on that corner. It looks a lot better than a lot of other places on Route 6. So I'm just pleased that we have something that came to town, you know, from start to finish listening to it, and it looks nice. So
that's all. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Anne Kerme. Okay we'll move on Grace G.
Hi, I'm trying to turn on my camera here so you can see Dave and I. That's okay. I guess it just won't work, sorry. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for everything that you do for our town. And I know it's been a long evening, so Dave and I will keep this very, very short. The reason we're here this evening is because we're asking for the board's support. We'd like to start an adult pickleball game or night or however you wanna call it at Andover Elementary School. And I understand there's disc golf on Monday nights, there's volleyball on Friday nights, and on Sunday night there's adult basketball. However, I know that that leaves three nights and I understand that the kids do play basketball at this point in time. So we don't want to interfere with their time. However, I think that once basketball season is done, we'd like to see if there's something we can do to get that started. We currently play in Hebron two to three nights a week. I started playing in Marlborough. So I know that in Columbia they have courts, in Colchester they do as well. So we're hoping that that's something that the town of Andover can start as well. And after talking with a few people at the town hall, I am going to be going to the Rec Commission meeting next month to discuss some specifics about that.
All right. Thank you very much. That sounds great. Okay. Thank you. Good night. This is definitely the right place to be for that to get started. I don't see anyone else on. Is there anyone else on that I'm missing? I don't think so. Nope. Okay. Item 18. Motion to adjourn. I'll second it, Scott, if you're not gonna. Go ahead. I'll second it. All those in favor, aye. All right, thank you very much, Eric. Thank you. I hope you're feeling better. Have a good night.