Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
September 14, 2020 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Now on the Zoom is Jessica Wiley Kipfer.
You all set? All right. I'll have to stand up. Erica's correct. Stand up and I'll try to back up a little bit. Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States and America to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, under God. Okay. All right. Public sneak. Amanda, if you could go through everybody.
One second before you start that. Sloane, I believe you're not muted, my dear. And we heard you saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay.
Thank you. Okay. So we are going to go through first. We have Mike and Kathy Palazzi. Hello. How is everyone? Can you hear us? Yeah.
We can. Kathy, would you like to participate in public speak? No, because we're going to later on. Okay, thank you. Carrie Crompton? Yes.
Would you like to participate in public speak? Oh, no, thank you. Shannon Loudon?
Okay. Yes. I would like to participate in public speak. Go ahead. Let's go. Oh, I just wondered if you were developing a roster. Okay. First of all, I'm very proud of the Anover Elementary School for making it through one week without any COVID cases. We reopened. We've got a fantastic new superintendent. Everybody has just done tremendous work to allow everyone to return full time in person to Andover Elementary School, and I just wanted to pass along my congratulations in that regard. Now I'll go through your agenda real quick just to put in my input. Hope you approve, as did the Board of Education, the town accounting software. We voted last Wednesday for Edwards gov. We also put on both Laura Edwards and Chris Bernard as our representative to the search committee for the assistant finance officer. So I believe you're gonna vote on your representation for the board of selectmen to that committee and hopefully, that will get started very quickly. Loved all the stuff with regard to acquiring open space and the pollinator pathway. Highly affirm those and hope those are
acted upon in the affirmative by the Board of Selectmen this evening. And two more and also the Agent Orange Monument, highly supportive of Jerry's efforts in that regard, having worked with Vietnam veterans myself when I worked in Washington DC and just knowing how much they've been drastically affected by that. So two important things with regard to your voting on the yard signs and political yard signs this evening. I highly Highly recommend that you not put any restrictions on those yard signs so we're not afoul of any First Amendment rights or whatnot, and that you allow us to put things on public property in town. As far as on private property, the one thing I'll say is in many pieces of property and I don't know how this can be addressed I believe that the 15 foot rule may put some signs all the way back to people's front doors and really not visible from the road, which is the intent. So I don't know what we can do in that regard, how we can both keep traffic safe and also allow people to put up their yard signs, as well as putting up yard signs on public property. So I encourage you to allow that on public property within reason. And finally, just having been aware that the culprits for the
graffiti that was put all over the wonderful library mural are going to be in court this week as far as I understand. And I don't know what input Eric has or the Board of Selectmen have as far as recommendations for their sentencing. But certainly, if found guilty of those crimes for which they've been accused and indicted, fines, monetary fines, and or cleanup responsibilities or whatnot, certainly, monetary fines can be imposed for that. And I think that's really important that the town's insurance not be responsible for that, but that, in fact, that the three alleged criminals, from what I understand, be held to pay the fines so that the town of Andover doesn't have to pay for any of that. Thanks very much. Thanks, Shannon.
Next up we have Charlotte Nelson. Would you like to participate in public speak?
Hey. I would just like to echo Shannon's sentiment in regard to the posting of silence on Friday. Charlotte, we're having a hard time hearing you. Can you hear me now? Barely. Okay. Anyone else able to hear her? No. No. Do you want to try again in a minute?
The other thing, Charlotte, do you want to text me and I can pass along your your comments? Okay. Okay.
Who else? Can we skip, and move to someone else and then we'll come back? Let's go. Anybody else? Elaine? Public speak? No.
I get to talk under EDC, so I'm good. All right. Megan,
go ahead and speak. Yes. So I just had a quick question under so obviously, I'm going to speak to 5A on the agenda 6B. Wayne Thorp resigned from inland wetlands. I'm not sure if that was a typo on the agenda or if he also was seated on another commission that he's resigning from. Okay. I'll have to look at that. Okay. Do we to wait or can we just speak? Well, Brian, you can go next. Go.
All right. So I just wanted to touch on what Shannon was saying about the sign law and I think a way that we could make it work for everyone is follow the Mansfield Ordinance here. I could read it to you or I can send it to Eric. But it basically says all signs shall be located so they do not block traffic control signs or devices, street signs, street or drive by intersections, or sight lines for existing signs on neighboring property. And then they put in wherever possible signs shall be set back a minimum distance of 30 feet from any intersection. And that's the A section of the law, so they put it wherever possible. So, for the B section it says unless specific authority is granted by the State Department of Transportation or the Mansfield Traffic Authority,
no sign shall be located within the state or town street right away. Wherever possible, signs shall be set back a minimum distance of 10 feet from any property line. So, they're putting it closer to 10 feet instead of 15 feet and then they're giving a wherever possible for individuals who cannot put the sign 10 feet back and it'll still be visible. So, I think that's a good compromise and something to look at. I can send that over to you if you want. Okay.
Please send it over, Brian. Okay, who's next? Anyone else? Catherine? Hank? No, I don't have anything.
Joanne? She's good? Yes. All right, Nick, think we're okay. Did I miss anyone? Yeah, Amy Knox.
Amy. Okay. Kincaid is all set. All right. And and let's go back. We,
Charlotte, I mean Real quickly, just on behalf of Charlotte Nelson, she was echoing my sentiments, Shannon's sentiments with regard to not placing any restrictions on yard signs on private property other than potential line of sight and safety restrictions on such and encourage the board of selectmen to not place unnecessary restrictions on signs on private property. Thank you.
Are we gonna we're gonna look at we should look at some type of size restriction you know you get bigger than a four by eight. It's it it's in our package. Yeah in the package. Yeah I thought so. Okay
Anyone else? All right. We have an extremely long agenda, so we're gonna try to, get through this. So additions and deletions. Members, do we have any additions and deletions?
Yep Jeff I got a few. First add item 9P neglected cemetery account. Add 9Q hunting on town property add nine r second nine q hunting yep Nine r acquisition of the clock property. I got $20 as he makes it to z.
Not today. And the last thing is I'd like to move agenda item 14 which is the assessor's item to before item 4A since the assessor's on the call right now.
Okay. Anyone else have any more that they would like to get on? Scott. All set.
Adrian, you good? Yep. Thank you. Set. Okay. So I'll make a motion that, you know, we add nine P cemetery account, nine Q hunting on town property, nine R acquisition of a clock property, and we will make a motion to also move the assessor to four A. I'll second that. All those in favor?
I'm just texting Jeff to make sure he doesn't want anything on the agenda. Who's that Jeff?
Yeah. Is he joining us? He's gonna join us. Driving home right now. Yeah. He went to the town hall. All right. Well,
let's get started with the assessor for 4AA we'll call it. John, I'm hopeful that you can sit there and give us an overview of where we are related to the reval and what steps we're taking based upon COVID. Is he still on the call? Yeah, he should be.
Man, I can check see if he's muted. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I got you. Okay.
Thank you for unmuting me. Good evening. As you all know, we signed a contract last December for the new 2021 town wide revaluation project. And that contract included performing full inspections of every property in town. Due to COVID, I think everybody knows that there would be huge resistance as well as it's probably not the greatest idea to be asking to go into each and every home. Eric asked me to reach out to the vendor to see what the cost would be if we changed our contract to one in which we send a data mailer rather than go out to visit each property. I did reach out to the vendor. They responded with an email that I believe Eric said everybody should have a copy of tonight. The email they sent back said we could convert the project to a data mailer project. The cost would be the same. And if they had to inspect more than 200 parcels, that we would be charged $30 for each parcel over the 200 properties.
Why would we inspect somebody if we were doing data mailers? Because if you send out data mailers and there's no response, you're required by law to then follow-up with an inspection of the property. So if you send out 1,000 data mailers and only 500 people responded, you could still be forced to go and visit the other 500 properties. So at this point, we kind of have a couple of options on how to go forward. 2020 revaluation projects are not completed as of right now and will be by January 2021. So, those people were already under contract and they dealt with COVID as well. What did those towns do? The the governor signed an executive order that that basically relieved them from performing the full inspection and different towns did different things. Some towns tried to convert or do data mailers for the inspection that they hadn't done. Because by the time COVID hit, it really sort of got rampant in like February. If you were doing a 2020 revaluation, you would have been close to done with your data collection. In fact, our project is a 2021 Revel, and we would have liked to start data collection in July of this year and banged it out in July and August, but we didn't because of COVID. I talked with the vendor. We sat, and we waited to try and figure out what we were going to do. I've talked with the Office of Policy and Management several times, including today, to get another update. And I'm being told that
they expect the same executive order for 2021 revaluation projects as they had for 2020. While the governor, on the ninth extended all existing, executive orders, the the executive order was only for twenty twenty towns and not twenty twenty one towns. So we're expecting a new executive order that's just for 2021 and will basically relieve us of that requirement. So, what we're left with is what do we do with the contract? We have a couple of options and we need some guidance on how to go forward. At this point, we still could we could convert to the data mailer process, but I'm not sure that that's the the best bet. We also have the option to still send the data collector out to every house and not try to get in. Obviously, we have to do some public relations and inform the town through
press releases as well as the web page on what we're doing, but we could still send a data collector up and down every street to every house. They could ring the doorbell, hand them a sheet of paper, tell them who they are, just walk around the outside of the property, confirm the measurements, confirm that the house is still the same, the square footage is the same. They'd be looking for things like central air decks, pools, finished area over the garage. They see curtains. They could bang on the door again and ask a question about that. So that is one option where they would do that, and they would not try to get inside the property, but they would go out and visit every single property and confirm everything that's on the card. Or the option b is to, you know, send a data mailer in in which we send out to the people a card, it tells them what we have for data on their property record.
And they confirm that it's accurate, or they let us know if if something is different and needs to be changed or or added and modified. And on those ones that claim there's something different, we have to follow those up with an inspection. So we would have to go out to anybody who didn't respond or anybody who responded with data that was contrary to what the town had. Well, tell us there's an option c, please. What would option c be?
Move it to next year when there's no COVID issue. And I don't think data mailers are a good solution. Nobody's gonna come out and say, yeah, I I may have renovated my kitchen and put in $50. We're good. No one's gonna admit that. You know? I mean, we see it all the time. We go and do work on a house and it's it's not it's not been updated. You know, we know it's not. So, I I just don't see that as a good solution. I don't see the data mill as a good solution and, you know, a lot of things that you people do aren't visual from the outside. New bathrooms, new kitchens, those types of upgrades that do add true value, we're not gonna catch. I feel like that's a waste of funds to do a huge contract, meet our statutory requirement, and then not really gain from it.
I mean, unless I'm missing something, John. I I have you had a different experience with them?
Well, no. I mean, I can only offer you the options that are available. There were 35 towns that did revaluation last year. If they had allowed all of those to put it off for one year and then we got to 2021, they said, oh, let's have them all put it off again. There's another 35 towns. Now you're looking at 101 towns that need to reval in 2022. The cost would go up four times and you do have trouble even finding enough vendors to do all the work. I don't think you're going to see them unbalance the revaluation cycle. When they balance the cycle, I think it was 94 or '96, they didn't just say 35 towns every year. They actually looked at the number of parcels because a Waterbury might have 22,000 parcels and Andover might have 2,000. So they actually looked at the parcel and that's how they balance the cycle and they didn't let anyone postpone from last year. So I don't think that's an honest option.
Well, but we're doing 21. Right? So couldn't we do we were kind of ahead of the curve. Couldn't we do this in the spring? Could we come back in the spring with data collection? No. Yeah. Go back in the spring and do inspections in the spring.
Certainly could put it off until the spring. But if we get to the spring and then we find out COVID is still here. I mean, when you look at COVID in the last ninety days, you went from eight million cases worldwide to twenty eight million. And in The U. S, two million to six point four million. I mean, it's still climbing, there's no evidence that it's going to be any better six or seven months from now. And then what do you do? Well,
think we're either gonna be dealing with it differently or, you know, or it's it's gonna have, you know, run its course. I you know, obviously, I'm not gonna get it. I'm not gonna into an argument about COVID here, my question is we signed a contract for something that they now can't perform. So I I don't see how we can I don't see how us converting it to a data conversion is the same value, Okay?
Let's go back John. The option that you sat there and you gave us was they go out into the field and do full inspections of all the homes by walking around the homes. Which isn't a full inspection though.
It isn't a full inspection. I agree. What they would do is they would actually hang a measuring tape on there on on each home and they would confirm the measurements. They would confirm the sketch. They would confirm the number of outbuildings. You still can see decks, pools, garages, sheds, central air. If it's a raised ranch and you're walking around, you can see if the basement is finished. I mean, there's still a lot of data that can be collected. And I agree, Adrian. This is I don't think there's any perfect answer here. And I mean, if you you guys are certainly welcome to talk to the vendor, if you want to yourselves. But I can tell you this, out of all the twenty twenty projects that took place
and inspections that didn't get done due to COVID-nineteen, nobody got any money back on those projects. No municipalities saw any savings because the work wasn't done. It's also not the vendor's fault that COVID-nineteen came in.
But So you're also telling us there's no clauses in that contract where they have exceptional issues? We'll have to get our account of attorney over the time. So I mean, I'm more concerned about John's point that if we push this back, that we're going to have our contract increase. That's the biggest issue on my mind. How we do this correctly is the different issue. It's really what we have to look at. So I mean, that's biggest thing on my mind.
John, I mean, we really I mean, part of the reason we talked about doing this was because we're within cycle to need a full inspection, right? And we thought that this would also recoup value that you know in general these types of full inspections are beneficial to the town because they they you know collect value that's been lost in the lack of inspections. So if we're not doing them and we do this other method, what's the reality of what we may or may not collect using this other methodology?
Well, while I can't deny that if you find improvements that you weren't aware of its revenue producing. What I stated when we talked about this was my goal is the fair administration of the local property tax and for everybody to be paying their fair share. So that's the real reason that I wanted to do it. And I think that you still will gain great data by going out to every property and seeing them. Plenty of the properties are some of them are 500 to 1,500 feet off the road. And you get back there and you see what's there. And there's still a lot of data that gets grabbed. I cannot deny everything you said about the interior of the property, Adrian. It's absolutely true. Kitchen bathroom renovations are one of the best return on the investment when you improve a house. But we're dealing with a worldwide pandemic, and things are different. I mean, we're limited in what we can do.
I think my bigger issue with this conversation though is you're saying that they're not gonna do the contract that we asked them to do. They're gonna use a different methodology, but they want the same amount of money. To me, that's a little frustrating, you know.
I I hear you. I mean, you have a copy of the email that came from Patrick Donovan. I mean, you know, you could talk to the town attorney if if you want I mean, I'm I'm not an attorney. No.
What if we I mean, I'm going to ask a silly question. What if we postponed our full inspection in this cycle?
We can't. Why not? Because it's our, we're due. I know we're due. We're also have COVID. I mean, if they, and
I think So by full inspection, Adrian, we either have to do the data mailer approach, as far as I understand it by law, either have to do the data mailer approach or we have to do the full measure enlist or as close to a full measure enlist as the governor's executive order will allow. Those are our two options it's not like we can say yeah we're not gonna do it
because we did it twenty years ago. Well listen our last cycle was supposed to be inspections and and if I'm if I'm wrong from what the information that I was given we didn't do, we drove by the houses like the road like went by. So my point is my point is well what if we just left the information from the last cycle and set ourselves up to do a, do it in a different you know five years from now. What's the difference? Well not in five years but a year, two years, whatever it is. No. No. What what John is saying we'd be off cycle. So we as Andover need to stay in our cycle, in our lane. I'm just asking what if we don't do it at all?
My my point is if we put it off a year, yes, we'd be off cycle, but given the low number of parcels that we have and then we just do our next one at four years instead of five years, you know. Yeah. But you're listening. John does any of this is any of this viable and what's the what's what's the penalty if we don't do it the way they want it done realistically? Dennis, go ahead. I
penalty know what is today because they changed it years ago when they first instituted it. It was a substantial amount of state aid, but I think they have backed off of that. But I mean, you also run the risk of a class action lawsuit from, you know, your residents for not having done what was legally required to do.
So they're gonna sue us for not taxing them more? Probably not.
Could. I've seen it happen before Adrian. They'll pick any reason they can if a certain group you know people or a certain neighborhood you know doesn't like the end result they can they certainly could. I mean, it is the requirement. Dennis.
I just wanted to point out that I'm although I'm not really familiar with this, you know, and in a hands on way, I know in Wyndham, my wife who's a state representative has had to go to the legislature a few times to get them to approve a postponement. So I think in order to postpone at a certain point, John, don't you have to get legislative approval? You may not for this, but I know it happens. You do, but let's say that, you know,
I'm sure there were towns that wanted postpone last year, I'm sure there would be others that would want to postpone this year. But let's say you went for that, and let's say it failed, then you haven't been working on the project. You're behind. Let's say it passes and you get it. You're still going to have to pay the contractor this $75.
Our contract is you're telling us that if we chose not to do this with this group that we are contracted with currently to do a full revaluation, and we totally canceled. There's no out clauses?
There's no way that contract will hold up in court.
You know what guys? This is above my pay grade. I am not the town attorney and I honestly don't know what the repercussions would be from walking away from the contract and refusing to pay for it. I can promise you that this contractor probably would never bid the town again, and there's only a handful of decent companies that are bidding on contracts these days. Towns are getting between two and four bids. There's only something like 26 certified revaluation companies in Connecticut, of which a lot of them are an individual person like myself who doesn't really go out and do townwide revaluations. There's really only a handful of companies that are out there doing this full time.
So, John, did you just say that you could do this through your own company? Or how did you what did you just I
said that I am a certified revaluation company, but I've never done a reval or bid on a reval.
Okay. So John, in your position, what is your solution for us? I mean, is there a solution for us that's going to make us happy? What's your advice? Yep.
I mean, I still think there would be great value in going out to every property. But I mean, the other the only other option is the data mailer and we can send out the data mailers. I mean, we'll we'll follow whatever direction you guys wanna do. So you think going out to every property and I mean, we're gonna pay for it either way. Right? You are. And actually, if if you did data mailers, there is there is a risk that it could even cost more. I don't I don't believe that would be true. I wanna be completely honest. I don't believe that would be true. But if all of a sudden people, a, didn't respond to the data mailer or or B, responded with discrepancies, then we're required to go out and look at them anyway. And even if that's a smaller amount, that's one here, it's one over there, it's one on this side of town. There's a greater cost than than being on the street and going to you know, buy every house. So you're so you're saying at this point,
we I mean, we're paying to go door to door either way, realistically. I mean, we're paying that same base number. So worst case scenario, if we go door to door, the client, you know, the the the resident does not let the assessor in for whatever reason, COVID, whatever. The the assessor will do their best just like they were if they were turned away in any other case to make an assessment based on the cues that they see and then if they want to fight it or if there is a discrepancy between what the assessor believes and what the resident believes then it would go to an appeal situation.
True. And even on a full measure and list pre COVID you never got into a 100% of the properties. I mean a good 10 or 15% will refuse and then others you'll just never find them home and after you've tried twice and sent them a letter in the mail, they still don't respond. You still don't get in. Okay. So it's not like, you know, you would have gotten into a 100% of the properties even if COVID never popped up. Sure.
Is there and the so the company is willing to still do the the measure? Absolutely. I mean I I
I don't know about anybody else, but to me that seems like it's painful as we'll do as much as we can. Adrian, let me read off what the company
replied to me when I asked them that question. The vast majority of twenty twenty and twenty twenty one Connecticut communities are proceeding with full measure list because they see the value and accurate exterior inspection information and physically verifying the property characteristics. In addition, we found significantly improved interior data response to post inspection callback letters versus a traditional data mailer. Visions worked closely with the revalved communities to adopt these measures in a COVID environment and align ourselves with the social distancing, blah, blah, blah and meet all the state safety requirements. You know, that's their response. You know, when I asked them directly, I got the feeling from them that there it was basically going to be cost neutral, whether we do data mailers versus we do the exterior inspections at this point.
Well, I think John's point though that you may pick up a pool or you may pick up improvements in other ways. I think that's probably the better choice.
I mean it has been as far as I know and John you can back me on this or tell me I'm off my rocker. It's been twenty years since we've done a full measure and list, correct?
It might actually be longer than that. I think I'm almost here twenty years and it hasn't been done while I've been here. And the reval, just before I came, I was told it wasn't done. And prior to that, rebels were done every ten years. So it could have been 30. Now that doesn't mean you don't see anything whatsoever. On the fifteenth of every month, I pull MLS on what's for sale in Andover. And I got a 30 pack, including of interior photos, and I can see exactly what's there. And if we find work that was done illegally or not illegally or done without permits or it was the kind of work
that didn't require a permit but enhanced the value. We're aware of it and we've updated our records in that way. I also go out every single year to every and visit every property that pulls a permit. And I even go to houses that pull a permit for a new oil tank or upgrade to 200 amp service because sometimes they might have done some other stuff that isn't on the permit. And as I drive around the town doing my permits every fall, I'm on just about every street. So it only takes a few extra minutes to look at properties that pull the permit that you would traditionally
think doesn't add any value. Well, 90 They're they're pulling the permit, the the 200 amp service because they did a hot server or pool or whatever. And it could be. And sometimes you do find that. You're absolutely right. So it's not like we haven't looked or seen any properties in thirty years, but it has been a very long time since Anzor as part of the reval sent a data collector down. Jeff McGuire is 100% correct in that during the last reval, we did drive down every street as part of what's called review, and that will still happen. That happens afterwards. Data collection is the early phase of the reval. Then later, you do is you build your algorithm in your Canvas system to hit all your sale properties. When you have something that's hitting all your sale properties fairly and uniformly, you turn that algorithm loose on every other property in town, print a new card with a new value, and then you drive down every street and you look at them and you look at them and say, is that Colonial worth what Colonial was that sold around the block? So you do go down every street a second time, but you're not walking around the house. You're not confirming measurements.
Okay.
So what are you looking at? John, what do you need from us? Do you need a motion that says keep going, or do you just need us to you just need to hear that we're not we're not changing our minds?
You know, mean, someone needs to tell me, Eric, or someone needs to say, you know, this is a decision that's over my pay grade. I mean, this is something I've never seen before and and, we need the town to or I need the town to say, you know, which direction you'd like us to follow. What is the latest date that you can deal with doing this?
I got two emails in the last, two weeks and they were really looking for us to make a decision. But I told them, you guys were meeting tonight and they're expecting a phone call tomorrow with some direction. Because like I said, they would have liked to have been out in the field in the summer months. July and August, they could have banged out the whole town. Jeff, is there some reason you want to put this off?
Given this board's lack of desire to kick things down the road, is there a reason we're kicking this?
Just want to know the latest date you can start. I really don't Okay. You know, the reason why I even wanted to have this discussion is because we're paying the contracted amount for a totally different service and there's zero reduction in the price. So my question is, what is really occurring? So that's all I'm after, and if John tells me he needs a definitive drop dead date of two weeks, I mean, I'd like to have the town attorney review the contract. I'd like to understand, if we did nothing what would happen? Well,
I mean we know we're gonna get penalized if we do nothing in some way shape or form. We know that we need to How do you know that? Who's told you that one? That was part of the discussion that held state aid in the past unless they do something. I don't know that for definitive,
especially with COVID now I'd like to know. We're doing an evaluation one way or the other and if we back out of the contract, I don't know, personally at this point, I think they just go forward and do the best job they can with the with the measuring and and hope that you know people are more honest and you know step forward and if not then we deal with that when the time comes but you know.
You're stuck with the contract the way it reads everybody got COVID.
Yeah, I would believe that I think the problem for us is trying to back out of the contract is if what John is saying is correct is that other towns move forward then we don't have don't have a standard to look at and say well other towns didn't do this because of. If other towns went forward with the measure then we don't really have justification for not moving forward with the measure. That'll be the or that that's the only issue we'd run into.
I don't know of anyone that postponed from last year and didn't implement their reval and and keep going. They all did different things on how they finalized it, but and I also was told that no one got any reduction in their costs.
Okay. So, John, if I understand this correctly, what would be the difference from what you're planning to do now with the walkarounds than what you were contracted and had contracted to do the last time we had the reval?
The last time we did reval we did not go up and down every street bang on every door and ask to come inside.
So here's my thought. I'm just thinking out loud here. We have we have a high population of elderly people in town and we're asking them to open their door.
We're we're asking Paula, but they they have the option as they always do to say no. Could They say I'd rather you not come in and John will have to do the walk around and but it'll still count as our full rebel. So we stay on cycle. Actually,
think you could even through, you know, public awareness, make it known that we're required to bang on the door and ask. They can say no and just allow the person to walk around. And I think if you put that out there, I think that's the option everyone would choose.
Yeah. If if they know to say that, I mean, we're we're telling people not to come in the town hall and then we're now sending people out to other people's houses. I'm I'm just thinking out loud here, you know? Maybe
I grazed over it. I said the person would go out, knock on the door, hand them a sheet of paper, back up six feet, wait for them to read it, explain why they were there, and explain their option.
So whenever we communicate, if we go this route, I think we need to really tell the residents that's what's, you know, that's how it's going to happen because I think people are going to be really leery about letting a stranger in the house especially you know an older older person that might be living alone they don't they don't know who this is knocking on their door and then you know they're they're leery about sending somebody in the house that Sure. In
fact, the last executive order didn't relieve the town's burden to go inside the property. The minute the taxpayer says no, then you're relieved of the burden. What the executive order said was you could convert to a data mailer mid contract and change to do that. In my discussions with OPM, I have asked them to change the definition of fully inspect, which included going in to just go in for this particular rebel cycle to just going out and measuring and looking at the property from the outside. I wish we could have had that executive order already. I wish I could have more
data for you. And certainly, if you want, we can I'm being told it could be thirty to sixty days before we get that executive order on our reval. And Jeff was asking how long can we wait? I honestly don't know because I know that they're pushing me hard because I think other towns are doing the same thing. I think other towns are trying to figure out what are we going to do, what's this executive order going to look like. But the rebound company can only get so stacked up on their work before they're all of a sudden
present to, you know, to keep up with all the jobs. And then we end up risking that they don't have time to complete the project the way we need to complete it. Sure. I mean we
have a we have some questions that maybe we need to get some answers to before we decide to move forward. I mean What would your what would your questions be?
Well, we we've been going back and forth about can we put it off? Can't we put it off? I mean Well, we have to do it one way or the other and we're gonna pay the same amount one way or the other. So Right. Not really whether we're putting it off. It would be changing the type. Listen, I would love to put it off but we're being it would be changing the type of inspection. But that secondary inspection that we're talking about is simply mailing something out to people and saying, please tell us what you've done in the last twenty years, basically. So yeah, there's no idea. Recognize there's ideal situation.
So it's, yeah, I mean, there is no ideal situation, they're gonna give the resident an option, they're gonna do it in a polite COVID safe way as much as possible. What
more can we ask for at this point, I guess. And in the meantime, I'm still working on having that definition changed to the point where we don't even have to ask to go in and account for the full inspection because So As
a point of reference to, that was another question I had for Vision and what he wrote me was with the current COVID executive order in Connecticut, Vision is not attempting interior inspections at this time. We are still performing all exterior data collection and ensuring accurate measurements.
So if we make an order, John, that sits there and says there's no interior inspections inspections and and all all you're you're going to do is the exterior inspection. We are allowing Vision to come in whenever Vision wants to eight in the morning till four in the afternoon without having to communicate to the homeowner. There's no price reduction for that? They're supposed to do full interior inspections on everything.
As far as the contract goes, I mean, maybe that's better posed to Dennis. I honestly don't know about that. But I will tell you this. They're telling me that their costs are rising due to COVID. Are longer conversations with taxpayers at the door. It's a slower process. I mean, I hear both sides of it. So it's tough for me to say, but when you talk about contract law and what we can do, that's really above my pay grade. Okay.
Then one thing I would just ask you, John, to do for us, and then we're going to have to move on and have a special meeting related to this, I would imagine, within the next week. John, is there a solution? Is there a way for us to send a mailer out to the residents of this community and say, Hey, listen. This is how we're going to do our reval. This is what's going to occur. We're only going to do walk arounds on your property, and they're going to occur from this day to this day. Will that suffice for the knock on the door and telling people
this John is is saying that they haven't officially done it but Eric is saying he's got a letter saying that Vision's not doing that.
But John is saying they have to stop at the door, knock on the door, hand them a flyer, tell them this is what we're doing. Why can't we send that out in advance? Tell everybody this is what's gonna happen and then Vision can move around the town as efficiently as they possibly can and get this done.
Well I can't, I mean can we, that would probably fall on the town to send a postcard out if that's not No I understand that but what I'm asking is that's still a valid notice to the resident?
Well, they're gonna have to do both. Why? Because when the person shows up in the property, they still knew to identify themselves. I don't care if I got something in the middle or not. If somebody walks up my driveway, I'm gonna wanna know who it is. Okay.
I mean, I know you don't but you live close to the road. No, Adrian,
I understand your issue. I get it. I'm just sitting there saying this is inefficient. And it's going to cost us money that, you know, they're not doing the services that we're contracted for. So we're changing the contract we're changing the service level. So I'm asking, what can we do to change the service level to make it more efficient for vision and get this done quickly and effectively. That's it. Welcome to twenty twenty. I have tenants that don't have to pay rent because the governor says so. So, yeah. All right. Could there be scheduled appointments?
No. They're they don't they don't schedule appointments because when you you put them on one street, you want them to go up and down, you know, the the whole street. They can't be popping left and right and then over the Well, in the mailer, can there be scheduled time between
No. You got twelve that Wales Road is gonna be done? You're talking No. Typically, what we do
typically, what we do, Scott, is we try to run, you know, as much of a PR campaign as we can. Like, the River East goes to every house in town, and we usually will call up the reporter and we'll have sort of a kickoff story about Reveal and talk about when it's beginning and so forth. We go to the town web page. We also have that email blast that goes out to most of the residents. I'm sure we could get on that as well. Maybe. We also have the town website where we can put what's out there and say, Andover is a small town. So the data collection literally could take place probably in four weeks, I would estimate. So I mean, yes, we can advertise that it's taking place over the next four weeks. They drive around in a car that says, assessor's office right on it. They have photo IDs. Everybody's
the idea is to get everybody educated on it and aware of it so they know what's coming. But we do have to figure out what scope of that we wanna, you know, proceed with and I know there's no great answers here and I I apologize for that but this has changed everything. I mean, personal opinion is if we're paying for it, I want as much as I can get, It's not listen,
I want what is contracted for or revised the contract. It's the same thing that we were dealing with in the last time we did this is that we had a contract and expectations that were put out there that I don't believe were fulfilled. So I'm sitting there and asking it very simply, if we have a contract and we have certain items that are on that contract, revise the contract, state it clearly, tell all the residents this is what we're doing and get it done with. I don't have a problem. Like, John needs an answer, so we're gonna have to give him an answer relatively soon. But, Dennis, I'm asking you to review the contract and get back to Eric in the next day or two so that we can sit there and understand what's up. David, I'll be governor's as well. Okay? I'd like to do that and, you know, you guys are not paying me by the hour so why not?
Alright. What's your time frame? I can't hear you. Or can we let John go?
What's, well, wait a minute. What's the timeframe to get back to us Dennis?
I have it here. I mean, I approved it when it first went out. It's my contract but I don't know that it covers, you know. I don't know what, you know, what it covers in terms of this kind of situation. Don't think anything covers this in the, I mean, you There's know principles of contract law that can be brought into a contract too, even if it's not stated in the contract. It all depends on the circumstances.
But here's but if we asked to change the contract, they may have the option of backing out and what John is saying is their costs are going up not down. So if we, if they say, okay, fine, we're not gonna do it. We have to go find somebody else and they were the lowest bidder. Fight far.
I'm just gonna tell you what I'm just gonna tell you what I'm gonna make the call for you. Yeah. It's Dennis Dennis evaluated the contract. What what I would ask John to do on, you know, in his position is that if we change the way that this is structured, then let's just get an answer. I mean, because we're not really change, John is changing the way that it's structured to a knock on the door and walk around to everybody and just not going in. I'm asking to change the structure. Let's find a way, be creative so that we can reduce our costs.
That's what I'm asking. I don't know that you're gonna reduce costs because they're spending money on COVID but no no I mean just think about it reasonably for a minute. They're spending money on COVID etc etc but beyond all of that it's less time to walk through a house and note changes than it is to do follow-up data collection, put together mail or send it out, wait for it to come back and then put it into the system because that's what he was talking about, you know.
Then let's change the structure. I mean did sit there and do a walk around if you're gonna have to go through every house, do one walk around, sit there and evaluate what's up. Let's move on. I mean, it's it's don't understand. John, unless I'm incorrect, unless I don't understand what what you're doing, you're evaluating the town's overall sales and you're doing a
blanket appraisal. You're doing a you know, that's all that's what you're doing, right? No, he's doing a full measure, a full measure on every house and then we're just not gonna do a walk through the house. But they will do follow-up data collection with houses that they have questions about. They'll follow-up with a mailer and on those particular houses and then do adjustments.
Still doing a global revaluation and it's based upon current market or market values at a certain point in time. Yes, but a full remeasure. That's the key here. Okay. John?
I agree with what Adrian said. I mean, you know, Jeff, we could not look at at any single property in town and only look at the sale properties, we could build our algorithm and we could turn it loose on everyone in town. We're turning it loose on old data. So what Adrian is saying is correct. If we do go out and we walk around and we measure you're going to find people who turned a covered porch into finished living area. You just do. He's right. You're going to find that stuff, you're going to pick it up, and you're going to clean up your data. So then when you turn it loose on everyone, you're turning it loose on properties that have gotten bigger or have additional amenities.
Okay. My thought still is that, okay, if that's the case, and we're paring down what we're doing, we are still paring down regardless of what anybody is sitting there thinking, we're paring down, let's pair down and make this as efficient for that provision as we possibly can. What we are sitting there saying Adrian is we're just going to change the scope and pay them exactly the same amount of money.
I understand what John is saying better before. I think the part that I was missing and maybe it's the part that you're still missing now is that they're still gonna measure every house. The only difference is they're not walking through every house but they are gonna follow-up with, it could be a 100 properties, it could be 150 properties where they're gonna do follow-up data collection because they have a concern that it doesn't match the part. Is that correct, John? I would agree with that.
Okay, well, what does the rest of the board members want to do? Brewer, you've been quiet. Paula piped up. Scott, you had some questions. Are you awake over there? Help us out. You're usually the middle ground, help us out.
I think we're caught between a rock and a hard place. I think that the governor said that there's contracts out there that have to be upheld Jeff Yeah, we're going to have to do it.
And just from my personal experience, I did have John come in my house when I did my basement over and with my whole my whole basement, walk through the whole house and my my valuation went down actually because there was a lot of mistakes on the line card. So they're not really the boogeyman. They can actually help you out in some circumstances. That's my personal experience.
I would I would just if you're telling us we need to make a motion I would make a motion that we just move forward the contract as suggested by John with a full exterior measure and and the accommodations that we can make beyond that.
I don't think you're gonna do any better than that.
If Jeff, No, if it makes you happy, can send out a postcard on top of the River East and on top of the different Facebook pages and on top of the email blast and everything else. Is that what you want?
About all the people into town to fill out the mailers.
Well, you're not sending them a mailer. That's not what was being suggested. Well, they're going to. No, they're not.
No, the mailer was the other option that the way the Every ten years you have to do a full inspection Your two options for full inspection as I understand it are sending a data mailer Which says we're not really coming to your house, just tell us what you did, or, you know, a full measuring list. The problem is you can't do the interior part of a full measuring list today. You can only do the exterior part.
Yep. So let's do that and get as much data on the thing as we can and but we have to stay on cycle currently so let's do it.
Who's seconding that? What's the reason that we can't have mailers Eric?
It's gonna cost you the same money but you're not gonna measure the properties. You're gonna be self reporting.
Scott, you could do the data mailer, but if you do, you're scratching the visit every property, confirm the measurements, walk around. It's either option A or it's option B. And we did that would require a new contract. And we did go back to them, and they actually came back and said that it said the cost would be the same as the it's actually you should have got a copy of it. The data mailer option is the same cost as the scope currently under the agreement. We incur increased third party costs with, printing and creating the data mailer, mailing postage, receiving the data mailers, data entry on those. And then they have to go out and inspect anybody who either, a, didn't return their data mailer or, b, had a discrepancy. So they were willing to keep the price the same and say that they would inspect 200 properties. And if there are any more than 200, we would have to pay them $30 per property.
Kind of option A or option B. So if we move forward with this, John, can you rewrite or at least do an addendum to the current contract and list out the expectations for this company? And what expectations were those?
What you're going to change for their needs, what they're going to do. I'd like to know exactly what the town can expect to receive for the money that it's gonna spend related to this changed contract.
Oh, sure. I think we could go back to them and say, you know, we have this contract. Due to COVID-nineteen, we know you're not going into every door, but can you put in writing what services you're providing what services you're still providing? Something like that, make them put something in writing? In detail yeah okay
and then we can we can hold them to that as far as the contract is concerned are we looking for Jeff that's exactly what I'm looking for fine do you need a motion You made a motion. Let's go. Do we have a second? I'll second that.
Anybody else? Any of the other members want to comment on this topic? Okay, let's vote. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Let's move on. Thank you, John. Okay, thank you. Have a good evening. Yeah.
All right. We're going to go to 4A, the Board of Selecting the Board of Education Combined Finance Department Committee, Town Accounting Software, and the Assistant Finance Office Job Posting. Who wants to take the lead on this Adrian, go to it.
Confined finance department, we need to have a meeting with the school. We're kinda waiting for the school to get settled in with opening and superintendent and that. Otherwise, I think we're in pretty good shape there. Accounting software, my last email or our last email as you know, we're waiting for a final contract from Edmonds. We haven't seen anything on that yet Eric, have we? We've talked about this a week ago.
We don't have a final contract. What they asked is that we sign the sales order and then once we sign the sales order they'll produce a final contract. Okay. What Edmunds and that's as far as I understand the board of selectmen has voted to select Edmunds and they've also voted and appointed two representatives to a combined group for the hiring of the assistant finance director. Okay, in the board of education. Board of education, sorry.
Okay, so do we need to, I thought we had already, we were kinda good with the committee. They're saying we need a motion to accept the same?
Yeah, think because the board originally the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance had a joint meeting and they kicked it back to the combined commission and said come back to us. Since we haven't had a combined meeting, the Board of Finance has already agreed to it. If the Board of Selectmen agrees to it, then I'll sign it and we'll keep moving on. That's my philosophy on it.
Okay. I would make a motion then that the Board of Selectmen accept the last offer from Edmonds with the modified dates of implementation and move forward with that contract.
You can probably add Adrian, how much the contract is for? $38,955. That's gonna be split evenly between the town and AES. Yes.
All one pot of money. Let's go. Someone second that. I'll second that. Okay. Discussion. Since I I need to discuss this, and I'll ask some questions. Adrian, what was the auditor's position on this?
The auditor's position is it would be better off to for the both to be on the same software. The agreement was that, you know, there was definitely some back and forth but you know admins is certainly a doable software. It may be slightly more expensive in the long run than QuickBooks, but given this some of the things the school is looking for, it might be the best solution overall. Not necessarily the town solution, and I know something that you personally disagree with, but compromises are sometimes the way things have to be done.
It's a absolute waste of money for this community. But alternative That is about as compromising as I will be. It's going I to agree. Hey, Adrian, I'm commenting. I'm commenting. So I would sit there and I would tell you as a group that we are going to overspend for a software that this community does not need, and we are going to impact the quality and the type of person that we can get in any given position for this community for five years. So that's it. That's all. I mean, Adrian definitely knows my position on this. I am sorry. It's a waste of money. We are totally going overboard, and we could make ourselves extremely more efficient, but we're going to bend and agree to allow the Democracy is messy, Jeff. Yeah. I mean, when you have you have the the wrong people sitting there making the decisions to sit there and do certain things, it definitely is messy. So
let's go. Were you involved with that meeting, Jeff, at all? Yes, I voted no.
Go ahead. I mean, listen, it is a situation where I would just look at all of you. I wouldn't mess with Jeff Murray if he came to me with an electrical issue. I would rely on him. I would sit there and go to Adrian for a construction issue. I would rely on him. I would look at Paula, and you said something about a website. I rely on you. Scott, you come to anything about forestry and trees, I'm not gonna sit there and but that's all right. I'm only a CPA. It's all fine. Let's go. Let's move on to our next set issue. Vote on this please.
Does anyone else have any questions about basically it was a split vote. Candidly I changed my vote and ended up siding with the school because to me the alternative was we would end up with two separate soft wares. I don't believe that I understand the school's concerns and what they were specifically looking for and although I disagree that they were needed on that level, the alternative to me was gonna be that the school board went in one direction and the town went another and then we would spend just as much money. In fact more because they'd be on one and we'd be on a different one so and the base cost was going be the same so.
All right, any further discussions?
I don't like that we're going against you Jeff. I don't like that at all. Scott, it's okay. How do you think I feel? I am just voicing my opinion. I don't
feel right about it really at all. I'm letting everybody here know that this is a waste of money. Only a waste Eric, Eric, how do you vote? So of let's go. Anybody else? Paula, Jeff, you good? Alright. Let's vote on this. All those in favor? All those opposed? I'm kind of opposed to it, really.
Well, you're what's your what's so what's your solution if you're opposed to Oh, you know, I I don't I don't Jeff is a CPA.
No, listen, listen. There are issues. I'll tell you. We're gonna have to vote again. I'm telling you, I hate to waste money. Right? But Adrian has his logic in what he's doing, and I don't sit there and discount him. I just have to make my point made. You guys can all listen, the Board of Education wants it because the Board of Education's administrative finance person wants it.
But that's not being fair Jeff. Eric Anderson also voted for it. The treasurer also voted for it. No, the treasurer did not vote for it. He did. No, she didn't. She wasn't on the committee. She actually she voted and then when there was a pushback, said, okay, I'm gonna abstain is what I don't know. Eric,
was she on the committee? I thought the five members of the committee were Eric Anderson, Laura Edwards, Adrian, Mark Brinker. Mark Brinker and me.
Right. And originally, but Laura was not Laura, Barbara was also on the committee, but Barbara said when asked to vote the second time around said, I don't feel comfortable voting on something that I'm not going to be here to deal with. Eric, was she on the committee? She was originally on the committee. Yes.
Adrian, I'll give you that one you win. So she she abstained and that's how we got to two to two? Right.
No. She basically didn't want to take a bunch of flack for a decision that wasn't going to affect her because she was going to be gone anyway. Right.
And that's where you ended up. And Mark said he didn't feel comfortable voting on it because he wasn't interacting with the software enough in town hall to know. No, but Mark eventually
So it was me and you on one side, and Eric and Laura on the other and I switched my vote. And that's how you ended up where you are now.
All right, let me ask this question. If if we vote now and we say no, what happens then you guys it goes back to the committee and then what? Then we're gonna waste even more money. And it'll be a Look,
it's $10,000 over five years difference in cost. No. Yes. Yes, it is. You can sit and break it down. It's 10,000 over 5 years. I know that you think I know you think we have to go by what we were quoted, not about what we think is gonna happen, but what we were quoted. It comes down to about 10,000 over five years. There is no guarantees on either side although Edmonds did lock us in for the first three so we're locked in on cost at least to some extent. We did verify that Edmonds has local training available like they have people out of Jersey that will come up if we need in person. It's not too much of a shot for them to do that. You know, we tried to trim up all the things that we had concerns about with Edmonds.
And they were pretty good about getting back to us as far as implementation dates and a lot of the things we were concerned about doing or not doing. Listen, if you ask me if it's my ideal situation, it is not. But the flip side is if we say no with the if you vote no what's gonna end up happening is the school is gonna be on one software and the town is gonna be on a different one and that is a bigger problem. Everyone has agreed that both being on the same software is important both from the from the combined finance perspective but also just from auditing perspective. So it makes sense and and if we're talking up you know $10 or even if it's $15,000 over five years, it's a $3,000 a year difference. To me, the gaining of continuity and the ease of being able to combine those offices because of that is worth more to me than the $3,000 difference in cost. Jeff's argument, Jeff's concern is very simply that we can get better availability of staffing because everybody knows QuickBooks, everybody. If you don't, it's fairly easy to learn. However, point taken, as Laura had pointed out, most people coming into a job may have to learn the software they're going into anyways. When you go to a new company they may not have the same software you had at your old company and somebody at that skill level
should be capable of learning a new software in a relatively quick amount of time. Is it a perfect solution? No. Is it an equitable solution for the options we were given? Yes.
I will disagree with you on one issue. It's not $3,000 a year. How much is it? I mean, you're sitting there looking at, Eric, what is the annual cost for Edmonds? Think it's around 4,500 a year.
Okay. All right. Adrian, I'll give you a second one. That's probably right. About $3. Now, I'm just going to tell all the other members, while I totally disagree with this, We will spend more money if we don't move forward.
So That's what I'm thinking, and this whole project was gonna stop.
Yeah. If we don't No. Move We have listen. Whole I'll even vote to approve this. I do not want to. It's a waste. It's a waste. The community could be much better off if we all got together, but we didn't all get together. So, but if you if we vote no Jeff, I know you want to vote no on principal We're gonna spend more money. I will tell you, if we vote no, we'll get a lot better information because I still we've been on this board all of us have been on this board for a year and a half. We've gotten terrible information.
Well I'm telling you. But Jeff, don't you feel that when we move forward, we should all be on the same software and be in the same boat together? Understand why you wanna vote no, but.
All right. Let's vote again because Jeff, when we get into this new software, will you be able to access it? No. I should
be able to ask that I want to see a check register and get it tomorrow, like at six, seven in the morning when someone walks in. I don't get that stuff. I can't get that stuff right now. You cannot get it out of our current software, so we have to go to a new software. I can tell you that if Eric had at his disposal a software that was incredibly simple to use, no problem. He'd get it, he'd get it to us, we'd have no problem. We're just not going to the most efficient system.
That's my fear. It's a very good system. It's just it's geared to municipalities rather than QuickBooks, which is kind of all encompassing.
Okay. So we have to vote on this. If we vote no, I'm just telling you, we do vote no, we're gonna spend more money. And and Adrian will not get what the reason why he switched his vote, which is consistency, which I applaud. I get it. I'm with him. But he did. He waffled and I did. He did. He waffled. He walked away from what he knows is truly deep down in his heart the correct thing to do, but I'm okay. He took the one for the team, right? One other person to deal with this. All right, let's vote. We're all going to vote again. Let's vote. Let's vote. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Alright. I'm glad we talked that out though. Yeah.
It was painful. Let me tell you. Yep. It is painful. Right.
Can imagine how much off is your job posting. Eric where do we stand related to this?
So we've got a bunch of applicants the Board of Education has identified the two representatives they want us to committee. What we talked about initially when we had the combined committee was having a total of five, two on the town side, two on the school side and one neutral outside person. So my suggestion would be I'd be one of the two on the town side you pick a Board of Selectmen member or you know somebody from the Board of Finance if you choose and we go for an outsider and we start interviewing and we make this happen. That's my suggestion.
Who wants to be on this committee from the board of selectmen? Anyone? Then we should ask Mark Brinker. It's either Adrian or Mark Brinker. Adrian, you got too much going on?
When will we be starting? How quick, Eric? Two weeks. And what are you projecting as to when you think meetings are gonna happen?
I think that's up to everybody, you know? I mean, the meetings will be whenever people can make it. I don't, you know, we'll have to do a quick doodle poll and find out when people are available.
I can try to make it work. And if we're looking for an alternative, I would actually suggest Diane Shawkat. Her schedule is a little more open than Mark Brinker's is right now. She certainly has the background having been in banking as long as she was as a VP.
You know. So when can we get an answer from her?
Why don't we Eric you're thinking you're gonna be the other person who's gonna be the neutral? So
I would actually like to go for Columbia's finance director because she runs a combined department. Did you talk to I
talked to her quite a while ago but I haven't talked to her
certainly in the last like three months so I would have to revisit this but I just want to make sure we understand who the actual panel is before I do that. I would say I'll put my name in the hat and do it and if I can't, then I would ask the board of selectmen to allow me to replace myself with Diane. Would that be acceptable? I have no problem with that.
Anybody else have a problem with that? Okay. So we'll make a motion to appoint Adrian, Eric Anderson. And Eric, since we don't have a neutral third party, when are we going to find out about that?
Well, I mean I will find us a finance director to be on the interview panel. Worst case scenario, Columbia doesn't and I ask Coventry's who I've had similar conversations with also. Alright. Can we can, Dennis, can we do this vote by email or by telephone?
Like as a you know, outside of this? Like, so if on Wednesday of next week, Eric has all the people that wanna be on this board, can we vote then? You gotta mute, unmute. You're muted, Dennis.
Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. Good. What was the question again?
If we sit there and have this by you know we don't have the exact names of the members of this hiring committee. Can we vote by phone or by email at some other time next week? Yeah. I'm shaking your head, Shannon.
Sure. You have to set it up though. You have to set it up tonight.
We'd establish have a special meeting to have that vote. Special meeting of of you know, by Let's not let's not have a special meeting. Let's make the, motion broad enough to accompany, have the replacements be made made available. Diane Sawcatt would be the Selectman's alternate. And Eric Anderson is going to find us a town finance director to be the alternate party or the only Delegated to Eric. Yep. Okay. So the motion will be to appoint Adrian Mandeville to the hiring committee for the assistant finance officer. If AJ is not capable, that would move to Diane Chalkette from the Board of Finance, and that we give Eric Anderson the authority to appoint the unaffiliated party from a pool of finance directors or assistant finance directors from our area. Seconded. Eric, I'm gonna, but it's seconded now in conversation. Eric, just so I know, is that on your list of motions? Yeah. Critically it's four AII.
Yeah. Okay. All right. So we did it a different a little different way, but I'll make sure I look at your motions again in the future. Sorry. I apologize. Discussion on discussion on this? All All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. We're moving on to 4B, Conservation Commission, the, CTERT reports, number two, land parcels and three, mowing recommendations. Who is going to be our Conservation Board representative?
Mike Palazzi is on. I've got two other people that I know that are on there, Carrie and Hank. So if I forget something to say, I'm sure they'll fill in. But I don't know how much you guys know about this but there's three parcels of land being offered to the town. Two of them are for the North, what the hell is it, Northern Land Trust out of Summers, Connecticut and one by Tom Talbert. And they all tie in with land that's already owned by Andover right behind the Gyle And The King property. The one by Tom Talbot is a little further away, but it crosses some nice streams and stuff like that. It's a beautiful piece of property. We've walked this ourselves as a group and then we walked it with the ERT group from Hartford, and they had all their specialists
there to look at everything about that, the wildlife, the plants. Own Kerry and Hank participated in as experts, and they came out with a nice report from this, which is on the website, I believe. Is that right, Amanda? Okay. It's on our website. It's been on there a while, because this kept on being postponed for whatever reason. They're offered and the only thing we'd have to do is do a title search on the three pieces of property, whatever that costs, I don't know. So 125 per property generally.
That's not a big expense because Tom Talbert offered to take care of any transfer stuff and he'll pay for it himself.
That include the four acres that's landlocked or is that still sitting out there? No, it's all landlocked. No, there's four acres that Talbert has that's abuts myself, the one sixty behind me, Roger Barrett's. It's it's like literally in the middle of somebody else's parcel.
I don't believe that's that's true. The Talbert property is right next to the town property behind the Kane property. So it's and the other two pieces are buttered on either side. That's all I'm asking if it includes that four acre parcel. Don't believe it does. This is a let's say looks like an eight acre property that Talbert owns. Okay. Yeah, he also owns a four acre property that's land like really landlocked. I don't think that's that's part of that. Okay. There's only one piece he's eliminating. You are right, Adrian. Okay.
Okay. So we need to make a motion on this because does anyone have any questions for Mike or for any of the other members of the Conservation Commission related to this potentially
8.5. It's really closer to 16 acres of land. Yeah. Right. No, it's a good deal for the town and nice piece of property.
So just one thing first, the next step technically is you still have to send this to the Planning and Zoning Commission for an eight twenty four referral. Right. By law. That's part of your motion.
Correct. You want a motion, Jeff? What's the town's plan for this? Are we taking it off tax rolls by doing this? It currently in not big enough to be in forestry. No. It's it's gonna be open space. Do we know what the taxes are on this?
Yeah. We did on the the top where there was oh, boy. Gotta look that up. Any of guys other have that that are on here? Eric, do you have it anywhere?
I don't but open spaces tax at about 1,500 an acre so I mean the appraised value on Tom's Talbot property is less than $10,000 somewhere yeah $12,000 something like that Okay.
So but so the plan is to put open space and then what happens with it once it's designated open space? What are we what are we doing with at that point?
Well, there's not too much we can do until something happens and opens it up. So you'd have to cross either the Giles property or the King property to get to it or come in the other way transfer station, that big piece of property that was there and it's up for sale right now. Yeah, it's $161,162 acres. Yeah, that's the way we originally walked in with Tom and that was a hike and a half, you know. Alright, yep. But it was a nice hike, wasn't it Mike? Yeah, was a beautiful hike. It was a nice day. I was bleeding from head to toe on it.
Okay. You want to hear a motion Jeff? Are we done?
I'm waiting to sit there. I know AJ is looking something up. I don't know if Jeff or Paula have any questions.
Jeff, can I interject one comment? Sure. Go ahead Meg. So I was part of the conservation commission when this transaction first was brought to the table and I just wanted to point out Mr. Talbot didn't have a preference whether or not it went to conservation easement or if it stayed developable land. He just wanted the town to pursue acquiring adjacent parcels. That was his only requirement if I remember correctly. I think the taxes when we looked at it, it wasn't a lot. It was like 1 or $200 a year.
That's what I think I remember too. It wasn't much. It was less than $200 I believe. I can find that. I've got it someplace in my many many documents here.
And Adrian, that that those parcels are adjacent to a town parcel, a 16 acre parcel that's in there already. Yeah. The one parcels at one end and one parcels at the other end. So, it's just gonna make the town's parcel up there, you know, 32 acres or something.
Yeah, I just found it. I just found it on the GIS. I'm looking at it now.
But if you wanna look at the taxes you get a look on vision.
It'll give me a it should give me a baseline. Yeah, the assessment was 8,100.
So what's the worst thing that we do? We send it to planning and zoning for the referral and they give us the referral. We still have to go to a town meeting related to the acquisition of the property. Correct. Okay.
Okay. Scott, go ahead and read that motion, will you? Alright. Let's push this forward.
I motion to refer the donation of land and acquisition of 8.54 acres of land from the Northern Land Trust as well as 7.83 acres from Thomas Talbot, the Planning and Zoning Commission for an 08/20/2824 statutory referral to determine if it is consistent with the POC date. If it receives a positive referral from the Planning and Zoning Commission is to be set in a public hearing for the acquisition. Second. Did someone second that? Anybody? Paula? I did. I'll second. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?
You opposing Adrian or you in favor? Oh no I'm in favor. Okay. I know Paul is in favor. She gets open space behind her house. Who
puts the eight twenty four in? Excuse me? Who puts the eight twenty four in?
If the Board of Select votes yes, I will write a letter to the chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission, know, notifying them that he's gotten an eight twenty four request. Okay.
All right. So Eric will be writing a letter, Mike. Okay. Thanks. Can I ask a question though? Yeah. One of his conditions is acquiring the adjoining parcels. What is the plan? Don't we need to put some sort of well the conservation commissioner, gave it, sorry, referred to planning and zoning. Will planning and zoning put some sort of plan together to follow-up on that? Who are you asking that to? To follow-up on what? Well, his condition for doing it is if I heard correctly, was that he wanted the town to try to acquire adjacent parcels. Tom Talbot does?
I think that's what Megan just said, isn't it not?
He dropped some of the original conditions. He just saw the light on this. Can
you just refresh us on that? I just want to make sure I understood you correctly.
Sure. So I would defer to whatever information Mike has because I haven't been involved in the transaction in a while but initially he was trying to force the town's hand in a little bit. There's a Northern Land Trust parcels as well abutting the property and the condition of giving the land to the town was that they would also, take ownership of those parcels. It sounds like Mike is saying that that's no longer a condition, but
I just want to point out it didn't need to be under conservation easement because I specifically had asked him that whether that was important to him and he said no it doesn't need to be placed under any type of easement if the town acquires it. Okay. Thank you for the clarification.
So Eric, you're gonna write that letter now. We're on to 4B, three mowing recommendations.
I don't think you actually voted yet though. Yes, we did.
Yes we all did. Everyone was in favor. Five to nothing and then Adrian followed up with another question.
Got it. Okay. Just keeping you on your toes Jeff.
Who me or Eric? I said Jeff that that's you. Me? Okay great let's go. Who's talking about mowing recommendations?
Okay so Carrie Crompton is on she'll discuss mowing recommendations the Conservation Commission has asked the town to consider altering its mowing practices to be more friendly to pollinators. And Carrie can take over from here. Seth, you're not on. Yourself,
Kerry. I know. I'm trying to do it. Okay. There we go. I don't hear you. I have to press the right button. Yeah, I just noticed a lot in the past year that we're mowing very tight and very wide on all of our roads and on the rail trail and behind the ball field. And I'm questioning why we need to do that. Because as I said in the written materials that you have all received, populations of pollinating insects are down worldwide. It's a matter of concern everywhere. And there are many, many agencies in Connecticut that are really trying to restore pollinator habitat. Without pollinators, as you know, we don't have plants, we don't have food, we don't have anything. So it seems prudent to allow native grasses and wildflowers to come up and bloom and provide nectar and pollen for pollinators if they're not in anybody's way. And so I have thought about it a bit and come up with some suggestions for simply reducing the amount of mowing that's done on town owned properties, especially to allow low growing flowers like clovers, which are very, very good for pollinators, to bloom instead of cutting off their heads every time they start to bloom. And so these are sort of preliminary suggestions about, setting the mower deck a little bit higher along the roadsides and along the rail trail to allow
low growing wildflowers to bloom. And then not mowing so hard at the very end of the season when all of the I didn't actually say this in there, don't think, but a lot of pollinators overwinter in stalks of tall grasses and goldenrod stalks and so forth. There's no need to cut it all down if it's not in a sight line or in a place that's needed for what they call an amenity lawn, you know, sports lawn or something like that. So I know you can read all of these. I made suggestions for the town centre, the Chamberlain Pond Park, which could be a little bit more natural, and the town roads and the lawn around the historical museum. I think all of these places could be a little greener
and more friendly to pollinators. On some of them, Carrie, you could move the decks up a little bit.
What would be the objection to moving the decks up on any Right. Yeah. What was there anything that is there any usage issues?
No. In all in all those places, I I would say that, you could do that. Okay. Definitely move the deck up. I don't I don't even know if you could go to, you know, four, but, you know, three and a half or four, that's not asking a real lot, you know? It's not asking a lot. I wanted it to be a fairly modest proposal,
actually. It wouldn't change the look of things very much. It would just allow
for a pollinator pathway through town. It's not good for a lawn, but it's fine for where you're talking about. A vacant lot opposite Hop River home, we could mow that, you know, you know, once or twice a summer or something. You know, I went down with with Eric back in July and I noticed that it had been
the opposite Hop River homes had been mowed to like half an inch. Was just about bare dirt. There was nothing except these little spikes everywhere, little green spikes. And I didn't know there was so little plant material there I couldn't even identify what these little spikes were. Well, now I went down yesterday, and I know what it is. It's little bluestem, which is a native prairie grass and very beautiful. It's rather high now in front of the Hop River homes. And maybe it's an acquired taste, but I find it a very beautiful look. And it provides seeds for many species of birds. These native grasses are good for thrushes and for sparrows and cardinals and finches. They all eat the seeds. And if you mow it to within an inch of his life, no seeds will be produced. So if the area across the street from Harbor River Homes is not needed for any other purpose, I think it could be allowed to be a beautiful prairie for, seed production for birds. I you know, I'm speaking from a conservation point of view. I think you talked to Cinderella, Carrie. Is anybody gonna object?
To what? To the Homer deck or to take Kerry's well written presentation and sitting there and trying to evaluate it for future, so what we can and can't do. Part of Eric's issue is that we don't mow. We have one mower, one guy that goes around and mows and he doesn't get to it very often. When he does, Gary is basically saying that we mow it all the way down because we don't get back to it again. I realize that. I Yeah.
Would love to see the Conservation Commission sit there and evaluate different areas of the town and town property and state property and tell us what can and can't be done. Because I will tell you that one of the things that I talk to Eric every time I see Eric is the walkway and the hill next to the rail trail. I think it looks terrible. I think it looks terrible for the townie, and if you grow it longer, it'll look even worse. So I would ask the Conservation Commission to go through and evaluate different areas and sit there and tell us what can and can't be done. But with the understanding that there's conservation and there's beautification, and they both need to work together. Because if you could do I absolutely agree, Jeff.
That'd be all for it. I do agree that. And I want to tell you that I'm in conversation these days with three people at this point who are experts in mowing programs around the state. One is Kim Stoner, who's with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and she's advised DOT on many pollinator pathway projects around the state. She's also one of the founding members of the pollinator pathway program in the Southwestern part of the state, now involves 95 towns in Southwestern Connecticut and Eastern New York. I'm also in touch, Oh, and Kim Stoner, I sent this proposal that I sent to you. I sent it to Kim Stoner and said, What do you think, Kim? And she said, Looks good to me. If you need any more advice, please be in touch. I think we're on board. Is that Yeah, yeah. I just want to tell you that I see this as just an opening of the conversation. I want to talk with experts. There are two other people on my list who have both said, this is great. If you need advice, please be in touch. And we have really the winter in which to develop a more fine tuned mowing program. I mean, good advice from experts.
My personal opinion is I would run that just by Eric. He seems to be the guy that's going be telling them to mow or not mow.
Well, I did run it by Eric. And he said to run it by the Board of Selections. So here we are. Eric just likes to get people in front of us. But I think And happy
to do so. Happy to do so. Gary, we appreciate you putting in the effort. We do. I think we know that if you put in this much effort, you're not going to steer us wrong.
Well, would like to do well with it and continue talking about it.
Really for changes next year, not this year. We will keep doing that. And we hopefully will add another 16 acres of pollinator pathway to the for the town for perpetuity. One of the things that Eric will work on is some kind of program for next year as we get into our budget for next year too, is to identify how much money we can spend on mowing and what type of mowing we want to do. I'll donate a $100 to wildflowers if you plant them on the hill. I, I will, I will match you and I'll actually double that if you I'm writing this down, Adrian, 100.
Gary, am not kidding you. Gary, better hold them off to that. 500
if you sit there and can do wildflowers on the hill across from the post office. Right, exactly. We can do this. We can do this. I will put up $500 to do All right.
Got that in pencil. I'll for 100. I don't have lake money, so. Yeah.
The assessor just took that from the office. We'll work on a plan because this is doable. It's doable and it could be very beautiful. Excellent. I think it'd be great. Thank you very much, Carrie. We appreciate that. Economic Development Commission may have I, want a sustainable Connecticut and to board member for the tourism district. Elaine Sure. Or who is
Yeah, the EDC would like to spearhead Andover getting involved in sustainable Connecticut. I had proposed doing this several months ago and Kathy Palazzi has been looking into what's entailed in getting us registered to work with their planning groups and tap into potential fiftyfifty grants to achieve some of our goals. They also offer guidance to help towns work on the various steps towards sustainability. Kathy learned that we needed to have a resolution signed by the town authorities to register for the certification program. So we sent you a letter kind of explaining what it's all about. We sent you the resolution that we need the board to sign to go ahead and move forward and get us registered in the program. The board needs to appoint a liaison and appoint person to communicate with Sustainable Connecticut Project Management and Kathy Palazzi on the EDC would like to be that point person. So we're looking for you guys to sign the resolution so we can move forward and register. We're looking for a Board of Selectmen liaison to communicate with about Sustainable Connecticut and Kathy Palazzi would like to be that point person for the communication with the Sustainable Connecticut project management. So that's what we're looking for. If there's any questions, Kathy's willing to field them.
So what categories and what actions do you have any idea what you want to do for this?
Well, I mean, you can see the list. It's quite extensive. They've got the economic, they've got land and natural resource use. They've got arts and cultures. They've got planning and zoning. They've got transportation. They've got infrastructure and operations. They've got public services, housing and community impacts. And what the it's not just the EDC, obviously, we would be getting all of the other groups involved in it. The Conservation Commission, the Andover Farmers Market, you know, we have to if we get the go ahead, go ahead and work on this, we'll go ahead and start communicating out to several other groups because this entails everything involved in the town. What's the cost, Elaine, to the town? Free.
It's free. No, it's not free. It's time. It's time and effort.
Well, and it's time that the EDC is willing to spearhead and see what we can do with it. Okay. And what is Eric's involvement required for this? We may be asking him a lot of questions.
But might be asking him to sign off on something that would be his responsibility and I'm willing to do all the paperwork I have no problem doing research Eric, do you have any questions?
I mean, looked at this program multiple times to me, the cost benefit isn't there. I mean, you know, you're not there's not enough grant money behind it for it to be worth going after from my perspective. It's mostly doing common sense things the town should be doing anyway. And I don't really think we need some external organization to ultimately give us a little black to tell us, you know, we're managing the town in a reasonable fashion. That's my personal opinion. Obviously, lot of towns are participating in it.
I mean, I when I looked at the list, and that's why I asked. When I looked at the list, I didn't see a ton of things that we could hop on to. And I say that because we are a very small town, we already have narrow roadways, we have a limited budget. I mean so many of these things are they're feel good ideas they cost money. We have a hard enough time getting a budget passed now to put our kids through school and take care of you know hazards like trees and things. I can't imagine you know if we started going after some of these things. It's not that I think it's certainly a bad idea, I just don't know that it's a good idea for us right now.
So what they're asking for is a representative from the Board of Selectmen and they are going to sit there and do all the work. And I know it's gonna come back to Eric somewhat, but I'm asking.
So here's the thing though. We have so many irons in the fire right now with other projects. You're asking for another member of the Board of Selectmen to hop on and there's only five of us. Understood. Looking for a liaison. But the liaison has to go to a committee meeting and right now I can tell you on most weeks and last week was great. I actually got a whole week with no meetings but generally, it's we're doing something two nights a week already.
Find myself personal. I'll volunteer to be the liaison with this group. Thank you, Jeff.
You're welcome, Kathy. Awesome. I know. Just asking. I mean, listen, I keep saying all along Adrian, and I know you believe it too, the more people that get involved in this town, the better off we're gonna be. So when Kathy Compton does our wildflower evaluation,
right, and we do those types of things, it's only gonna benefit the community. And I don't disagree with that at all. I just don't want us to spread ourselves so thin that if Elaine and Kathy are putting in the effort, we need to be putting in the effort too. And I don't want to be haphazard because we made a motion in a feel good idea. If we're gonna do it, need to, you you have to commit to being able to do those meetings and or myself or Scott or Paula, whoever's doing it has to be able to commit to doing those meetings and commit to putting in the effort. That's all. I think that it would only be a question of
Jeff that you would perhaps be at a meeting quarterly. It's not like you're gonna be there every month or every week. You mean we can have a phone call? We can.
All right, I'm in. And who will be responsible for picking the different things that you could be working on out of this list? They'd have to come in front of the board of selectmen. It's not about
Exactly. And And can I just say that there's, I hate to say I disagree with Adrian because I very, very seldom do? But I just wanted to point out that I thought that there were a lot of information here that I looked into. One for instance was land and water body conservation, which I thought that was inland wetlands, I think. And you guys can tell me if I'm wrong. And the farmers market, I think I wanna see that grow. And the environmental, they have offer environmental programs in education and recycling, energy efficiency. I don't know, it just seems like we should find out about it. I'm not saying we have to do it. I'm just saying we need to find out about it. Kathy,
again, I'm not against it. I had a hard time looking at the list and because there's different levels of certification, the bronze and the silver and all that. I had a hard time identifying ones that that would be
I don't wanna say cherry picking, but, know, it's something that I know that we could do as a town. But definitely if we were gonna go for grant, what you're talking about, Adrian? Yeah. The bronze and silver and all that. That's if we were gonna go for Grant. First we have to find out about it. We can't jump into it. We've had to work on this. Yes, willing to work with you and he's jumped on board. So you guys are good to go.
Thank you, Adrian. Dennis, go ahead. Yes, Jeff. I can put you and and and Kathy and Adrian and anybody else who wants to, Eric, in touch with people in Wyndham who can tell you more than you'd ever wanna know about attaining Silver status. Dennis, I'm going to call you. Okay. You call me and I will put you in touch with Dawn Niles. Thank you. She is on top of this and we are right near the top of the pack here. Thank you for your assistance. Our
town council does nothing really except Dothan is a member of the town council. You also
elected a Green Party mayor, so it's a completely different environment down in Wyndham. Let's begin. Hey, hey. I'm Green. Am Green. No, Green
Party. Totally different ballgame. Tom DeVivo is a big Really? Yeah, really. Okay.
So can we make a motion on this? I'm paying for it. Yes.
Let's make a motion on this. Actually I don't think this is on here. Okay.
But we need an appointment, right? A motion for you guys to sign the resolution.
So we have the resolution if you see one. Mean have the resolution to be signed if you're all in agreement with it.
Alright. Make a motion that we sign the agreement for sustainable CT and appoint Jeff McGuire as the liaison to work with Kathy Palazzi and EDC.
I'll second that. Further discussion? All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Okay. Now
the Central Region Tourism District, I believe they had sent an email to Jeff McGuire looking for somebody to be a representative for Andover to work with the Central Regional Tourism District and Patrick Dougherty from the EDC has volunteered to go ahead and be that representative with the with the central regional tourism district. So I don't know who would go ahead and I don't know, Jeff, you would email them back and tell them who it is, who our representative is, or if you want me to do that, or
I know. I'm trying to find the email. Yeah. Amanda sent it to me. Yeah. Yeah.
So all you're trying to do is get somebody appointed to this board for Yep. Yep. For to represent Andover on the on the tourism district board.
Okay. How much tourism do we have in town? We have to develop this right?
We could send to First Farms. They have wonderful chocolate.
Well, Patrick would have to, go to their meetings and, go ahead and figure out what they're looking for from the towns and figure out how the towns can benefit from the tourism district. So he basically is volunteering to go to the meetings and find out exactly what it is it entails.
So motion to appoint Patrick Dougherty to the Central Region Tourism District.
Question. Given that it's EDC really, right, that's sending him, is this really an EDC decision? Does this have to be a Boris Leuchman decision? Well, the email had come from Jeff. It
had been sent to the town asking them, not to the EDC. So the EDC is just saying, we've got somebody. Let's just let them know who this is. So I guess we'll we'll kind of figure out how to how to inform them that Patrick is it and how they get in touch and get information so they can get in touch with Patrick directly. Just give an email to them. I'm only asking as a point of procedure because he's going from your board really as a rep. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.
It really should be your board that does this, not us.
Yeah. And we have. We already did. Congratulations, Patrick. Moving on. Alright. So we'll just figure out how to inform them.
Well, I'll sit there and say, I don't think that I received, unless I received it under a different email address, I know there was a letter with Amanda, there was something that was sent to you sent to Eric or sent to to how did that get to you? Through Amanda
just like it got to you through Amanda. No, that's what I'm saying. So I'm just like, who is it addressed to is what I'm asking about.
Yeah. That stuff usually comes to the first selectman of the mayor typically.
Are mayor? You I am the chief of police so. Probably went to you Jeff. I don't know.
So anyway, I will sit there and I will Figure that out. I will I will send something to them then. Okay, good. If
Jeff's the chief of police, does that mean we put lights on his car? I want them.
Want them in a big way. All right. And then Can we move on?
Well, find one more thing because now that they're I don't know if people have noticed on Facebook Hebron has a got Hebron open is open for business Facebook page. And we would like to do an Andover is Open for Business Facebook page. And Amanda has talked to the group. They have actual team over there in Hebron that's working on it and they are willing to open up their meetings to us so we can go ahead and discuss with them how to go about doing this. So we're going to be partnering with Hebron on this to try to get an Andover's Open for Business
Facebook page too. That's it. Awesome. Great job. Thanks. All right. For D, Website Development Committee. Paula, you want to take this one? Yep.
So our Website Development Committee, we developed the website. It's launched. Yay. Great job to everybody. So we were kind of thinking that maybe we need to shorten the duration of the committee because I think correct me if I'm wrong think it was gonna be a year and a half for the committee so we got the website out there and anybody that has suggestions has been sending their info into Amanda and or Eric. I know Diane's been great with some suggestions and sending that info in. I'm just putting that out there that
Any more that your committee needs to do, Paula, that you guys feel like is left on the table? I mean, I personally think
the websites out there, it's doing great, it's doing its job and as things pop up, know, people are commenting or sending information in and we're adding things or
fixing things so. When you say we are though now we're talking about Amanda and Eric primarily. Yes. Yes. So should we make a motion to disband the committee and give them a well break thank you? That's what I'm suggesting, yes. All right, I'll make a motion that we disband the town website committee with a grand thank you and an awesome job done.
I'll second that. Thank you very much everyone that was involved. And all of the committee.
Yes, it was a joint effort and they all did a great job. Great input, great team. Jeff call a vote. Do I have to call a vote? Yes. We're disbanding a committee.
All right. All those in favor of disbanding the website committee. With a congratulations. Thank you. With our undying love, thank you. Well, let's not go that far. No, it's true. Alright. 4E, Traffic Safety Committee preliminary assessment draft report. It is up on the website. The committee met twice. The committee chairperson put together a tremendous report that everyone should take a look at. Joe did a great job. Talked about it at various different spots within the lake. Eric, the state trooper, myself, and the other four members of the committee all attended all of those two meetings. And if you read it, there are certain things that we have to decide what we're going to do. I think it's probably important that we sit there and look at this for the next budget cycle to see if there's any of these things that we want to tackle, unless Eric thinks that we can tackle some of them now with our current funding.
Eric? I think most of this is future funding. I think we can do the crosswalks that we discussed. We talked about the addition of an additional three way sign where Island meets Lake Road. I think that is definitely doable if the traffic authority, which is all of you, decide it's appropriate. You know, lot of the the other solutions are going to take you know, more effort and money. Anybody have any questions about the report?
Do we have estimates to go with a lot of these suggestions?
No, I started going down the road so to speak with post Jensen Miller's traffic engineer but I think the reality is you know any of the intersection changes we would have to hire a traffic engineer and we would have to come in and we would have to have the intersections actually redesigned and figure out what we can do and exactly where. I think some of the solutions are paint and those are relatively easy to implement. You know, increased signage, things of that nature, we can definitely do without incurring a lot of costs. But when you start talking about reconfiguring a roadway, you know, you're spending some dollars. So no, I don't have hard estimates for that by any means. Okay.
Okay, speed check sign unless anybody has additional questions Jeff, Paula, anybody? No? Okay. Speed check sign.
So that was supposed to be in place already. I'm getting a little annoyed. We've now sent the instrument back to the manufacturer twice. You know, theoretically we're going to have it back in three or four days and it's going to function. But you know.
Is this a COVID issue or are they just behind? What's going on? No, you know, it was
it was they, you know, they quoted the unit and then they sent us something, decided that they had sent us the wrong thing and before we even unpacked it asked us to send it What we originally had was actually the correct unit which we sent back and then they changed it to the incorrect configuration and sent it back to us and when we tried to attach it to the battery none of the wiring matched what the diagram was so I called their helpline and they're like yeah no we gave you the AC unit and I'm like, well, why did they give you that? Oh, I don't know. So, we sent it back, we're getting the DC unit again. So, kind of stupid. In fact, the president of the company called me after the last screw up and you know personally apologized but you know the reality is it's still taken a month and a half longer than it should have to have us a functional unit. Okay. But
that's where we're at.
All right any questions? Nope. Five appointments. Five A, Gabrielle Anderson, alternate member to the In N Wetlands and Watercourse Commission. And B, William Monroe, regular member of the Zoning Board of Appeals.
And correct me if I'm wrong Megan, but William was also agreeing to be an alternate member or a regular member of the Inland Wetlands Commission also, am I correct?
So we don't have any vacancies regular member seats. He did express interest in the commission and we're hoping to speak to him tomorrow night about his interest but we're not bringing his name forward to the Board of Selectmen tonight, just Gabrielle's.
Okay sorry that was my error then. No that's okay.
Okay so does anybody have any problem? I'll read the motion Board of Selectmen would like to appoint the following members of the Inland Wetlands Watercourse Commission. Gabrielle Anderson, alternate. I'll second that.
Okay. All those in favor? Aye. And then five b, the Board of Selectmen would like to appoint the following member of the Inland Wetlands and Water Course Commission, William Monroe regular member. Isn't that zoning board of appeals? It's supposed to be zoning board of appeals that was my error. That is my error. I apologize let me reread it. All three of guys are fired.
Rewrite that. Board of Selectmen or I would like to appoint the following member to the Zoning Board of Appeals, William Monroe, regular member. Second that. All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Resignations A, Theresa Gonnet, Assistant Tom Clerk. Wayne Thorpe, Alternate Member Zoning Board of Appeals, and Linda McDonald, Land Use Board Clerk.
If I did look at the the board of selectman packet and and the resignation from Wayne is for inland wetlands he sent a letter dated August 19 to me that was forwarded to the board so that's a typo on the agenda.
Okay Well, then you're make me read that. So Wayne Thorpe, is he an alternate member of that? He is an alternate member, yes. And that was Inland Wetlands? Correct. Okay. So Wayne Thaw, alternate member of the Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Commission. So do we have to vote on our resignations? We're just accepting them. We're just announcing that they're being done. Okay. We're gonna move on. Town administrators report. Eric.
Okay, so this one was kind of more of a novel than a novella, so I'm not gonna read the whole thing obviously. You know COVID-nineteen the town is doing very well overall even though within the region our numbers were up predominantly because of the University of Connecticut. Political science will be covered elsewhere in the agenda now and Dennis is on to pontificate about that so I won't go into that here. We did realize that after comments from a couple residents that our current zoning regulations as they relate to signs no longer line up with either the federal or the state courts. So that will be changed. We made some temporary changes to what will be enforced on private property. The board has the decision, board of selectmen, what they wanna do on town's property. Paula talked about the website stuff. And as far as public works goes, you probably all aware there's a lot of tree work going on right now. And we're gonna talk later
in the treasurer's report about moving potentially a little bit more money into that to continue doing tree work. We're about to do some guardrail repair in some of the worst areas we have in town. We have a really big backlog of guardrail work to do. We're gonna spend about 20,000 out of town aid road to address some of that now. We have about 120,000 on our list of priority to repair, but we don't have a lot of money.
Quick question on guardrails. Is any of that stuff insurance based?
No, the only damage we have is some relatively minor damage from the storm. Okay. So we're not really gonna be able to claim much in terms of, we have a fund but there's not a lot of money in it right now because the last time basically every time somebody gets in a car crash and damages the guardrail we go after their insurance. Yeah, that's why I was asking. But we've spent most of that. I spent a lot of that last fall doing guardrail repair.
So are we piggybacking on the state bed? Correct. Okay, thanks. And Eric,
the replacement are they are you putting steel or the replacement of wood guardrails? No, we're doing the metal guardrails
because I mean the wood ones just don't seem to hold up all that long. I mean, you know, so we all know we didn't fog seal over the chip sealed roads. Comer is supposed to be in on the twenty first which is next Monday. It's estimated that that's going to take two days. That should be done without road closures. We'll do one lane at a time so we keep the roads open. Paving operations, we're going to be doing shimming. So shimming is basically when you repave a localized area. We're going to be doing a section of Lake Road. We're going to be doing part of Erdoni. We're gonna be doing part of West Street, and we're gonna be doing the extreme top of Bunker Hill, the first major hill on Bunker Hill. There's a lot of other spots that need it, but that's what we've got in the budget for right now. So that should start the last week in September. That will be started basically right after they complete the transfer station because it's the same contractor. We're starting mid to the end of October, we're renting a pothole filling machine called the Durapatcher and I'm going to send Public Works out for basically, you know, almost a month just filling potholes because we have an enormous backlog of potholes to fill.
And it should be a much more permanent patch than what we're typically doing and more cost effective than trying to get hot patch each time. Rail Trail got really trashed this last couple of months. There's been a ton of stuff down on the trail and a lot of hangars that are unsafe. We're working with DEEP to address that. We'll probably do some of it with our crew and some of it will have to be done by DEEP. We are addressing some of the sideline issues at the rail and road interfaces right now as we're doing tree trimming. Is it that really Deebs responsibility?
Yep. So why are we using town stuff people for it?
Because then it'll actually get done. It'll actually get done then, Adrian.
I know, but given the amount of priorities that we have before winter hits. We're talking a very few trees to increase the sight line drastically. Well, he was talking about doing your hangar work too. Well, you know, I, I, we're not,
I think there is a place to use public works on a limited fashion for addressing some of the safety concerns on the trail. I would like to get DEEP to do as much as I can and we have a long stretch of really bad dead trees on the rail trail where there's somewhere around 90 dead ash trees on the trail. We are not addressing that. I mean, they are going to have to come in and do the systematic cutting. But just like we mow the rail trail we have some responsibility to the trail because our town members use it.
That's my philosophy anyway. Has Deep got back to you about Distinctive's offer?
No, they have not and I've bugged him a couple of times. He's contemplating it. Which is annoying for me.
We have in town, I mean given all the different little things that we have going on, do we have a group that's dedicated like volunteers or townspeople that's dedicated to trail work?
So if we were to be honest, most of the trail work that gets done gets done by volunteers. Yep. There's some stuff that can't be done. You know, we're not expecting volunteers to drive down the trail with backhoes, you know, and use chains to pull hangers off other trees, stuff like that. There's some technically volunteers are not supposed to be cutting using any power tools on state property. We all know they do, but the point for town crew is to do those things that the volunteers can't and right now we have some of them that we'd like to address. I was just curious, thank you for the clarification. Yep, transfer station regrading supposed to start in somewhere around the twenty third, something like that. Actually not the twenty third, twenty sixth, twenty seventh. That's being done by Hanes. They were the low bid contractor for the job. They've done a bunch of work for the town too and the quality of their work is pretty good. So that should go pretty well.
We're gonna advertise really, really heavily, really, really big sign down at the transfer station to remind people we may have to close it for a day?
Well, yeah, I mean, we're gonna have to put stuff out on social media and everything else. The only reason I haven't done it so far is I don't know which freaking week they're starting, but we are probably gonna have to close the transfer station for Wednesday so they have a continual shot at completing the project. Okay.
I do have an RFP out right now for grinding all the brush at the transfer station. We haven't gotten anything back in yet from any of the contractors that closes in another three days. Have we looked at just renting a tub grinder ourselves?
No. Wyndham rents a tub grinder instead of having a crew come in. They just rent a tub grinder for two days and have their public works do it.
If you want me to look into that I don't
think that we have anything to load that a tub grinder with Adrian we got a backhoe going I
don't think you need something with more substantial than that, you know.
Well, what do you have any bids in yet on that? Nope. Okay. I just I don't know anybody that I I mean I guess other towns may do it that way but most towns I thought were renting grinders and doing it themselves. Know?
So I put a thing out on the the public works list serve that UConn hosts, and I got about 10 or 12 responses back from towns about what contractors they use for the grinding. And there's not that many of them that do it and we've sent the RFP to all of those. We sent it directly to those people. Okay. Yes we did.
Eric can you ask it may be out of their scope but maybe Distinctive Tree has a day with their grinder?
I asked they're not even remotely interested in doing that that's wrong piece of equipment for the job. Okay. Nice thought. I had hoped
that would get brought up in the meeting. You need a tub grinder.
Yeah, well, he said we might not even need a tub grinder but we I would look into renting a tub grinder and then given what Scott is saying like a 20 or a 30,000 pound excavator with a thumb on it. Yeah, that's what you need.
Okay, all right keep going there. We're gonna figure that one out.
Okay, Times Farm Bridge, DOT finally gave the authorization for the closeout of the project. We're just waiting on the final cost accounting from CME. That's turned out to be a little bit of a cluster because the engineer assigned to our project said, Hey, I got the final authorization from DOT. By the way, I'm quitting. Today's my last day. So CME has to get somebody else from their firm authorized to do the closeout. The really annoying thing is that there's a $17,000 discrepancy in what the final costs are. So, as far as any paperwork I have, we owe the final contractor about $22,000 but we should also get some additional money back from the federal government for their match for that. CME says 17,000 of that were previous cost bad estimations and that we actually only owe about 5,000. So that's got to get resolved. The state has finally done their part and now they're pushing the company to resolve. So, I think it will actually be resolved fairly quickly. We owe somewhere between 5,000 and $22,000 which is a really unsatisfying thing for me to tell you. But because it's the engineering
company's job to review and make the determinations on what are allowable costs and not allowable costs, I just don't have that information. That's something that the engineering company has to work out. Obviously, the contractor's really pissed off about the whole thing because this thing was done in 2017 and they still haven't got paid yet for their final. So they're unhappy that they haven't got their hold back. We have the money to do it, you know, the money's sitting there in the account getting ready to pay it. I just got to get the final amount from the engineering company. I really want to close that freaking project out and be done with it. That's it. Veterans Monument. Jerry's right behind me. One of the things I realized as we started on that project is that really we need to put our hands around everything we need to do at the Veterans Monument and then make a decision whether we want to, you know, what we want to actually do. Because we were starting to do this piecemeal but we really didn't have the cost for everything.
So right now I'm trying to get as much information as I can about all the various different things that are going into it. We got to make a decision whether we keep the existing well or re drill, or just pound the existing well. Got to make a determination whether we're going go with sprinkler systems, whether we're going to add more topsoil and redo the electrical. So that's kind of what I got on that. And did we make that an agenda item?
Did do we need to talk about that, Eric, tonight?
I think we should. So I had sent out with the administrator's report a pretty lengthy section of everything I thought we needed to get done with the Veterans Monument. And, know, Jerry's here with me. And the question is, what is it, how does the board wanna proceed? What other information do you want to have before we make a decision what we wanna do here? Essentially, how do you want to proceed at this point?
Thing is, you know, we got involved with this, me and Eric, and started to test the well, the well's not really great and you could take a shot at an irrigation system working, but that's what it would be taking a shot at it. It probably would keep running but it would probably be better if we put a new well in then we're talking about putting topsoil in there and seeding it in an irrigation system and have an engineering firm, like Eric said, put this on a print so we know exactly where everything is, where the well is, where the new electrical is going to be, where Jerry's new monument is going to be, where everything is located precisely on a print so that everybody knows in the future where everything is located.
What's the issue with the well? Is it volume? Is it reserve? Depth? What? Well, the the well the the well will put out 15
gallons a minute for about twenty minutes, and then it slows right down. So it's telling me that it's it sucked it dry, and it then it'll start to pick up after two or three minutes. Then we tried it and ran it for, you know, an hour at like three or four gallons and it ran fine. So, you know, three or four gallons will cut it for an irrigation system but and it was at, you know, it hasn't rained in, you know, ten weeks, so it's a pretty bad time and so it kept kept going. So you could probably think that it would work, but you know,
Eric is going above and beyond and thinking that we do, we possibly could need a new well. It's an old well and it could be a you know when we checked this only 55 feet deep so it's an old old well that was from the Kramerine.
So you're talking $20,000 in total expenses if I can if I read the information correctly.
That would be Then then we would have, you know, when you come around the corner then everything would be green and we would have a nice print and everything would look nice there. Okay.
Yeah, I suspect so the only thing I've, you know, the town to at this point is the survey. And I think the survey is important because when the state gave this to us, they gave it to us with a compilation survey, which is basically saying, we're not really locating anything. This is generally what it looks like. Here's the borders. We already have one of them. We have a survey and that is underway. And then the question is, do we commit the money to do the project and what does the project include? And what I would say is, I still don't have all the information. I was hoping to have a price from Rick by now of what all the electrical work is gonna do. And then, you know, the other thing we really need to do is when they drilled the well and they put in the pressure tank for the well, it's in a very narrow housing to the point where the, you know, when they drained the thing every year, they pretty much had to lower a plumber in upside down, you know, to work on the thing because you're at a pit that's about two and a half feet wide with a pressure tank in it.
So we really need to put a vault in at the same time. And I feel like what I wanna do is come back to the commission when I have a completed plan with a sketch and all the steps identified before we start outlining, you know, what we're gonna do. Now, the hard part is, and we got Jerry behind me, is that Ron wants to start sometime this fall putting in the, the stonework for the monument. Now, I don't think, because I think the irrigation system will go around that, and I think because the lighting will meet the existing work, we can go ahead with just that part since Ron is doing that without charging the town anyway.
And it's laid out right now in paint. And so we'll have the surveyor when he does the initial survey mark it on the thing so we know where it is and that's where I'm at with that.
So how long will it take you to do the analysis for everything else?
I'm hoping I have that to you in a month, but I don't know exactly how long it's gonna be before I have an A2 survey in my hand Should be I should have that within a month also.
We're paying for an A2 survey of the park? Yep. Why?
Because eventually we're gonna wanna do as builts for everything we do. And you're not getting as builts if you don't have a survey to work from.
Why do we need an as built for the park if we're only talking irrigation isn't going to be on that. The only thing you're talking about is the well. Why wouldn't irrigation be on that? Irrigation's gonna be on it. On an as built?
And the electrical's gonna be on it. The irrigation's gonna be on it. You're never gonna get irrigation on an as built. Nobody does that.
They put a general where the heads are gonna go but when the guy starts putting the stuff in the ground, he's gonna use a device and it literally just pushes it into a hole. So whichever way that thing goes and if he's got a nice loop line because he's not gonna wanna kink it, you're not gonna put Ts in, come they're not back and do an As built for that, that's not realistic. And electrical, again, how much electrical do you have down there? It's gonna be all low voltage if we're smart about it. It's not gonna be 110, it's gonna be low voltage. So you don't need to market. Low voltage is not dangerous to anybody. So why are we spending that money?
How much is it?
You don't want a print of when they put electrical in there and where it is. Right now nobody knows anything about that, the electrical. Only electrical you need to mark is going to the well, that's it. That's not an A2. How much is the cost of the survey? So the survey is $2,500. That you don't need to spend.
Well, I mean, I certainly disagree with you. I wanna know what's town property, and I wanna ensure that we're doing stuff on town property, not on the state property.
So reach out to the state and get the a two for six for that section in the intersection. We already have that.
We already have that. So you already know what's town property and what's not. Next question. Have we already done the surveyor?
We haven't. When did We haven't done the survey. I mean, I have given the guy a purchase order for it. But if you decide we're not going to do a survey, I mean, I'll pay him off for whatever he's done so far and, you know, I guess we can draw pretty pictures of it and proceed from there. But what do you need again? What do you need an A2 survey for?
The Electrical should be low voltage. So it doesn't need to be on a marker. The irrigation is going to be done after the fact and he's never, once it actually grows in, he's not gonna be able to tell you where it is unless he goes around with a ground man and not always gonna do that. And why would you even need to know? You wanna, you know what I mean? It's not very deep, it's replaceable, it's plastic. I mean, you know where the monuments are, you can see them. What are we marking that we need to know?
Okay. So I mean, I wanna know where the electrical is Adrian. It's 100
it's gonna be 110 it's gonna be low voltage DC that's what it should be. And nobody marks that because it's low you do low voltage DC because for groundscapes it's not a hazard to someone that's why you do it. You don't want 110 open voltage down there.
Okay, agent, can you get with Eric and Scott, you three who have the expertise in this field that I like to rely on appropriate people with the expertise in their given field? I would like you to sit there and come to a resolution of what should be important and get done. Okay. Just hold on for a sec. Is
the board wanting me to tell the contractor we're no longer doing an eight room survey?
Is that what you're telling me? I want you to get with Adrian and Scott and determine if it's an appropriate use of those, that 2,500. If you guys I don't mind if you spend it on a survey of that that land. It's not but that's not my I'm relying on Adrian and his expertise. If want us if if you you guys come to it and say that it should be done, then do it. If not, get Adrian to help you draw up the plan. Does the eight does the eight two include It's the
a cartoon, Adrian. There's nothing on it. It's a cartoon. No. Does the eight two that you're talking about, does that include the building for the museum and that that area beyond it? Nope. Everything in the triangle. Nope. Then it's a waste of money.
I will call the contractor and I will cancel the PO and I will pay whatever cost is acquired up to that if that's your your decision I as a
I would say that we need to have a board vote on this
before we stop that. You make a motion then. Let's go.
I motion to hire a contractor to do the surveying work at the Veterans Memorial. Okay, I'll second it further discussion.
There is no need to mark out low voltage electrical, which is what you lose in landscaping. There's no need to mark out because it's nearly impossible to mark out after it's done. I'll send you pictures
of irrigation jobs when they're done. If you could tell me where the irrigation is, God bless you. What about all the wire the wiring that's going to the poles, Adrian? What about all that wiring? For what? Nobody knows where any of that is either. For what for what poles? What if we what if down the road we wanna add some stuff to the into the grounder?
Again, it should all be low voltage, so it shouldn't Do you have an a two survey for your house?
I have an A2 survey because I have a foundation, a septic, you don't have a septic down there, right? I have foundations that I have to deal with. Yeah. There's no foundations down there and high I voltage in the ground. You guys should not have high voltage in the ground.
But we already We'll have to rip out the existing high voltage in the ground. We're gonna rip The out existing lights are all high voltage.
Right, right, exactly. If you're talking about redoing the landscaping down there anyways, which is what you're talking about and you're talking about putting in irrigation, you're gonna have to pull them out anyways. They probably weren't done right in the first place. More than likely they're not 18 inches.
So Eric and Scott have done a lot of work on this.
I understand that but again, he's gonna take it, the A2 survey guy is gonna take a guess on the electrical. He's not walking around with a ground sounder. He's gonna say point A, point B suggested locations for electrical. He doesn't know where it is. He's assuming that someone went a to b.
Is that all that you're requiring, Adrian? To make this good
for yourself? No. That's my point is that he's gonna guess at the electrical because he you don't have a plot plan for how it was done. So he's gonna guess at it. He's not gonna actually go out there and look for it. There's no unless he's walks around with a metal detector and tries to take a shot at it. No. We can we can call somebody and have them find out where the electrical is, right? Yeah, so but you I'm trying to understand why you need it if you do this correctly. If we do low voltage like we're supposed to on all of these monuments, right? Yeah. Go to low voltage like we should be and then you don't have the you don't have the concern. The only thing that should be 110 down there is that well or probably would be two forty is the well.
That's the only thing. Know the fact that it was done a different way doesn't mean it was done the correct way. I'd rather see you spend the money replacing the electrical that's in the ground because you're gonna run a risk of hitting it whether you try to find it or not. You might as well start from one end and pull it out and replace it with 110. Do all of the lighting at once. Spend the 2,500 on converting us to low voltage everywhere so it's done correctly and do that in coordination with redoing because they talked about you know they wanted to recompost and put if you're talking about putting irrigation in that also means that you're talking about reconstituting
that soil which means you're gonna hit that electrical. You're gonna have to take it all out anyways. So you're talking about doing an A2 survey on electrical that you're then gonna pull out to fix the greenscape. So you're literally trying to find stuff that you're gonna remove. Spend the money on putting the stuff back correctly rather than spending it on marking stuff that you're gonna pull out is all I'm saying.
All right. So can we come to a compromise on this and and when
well, no, you're gonna have to vote on this. You already made. It's not spending 2,500, that's my problem. It's spending it on something that you're literally gonna pull out in the process of doing this whole. Everything you're talking about, you're gonna end up pulling it out. All right. Anybody else? Paula, Jeff, you have any comments?
Yeah. Jeff, what are your thoughts? Because this is way over my head. But I understand what Adrian is saying that if you're pulling it out, it's not money well spent. So Jeff, what are your thoughts?
Oh, it's just I've just been listening and I'm really up
up to speed on the subject to be honest. Don't need an a two to play so well, even if you put a new one in. You don't need an A2 for anything that you're talking about doing, not one thing. It's not a requirement for the building department, I can tell you that.
Doctor. So we're going to tear out we're going to tear all the lighting circuits as far as this as part of the You're gonna have to anyways because they're talking about reconstituting the soil down there. So you're gonna have Well, after 18 inches, they're gonna be far enough down. Yes. If they want to take all the tops out and put new tops If it's PVC or buried conduit should be if it's rigid conduit could be six inches. But if it's
PVC and it was but it was probably put in when there wasn't a requirement to put down marker tape like there is now.
Yeah, you see why BD anyways, if you go and excavate it. Right.
Well, that's the problem though. They're gonna tell you the start point and the end point, but they don't know the in between. All they're gonna say is it's buried somewhere in this lawn. Good luck.
We're gonna kill the circuits anyways if you're gonna excavate. Right.
But you're gonna end up pulling it all out and doing it with one ten. If you're talking about redoing everything down there and adding even more stuff, we never should have had one ten in there in the first place. We're gonna need one ten for the lights.
No. Yeah. Low voltage, you're never gonna get the the current is too high to get the the wattage of those lights. Not You're gonna get enough.
Global to jpg you're gonna need one time. Now that they've gone to now that they've gone to LED you absolutely can. I disagree on that one.
I'll send you to my lighting guy. Three hundred five hundred wall lights. It's too much current. Oh god. No. You're not gonna wanna do that. You're gonna split that up. Okay. So since we have some You're not doing wattage. You're doing lumens is what you're looking for and the lumens efficiency on l c LED is way higher than it used to be. In the last seven years, it's doubled. So
Okay. Jeff Murray, since you are the arbiter of this and Paula and I need some guidance. How do I get this?
Because you're the middle ground. I was trying to stay quiet. I know. That's why we asked you.
Jeff, it's up to you to get us out of the colonial days here. So
what's the reason for the survey? Eric, just one more time, like 40,000 foot view.
So here's what I want. You know, I want, if we're gonna be committing a fair amount of money of town projects, I want it to be on a piece of property we surveyed to begin with and when we're all done, I want as builts where all the major stuff is on that property. So that's what I want. Why do you want that? Why?
Well, I could tell you why because I've hit in doing construction or probably my job I've we've hit things that weren't on maps.
Right, but they're not gonna go find me a lot of things on duck I've hit I've hit four forty and all kinds of stuff in duck banks. Yeah. But you're not gonna find they're not gonna go find every piece of electrical on an a two survey. They're not gonna do it. I'm just telling you right now for $2,500. They are not paying someone to come out with a ground sensor and find all that stuff. So just
one more question for Eric is just how much of this project has been completed to date in your estimate, your estimate, your estimate estimation?
The survey as far as I know, they haven't come out and done any physical surveys. They've done the map work probably zero zero zero that appeals been expended.
And and no offense to Eric, but I'm surprised that you signed something for $2,500 without running that by this cost first. Why? Why?
Because this is a town project that we've, we approved doing the monument. We didn't approve doing an A2 survey. That's a whole another ballgame. Honestly,
Adrian, what I was trying to do is speed up the process and not wait to come back to a board of selectmen meeting, then get approval to do the A2 survey, then come back a couple months later with the next step. But you know what? I was wrong on that. I'll take my lumps. I'll tell the guy we're not doing the A2 survey. I'll pay off whatever it takes to do. And, you know, then we can proceed.
When Ron comes when Ron comes and he's gonna start to do the work and that's the time to put the irrigation in.
Actually no. You want to talk to figure out if we're we need to make a decision as to whether we're reconstituting the soil or not because if we are, you're not going to do the irrigation until after that soil is reconstituted. Because according to the according to the stuff that we heard, the top so many inches of soil is complete garbage. It was it's got too much sand and silt. Do you remember that meeting? Right, we're gonna add soil to the top Adrian. But you can't add without taking something away. Otherwise, you're too high and you won't be able to continue in the We won't be too high anywhere. We we've already gone over that. Who'd you go over that with? The people that gave us the prices. For soil?
Yeah. They they already told us that we don't we don't have to worry about whether or not we're adding too much or or doing it or taking some away. The ground levels in in in areas won't be affected. None of the stuff will be affected by adding topsoil over the top of that.
Do talk to about this? I mean, it's surprising. The
people that were involved with the the quote. True. I'm asking.
What's that lady's name Eric? We got a quote from Randazzo. Randazzo? From Juan Visson so far.
Okay I'm just I would tend to disagree with that and until somebody's gone down there with a rotary laser and checked grade I don't think they can give you an honest answer. Just gotta tell you if they haven't gone down with a rotary then they're guessing, you know.
Okay. So where are we at this? I don't know. We're we're not in a good spot here. No.
We're not. I'm not trying to be a pain in the butt. I'm not. Just hate Jeff hates spending money on software. I hate spending money on public works projects of any kind where we're not spending it efficiently. We're doing this backwards. Like Jeff, like Murray said, we're gonna shut off the circuits anyway. So it doesn't matter where the electrical is, you know, and you're gonna have to change it up. Whatever you do. Even if you decide to keep the 110 on the light pole, maybe you don't keep it on the smaller stuff but you want it on the flagpole, right? That would be the only thing that there'd be any question to my mind but generally you can do the flagpoles too because you don't do the light from the ground, can run it up the inside of the pole and have it come down instead of up. Okay,
so as a board, can I take a pulse? Are we all willing to spend the $20,000 on this project? I mean, I understand it's going to have to go into the next budget cycle, but are we willing to start from scratch on that area within the town? I am because I'm not. Not given the amount of roadwork we have and tree work and community center and all the other stuff in the pipeline, my So we're one one. I'm asking the rest of the board members because I believe that is the most visible spot for our community. It's that center, it's that bridge. That's what people drive through Andover, and that's what they see. It's the first thing you see. You come around the corner. Scott, are you willing to invest when the next budget cycle comes up on actually doing this correctly? I am. Okay. Paula. Paula? I'm still mulling it over. Go to Jeff.
I want to get some more information. I want to go sit down and talk to Scott and maybe I'll get a get picture of what's going on. I'm I'm not not gonna gonna make a $20,000 decision in 2020. No,
heck no. And listen, I will gladly go down there and walk it with anybody that wants to. I will bring a rotary laser and we can check grade differences and see what kind of variance you have from A to B. I will volunteer to do that. But if we're gonna, I don't not see the purpose of doing a survey for $2,500
for something we haven't even committed to yet. All right, then we're all willing to sit there and evaluate. So Eric. Oh, all right.
Adrian, would you be willing to commit to this tonight if we didn't do the survey? Commit to what? Commit to the project. The $20? No.
No, I honestly listen, it's not that I don't agree. It's a place I'd love to spend $20. It's that I know all the stuff that didn't get into this year's budget that we still need to do. I mean, on a Scott, you're on a committee right now that's gonna be looking for what? $450,000 we don't have right now to build a community center? On top of the $4.50 we do have. That's gonna be a hard swallow. I mean how much of this, you know, we've got a couple million in roadwork just roadwork. It's it's it's we've done a lot of great things for that for that area down there and you know Jerry's working on doing some more stuff I get that but there has to be a happy medium we can't keep spending money on a park that looks good Doesn't get a lot of one on one use we use it for ceremonial things and we use it for parades and stuff But beyond that, you know, I want to see us listen if that park is that important Let's do a fundraising thing for it. Let's do something for a park beautification. We'll put a big sign down there with a like the church does put a big sign down there with a thermometer and start raising money.
But to go back to the town and say, hey, want another $20 for that. That's gonna be a tough sell, think. Harder than I think you guys realize, but I could be wrong.
All right. So what are we asking Eric to do? No survey? Yes or no? Did we make a motion on that? I seconded it, I thought. Let's vote on this. We voting to have the survey done or not? All those in favor? Aye. I'll vote aye. All those opposed? Aye.
Oh, come on, Jeff. You got to do something. You got to say no. All right. Thank you. All right. Just because I don't have enough information, I wish No, understood. Listen, I I to be really honest, Adrian is extremely knowledgeable on this and I will lean on his expertise. But Adrian, I will tell you, you gotta get with Eric and you gotta get with Scott. You gotta find a solution for that spot of land because it is important just for the eye appeal of our community. It's in dire need of help. Okay. So let's
get together before the next meeting and get a picture of what we need to do.
So obviously, we're not gonna have any kind of drawings because we're not gonna have a fucking survey. Excuse my Woah. Woah. That was inappropriate. Woah. Let me finish, then you can have you can say whatever you want. So We're on a public call. Want me to do to proceed now? Are we just putting this on hold? Are we giving Jerry the authorization to continue and Ron Bisson with the paperwork they were planning on doing? Or are we telling them to be on hold? What are we doing? Eric,
we already approved that. You can move forward with Jerry in getting agent Orrin monument worked on. We're going to have to work on survey or how we're going to draw plans for what we're doing moving forward. We will move that park forward. Okay? So all that asking, all that's being asked for now is don't spend the money on the A2 survey.
Okay, I will tell the contractor and I will back out of that. That's fine.
All right. Eric, if you want to reach out to me offline, I will take time to go down there and walk with you and see if we can come up with a solution. If you have time, that might be good too.
Yeah. But, you know, we need Paula, we need Jeff because everybody's voting, Adrian. Let's come up with a solution. All the time that me and Eric spent down there this summer is now, you know, hung in the balance because you I'm guys voted
not trying to throw wrenches at your idea. I'm just I'm I'm asking the questions that somebody should've asked a while ago. You know? And the problem is when you go to get a bid from someone, they're never gonna tell you that you shouldn't do something because they want you to spend money with them. You have to be just a little bit
Let's move on to the next topic because I am still on seven.
Eric Right and that's in my administrator's report so I turn it back to you. All right let's go to old business And we have the town personnel policy.
We're gonna skip that. Can I skip it, Eric? No, why don't we just vote to accept it and be No, done with we accept it. Somebody make a motion. Let's go. Make a motion to accept the town's new personnel policies which we've all had for months on end and Eric has spent a ton of time on. Okay. I second. All right, discussion.
Eric, what were the latest changes made to that just so we know? So there were two things. One, you asked me as a board to go back in and put in the ability for a person to take half the cost of the medical insurance in lieu of adopting the medical insurance. That is in the personnel policy. I also sent it to the town's attorney that deals with personnel issues, whose name is escaping me as a moment for review and I made some changes based on their commentary.
Did we have any pushback? Did it get kicked over to the union for consideration at all? It has not gone to the union yet. So once we approve it, you'll send it to them? Yep. Okay.
Okay. Any other questions? Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The Community Connectivity Grant, Eric, when is that going to get started? I know they're moving it along, but when's the stake going to move through its project?
I don't have a date when they're going to be done with the construction of the first phase. And they will not release the letter to the town stating that they will grant us a permission to work in the towns right away until they complete the first, the DOT completes their phase. So we're sitting, they're sitting on that. They've been sitting on it since, you know, end of April, basically.
Okay. Is the DOT still saying October for completion on their side?
They are, but it's in a sense, it's gonna be too late for this construction season anyway, realistically, because that means the earliest we're gonna get a letter is October, you know, and then we gotta get it to the contract. We gotta get the money from the connectivity project. We gotta turn that back in to the connectivity portion. We gotta get the funding established and then we can send it out to bid. That's the or to award the contract, I should say.
Well, a question. Can we fund if we we already know we have approval for the funding, correct? Yes. Can we fund it and while the process is being drawn out, can we do our what we need to get done on town funds and then repay the town?
I don't think so because I don't think we can get credit for work done prior. It's like we can't go back and get paid for things, you know, that we haven't act that we've done prior to when they allowed us the money. Don't think we can start early.
I just thought given that we'd already had approval for the product project, that was my
Alright. So if we can't do that, then Eric, just as an attempt to pass five Mr. Mandeville on that one, can you find out from the state if we could do that? Because that way you could get some work done, but obviously we're not going to do it if there's a risk that we won't get paid for it. If you could just ask that question that might get that done.
So are you basically willing to allow me to sign a contract with a contractor for essentially $300,000 without being absolutely sure the state's going to reimburse us? Is that the No,
we're not willing to do that, but we're willing to have you ask the question if we did some of the work in advance, would it count under the contract?
Given the pre approval process we already had, we're basically in submission, right? Yep.
Eric, if there is even a slight chance that we won't get reimbursed for $1 then you don't do it then you're not doing it no but doesn't hurt to ask I can ask the question doesn't hurt to ask okay let's go so COVID update and town hall reopening
Eric. That's on there because it's been on there for the past four months or five months. The town hall is open by appointment only other than the town clerk is open by ringing the bell for transfer station stickers. So far it's that's worked reasonably well. I see no reason to change personally.
Yeah. We're somewhere around 800. So we got maybe give or take 400 more stickers to go. Right?
Okay. So if you don't have any problem with it, that's how we'll continue to go. Are we still on par with surrounding towns?
Yes. There's think I know of only one town that's really reopened like fully and then as in not by appointment only. Most of them are doing something similar to what we're doing. Great.
All right. Storm recap. New business, I'm sorry. Is there anything else, Eric, that we're missing from old business? It's not on there, so we're not doing it. New business. Let's go through the storm recap.
I sent you all a copy of my notes on what I thought we did right and wrong with the storm. Do any of you have any commentary on that?
Thought you guys did you and Amanda and the town did an excellent job keeping me personally informed with your updates. I thought that was extremely helpful. Thank you. Good job. Upcoming road maintenance projects.
I talked about that in my administrator's report, so I don't think I need to hit on it here unless you guys have specific questions.
No? Well, I'll just sit there and go. Eric did send us some additional road maintenance programs. Had gone on Eric and I drove a portion of the town last Friday. We sat there and looked at conditions of the roads. I asked him to sit there and do some updates for you as far as how much potential money it would take us to get through various types of projects that we saw that need work done, so culverts, roads, guardrails, and so on. If you read that, it's very interesting. It's something we need to take into account when we do budgets and we try to determine how best to spend our money to do all these projects we need to do.
Steep grant application, it's out, Eric. Yep, steep. We've applied for it. We haven't heard back from you yet. We should hear back in another couple of weeks. It'll be a pretty quick approval process or not.
Okay. Veterans Monument Park, we've talked about it at length, but we do have Jerry in the back. So Jerry, is there something that we need to sit there and discuss related to the Agent Orange issue or are we all moving forward? Is it all good, Jerry? Or there's something you need to talk to us about. Well, on
August 28, on August 28, I signed off on the monuments and no one's monument has got those we're in the works okay right now
the end date I have to set an end date so we set an end date for 03/29/2021, which is welcome home Vietnam Veterans Day. Okay.
Now we're going to watch the weather. So when it gets within a couple of weeks of the twenty ninth, still give us enough time to do up a brochure, contact the papers, let them know when we're going to do this. And I'd like to do it in the evening. So the time change is March 14 to daylight savings time. And so I figured probably around 06:00 on the twenty ninth, I don't think we're going to be there for more than a half hour, forty minutes.
Okay. Let us know what else we need to do to help you get that accomplished. All right. So I know that Jerry also looked at a howitzer for a monument, and I understand that that was taken. So that is off the table. Go from there. F, consideration consider transition of Beautification Committee to Park and Grounds Committee. Do you have do you have a motion on that? There we go.
I did make a motion so for the record the Beautification Commission basically resigned not because they were pissed because they just didn't feel like holding meetings and do all the things committees are supposed to be doing. What they really want to do is plant flowers for the town, you know, and water stuff and they're happy to continue them But Joan had suggested that what the town really needed was basically not a beautification commission, you know, but something along the lines of, you know, a parks and grounds committee with a bigger mandate. So I'm just bringing this to your attention. You can make a decision that you think that's reasonable or not, you know.
So we're going to potentially appoint a new committee to oversee the parks and grounds. No. Who said no? Did someone just say no?
I didn't say no. Okay. Does any does the rest of the board feel that that's appropriate? I mean, we have so many committees right now. Scott, go ahead. No. I would I would say that we need to see something in writing of what everybody's gonna be doing.
You know, what their mission is, why they wanted to do this. Well, they're they they they
it's not that they wanna do it. It's that they didn't wanna do this stuff. They wanted to stick to what they original mission was. Well,
from what I understood it they said that all they're doing is planting flowers so they don't need a committee to plant flowers. So they recommended something else.
Whatever that may be. So what so all I'm saying is what what are they saying that they want to take care of?
No. So so Jonas basically said they want to keep watering stuff and they want to keep planting flowers. They don't want to be a committee. They don't want a lot of responsibility. They just want to do what they always do and not be bothered, basically which is fine you know they're volunteers and we appreciate it. Joan had suggested that it would make more sense to have an actual parks and grounds committee you know to make some of the more structural decisions about what we did. You can adapt to that recommendation or you cannot. I mean, it's up to you. It's not, I'm not telling you, you need a parks and parks committee. I'm just putting this forward because she asked me to. I
spoke to Joan as well, but what I do think we need to do is what Scott said, is we need to sit there and determine what this new committee would be all about. And we probably need to make sure that we can staff it. I would sit there and say let's push this off until our next meeting to determine if we can get it staffed and if we can give them a mandate.
Well, and and I I I just I'm not trying to nitpick here, but I I think in all fairness, Joan's point was that the Beautification Committee had gone beyond what was originally asked of it and was doing things like working on irrigation and things like that that really wasn't what their original intent was and that was kind of her point. So in all fairness to them they felt like they were outside the scope of what it wasn't whether they wanted to or not wanted to they felt like they were outside of their mandate so.
All right, I get it. So I don't think that it's probably appropriate for us at this individual meeting to sit there and establish a new committee without putting forth what the mandate's gonna be. So let's table this and move this to our next meeting and let's move on to something next. The fiber optic connection at the town hall.
Side note, if you're gonna, we're gonna do that. Let's put a list together of all the properties we would talk about encompassing for that. Okay. Thanks, Jerry. Fiber optics, Eric, is it bleeding?
So the physical connection is completed. Completed? It's been tested all the way through for throughput. It's finally turned on with CEN. All we got to do now is switch the bloody firewalls around and connect through that instead of the I'm hoping that gets done this Thursday. I'm I'm trying to get Ed to get in here and make the physical connections, him and Lance, who's the network administrator. So I'd hope to say we were on the fiber at this meeting, we are not.
CIP report, well, let's go this way. Let's ask one quick question on that because it's holding up. What's the timeline? What are they telling you it's gonna get done?
So when I talked to Ed last week, he was hopeful he was going to be in last Thursday and did it. He has not. I haven't talked to him since then, but I will reach out to him this week. I'm hoping we get it done this week.
Okay. All right. The CIP report for Tom buildings and properties.
I sent that to the board. If you have any comments, let me know. Anyone have any comments? No, let's put it on next month's agenda. Brand new truck for the volunteer fire department. Which one they got to?
So we haven't met since the last time the fire department took possession of the tanker. So the tanker is in, they've been running around madly road testing, and training people on its use. So as far as I know it's pretty close to being in service right now. They got the gator in as well. Correct. Okay. The Public Library mural restoration.
So we initially hired an individual from Mansfield to do the gross restoration of the mural, by removing the graffiti. There is some touch up needed to be done. Sarah Whale and the original artist will be in this week and next week at some point. She's I think estimated it's going to take her about two and a half days to retouch up the mural. So that should be completed, within the next couple weeks. Several other members of the community have volunteered to reapply the two coats of varnish over the top of it since we disturbed some of the department.
Does the insurance company require us to seek restitution for that?
I don't know so far we haven't even spent enough to be over our deductible. We should seek restitution at least for that then.
Yeah, I mean, I've talked to the resident state trooper, you know, they initially, know, his initial thing was that, his initial estimate we put in was for it basically being about $5,000, it will be less than that. So we should, I don't see any reason why we won't end up with restitution out of this. Okay.
So just so I understand this, this is restitution from the perpetrators. Yep. Right. We're all on the same. Yes. Attorney O'Brien, this will be submitted to the public attorney's office and the state attorney's office when this comes up for hearing?
Yes, it will. Okay. And you'll be notified when, they, you know, probably take a, you know, a plea of, whatever.
So it's a minimum of $5,000 because knowing how we do things, there will be additional costs that will come up that we will have to incur and we need to get all of our potential money.
Well, I hope so. I mean, I don't know. It depends on what they have to offer and what the court wants to do with them and what the prosecutor wants to do. I think we should send Diane in her Mrs. Claus outfit.
If that's what helped the Sultan of Andover, then we're going to do it. I would be glad to accompany her
and, you know, and, see what we can do. Alright.
Dennis, when this goes before the judges, is do they usually do multiples of the restitution? No.
No, it's individual and they, know, I, I'm not a criminal attorney. I haven't done criminal law in a long time, but, The answer is no.
I don't think so. I think there will be, you know, probably please, on whether these guys have, experience in the criminal court, they will probably apply for, you know, certain programs that will enable them to, you know, not have a record after a while and, you know, that that will we'll have an opportunity to,
to comment on that. They allow a victim impact statement even on that type of stuff where we can seek to ask for certain things. So that's why I brought this up. Yeah, haven't
been in court on one of those things for ages. I don't know what they do with those anymore, but it's, you know, we will be notified. We'll have an opportunity to weigh in.
All right. Okay, thank you, Dennis. Curb guards at the public library, the library board has requested that curb guards be put into the parking lot to protect cars from damaging the mural and hitting the library. At one point in time, Adrian and I met with Kathy Deroziers and Diane Grineer down at the library to talk about it. We talked about it. We had agreed to sit there and try to move this forward. But I know there's some hesitation. So Eric, can you explain to us the pros and cons of the bumpers that are being requested?
And did you have a chance to sit down with them prior to this meeting to see if you could find some middle ground with public works in them?
I'm not sure there is middle ground. I mean it really comes down to if you're gonna make the bumpers effective, you're gonna have to put them out far enough so that when a vehicle slides back to their rear tires or up against the bumper, you still have three feet clearance between the buildings. I mean, that's where you put them in and that puts them about seven feet away from the building, which to me does not seem like a great idea just because it means there's an awful lot of hand juggling, you know, and there's more limitations on the parking lot. But the Library Commission feels adamant that, you know, they can't possibly protect the mural without them. I mean, I think from a protection standpoint, Ballards are more effective, but at the same time they offer a lot more visual noise when you're looking at the mural. So I guess what I'm saying is there's not really any great solution. They asked me to authorize it and I said I didn't think it was appropriate, but I thought, you know, ultimately that's a Board of Selectmen decision, not me. So here we are. Well, think the second part of that was that they
do we have a price on Ballard's? Like they had someone that was gonna donate them, think and donate actually putting them in or something. They had some methodology for doing this on a very cost effective basis I think that was also one of their points.
So it's not a cost issue the library committee will foot the bill for it. So it's not costing the town directly. The friends of the library will pick up whatever costs are associated. It's simply a question of do we allocate the time to shovel the thing out every time it snows? Do we add, you know, more surface area that can't be handled by a machine but can be handled, you know, get shoveled by hand? That's really the question.
Do the if you put Ballard's, it's more effective, but it still doesn't solve the shoveling problem. Is that correct?
Well, the thing about ballards is ballards because it's the bumper that hits the ballard. So the ballard can be put right three feet away from the building as opposed to a bumper which has to be considerably farther from the building to be effective. That's really the difference between the two but ballards stick up a lot higher and visually, you know, if you're viewing the mural, that's a disadvantage.
So if the current parking spaces which are drawn, you're telling me that the library couldn't put the parking curb or guard at the end of the park current parking space that's outlined there?
Oh, you could but it wouldn't solve your hitting the building issue because that's only three feet away from the building and any vehicle backing up can still hit the building before the bumpers hit, right? Anybody with a decent sized truck is gonna hit the building, you know, prior to coming into contact with them.
My sarcastic comment is someone like Adrian who has a truck does not read. I'm sorry it was sitting there it was totally there. That was good I like that.
You're right I don't I use the internet I don't go to the library.
So I'm sorry. I digress. I live in the twenty first century. It's 10:30 or whatever it is and it's getting late.
For somebody in your age, I will tell you what it is.
Will tell you that Come on, Adrian. I will tell you, the library committee would very much like to get these installed. They feel I mean, the issue of shoveling to me is yes, they have to get out of their truck and shovel part of that library anyway. We're asking them to shovel another 10 feet.
Well, no, it's more than 10 feet, Jeff. You're talking about shoveling seven feet wide by the whole length of that building. It's what 20 something feet, 25 feet? You're three passes on a 25 foot long run, it's gonna be closer to 75 feet.
Okay. So they have to shovel 25 and a half feet or 30 feet. Times three.
Times three. The shovel's not seven feet wide, Jeff. The shovel's, you know, on a good day, 22 inches. Okay. So that's the issue.
So are we gonna put a physical fitness standard on for public works so they don't ruin their back doing this on top of the front walk and the sidewalk. Where else do we shovel, Eric?
Well, we shovel the town hall. We shovel the library steps. We do some shoveling in front of the fire department. You know, obviously we shovel the sidewalk to public, you know, the front of public works. There's not a real lot else we hand shovel. Do we have
one of the smaller snowblower setups like a like a Toro?
A Toro like a rubber unit or something? We do not. We do not own anything of that sort.
Is it worth considering? I mean we're adding I know this this doesn't sound like much to anyone looking at it and I get it but given the quantity that we're now looking at overall this may sort of be the straw that broke the camel's back, you know.
So what I would say is that eventually if the connectivity grant project goes in and we get the sidewalks in the front of the library there might probably will be enough sections of sidewalk we're gonna end up, you know, plowing that some sort of snowblower makes sense. I wouldn't have bought it until we had that in but you know. And how much is that piece of equipment cost?
$3,500 for commercial two stage with an feed. I just bought one from my buildings at Womanic. We do 390 feet of sidewalk. There you go. $2,500.
Yep. All day every day. Has a commercial transmission so if you get something stuck in it it doesn't have shear pins. There's no shear pins to replace it's got a commercial training.
All right anybody else have any comments? Because we need to vote on it, I am going to sit there and make a motion. Eric, I'm not sure you have that in the motions, do you? You don't? No. Okay. I do not. I'm going to make a motion that we authorize the library committee to install their curb guards at the public library in front of the mural. I second that. Who seconded that? Scott. Scott. Good for Scott. Okay.
Scott's on it tonight. That's like his fifth or sixth one so. Good. He's on fire. Alright. Any, any discussion?
Eric, what so I mean I know you and I talked about this after Jeff and I had the meeting but there was no opportunity to sit down with the library folks and try to see if there's some middle ground on this?
I mean, I've gone around the bend with the library folks a bunch of times on this going back the last four months. Don't think one more sit down with them, you know, we just disagree on the approach, but you'll make a decision and that's what we'll do.
Okay. The guards go in, there's an, I mean, I know that driveway pretty well. So there's enough room for people to back out and
Well, you tell us. You just said you know the library that parking lot really well. Is there enough room? I don't I'm I'm trying to visualize it.
Well, I I I would believe the question is really not. If you put them where Eric believes they need to be put, you would be moving the parking space back three feet, four feet, Eric? Yeah, somewhere in there. Yes. If you put them where the library committee wants, they just want to put them at the end of the current parking space. They may not be effective there, that's the issue. They're gonna The library make that determination of location?
That's what they told you and I. You want to ask Diane Greiner, she's right there in the black square.
Yeah, I guess I'm not clear. So they're going to be three feet from the building where the just where the mural is or they're going go all the way down
past the mural? Just where the mural is. I don't think they're going all the way. I believe there were only five of them they wanted to know. So maybe we just have to put something on those parking spaces that says like small cars only or something.
But the question is, are you if you sit there with a library committee and you say that the curb is not effective unless it's placed here, that's one thing. Because right now there's lines drawn in the parking spots and they anticipated putting the curb at the end of the aligned parking spot. If Diane's on the call, can we just have her chime in? I really would like some public input on this. Amanda, can you sit there and see if Diane Greiner is on her spot and ask her? She just unmuted.
There she is. I love your hair, Diane. Can you help us out with this just a little bit please?
Sure. What do you want to know? Have you been listening to the conversation? Absolutely.
Okay. So Eric has a concern about placement. Do you have that same concern or have you guys already thought about this? And I mean, it's possible you brought it up. Unfortunately, the conversation was a while ago and I don't remember it. I don't know if Jeff does, whether that was part of our conversation. I don't believe it was. I know we talked about the shoveling being a concern. I think that's a bigger issue we have to solve on public works side. But as far as placements, are you understanding that if they're placed in the current end of spot location, it may not guarantee you this walking space that you want for that lower entry?
Yes, I understand. Well, Eric was talking about trucks backing in. I don't know how many trucks back in there. Not many, if any. You know, they're mostly small cars. And we we Now we're stereotyping. I was gonna say they don't read, but Readers. Diane has Readers.
Trucks go in, they pull it no nobody backs into those parking spaces. I.
Okay. Okay, we'll start there. Also, we find that, you know, the cars, again, we realize that, you know, from the bumper to the tires, you know, you got that three or four feet. But most people I know when I pull into a spot that has those concrete bumpers, I am not pulling my tires all the way up there. I'm worried about the undercarriage of the car. I'm stopping way before that. So I don't think that they need to be put three feet back from the walkway. Okay. Because people like I say, you don't drive up till the tires hit those bumpers. You don't?
I do. I I do too. I guess so do I. But I have a truck and I don't I a car that has a you know?
But then you guys don't go to the library, so don't worry. No. No. We don't. A low car is hit
those bumpers. Yeah. A low car. Yeah. A low car will hit the bumpers. A low car will hit those bumpers. Are you doing like a standard, like, inch belt,
bumpers? Is that what we're doing? Something like that? Seven or eight? Yeah. Those concrete ones. You know, I I don't know what they They're about Six, seven, six inches or so, four, five feet, six feet maybe wide.
So your intention is to put them and and you won't worry about whether or not somebody is over them, you know, at this point.
No. In fact, I've been taking photos of cars that park now. They don't go up to the walkway. Cars are, you know, considerably back from the walkway.
Worst Okay. Case scenario, if they start going over it, we'll have to drill them and put in some flippy flags or something. Don't know.
Diane I'm thinking, you know, how hard are these things? There's just a couple of pins that anchor them in. If this becomes a real issue, we could always move them four feet out from the the walkway.
Yeah. If if you remove remove them in the first year or two, yes. But it depends if he puts them generally, they either anchor unit in so they can be removed at some point or they epoxy the bolts in so they cannot be removed. It just depends on what they do for an install. So a couple different ways to do it.
How many can epoxy them? What's that? They always epoxy stuff into, right, tar, cement,
anything. Yeah. They like sometimes they do an expansion bolt though and the expansion bolts are great if you take them out in the first year. If you don't, they're not coming out. It'll make it'll make a mess of the concrete or the the tar. So maybe just talk to the, you know, whoever's putting them in if, you know, that they could be moved if need be whatever method they use. We could do that.
And Diane you feel like where we're where you're thinking about putting them
people will be able to back out and get in and out of spots okay in the driveway. They're talking about using the spaces they currently have so yeah they wouldn't have a problem if they put them where Eric is then it might be a different conversation. There's still a lot of room there beyond the
You know those people in those small cars though they're not as used to turning as tightly as the rest of us carpool are though so it's maybe a little harder for them.
Oh I don't know I've been driving for a long time I think I can drive as well as you Adrian. No. No. I didn't suggest my car wrong. I sent some of those people.
Maybe Paula, for instance. Yeah. He he that was a dig to me, Diane, not you. Oh. Yeah. I think we're agonizing over this. Let's, Let's call a vote. Come on. Let's call a vote. Alright.
So the motion was made to sit there and allow the library committee to install their curb guards. Diane with bated breath waiting.
I thought we had this back in June when Adrian Hi. First like been met with us and said, yes, go forward with it. And so yes, I am waiting with baited breath worms on my tongue.
Okay, Jeff, you were gonna say something. Yeah, I just want to make sure that we are we are gonna put these at the front of the parking lot, right? We're not going to put them three feet back, correct? Right.
Okay, because when I was looking at the I looked at the overhead view and we start moving cars back, it looks like you almost impede the handicapped areas on the other side. So I would just be worried that cars would be what handicap area.
Well, in fact, there's handicapped there. I never saw it on the other side of the library. There's some handicapped spots. No. There's no handicapped spots in front of the mural. Handicapped spots on the other on the other side to get around. There's only going to be five of them.
Okay. Diane, how many are there going to be five.
They go from the stairs in front of the mural. They go from the stairs over to the knee wall. Now my concern was that last one that's on the West Side, like if we got the cars far enough back or if there's a big truck there like somebody couldn't swing around to get to those other spaces on the West Side. That was on my only concern. We should hope we have that much traffic at the library. Yeah, no, I'm just wondering because if you get one handicapped person, they can't get back over there to park and use the ramp, then it's kind of an issue. So I just want make sure Once those things are in people with bigger trucks like myself will feel safer going to the library.
Oh my gosh. Okay. Let's vote. You got the other eight spaces. Oh, we already voted. Everyone did this except for Jeff and Scott. So Okay. Voted.
Oh, I didn't see it. You were, like, invisible. Voted before you did. Can't see you when you move your hand fast. I can't see it. Look at my hand, Adrian. Looks like an angel, Yeah, okay.
That's good. So, the Merritt Valley property, Scott, would you like to talk about that?
Well, I guess, you know, all the agonizing about this property, the realtor just texted me and told me that the clocks are not interested in any donations at this point. Okay.
Alrighty. So we'll move on from that. I got the,
nine ms, the ram generator, Eric. So in other words, Scott, we're not contemplating making them an offer of some sort?
I mean, I'm just asking. The plant the planting and zoning commission the Conservation Commission said that they would only let us spend half of what we have in the open space fund in the planning and zoning said, you know, up to a 100,000. So, you know, there's gonna have to be a donation in there. So we don't have a deal at this time.
And their concern was what? Us agonizing over what? Say that again, Adrian. You said they rescinded the idea because we were agonized over something?
No, I didn't say that. The other committees agonized over it, Adrian. The other committee is agonized over what to offer potentially offer for the property. Right. Thank you. You for clarifying. It's
the table. Okay, so let's go to the generator. Eric. So very quick, there
was a proposal made a while back by the combined, our CERT team has combined with the CERT teams for the other two towns, Hebron and Marlborough. And one of the suggestions that's been made is instead of running each town individually, running an emergency shelter, do a combined regional shelter, do it at RAM, you know, so we can all combine efforts. Advantages and disadvantages do it. If we're going to consider it, RAM needs a generator capable of running an actual shelter, which they don't have right now. So, Andy Tierney will put in the grant application. They got one of the their reps and senators to support it. They're just looking for all the other two towns to also support that if we think it's appropriate. And so ultimately, if we got the generator, would probably end up rewriting parts of our emergency management handbook to reflect that. And we would probably then make our existing elementary school, the secondary emergency shelter, not the primary emergency shelter. So but again, that's a political decision, you know, so I'm bringing it to you. Is this an idea you want to support? And if so,
there's a resolution for you to sign. Is it broken out with a cost basis or is it equal share?
I mean right now they're trying in in terms of what in terms of utilizing it as a shelter? Is the grant going to be covering a 100% of the costs? As far as I know, yes, they're not nobody's asking the town to cough up money to make this happen. They're just asking to support it in concept.
Okay. Does anyone have a problem with the overall thought of a regional,
you know, emergency center? I don't know how are we going to get there in the middle of a storm all the way to Hebron? That's
There's a lot of small car people from the library that can get under those wires. True. With little Subarus.
Right. We don't have a Subarus. I'll come pick you all up. Okay? Woo hoo. On the short bus.
Okay. So let's let's let's now sit there and get back to it. Does it does it make sense to even contemplate regionalizing this type of service?
Well, yes, I think we need to ask ourselves as a board if we regionalize this service and it comes back as an equal share, so a third, a third, a third, are we okay with that concept? I personally, Shannon's shaking her head, I personally am okay with the concept only because there may be times where we use it, we get hit harder than somebody else or vice versa. And if you start talking about breaking up the share by population then you're gonna share you're gonna break up the running cost by amount of hours used, you know. It's too complicated. It's almost easier to say a third, a third, third and call it a day. That's my take on it. Somebody else's may be different. I don't necessarily know. I
have a question for Eric. Do you know what the fuel source is? Is this gonna run on natural gas or is it gonna run on fuel oil?
Considering where it is, it's probably gonna run on natural gas.
It can't run on that system that big would need a tank that doesn't exist on-site.
I'm just saying it gives us it gives us another option if it's I know they have a natural gas line going through the school. Yeah. Utilize that. It would just be another option for us as a town. Yeah. Having it running off natural gas versus
Oh, it would have to be natural gas. You cannot run a system that big. The tank size would be insane.
Just a question I'm asking. That's all. Just be another option for us if you know, we had a extended shortage where we needed a generator for a long time. What other bills are is the town gonna incur from this?
I mean, you know, it's too early to say we're in the concept stage. They're just writing a grant to try to fund this thing through FEMA.
Well, the 100 they're talking what? Probably a 150, 200 for that thing?
I don't know what the, you know, what the dollar value is. I mean, I think at this point they're just exploring this thing and say, are all three towns really on board with this? Will you send a resolution to support it so we can start looking at legislative and FEMA, you know, to make this happen? I personally don't have any problem. Overall, sounds like a good idea but
Because you're really talking about utilization once the storm settles out and it's, you know, the rain's done or whatever and it's just a question of power and showers and food and services, extraordinary services, right? Yeah. It only makes sense for me like that.
I'd make a motion to be in favor of it.
Yeah I mean what would what would be the negatives about it? Downside.
Driving a Hebron? Yeah. Going to Hebron. Why can't we do it at the Andover, Jim? Potentially losing losing control of our CERT team.
Right. There's certain things down the road. Emergency director like Do we share those services right now? They're all possibilities, so I think we should sit there and did someone second Adrian's motion or do we have that motion somewhere?
So we don't have a motion we have a we have something for you all to sign to support it. You got a few things you got to come into the office and sign anyway as a group. So if you're in favor of it, you'll just come in and you'll all sign the resolution supporting that if that's what you want to do.
Well, we need to decide if we're all in favor. Correct. I'm in favor. I'm in favor.
I'll support. Okay. So we're all going to come in and sign that Eric is a preliminary Scott.
Scott doesn't get a say? I thought Scott said yes. Scott said yes. Oh, I didn't hear it. Scott didn't hear it again, didn't he?
Stop, Adrian? No Adrian listen Adrian's the only one that could hear this time Scott didn't say anything yet. I'm
asking you a direct question are you in favor of this? In in concept. In concept. Yes. It's the best thing for it's a good thing for the town. That's what I'm I'm in favor of. It's a good thing for the town. Okay.
I'm always about good things for the town. So route six corridor forestry.
Okay, really quick. So we own, I put in your packet the picture of what properties that the town acquired from the state for the old Route 6 Expressway. And, you know, the neighboring towns, Bolton and Coventry, both want to at some point pursue a trail network along those properties. Where it would be possible in Andover is essentially the section up to Bear Swamp. Past Bear Swamp, there's no practical way to do it because certainly all the homeowners have acquired the properties back and there isn't a direct connection. So, or Coventry's suggestion is to use Hull Forest Products to look at all of that corridor and come back to us and say what would what would the town potentially get out of it if we did timber harvest on that and we end up with some sort of you know, machine trail back there, as part of it. So that's one possibility that would be just saying, yeah, let's all kick in and all three downs do whole forest products. Scott has suggested that from an economic standpoint, we would do better by hiring an independent forester, have the independent forester evaluate our section in town, and then if we wanted to do timber harvest, send it out and basically bid it out. So the question becomes, do we even want to consider this in the first place? Number one. And if we do, do we want to kick in with the other towns and use Hull, or do we want to try to go for an independent and what is our objective with it?
So that's what I ask you. Very simple.
I would tend to agree with Scott on this. My own experience with, looking at, you know, harvest thing, Hull was okay, but they weren't great. They, you know, just in general, I think they try to they try to do a truckload rate versus a real timber rate. So it's a little a little light. And I would if we're talking about doing this, wouldn't it make sense to maybe encourage Coventry to do the same thing too, you know?
Well, I got some information. Coventry, the residents of Coventry were vehemently opposed to this trail being in town. I mean, I don't even know where this is coming from. And the section between Skinner Hill and Wheeling Road is all Mars. It's all wetlands in there and I don't even know how we would get in there and do a lot of that work. I mean, it's it's it's really wet in there. It's where it's filling in as you go. It's very wet as you go now and we have the we have the rail trail in town and you know we have enough we have enough we expend enough funds of keeping that as as alone as as a trail and does this go behind your house Jeff. Yes, it does. But it has nothing to do with it. It's just that it's just not the right place for it and I'd be against it. So I really like a trail by my house actually, but it's just so wet back there. Just it would just be too much work to actually make it viable. You know, we'll go ahead.
One thing Jeff about you point that you you made that one thing about wetlands in Connecticut
is timber harvesting can be done in the wetlands in Connecticut. Yep. I know that, but I'm just saying the goal was and what Eric said is to put a trail in and it's just it's in my opinion, it's just not the right place for it. Well, I think it's Wouldn't
they harvest they harvest everything but they try to put the trail in a dry area. I would assume no or is there or is all wet Jeff. Don't know. All wet across. It's all where it work. There's if you look if you go up Long Hill past
my development Haverhill's house. There's a stream like a like a depression area in there. That's wetlands all the way through that all the way across. It's a it's a pretty big swath. And then you've got on the other side of Skinny Hill going towards the tree farm. That's really wet as well. Area.
Me and Eric have walked at Jeff twice so far, the whole thing. Yep. And there's and that there you can and I'm not a pro or con on this thing at all, but all I'm saying is you could easily put a trail through there. There's there's areas that you could put a trail through there and there's areas that you could put a you could do forestry work in there And so, you know, I I don't know that we're talking about if you Eric didn't bring up whether or not we're gonna put a trail up there. He brought up whether or not we're gonna use for
that work. All he knows about The forest thing with the thing was to put a road in for an eventual trail. That was that was what he said.
Well, no. The forest harvesting would would then create a a viable trail, I would think. Correct. Correct. I think Scott maybe I should Jeff out my machine for a ride through there and just see if you find a dry area. I mean I gotta disagree with Scott. I mean it's wetter in there than it is at behind the elementary school. We should go look at that then. It is very well back there. Scott, do you think I can go back there? Adrian. Maybe you should park that library. You and I,
I'm gonna take you down over to Jeff's house, okay? I'll show you right where it is.
We'll go looking. Okay. So so so this is this is an issue that does not need to be decided today. Eric? Eric? Anyways, what I mean, they're
on proceeding. Either we want to jump in with them on the hull, or we decide we don't want to. Need to talk about the that stuff the thing that Eric wants to talk about, just
aside from everything else, if you go with Whole Forest Products, you're gonna get paid for their pricelist, on their pricelist. If you go with an independent forester and you have him go out there and give you a forestry plan, he's gonna send it out to bid and you're gonna get bids from 10 different people, they're gonna give you 10 different bids from high to a low. Hull's always gonna give you their price list, it's always gonna be not very good, and so you know where I'm going with that. I would vote against not going with Hull for that reason. The forestry plan, you know, we can talk about that in the whole trail thing
at another time.
Scott and Eric and even Jeff, mean, separate from the idea of a trail, are we talking about whether we talk about a trail later or not? Are we would it make sense to talk about harvesting the property There's
absolutely a lot of timber in there that could be harvested and should be harvested
already. I'm not opposed to harvesting timber. I'm just I was just if we're doing it to put a trail and then it's the wrong reason. But if we I mean, maybe we could use that harvest money towards the $20 for the park for crying out loud, you know. Correct. Correct. I have no problem with the harvesting. It's just the trail aspect of it. I don't think we need any more trails, especially when it's parallel to the rail trail that we currently have. And I talked to a forester that said he could get in there in, you know, right around November 1. Right now, he's really busy, but and then November's not far down the road, and he could make a forestry plan for the whole thing. And you get an independent
guy that's going in there and giving you an independent idea about what to do and not a mill. You don't want to go in bed with a mill. Well, if it's if it's if it is if let's
say for giggles, you know, what Jeff is is saying is that it is wet.
If he is correct, would it be better to do that in the winter anyways? Well, this this particular guy that I have an idea is also a soil scientist and a surveyor. So he is fully verged on every single law and regulation about timber harvesting and the soils in Connecticut.
Okay. So since this is right up Scott's Alley and I like to look at my other members and deal with their expertise, I'm going to sit there and agree with Scott and, sit there and say we should, not
go with Yeah. So I I'd make a motion now. I I would like to do this though because we're talking about time framing and getting in somebody's schedule. I'd like to make a motion that we not go with Hull Forest Products, but we explore a separate timber harvest on the town properties, and look at, you know, the availability of doing that so that when we come back to our next meeting, maybe we can vote on doing that. I'll second that. But not, just to be clear not to be talking about trail just timber harvest at this point
period. Stop. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine with that. I would support that. And on which properties then? All of them. All of them.
Go to town. Go to town. Yeah. So Scott seconded. McGuire, it's up to you. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Five nothing. Okay.
Just so Scott, you're going get with Eric and get the individual you thought could come up with a timber plan, and they will go even past the Bear Swamp line.
Anything that's at the town of Andover's property. Okay, you got it. Okay,
so, alarm alarm alarm okay alarm monitoring for town buildings.
So we have been using the Tollin dispatch to monitor the alarms on our building. Tollin has informed us that they decided they're not going to do it anymore. So I asked the Board of Fire Commissioners to examine what our options are for picking a town wide vendor for, alarm monitoring, period. I figured they can do a better job of sussing that out than I can. Okay. Is Tallinn not doing it for a is it just they're kicking us out or they're not doing it at all? No, they've decided to get out of the business completely because when Colchester closed,
took on, they had to take on a much bigger coverage area and they either got to hire a bunch more people or get rid of some of the stuff they do and they chose to get rid of some of the stuff they do.
Okay. All right. So, 9P which is one of the additions, the cemetery account. I know I didn't say I didn't write that correctly but neglected. Yeah, so neglected cemetery account basically,
Kathy can speak to this, but there is a state program for maintaining old cemeteries. We apply for it pretty much every year. That's another one of those resolutions you're all gonna have to come in and sign. We got to do that fairly quickly because the grant is due relatively soon. Presuming of course you want us to actually maintain our cemetery. Basically February a year from the state to help us pay for, repairing gravestones and straightening up the cemetery and doing work down there. Did we use it last year? Yeah.
Okay. So that resolution will be in our package when we all try to go in there and sign documents?
Correct. Amanda has all that even as we speak. All right. Nine q hunting on Tom property.
Scott Person asked me to place this on the agenda. I received at least one inquiry from residents who wanted to know whether they were allowed to hunt on town property. And my response is at least at this point no, but that's a board of selectman decision
not a Eric decision. Are you against it or for Eric? Do you have an opinion? I don't care.
I would say no. I have no problem with people hunting my personal property. I just don't listen and I don't have a problem with it on my personal property either. Sure. You know, to be candid, like, Scott just came up on Sunday and we looked at my property. So Scott can hunt my property, but I have a little bit of concern from a standpoint of town property if somebody didn't get a good lay of the land and made a mistake to a house nearby, the town would have some liability.
Alright. That that's that's a good idea. But what about just bow hunting? Yeah. Archery I have no problem with it all. Yeah. I'd have no problem with archery. I'm good with that. Okay, so everybody's on board with the bow hunting here. Would you would this be Andover residents only? Yes, also.
So we would have to do something with the town hall, right? That they would have to inform.
I think they'd have to come in and sign up. They have to say that they're hunting. Who's enforcing? You're a chief of police, buddy. It's all on you. The DEP. I mean, if you don't if you don't if you don't hear and go out, it's the same The DEP enforces it, Jeff. Yep. Yeah. But I think we need a I think we need something that they come in and register with the town so we know they're there. Yep. If the townsfolk calls in, we know they're there. Eric would have to sign something. Eric signed something and they show that they have a valid hunting permit. And the hunter identification number. Exactly. What,
yeah, make sure they have a license like we write license. And then what lands where we allow them to go on. Would it be like the land up by the transfer station because I really wouldn't want to have them buying the school. I don't think that would be a good idea. Just for the bow hunting,
Jeff, it's not gonna. Yeah, I'm just saying that the school is very sensitive to people walking around back there. Yeah. Schools in session. So I don't know if they came in on the other side, maybe walked up the hill possibly, but So nowhere on nowhere on any open school grounds.
Yep. It would be Not on school grounds, obviously obviously. Like on the other side of the gas line or So we just say nowhere on any open school grounds, bow hunting only, go bow hunting crossbow.
Take take the town map and figure out the properties and lay it out so I can say these are the only properties. Everything but that section behind the school, once you get it once you get past the gas line, go for it, you know? Yeah. And should they pay a a sticker fee? No. They're already paying the state for fee and they may not get anything so I'm already paying taxes. I have to pay a sticker When you And they're actually
will get you a crossbow so you can get up there and go to town. They're actually managing the deer population which is a good thing. Yeah. And that helps with the ticks. Every deer you take out of the forest is a thousand ticks. No shit.
I haven't seen any ticks this year. I'm gonna go somewhere.
Our language has to improve on our meetings. All right, everybody. Come on, we can all I haven't seen Ivan Swarren tonight at all. Didn't know didn't know The best one has been Paula. I've been quiet. So I wanted to I wanted to swear.
Okay. It's just probably we need to set we just need to set up parking areas in areas of egress. I just don't want anybody parking at the town hall and walking behind the school to go. Right. And I can work on that with Eric. I think that's a good idea, Chuck. All right. And when does this need to happen by? Soon. Starts next week, right? Yep. It starts tomorrow.
I wouldn't push this. I would go slow. Yeah. I would announce that you're considering to do it, and I would ask for public comment before you arbitrarily do this. Need I'm neither in favor of it nor against it, but I'm just saying that you're gonna get some people wound up and you ought to ask for public comment before you do it. So we need public comment through Wednesday. Although I will also tell you that there's I've certainly seen a deer stand on town property behind the town hall. So somebody's hunting or in the past has hunted that property in the very recent future. Eric, as well as
the right of way that goes behind my house as well. There's been deer Like there's one there's right one right behind your house. Yeah.
So it's they're out there. There's one down by Bear Swamp I saw when we were down there. Thank god. I don't believe in guns. I'm the only one on this board that does not believe in guns. We can work on that. I found him on my property yesterday. Right. Okay.
Just for just for record, I actually looked in the town charter and actually snowmobiling is allowed on town property. Right. Snowmobiling is allowed. If a lot of people probably knew about that, they'd have a fit too. So Yep. We can advertise that as peer population. As a weaker
you were talking about trying to bring people in for your tourism. Tourism. It's a big deal in Connecticut. Snowmobiling.
Nowhere to go. Okay. So, Now they can go to Andover.
So what are we what is our intention if this has to get done quickly? Are we going to sit there and and It's not that complicated, Jeff. I mean, give them when's the season open, Scott? Another Tomorrow. Really? Tomorrow? Believe it or not, September 15. Yep. In both But it's not it's it's not pressing. You don't have to get ready for this or anything. It's not like that. No. But if we give them a give them a a week or two weeks to come up with something, maybe we have something ready by, I don't know, October 1. Yeah. Yeah. So who's coming up with this? And I would the motion or what? Down manager, I think.
Because my decision would be no, personally. Scott. You know, so if you want this, you guys are gonna have to come up with what you want.
Well, the I'll I will definite I will help you, Eric. Okay? I think McGuire should come up with it because he's the one only one that's not pro gun. So he's the most conservative on this issue.
You should get it in. You get it. You know, you can use the word liberal. I'm really okay with it.
I don't wanna insult you. Just told me not to swear.
That's funny. All right. Let's I personally, Scott, I'm gonna tell you that it's gonna end up on you and Jeff and Adrian to Paula to come up with what plan you want to submit to Eric and Dennis to sit there and get it approved and we'll vote out at the next meeting. You know what I can do as a Sportsman's Club member. Let me reach out to them. There are three people because we do have some rules of the Sportsman's Club for hunting on their property. So let
me see what kind of rules and regulations they have and Sydney, we can adopt some of that. That picture
from Paula of her daughter shooting a ball off an ATV while wearing a tutu. That would be a perfect. It's an amazing picture. Hey,
is this the youth of Andover can get involved in in good healthy outdoor stuff. I am. Appreciate it. Poster child. Poster Poster child. Goes snowmobiling.
Child. Yes, Eric. So, I have one thing I missed on my report and I apologize because I thought we had added to the agenda and we didn't and that was the policy for placement of signs on town Yeah. Oh my god. Which Dennis is here to address. Okay. So let's
go through and that would be, nine r is signed placement in the town. Nine r was clocked,
but we don't have to do that. Right. But we already discussed that. We'll that nine r. Yeah. Okay. Already we're not we've already talked about it, and we're we're not moving forward with that right now. Dennis, you have
We're into the fifth hour of this meeting. Ten minutes. I spent two hours on the softball field just before I got here coaching my girls softball team getting ready to play hammer at some point. You're wasting your time. Did you win? I'm I'm gonna you're you know, I am gonna let go with a whole slew of expletives. Did you win? No, we just practiced. We're gonna play a hammer. We'll beat them. Okay, we're ten seconds into this. Anyway,
political signs, I could, you know, I was gonna talk for an hour. I know. I have experience with political signs more than any of you and and probably the whole group. Can you tell us all about that? I will if you'd like. But I I you know, I I I heard from Eric that you were considering some sort of rule on political science. There are zoning rules. The zoning rules have been changed, guess. I guess you're not applying them. A lot of towns do not apply any kind of rules on political science.
My town does not. Don't they have a size limitation?
They might have a size limitation but nobody violates it. I'm just saying everybody opposes something.
Well, have, they have, you know, there there a lot of zoning regulations like ours, like yours, have limitations on how long you can keep them up. It's really not necessary to have a limitation because, you know, the political parties generally don't keep them up longer than, you know, they'll take them down right after the campaign ends. But the question here is, guess, I'm trying to get right to the point, Jeff. I can see you're fading. He faded an hour ago. Yeah. He you he's he's fighting it. He's fighting it. He's barely awake. But, the question here is whether or not you're going to allow political signs on town property. And the answer is? Well, the answer is if I were you, I would just let them do it. But, I I did come up with a proposal and the proposal is sort of restrictive. Alternating days? In terms of parties?
Yeah. I I mean, you you you definitely can have limitations as to time on town property because it's your property. Know, and we're also including right of ways, the right of ways along the town roads. As far as the state roads go, that's up to them. What the state does in our town, if anybody puts signs up along the road, they pull them out and they put them in the town garage up in Mansfield. If you're a political, you know, party leader like I used to be, you can go and pick them up there. You're a good republican.
Never. Never. I'm from I'm from a union family in New Britain. I've been a democrat all my life. Eight minutes. Everybody knows that. Well, I'm doing this for you. You guys don't wanna do anything. I you know, I don't care. I mean, I don't Come on, Dennis. Let's go. Get to the I paid my dues for hours at this meeting. I'm learning a lot about guns. I I come on. I mean, Os, it. Look at that. There was nothing on TV. Didn't do it to Britain either when I was going up there. This is the best guys are all different. The best entertainment you didn't have to pay for. It is entertaining. It's better than watching the Vikings on it. So your suggestion is that we not really put much restriction? Well, you know, most a lot of towns do not have any restrictions at all on political science simply because the parties really don't go nuts with them. I don't know. Do you have a problem here? Somebody putting 10 signs up on a on a single piece of property? Never had a problem. I've usually put the signs up for our party and we've never really had a problem. Yeah. No. I mean, I think that, you know, we have there is some political banter back and forth where somebody
puts a sign in front of another sign crap like that, but it's it's it's good nature. It's all, you know, it's all minor stuff. I mean, it really isn't, you
know, but I did I did draft at Eric's request a regulation or a policy that would limit the number of signs you can put up and for how long on town property. I think the biggest concern you might have is, you know, people putting I don't Do they put up signs in front of the, polling place on election day, Jeff? Yes. Yeah. As long as they're outside of the 75 feet. As long as they're outside of the 75 feet from the polling place. Yes. Yeah. What do you do, Jeff? Put them up the night before?
No. Well, we we put them up like the weeks before, but usually the town hall usually pull them all together and they bring them to town hall on election day. That's what we do. I mean, you know, they put up way too many, but it's only for one day. Yep. And you're polling places at the not the It's town be the gym
this year, I guess. Okay, so it's gonna be the school. I mean, we used to have some polling places here that were in schools and, know, sometimes they would make a fuss about it. But you know I like I said I don't know if you saw what I Eric did you give them what I wrote?
Yeah I think so. Yeah. Okay. It's in the minute. It's in your motions.
Okay, and that is a restrictive policy. And I'm not in favor of that kind of policy, but I thought maybe you wanted to be more restrictive. You think there's a need? I'm talking to Jeff Murray now, not Jeff the first selectman. Do you think there's a need for some sort of a restriction on signs? Is there sign pollution on right of ways along the roads?
Not really. I mean, there's just there's a couple spots in town we put signs like both parties have put signs and we've never really had a problem.
Remember, you can't restrict signs if you put this policy and if you want to let it be unlimited every sign essentially is equal. So you In can't
content. Terms Right. I mean what do you, I mean, I mean, you might wanna limit your signs on, in the right of way to smaller signs like the four foot square signs that, I mean, I've already seen the Biden signs. I don't, I haven't seen any, any Trump signs yet here. But, you know, the the smaller signs, you certainly don't want big signs along the highway two feet from the, the travel portion of the road. Well, I think that the you haven't had that kind of problem. Have you both parties understand the rules and they
put them off far enough. I mean, I've seen a bunch along better out now that are in violation that are probably going to get pulled from the state. But, well the state will pull them. Yes. Yeah, the state are gonna pull them because they're in the right away. They're not 15 feet away from the edge of the roadway like there should be. Right. Because we and I usually put them up. I put them up far enough away so they don't get bold.
Okay, here Jeff, we put them, you know, on private residences like I have a I have a big frontage in my head right out here and we don't have any sidewalk. So I will I may put it three feet away from the travel portion of the road. I don't see a problem with that. No, as long as it's not it doesn't it doesn't impede with the line. Well, it doesn't impede sight lines or anything like that. Exactly. And we have the Lake District where I mean a lot of people have limited front yards.
And so we can't really you can't really have big setback either. Right, right. I mean, that's what I was thinking. Common sense here, you know, Exactly. I just want get some clarification.
Eric said all signs are equal. What did you mean by that?
I mean, it doesn't matter if you have an unlimited regulation. I mean, I could have a big KKK recruiting poster and I could plunk it in the towns right away and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it because that's a political sign. That's a you know, signs if you're going to allow it, it's got to be content neutral. You cannot say I'm okay with this type of sign, I'm not okay with that type of sign. Either you allow it or you don't. That's the sucky thing right now under the the Supreme Court's decisions.
Yeah, those decisions by the way are not new. This is old hat. And around 2010, I don't think it came to me as town attorney. I think it probably went to Mark Brandt's. Yeah. But the ACLU sent out a letter to every town in the state threatening to sue them if they enforce the thirty day limit on signs. Because there can be no limit. If somebody wants to keep a political sign up in their yard, pass the right on their property, Jeff, pass the right away outside the 15 feet, they could keep it up all year. But in fact, nobody does that. I mean, nobody leaves up. I mean, what what what I do, I've spent so many election nights, Jeff. And again, I'm talking to Jeff Murray who's done this. You know, going out after the after the results come in, picking up signs with my truck. Yeah, after the drove that 08:00.
That's what I do on my way home. Pull all the signs, all the signs are at night, they're down the night of the election. Yeah, I like So people first of all, the board of selectmen does not have to worry about what happens
on private property because honestly that is the, that is a zoning. Right. Correct. That's a zoning. So we don't even, we're not even talking about We're private not. That's, that's not your jurisdiction or my jurisdiction. I'm
talking town property. All the ones are pulled from town property that night.
Right. What I'm saying is the town needs some sort of policy for town properties and town right of ways about what's permitted and what's not permitted. As far as I'm concerned in right of ways, the simplest thing to do is just put a four square foot maximum on the sign because that means it's not going to be so big that it interferes with the sight lines, period. That means pretty much every sign that's up there right now is permitted and stays, And then you can make a different decision on town properties other than right away as if you don't choose.
Well, listen, I I mean, I know we've heard from, you know, Jeff. We we've been asking Jeff because he's on the republican side. Shannon, do you have any input on this? Would you mind speaking on this? Can someone unmute her if she Would I mind speaking?
Seriously. You have to ask. Well, you know, I know you've been reformed lately. So
No. I I absolutely agree with Jeff. I believe that so far from either party, we really haven't seen abuses. I will say and I know it's a public forum. Of late, we have had three of our Biden signs taken from in front of personal property. So I hope that crap doesn't continue. Not being a key story of anybody. I don't know who took them. We don't know how it happened, but they're gone. They were just put up two days ago. It's been gone, but that did happen. It's not on state property or town property. So they're on private property. But I agree, you know, you're not you don't have jurisdiction over private property. And on public property, I think the only thing I would question is two things. Number one, my understanding of the state regulations is that the state requires that all signs be 15 feet back from any state road. So there's already regulations on state roads. And I don't think in Andover, like I said earlier in my public comment about four hours ago, I don't think I mean, there are many of our properties that Jeff already alluded to that don't accommodate a 15 foot setback. Right.
On private property, like Dennis said, it's what goes on where he lives. Yep. I guess my only concern is when you're dealing with right of ways. There are a lot of right of ways where 15 feet just I'll give you an example. I know for last time we had municipal elections, right in the right of way where Townsend Road comes off of 316, there were probably 10 signs. Well, that triangular right of way, you know, doesn't
doesn't even it's not even it's probably 15 feet in and of itself. So And the state pulled they pulled those sign once on us. I know that. No. They still stayed up. They'll stay up. They'll stay up. No. But they they pulled them once early because I remember we I I went down to That was on Oh, yeah. Because 316 is a state road, so that would make sense. That's why they pulled them. They were pulling them after a while. They were strangers that fast. Yeah.
That was a typical I mean, I you already have regulations as far as how close you can get to a polling place on election day. Yeah. Both parties do the same thing. We take all the signs the night before and move them to, you know, the locations right near the polling place where they're they're most likely to be seen, you know, taking into account the 75 foot rule. And then we go from there. Yeah.
I think this came up when based on what I've read in the in the email, I guess the the chairman of the zoning commission asked Mark Brantz about it.
Yeah. And Mark This came up because the zoning, board and whose prior chair shall remain nameless for right now, unfortunately, put in regulations that were contrary to Supreme Court and Connecticut Supreme Court law. So that's what happened. They're contrary to the US Supreme Court. Yeah. And Connecticut Supreme Court. Yep. So Right. But remember that zoning regulations for that section, the last time they've been modified was 2001.
Right. So, you know, you're talking Okay. About Okay. Okay. Yeah. The US Supreme Court case It's not as though the First Amendment's existed for very long, Eric. But there you go. Okay. I'll Go ahead. Okay. Just don't see a close. I'll be muted now. No. No. Shit. Got So one
Dennis, what do we have to put in place, if anything, for the town?
I wouldn't do anything unless you feel you have a problem with with the I think we need a size restriction.
Yeah. I I would say size restriction. Are you okay with the four square feet that covers the the primary side of Were signs in the right of way?
Yeah. I don't think you should have big signs in the right of way. You okay with four square feet Shannon? Let's go. What's next? So
no, we need to do we need to make a motion on this?
Is it even in our purview? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. You wanna have a policy for the for the election.
So for correction on wording, would say something like, you know, signs in the public right of way on town property would need to be no larger than four square feet. Yeah.
Do we need to we can't do anything on timing or when. Right? Do we can we do something like they have to On do town property you could.
Okay. You can say anything you want. You can have them up for one day. You can have them up for No, not your on property. But on town property,
and the right of way is considered town property even though, as you probably know,
the the underlying land is owned by the by the property owner. So what do we want to say no more than a hundred and twenty days before municipal and must removed be removed within. Oh no.
Wouldn't even do that Adrian. Thirty. You can't, you can't do that. You can't do that.
Let me On town property you can. Can. Jeff, you can do it on town property. Jeff, you as a property owner can decide who put signs on your property. The town as a property owner can decide what within
that can can change the timing. Within the right of way. Change the sign. He can't say we like this sign, but not that sign, This person but not that person, but we can do time. My team I put forty five days in my draft. I mean, that Okay. But here's the problem. We got people that are gonna do early voting as as as early as they can. Yep. She's her head. She agrees. So we want everybody to have a fair opportunity to to advertise for their candidate.
Just I I would just limit the size of the science. I wouldn't I would say don't put any time limit on it whatsoever. No. If it if if you find if we subsequently find there's an abuse of that, then you can come back and revisit it. But for right now, size limitation,
not in the sight lines in a right of way, and go from there. About what about in of in front of the polling place? You don't want signs there for a month. No.
And and if we don't put a limit on it, then they don't maybe they don't remove them after, you know?
Oh, they they remove them. It it it's politically it's politically bad to leave your signs up. People go nuts over it, and it doesn't help your party.
Nobody we don't have a problem the all. Democrats and the Republicans take them down. It's Everybody takes them down. So you wanna try it this election and then see what happens. It's fine. I'm okay with that. So we'll leave it with no time limit, just four square feet limitation. Because, Adrian, if we do a time limit, we're gonna go against the Boy Scouts, anything else, anybody else that puts a sign up. That's fine. Yeah. You you know what? You're right. You're right, Jeff. Because if we if if we look
we regulate political science. Fine. So the motion is It also gives an opportunity for somebody else to put up a sign. The motion is four square feet maximum,
no set time up or down. We'll address it if we need to later. Eric, what do you think? I need a second. No. Wait a second. How about the Veterans Memorial Park? Can you say that's a second?
No. No. No. No signs on Veterans Memorial Park. That's always been a rule. That's always been a rule.
We are we gonna put it in? Guys read my thing I wrote? Yes. Ken, is that an up or a down? We read it, Dennis.
Exception, no sign will be placed on the Annover Veterans Memorial property. Alright. That's in there.
And as far as signs being placed on school property, I think you really ought to get the permission of superintendent. It's a polling place. We don't 75 feet.
Let's do 75 feet like we always School and the school actually has a policy on signs. No, we don't. Yeah. Yeah. You do. I got I got sent it. It was sent to me. Oh, good. Because we were gonna consider it at last week's meeting and I didn't think we had to, thank you for the confirmation. Yeah. There is a policy, Shannon. What is it, Jeff? So can we just do 75 feet from the polling place and everybody be good with that? What is the school policy, Jeff? I can can send it to you. It was sent to me a long time ago. All right. So it will allow politically neutral.
What's that? You probably want them there on election day.
Okay. School wants to stay politically neutral and it's been in it's been enforced for a while. I was I was I was told
of it about, six years ago. Well, yeah, let's just do the 75 feet and then they're off to school property at that point really for the most part. Okay. Okay.
Then we don't have to worry about standing out there anyway. Canada, you have you know, for an election like this, you're gonna have people's pole standing. Yep. Yep. There's not a about it. You're get a big Four square feet. 75 feet Even right away.
No no no no signs at Veterans Park. Okay. No no signs in front of the town hall.
No. You can't say that because that's that's where most of the people end up dumping them. Yep. Because
that's where people drive up to vote on election day. That's just for election day. Yeah. When you the way I wrote it, you get to you gotta get permission from the town administrator. No. You know he's gonna give it to you. Pull that.
Alright. Okay. So it's four square feet, nothing in Veterans Park, 75 feet from the polling place, which in this place is gonna include the school.
No no time up or That's law anyway. That's state law anyway, Adrian. No time up or down. So We good? Second? Eric?
What do you say? Doesn't matter to me. It's your policy. You don't need to stop you enforcing.
I think we should Adrian, we should take out the 75 feet because that's already in state statute. Fine. I'm good with that. We don't need the 75 That's that's required by by state law. Yeah. So we don't need to repeat that. No veterans. No time limit up or down. No veterans park. Oh, sorry. And four square feet.
Three things. We're So can leave your political signs up forever or whatever kind of objectionable signs you got. Any right away, anytime property, doesn't matter. You can put whatever sign up you want. That's your policy. Am I correct? Yes. For this voting cycle, absolutely.
Okay. It has to be because you can't under the first amendment, you can't restrict the
content of the sign. Can do it on town property. If we own the property, can do it. Unfortunately I don't recommend that you do it, but you can't. Unfortunately, Eric, it's either all in or not all in. We either agree No. I I I understand. I'm just bringing that to your attention. No. We But repercussion of that is that,
you know Eric's saying he didn't trust us politicians to remove the signs. No. Eric's worried about some dimwit doing something that would be uncouth and look bad for Andover. And he's right, but we have to hope that Andover's smarter than that.
Hey. Hey. We don't have stuff like that happening in Willamantic. And believe me, we have more dimwits. Yes. You do. I could get in trouble for saying that publicly, but I Okay. I'm sorry. It's true. So we're gonna not. We're gonna revisit this if necessary after this Right. Okay. Yeah. We might need an ordinance. Who knows? We got a we still need a second on the on the on that motion. What is the motion? I'll second it. Oh my god.
Four square feet. Nothing at Veterans Park. No time limitation up or down.
Talking about four square feet in in the right of way. I I don't know what
that 75 feet from the polling place. That's already in that's already in statue. You don't have to worry about that.
So we didn't put that in because it's already statue. Everybody okay with all that? One last important. One last funny.
Diane, what would you like to say? Yeah. About nothing on the monument Park. Yes. We already have the one that identifies the park. We have one for the cannon. We Jerry's gonna put something for his are you just talking about political signs or no signs of any type? I mean, know no tags and all those sorts We we can't just say political
we can't just say no political signs. Can't say something about signs
Diane, don't mention your signs. We're good with them. Diane, those signs are for installation.
So Yes. We're good with you. Part of the installation that goes to the store. Cares about that. Nobody cares about Love your signs. Nobody wants to restrict those signs. Well, we had to have a special a special ordinance made so we could get that big sign on Diane. Good, Drew. Good. We're good. Okay. Good.
Are we confused or what? No. We're good. I got a second from Jeff. I need McGuire to gonna make sure nothing happens.
I've I've done, like, five elections in town and we've never had a problem. Let's vote. Yeah. That will that will upset town administrator. Let's go. Aye. Ball, there you go. Okay. Now we're on to,
this is gonna go very fast. All of are taking early out. All right.
Move along the meeting minutes from Monday, June 13 and Monday, July 27. All those in favor? Aye. The town's treasurer report is available for everyone to read after that. Eric, do you have anything that you want to discuss on that? Yeah. If you go down to the treasurer's report
and then you look through the motions, there is a motion For under For.
Tell us what it is while you're looking. So it is to do the final transfers from last year's budget to equal everything out and punch a bunch of money into three of the town's permanent accounts. The roadwork fund the tree work fund and the equipment fund period okay and where is that resolution Good question. Amanda? Them. Come on Amanda, save them. Where's the resolution?
The appropriation transfers in the packet under item 12 budget? It's page one zero one is what all the funds, the appropriations are. And the motion is simply, I motion to authorize the appropriation transfers outlined in the treasurer's report. This still has to go to the board of finance, but you have to approve it and then the board of finance has to approve it. I vote that we approve the motion.
So if I understand this, Eric, I'll second this discussion. So Eric, you got transfers going to which three phones now? So,
there's a bunch of little transfers but basically we're taking the excess, a significant fraction of the excess money that would normally go into the unexpended fund balance and putting them in capital fund, you know, project capital funds. One is the road improvement fund, one is the equipment fund and one is the tree removal fund.
So you have $125,000 of unexpended money in various funds that you want to put in those three funds. Great. Instead of rolling it back to the unexpended fund balance. Yep. All right. And then you just you have two other transfers above that. Those are just to move things within various funds or that we're not voting on that?
So those, I think those are big enough that the board of finance has the authority to approve or disapprove. So they're gonna have to vote on those. I think conceptually in my mind, what you need to do is vote on the big picture, which is whether you want to take essentially all the small pools of money that were unexpended and put them to use or whether you want to let them flow to the unexpended fund balance. That's actually That's a real question. That's a Board of Finance issue that's not even on ours.
That's all We can Board of push this to the Board of Finance. I mean, we can give them a recommendation but it's all Board of Finance. Great. So let's make the recommendation that we push them the way that Eric has me because they're going into three things that are important. I don't have a problem with that. I'm just clarifying procedural. Let's go.
We could say no and Board of Finance can still do it.
Okay. So Woody made the motion to move it to the Board of Finance. So Agreed. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. Alright. All right. Eric, anything else in that section? Not in that section.
Okay. The budget, did those a tax collector report refund requests?
Yep. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight refund requests. That is page 105 or 106.
So just before you move on, the July deposits for the tax collector were $2,721,000 Did we show any fall off because of COVID?
No, actually I think we're doing the last time I talked to the tax collector and I is we were doing pretty well financially. Like, we're
our collections are better than they have been. Imagine if we'd been willing to take cash. Could have been epic. Have been
Epic. We're breaking the infection rate so I'm glad we didn't. Good job, Eric. So you got those, tax refunds. Are we gonna sit there and make a motion to approve these tax refunds? So moved.
I don't like to give any money back. I don't either.
I'll second it. All those in favor, aye. It's only because of this board that I vote yes on those things. All right. You didn't any of the department reports that need to be approved or talked about voted against that. You didn't I always voted against those. I do not like to give people their money back. Never voted
positively on any of those, any meeting I ever went to. I know.
I mean, the only one I just want to bring to your attention to is, obviously, as you are all aware, we've had a rash of break ins and a rash of vehicle thefts. This is a problem throughout the state. We know there are youth gangs operating out of pretty much all the major cities. There have been two really big busts lately. One of them nabbed a whole bunch of people that were, I think kids from Windsor. They got nabbed in Rhode Island, like seven of them got caught, stealing cars and breaking in. And there was another one recently, a theft ring in Hartford that got broken up, another fairly large ring. There's a bunch of organized gangs doing it throughout the state. All the suburbs are having this problem. The reality is they're not punishing the kids when they catch them. So until such time as we actually, you know, do something to people who get caught, it's going to continue. So lock your cars, don't leave your keys in the car, don't leave your pistols
unlocked in your unlocked car. Why are you telling us this? We're not the people that left our stuff in their car got stolen. I'm just putting that out there. He's saying it publicly. He's doing it. Don't you know that 11:35
at night. Nobody's watching this stuff. It's on it's being recorded. Look in your upper left corner. It's five hours long. If they Oh my record. My Lord. What's your fault
Of this type. Okay. I've been at hundreds of them. I've never seen one anywhere near this long. That's why I'm staying. I don't want to miss anything. Dennis, I have to tell you Dennis. It's too good. This is too good. Dennis, I am proud of you. You did exceptionally well on that
section. Because I knew you would shut You me were at least forty five minutes to a sixty minutes in. You were gonna shut me down anyway, Jeff. I know you would.
All right. Do we have anything else that we need to talk about? Adjournment. Okay. Public speak. Who would like to speak? Who's left? Shannon, you're killing me. Cut her off. Dan, what we're going to Let's go. Good night.
All I'm gonna say is I'm really happy that the Board of Selectmen went longer than the Board of Education. Let's keep up the competition. Let's not.
Let's not. Anybody else? Hanover resident, Hanover Connecticut, we all good? All right, who wants to make a motion to adjourn? Everyone. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Good night.
Okay. So you all need to come into the office and you need to sign the resolutions. There should be four, there should be the steep grant resolution. There should be a cemetery grant resolution. There should be the sustainable CT grant resolution, and there should be one for the generator. So please come in and sign that. This
will be in Jeff's mailbox. Right, thank you. This blue folder. Which Jeff?
I that would be me. All right thank you very much everyone we'll see you. Thank you.