Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
June 13, 2022 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Here we go. Okay, so I am going to call to order the town of Andover Board of Selectmen regular meeting for Monday, June 13 at 07:02. And we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice.
Thank you very much. And we'll move right on to public speak. So let's start with Kathy and Mike Clause. And we're Yeah,
we're fine. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. And Anne Creme.
I'm fine, just you're watching. Thank you. Yeah, you got it.
I have a code J72443. Public speak, would you like to join us? Yes,
would. Thank you. Sure. Your name? My name is John Kentris.
Your address? 41 Burnout Brook Road. There you go. Thank you.
And I've got something to bring up whenever you want me to. Yeah, you're on public speak. Just moved to the area last year, retiring, getting close to the grandkids, but I stopped down to town hall today. I'm an avid archery hunter to see. I live right across basically from the transfer station at the back side of it to see what possibly I could do to get permission to hunt that land. And what I was told was this committee had it on their board basically review, but I don't think it ever came to a conclusion if they were going to let individuals hunt on town property or not. So what I'm looking for is for myself to do archery hunting, but whatever that means, if that's got to go through a vote or as an individual, whatever is needed, I wanted to try to see what I could do get permission to at least that piece of property myself.
Okay, all right, thank you very much. Katherine, with all the years. Hello, hi. I just wanted to, pardon? Go Celtics.
Go Celtics. Yeah. I wish we had Steph Curry. So my I would like to speak a little bit today about the hundred and seventy fifth anniversary coming up next year, And we could really use an help from the board of select men for the town manager from town leaders, because we're not really getting enough of a response. I sent Eric was good enough to forward to you guys the logo we developed a logo, we developed a brochure to tell people what's happening. Have been posting on our Facebook, end of support network on the website amanda's been doing it for us. We set up a direct link for donations, And we have maybe 13 donations and 10 of those came from actual members of the committee. We're, we're not going be able to do too much if we don't have sponsors. We don't have donation. So we're hoping to maybe get out to businesses ourselves and at least ask for sponsorship because if we're having a major festival here, we're gonna be doing a tree planting this year or next year is going to be a commemoration on the actual incorporation day and then a big festival at the school.
And we need those items, those inflatable items that we want sponsored because they're it's gonna be like $9,000 and we don't have that. So any help that we can get from the board or town leaders, really need your help because donations aren't coming in as though like we thought they would.
All right, we'll take that up. Diane Chokett? I'm all set, thanks. All right, Carol Lee? Okay. I'm all set. Sorry. All right. Leanne Hutchinson?
Hi. Yes. I had a comment about the Public Works Department. With the roadside mowing and the budget having gone through two voting cycles this season, I'm not sure exactly where it ended up as far as personnel there, but in the past the town has hired someone just to mow the roadsides in the summer, you know, make several passes, etcetera. So, I'm hoping that if the public works is more short staffed than was originally proposed, that that's going to be an option for accomplishing at this summer. Thanks.
Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. Let's put that out there. All right, we have a cell phone number 86020 oh, yes, 208-2345. That's me, Joe. Oh, hi, Dennis. Dennis.
Yeah, I'm here. Alright, we have another cell phone number, (860) 707-5579. That's me, it's Marina.
Hi, Marina. Jed Larson, you're up top. Would you like to say anything in public speak? No, I'm all set for now. Thanks. Okay. And I'm assuming Valerie will wait for you and Jay will get you on our public works section. Okay, so item three is additions and deletions to the agenda. The other members have additions and deletions they'd like to make to the agenda. Anyone? No?
Okay. Jeff, if there aren't any additions or deletions, I would just like to ask that we move item 9B, 9C, 9D, nine G, and 9H in front of item five, just so that while we have staff here, we can address all the things that relate to staff.
Okay, so which items Eric and I'll gladly move them again. Starting with nine what? 9B. 9B. 9C. Yeah. 9D, nine gs, and 9H. Okay.
What is nine gs and H? I don't have that.
I think the question's coming about because we got three different board packets. There's the agenda that's on the website. There's the agenda that's in the first packet. So are we working off the first packet agenda or the website agenda?
Oh, I see. Yeah, Packet packet one-ten. That looks like that's an updated agenda.
Yeah, and unfortunately the website agenda did not get updated separately, so. Sorry, that's my fault.
I would gather you had enough stuff in the packet to keep you busy. So
Yeah. It was only, like, 200 and some odd pages. Only? Yeah. Okay. So does any, do any of the other members have a problem if we move a 9B, C, D, E, G, and H above item five? Anybody? Nope. Nope. Okay. All right. So we're going to move on to item four, boards and commission presentations. Recommendations from the Charter Revision Commission. Who is speaking on behalf of the Charter Revision Commission?
Okay, so that would be me. I did submit the draft report for the Charter Revision Commission. I believe that was part of your packet. It was. Go ahead. Okay. And just wondering if there are any questions on that.
Do any of the other members of the board of selectmen have issues with the draft report that was prepared for us and submitted to us on the June 8? It starts at page four in packet one. That's the ballot questions. Yeah. So the draft the draft starts on five, so it's all the same thing. So does anybody have a problem with what the Charter Revision Commission is recommending? Nope. Jeff? Yes, Dennis. Dennis?
Yeah, if I may. A little bit on the legal end of this. The draft report is something that was required by a vote of the Board of Selectmen several weeks ago. It was due, I believe, on the July 11 or probably maybe the twelfth. I'm I'm not sure. And it is a it is a it is a legal document, and it is something that starts the process for the board of selectmen. The board of selectmen now needs to have a public hearing. You need to have one public hearing on the on the on the draft report. And by the way, I I sent you all members of the board of selectmen, Carol Lee as well and and also Eric, a copy of the a revision of that report because the numer numeration of it was messed up, and I'll I'll take responsibility
for that because I did prepare the final report based on what happened with the Charter Revision Commission. I attended their last meeting, and they authorized me to do that. But I somehow messed up the numbers, and I sent you a revised set of draft reports with the numbers as they should be. There's four items, not three. And, the words are all the same. It's all the same, items and proposals of the, Charter Revision Commission. So you really need to have a public hearing. My recommendation would be to, if you can, to do that within a couple of weeks. Because if you do that within a couple of weeks and and you like what's in the draft report and you don't wanna change it, after fifteen days, it becomes final. And then we can move it on to the all you would have to do then is approve the ballot questions. We submitted ballot questions to you based on my discussions with the commission, and those questions you would you would act upon at your next meeting on July. I believe it's July 12, and then we could move this whole thing onto the Secretary of State's office and get it onto the ballot for the November election, which is what the goal is. So, that's really the way the process has to work from here. Board of Selectmen, is not being asked to act on this tonight. I think we're just introducing you to it,
and you need to have a public hearing. And within fifteen days that if the fifteen days go by after the public hearing and there's been no objection at all from the board of selectmen, then the report becomes final. It becomes owned it it becomes owned by the board of selectmen as well as the final report, and then all you need to do is approve ballot questions. We've given you a a draft a set of draft ballot questions that totally reflect the draft report, items.
If there's any questions, I'll be glad So, to Dennis, would it be alright to set the public hearing for our next board of selectman meeting
in the time That would be okay, Scott, but but you you would have to slow it would slow down the process to the point where if you have the public hearing then
Alright, so then we need to set it for a sooner date. Date?
Would do that some date that's more than fifteen days prior to your next meeting on the twelfth. That way, if if if you do nothing at all in the interim, that report would become final.
So so Jeff, would you be alright with having a special meeting? And another question. Can we have this a Zoom meeting also?
Don't think why not. Yeah. The latest version of the rules set forth by the legislature just recently based on the prior executive orders of governor Lamont.
Would anybody have a problem with a meeting of the June 21? I'm assuming that the
who's voting at this meeting? Is the community voting at this meeting? No.
It's only a public hearing. Just a public hearing, Jeff. Word of selectments are input from the public. That's all. Then
we can do special meeting, Scott. I have no problem with that. Just for public hearing, Jeff. Yeah, anybody else have a problem with a special meeting later in June?
Not the twenty first. We can have it the twenty first. Carol can be there. I don't believe I'm back in town yet. When are you back, Jeff?
Is that fifteen days? Yeah, before our next meeting. Our next meeting is to Yeah,
that would be fifteen days. The only thing on the calendar is the RTC, so. Well.
You wanna make a motion? Let's make a motion. It's gonna be twenty seventh? All right. I will motion to set a public hearing date of June 27 for their charter revision public hearing. 7PM I presume And via Zoom? Via Zoom. 07:00. 7PM. Jeffrey Murray will second.
Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
So we are five nothing. Okay. All right. Are there any other issues related to the Charter Revision Commission recommendations?
Well, if I may, Jeff, you know, it would be good and I'm not trying to influence board in any way. That's not my job. But if you do have an issue with anything that's in the draft report, the next step would be for you to have a meeting with the Charter Revision Commission and try to resolve your differences. If that doesn't happen, then that's gonna take time and then you might run into a problem in terms of, getting it onto the ballot. So, you know, this is a this is not a comprehensive, change. It's only a few items. And, you know, it's it's it's important, I think, to get it on the ballot for the November election because if you don't get it on there, then you'd probably you'd you'd probably just see. Could you get it on? I don't know if you I don't know if you could get it on to the next general election, November 23. Well well So Have you Go ahead. Excuse
me for a second. Has the board of selectmen read the draft already? Everyone's read it, and no one has any problems with what Dennis has drafted?
Well, it's not what Dennis drafted. It's what Right. So it's good. Board it's what the board. Right. Well, I think, I think we need to get my question to Dennis is
if after getting public input, we decide to make a change, do we then have another public hearing before moving it on?
You can, but you're not required. You're only required to have one. The Charter Revision Commission was required by law to have two. One public hearing would be all you'd have to have. And then if there's any differences between you and the board of you and the board of selectmen and the Charter Revision Commission, you're required to meet and to try to resolve your differences. And if not, the process goes on, and there are all kinds of different steps that have to be taken, which which take time. And, you know
But if we but if we want a change and the board and the Charter Revision Commission agrees to it, we do not have to have another hearing. We can then move forward from there? Correct.
And the turn in and the turn in date is September something or other. Right?
It's in early September for Carol would know better than I would, but I I've I've experienced it many times, but I don't know the exact date. I know it's in early September. It has to be the office of secretary of Yeah.
I'm I'm I'm fine. I think we should set the date for the twenty seventh and just move on from there.
I mean, do do we have time to go over it tonight?
Given the amount of stuff that is on our thing at Delta, we're going to have a meeting on the twenty seventh. Let's wait for public feedback and go from there. That's my personal take. I think we've all read it plenty of times.
Yeah, I agree that we can have our meeting and get public input. Then if we'd like to make we have any issues, then we'll discuss those five issues at the special meeting, the four issues. Okay.
Okay. If there's no objection, let's move on to 4B, Planning and Zoning, the Current Demographics and Affordable Housing, Opting Out of Public Act 2129, Accessory Dwelling Units.
Jeff, can I just back up one second? Sure, go ahead. For the sake of expediency, should we schedule a meeting back to back with the Charter Revision Commission just in case? And then if we don't need it, we're all set? Carol, are you okay with that? Carol? Yes, I'm fine with that. Sorry about that.
Okay, so I'd like to make a motion quickly then to schedule a meeting between the Board of Selectmen and the Charter Revision Commission immediately after the Board of Selectmen meeting for the Charter Revision presentation. I'll second that. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay.
So that passed five nothing. There were no objections. Thank you. Yep. Sorry, Jed. Jed, I'm assuming that you're going to be giving the presentation on this item?
I give it my best shot. I sometimes have a little trouble getting the technology to keep up with me.
Before Jed gets started, I want to let you know that Jed is a retired Navy serviceman and he still fits into his jacket that he had when he was in the service, his windbreaker. I just want to let everybody on this meeting know that, all right? Okay, Jed, you're up. We're very proud of you, Jed. Great. Thank you for all you did. And he was in the submarine. Exactly. He was the commander of the ship. He was a Jed, you didn't tell me that. You didn't ask.
Wow. The commander of the ship. Of the submarine. Exactly. That was thirty years ago. Jay, just so I know, what was the name of the submarine? USS Pasadena.
There you go. All right. There you go. A little bit of information about a resident of our own town, but he still fits into his wing breaker. Right. Ahead, I'm sorry.
The public act that you mentioned, twenty one-twenty nine, came out last year and it required each of the towns to come up with an affordable housing plan. And we, you know, we solicited the help of Bill Warner, the consultant, and he helped us put together what I thought was a very good plan. The due date for that was the June 1, and we submitted it last month. So, we were able to meet that due date and the greatest of military traditions there. There were a couple of things surprised me as we were working through that. And one of those was I was surprised at the town demographics of our population. And so, as we started out with the affordable housing plan, I started thinking this was not something we really needed because I thought Andover was a fairly affordable place to live. As we worked on it, I started thinking that this was a really good thing for the town to do because we've got a lot of people that are struggling with affordable housing these days. Or it could be, you know, workforce housing because a lot of the workers, you know, fit the category that meets that or the seniors that we have. So I was gonna talk to you tonight about one of the things in the plan is for us to opt out of the accessory dwelling unit regulations that the state put on. While I was here, I just thought I'd run through the demographics part of that as well. The plan is on the website. I think it's a very easy read. So, you haven't read it yet, encourage everybody to do so, as well as the
presentation that I gave to the town one beautiful Saturday morning where our attendance was all that I was hoping for. But Eric, if you'd let me share my screen, I'll see if I can get You should be able to share now. Okay. Yeah.
And just for the record, you know, with Jed's leadership, Andover was one of 40 out of 169 towns that actually submitted their plan in time for the state deadline. Thank you, Jed. Yep.
Anyhow, is the population increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? And here, I think this was from the plan that we developed. It showed back through 2010, you know, a rapidly increasing population in Andover. In fact, we probably, you know, modified some of our zoning regulations to slow down some of that growth, if you will, Certainly not make it any easier. But then, you know, back from the last, you know, we do a planet conservation development. The last one was done in 2015. Next one is going to be due in 2025. So, you know, the Planning and Zoning Commission, we're getting ready to start working on our next one here. But this is the data that we had from the last POCD. And it showed the population slowing but still increasing, you know, 2015,
3354 to about 3,400 in 2025. So, were still going up but not nearly as fast as we were back prior to 2010. I think we all know that Andover is getting older. And this shows the median age in Andover and it's projected to be over 50 by 2025, which is coming up soon. And Andover is getting older faster than the state in general. Not necessarily good, bad, but that's what, you know, we in Andover, we have a large senior population and it's continuing to grow. This is the slide in our affordable housing plan that really got my attention. And it showed that between 2010 and 2020, Andover's population declined by four and a half percent. And it shows a steadily decreasing population over the last ten years. And I said, well, that's probably not good for
our tax base, you know, and all that stuff. There might be a lot of reasons on that. You know, families are getting smaller, as we're getting older, we've got a lot of empty nesters. But a decreasing, declining population, I don't think is healthy for us. And then we went, you know, and I looked at a website called the Connecticut Data Center and they're the group that the state uses to analyze all the census data and all that stuff. And it makes a projection like they did for our last planet conservation, but it shows that our population will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. And that's what I said to myself, you know, we need to tackle this affordable housing thing. There's people that, you know, they just can't afford to live in Andover anymore for a lot of different reasons, and we don't have the facilities here. And we've known that for a long time, long term study group, you know, in the last plan of conservation development highlighted the fact that we needed affordable housing. But if people keep moving away from Andover because they can't afford to live here, I don't think that's a very good thing for us. So I wanted to show you this, maybe everybody was aware of that, but it caught me by surprise. I assumed we were slowly increasing and had a healthy population there. And this is what made me want to tackle
the affordable housing. And since we finished the plan, you know, inflation's going up, interest rates are going up, the need for affordable housing in town only continues to go up. So hopefully that will whet your appetite on that. And if there's no questions on what the population trends are telling us, and it could be that, you know, it doesn't come to pass. The pandemic and the shifting to virtual working may result in Andover's population turning around and going back up. But right this minute, the state of Connecticut population is increasing, Andover's going down, and we ought to see what we can do to keep our town healthy. So that's my pitch on the population stuff. Any questions on that?
No, I think you're good on the demographics end, Jay. Okay, and so
now I'm going to try and go out of this one and see if I can get. So, the thing that you'll be seeing soon is one of the actions that comes out of the Public Act 2129 is they had some regulations for accessory dwelling units. And part of our plan that we'll talk about here in a minute is the Planning and Zoning Commission, as well as, you know, in the plan recommends opting out of those regulations. So, why do we want to opt out? The public act requires each town, and I'm just going to read the underlying portion here, provided at least one accessory apartment shall be allowed as of right on each lot that contains a single family dwelling. And the thing that makes that tough for Andover is if all our lots were, you know, one or two acres or bigger, you could put an accessory dwelling unit on there and no big deal. But around Andover Lake in Lake District, you know, we've got
some very small lots. And if we were to say that as of right, each property owner had the right to build an accessory unit on there, I think that would be detrimental to the health of Andover Lake. And we're all working to kind of keep that lake healthy. So, our current accessory dwelling unit regulations, and I don't know if every town's got them already, if that's why they don't, and that's why it was put into that public act. But we've got regulations in effect today that address accessory dwelling units. For the Lake Ridge District, it talks about if you've got a lot greater than three acres in size, you can put in an accessory dwelling unit. We already talked about Andover having several small lots and that not conducive to the water quality there. So anyhow, based on that, you know, our plan was to opt out of that, which is written into the public act. This was the only piece in there that
we had the opportunity to opt out of. And in the process goes the planning and zoning commission by two thirds vote votes to initiate the opt out process. And I'm hoping to do that at our Planning and Zoning meeting next week. After that's done, we're required to hold a public hearing on the opting out of it to get input from the town. And if the commission decides to opt out within statutory deadlines, sixty five days after the close of hearing, we need to state on the record the reasons for the decision that takes two thirds vote to approve. We've got to publish our notice of decision like we always do. And then we get to the Board of Selectmen. So once once we have done that, we bring it to the Board of Selectmen, and it needs to be ratified by a two thirds vote of the town's legislative body or its Board of Selectmen if the town meeting is legislative body. And I'm under the impression that the town meeting is the legislative body for our town so we should be able to ratify that by a two thirds vote of the board of selectman. But I didn't want to come to the Board of Selectmen with this being a done deal having it be the first that you heard about it. And so that's why I wanted to come to you here tonight. If we don't do that, all the requirements of the Public Act go into effect regardless of what our regulations say. So at that point, our regulations are null and void. State regulations are there and they allow anybody that wants to endow to build at least one accessory unit on their property.
And then, you know, there were some good ideas in that public act. We might want to change our accessory dwelling unit regulations at some point in the future. But at this point, I just wanted to make sure that we got the opt out process complete before the end of the year so that we had the opportunity to take what we wanted from the state's recommendations and not be forced to allow accessory units, accessory apartments on our small lives. So that's that. I just wanted to give you a heads up that when you see it, it'll be close to a done deal, but I wanted you to know what was coming your way later this year.
Can I ask a couple of questions for clarification? Yeah, go ahead. So the first question is, we currently have accessory dwelling allowed under certain guidelines. Would this right negate the guidelines that we currently have in place? I mean, we currently have, I think, a limitation of a, you know, has to be under 1,000 square feet, you know. And my secondary to that is, wouldn't our inland wetlands protect the water quality? Because I would gather that even with an accessory apartment, although they have a right to have it, there would also be a requirement that the septic meet a certain guideline in order to have additional people living in the house. Am I wrong in that?
You are not incorrect on that. But again, when we created the regulations that we did, and if we had it to do over again, I'm sure we would not allow the small lot sizes that we have. So by increasing the septic loading on the lake, I don't think that's certainly not in keeping with trying to maintain the health of the lake as best that we can, recognizing that the health of the lake, you know, is probably on a degrading trend, not an improving one right this minute. That was the The second first question, you know, had to do with the size of the dwelling units. And right now, our regulations limit in an accessory dwelling unit to 800 square feet. The state recommendation is for 1,000. I might consider, you know, 1,000, but that's something for us to look at later on. The other thing to get into here is, you know, going back to the affordable housing plan. If we went up to, you know, the first slide down here at the end, it said no such accessory apartment shall be required to be an affordable accessory apartment. While we can't require it, there might be something that we can do to encourage somebody to have that be affordable housing, and the requirement on the property owner's part, it would have to be de restricted for ten years. To be affordable housing on a house out in town, you know, it's deed restricted for forty years. So, this is a lot smaller than that. You know, a lot of people build the accessory apartments for a relative.
Hopefully, can entice people to specify that and help out getting our numbers of affordable housing up to better than they are today. Should I answer your questions, Adrian? Yes, but it
gives me a little bit of concern in the sense that you're suggesting then that our current inland wetlands and septic regulations are not protecting the lake. So, someone could put in an accessory apartment and it would put too much, you're saying it would put too much septic load on the lake. Isn't the whole point of having a septic to limit accessory damage?
I don't know that somebody could get the, you know, the Board of Health to approve a septic system on a, I think we have some, maybe as small as a oneeight acre lot around it. Right. They would probably protect us there. Would we want an accessory apartment with the added septic on a half acre lot or a one acre lot? I don't think we did. I don't think we do. We're trying hard to put in requirements to help us keep the lake as clean as we can. While I'm not a civil engineer, I do think that a lot of the septics are contributing to putting in nutrients into the lake and hurting that. So while I think that public health would have to sign off on it, I don't know that that protects us as well as we would like it to.
Just so I understand what you are saying, I don't really have a problem with opting out, But how would anyone get a like, even my lot, how would you get an accessory building on my lot and be be able to put in a leach field that was 75 feet off a well and outside of the distance that's required for the lake or any of those.
Basement apartment, Jeff. Could be you could renovate your basement and make a basement apartment. That would consider be considered an accessory dwelling unit.
And both the accessory dwelling and the main house can use a common septic system if it's large enough to support it.
And therein lies my question. You if your house was built with a, for instance, a five a five bedroom septic right and you have four you put one bedroom downstairs. Don't see my question is, if we're really concerned that our septic regulations are not protecting us, then we need to address that, not just, you know, not make it hard, not necessarily make it harder, but let's actually make the regulations reflect what we're trying to do, you know.
That is one of the areas where I feel, you know, and again, not my area of expertise, but I did spend a significant amount of time talking to, you know, Thad King, our town sanitarian, when we were trying to draft the lake regulations for nutrient runoff. Mhmm. And, you know, Connecticut doesn't allow him to provide the enforcement that he would like to. When he talks to me up in Massachusetts, if you sell your house, a requirement for the incoming person when he is purchasing that house is the septic has to be up to code. FAD can only require an improvement in the septic if it is essentially failing. Okay. Otherwise, it is a paperwork review. And again, I don't think that's what we want to protect the lake. So that's the missing piece. Thank you. One
other question, Jed, just because I didn't sit there and see it. Like where does Andover rank in affordable housing? Like what is our ranking? How far below requirements are we?
Well, so every town is required to have 10% of its housing affordable. So we've got 1,100 units. We should have maybe 110 affordable housing units. We've currently got about 50. Requirement is 10%, we're 5%, and we are consistent with a lot of other towns, a lot of other rural towns here are about the same four or 5%. That is why when you read in the paper, there's commentary that while towns are providing plans, there might not be a lot of teeth in the plans that actually require anything to get done. And I would like to think that based on the people that we would like to have living in Andover, which are the seniors and the workforce people, we would like to build more affordable housing to accommodate them.
But isn't that going to require a larger conversation about changing our regulations? I mean, one of the biggest problems I see in our zoning regulations is we don't allow high density housing. Multifamily housing almost doesn't exist in Andover.
That is true. There's a couple of things in there and those things are all addressed in the plan. There's an awful lot of work for the Planning and Zoning Commission to do. You know, the one action that we would like the Board of Selectmen to do is to commission an affordable housing committee that kind of drives the bus on creating affordable housing. There's a lot of different ways that we can create affordable housing And we need somebody out there champion, being the champion for that effort. So, if I got the demographics,
our population is dropping, and I am assuming the state of Connecticut population is dropping. The state of Connecticut is actually increasing. Know, they have increased, you know, in 2020, they increased 1% from the year before, where, you know, Andover has decreased a little bit. Okay.
Yeah, but that's primary, that's not birth rate, that's immigration. Say again? That's not birth rate increase, that's immigration increase.
It could be, but it's people coming into the state, births and immigrants, primarily driven by immigrants into the state, which is a reversal from a few years ago. Think we saw a lot of people leaving, but maybe we reversed. Listen,
I don't necessarily believe what Adrian just said anyway because we're in the middle of COVID if the rates are from 2020. So everybody moved out of the city to get to a rural community like Connecticut was. So whatever. Let's not get into that level of the discussion. The issue is you're saying we're 5% low on potentially what is required as affordable housing, and we dealing with a decrease in our population. So, I mean, we're not dealing with a decrease in the amount of housing stock or the used housing stock. We're dealing with a birth rate decrease because all of our houses are there Eric, you would know, are there a significant number of our houses that are unoccupied? Because I don't see them.
No, they're not. The occupation rate stays about the same. The big thing that is affecting us is as the population ages, the percentage of households with kids continues is decreasing.
All right. I would disagree with that because if you look at our school population on, you know, we're actually slowly increasing. We actually may go back over 200 next year when we're know, if you go back a couple of years, we were down into the 180s.
Correct. We wrote out a 2008 or nineeleven issue or a 2008 issue, we wrote out a lot of issues that caused slowing of the birth rates with young people not And even getting
if anything, COVID is driving families to more rural communities like ours because in general they were more friendly during COVID situations. So
your real issue, Jed, is to get potentially 50 units of affordable housing or to get to a 10 number the state's requiring. It's not a hard and fast requirement. Are we going to be forced to do it? That's the next question.
Well, so if you don't have 10% affordable housing, what can happen is there's a general statute that says that if you don't have 10%, a developer can come in and he can put up whatever housing he wants, irregardless of your zoning regulations, as long as it meets the public health requirements, like Adrian was talking about before. And so, you know, one of the problems is that we don't have a lot of big parcels for somebody to come in and do that. And they wouldn't be necessarily nobody's going to come in and make an affordable housing development unless they can make a profit, you know. And so, those aren't the most profitable things, they've got to be, something that brings the developer in to work on one of the big pieces of property that we got.
Two of the things that came out of the plan that I thought were as exciting as anything that I heard in there was to increase the number of units over in our currently existing senior housing over by the ball fields. There's room for more over there. And then our plan of conservation and development talked about putting in some senior housing behind what will turn out to be the new seniorcommunity center by the town hall and the school. And I think we could make either of those attractive enough that we could get somebody in to come work with us on that. But we need to have somebody who's out there who knows how to work with getting the developers in,
enticing them, and bringing them to town.
Yeah, because to your point, Jed, they're allowed to ignore, as you said, as long as they meet the health requirements, which means they could go into a smaller parcel and do a higher density and ignore our zoning regulations as long as they could get a septic field approved. That's correct. So they wouldn't need a big parcel. So everyone that thinks that that's protecting us, it's not.
Then we also in our regulations have two chapters in there. One is for, I'm going to call it senior housing. I think it's planned development for older citizens or something. Then there's an incentive housing thing. And there are two chapters that allow us to do a higher density on bigger pieces of property, like what the town owns behind the town hall and that sort of thing. The end goal of our plan was not to create 50. We thought that was an unreasonable goal right this minute. We came up with a goal of let's get 10 new affordable housing units over the next ten years. So if we could add one a year, we think we'd be doing good. And we can do that, but there's some, to help out the seniors or those guys just starting out in life that we would like to have stay in Andover, we need to have something that they can afford to live in or they're going to move other places.
Okay. So just so we're all clear, what you need from us, Jed, is you're going to move forward with the meeting schedule that you had. Yes. Then once you get that approved, we as a Board of Selectmen need to approve it as well.
And that's approving the opt out of these accessory dwelling units provided by the state. Housing plan.
The affordable housing plan is approved, submitted to the state, and for right or wrong, good or bad, that's a done deal.
Okay. Thank you, John. And then we're also going to have to endorse a building committee, an affordable housing building committee.
Let's put that on our agenda for future meetings, Scott, and we'll deal with it at that point in time.
Certainly, I've taken up more time than I hoped to tonight. If there's anything I can come back to you on, happy to do that. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about it a little bit. Thanks,
Jeff. You very Thank you, Jeff. Your board. Thank you very much. Okay. Let's move on to, We're going to move to the items that Eric requested that we move. We're going to go to 9b, demolition estimates for the old firehouse.
Okay, I'm gonna let Jay Tuttle drive this one. Jeff Murray asks that this be on the agenda and this is a good timely time to do it. You know, I think this is well within the capability of public works to do. And I'll let you let Jay talk through what it would take to demolish the building. You're on mute.
Good evening, everybody. So Eric approached me not too long ago about what we can do about our storage of our senior transportation vehicles and where's a good place. So, I've been throwing it around and one of my suggestions was to demo the existing building and rebuild there. As of right now, I don't have any estimates, cost estimates as far as demoing, you know, what it would take. But other than if we rented an excavator with a thumb, you know, it probably cost $5.6000 dollars for an excavator for a week or so. And I'm guessing somewhere around 10 plus minus dumpsters, We can put all the material in there minus steel and any concrete because concrete we can take to our pit and dispose of their dumpsters can be hauled off by Our by Willie waste. And what's the what's the current rate of those poles now, Eric? Are they still around 300?
I don't know off the top of my head, but I think it's
going to go by weight though. So yeah, they'll they'll be a tonnage.
Yeah, sure. But just if you figure if you figure a thousand a pop, you're safe. Okay.
Don't, don't figure 3, don't figure 300, that's for sure.
Well, was thinking, I was thinking on the pull plus the weight. So it's roughly, you know, a thousand dollars a dumpster. So another 10 plus minus on that. So we're probably looking. Probably under $20,000 to demo. And that, but that's not including our. Time, you know, our time and and vehicles diesel. That's already part of our budget.
Do have any? Do we have any basins near there on the street?
Well, the only basin that that's quite a ways down. It's right at the inner. It's right at the intersection, the Inner Center St and 316.
Okay, just wanted to make sure. We need it so we can need filter on it if it was closer, think so.
Yeah, yeah, well we we would have to, you know, provide some protection. Have to do some hay bales. Could even put a little berm just to catch anything.
Exactly. You know, containment. If it's within a couple 100 feet, if it's within a couple 100 feet, generally you have to, you have, you're required to put a filter in it.
Yep. Well, it's further than that, but as far as containment on-site, that's not a big deal. Okay. And then we can monitor that down below. But that's really all I have as far as the demo. And, you know, further, do you want a further discussion as far as the building or we just talking demo right now?
I think we can roll right into the building and let's do them all at once. Okay.
So the second part of that was, you know, when Eric initially came by, we've been kind of off talking about this quite a while, but we looked at our site at Public Works. You know where potentially we can either do temporary parking or. Put placing another building there. In my opinion. And in my stubbornness, you know, we're I've been trying to make our public works more efficient, providing areas where we have materials storage so we can get it at a moment's notice and be ready. We don't have to go shopping all the time. We expanded some in the back. We're still working on that, which has really helped us out quite a bit. So we really did take a good look at our site. And there's potentially do you want to bring up the site plan? Eric, do you have that? You want the one for public works? Sure.
And why he's bringing that up, we were, you know, we got to keep in mind, we got to stay above the floodplain. Would it, you know, would we be able to build another building there? And
would army corps or would they even have to be involved? There's one spot that a building may fit on the site, which is if you're facing public works, it would be to the left as you're driving down the driveway just before apart. Did you find it? Yeah, hang on. Okay. And across from the gas tanks in there.
Yeah. Yeah. And the other problem in that spot, that's where our well is. Currently, that's that area is where we the employees park. And the size of the building would. There you go. Can you expand on that a little bit? Sure. There you go. So you can see on the right, the right in the center of the Public Works Building into the right, he's got it hashed out where the potentially the building could fit. There's also power lines directly behind, which would probably be above the building as it was placed. As I stated earlier, the employees currently park there. The driveway that goes around the building, which is the main driveway that we use to get to the back currently, And it would be a little bit more difficult to use or navigate of our equipment and we'd probably end up using more of the driveway closer to the river, which is on the opposite side, which is not as quite as good a shape as the one we're currently using. We use that far driveway by the river limit on a limited basis. And then property setbacks from there, we're not sure of the property line. We're kind of assuming
that's whereabouts, That's the back line, Eric, that you have there drawn
to the Yeah, we don't actually have a survey of this. All we have is a really old deep description. So, we would probably have to survey this and we would be building within the side yard setback. This would take a variance to enable us to do that.
And the building would be pretty much butted up right up against our well. Which is on the far end. Closer to Long Hill.
And so it sounds like this is a dead issue because you're not going to get a full well, you're not gonna, you know, so what's our next? Let's move on to what we're looking at. Let's
go back to the senior. The old firehouse drawing. And while he's bringing up that we met Monday. With Rob from BNS? The engineer. Yep. Okay, Eric, right? Yep. Engineer and Ed Cerisley. And I had an other than other than demoing the existing building and building within using the existing foundation or building another foundation of, you know, using that existing building, I had an idea initially of putting up a building up top in that parking area. And it sounded good while I was thinking about it, but then the more we talked about it and saw the site, there's some there's some ledge outcroppings in the area and we're not too sure that if we put another building up there, whether it would fit due to setbacks and we'd have to do a lot of some test pits in the area that upper parking lot.
Well, if I, if I remember correctly talking to Kurt Dowling about this a while back, he said they buried some massive, massive pieces of rock in there. You So might end up blasting,
you know? Yeah, so, I mean, I don't know what, what's up there obviously. And then, you know, we were just figuring you got to have a 50 foot setback from the road and then a 35 foot setback from the sidelines. And by the time you put the building in, you know, it's just it, you're going to be constricted and then you still have the cost of demoing the building and then we got to fill the hole that is left behind and that's going to be a lot of work too. So, and we kind of put our heads together and we came up with an idea that if we demo the existing building and use the existing foundation as the retaining wall, so because that's your area that you're, you know, to box out for your new building and we build new walls within the interior of that building.
So, basically creating a smaller building, demoing only part of the existing foundation down far enough just so it would be below grade when you end up finishing. We'd end up putting a 36 by, geez, I forget what the length was. What's the length there? Six thirty by six by 64. 64, yeah, 65 in length. So, currently the building's about 40 feet in-depth. And we would just take down the top, the walls far enough down, as I said, below grade and putting a structure on top of the new foundation.
Questions? I gotta say after the Memorial Day parade in the thing that they had down there, there was a lot of people there were very happy with that lot and having the that ceremony there. I think that if we got rid of that building in some way to make it more attractive and put another building in there for the commuter or buses. I think we got a winner two ways here, getting rid of the old building and getting a place for a roof for the all of our vehicles.
I have, I just have one question. Has anybody thought about, and I don't know what the condition is, if it's wetlands or not, the area below the firehouse on School Road?
Eric and I did visit that site. You're talking about the parking lot where the dry hydrant is? No, I'm just talking about the other side of the firehouse.
Yeah, that's too wet. Only thing we could even potentially do it, crazy as it sounds, would be right in the parking area for where the nature pond is. That would take a bunch of, we would certainly be within 100 feet of wetlands. In any case, there's some possibility, you know, that you could get permission to build a building in there, but it's far from an ideal site and you lose all the parking at the nature pond.
My question is just putting this building out as a standalone item, I'd like to try to align it with our other structures. That's still my only concern having the stable. Then if we have some residential development in that area in the future, if we kept that lot open, especially for affordable housing, think I would just want to be open to that. So that's kind of my only concern. We'd give up space for a garage when we could probably locate it in another location in town and align with our other buildings.
Yeah, we looked at that Jeff. You know, when Eric and I tossed that up, just you know me putting my 2¢ worth in. There isn't the town doesn't have a lot of properties available where something of this. You know, where would it fit? Know, it's it's I understand you got standalone. There's there's a lot of development costs to this. Just putting it someplace else. You have an existing structure that you could utilize. We can make it look residential. You could put a couple of dormers on the roof, you know, so it looks more residential looking. It's easy for us to service when we got a plow because it's very close to the garage.
Is there a reason we can't just use the existing foundation and put a, you know, put a kiddie wall on top of it and, and, you know, just do a flat roof, a truss flat roof?
Well, we, we looked at that too. And I mean, I suggested that myself and you and I both have talked about that Adrian. I talked to Eric about it too. And in talking with the engineer and you have the original stone foundation of the building to the west side. Yep. And then it was added on how many years later to increase the depth of the building, adding on a bay, and then that last structure adding even more concrete. Currently, there's a couple of spots in the back wall, you know, where there's some, when the water table is up, it leaks a little bit into the garage base. You know, we could fix that stuff as we go along by putting in some better drainage, footing drains of the new structures, you know, new footings. Just one
thing that I would like to ask is, at the location where we're planning on building the community center off between the community center and the fire department, is there any space over there that could be utilized and maybe tied into a building where all the seniors would potentially be?
Unfortunately not because there is a very large septic field out there.
You go to the school side, on the other side there's a septic system? It goes quite a bit towards the firehouse. Yes.
Yeah. And directly behind their parking areas, wetlands. Yeah. And there's not much room between there and the, the gas line. The only way you could do it is you could run all the way through. You could put a driveway or an access way through past the gas lines and located on town property behind the gas lines. That would be possible. But now you're committing to a fairly significant driveway construction or access way construction to get back there.
Because it's not, it's not a short distance. You would have to go quite a ways back to I get out of
was thinking more that there's the parking lot that is behind Town Hall, then there's strip of land and the fire department in that area,
in that area. Yeah, but again, so that, keep in mind, the septic field is not, it's not a septic field for a house, it's a septic field for a commercial facility, a school in this case, and the town hall. So it's not a small septic field by any stretch. If, if you go back actually in your What's that?
Just beyond that is, is the wetlands all behind the Right, exactly. Exactly.
I do have one other idea. Unfortunately, it would not address Jeff Murray's concern about residential. If you were to take the size building that you're proposing, and looking at the, the, the shared screen we currently have, if you put it in the upper left, you know, the up centered it in that upper, you know, left, you know, quadrangle, whatever. I'm can't remember my geometry terms, but basically it's kind of move it up into the left and center in that area. And yeah exactly right there if you did that and instead of doing a traditional foundation we did what's called a monos a monolithic slab you wouldn't have to do very much digging at all. You basically have to go down about 24 inches and just put stone, you put insulation panels and then you pour your you pour your floor on top of that. And it allows you to put up it's basically a construction technique that allows you to. Put something somewhere without really doing a deep footing so that would protect us from having to do some massive digging and your excavated material could then you'd be used to help fill in your demoed area.
Yeah, we again, Adrian, we thought of that too. And, and you know it brought us right back to it. We utilizing that that lot in its it for its best use if the public now wants to use that that's you know that's open space basically up top behind that behind the building as it is. Yep. That you know just as of late it was used for the Memorial Day parade for the celebration.
Right. So you put a building there now you lost it. It gets used once a year. What's the difference? People are talking about selling that property. Yeah. And my my my
thought process in this is my concern is it's by the time you sit there and do some of the engineering required to do the, the, you know, the building in a building. And then we're gonna have to make some. We're gonna have to make some improvements because of the water issue that you've already mentioned. It may be less expensive to go the other route to do a monolithic slab, you know, in the upper corners. And as long as we meet our setbacks, which I think we would. I don't see the, I don't see the well location on here.
I, I, I don't It's right in behind, it's right in behind the, between the
walkway there and the building. It's right off of that, right in the corner there. So we'd be okay for that.
We'd be okay for the well. You would not meet the setback requirements because this zone has a 50 yard front yard setback requirement. And if you look at that size of the lot and you take this building is basically around 68 feet long, which is not much longer than the original. If you stuck that in the corner, you are not making the front yard setback.
This Are you telling me, Eric, that we can't get a variance? I'm not saying you can't get a variance.
Well, ironically, don't think any house on the street has a 50 foot setback. So. No, I understand. I
don't care where those buses need to be undercover for the benefit of the seniors of this community. I don't care where it goes. I don't care how it gets done. We got to figure out what we're doing.
Can we start by, can we start by, what's a, I would like to move forward with the demolition. I think that's the smartest play at this point. We're spending money on power and heat on that building, and especially where oil is right now.
I think it makes sense to. If you don't have an alternative for the buses, the bus storage, you're not tearing the building down. Yeah. We have to find a storage unit for the buses, but who's with the buses?
You're gonna have to move the buses during construction anyways. There's a time there's a timetable for the steep granite. Are we suggesting this? This something we want to steep grant?
I don't suggest if you're going to do it, this is going to be expensive enough. We're going to want to grant fund this. Yeah.
I have one more question. Don't we own a chunk at Shawty Mill before you enter the transfer station going up the hill? Right down the road? Yes,
we do, but it's not. I don't think it's flat there. I think it goes downhill pretty readily there. It's pretty flat
from what I remember. I just didn't know if we'd looked at that or not either. My suggestion for doing that is trying to keep, like I said, everything kind of grouped together, all our town complexes grouped together. Just having this building standalone just kind of concerns me a little bit. Just vandalism, know, just having it as a standalone, not part of the complex. It gives me some concerns.
Yeah, if nobody's vandalized this old firehouse the way that it's a yeah, I don't think come on.
We're not going to abandon it. I'm just asking the question. I'm just trying to consider all the other sites that we have in town.
No, I'm with you. I would love, I swear to God that my mind after everybody's talking is where can you do it by the town hall, by the new building? Again,
Eric is 100% correct that you, the only, your only option for doing it over the town hall is to move it out past the wetlands area and across. And it's, a commitment to a rotor building project. Right. It's very wet in there, very wet. Now,
we are eventually going to utilize that, you know, for a senior housing project, you know, to do that isn't the worst thing in the world, but it is, it is money. And that, that would be a fairly expensive. And the other thing about this is when you demo that building, you know, got about 700 cubic yards of material we need to bring back in to fill in where the existing foundation is. We'll get it from the pit, but that's still an awful lot of trips and an awful lot of trucking in from public works. So, mean, one of the things I was trying to do is avoid that as part of the process. Now, Adrian's right, if we use the upper site, some of that material that we took out could be used for that. So, that would be a possibility.
Right. But there's only, there's only so much material on a 24 inches cut.
No, you're absolutely right. There is. But I think, you don't have to fill the whole thing. I think you have to, you know, work on us. You, you have to grade out that slope and put some slope retention in, you know? Yeah. So you're not trying to fill the whole thing. You're, you're actually trying to fill probably about, you know, half.
It's a lot more than that, Adrian. The grade is almost up to the roof on that one side on the it's
still No, I mean, I mean half the building space is all I'm saying. Right.
All right. So we still have to find the appropriate location for this, but we can't tear that building down until you find a home for the buses.
No. Right. Well, I think temporarily you can leave the buses outside for long enough. No, that's absolutely unacceptable.
No, you can't. Kind of vote no too. Think about the winter for them. We're having enough trouble finding bus drivers and you want them to go out there and clean those vehicles when it snows? No. Not an option.
Okay, then let's not talk about the site because if we can't ever have the vehicles out from the building, we're going to have to keep this building and not demo it until after we pick another location. Okay, let's pick a location. I like Adrian's idea to be really honest. Well, if that's what you want, that's what we'll pursue.
I mean, I like my idea the best, which is put it up near the town hall, but if you can't put it up at town hall, I like Adrian's second. Well, I mean, here's the thing. If, you know, to Eric's, again to Eric's point, which I'm getting kind of sick of agreeing with him tonight, but I'll deal with it. Is that as we go, if you're going forward, you know, we just had a conversation about, you know, affordable housing and being a developer and all this other stuff. As you're going forward. If we were to invest as a town in putting in that that that roadway. That would be a huge first step towards getting a developer to actually look at that parcel. Right, but Adrian for one
thing, the road would not cross the gas line in the location that you guys are talking about. The driest spot is up at the top of the hill. Okay. And that's where you would go into those properties where the road to the 70 acres. And when you say the top of the hill, can you? Yeah, right over, right, you know, in the vicinity of the community garden, the garden and the community center. It's going to go in right through there, that's the driest spot. There's some wetlands in the back there if you're going to cross the gas line and you go into it that way. It's just further you go down the hill there behind the fire department, it's all to wetlands right And
I don't care where that road goes in over there, but I'm just saying if we were to invest in doing that and put the building in a clear spot back there Right. That would be a great first step towards.
Right. And and Jeff Maguire's idea is good to put it in there tight in some place, but if if you're gonna put a road through there, it's wet. So the road's not gonna go there. It's gonna You need to move the road up a little higher. And
then if you wanted to put this new building that we're proposing up there, there's no room for it. It immediately goes right into the school's property. And not the school's property, Andover's property, but you know, there's no place to put it, it's a playground.
Well, actually one of the things that was discussed and one of the things that was super important to Ed Srisley was that when the community center plans were put together with Rob, that there that that space between the school and the community center is large enough. They could put a roadway through there. Exactly, and there is, there's plenty of room, Adrian. Okay.
But to put both of those buildings in there would not work. No, but you could put one and then the roadway back to the other. Am I wrong, Scott? Well, you could put a roadway in through the woods there, where would you put the building that we're proposing?
Soon as you get back into the woods and you're clear of the wetlands area.
I I you know, I'm I'm not saying you couldn't do that. Yep. Gotta get a big grant. Set off a big grant. Yeah. Especially at
Alright. Let's let's So can we actually get a can we just get a budgetary estimate for what the road would cost?
How much is how much a foot, Jay, on on a road nowadays?
I 300? I don't know at this point. It's a million a mile.
Yeah, but that was last year, Adrian. No, it's a million a mile. That's the going right.
To build construct a road is about a million a mile. Yeah, so you got to go 800 feet back there to put that building that we're talking about. That's, you know, I don't know what is it like 4 or 500 Jay for a road nowadays? 4 or 500 what for a row? A foot.
I don't know, Scott. I would say, you know, we're talking 3 or $400,000
Oh yeah. You're probably 3 or 400 ks to get back there. Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, wouldn't debate that at all. Listen, was Jeff's idea. I'm just trying to run with his vision. Can I make a suggestion, please? Yes, Paula.
Can we, for next meeting, can we have option one with pros and cons and maybe some numbers behind it? So option one, maybe Adrian's suggestion with pros and cons and numbers associated with cost. Option two would be Jeff McGuire's suggestion and then with pros and cons and numbers to that. I feel like that be that that would all would be good. Listen, it's a great idea, but let's be honest. Eric is one person
with a laundry list of stuff on his plate, including, you know, steep cramp submissions and July 15 And personnel changes and a bunch of other stuff. So I think So how do we, how do we, how do we pick something tonight? What's, what's the suggestion? I feel like we're don't think this goes, I don't think this goes forward tonight. I think unfortunately this gets pushed, you know, we're slowly picking off big things. The community center is moving, is moving forward now. I don't, I don't think you haphazardly make these decisions. We need to plan them out a little more. And I think we need to give our staff time to do the things that we've already tasked them with doing before we dump a lot of other stuff on their plate. So what I'm trying to say is I feel like we're talking in circles. We're trying to find, we're trying to pick
a site to move forward with and we can't, we can't right now. So I think we move on unless otherwise. And,
and we try and find some more information down the line when we can. I do think that we should talk about demoing this building though at some point in the near future.
Know. Paul, from my perspective, the only thing I would say is that if this is a consideration for a steep grant, you know, we need to, the decision needs to be made pretty much now because we've got essentially two months from today to submit. I can wait. It is looking shovel ready projects which means we're going to need to commit and spend engineering dollars with a structural engineer and with a surveyor and we're going to need to be going for it kind of full blast right now. Right away. If we're not going to do that then we just you know say okay we're not going to this is not going to be a consideration for steep grant.
And then we look at other things for steep grants. I mean, looking at looking at the list of options that you gave us for steep grants, I think there's plenty of other things that we can put in for the, know, and spend the funds pretty quickly. I mean, roadwork to me was top of that list. And there's certainly enough money in roadwork that we could spend, you know, through a steep gram to to fill out the 500 ks pretty quickly.
And I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if we're gonna put this under the steep grant because we don't have numbers associated with this unless I think we'd be, I think we'd be rushing this
to get. You know, to get an accurate assessment beforehand, I would rather us look at the roadwork. It's the number one complaint from residents in town, you know, and we've we've been making some progress. It'd be nice to make a little more progress. So and then we try to work at structuring, you know, going forward with this come up with some some ideas. Where where's the roof for the our buses?
Can you can you rephrase that question? I'm not sure what you're asking. We need to have a roof over the buses for the winter this this winter. What what do we how are we gonna address that? Are we not parking them there currently?
Yeah. But the roof is falling in. Yeah. Is it really?
Here here's the here's the issue, and I don't know who's been down there lately to look at that building, but well I mean I felt something bad's gonna happen in there. Yeah, somebody's got to somebody's got to go in there and take the ceilings down because they're they're falling in and the garage doors are dragging them down when the garage doors open and close and you got these massive holes in the soffits, especially on the, would call it the east end of the building.
The raccoons been going in and out of that end for years.
Yeah, the east side of the building had a very soft roof several years ago. I mean, I I I did a site inspection on it. About six years ago and it was so soft I I actually was worried I was going to fall through. So yeah, everyone needs to go down there
and look at that building. I don't know how bad it is, I've seen it. I've been in, I've looked at it, it's bad. I just gotta propose something. I mean, have some money in our community center fund. Couldn't we cover most of the expenses for that out of the community center fund since this is community center related? For what specifically? Demolition and construction of a new garage. Yeah, pick a site.
If we can pick a site, we can pay for it with those funds. We have those funds ready to go and then we could use our Stevegram money for other things like Adrian was saying, roadwork or whatever we choose for. We have that money. I mean, then we could just free it up. Everybody's agreement that it would be at a acceptable purpose or use for that fund, those funds, I I don't see any reason why we couldn't do that.
I just wouldn't go crazy using them because we haven't got a number back yet. Because if if if the numbers come back over a million, they're going to come back way over a million because they'll it'll be once we break a million, we have to go. Yeah, we're gonna go be we're gonna be prevailing until we get their RFP. Yep.
What's that? I I agree with you. Yeah, so I would like to wait before we commit to that. I'd like to at least just let's get an let's get our let's get the RFP numbers back from the Community Center before we make that commitment. That's all if if we come back and it's clean, then you know, then I and we make that decision I don't have a problem with it, and I would support it. I mean, what do you think a steep grant would be for the demo window replace that 100,000.
I would have figured considerably more than that. Would assume that we were going to be into that at least a couple 100,000 by the time you demo that, build a new structural you know foundation and, you know, plunk a roofline on top of it. If it were me, I would chuck on top of it would be like a bonus room truss, a 36 foot wide bonus room truss. So I had some potential future storage so we could finish it off at some point later. That's what, you know, in my mind that seems like the most logical, you know, and then what you do is then you put a couple of fake dormers on the front. So it looks vaguely residential. Residential. It doesn't look out of place in the area where it's at. Looks better than it looks now.
Far more functional than what we have now. And, you know, we're pretty much set from there for senior transportation. That would be my take on it. And we'll still need a
variance though for that because even using these existing space we're demoing more than 50% of the building so we'd have to get a new permit.
Yes, however, remember we are, what we're doing is we're reducing the nonconformity from what it is now. So, getting variance is more likely than putting it in the upper part.
Fair enough. Yeah I think eric's right you're probably. You're you're probably all said and done you're going to spend 50 ks on the DEMO, even if we do it in house, if you go out off if we contract out it's going to be way more But you're 50 ks in house and you're going to be easily 125 to 150. So you should be budgeting 200 plus for this.
Well, the construction I was looking at, I mean, was getting a steel buildings for my house. I mean, with a decent facade. And, you know, three car garage was right in the neighborhood of 50,000. You're absolutely right, but that doesn't include putting in
electrical or insulation or any of the other things. It also doesn't include trying to make it more residential, unfortunately. Are we gonna make this heated and are we gonna just make it a storage building like we have now? That's the question. Are we gonna just, the purpose is to get the vans out of the snow and the weather, not to, not to heat them all. I think the question is how far are we going towards residential, right? If, if we're going more towards residential,
that's going to take money to make it look more residential. That's why I like to try to find more of an industrial spot if we could that was part of our existing complex.
Actually Jeff, know, I believe that that's my biggest conflict on this putting it there that doesn't stick with the residential, but if you can make it it look residential. I understand what you're saying about that, that's one of my problems but it's still it's the best it's our best alternative right now.
Really. We can certainly make it look a lot better than what's there now. There's no question about that.
So would we, do we need to have the variants and all that stuff approved before we go for a steep grant?
We need to have it as close to shovel ready as possible. They So,
I mean said that the permits, it's highly advisable to have all the permits that are required in hand. And what's the deadline on Steep? It's August 15.
That seems a bit implausible to me that we could do it. It's no question. It's a push. It's a push.
Are you saying that you want to try to tackle this Eric, if we approve it?
I'm not saying I have a burning desire to. I'm saying given that our objective is to find a home for senior transportation and steep grant is a viable funding mechanism and I don't know of any others right now that we can tap, you know, conveniently. I think this is a good option. And I would put my head down and pursue it if that's what the board wants. Jeff, Jeff, Thoughts? Listen, that's something that has to get done.
Marine saying it's it. This is this is a need we're gonna have to. We're gonna have to address. I mean, we're gonna lose a van if that if something's heavy falls in that building, we damage one of the vans. Alright,
I mean, we're gonna be kicking our. I make a motion that we authorize authorize Eric to pursue, you know. To pursue this as a steep grant option and we allot 250,000. Towards the project for steep funds. I'll second that. Okay. Further discussion?
Do we, before we vote on this, do we wanna have an extended conversation about the steep grant and what else we want to talk about before we decide on this.
All right, we've and we've certainly got a full list from Eric to fill in the rest. I think we probably need to go to the list. And Paula,
what exactly were the, what was your thoughts on what part of that?
Before we decide this is a done deal for the Steep Grant, do we want to have a full conversation about what else we want to look into for the Steep Grant before we put, you know, this in the ring.
Right, yeah. The school's talking about a playground, I guess, right Paula?
Right, we haven't heard from And Valerie yet we haven't discussed everything else about what we wanna put in possibly in for this DEEP grant. Is there a maximum, Eric?
Yeah, maximum of 500,000 for the town, but it can be multiple grants. I personally only want to be responsible for submitting one, Whether I submit one for 500,000 or whether I submit one for less than that, I have the bandwidth right now potentially to do one good grant application. So, keep that in mind. If you want it out of the town, unless you're volunteering to submit one of the steep grants or develop it yourself, the town I think should take a tack should tackle one. So if we were to do this, that would probably be our steep grant from the town's perspective.
But if we're doing roadwork though, wouldn't that really be something that Jay would be more involved in? Could?
Well, Eric, could we additionally add some roadwork to the steep grant?
What Eric saying is he only wants to do one. So if we did roadwork grant, it would fall upon Jay. Oh, okay. Yeah. So the question is, where's Jay? I'm still here. All right. Thoughts, Jay? You want more money for paving?
I would love more money for paving. I just don't know how much time I can put in this between now and the time the grant is available. Right now, swamp's getting shotty and getting our road work done right now. This goes back how
much time will you have versus how much time public works is taking up for projects. Yep.
So we got I didn't get out of there till 04:30 tonight.
Yep. So the school does have a proposal they'd like to put forward. Do we wanna hear that from Valerie that might be appropriate? Yes. Let's. Thanks.
Hi, Donna. Hi. So, yeah, I there's a couple of things that I wanted to address. I know that, you know, we've been talking now for about ninety minutes about a bunch of different things that the town is looking to advance. And I know that a big focus has been on really the community center and that being a lot of the undivided attention at this point. I know that there was a mention of the steep grants and the town applying for steep grants. I don't know how quickly you'll be able to get some of the other stuff together by the deadline. It's eight weeks away. I do know that on the school and I shared with you guys that we do. It's funny that I think was Jed that was talking before about an increase to population or decrease. We are over 200 for next year, and the demographic of our students is changing. We actually have some bigger changes. We've got some students that are entering next year with disabilities. One particular student with disabilities that's coming to us in the fall has significant physical disabilities. And we do not have anything in town that's ADA compliant. We do not have facilities for students in wheelchairs or adults to push students in wheelchairs at any of the facilities now. I actually already did go through with O'Brien and Sons
to come up with a proposal for different phases of looking at updating, innovating, and making ADA compliant our existing facilities that are in our yard now. I think it's very timely with the fact that the big project for the town is going to be the community center, and its proximity to our backyard means that everybody's going to want to use it. So I would ask for consideration this year for the ability to submit a steep grant on behalf, not just of the school, for the town to be able to have this kind of facility. We're really talking about the back of the town hall and the school being the hub of everything that we're talking about creating here for the future of Andover. And so I know that a big consideration with the Steve Grant is being able to be pretty much shovel ready. And since we already have facilities there, we are talking about innovating and updating. So we're shovel ready. It does take weeks to have some kind of an agency come up with a quote, things like that. I've already done all of that. So getting an August 15 proposal in for a grant is not a problem if you guys were to decide that we don't want to not be prepared to turn in some kind of a town steep grant.
And so I would say that before a decision's made, I would ask that you guys at least consider, you know, having this be I mean, I would do the work with this deep grant. I'm not asking for anybody else's time to do that. I'm kind of just asking for permission for this be a possible project that we look at, especially considering the fact that demographically I do have children entering one particular one that is entering school in the fall and we currently don't have anything that's ADA.
So how do you, how would you propose the co funding requirement for the seat grant?
Well, from we have to talk about what the matching co funding portion is from what I can see in there now. There's a couple of requirements that we would have to go through to see if it is a 20% requirement that we get that or not. I'm not quite sure the way you read it. It says that you must have the 20% match.
So if it's a 20% requirement, how would the school fund it?
I'm asking I'm asking you, is there a 20% requirement?
So I can answer you that question. So I sat through the webinar with Martin Heft and there is and there isn't. And by that, I mean, they were very clear that any project that has less than a 20% municipal match will not be considered until all possibilities with a minimum of a 20% match are considered. Since I think it's unlikely that there aren't going to be enough steep grants, to go through the $30,000,000 state allotment, you know, he basically said, you can put one in with no match if you want, but don't expect to get it. So that's how I would put it.
Well, I think with any of the grants that we would put in for the town, that would be, I think an issue was we'd all be taken a risk. I don't know that we have 20% for a $500,000 grant to go in for anything.
So That's for us to we're asking about the school. I know. Know. But I'm just saying,
did read through the requirements and they they will consider one without a municipal match if all of the other requirements, like the fact that the foundation is already there, the foundation I mean, the fact that it's shovel ready, the fact that it's going to be falls under the category of recreation, and it's going to be something that helps the community.
So Val, just so I understand this, so the application that you're looking to submit is $250,000 grant, correct?
Yeah. But but it doesn't necess it that is. The project itself is $258,000. However, what we got through O'Brien and Sons was phases of the project. So Jeff, if you guys said, you know, we're only allowed to put in 500,000 by August 15, Val, and and we're not gonna let you even try to get 258,000, there are portions of the project that are also ready to go for an application if you said you can only put in and ask for a 100,000.
Okay. So, I mean, the the the problem, Val, and where I think, you know, if we went to if we went to road work, we have road funding already in place. So to push money around that way would be a little bit different. And so we have to sit there and identify what we can assist you with. And you have to sit there and come back to us and let us know if the school board or the school has any available funding that can be put into that. So I mean, 20 of $2.50, you know, you're looking at $50,000 in that number. So, well, let's all look at we're going to have to get with Eric and understand what Eric would put in, and then we can go from there. Eric,
if you had three different, if you had the AES project and road funding and new building for the buses, I mean, those be, could you put the two things for the town together and additionally add this on and then use our matching funds for their matching funds? That I'm not I
Say that again, Scott. No. I want clarification. What is he saying? He he he's asking a question. Is is the can the town use funding to assist the school? I think what you end up with, Scott, is you end up with a poorly written grant. You're gonna have to if you're gonna allow the school to do it, have to have two different grants. You have the town grant that Eric writes, one grant for $2.50 for whatever project Eric would go after or we would recommend that Eric go after. And then the school would have a $250,000 grant for its project. The problem that Adrian addressed is where are the 20% funds coming from? Like, I can visualize how we get the funding for road work. It's more difficult for Valerie and for that project to find $50,000 Do we have that in a building fund? Do we have that somewhere else? Can we come up with it some other place? Yes. But I think what we have to do is we have to listen to Eric and to sit there and see what projects he could potentially write grants for.
I think I have one other question just for clarification on the school. So that's basically adding on to an existing playground, correct?
It would be updating, innovating, renovating, making ADA compliant, yes. But that's playground is closed to town residents during school hours, correct? Only during school hours, yes. It's open after school on the weekends and the summers. It's open to the rest of the community. And we now have the community garden next door, know, so you do have people that use it on the weekends when they're there with that as well. I No, I'm just asking for clarification in the sense that, you know, there's been a lot of ask for
a project, you know, like this specifically, you know, an accessible playground, but also to have that playground be available during the school day when, you know, if you've got a one to four year old that's not in school, you know, that that you can bring them down to the playground.
Well, they certainly can before and after school and three through kids three and up are already in our school. Okay.
So I just have a question where what's the 250,000 for? Because I did some reading on this before the meeting and it appears the standards are, if you have a playground, 30% of it has to be stations or activities that are ADA compliant or accessible by a wheelchair. So if we have 10 vehicles or things on the PlayScape, three of those have to be at the ground level or accessible. And another thing is the slope, like we're talking about getting this from the community center, there is some regulations on how to get the wheelchair ramps to a certain height and it has to be one foot for every 12 feet. So it would be almost impossible for us to get from the community center to the playground based on the elevation. So we'd have to come up with some other plan to get people in there.
From the community side. Yes. From the back of the school, let's say down by where the seniors had their lunch the other day, where our garage is. There from where the garage is all the way up to the back in existence already is pavement that goes all the way around to the other side. So you can get from one side of the school where the other side of the playground is to the right side over there. You can get all the way back down to the what do you call it?
To the garage. But Jeff and Jeff is asking if the pavement's ADA compliant.
It's not ADA. It has to be one foot elevation for every 12 feet. So it's too steep.
So but right now, since the playground itself is not ADA compliant, what do you call it would have to be extended from the walkway that currently exists there down to the swing sets and the appropriate materials there. That's where we're not compliant.
The access from the town side, Jeff, just, you know, the grade in the back is less. Just it would change. That's all. So Valerie, the plan The town side to the school side would be in a different place than the grade that you're talking about. So Valerie, the plan addresses that, the grading issue from the town side or only from the school side?
Well, it it would if this is what we're looking at. I haven't gotten that far yet. That would be added in there, but we do have the rest of the costs of the actual equipment.
Well, there was a huge plan. I know John showed me a plan at the meeting, so it's not currently it's not addressed in the current plan.
The grading from the town, no, because the original plan itself would have focused on the attention of getting from school to playground. Now we would just have to add the community center to playground. Okay. Okay.
So we're we're still on the new business items to try to allow Jay to move on. What else do we have for Jay?
Well, I don't know what Jay was gonna be part of, so we'll go back to the steep grant submissions later. We had nine, purchase of a portable PA system. I'm assuming that's Carol Lee.
No, I think Jeff wanted that added to the agenda. Jeff and Paula probably. Okay.
We just want, I think it's time we get a portable PA system for the something that's reliable for the town to use parades and events. All right Paula, do you have an idea, cost?
Yeah. Jeff Jeff was looking into it. So Jeff, you wanna just I say under I know. Under $500 we can get something we can get something really good.
And this is gonna be used at, you know, outdoor events and things. Senior lunches, all the events that we have. Excellent idea.
Yeah, the system we have, it's a little wheeled box and it's, I don't know how old, it's sound very reliable for the
Memorial Day parade. Oh my god, we're talking about $500 Let's just approve it already. Yep. Let's just make a motion to approve it. Just find it. And to be clear, if we're moving on to something else,
when are we coming back to Steve Grant stuff? Because you know Valerie's on this call. She's on one as well. When you know what Adrian, what I was thinking is, should we just should we should we just have a separate meeting? Everybody put their proposals together, decide where we want to put the Steve Grant in for? Probably a good idea. Let's just do a special meeting next week. We'll all meet. Let's put our proposals on the table. Let's decide what we're going use our Steve grant for. So everybody knows what they're going get spent for. Spent on.
Okay, what do you want back from me in terms of the town? Because what I did was I gave you all a list of things which I You thought gave us a huge list, yep. Right, but because it's really your decision. I mean, don't want to tell you what to spend the money on. I'll put the grant in for whatever it is that you want. The only thing I would say is that the decision has to be made whether we're going to split and do two grants, in which case one will probably be the school grant or whether you wanna go for one big grant.
So he sends us an email on sixsix, which was on Monday. It was a week ago regarding this. Right.
But what I am saying is if we are going to consider the putting the building where it is now for senior transportation, then that means I need to get some structural engineering work done and some surveying work done. Very quickly.
And I would we would have to make that decision pretty quickly, and just take that money out of the multi use building fund, which would be reasonable. If we did do that, you know, that limits the loss to the multi use building fund to about, you know, 50,000 and the other 200,000 would be out of the grant, presuming we got it. That's how I would approach it if that was the way you as a board wanted to go. If you want to do a roadwork project, we could easily spend the full $500,000 on a roadwork project. We would have to come up with $100,000 out of our budget to match, which would give us about a $600,000 project if we're trying to do just one.
But we could use money we've already put aside for paving for that, right? Well, maybe not. Clarification?
Well, the existing paving RFP came back a little higher than we would like. It's considerably higher than it was two years ago. So we're going to be pushing to spend a fair bit of money this year to get the reclaim and repave for Long Hill and Shawty done.
Could we shift payment for that? I guess my I want to get clarification in the sense that my concern and I like the idea of trying to do something for a a playground. My big concern for this other issue is, though, is you have until August 15 to get this done. We're saying we definitely need permits to do that. That means you basically either you've got to get the approval. You've got to go through a regular building meeting and then get a variance meeting and get an approval at that meeting. In the next give or takes you know sixty days.
I don't know that I couldn't do that with an administrative approval, because I'm not increasing the nonconformity.
There's already a building there too, Adrian. No, I understand that. I just don't want us to be. I just don't want us to come August, you know, August 10 and we go, we can't get that meeting in time. Actually we're we're we are replacing that building. Again, I I don't care what the the language is. Just want to know that we can get this done. If not, then we should be talking about paving. We should be talking about paving. Marie?
We're not going to have the time to address this. I would say we focus on the paving. And I think it's important that we put a playground back there and it is ADA compliant. I would just like to get a little bit more understanding where the $250,000 is going. If we can get itemized list and like a statement of work of what's going to be done. Oh, listen, the $2.50,
the $2.50 sounds like a bargain because I can tell you when we were looking at trying to do playground upgrades before with the rec commission, it was ridiculously expensive just for a small, not even ADA compliant, just a small
playground piece. Yes, Adrian, I that, but I think as a board, we should just do our due diligence to make sure that we review whatever the proposal is that we have. Okay.
Okay, so what are you all looking for me going forward?
What's your level of confidence that you can get this done by August 15? That's what we're trying to figure out, Eric.
I think if we knew we were going for it right now, we could have a pretty good grant submission on the table August 15.
For what? For the building? For the storage of the senior transportation units or for a roadblock? For this for either
either we gotta we gotta pick one. Right. So you're saying you can get this done by August 15?
I can say I will get one good steep grant out the door by August 15 for either a building or for another project, you know, a roadwork project
in that time period. Fine. I will make a motion then that we authorize the town administrator to put together a steep grant for up to $250,000 the $250,000 of skink grant money plus the matching funds from the town for a storage building for senior transportation vehicles in the old fireworks, the old firehouse location, and additionally $250,000 authorized the school to put together a grant for that. Their playground submission. It would need to be Ada compliant from both sides.
I'll second that as long as everything is we get some finalized plans you know with our next meeting. Some kind of plans, we gotta be able to see something like Jeff Murray was saying.
We're gonna have The has a whole, they have a plan already in place, they just need to share it with us. That's not a big deal. And the $50,000 funding is not gonna be a problem?
That's a Valerie question I can answer. Yep. This deep grant says that it's not a requirement. It says preference to to matching preference to shovel ready, but it's not a requirement.
I'm just I'm just nervous to what Eric said. I just don't wanna have you lose your consideration if we don't have the matching funds. That's all. When is your meeting?
We haven't said it yet. Yeah. We've we've currently small. No. We schedule I thought we're having a meeting two Mondays from now on the twenty seventh already. Yeah. That was for the. We can address this there.
Okay. I'll make sure you guys have it by then, and then you can make a decision if it's submittable or not. Okay. Thank you.
Alright. So are we done with the grant the steep grant section 90? You gotta move those motions forward, Jeff. Nobody voted. Oh. I seconded it. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
Opposed? Okay. I have nothing. So now let's move on to so did we sit there and push forward the purchase of the portable PA system and have Eric somebody's gonna sit there and get the numbers.
I will make a motion that Eric be authorized to purchase a PA system for under $600 for town events. Second.
Paula got it. She seconded. Got it. All those. The only only addition I'd like to put on there is that just work with Paula and myself just to make sure we get something that we feels appropriate for the town. I'll amend the motion that Jeff Murray gets to pick it out. Where are we gonna pay for this from?
Well, we're gonna find a line item here. Let's see how good we are. Kathy Pelosi has to stop laughing though. Paula, you're seconding that again? Yes. All right. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye.
Okay. Nine gs resolution regarding driver driveway apron permits. Okay,
I put this at the back of your meeting motions that I sent you. And I also sent this to you, or we discussed it once previously. Right now there's an ordinance that says the board of selectmen has to sign off on every single driveway apron, every single curb cut, everything. Well, we know that that has never happened though. Right. So all I'm saying is that we should actually pass a resolution to give the responsibility where it belongs, which is to Jay in public works to sign off on these. And that's what the resolution does. And then what I would suggest is that the only things we bring back to you are things that would have major effects on the road, because at some point it's serious enough that Jay's not going to want to sign off on it without at least talking to you. But I think he has plenty of judgment to figure out when that is. Right. But my suggestion is you approve the resolution and we move on. Okay. Only my only question in reading the resolution is
I want to make sure that we have a system in place that Jay is notified when a certificate of occupancy is issued and before the bond is released. Because Jay needs to go and approve before those bonds get released. Whoever's doing this needs to be responsible for that. So you want that added to this this ordinance? I gotta put it somewhere. I don't care where it gets. How do we want to address it? Eric, suggestions? So
currently before anybody gets their driveway apron bond back, Jay has to sign off on that as the public works foreman. So nobody gets their money back for the driveway unless it gets approved. And it's the same thing with any bond for a, you know, road whatever,
road or cut or anything. Mean, so you're currently signing those Jay? Yes. That may be done this year. And then Eric usually reviews those as well before a check is issued back. So you're going out and looking at them already? Correct. Okay, I'm fine then. So I would make a motion that we approve the resolution delegating Board of Selectmen Authority for permits regarding driveways, connecting the roads and towns to the public works supervisor of the town, as for so written by Eric Anderson and forwarded to us in our meeting packet.
The only correction is that was written by Dennis, not myself.
You want to read this? No, it's ridiculously long. It's in the packet if somebody wants to look at it. It's a lot of legalese. Dennis was on on point when he You did this only gotta read the last paragraph, Adrian. Therefore, it'd be resolved by the Board of Selectmen of the town of Andover, the authority and responsibility of the Board to approve and refuse approved plans and specifications for the installation of any driveway connecting with any highway maintained by the town of Andover. Issuer permit after approving a such plans and specifications and to approve and accept performance bonds prior to any such approval or issuance of permit. To ensure completion of the work in accordance with such plans and specifications comma be officially legally and permanently delegated to the public works superpower of the town of Andover effective immediately move by selectman Adrian Mandeville seconded by. Scott person Scott person and so voted on this day '20 '22, and that is just one small portion of it that's why we're not reading the whole thing. Okay, so when you have to read Adrian. Thank you, sir favor. Aye. Aye. Jeff Murray. Aye.
Thank you. All those opposed, no, let's, move on. That's that. H, employee education funding for job skills.
All right, so this is a question for the board. Our current personnel policy allows us to pay up to $500 for employee education.
Can we pause for a second? Are we done with Jay? No, actually, because this involves one of his employees. There we go. Yep. Couple more minutes.
No, no. I just want to make sure we're not hanging on to you buddy. No, I trust me. I get it. So,
specifically Zach has asked to consider whether the tower would be willing to pay for a portion of the costs for an associate's degree, basically in public works. There's a, essentially an online degree program that's been created that is specifically geared towards, public works supervisors. And since I think long term probably Jay's replacement, if we were going to come from in house would likely be Zach. The question is, are you as a board, would you consider a proposal to pay part of the costs if we put in some performance guarantees? Like if he leaves in the next six years, he has to pay it all back or something of that nature. Is that something you're willing to entertain if Jay and I put together a proposal for you? Sure. How much is the course? You've to put together a proposal. Well,
the total would be somewhere around $24,000 Obviously the town's not going to pay that. You know, so it's just a question of what the town would consider, you know, and it'd take them at least a couple of years to do it. So what the town would consider. Here's
a question though. If we give this to one union employee, wouldn't any union employee be able to ask for it? We need to get this approved by the union as a variance to the contract.
So, you are correct in that and the question becomes, is this a unique enough situation that we're willing to grant a one time exemption for an employee?
But are we also opening up the are we opening up a you know an issue with regards to the fact that if we do this exemption for him and then we turn down another employee are we going to have a problem?
I mean we if we if we went down this road, we would have to write a memorandum of understanding with the union specifically stating that this was not binding on future, you know, future employees or other parties.
Make a proposal and bring it back to us so that we can understand it. But make sure that we also have that addressed to the proposal. Okay. All right. That's enough for me to go on. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Jay. Very much. Hey, Jay. Let's go to item five. Thank you. Have a good night. All right. CJ. Are there any appointments, Eric? There are none. Okay, resignations, item six. There
are none that I know of. I did hear in this is rumor.
No worries. No, no. Thank you. All right. Item seven, a town administrator's report.
Okay, so I'm going to hit the highlights of the stuff that's occurred since the last time so we don't go through anything. So first of all, we have the RFQ for engineering services that's due back in a couple of days. How do you, how does the board of select and want to review the qualifications and pick a vendor? Are you willing to empower myself or pick a group to do follow-up interviews with a few firms and then pick? How do you want to deal with that? She doesn't have matching funds. Why is she even doing the grant?
Okay. I'm sorry? No. That was that was someone's mic was not muted. So keep going there. So
that's the question. Are you comfortable Would with you be willing to accept maybe Ed Cerisley or somebody stepping in to help advise?
Well, I was going to suggest Ed Surisley and Jay Tuttle and have the three of us, you know, and I was also going to consider consulting, with Jed because one of the functions is the town engineer is to do planning and wetlands review. Since Jed is on both, he would be a would be a twofer for that. Yep. Sounds great. Okay. Okay.
So if we are going to do the community center, not the community center, the parking for senior transportation, we are going to have to spend some money. I've asked Rob Newton to give me back a cost estimate for whatever structural engineering and survey would be required to figure out how to put that building there. Do I have permission to execute that if I get back what's a reasonable estimate for that? Or do you want to see that again before I sign any contract with them? Define reasonable. I mean, I got to think the, you know, we're looking somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to $12,000 because we are gonna need to survey it and we are gonna need some structural work.
I don't see exceeding that. As long as it includes a survey of the lot, I'm fine with that. I would say that's fair. Okay.
You need a motion. Where are gonna pay for that out of the
multi use building fund. Next up public works, we got the RFP back for the reclaim bid. The costs were significantly higher than when we originally estimated it two years ago. And we had preliminary pricing then the lowest bid we got for reclaim and repave of the sectional Long Hill Road and Shoddy Mill Road was $378,000 by B and W, which was about a 100,000, more than we initially estimated. So it's a huge jump, but given that the price of asphalt right now is running somewhere around $95 a ton and the cost of fuel, that's probably the reality. We are going to be able to afford it. We're going to have to shift around a few other things to make it happen.
Does that mean what project are we dropping to make that happen?
So we're probably not going to do any guardrails this year. We're probably going to not do basin cleaning and we're probably not going to do any crack sealing and that will do it.
Basin, is that something we want to go two years on? Do we want to? No. Can we? Probably yes. Can do that.
We can, Jay? We can do that. We can go another year. What's the effect of skipping a year?
Polar basins. Fairly negligible only because, you know, we're, we're only using the salt. So it limits, it limits our silting into our basins. Did we see, did we see a significant reduction?
Oh yeah, most definitely. Okay. Because what I, what I planned on doing, what I planned on doing was scaling back on the catch basin cleaning as a whole anyway, we do the lake every year and the other So parts of town every
would we still be doing the lake in this scenario or no? No, we'll be okay for this year. Okay, thank you.
Okay, next up, I want to put out the public works maintainer one position and start advertising that right now. We're going to use essentially the same setup as last time for the interview panel, which was Jay Tuttle, myself, two public works supervisors from neighboring towns, brought basically the same question list as last time, basically the same job description for the maintainer one as the prior application. Jay has tweaked the job description, a little bit. Unless a board member wants to be in on that interview panel and you're more than welcome to appoint one if you so desire. I would volunteer for that. Okay. Any objection anyone.
No, you're all good Adrian. Thank you, sir. Okay. You're the man. All right, next up purchase. Know how to operate the equipment. Next
up purchase of a skid steer. So CIP has signed off on it and I got to look through the minutes, but I think board of finance signed off already once the budget was approved. Does the Board of Selectmen have any objection to us, signing the purchase order for the skid steer? How much are you paying for it? Was it 70 something plus plus?
One is 59,226 plus the add ons of 15,792 So, yeah, roughly 75. It's in the budget.
Yeah, I mean, we're currently, if you looked at Jay's notes for public works, he's been trying to schedule borrowing it from Coventry to accomplish what they've needed to accomplish on the short term, so you know we're certainly using one so. Jay, while you're still on here, it's just a side note. Your notes are great, but could you actually when you're doing the notes, can you write next to each person what they actually did versus what the crew as a whole did? Yeah, take me some more time.
Well, I mean, you know, I don't need you to break everything down, but you know, when looking through the notes, it's hard for me to tell it almost reads like one person, you know, like. If you read the note, it would it it's not clear as to who went where. No, I I understand. I mean, I can I I'll jockey it around?
Well, mean, what what's to prevent you from asking those guys to, you know, give an end of work summary for themselves each day. What takes five minutes, you know? Yeah, just, just, I got to come up with some more documentation to try to, yes, it will take some time. I mean, we give them a sheet that says, did you do today? You know, and they write down what they did. It's not a lot of, you don't have to do it. Let them do it. It takes five minutes. No, I understand.
I'm not asking you to do more or less, Jay, I'm asking you to do less actually. I'd like them to do it.
Understood. Sometimes that's tough to do because they're running around crazy too getting stuff done. So, but I will, I'll work on that. Please.
Okay. Okay, next up connectivity grant project is going fairly well. We're somewhere around 75% complete. Did run into a little snafu because the state never told us until about a week ago that we needed to file some paperwork and that we needed to be spending six and a half percent of the funds contractor. However, we weren't under budget at the project as overall as a project, we're going to be able to accomplish that. I had a meeting with the contractor on Friday, when we kind of figured out a game plan forward. What I'm going to do is I'm going to work with Christine Randazzo to do a landscape design because we have enough money to do a reasonable design.
Jay has asked that we consider, you know, some screening elements to hide the tanks, the big tank at Public Works, because that's kind of ugly for the road. And we're also looking at a couple other small add ons. So we're going to accomplish what we need to do, and we're going to be legally compliant with the state. It is a little more work on my part and the contractor's part, but we're under budget, so we're going to end up fine on the project. And we'll be able to get some things incorporated into the project that we didn't originally know we had the money to do. How about handicapped access at the soccer field? Oh,
I don't know whether I can make that part of the grant. I'll consider that though. That's a really good thought. I just got to see whether that'll work or whether that's because that's really not that's really past the area of
construction for the project. When you make the print, don't add the river.
The sidewalk is supposed to get down there so. It's kind of hard to leave the river out. Let's talk about that tomorrow. If I can squeeze it into the grant, I will, Scott. Okay, so that's what I got for that. I did get a note from, Martin Heft, the Undersecretary that we should be getting our second allotment for the American Recovery Act funding, which should be the same amount we got the first time, is $478,848 So we should get that relatively soon but the state doesn't tell you when relatively soon is. That's pretty much everything I wanted to talk about from the administrator's report. I will have some more stuff when we get to the electric car charger, but that's later in the agenda.
Okay. Anybody have any questions for the town administrator? Adrian? Nope. I'm good.
Okay. Alright. We're gonna move on to item eight. We're gonna get through this old business item eight a, renewal of tax payment for Hop River Homes in the softball field renewal?
So you've signed and agreed to the tax abatement. As far as the softball renewal is, I put in the packet a copy signed by myself and Hop River Homes. It is not yet signed by whatever the state agency that they USDA. I faxed it to them, got it, got it there for their signature but we just I haven't heard squat from them. But as far as I'm concerned, we have a copy signed by us and the owner of the property. I'm not too concerned with that. That's all I have for that. Good. Eight B community center RFP for design build.
I'm working on, I'm working on it. It's currently out to a couple of people for consult to see if it meets what they would bid against, or if I need to make some modifications to include things they don't currently have in it. Thank you. ATSI, authorize UConn Energy Benchmarking Study.
We've provided them with all the information they require except for one thing which I'm still trying to get from the school, But I'm working on that. We've got them 95% of the way complete with what they need for that.
8D, town personnel policy, part time employee status, return to work after injury, longevity payments, senior transportation drivers.
That's a holdover from the last time. I'm just still waiting for you all to review the red line copy that I gave you and give me comments back if you so desire.
Okay, I'll have to do that. 8E finance department office structure.
Now let let's back up. We're I mean, I know you're saying you'd like to do that, but that's been out there for a while. Does anybody have any issues with it so we can move forward?
I don't have any issues with it. I don't remember reading it though. I'll be honest. That's why I was going go back and read it. Okay.
Eric, looking at it, I had a couple of questions, but I'll adjust them with you directly offline. But where are we at as far as it looks like you've sent out and got some some stuff back from them. Is that correct?
Are we talking about the town's personnel policy or are we talking about the union contract? Union contract. Union contract we should probably discuss in executive session. Okay. So, AE, finance department office structure.
So I sent you a note on where we were updated as of, I don't know, yesterday? Friday, sent it out today or yesterday. Did I send it out Friday? Yeah, you updated. Yep. Yeah. So do you have questions for me, Jeff?
I mean, I'm working on the information that Marina sent me, you know. That's probably a separate conversation.
Fine, Let's go. We're just gonna move on from that because that's a huge issue. 8F, board clerk employment.
So we have the job application out there for the board clerk. So far we haven't really gotten a ton of response back for it, but it's still open. So that's hopefully we'll get one,
at some point. Do we have something in the River East or the GI?
We did advertise in the River East and on the town website and I don't remember exactly where else.
Okay. Let me just check and make sure it's on Indeed or something too. You want that on Indeed also? Makes sense. Okay.
Eight gs senior transportation vehicle parking. We spent an hour on that. We're gonna skip that one over, because we still have parking for nine A fiscal year twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three proposed on budget.
The budget's passed. The Board of Finance has set a mill rate, so no action is needed on that. What's the current mill rate going to be? You had to ask me that it's 31 something, but I can't tell you off the top of my head. If you give me a couple minutes, I could give you the exact number.
Just curious. We can wait. I thought I saw it. Nine to F, the car charging installation at Town Hall, the Eversource program.
So I put a motion in your packet. So this was something that has been on my plate for a while and I just hadn't had time to address. So I spent the time to go through the Eversource program and sat down with Rick at Lenco and then talked to some of the other surrounding towns that had put in chargers. Based on that, I suggest we use the EVSE charger. It's a company that's headquartered in Connecticut. They appear to make very good products. What I would like to do is apply for the grant through Eversource. So what we have to pay for is half the cost of the chargers themselves and Eversource picks up the cost of the installation.
We need five ks, where are gonna get the money from? So I'm gonna take it out of the building maintenance fund. Okay and is that gonna interfere, I'm trying to understand location where this is gonna end up. Is this gonna interfere or be an issue with any of the
current community center plans or any of that stuff? No, what I'm intending to do is put it on the opposite side of town hall. So between the town hall and the fire department and the two spaces that are closest to the front door of the town hall. Okay. And then I'm also going to future proof. So if we have to, at some point, the wiring will all be in place so we could add two more chargers later. If it turns out we actually needed them.
A motion to authorize the town administrator submit an Eversource application for grant to cover the cost of the installation of two electric chargers, EVSE 3,704 pole mounted level two chargers, the credit card station and RFIP reader at the Andover Town Hall. Total estimated cost of project is $24,001.32. Towns cost about $5,000 charges to be located Southwest Side of the building Southwest Side of the building. Town hall of the town hall building the project will not be started to ever source issues the official incentive reservation determination letter. Go ahead. Go ahead. Paula gets it discussion. Guess I'll get you.
Just one question Eric, have you let the library know about this program too? No. I have not. Okay. I don't know if a level two charger would work all that well over there, though. Oh, I'm just I'm just throwing it out there because, you know, we're kind of up to beating. They're being read off Route 6 either there or the museum. So just a thought. Yep. That is a thought. Do they have the power up there?
They're right by six, they can get it. Yeah. I mean, it would be possible to get it. It's basically two chargers is a 100 amp load. So you have to size it for a 100 amp load.
Would it make sense to put it down at the ball field so maybe you could sit there and get the power down there so you could actually do something in the future like lights. You put that in one of your things you wrote.
There is a 200 amp service at the ball field so it would be possible to put one in at the ball field. To me what makes it ideal putting it at the town hall is if the town does go buy an electric vehicle, it's
an easy place to plug it in. This goes back to his electric vehicle conversation about having smaller vehicles for senior transport. And we don't have to worry about them stealing the catalytic converter this way. It's electric.
I just don't know how much it's gonna get used. That's all. Another one in Hebron doesn't get used hardly at all. Never seen anybody.
We're either gonna put it in now or we're gonna put it in when we get the electric vehicle. We have to do one or the other. Right?
Yeah, I just didn't know if it was worth it to explore other areas of town as well. So that's all that was my question.
Well, think his point about putting a town hall and what we back when we discussed the electric vehicle was that we needed a charger at town hall in order to charge that vehicle.
Correct, but I didn't know. And then I didn't know if the library knew about it, if they wanted to put one there at their location as well.
But that's a separate let's deal with that. I just didn't know
if we could bundle them all together. That's all. That was my question. Oh, that I don't know. Is there any incentive to that, Eric? Well, no, because we pretty much maxed out. Our maximum grant amount was $20,000 and this is going to be pretty much maxed that out. Okay. You answered my question then. Not that we couldn't put a second grant in as soon as we got the first one for the library. We might be able to do that if that's something you want to pursue.
I'm just saying that we may let them know if they want to chase it. Well, yeah, let's let them know. And once we get this one done, if Eric can put in a second one, he's saying maybe then let's find out.
Let's vote on it. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Five nothing. Alright. That is actually all for new business. So we're going to move on to the approval of the minute meetings, the meeting minutes from Monday, April 11, and Monday, May 16. Somebody want to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes? I'll make a motion
to approve the 04/11/2022 regular meeting minutes and the 05/16/2022 regular meeting minutes. Seconded. Okay. Adrian seconded. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Aye.
Five, nothing. We'll move on. Was a significant item 11 is the finance department report. There's a significant amount of information in these packages related to this. So the budget revenue summary, the town budget summary, the town aid road update, town cash Can I ask a question that I noticed in there?
Yeah. Are we paying It looks like there's multiple transactions on one check and this happens more than one time, whether it's So for instance, we're paying the excavating company. There's like five separate numbers, but they're all have the same PO and the same check number, but there's five deductions listed.
So we typically pay for a number of our vendors like the utility company, you know, we send them one check, even though we are subsequently billing five departments within the town against that bill. So we combine bills to the same vendor regularly. Okay. Okay,
let's go back and state. But they were all public works. It looks like they're on the public works because there came out of town aid Road.
Right. So if it's to the same vendor, like for instance, if we're buying asphalt and we got 10 tickets for asphalt, we're not sending them 10 checks. We're sending them one check for the materials we're buying from that vendor. Oh, they're giving us 10 separate invoices? Yes. Oh my god. Okay. It's like Eversource. You'll get,
well, you'll have 10 bills the town receives. I just haven't seen that with material suppliers. When we get aggregate or bulk deliveries, I mean, they'll put, they'll combine 30 of them into one payment. You know what I mean? They're not gonna give me 30 separate tickets if we're doing a site project. I just wasn't aware that that was happening. That's fine. Thank you.
Okay. Does anybody else have any other questions on the finance department reports? I mean, we are going anyway. Anybody else? Okay. So Eric wrote to us on item 12 of budget, appropriation transfers, nor expenditure requests. Anybody have any questions related to those items?
No. He explained what happened or what's happening, I should say.
Okay. Tax collector's report. Any questions related to that and the collections for the month of May? Actually, was that report even May? I looked at that. I wasn't sure if it was May or April. It had to be May. It is May. Okay. Assessors report.
So I'm going to suggest we don't keep the assessors report a standalone report. We just wrap it into department reports in the future. Sure. I agree with that. I think we're pretty much done with reval services, so there's no reason to keep a standalone reval services line item unless you want it.
He still needs to include this small report with the number of activities he has for monthly activities.
Well, yeah, I mean, we'll still we'll just put it in as one of the department reports and just have assessors report as part of a regular department instead of giving them their very own number. That sounds like a good streamline.
Is it so difficult to get the May report for our June meeting? Question. Okay, let's keep going.
There was Are we okay with what Derek suggested? You didn't give a report. Yes, I have no problem with that. Thank you.
Does anybody have any questions on the other reports that were included? I do not.
Okay. Then we'll move past that. Eric, any other correspondence? Nope.
Okay. Public speak, item 17. Let's move through our list. Okay, sorry. Karen Maydore, public speak. You're good? We waved you off. Next. Joanne Eber. Okay. We'll come back to you, Joanne. Anne Cremay. Nothing tonight. Thanks. Okay. Diane Choquette. Nothing? I'm all set, thanks. All right. Leanne Hutchinson. Skipped Carol. I know I did. No, Carol Lee. Also, thank you. Thank you. Phone number ending in 5579.
Hi, that's me, Marina. I couldn't unmute myself quick enough in the finance department section. I just have one question to circle back on the longevity payment only because I have one payroll and one AP batch left for the year. So I'm just trying to look at it from, like, a budget standpoint for the end of the year. I don't know what we wanna do about that payment.
I thought we we agreed to it in our last meeting. We authorized it. Okay. Alright. Just wanted to make sure.
Yeah. It should have been in the previous minutes, I think.
Okay, I'll go back and reread them. Thank you. Yep, thanks. And then we have a phone number ending in 200345.
That's Dennis. That's me. Dennis. Dennis, attorney. I do have a question. Sure. I believe Adrian brought up the idea of having a meeting with the Charter Revision Commission for regarding the Charter Revision. I did. And and I don't think anybody gave a date for that meeting. Yes. Right after our right after our meeting. Right after our public hearing. Twenty seventh. Oh. Well,
I'm not sure that would be, the right time to have it. Because think that well, because you know, I could see you having it if you first had a meeting of the meeting of the of the of the board. We are because the results of the results of the public hearing, and if you say approved or didn't approve the entire package in a very brief meeting, probably, you could then meet with the Charter Revision Commission that same night and have a trio of proceedings, one right after the other. Yeah. That's what we're gonna do, Jim. That's what we already approved. Okay. So you're gonna have a board. Left to notice a public hearing and that's got to be public And
then if we feel that we need to have discussion with the Charter Commission, we will will then go. We'll make a decision at that point and and move into a Charter Commission meeting.
Okay. So your public hearing will be followed by a board of selectmen meeting. And that would have to be noticed because that's a meeting. That's not a public hearing. So your public hearing, then your board of selectmen meeting, and then if needed, you're meeting with the charter commission. Thank you for the Okay. I hung around just for this. You're awesome.
Love you buddy. It's always a good it's always a good time. Alright. Did I miss anyone? Yep. I wanna say something for the one hundred and seventy fifth committee. Catherine has Is jumped this public comment? Yes, this is public comment for We have minute.
Oh my gosh, okay. I would also like to say that the one hundred and seventy fifth committee, are collecting recipes for a recipe book that they will be selling. Please visit their Facebook page. They're also printed. Paula, none of us know how to cook. Adrian, stop interrupting me, okay? At the library and at the town hall, there are printed pieces of paper that you can submit your recipe to. And please consider sending in a recipe. Please consider donating. There is a link on the support network and on the town website along with town Facebook page. This is going to be a great community event. This is our celebration for our town, one hundred and seventy five years. So donate, donate, donate, donate. Come on people. I'm talking to everybody in this town. Thank you. Now, what do wanna say, Adrian? No, that's it. I just picturing you with pompoms at this point. I love it. Yes. Donate, donate, donate. I was not a cheerleader. I was a soccer player, but there we go. Everybody go to the page and donate please. Did you donate a recipe?
I am writing one tomorrow and I also donated to the committee for the celebration. So Adrianne, I'm challenging you tonight publicly. Please send in your favorite recipe because I know you are a great cook and also please consider donating to
this great cause. I think we should have a bake sale.
Why don't you join the committee meeting and suggest that to them? I'll work on that. Excellent. You two can bicker later. Let's go.
Oh, Joanne said she didn't hear her name. You said you'd circle back. She said that in the chat. Joanne Ebert.
Sorry if I missed it. Yeah, I just wanted to mention one thing, and it sounds like you're all going in that direction, that it would be, I think it would be opening a can of worms without request to fund college, you know, or for one employee speaking from experience. So I had put in the chat earlier, which I know isn't really always a good thing but usually those kind of things are negotiated through unions because what's good for one is good for everyone and you know that is a big financial price to pay too so I'm sure you'll think long and hard but it definitely shouldn't just be offered to one person in my opinion and it should be you know presented as a long range plan it's another big financial hit for the town if it is offered that's all Thank you for considering that part. Thank you.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much, everybody. Now, who has control of the meeting? I do.
Paul, I'll stop reading your text. We to make a motion to go into executive session to discuss. We
have to say goodbye to everyone else who's joined us and for our meeting. Thank you very much. Bye. All right.
Still have to make the motion. Aye, everyone. Let's make the motion.
I make a motion to go into a at second 09:45PM.
I am not seconding that. I'll second it, Paula. All right. All those in favor, aye. Thank you. Aye. Aye. Oh, Eric. Fine. I'm in favor too, sort of. Okay. Hang on.
Eric's still getting people out of the meeting. Oh, Jeff, it got dark out. Okay. So I'm still outside, man. It's nice out here. What do think I can't hang up?
Anyway Is that Dennis? Are you Yeah. Dennis, it's you. You're 2345 is you?
Yeah. Why don't you get I I don't think I need to be in on this. My gosh.
Did you want me here? What's funny is Dennis has been on our calls for like a year and nobody can remember his damn phone number. I can remember him. It's the worst. I can remember him. It's nobody else, but me. I'm so sorry, Dennis. Except for you guys, you're the same thing.
Forgive Maguire, you're an accountant. You can't freaking remember a number. I got another problem.
I I I don't even know my own phone number. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm gonna go watch the Celtics lose. Okay. Well, they're down 12 already. So
that's called a that that's called a deficit. They'll come back. Well, let's go. Anyway,
Eric, don't need me. Right? No. We're good. We're good. Thank you. Enjoy. Good night, Dennis. Good night.
Okay. Real quick. Did anybody have any corrections they wanted to the union, the MEIU union contract before we send it back to the union? If you would like I can go through the red line comments that I made. If you want to review it, but
just depends on what you want to do as well. They're pretty much accepted everything except for 14. What's the impact of them not taking 14? Which one was 14? Under management rights section,
goal 14. A town authority pursuits of applicable laws concerning Guys, we're still we're still recording. Oh. Still recording.