Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting
September 13, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Thirteenth, two thousand and one. Amanda, I do that to you every time. Sorry. So we're going to call to order the Ton of Andover Board of Select meeting for Monday, 09/13/2021. We're going to 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, with liberty, and justice for all. Okay.
And we're gonna start with public speak, and we're gonna start with Mike and Kathy Palazzi today.
Yes, I have something to say tonight. Me too. Mike too. Good evening to everyone. I am organizing a town wide flu clinic on Thursday, October 14 from two to 6PM at the Andover Elementary School gym. This clinic will be available to all ages three and up. There's an article going in the River East this Friday through Friday October 8 to alert everyone to save the date. As I receive more information on this clinic it will be published as well. In the past I've arranged for seniors only to receive the flu vaccine. However, good thinking on our town administrator Eric Anderson's part suggesting I open it up to the entire town for those who would like it. Thank you Eric. He's gone but thank him anyway. People would only need to bring their insurance cards and come after work. This would allow the seniors to go at the earlier times. I'm working with the CVS on this project. We will be provided with a link to register for the clinic. If any seniors need help registering, Roberta, our municipal agent will help me sign those people up. All this will be known soon and relayed to the public. I have asked Amanda to put the same article that will go into the River East beginning Friday to be displayed on our website so all could see it. Thank you, Amanda. Regarding the booster vaccine for COVID, I had requested this to be done on another day as one cannot have the flu vaccine
and the booster vaccine at the same time. There has to be one week at least, they prefer two weeks in between. If you have received the two vaccine shots, Moderna or Pfizer, you must wait eight months before taking the booster shot. Check with your PCP if you are unsure. CVS corporate has given me a tentative date of Monday, November 29 subject to change. CVS this would be for the COVID booster. CVS has told me they can offer only Moderna booster. For your information, if you had a Pfizer vaccine, you must have a Pfizer booster, not a Moderna. As new information comes in and we are able to hold a booster vaccine clinic, it too would be at the AES Gym. Thanks to Superintendent Reno and Principal John Variety. Is that right Amanda? Amanda knows this. Thank you. For opening the gym for residents for both events. Sign up online as expected for the booster shot. We will not be receiving the booster vaccine in Connecticut until 09:20, September 20. And Roberta will assist me with registering those who do not have a computer. If anyone has any questions, I can be reached at (860) 916-6122. Thank you, Kathy Swazi, senior coordinator.
That's it Amanda, wait, Mike has something. I have just a quick one. We had a very busy day today at Hutchinson Road. There was a tree trimming service that took down several diseased trees and they're laying all over the place but they're going to come back and they're going to chop them up. Yeah, I think Scott has something to do with that. Yeah, you guys pointed out the trees that were diseased and they did a hell of a job getting rid of them starting at 07:00 this morning, but they're done for the day I think finally but they'll be back
so thank you thank you Scott and thank you Eric okay thank you very much Michelle Bell Yes.
Do you have anything to add, Michelle, in public speak? Oh. Yeah, I know that I've talked to the town, Jay. They're going to be
coming around and trimming some of the trees. Some of the bus drivers are going to get together and try to write a list of what trees that our buses just about scrape every single day the last couple of years. I guess they call it a canopy. So we are trying to put together a list of addresses. It will take a while and we know we don't expect it to be done tomorrow. But, you know, we'll provide a list of that to Jay as soon as we get to it. I know tonight we wanted to talk a little bit about the traffic around the lake. We haven't met
can hold off on that because you're going be able Okay, to participate on I'll hold off.
Right, Mr. Yeomans, Dorothy? You're on mute. You're on mute. Thank you. Good. Still on mute. You're good? We're going to skip past. If you figure out the mute button, we can come back to you. Diane Choquette? I have nothing to say. Thank you. Excellent.
Joseph Goodwin? I'm good. Thank you. We'll come back to Mr. And Mrs. Yeomans. We're not going to say anything at this point.
Okay, thank you. No problem. You can go back on mute. There you go. Melissa Evans, you're on the Safety Committee if you'd like to add anything other than related to the Safety Committee. No? Okay. Ed Suresley. You good, Ed? Okay, we'll move on to Catherine Hutchinson. Okay. We'll move on to Louise Goodwin. I'm all set. Thanks. All right. I'm assuming my 860208 number is Attorney O'Brien. I know he'll contribute later on, but is that true? Okay. And then 9043825924. Would you like to add anything to public speak? Some people called in on the phone. Okay. All right. So I think we're good. We'll move on to additions and deletions. Do any of the members have anything that they want to add to the agenda?
Guess we got to add approval of minutes to 12 b. Okay. From August 30.
So do we have, did we approve the minutes for the regular scheduled meeting previously?
Or do we have to do that as well? I do not believe we did. So we have to approve both sets of meetings, minutes. And does anyone know the first date in August?
Yes, the first date in August was Monday, August 9. Anything else, Scott? That's it, sir. Adrian? No, I'm good. Jeff Murray? Good.
All right. Who's going to second the addition? I'll second it, Scott. We'll move on. All those in favor of adding 12B approval of minutes from the August 9 and the August 30 meeting? Aye. Aye. All right.
We're gonna move on to item four, which is the traffic safety committee presentation and the discussion regarding Andover Lake area road striping. All of the members that are from the traffic committee are going to be allowed to participate during this section of the meeting. So we'll allow Eric to get us started and then the members feel free to contribute at this. Normally for everybody out there, we don't normally allow participation in the selectment means other than the public speak at the beginning and at the end of the meeting. So we're gonna break with protocol slightly to allow more participation.
Alright. Eric, you're up. Okay. So we've been having an ongoing discussion about whether we should or should not Stripe in the Lake District and whether we should do edge lines or whether we should do central lines. When we discussed it last time at the meeting, you asked whether I would bring the Connecticut State Safety Circuit rider on to discuss that with you, and discuss her recommendations relative to that. And then Jay Tuttle, the Head of Public Works is also here as is the Traffic Safety Committee. So I think they can kind of all answer, your questions at this point. Okay. I believe is Melissa Evans from the the Yes. She is the Safety Certificate.
Okay. Melissa, if you'd like to participate and tell us what your findings were when you rode around with Eric, would be great.
Sure. So yes, I'm the state's safety circuit writer, so I work up at the University of Connecticut's Transportation Institute, specifically for the Connecticut Training and Technical Assistance Center, which is commonly known as the T2 Center. So I met with Eric back in May. He reached out. We provide, the safety circuit rider program provides free technical assistance to all the municipalities around the state in regards to road safety, pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, etcetera. So Eric reached out and asked if I would come and look at some locations in town, And we we we spent quite quite a bit of time actually looking at several locations, and there were some different recommendations. So I don't know if tonight's focus is specifically those roads around the lake area, but we did look at some other locations, but I think tonight is focusing on on the lake area, if I'm correct. You are correct.
Okay. So, you know, based on my conversation with Eric and certainly, you know, tonight's discussion, I can answer any questions that come up or or we can talk about other options. But initially, what Eric and I discussed was the fact that, you know, this is a a busy area, a seasonally busy area, and that there are concerns with speeds through the area. You know, obviously, even the day that we were there, which was in late May, there were already people walking and biking. Know, Eric said that only was going to increase with the summertime. So, you know, there were certain things that I noticed as we walked around and drove around. One of the things that I recommended, and there was some talk and I know Eric shared some notes that he had made,
but you know, regarding striping, so well, first and foremost, if you do centerline striping, has to be a double yellow line, not a single yellow line. But often I recommend to towns that have streets like the ones in that area, no centerline striping and edgeline striping only. That is allowed per the federal manual. There are some requirements, but the roads in question that I recommended it for meet those requirements. The point of that is that psychologically, see a double yellow line and they think main road, they think high speed. When you remove that and you just put the edge line striping in and you narrow the travel lanes and you make people have to think about where to drive, They're avoiding that edge line striping, but they know there could be cars coming in the other direction, so they tend to drive a little bit slower, bring their speeds down because they have to be more cautious.
And then the added benefit of an edge line stripe is that it gives pedestrians and cyclists a spot to stay on the shoulder. So we talked about some of that. There were a few other spots where there was an intersection, and you'll have to forgive me, I don't remember the name of the roads we were at, but Eric can jump in. Was a very wide intersection. We had just come over like the little bridge, and there was a very wide intersection and as you we came over to the right went up a hill. But it's just. You know, there are things that can be done to tighten that intersection up so that people aren't making sweeping turns, so that pedestrians have a better place to walk and to cross. You know, it's unreasonable to assume that there would be sidewalks installed along all of these routes. I think that's probably not a necessary thing, but providing some you know, calming of the traffic and better striping and better guidance for drivers and pedestrians, I think, would help through that area. We also talked about an another intersection that's a smaller intersection, the potential for a very small kind of neighborhood traffic circle. I think I even gave Eric at some point a little very rough draft of what that could look like. And all of these things,
you know, there are chicanes on one of the streets, but the chicanes, the the traffic circle, all of these things, even the striping, I mean, nothing is set in stone. Right? You can try out you can try chicanes on a temporary basis. You can try traffic circle on a temporary basis and tweak it or decide it's not working. Get public input. Maybe people don't like it. You know, even the striping, I mean, it it only lasts as long as it lasts. So if you if you strike the edge lines and you decide it's just not working, as they fade out, you do something different. But that's the general review that we did. Okay.
Can I ask just a general question so that we can get some feedback? So are the options from your perspective to meet within the regulations centerline striping, a double striped line if we chose to do that, no double striped line, and edge line, And is another option just do nothing?
Well, mean, do nothing is always an option. I don't recommend it, but it certainly is an option. That's okay. So those
are basically our three options. We could not stripe anything. We could edge stripe or we would have to double line stripe yellow, double line the road. Mhmm. Okay. Alright. Do any of the other members of the board have any questions for Melissa? How does chicanes work exactly?
So chicanes basically are, if you imagine, we call them like a serpentine design. So what a chicane does is it bumps out, think of like a curb bump out, but this is in the middle of the block and it's a longer narrower extension so that as you drive down the street, you drive out and around and back into it. So the lane kind of serpentines around these extensions and you offset them so that as people come, they have to slow down to go around as the two way traffic. I mean, it's almost, you know, if you imagine like a work zone where they have the lane shift, it works very similar to that, but it's it's, you know, offset so that each direction is doing it at a different point in the road. Does
that make sense? I explain that okay? Is it is this done with, like, concrete barriers, or how is this done?
So a a permanent installation is normally done with curbing, and, you know, you would most likely landscape it. There are some versions that are done with just paint. The town of West Hartford actually did it with paint, But in a temporary situation, if you were gonna try it out, you would do it with probably paint and there's different things you can get, rubber or curbing to try it with, you could just set up cones. I mean there's some different ways you could do it on a temporary basis for a trial run, but normally a permanent construction is curbing and landscaping on the extension.
What do you think of the one thing I didn't hear you mention is what do you think of like the road speed bumps to slow people down? I mean, I've seen them in Coventry. I've seen them over like around the university where you work on some of the side roads that get some heavy traffic. Yeah. Those effective or? Speed is definitely an issue on these lake road areas specifically.
Speed humps are traffic calming tool. You would want humps, not bumps. Bumps are like the really small and severe ones that they put in parking lots that you have to go about five miles per hour drive over so you don't damage your car, but on public roads it would be a hump, so it would be a longer, less severe rise in the hump, and there are a lot of towns that have them, they definitely are a tool in the toolbox. I will say that, you know, they have what I would consider equal pros and cons. They do slow traffic, but they tend to only slow traffic right at that location. And then people like to speed up afterwards to make up for the time they had to slow down to go over it. I've also, you know, heard stories and seen examples of people driving on the side of the road and on people's lawns, so they try to go around them. I've heard residents complain about noise when their house was the one that the hump was in front of. I mean, are pros and cons to them, so you'd have to really look at your locations. The other thing about humps is that they really only are effective if you have a series of them, so you'd have to look at the roadway and see, they have to be spaced out a certain amount of distance apart from one another, they can't be on curves or grade and you have to consider where driveways are, and then you have to consider drainage. So I mean, they are absolutely an option and I recommend them sometimes when I think that they're appropriate. They also can be you can do trial ones. I mean, do sell
rubber ones you can buy and put together like traffic calming Legos and you put them out there on the road and you can test them. But, know, I think you'd have to in order to spend that money for the temporary ones, you'd have to really know that that's the direction you wanted to go in. Okay, thank you. Sure. Okay. Jeff Murray.
I just have one question on this, the sideline striping. I was reading some studies about, you know, ADT numbers and usually the side striping is usually reserved for rows with a very low ADT count, and they recommend centerline striping for rows with higher ADT counts. Do we have numbers for Lake Road and those recommendations?
So I can tell you that based on because we have multiple sets of twenty four hour data from the speed cameras. And we have data for School Road that you can assume all of the Lake District and we have for West Street that you can assume pretty much everything in the Lake District has between four and five hundred ADT.
Very low. I mean, it's very low, very low. And well within the federal manuals limit for no centerline striping and edge line striping. I mean,
there's other things that come into play too with and such, but I think these roads absolutely qualify if that's the direction you wanted to go. Yeah. I can see it happening. I just I was just reading some research that said, like, on these lower travel rows, only about 10% are side striped, most of them are centerline striped. And the ones that are sideline striped have a higher incidence of side swipes and, offset crashes versus roads that are center stripes. So that's just a concern I have.
Well, I think, you know, again, the the the crash rate I mean, you have such a low volume on these roads that your crash rate is practically nonexistent there to begin with. And the centerline striping versus the edgeline striping, the recommendation was mostly based on the need to slow people down, get people more aware of the fact that there was pedestrian activity through here, bicycle activity through here. I do know, you know, we discussed the you know, there's some existing and maybe even adding more of those and some better signage. You know, all of these things together would would form kind of the traffic calming that I think, you know, Eric and I talked about being the goal. But, again, you know, it's just one of the options. It's not it's certainly not a requirement.
No. I personally don't feel like people are not aware. I think they just ignore it. You know? I I think everybody's pretty aware of what's going on down there. You know? They just want to get somewhere a little faster and they figure, well, I'm a good enough driver, won't be a problem.
Right, Melissa, thank you very much. I will also do, Melissa, if you could stay on just till the end of this section in case the traffic committee has questions for you or they want to sit there and address something to you, that would be greatly appreciated. Absolutely. All right. Joe Goodwin, I know, is the chairperson of the traffic committee. I know Michelle Vail is on as well. I'm not sure if there's any other members of that committee that are on here other than Eric and myself. Just see where Joe was. He was headed to Home Depot to get something. I am safely parked.
You're back. Good for you. Right. The traffic safety community, I know you guys have met. I know you guys have been involved. What is your take on the Lake District and Limestrip? Joe or Michelle, either one of you.
Well, I think the sideline striping that Melissa was mentioning, I forgot what it's called, But I think that's very ideal. My school bus takes me around the lake four times a day. I see Jeff out there every day around 06:40 with his dog at the same time. And so I see the same couples, same parents, and I think if they have a little striping, they know they can step over into and be as a safety measure for them. I think that's more ideal than something going down the middle. Because as much as people are aware, when we come around certain corners, somebody is right there. I think pedestrians and even the people who are driving, if they see those little white lines, they know it must be something, especially if it's going to take time to get used to it. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. Oh,
boy. I parked too close to Home Depot and it connects to my WiFi. So, anyway, alright. So, yeah, no, the circuit rider information, I think, is is gold. Obviously, you know this started with us, you know, initially going out walking the lake, biking the lake, you know the the different committee members lift live on different sides of the lake. Know, so there's a lot of different perspectives and even even Michelle driving that every single day with a large vehicle, you know, seeing, you know, the the pinch points and whatnot around the lake itself. You know, all these areas that the circuit rider identified, you know, are the same areas that you know, obviously we we spoke to to Eric about and Eric was part of that conversation as well. To me, are the least invasive things that we can do. You know, we start thinking about speed humps, speed bumps. You know, nobody wants that, you know, 30 year old Ford that's got, you know, every rattle known to man hitting in front of their house, You know, so I can appreciate that. You know, so when it comes to the side striping, I like that idea. Again, it gives that visual safe barrier, if you will, for for pedestrians walking. Obviously, folks aren't gonna stick right to the shoulder, you know, at all times, but I think that'll that'll be effective as well as intersections. You know, obviously, with those intersections in the in the small traffic circles, that that can be a concern. Is that going to be practical? And I think the approach, again, being the least invasive that we can is a temporary approach to see is there value in this? You know, obviously, if Michelle starts driving and her bus is hitting the centerpiece,
whatever temporary piece we use or EMS fire departments having issues, you know, then we'll know that, hey, that's not a viable option. But again, you know, temporary solution for that. Sidestriping, you know, I'm I'm definitely for it. So
Okay. Is there anyone else from the traffic committee that would like to speak? I don't think so. We're going to open this up for public comment because this is an issue that we want to make sure that we hear from as many residents as possible before we decide what we're going to do. Actually, before we go to public comment, Jay, if you'd like to participate in this because you as the Public Works Director have intimate knowledge of what you're seeing out there and then you also know that what the applications are about.
The only thing I'd like to add, and understandably all this stuff is budget driven. We can try some new things for traffic control safety. Have personally, I will not recommend speed humps. I have vast experience with those. From my perspective, from the guys that have to take care of them, plowing them in the middle of night when you're on a twelve hour plus shift and you forget about it and your head hits the ceiling, the motorcycle driver that's not paying attention and the front wheel spins around on them and crashes, the people that are going too fast and they get the chipped tooth. So there's all kinds of things about that. I will tell you that I did some measurements out on Lake Road
and the area between probably West Street or just before West Street coming in from Basola past Kurt Dowling's house right in that that stretch there That's the narrowest part and at the narrowest point it's just 19 feet so you'd have six inches on either side of the road. Four inch strike you're left with two inches. There's places for people to go. And again, it's just budget driven. I did some. Got some quotes from different couple different of our vendors. I don't know if Eric passed those along, but that's just a guideline that we can use.
Jay, how long is that section that you're talking about that it's going to be so narrow?
It's pretty long. Yeah. Especially right near Steve Willard's house is really the tightest. That area, You come up that hill, is very tight and Michelle comes down every day, but you come up that hill and then you kind of do a little snake pattern in between those houses that are right on the road. It is very tight, Adrian.
And there's a lot of people that park partially in the road too, as there's not a lot of off street parking there.
The only other thing I'd like to add is I've had seniors, you know, ask me about lines just for the visual and. You know the driver is looking at the center of the road in front of his steering wheel or their steering wheel. So, but speed is slow on that road. So, having the the edge lines that could be something I, you know, personally I'm used to centerline striping and I put my selfish hat on and I like to see that centerline stripe in the wintertime because I know my geyser can follow that line and know how wide the road is and I don't have to worry about going somebody going off on the wrong side of the mailbox. So that's my take on it.
All right. Right, Jay, thank you. All right. Anyone else from the public that would like to comment on this issue, you're more than welcome to do it right now. I'll go around again and just ask you if you'd like to comment. If you don't want to comment, that's fine. Kathy and Mike Blasi. Okay. Dorothy Yeomans, miss Yeomans? We like edging. We're gonna try edging. Okay. Thank you. Mister and missus Yeomans? No. Okay. No problem. Diane Choquette? I'm good. Thanks. Alright.
Ed Serizli? Catherine. We can't hear you. Have to tell you, Ed was out practicing on his electric scooter so that he can make more use of the Andover roadways. He and his wife were out at the Andover Elementary parking lot yesterday practicing their scooter abilities, so I'm sure that some type of striping would help them. Katherine Hutchinson. No? Okay. Louise Goodwin?
Yes, I have a question. Will there be any special type of maintenance to keep the roads clear to be able to see those sidelines, either let's say in the fall when the leaves fall or in the winter when the snow gets piled up on the side of the roads?
Well, I mean, I can tell you from being around that lake during the fall, you never really have any problems. You see the lion stripe and you might have a leaf plastered on it, it's really not an issue in the fall. In the winter, depending on how much snow gets, it depends on how far Jay and his crew push it off the road.
Oh, okay. All right. Okay, just lost my train of thought. All right. Oh, like sand. Will there be like, you know how sand builds up sometimes on the side of the roads? Will there be extra type of street sanding to maintain that?
We'll be using sand this season except under absolutely extraordinary conditions. We've been using salt over the last year, Louise, we've solved it. Two seasons now.
Right, but aren't the streets swept periodically? Yes. Okay. That's what I'm asking about, not necessarily for the snow. Does it need additional type of sweeping to maintain it?
I'll let Jay handle that one. I'll chime in a little bit. So our routine sweeping, you know, got a new sweeper, replace the old one. We didn't get to every place this year that we wanted to just because of time and other projects. So routinely we'll get out there in the end of winter and we'll go through the town and sweep the roads And some areas may be not. They'll be let off for a while and then we'll get back to them. And then as as you know, storms happen and we get a little erosion here and there or somebody's driveway or whatever the case may be some and we'll go out and do some touch ups but having multiple times a year right now that's not in the in the cars. Okay, thanks. Okay. All right, Joanne Ebert. All set.
Okay. And then I have one phone number over here, (904) 392-5924. Okay. All right. So board members, let's have some discussion related to this topic. And so we've heard from circuit rider, we've heard from the traffic safety committee, and we've heard from the residents who are on the call. So what do we think what's our choice? I mean, we obviously have three choices. Double stripe the line down the center, no double stripe line and edge stripe, or nothing.
Are we gonna open this to the community any more than the public that's with us tonight? Are we gonna make a decision tonight?
I think we should make a decision tonight, but Eric, go ahead.
I just wanted to say, you know, in the interest of fairness, I received three emails that were all in favor of centerline striping, not edge striping. One of them was Kirk Dowling. One of them, I forget who the other two were, but there were three total that I received. Those in the packet, Eric. No, they were not in the packet.
Before we move on, Ed Suresley is actually online. Ed, do you have anything to bring to this discussion?
Unmute. We still can't hear you, Ed. I don't know whether your speaker doesn't work. You're gonna unmute it. Turn the volume up.
No. He's got Alright. Moving on. We've got a lot on this agenda, guys.
Alright, Ed. We're sorry. We would like to hear from you. Alright. Okay. So
Just for the record, I'm I'm I'm agreeing with what Jay had said, and I think, generally accepted as the centerline striping, and that was something I would be supporting. I just it's not in common use just to the sideline only. That's something we'd be doing not in any other road in town. I think just to be keep everything common, I think would probably be the best idea just to centerline stripe.
I would second that both because of the stuff that, you know, Jeff, you brought up about sites wiping issues and things like that when you try to make it more complicated. And also the point Jay made about, you know, we have a very, sounds like a long section over there that's we don't have room for both.
You know. And Adrian, to add to that, if we had enough median that would actually provide some protection for pedestrians, it sounds like in one or two spots there, we've only got an inch or two. So it's really not going to make that much difference. Yeah.
Looks like there we have yours. It looks like I'm gonna have to borrow yours. Time Okay. To We can definitely hear you now.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm still learning technology here. I just wanna encourage
can you hear me now? Yes. What do I think, okay, to the committee and the Board of Selectmen, just have everybody in the new committee please read our Complete Streets report that came out of the long term planning committee, of the planning and conservation and development. So there's a lot more to getting people to drive safely and ride bicycles safely around town rather than just focusing on the lake. We've got to think globally on the whole town. So all of our streets and implement eventually the Complete Streets program that we have as a report. That's all I had to say about that. Thank you. Thanks, Ed.
I understand what Jeff and Adrian are saying, but as far as me as a walker, I definitely don't like the double line simply because for me the drivers think of that double line and they do not like to move. If you get stuck I mean, listen, I'll tell you how I walk that lake and Michelle will sit there and vouch. I get to the opposite side of the street on the lake so that as I see oncoming traffic, I move all the way over to the other side because I don't trust the majority of the drivers to move far enough away from me, especially on those narrow sections. There's absolutely no way. Especially with my dog, I have to. So if I had to tell you what I would like to do, I would sit there and I would not do anything. Now, I realize there's a lot of people that want the centerline, and I respect Jay. If Jay sits there and says he wants that for his claws, I get it. But if I hadn't my total weight, I would tell you right now I would not do anything, and I would let it go because I definitely while I understand the edging, I don't necessarily know that that gives enough
space in different areas on the lake area to sit there and actually walk safely. I mean, I'm in people's yards all the time because it's just either people how they drive or it's just what it is. So it's their narrow streets, double lining them. I'm just telling you, when I get stuck on the other side and the people don't cross that center line, that is the worst.
Look at the bright side, it's not a massive 10 mile lake.
But Adrian, when those cars come back and they don't move over that center line because it's a double line, and I get it. You can't sit there and do a line and then create spaces in the line because then you're giving passing issues. I'd rather do nothing in the lake area.
Yeah, I would gather though that you've never been out plowing. Maybe we can pick you up show you around sometime.
It sucks if you don't have a reference point. I'll flat out tell you they did it last year. And
that was a new driver on that route. So they didn't have a center line in the lake area. Might have been fading, I guess, slightly some areas, but there wasn't a lot of lines out there last year.
Jeff, just to add one more thing. Starting October 1, there's a huge pedestrian, basically rights law that's going to be affecting Connecticut. So, I mean, I think we should actually start pushing that to residents and giving giving space to pedestrians as more as an alternative to this, because actually, there is a lot of laws that are gonna make it illegal to not give space to pedestrians when you're coming in opposite directions. You
have the right of way. Three feet has been the law for passing a cyclist for many years and codified. Yet, how many times have you been? I've been clipped by a side view mirror, you know, at least once every three years, you know, ad infinitum. So it's not happening now. Adding additional laws isn't necessarily going to help that situation.
I understand that, Eric, but there is, I mean, it's basically gives the this, these new laws basically give the pedestrian the right of the road, so. Okay. Alright, Scott, you're it.
I would vote for, I guess, since every, Jay, Jeff, Adrian, I've plowed around the lake before and I would say that Jay's probably right that you know that center stripe in a big storm is what guides you down the road.
Okay, so let's sit there and say we're now double striping the lake area and the question now becomes the budget for line striping. Eric, what is our budget for that?
It's coming out of Town Aide Road. It will be whatever you decide it's going to be.
Okay. In the package we have some information regarding Jay's recommendation was to strike Lakeside, Erdoni West and Bunker Hill Road. Water based cost is $5,263 and epoxy based cost is $23,682 Jay, just as a side so we understand the difference between the water based and the epoxy gives us how much time?
So just to back up just a little bit, I allocated from last year's budget. I in my spreadsheets, I put aside $20,000 for striping. So just so you have that number in your head. If we do water based lines, we're only going to get a year out. They fade, you know, we do it now, you might make the winter and then it just fades out from there. So striping, epoxy, I've got stripes out there right now that are on six years. So and they look almost as good as they did when they put down. So epoxy lasts about five years.
Okay. So right now the difference between the water based and the epoxy, let's say, is five times. So I get five years on the epoxy and water based, a little bit less. And the epoxy has the glass bead and reflectivity.
Right. Jay's recommendation is epoxy paint. Let me just say epoxy paint, Jay. Don't take me and be upset, but the epoxy paint for the areas that Jay wants to do is $14,612 I would make a motion to do that. It's $22,002.85 79. Yeah. It was, like, 23, I think. Yeah. 23 and change or under.
So I gave you one set of numbers just for the Lake Region and one set of overall numbers. There is a second company that gives us a little bit of a discount if, you know, the per mile per line by doing double lines that brings the total cost down a little bit, but including stop bars and sharrows, it's ballpark between 22 and 23,000.
Again, I'd still make the same motion. I think it's appropriate, and I'm a big fan of anything we can do that has safety. So the reflective part is a good idea.
Just just one question I have. Is there any chance we're gonna fox seal this this roadway in the future next year? Any chance whatsoever? I
don't have any plans on Fox Sealing. Okay. I just know I just know School Road and Lakeside Drive was Fox Sealing. I just didn't know if there was any discussion on Fox Sealing the rest of the the path around the lake and Lake Road. Are you sure? Am I sure?
Yeah. Either one of you. Are you sure? I'm sure. Okay.
And then I'll second Adrian's motion. I'm not hearing anything from Eric. Eric, are you sure?
Not sure. I prefer to fog seal personally. But, you know, it's a question. You know, every if you fog seal, you reduce the amount of chip seal you do by about a mile and a half a year. So it's it's a trade off between doing a little bit better job or doing more total work, you know, and and it's just a it's a numbers game.
Okay. And personally, I think it's right now it's about trying to get more work done, trying to get more of these roads. I mean, it's a $4,550,000 bill to fog seal versus getting more road work done.
Okay. And one thing real quick. Does anybody on the commission have any more questions for Melissa? Because I suspect she'd like to actually eat dinner tonight. I
think we're all set. Melissa, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming on and helping us out. Appreciate that. Of course, not a problem. And Eric, you know how to find me if you need anything else in the future. Okay? Fair enough. Thank you. Sure. Bye bye. Have a good night. Cheers.
Got a motion on the floor with a second, Jeff. Yes, we do. So further discussion. All those in favor. Aye. Aye.
All those opposed? Jeff? Motion passes three to one. Okay, so we're going to move on now. Everybody from the traffic committee, thank you very much for participating and giving us your input. We greatly appreciate it. Good luck with the well, Mr. Goodwin. Everybody else, thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night.
Thank you. Jay is still staying involved. We have our public works section. Jay, we're going to help that you participate with this. We're going to go 5A mini excavator and compactor purchase. Who would like to discuss that, Eric or Jay? Jay left us? No, Jay's there. No, I'm still here.
I'll answer any questions, but Jay's the primary one on this. He's the one that's using it.
So you want to talk about the mini excavator first? Yes.
Everybody received the packet for the various types manufacturers? Yeah, so we started out looking for, you know, an excavator to to so we could start doing our drainage work and something that we can do a little off road with. And also at the same time doing catch basins. So initially, know, and I'll take the hit on it, was thinking a little bit bigger machine. It's always been tough finding a smaller machine that would handle catch basins safely. So I met with another town, guys that I worked with before and they're running they were running this TB two ninety Takeuchi which we presently have on rental. And they said it could handle catch basins all day long. So we brought it in, we tried it out, we took it down to our pit. Long story short, we took the catch basin, the sump cell, which is pretty much the heaviest part of a catch basin. And we are comfortably able to get it out of the truck and put it in the ground, take it out away from the machine, it would hold, you could lower down in the hole, bring it back up. Is it as stable as a bigger machine? No, it's not quite as stable as a bigger machine, but it will handle and handle safely. And Tommy, our operator, very pleased with it.
And you'll notice if you look at the different machines of the
paperwork I sent you, this has got a twin piston main boom where the others don't. And I checked with John Deere, I checked with Caterpillar, I checked with all many of the other ones and the ones that did respond back they think it could pick up a sump, but they weren't sure. And then the dollars were different as well. So we're currently renting this machine. Let's see, we're on our third month now, I think it is. So we used it at the bridge. We're using it out on Shawty Mill Road, and, we plan to do plenty of other work with it If it's accepted.
Okay, for Jay. Adrian, I'm sure you know more about this than anybody here. Why don't you take it? I'm
actually one of the people that encouraged Jay and Eric to think about purchasing this. When you look at the rental costs over, you know, a four month period, it's what it would cost us to buy it if we bought it over this, you know, over a four or five year period. So it makes sense to just own it. Most of my friends that are doing landscaping, even you know, septic work have gone to this type of machine because one of the things that Jay didn't mention is that it's also a lot easier to move. You don't need to do just the flatbed. You can tow it behind most of other our other stuff with five fifty. So we have options with the dump trucks to be able to move this around versus go and get the flatbed for everything. So there's an advantage there. But in general, it's just it's the right size machine for the type of work that we're doing a lot of. And they're reliable, you know, so for the cost of renting it, we might as well be buying it. It just makes more sense. You know, I mean, these if they're maintained well, you know, this should be a twenty year machine for us, you know,
so. Okay. And Eric, if I remember correctly, or you can tell me the rental cost for this unit monthly is? Dollars 4,275 per month.
Okay. So we're planning on spending approximately $13,000 on the rental of this for three months.
Well, no, I mean, you're going end up renting it for four to five months by the time you go open season to end of season. You know. Okay. I mean, you do four months, ahead.
If you know, and it's something we have to face. And it's funny because Jay and I had this discussion before we started kind of drainage systems season. And he said flat out the problem with renting these things is you get all set to do a project, something happens and you end up moving public works and doing something else. And you sit the thing there for three weeks, you know, while you deal with some kind of crisis, and then you come back to it, and you've now wasted all that money. And honestly, we've done that this year. Several times we've stopped and started projects because we got another storm, we had to do cleanup, trees came down. So, think it's one of those things that the problem with renting is that you don't necessarily, you may have it for four months, but you don't necessarily put a ton of hours on it. You know, you use it hard for a week, then it sits for a while. To me, it does make sense seeing how we're using it. And the fact we've got so much freaking drainage work we have to do to purchase this piece of equipment.
And the irony was, even though we packed up and rained down and did storm work, we ended up using it on the bridge and stuff. So, we ended up using it for some of the storm work, you know?
So, does the rental payments offset purchase costs, Eric? Yes.
The way it's set up is the first two months get applied 100% to the purchase price And then after that, 75% of the rental offsets the purchase price.
Okay. And budgeted, this line item is budgeted for the equipment that we have for
the equipment line item for public works? Yes. So the public works equipment line item is, I believe, 110,000. So the money is there. You know, we can purchase the money, the machine outright, or we can consider loan options depending on what it is that, you know, you wanna do.
And do you have the loan options as far as the interest rate goes for it?
So there's a loan option through the company. They can do sixty months at 0%. And then plus they have some then plus they have some lease options with a a balance. Okay.
So 0% for sixty months allows us to sit there and take this at at 600.
Let's do a ballpark number. $600 is that your guess, Scott? Is that it? Yeah. Okay. What is it? I'm checking. No, it's more than that.
What did he say? You're trying to come up with the per month?
It says $14.63, if my numbers are correct, but they may not be. That's pretty close. $16.66
would be $100,000 over sixty months. I think that's a great Listen, I know Adrian looked at that bill and I looked at that bill and I immediately I don't enjoy looking at those types of bills. So paying $4,000 a month, the leased piece of equipment doesn't sit well with me. I'm all in favor of purchasing it and I would be all in favor of purchasing it at 0% interest over sixty month time frame. A2. B3, use somebody else's money. That's it.
If you do the math, 1,400 a month is $16.08 for the year and four months rental is $16.08. So it's literally identical, you know?
I mean, it's not, it's not as if it's not a piece of equipment that Jay and public works don't need.
Let's just and we have options as to where we take this out of. We could actually take it off Town Aid Road because it's primarily a roadwork item expense. We have options as to where we want to park this.
Okay. Someone wanna make motion to purchase this so for
Well, do we wanna do we wanna let Board of Finance we'll make let Board of Finance make the decision as to where to to put it. Is that what we're gonna do?
Sure. Let's just let them know that we want this purchase.
Alright. I'll make a motion that we purchased the, Takayuchi, that we are currently renting, and it's what, 110? Is that the price, Eric? No. Purchase cost is 96,135.
All right. For $96,001.35 as, as quoted in the packet.
Might I recommend that you actually, because CIP hasn't reviewed this yet. Might I recommend that you just make a positive referral to CIP since that really is their job to determine these?
Well, CIP so CIP several years ago recommended one, but the balances have never been there to pay for it. You know?
And even CI so we're gonna personally, Eric, we're gonna waste time to send it to CIP. CIP is gonna send it back. Just purchase the thing. It's the right thing to do for the time.
Yeah. I mean, is a no brainer. We're using it whether it gets purchased or not. So, you know, we might as well purchase it and save the costs.
You know? I mean, it's already in the budget. It's just I mean, even if you sat there and used it from the equipment line item, it's already in the budget.
And and, again, we're renting it, so we're still gonna need it whether they say yes or not. So and it's the same amount of money. I can't imagine they would say no. So Adrian, I'll second that.
Okay. Further discussion? Anybody? No? So all those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Okay. All those opposed? No? Four, nothing. Let's move on to the roadwork and tree trimming progress report. Aren't we going to talk the fiber? The compactor?
Oh, am sorry. The compactor, the quotes for the compactor, the one I saw was $12,000 Do we own those already?
What's that? Don't we own a compact or it's just so old it's not worth it? No, it's a lot smaller.
This one's a lot bigger. This one we're able to use on top or excuse me on top of our trenches. We did it for our road work. We we tried a roller small roller earlier on in the season. Really didn't fit our needs. We're looking for something that had a lot more hit, so we had some better compaction. The small compactors that we have. Basically you got to come up a lot smaller lifts takes more time. This one here we can, you know, put up to 10 inches of material, 12 inches of material and we can get a good compaction rating without small ones. What three or four with the small ones you guys have? Three or four? Inches. Inches. Yes.
Yeah. As far as how much material we can put in at a time. It's Do our small ones have reverse?
No. Just this stone has reverse. A little harder to use into a trench. Exactly. Yeah, the small
ones are good for patching, paving, little, you know, when you're doing some small patches. But when we're doing bigger work, this is where this comes into play.
Yes. So Jeff, just imagine being at a trench and you can't back it up, you got to pick it up with a machine and bring it back to the beginning and do it again.
Cause you can't, you can't, it doesn't have a reverse on it literally. And then you gotta try to twist it around or you're pulling on it. It's kind of a pain.
It's a workers' comp claim waiting to happen is what it is.
Okay. So the other thing we can do is instead of buying this new, the unit we've been renting to do trench work, we can buy straight out for 9,500. So it's about $3,000 less. I don't know exactly how many hours it's got on it. Was it new when it came to you?
It came to us with one hundred and forty hours on it. And
where's my notes? Yeah so it's a 2021 same model as the new. It's got a 100 had it came to us with one hundred and forty seven hours on it. It was just used a few times different places and you know I because the company that we're this is one of our vendors that we routinely use buy small equipment from, rent small equipment from. Who is this? Able Tool and Equipment out of South Windsor. Okay.
They get us sold, you know, if we have a special concrete tool, we gotta use jackhammers, whatever. They got pretty much anything and everything.
Did we get any other quotes? Have you quoted Superior or anybody else?
No, because I, whacker is the is the compactor of choice. Our smaller machines are all whackers and the whacker or this particular model is already quoted brand new using source well pricing. Okay. And as far as having the used machine available which they had, know I said send it on over so we can try it out. And again, the crew is able to use it. They're able to, you know, produce,
get the work done, and we can keep moving on. Can I ask two questions about it? Is it direct drive or belt drive? And what type of engine does it have? It's got a
Hats diesel. Okay. Direct drive? I can't answer that. I don't know. What's the model number? It's a DPU5545HE reverse plate. DPU5545HE reverse plate.
How much of a warranty does it still have? I'm assuming it's a direct drive but
because the smaller machines are use the belt drive. The warranty would be a year on most machines like that. For as far as on a used machine, yeah they. Adrian, have you got the internet? Look up done?
Yeah, I'm just looking to see what's on the spec sheet. And it has all the all the things you're looking for in a in that type of unit for a crew type application. So, you know.
And how many months have we rented it from? Or
No. We're we haven't had it a month yet. Getting close.
So according to your paperwork, that monthly rental can be applied to the purchase? Yes.
And the monthly rent Including the it can be applied to the one we're currently renting, is the $9,000.01, 95, whatever? Yes.
Now we're down to 7,800. For this unit they're currently using.
I would mean based on what I'm saying, I would make a recommendation that we buy the unit, we are currently renting. Kuntz, For the reduced costs. Dave And my suggestion would be that we you know take it out of town aid rather than the line item. Town aid road.
Why wouldn't that be a capital expense? I mean, that's the whole reason why we have a capital equipment fund. Because what else do you need?
Well, no, it's not just that. Mean, on a global scale, capital equipment is really for much more expensive items. And realistically, you would put the excavator in the capital equipment line, right? But for smaller purchases like this, I would not look at this as a capital purchase. It's a very small dollar item overall, and it doesn't have an extremely long service life generally. They generally look at these things for you know, eight to ten years, max, max, you know, I think that even the, if you were to look it up on the tax, on a tax point of view, which we don't have to do as a town, but it's generally only seven years. And again, you're if you really, that's what we're using it for. We're not using it for anything else in town. I mean, this is really a road maintenance item if there ever was one. Correct?
Right. I would still argue that that's a capital item, even at $10 or a little under personally.
Well, we're a lot more under now because we're, it's what $70.70, 78, '75. '78. Well, And what's going to, you know, here's a, I mean, point five, one dozen of the other, but when you start talking about, you know, capital items, again, I think anything under that, you know, $1,520,000 mark is questionable. And I put it out there this way, you looked at, when we look at capital items for the audit report, if it's under $100, they're not even interested for reference.
Well, they're not, but we are, but I still agree with Adrian that I would look at this as you could take it from wherever you want. If it's something that public works needs and we're already gonna pay $17.50 to rent it. We've already paid $17.50 to rent it. Let's vote to buy it and move on because you're gonna have more requests for next year and may as well make you guys more efficient. We have four employees, we're going to be as efficient as we can and get as much done as we possibly can. So I'm all in favor for buying the used piece of equipment. Pricing on that's not bad either.
Else? Adrian, did you make a motion to buy? I did. Someone's going to second that? I'll second it. Further discussion? Scott? Scott. All set. All right. So all those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Right, one nothing. Okay, so we're moving on to the next part of this, which is roadwork and tree trimming progress report.
So the roadwork, as you all know, we wrapped up all the chip seal. We're got a couple spots we got to go back to and and sweep up because we weren't able to get to basically Bunker Hill. We weren't able to sweep that up as best as we could due to time constraints and bridge closure and the traffic not being on there. So we'll get to that prior to painting any center line striping. And I'll get that scheduled. I'll talk with Eric about that this week and we'll get striping scheduled. And then we're working on the drainage on Shawty Mill Road. Right now we've got one of the guys out on vacation so we kind of shift gears and we're doing some tree trimming. So we'll start that back up and hopefully the end of this week if I get some time I can help that crew out. But we're tree trimming and Hendi, Skinner, Whelan with distinctive. So the tree work, any questions on roadwork before we move on?
Yeah, and I would say the public works has been doing some limited canopy trimming in some of the roads where we've been having problems with the buses smack and free branches a lot. Michelle was complaining that she had busted her little will be light on the top off of the off of the bus not too long ago, her first day trying to drive the roots on centers free. Public works is cut a lot of that back and they're working around the town trying to just do limited canopy cutting.
And so to continue on with the tree work that we have scheduled this distinctive in cooperation with Eversource, putting some monies together and having a collaborative effort to do some get some of those hazard trees, a lot of dead trees, improve on reliability around town. So currently I had I have marked about five thirty trees and that starts at well we added Hutchinson onto the list So we did a section of Hutchins and then on to Hendy. So make the loop from Hendy and continue right around to Bear where Bear Swamp comes out on Long Hill. So that whole loop Hendy, Skinner, Wheeling, Bear Swamp. So I got about five thirty trees marked right now and I gotta go over and mark out on Gilead. And so, Distinctive came in today. They got up almost up to the top of the hill, taking out some of the trees. Gotta they gotta backtrack a little bit because they gotta wait for a lock truck to come in to remove some of the stuff at the same time.
Can I ask a structural question about what we're how we're doing some of this stuff? When we have distinctive or if you could explain, I'm asking this because I've had a couple citizens ask so and I didn't know the answer so I thought maybe we could have a public answer. So when we have distinctive or we have a say the striping crew or you know, a paving crew in there, what are our are we still are we splitting up so that I understand when we do tree trimming, you need to be around because you're the tree warden. How does it work? As far as our crews, how are we doing work? You know, do we have one crew off doing one thing and the other one working with the sub or how are we doing this?
Yeah, so currently right now we have one guy on vacation. The other two guys, the other two full time guys are doing some canopy trimming in some pot in some spots in town. They started on Center Street today and then they moved over to Cider Mill and then they'll continue on other areas. What are they doing canopy trimming with?
They're using the pole saw, they're working from the ground. Basically, they're just trying to get those low limbs that the buses hit, the garbage truck, we hit with our tops of our, know, the bigger trucks that vehicles that go through those areas that are constantly hitting those low limbs. You know, ones that stick out from the side of the road that your mirror hits. I I understand that I I only
ask because hadn't we gotten a quote to do some of that work given that it's not really?
No, not. That's not in the, part of what distinctive is doing.
I understand it's not part of what they're doing now, but hadn't we gotten a number from them to do some canopy work?
I haven't gotten any work from them to do any canopy work and that canopy work is low level canopy work. The canopy work that they would be doing would be high level canopy work. Okay. Which ultimately that would be the goal if we can continue to do we just don't have the funding and have to take care of these problem areas. It's not everywhere. It's, you know, you got a stretch where, you know, somebody's tree or shrubbery that they let overgrow on the side of the road that's hitting your mirrors or your car or truck and you know it's it's I call it cut and run work. You know we go to a spot, we cut it, we go on to the next spot. Just you know there are some areas where it's a little lengthy. But it's not all, you know, it's not everywhere.
We're not doing those that type of we're not picking up that type of stuff when we do roadside mowing with the flail. Again,
you're talking about stuff that's, you know, 12 to 14 feet off the ground. Okay, you said something about people's stuff growing out from the side, so that's why I'm asking. Well, no, that's
mostly yes, there are. We do that with the roadside mower, but again there's places, you know, I can, I can give you a couple specific areas? You know, there's a, there's, there's a couple of tree limbs that have been bugging us for, well at least bugging the snow, the plow driver for past two three years, you know, and it just nobody's gone over there to knock on the person's door and say, Hey can we cut your tree? Cause the tree's 15 feet, 20, you know, 20 feet off the road, but it's got a limb that sticks out 30 feet and it's starting to get weighted. We need to take it off the tree to make it, make it safe. So it's things like that. It's those little things that just, you know, when we have time, if we have, you know, we got a little downtime because we don't have a full staff right now, well, we can go take care of those small ring flyers. Then as far as traffic control with our distinctive that's out there right now, we have our call in person that comes in occasionally helping us out this week. So we're not tying up our regular crew on that type of stuff? No, we try not to. Okay. And where are we with roadside mowing right now?
It's been around town twice. Next time we go out, we gotta get the mowing done on the trail and it'll have to, it'll probably be, what I'm hoping is that we put our change mower heads and we put the hammer flail on, which that mower head would be able to take care of some of that heavier vegetation that you speak of Adrian. Yeah. But I'm not, I'm not so sure we can make that work this year because we need to do a little work to that mower head. I'm not quite sure on what the extent of
repairs to that. So you switch the whole head, you don't switch the blades out?
No, because the blades coincide with the arbor on the type of mower head that's on it. The hammerhead is a lot heavier blade and you can't put that on the current mower head that we have. Okay.
The one we're using now is the one Coventry. I think it was Coventry threw away. We got it and rebuilt it. Yeah.
Okay, is there anything else that anyone wants to ask about the roadwork and the tree trimming? Okay, let's move on to 5C, Missoula Road bus turnaround proposal.
So I spoke did everybody see that in their packet? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So, I spoke with the owner at Number 71 Basola. They are the new owners of that property. The past owners only had a car or two and there was plenty of room for the bus to share their driveway to turn around and they made provisions to try to keep their vehicles out of the way for the bus. This new owner has multi vehicles, he's a hobbyist, he does stuff so he doesn't have the room in his driveway. So I spoke to him about that shaded area that I drew in pink. It's a perfect spot. We'd have to take out a few trees. We could box it out really easy and add some gravel and make a perfect turnaround. And it's on his property. I spoke with the gentleman at Number 61 Basola which is the
direct of Butter and he has a fenced in yard and so the fence would be close to it and it's a little downhill so if he stood at his fence even though there's some vegetation in there if he stood at his fence he would be looking basically at the top of the landing because it, you know, it does go downhill. We would have to, you know, level that out. So, make it feasible for the bus to turn around safely. We wouldn't just give them a hill to back into and try to drive out of. So that's pretty much what I did right now. I guess it has to go to you know I spoke with Eric about it whether it has to go to the attorney to create an easement,
get permission. So, that's where I'm at.
The board agrees to do it, I think we should give it to Dennis, because I would prefer to have an actual formal easement to allow us to do it that way. There's no, you know, heartburn, the homeowners know exactly what they're getting. We know exactly what they're getting. Know.
Okay. All right does anyone have any questions regarding the turnaround or any other issues related to? How long is Posola?
Mile? Mile? No. I was gonna say I didn't think it was that long.
Well, I know that I know there would be some unhappy kids that have to walk all the time. I don't know.
Eric, on your striping data that you gave us, is it in there?
I don't think it would be because Basolo wasn't one of the ones that were striped, but I can probably find you a length of that. Bring it up on the GIS. So, Basola, 0.32 miles. Oh, it's a third of a mile. Correct.
Do you have a cost that you're going to invest in this turnaround Jay?
Well other than removing the trees it would be in house So our labor's part, you know, of our annual costs. We can use our own materials. We got gravel in our pit we could use and we top it. So I didn't put a cost together what I would you know as far as any process but it's tough but
we got you know we got millens to put it we got plenty of millens we can top it with we have material okay You can take the trees down yourself?
No, I'd have to, there's a couple big trees that we would have to have take the two in the very front would have to, I'd have to have somebody come in and take those down. The rest of them we could take down ourselves.
I assume you can pull the stumps with the excavator though the backhoe.
Probably or we'd have them ground. But the stumps are pretty close to the road. I'd be cautious on taking them out, you know, having the root ball hurt the roadway. Because the stumps are kind of, they would be pretty much on the outside of either side of the of the turnaround. Okay. Anyone have a problem with this turnaround?
The smaller ones we can pull out for sure. The two big ones, I don't know if I pull them out just because they're right on the edge of the road.
Anybody have a problem with the turnaround or does someone want to make a motion so we can move that forward?
I mean, only it sounds like you've my concern is, you know, how long is this gonna last? House sells and, you know, somebody else ends up buying the house after this person. Then where are we at? Well, the other thing is too, and I didn't mention
this is we have a real hard time in the wintertime trying to find a place to turn around up there with a plow. You know, got nowhere to put the snow. You know, you look at Number 71 Basola, if you go a little deeper, the the road ends and it turns into a dirt driveway. Yep. So, there's a homeowner in there and he's a contractor that does various things around town. He says, oh you can come down and go right into my yard. Well, I'm not going to send our truck down the dirt driveway that's not maintained, that we're going to be bouncing along tearing it up because he said, you know, the bus can come down in my yard and turn around. Well, I went down there and maybe if everything was improved, but we're not doing that. But there's no we have a difficult time in the wintertime even with the previous owners turning around in that driveway and then just where to put the snow. You know you're either put piling it up in their driveway and trying to push it off in the woods. This gives us a place to put snow as well. So this is just poor street planning, we should have required something before we took over the street.
Possibly. Yeah, definitely.
And we have this, you know, we have another issue at the end Of Brown, but that can be done at some other time. Brown's a short road.
So your goal is to put this in and level it off enough that you can are you going to do millings or are going to do gravel?
Both. We'll start with the gravel and then we'll top it with millings. Okay. Because we, you know, we got to put we got to bring it up some so we're not just going to put a pile of millings there.
So I'm assuming if we sit there and we send this to the town attorney to get an easement, that easement is going to pass from owner to owner.
Future owner- Presumably, that's the reason why I want to pursue an easement to know that if we go to the trouble of doing work, that two years from now somebody else doesn't buy us and say, Get off my property. Dennis, is that, is that the case? He's gonna figure out the mute button. Big ask for a landowner.
And is there any type of remuneration or anything we need to consider for this?
I thought he said he was willing to do it. Dennis O'Brien,
if you can Eric, was was there any cost involved from the town side to the homeowner?
I have not been involved in that. I don't believe so.
No, the homeowner was all for it. Says have at it.
But he knows that we're going to come back to him with an easement.
Yes, I mentioned that to him. I said I said, you know, I'm I'll bring it forward to my to the town manager and then you know they're going to probably want to do an easement. With you.
As long as it's all done legal, legal, I don't have a problem with it. Just don't want it to be like a gentleman's agreement or something. Amanda,
can you unmute Dennis O'Brien? He's saying it's from your end.
I'm trying to unmute him. Dennis, can you hear us? He can. I've texted him.
He's saying he can't unmute on his end. Dennis, if you're calling from your phone, just press 6 to unmute yourself.
Okay. Well, he'll end up being on a little bit. Nope, he's trying. 6. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to end up asking for an easement. We're going to have the town attorney prepare an easement, and then we're going to try to present that to a resident.
As long as we go that route and it sticks, that's fine.
Yeah. Then I would be in favor of it also.
Is there any planning and zoning requirements, Eric, to sit there and approve this or?
It's going to be another entrance on the road, right? I mean,
theoretically, we would have to pull a, you know, a permit ourselves to construct an apron on a down road. But we can imply internally for that.
Alright, so I would make a moat what's the street address 707171. I'd make a motion that we pursue an easement agreement with seventy one basola to put in a turnaround for both plowing and school bus access to the road. I'll second that. Scott seconds. Further discussion? No. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Jay, thank you very much for sticking with us and all the good information. Thank you. Thank you. We're going move on to Item six, board and commission presentations, community, senior center billing committee. Is there any information that Scott or Jeff or anyone? I'm going to give a talk. All right, let's go ahead. How are you? You're not making any noise again. Amanda?
He just muted, unmuted. Try it again, Ed. Your mic's not working, Ed. Still strong, silent type. Your mute, unmute is is going on and off, but we're still not hearing you when it's off. It's currently on again. You're now off. And we can't hear you. And we still can't hear you. Hey, Ed, is your volume up on your computer? That wouldn't affect his mic. It worked. It worked before. It did.
Ed, would you like to call in from your phone?
Can you hear me now? Yes. They got me. They got me. Alright. We got you. Sorry. I have an echo. Have a new laptop. Can you hear me now? Yes, we got it. All right, thank you. I think we were hearing him through Diane's.
Diane, you need to turn yours back, unmute you, yours. Getting your volume in his video feed. Listen, unmute Diane's and Ed. Mute yours.
Yeah. Mute, Ed. Unmute Diane's. That's how it works. Diane, unmute yourself if you can. There you go. This is Louise. Are you kidding me?
I'm sorry, guys. I got a new laptop. I'm just trying to figure it out. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. All right. So anyways, we've got an approved site plan. Brandon, our town engineer, really liked the site plan that was proposed. The site plan the committee chose is a got a great opportunity to have a walkout basement is the change in elevation. Committee like this site because we have the opportunity to build a full foundation wall in and be able to finish out the basement in the future and not have to spend the money now. So basically we're going to spend the money to outfit the whole 1st Floor and have the potential for growth basement and have a walkout basement. The building footprint is about the max we can fit on the site it's partitioned on the east and west by the two parking lots so we have a 40 foot by 56 footprint, Amanda, you're going to help out and put that site plan from the website up. If anyone has any questions. Thank you, Amanda. So if you have any questions, you stop me as I go along. So we went through some evolutions on this we've been meeting for two years, mostly at the gazebo and good weather we had some zoom meetings with Diane's assistance. The basic footprint was reviewed by our town engineer Jay helped us find the utilities would skip septic this past spring so you see the yellow staking that's out there. We know where all the utilities are. Only thing we would have any big food in for this building is a new septic tank anyway so we're going to move all we got to do is move the existing septic tank.
And the engineer that we've selected will will see that if we can have a bigger septic tank for both buildings the town hall and the new building or separate septic tanks but there's plenty of room out back for all these things. The existing leach field will be will be salvaged and used as is at most we need to add maybe one or two more trenches for additional septic leaching. So all we got to do is move the existing septic tank. Thank you, Amanda. The proposed building is shown in orange. Again, it's the constraints are the two parking lots. And what we're going to do is we got 2,400 square feet as it is on the 1st Floor,
an unfinished basement of another 2,000 plus square feet, which the town can decide how we're going to use that at first for storage or maybe possibly some future offices down in there. Currently the committee has selected in our last meeting on Thursday we selected BSC as the engineering firm and another company called MMP or MPN, Moser Architects to do preliminary floor plans based on the input we receive from the community and the seniors. If we can pull up the floor plan, Amanda, from our website, Diane and helped me get this on the web on our website last month. These are available to everybody on the website. This went through a couple iterations also. We originally had the kitchen on the perimeter of the building but committee members suggested we put it to center so that the breakout rooms can be serviced by the kitchen in two different windows so you could have multiple functions going on at once. Now this is by no means a final floor plan of course it's just an idea to save us money to go to an architect and say, improve on this and make it better. So there's your 46 by. I'm sorry 56 by 40 foot building with a small, medium and large meeting rooms, bathrooms and office and so on. It's interesting earlier in the meeting, Mike and Kathy mentioned talking about having flu shots. Well, this is obviously a place where we would be, we would be giving flu shots at some point on our new community center in the future. The committee is currently charged with going out. We're gonna go try to go as a group to various,
and Kathy Pelosi is trying to arrange this to get us together for a joint field trip to see other senior centers in adjoining towns that are of small in nature and take pictures of what we like and don't like so that when we meet for the first time with the architect, we can give them ideas. But thanks go to the committee members who worked hard on this, even Adrian who's not on the committee officially, but helped us with some of the cat on this. And thanks to Jay for helping staking out the utilities. And so we've last Thursday we selected mostly based on qualifications based selection, engineer and architectural firm to do the preliminaries drawings on this to be able to come to a point where we have officially architectural design drawings from an art licensed architect and engineering drawings from the site plan to be able to go to the town meeting, a town meeting and presented to the town in a professional way by the professionals for input and approval. By that time we'll have budget costs better handled, a better ballpark budget costs on that once the architect comes up with a preliminary design. Anyways, it's a great site for great opportunities with lots of room out back. We already have the garden started in the back. Of course, you know that's going well and we'll run a water line out from the back of our building to the community garden. And I don't know Amanda if you have any elevations, they were also on the website.
Does anybody have any questions on these drawings at this point? I'd like to give a chance for the rest of the committee members to say anything. Have of course Diane with me and we have Mike and Cathy on the committee and our two selectmen, Scott and Jeff. Anybody else of the six of us want to say anything about these drawings?
Kathy and Mike think you're doing a great job at continue.
Well, thank you Kathy, you're a great big help on the committee and providing valuable input from the seniors.
Great. I think you're doing a great job too Ed. You're the exact right guy we need for this project.
Well, we're getting our best shot. Thanks, Scott. Know, inherited it from Jeff. Jeff had it handed off to me and I was happy to give it a give it a go. Again, I think it's just a quick history here. We tried three years ago to get it into the fourth wing and the elementary school that was shot down. We were charged with finding a site in this area. And I think we got a great opportunity with this building. The building may not look like anything like this, but at least it's going to be functional and we're going to have rooms that are flexible to have lots of different activities in there.
And so, anybody's welcome to come to our Thursday night meeting second Thursday of the month. We're always meeting at the gazebo where possible so come on down to meetings and give us input. And Kathy is now arranging for us to go to field trips to various other community centers. And again, this all stemmed out of this, we've been planning this for forty years. Conservation and developments talked about such facility to replace the over 100 year old firehouse, mold infested firehouse. For forty years we've been talking about this. The long term planning committee selected this area because the survey showed this this is where people want it they're used to going here at our municipal town center. And we got to eventually of course connect our current functional municipal town center with our historic center. And part of this is a two year old presentation that Eric and I gave to try to make a walkable Route 316 want to be able to eventually get our seniors and our children to be able to walk from the Long Hill ball fields up to the school and go to Route 316 and make a walking path similar to what Mansfield did at Yukon. I don't know if you have those pictures available. Just slip those in here real quick before I end. Amanda, you were gonna put up a slide what Yukon did to get students safely up to the ball fields. We'd like to be able to walk. We'd like to be able to walk from the museum for example or the library up 316. And there's only point three miles, one third of a mile that's the dangerous curve
right here. We talked earlier tonight in our meeting about shoulders and white lines. Well, obviously you've got about a one foot shoulder here and anybody that's walked this knows it's a problem. We, but we have the room and behind the telephone poles. If you look to the right of that telephone pole, easily foot in a five foot pathway elevated four foot off the road to people walk right in an embankment to tuck a shelf in there. The next slide Amanda if you got the next one we worked on this is a, we presented this to the state representative Robin Green and Senator Cassano two and a half years ago with the long term planning committee and bike walk handover committee. And it was well received and the bus driver said, yeah, we got to do something here because kids are walking down here to get a popsicle and they're already using the road. Next slide, Amanda, just a couple of these that Amanda and I worked on you notice how there's a pedestrian in the road and they're crossing the yellow line because they don't want to hit the pedestrian yet risking a head on collision here.
Next slide, there is a solution. A little path four foot wide behind the telephone poles, but in front of the trees. Now these trees are dead, dying and diseased. I'm surprised they haven't come and take the electrical lines down anyways. They need to be taken down anyways. Once those trees are taken down, there's plenty of room for a pathway. One more slide, Amanda, which is the solution. Here's the exact same road geometry. And I've studied, I got three degrees from in civil engineering from Yukon and I know this road well. I heard Jay worked on this actually when he was up in Mansfield but here's our exact same road geometry as 316. A two lane road with an embankment with a nice split rail fence protecting the walkway right behind utility poles. You can see down the street, there's a utility pole and the state property here is wide enough to put it on state property without without infringing on private property just tucking in a little shelf to let people walk to our new community center. So I was encouraging tonight earlier the safety committee to look at this area also we need to get a state grant. It is a state road and other towns. If you're Avon, if you're Wethersfield, you're gonna have this built for you by the state. Need our state representatives to back us up on this and improve the safety on this curve. And it's only 0.3 miles.
We could easily do what Mansfield did. That's why I took this picture from Yukon as the solution. Thanks for running through those. Any committee members have anything to do about or say about our building before Eric's about to hire BSC engineers to do a stamp an engineering drawing with a footprint and an architect, licensed architect to be able to go to the town and show them a preliminary floor plan. If not, thank you for your time. That's all I have tonight. Thank you, Ed. Great, thank Thank you very much.
Now, Eric, was that the original one that came to us last week or was that the secondary one?
The committee based it mostly on quality and qualifications based. We are end up saying $4,000 and the next highest price we got was $4,000 higher than what we are going to hire. We're to get the engineer and architect for $29,000 total, which is under the $50,000 you guys approved for this preliminary design.
So was this the one you guys originally picked or was this the new bid? No.
The one we originally picked was the only architectural bid we had. Eric put out his request to have the second firm submit architecture also to piggyback on as an add on. And this is the second one that came in. And again, it's only a $4,000 price difference. We are going to save that amount of money but the committee like the websites and the previous projects that these professionals have done. Okay. So you guys had enough time to review. Yes.
Okay. Any questions from any of the other members? No. Scott and Jeff are on the committee. So Adrian, you have anything else you wanna add? We're all set. You did a great job. Okay. So I don't know if we need a motion Scott or Jeff to,
did you need a motion to tell Eric to go ahead and hire or is he No, he's already been told. Okay.
Okay. All right. We're going to move on to item seven appointments. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ed. Appointments. Anything, Eric? No. Okay. None. We're going to move on to resignations. Matea Whitford. Eric?
Yep. Matea Whitford resigned. She's taking the job with the town of Coventry. K. We're going to item nine, town administrator report.
Okay. Amanda, can I share screen? Okay. I just gotta find it. I got a zillion things open. Okay, I'm going to go through this real briefly, and just talk about the changes since I sent this report out. The first changes were up to seven COVID cases in the last two weeks. We've started to have more, community transmission within the town of Andover. We're getting up more towards the average of Tollin County. Tollin is now in the higher category for community transition or trends transmission sorry. The good news is Connecticut overall has a very high vaccination rate Andover's vaccination rates pretty good. One of our neighboring school systems is closed with nine COVID cases and apparently eighty nine people quarantine. We do have a flu clinic scheduled. We're going to talk later in executive session about
the replacement for the building department and the town clerk or assistant town clerk. You all know we're doing tree work Jay's covered that. So, we let's see we did get the money for the the connectivity grant, it's hit our bank account. So, we're $297,000 richer than we were last week. Unfortunately, most of it's already allocated to that project. But it's we should be able to get started on that project hopefully by the end of the month. So that's a great deal. As you know, the committee made a recommendation on the contractor and also on the architect for the community center, I will be working with the town's attorney to put together the, you know, to hire that contractor to do the work. Later in the, in the discussion, there's going to be some discussion over the electrical work in the town hall. I've got a couple options, I want to talk to you a little bit about. One of them is moving all the electrical equipment, the other is relocating the oil fill line, I did kind of find a way talking with the talking with Randy the building official where we could potentially rerun an oil fill line. If we're going to do it at the same time we should change out to a bigger oil tank.
So I'm working with Charlie Manacuzzo of M and M Oil to get a quote on what it would cost to do that. And that is pretty much it. You all know we had this is a picture of the sinkhole that developed. You can see where it is relative to the center line. And this is it was paved today, so it is patched. And later we'll be talking about Brandon's report and what our options are for reopening that road. The last thing I wanted to do that's picture distinctive cutting trees that are over the power lines which is pretty friggin impressive. That's taken a chunk off the top of a tree about you know 6,575 feet tall. And that's it for my report. And that's the public works crew, their version of doing the same thing with much smaller branches working out of the back of the truck with a pole saw. So, that's it unless you have questions for me.
Good to see they have some safety equipment on there too.
Yeah, actually they're, you know, that was the first thing I've noticed whenever they're doing tree work, they're always wearing chaps, know, they're always wearing a helmet with the face shield, you know, they appear to have a pretty good safety ethos within the guys doing the work.
Eric, we got an email from Megan regarding some grant possibilities. Do we have anything that will fit into that?
I mean, I think the, the two things that would be possible would be trying for pathway connecting the town hall or the rail trail to the two, the three, you know, food slash convenience store venues in town, which is something that was proposed in the the complete streets program. It's not something I thought deeply about yet. I mean the biggest long term thing to do would be the connection that Ed just talked about going up three sixty. But I've never really sensed from this board that there's any actual support for doing that. So I have not pursued that in any way, shape or form. If that's something you guys really are behind, I'm happy to push for.
Given the pretty tight deadline that's there, we, I mean, we would, the first thing we'd need to do is what, try to get grant money for engineering here, right?
Well, given that we would probably use the money to do an engineering study of that if we were going to propose three sixteen. Okay.
I mean, I think, you know, that's been something that's been mentioned a bunch of times by various people. I, you know, if I have no objection to it, I, you know, I think it's if the community wants it as a whole, why not, you know?
You will get a lot of pushback from people that live on 360.
I know one of those houses turned over and when I talked to them, the one directly across there from where Boston Hill ends to the left and the new residents were actually pretty supportive of it. You know,
I don't know a lot of the other folks in the area. I mean, look, I can tell you that I think it's definitely something we as a town should be pursuing, you know, but I don't, I, you know, and I beat my head against it a couple of years ago and I didn't really get any traction, certainly no traction from the Board of Selectmen. So I dropped it completely at the time. If you guys are behind it, I'm happy to push that along.
Jeff, Scott, what's your take on it? You guys got the email too. I think it's a great project. Jeff?
I think it's a great project. Just think you gotta find out if the residents would go with it. Right.
We've had at least five people, six people come to us that are non linked as I would say, as far as generally on other items and they all expressed an interest in it. It does tie into what we've talked about is building a community center, etcetera, etcetera. And if we did that, that would give a link from the rail trail to our new community center when it's up and running. Yeah.
It is a great idea. It's been discussed many times. It really comes down to either is that state property or is that resident property? Would guess a good portion of that is gonna have to be worked on residents property.
Well, there is a right of way there, but that's what the engineering is about is how to kind of put that all together, right? Step one. When we talked to Cassano about a couple of years ago, he thought it was a great idea, but he also said, You're to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting because the state doesn't have the time or energy to address these smaller projects.
To be really honest, I thought we met with Cassano and I know that he was for it, but I'm not sure that the state guy, the DOT guy,
threw his hands up and said it's not something. As he said, it wasn't for or against. It's really within the they look for community pushes.
What I'm telling you, Adrian, is three or four years ago we got a letter related to that whole project. I believe Ed Srisli actually wrote to the state and got a response, it was not a favorable response. Yep. But listen, I have no problem applying for a state grant to work through the engineering part and understand what we would need to do to execute that. Would be totally in favor of that. Yeah, so would I, Eric. Me also. It's a great project. It's a sore thumb.
Yeah. You're definitely gonna have issues. But listen, let's let's Eric, let's try to find some funding for that that project. And if that's available, let's do it. Okay. Does anybody else have any other questions for Eric? All right, then if not, we're going to move on to hold business. 10A is discussion on the American Rescue Plan Fund. Eric?
I don't have any further updates other than I've done two things. One pushed our auditor to do the calculations, and so we can understand how much of that is in which category. In other words, do we have the additional flexibility to spend some of that money, because we can consider it quote unquote lost revenue. Second thing is I have been pushing a little bit. Looking at one of the needs we have with senior transportation that, and that is a smaller scale vehicle, more on the lines of passenger vehicle or small SUV. And I'm doing inquiries as to whether we could buy an electric vehicle, get in on some of the rebates available today by purchasing an electric vehicle, because I think that would be the perfect solution for that, because that offers us the lowest overall cost of ownership for that vehicle. And we're not driving far enough that we really have to worry about crazy ranges. So those are the only things I have going on that.
Well, I around the electric vehicle. I'm assuming you're going to get to a charging station or something where we'd be able to charge it for the town. So you can report to us future updates on that. Right. Yep. 10b, Veterans Monument Park updates.
I don't really have any updates on that, Scott. I spoke with Matt Kordner again this weekend and he's reached out to the irrigation guy and the irrigation guy has not gotten back to him. I've been very diligent about this but I can't get good response. I call and text these guys constantly and, you know, they're both aware that something has to happen very quickly. But it's still no date that's really cast in stone when this is gonna be done. Don't take it personal. I, you know,
I'm, I'm two months past my lightning strike, and I still can't get an irrigation guy up here to, to change out a controller. Yeah, I'm very, very diligent about doing stuff like this and it's not not. It's just a tough time of year. They're they're getting slammed. They gotta get as much in the ground as they can. And now they're going into they're going into the season where they start, you know, closing systems to on top of it.
Scott, we do know that you are extremely diligent and you put a lot of time into projects that you're involved in and we appreciate that. We're going to move on to storm damage at Veterans Memorial Field. Eric, and then you'll pass it on to Scott because he's also involved in this.
Yeah, I mean, we've got to figure out how to get the leaves back out of the fence. Fortunately, the fence was not retied down before it got blown out again by this latest, even worse flood. We were lucky that we didn't really suffer any other damage to the field though. The field was completely 100% submerged again, which has got to be some kind of a record for us in the same year. I had asked Rick to get me Rick still owes me a summary, an electrical summary of what he says occurred there so we can submit an electrical or a claim to the insurance company. And we're still waiting them to come back and swap the well pump again.
Scott, just because you know that field better than anyone, that field has recovered well from the floods and we don't really have any significant issues related to it?
No, they're back to, you know, taking care of it, aerating it, and they're going to reseed that back corner. I can't imagine it's going to happen again, but it possibly could. And Eric, when they fill in by the parking lot I want to put big stone you know like three or four inch stone not small stone again where that that blowout happened. Are
you hearing me? I'm hearing you, I'm just trying to think in my head. I'm not disputing you, I just haven't really thought through it. It's by the big back where the backstop used to be? Yep. Just put big material in there, it won't then it won't leave next time you know. If you can relay that to your GPW foreman. And I don't think that there's a need to reattach the fence on the bottom either. Think that's probably a waste of time and money.
Well, I was all for it and then I saw it got blown right out again and so maybe I kind of agree with you. Yeah, I saved a bunch of those hitches but
it's just just gonna get blown out again and why why attach it? Once this stuff gets out of there, it'll go back it'll hang back down. It'll be fine. Okay.
I'm going to go to Tend D, the complaint log. Eric, anything you want to share?
No, some people are unhappy, but you know, you guys asked to see and kind of understand what our kind of normal traffic is and normal level of complaints. That's it. I'm trying to work on the rest of the employees to submit logs. They're certainly not the best at doing it. I'm clearly not the only person that has people to complain to them. Yeah.
Okay. Is there anybody's ever a model that tells from other people? I
didn't hear that. I I said, why are we not getting them from other people? Well, I don't have a good explanation.
Well, I mean, it's part of their job. We've asked for it. What what am I missing? When you refer when you refer a complaint to another department, do you follow-up to see if that department has done what they're supposed to do? Not generally, no. Can we can we do that? I mean, that's the whole point of this, Is to make sure that citizens don't fall through the cracks. If we pass it off to somebody else, the whole point was to make sure that someone did follow-up with them.
It's simply a question of time, Adrian, and how much time do you want to spend just dealing with complaints? Well,
I would say that in general, you get a certain amount of, there's a certain amount of churn, complaint churn in any organization, right? Whether it's a town or a business or whatever. But if we are consistently seeing a pattern of complaint, then we have to look at that pattern and say, obviously we're missing something. We're doing something wrong with our public outreach or communication or something. That's the whole point of this, It's not just about, it's about spotting the smoke before there's a fire, you know, for lack of better terminology.
Well, are there any complaints in my complaint log that you want me to focus on? Or do you want me to focus on every complaint that I listed to If we're not following up, then we don't know who's getting,
that we don't, that's the whole point, right? So if we know that we've passed this off to and I'm picking a department I'm not let's say we pass it off to the tax assessor right. If the if we find that the assessor is not following up with people, this is how we catch it right, this is how we address it if it's the it's the town clerk or the building department, wherever it is, this is how we find out that those things are falling through the crack. And it could be a staffing issue, they don't have enough staffing. It could be a variety of issues, but that's how we address them, right? That's how we find that there's a problem. And so I know it seems trivial to you, but in the long term, as we get some of these bigger fires put out and Jake gets a handle on roads and we've got a community center and all these nice fun things are sort of settling into a routine, then you start working on these maybe less offensive, but still issues that we need to address as a town.
Eric, I think the issue for me is that, while I appreciate that you're doing it for us, even if it's one or two complaints that are coming to the assessor's office, if it just stays in the assessor's office or stays in the tax collector's office or it stays in the town clerk's office, then members of the Board of Selectmen are never informed that there's a potential problem no matter how big or how small. So all of the departments should be at least giving us a baseline if there's an issue. Now, listen, every resident can sit there and send an email to any member of the board if they chose to. So that's all. I think that's all. I mean, from my perspective, that's what I would be after.
If we're asking you to do it, we should also be asking the other departments to do it, and just let us be informed. I mean, there's only so much time for us to get out there and see everything, and we only see so many residents, and they may ask us to try to accomplish something, but more information on that standpoint is just gonna help us.
Anyway, I for one, I'm also interested in the complaints and if they're being addressed. So, I would like to know what kind of complaints there are, what things are happening in town and if they're being addressed and they're being addressed in the correct manner.
I mean, ultimately as a town, that's what we are. We're a public service department. Right, exactly.
We're gonna go on to 10E, building and land use department, the online permitting system.
Online permitting system is up and running now. We still have not converted fully to an online payment system. That's in the hands of the finance director. Okay. Have you had any complaints? Not about that. No. Alright. Not yet. I'm sure there will be. Okay.
If someone is to go in into the building and land use and try to, has there been any completed film forms filled out online so far, Eric, that you know? Yeah, I think so. Yes. So it's working.
I mean, it's physically working. Yes, the system is up and running. And we're only taking applications via permit link at this point.
For our next meeting, can you at least give us number and then just make sure that we're good. If you here have any issues, please let us know. I'm sure Adrian, you're going know more contractors that are submitting through that. If you hear of anything, please let us know. Keep us in the loop. What I'm saying is on Monday morning when someone goes in there,
what's going to happen? Well, they're doing it online. They can do it on Sunday. They can do it. Right. How, I mean, how effective is, how effective is it gonna be if there's nobody even
down there to look at what we're gonna address. Some of this later, aren't we? This is a bigger conversation than this right now. Think
no, I mean, I think this is can be had. I mean, I'm not sure what exactly your question is. You as an individual fill out a permit online. It gets reviewed by the you know building admin system, And then you pay the fee. And then once you pay the fee, it goes to the building official for review. And depending on what it is, it may also go to planning and zoning, it may go to the fire marshal, it may go to, you know, depending on what type of category, it automatically goes to all the other approvers. They each individually have their own login. They each individually approve or send it back with comments. You know, and then it goes through the system.
What percentage is the employee that not going to be there on Monday morning? It need to? How much is that going to affect this online system?
I mean, problem comes in Scott is that if somebody walks in at a random time off the street, and wants to walk down and fill out a building application, there's a computer there set up for them that can access permit link. And then they can use the scanner and they can upload information. But you're right, there's not always going to be somebody there to walk them through it at any given time. You're right. But I can tell you that I logged on to permit link for the first time never took any training on it, you know, and I successfully filled out a permit for something. And I'm probably gonna have to do it again tomorrow because I gotta fill out a permit with planning and zoning, a signed permit, because we got to put up a sign for the connectivity grant, and that requires a PCC application. So, you know,
Scott, I would tell you that change requires some working through it. I think it's a positive thing that this is all going online. I think it'll help us. But we do have other issues that Adrian has right that are in the agenda at some level that we need to discuss as board. Anybody else on the online permitting system? Okay, Let's go on to item 11, new business. Discuss and act upon the following 11A Bunker Hill Road bridge closure. So Eric, please just give us a brief status on the bridge.
Okay, so at this point, the bridge is still closed. The deck, the areas of the deck that were the pavement was cut out were have been repaved. You know, in terms of status that's where we are. You should I sent around, I apologize for being late I didn't get the official engineers report until almost six I sent that to all the board members. Could you read that for us to us?
You want me to put it up on the screen? That'd be nice. Yeah. Sure.
Just tell me when you want me to scroll down. I'm good. You can scroll. Everybody good? Yep, go ahead. How many pages is this, Eric?
Three, three and a half. Looks like we're halfway through. Okay. Can I scroll down? Yes, sir. Pay attention to that last paragraph, please. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Yeah, nice try. Based on the load rating report appears the culvert specifically pipe two and three did not have adequate ratings to handle large trucks or emergency vehicles based on the 2019 observed conditions. They cannot provide structural engineering related services and recommend that we get a CDOT review and place load limits on the bridge.
All right. When you say those load ratings, does that impact the school bus? Yep. And the town trucks. Right, Eric? Depends what the load ratings are.
If it can't handle an emergency vehicle, it's not gonna be able to handle a plow truck.
Adrian, you're basically looking at keeping that road closed until the total renovation of the bridge?
Here's what I'm going to say. If you look at this, this is all based on photographs. They did not take a core sample. They did not go down and look at this before we paved over the patch. I can tell you I did. We had liquefaction of the sand base that's underneath that patch right now, Which means we have a garbage base, the only thing that's going keep somebody from completely getting screwed, excuse my language, is that we did do some flowable fill on a couple of those culverts. But the fact that we had liquefaction of the base, which is primarily sand, by the way, at this point is scary as heck to me. And it's not just about rain. If we get a heavy snow event and you get ice buildup on those, any debris blocking up those culverts, we can be right back in the same situation. It's not a lit area. It's not safe. I'm not worried about somebody going in the middle of the day. I'm worried about somebody going in there, you know, coming through that in the evening or it's a dark event. We're getting going to winter, it's going get dark sooner. If it's dark out and we have a problem, all bets are off. And as a town, we are liable for this.
Where is the 2021 bridge inspection report? It's not out yet.
Well, if it wasn't if it wasn't load rated in '19, it wasn't gonna get better in '21.
Look, I did talk to the bridge inspector after he just got through inspecting it And he said it didn't. Sorry. It's not really funny. He basically said he was the guy that did the initial did the inspections in seventeen nineteen and twenty one. And he basically said, yeah, the it didn't look like they'd had any more problems with sinkholes at that time before we add the three large storm events. You know, and he had been happy with the previous repair of that, which he had had looked at. You know, he said the pipes are definitely, you know, they're pretty deteriorated, they need to be replaced. Yeah, but they were not recommending load limits at that time.
But okay, that doesn't make any sense given that in the 2019 report, wouldn't have been able to. We should have looked at load limits then.
Well, Adrian, if you really want to use that as your criteria, then you need to be doing the same thing on at least three other. You probably need to be doing load limits on Townsend. You probably need to be limits on School Road. You may need load limits on Bear Swamp. We have a lot of failing culverts, Adrian. This is not the lowest rated culvert we have in town by any means that we're using on a daily basis. So,
I mean, if that's really your criteria, you know, we got lots of problems. I mean, down Bear Swamp Road, you can see where the public works patched a big sinkhole right next to the culvert that's been sitting there for the last probably four or five years, which was when they patched it. You know, this is not this is something we're going to face.
Oh, I'm not kidding myself. What to think that we don't have issues. I've wholeheartedly pushed to get resources to address this. I mean, I'm not blind to this. I write all of us as a board have been pushing for this to try to get you the resources you need to address these issues.
What's the weight? What's the weight on the fire trucks? Eric, do have any idea? No, I can't even guess.
If we don't understand what the load rating information means, we have to look at Eric and go, Eric, can you get us the information on what the load rating really means to us? The town trucks are around what, 30,000?
I'm not gonna speculate. I can't tell you off the top of my head. 6,000.
He's the guy that could tell you how much they weigh. Jay just said forty six.
The issue ends up being if the the the issue is really what should the town be looking at for liability related to those roadways and those culverts? Because reality, we may be playing roulette with this, but until we understand what is our liability and how we should be looking at it, we could take the approach of close them now and we all suffer, or we could sit there and say, Okay, we're going to leave it because the load rating is this and we're going to continue to risk it. Listen, there's no good solution. None of us are sitting here, I'm with Adrian, none of us are going to sit here and say, we're in perfect situation, just close our eyes and let's go on about our normal lives. But the reality is we're going to have to sit there and make some
accommodation for the people on the other side of the road of not Bereswell and Bunker Hill and go from there.
So right away we can open it up for cars under a certain weight, cars and trucks under a certain weight is what he's saying. Well I'm not sure that that's what he's saying somebody. Well he said adequate ratings to handle large trucks or emergency vehicles.
What he's saying is that to provide structural engineering related services and they recommend we go and get some.
And if that was the case in 2019 we've been driving over those roads. We've been driving over that bridge since 2019 with all the vehicles. Public Works was on that bridge doing work.
Do you know what the interesting thing about engineering careers is, Jeff? Yeah, go ahead. Work right up until the point that they don't. So you could take that for every single major thing that's happened from a building dropping to a plane falling out of the sky, it worked perfectly good until the day that it didn't, right? So the reality is we have to make a decision is that road at risk, The answer is yes. So how much risk are we willing to take as a town? Because if we vote for this, we open it and somebody gets hurt, we're on the hook. We are liable as a town. And they're going to go back to that 2019 survey and said you know better.
Okay, but you also as a board, have a report from the town's engineer, stating that three of our large culverts, not including this one, are rated a two, which is poor slash failing. And they're all still open, except one of them, which is on Hutchinson Road, has been shrunk down to a single lane. You know, and what the engineer has said is what he's most concerned about, although it's the least likely event is a catastrophic failure, you know, of a headwall where the pipe invert is. So, what he really wants is to make sure nobody's near the edge of the road. Because if you're going to get a serious structural failure, it's going to be there. Is there a chance we're going to get further sinkholes? Yes. But we have never had a serious sinkhole, you know, in that bridge when we weren't basically at full capacity of the culvert. So, to me that says, as long as we preemptively close, every time it looks like we're going to get a flood and watch the hell out of it until the water comes down, you know, we're probably okay to reopen it to traffic. That's my perfect, you know, layman's. And if we're really going to say everything that has that lower rating needs to be closed, then we need to kind of bite the bullet and do it across the board. And I honestly don't think we can, simply because several of those structures, you know, are on one way streets.
And I don't think you're going to tell everybody that lives on Bear Swamp Road, that, you know, they can't drive to their house for the next four or five years until we come up with the funding. No, but I mean, you know, I understand your point, but you're also not taking into account that
you need to look at the thought flow of water underneath the cover or through the court that you're worried about, right? It's not just about whether you have a hole, it's about what is the secondary risk, right? Somebody dropping into a Or getting a damaged car in a culvert, you know, unless they're flying and you know your secondary risk is is the car going into the water, you know. So on on other culverts, do we have that same level of water flow? I'm not familiar with all of those roads, so I can't tell you, you know, but that's what you would want, you know.
Well, can we also ask the town attorney to do I I am not an expert, do not have total understanding of what the town's liability is related to, the use of roads and all of that, all those issues. Maybe we can ask the town attorney to do a quick analysis of potential liabilities for us, if possible.
Yeah. Will be happy to do that. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Alright. I finally made it on. Good. I've been listening. Yeah. I'd be glad to do that. I I would I think I should be able to research that generally pretty quickly. I don't know all the specifics you know, but, you know, I'd be happy to work with Eric and the and the town engineer on that.
Well, at least it would help us understand what Yeah, I I I
get it. I get it. It's a cons it's it's obviously a cons a major concern that cannot be, you know, just left alone.
All right. Yeah. Any other discussion? You know, how big is that culvert and what is the water exposure
if that, you know, if that culvert fails, you know. Well in the short term, doesn't this information from YRC telling us that for passenger vehicles, cars, small trucks can be opened then? That's not what he said. He said an engineer.
It just says it did not have adequate ratings to handle large trucks or emergency vehicles based on a 2019 observed condition. Right. Nobody has looked at it since this last event. What do you mean looked at it? Well,
before you guys paved over the patch, we probably should have had an engineer look at the sub base and see what kind of condition it was actually in at that point. Because the sub base changed because of the flooding. I mean, your picture looks really dry. I can send you a picture where all the sand was liquefied and it looked like soup. I went down and looked at it also, you know, We should have had a foresail before we did anything.
I'm not, you know, so Adrian, I think we know that the material, the backfill used for this came from Andover's pit. So, is very sandy gravel. It has a very high sand. Know, it was not great film material. You know, don't think there's any question of that. I mean, I look at it and I say the upstream portion of that culvert over, you know, where the patch was applied, which was dug it all the way out to level with the bottom of the pipe backfill with large ballast stone cap it with about four or five feet of flow will fill, you know, and then compact with material over the top of that. I mean, I don't see that settling
enough to wreck a vehicle going over that. Am I saying there's never going to be a depression or a sinkhole there? No. I mean the whole thing's going to fail. If you came back to there in thirty years, you know, it would subsume itself down into the stream at some point. You know, the question is simply, is it safe to drive over it, you know, when you're not in flood stage? And I would say probably is, but ultimately, you know, there are no guarantees. And no engineer is going to tell you 100% this is safe because they got a PE. They're never going on the record to say this is perfect. Well,
the reality is we're planning on replacing this bridge. The question is, can we Eric, I'll just ask the same question I asked this morning. Can we do it sooner? Is there an emergency program that we can enter into? Is there some way to sit there and get the bridge repaired and the bridge done quicker?
I've asked that question. The answer as far as I can tell is no. You know, you're not going to speed up the process.
Well, Connecticut, our area got disaster certification, didn't we? From that last one? I think for agricultural only.
I mean, really? Mean, Bolton lost a bridge. How many bridges went in the area for kind of love? There was a ton.
There was a private culvert in Bolton that let Is
that what you're referring to? No, I thought there was a public one also that had an issue.
In Manchester. Yeah, there's definitely one in Manchester. There was a couple over north of us too. Lebanon lost a couple, I think. Yeah. Small ones.
I guess my question is, is there a possibility of getting FEMA grant money or something like that to address some of this stuff? Even if it's just to come up with the temporary patches, you know, so that they're a little better. What would would be the next what would be the next
patch on on this bridge? What would how would you feel safer if we dug up the other side and filled the other side with Lobo Phil?
Yeah. It certainly buy a lot more time in a failing event to find it before it became an issue. And I think if you do it, we need to put something down there that's easy to close. You'd have to put a one way gate or something that you have a gate you can open or close as needed so that you have a permanent solution. Having to have somebody come in and grab a machine and move a Jersey barrier every time you want to close the thing. You may get a storm that pops up or a snowstorm. If you get ice pack coming down that decides to pack that covert, you know, you need to be able to close it right away.
There's no gate you can put on that that people aren't going to, you know, I mean, look at all the cones, everybody through all our barrels, all our blocks, all our sandbags, all our cones in the river. In the river. You know?
Yeah, so you take a gate just like they do on a limited access trail, a swinging gate, right?
And you don't think somebody's just gonna bulk cut that and drive on through? Because they don't feel like driving around?
Happens all the time. Listen, if somebody's driving around with a set of bolt cutters, God bless them, they cut a lot. But for the 99.9% of the rest of the population, you know.
So Jeff and Adrian, you'd feel better if we tore up the other side and put FloBoFil on the other side and then that would make you feel better?
I would, I don't, what about Murray? What's your opinion on this? Just listening at the moment. So what's your take on this? Wait a second. An engineer. Come on, man.
Well, the number one priority before was to get it open for the school buses to get across because we had kids stranded on either side. And apparently, from this report, it doesn't look like the school buses can get through. So I don't see what opening right I don't you know mean? Opening it to a few few passenger vehicles and not allowing the buses and the I mean, I mean, it's gonna be a matter of I mean, we can open it, but, you know, we know damn well oil trucks and stuff are gonna go across there. We we know that.
If we open it, it's not going to be we can put a limit on all all we want, but people are still going to drive over.
Well, let me I mean, and this goes into what attorney O'Brien would do. What if we put a sign up that said, you know, limited risk, limited exposure? I mean, state, I see those signs on the road all the time. Exactly. If you put
a load limit on it and somebody exceeds it, I guess, and drives over and causes damage or falls in. Mean, was some The
with load limits is it's not that truck driving over that's the problem. Right. It's they caused the damage and the next person ends up getting in front of it. And they made they made it over.
Right. I mean, I kind of like the idea of keeping it one way and putting stop signs on either side. I mean, that way it would limit the speed going across that area. I mean, if we just open it fully and let people come flying up and down the road. I mean, if there is a sinkhole develops, that could be a problem. I mean, if it's a stop sign and people are going be going like, you know, much lower speed, the risk of damage or an accident would probably be much less.
Yeah. So we'll have to use one of the serpentines.
Was the term that we had? Trichaine, you said? Trichaine. I
actually thought about building a Trichaine out of the mafia blocks and make them go really slow, make a big s turn on it So they couldn't go over it fast. That's not a bad idea. If you do
one lane in the center of the bridge, stop signs on either side, and you put some way to close it off quickly if you need to.
And somebody monitoring it on a daily basis or weekly or storm event basis?
I mean quickly I wouldn't even mind doing sawhorses with the road closed. Mean we did that at Long Hill and if somebody wants to drive through the water that's I mean, with a road closed sign right there, then that's their that's gonna be their prerogative.
So, I mean, if you look at the motions I sent you, my suggestions were basically that you reopen it as one lane, but, you know, edged towards the upstream side. So you're mostly driving over the repaired section. And that you close it preemptively whenever there's a flood warning for the town.
You can't just do flood warning. You're gonna have to do winter storm events too. Storm events. Why? It's
more of an issue as you start getting into spring and you get, you know, heavy storm, any storm event. Yeah. You're gonna have to be monitored.
I think you got a defined storm event if you get four inches of snow. Do you want the bridge closed? Or do you know but if you get all those waters coming up, just mud if you get 16 plus, you know, monitor it. It's just going to be monitored. There's a lot of eyes on that bridge. A lot of what?
Are a lot of eyes. There are a lot of people looking at that bridge. There's a lot of selectmen that are looking at that bridge. There's the child administrator looking at this bridge. There's all of public works looking at that bridge. Listen, we have to understand our liability and we have to understand the risk that we're willing to take. If we're all not willing to take a risk today, then keep the road closed. Simple as that. You've got to understand what that risk means, and I agree with Adrian. It doesn't fail until it fails. We're going to apply a 2019 report, then we're all derelict in our duties not shutting it down in 2019. But it didn't fail, so
we got off. Actually, it did. There were sinkholes in it in 2019 that were repaired.
Then we fixed them. That's right. Yeah, we went down and took pictures that time too. So
if we're if we're not all comfortable opening the bridge, I mean, Eric, other than inconvenience in the residents that live on Bunker Hill, right, what are we keeping it close? What are
we really doing? Have Public works has to drive around To go plow it. And they cannot have their plows down while driving through another town. So they're going to have to limit their plowing most likely until they're not going to be able to do it like an overnight plow. They're going to have to wait and kind of hit it all at once in the morning.
And the second thing that's an issue is that with that bridge closed, we're essentially every time we get a emergency service or fire request, we start both the Coventry ambulance and the Coventry Fire Department, as well as our own on the same time, because oftentimes they're going to have a much faster response to cover. So we enact mutual aid, more often covering our section of that. So that's the other thing.
Okay. Since you dealt with that, Eric, can we potentially ask Coventry why we're having this issue with the bridge if there's a potential that they could plow that side of Bunker Hill, and what would what would be involved with that?
I mean, that would be a Jay question. We certainly can propose that to them, but, you know, Jay, you wanna weigh in on that? I apologize.
I heard my name. I was on the other side of the room. What was the question?
The question was, is it possible to ask Coventry if they would plow the Bunker Hill section of that road down to the bridge?
Think it's possible. I can tell you what their answer is gonna be. Go ahead. Let's hear it. They would not be able to do it. They they could probably help us out, you know, if we had a a breakdown for a storm or something, but on a routine that would be, that would be quite a bit more for them to do. I mean, I could certainly ask.
No, Jay, but you also, we might have Jay, I brought up your concern about, you know, the fact that your guys can't put their plows down To go up there and plow, you know, because you're on somebody else's towns, you know, road. What about waiting till the, you know, waiting till you're on daylight and you know, or until commentary has caught up on that road and then making the run up there to do Bunker Hill. Unfortunately, you're not gonna be able to keep up with it, but you can still get it done at the end of the storm.
Yeah, that well, I could tell you that might work in a small storm. Problem is number one, it's Bunker Hill. And it's gonna be glare ice and you're not gonna get anywhere and nobody's gonna be won't be can't able go down that hill.
And, and in a large storm, you wouldn't be able to push the snow. Just, you know, it would be so packed. You'd be dealing with snowpack.
Yeah. It'd be yeah. You mean because residents would be driving on? Yep.
Yep and then and then you're going to be dealing with accidents because people would be sliding all over the place without an untreated road. Okay. This is Wow. And
and how how what is the distance that if Coventry allowed you to keep your your plow down? What is the distance you'd have to travel over Coventry roads to get to Bunker Hill? Oh boy.
Well, I'd be going Parker Bridge. So, Parker Bridge as long as that's open. But Parker Bridge around that's five or six miles. I don't know, two or three miles probably and then if that's not really accessible then we'd be going Skinner South Street to Bunker.
Okay. So let's find a bridge solution that we can all live with that are What if we we Or I could say Go ahead, and then put flowable fill on the other side.
You asking me? Yes. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah, we could, I mean we could certainly do that. You know, it's we'd be saw cutting and doing the same thing we did the last time, opening up the other half. And how long did that take Jay? Would we, well, we had that done in, I don't know, we had that done in a few days and then we'd have to bring back the paving company back again. Yeah. How
much of Parker Bridge is Coventry and how much of it is ours? Is it all Coventry?
The only section of Parker Bridge at ours is that first section off of Route 6, the part that's was chip sealed a year ago.
Yeah, we own about one five, you know, miles of Parker Bridge. The rest is not ours.
Okay, so where we meet what we're much point five you said half a mile. No, not even that. Point one five.
Alright. Well, if you take all of Parker Bridge, it's two miles.
Yep. And then you got the Coventry section of Bunker Hill. So Parker Bridge to Bunker Hill on Coventry side, then you gotta take the hard left and then travel that section to get to before we can drop our plow.
Okay, so again, let's find a workable solution for everybody on this board related to liability and opening that bridge back up.
So one of the things that Eric and I talked about and I was listening in on you guys conversation about the limited liability and whatnot and making a restricted lane and I you know I gave this some thought too and we got to make a if that's a consideration if we make a restricted lane over the bridge more toward the center. If we went and bought because we don't really have enough waste block right now, we could go get some more they're relatively cheap. We could make a tight single lane and keep it like it as Eric said a little bit more towards the repaired side of the roadway. So people actually do have to stop. It wouldn't be like we had it before when it was one lane. Was, you know. Most everybody kind of yielded as a stop. They didn't really stop. And if we we paint, the waste block. You know, so it's visible at night plus put the cones and you know things like that along the way
and make it so it's visible for everybody. And basically people do have to stop And that way if something does come up, we can easily move things aside, get it repaired, do whatever we need to do. And as far as what Adrian's concern was about closing the bridge, we can just take one block On either end rather than you know, three or four on either end like what we do like right now because the gate would be hard to, you know, somebody's going to go through that would they'll just drive through it. But we could if we do have to close it, then we could just put one block up. On either end of a restricted lane.
Just food for thought. How much those blocks are how much Jay? How much do they weigh each one of those? Those blocks are, I think they're like 3,800 pounds. And you'd be using how many blocks?
Well, we probably got enough to make a restricted, what is there out there's for
I think Scott's point is that we're putting as much meat on the bridge as would be if you had it open. Exactly.
Two blocks are just, you know, a big car or a small truck.
Yeah, so if you need six blocks to cross the bridge on either side, right? You're blocks spacing them mile. It's 48,000 pounds worth of weight. Yeah, your spacing amount
and it's it's not like you're concentrating at all the weight in one spot.
Right, and it's not like a freestanding bridge. A culvert has multiple points of contact, essentially. So the fact that you're loading culvert one doesn't really affect the structural capacity culvert number three anyway.
Okay. True. It still doesn't make comments then. I I I would still vote for digging it out and filling it with Flo, Bill, Phil again and go that way so that everyone is satisfied. You mean doing the other side Scott, right? Exactly, yeah. I would feel better if it was done that way on myself, then we don't have to worry about us, then we can open it up with one lane and everybody, you know, one lane and we don't have to worry about it. Safety, we could put a sign up. Dennis can tell us what kind of sign we need to put up to reduce our risk and go that way.
What do we spend on flowable fill? We are under 20 for that, right? That repair?
Jay? I didn't get the bill yet. It was 100 supposedly. He
told me it was like $110 a yard. We put in 25 yards, I think.
So 2,500 plus paving, you got another grand, right? Yep,
and then, yeah a little bit of fabric, we bought a roll of fabric that was, yeah. Fabric was $300. It's under $5.
Well, you still you still should have fabric left over from that, right?
No, we use that on the because we use some, we had us partial roll that we started with and we ended up using most of that leftover fabric on our drainage job. Yeah, but you said you bought a new roll.
Yeah, I know, I bought a new, I used a half roll that we had plus I bought a new roll and the roll that we bought we've used it on the job plus I used it on the drainage job.
We used 300 linear feet of fabric, holy cow. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Well, it was a deep wrap on those bridges. Yeah. Huge.
And then and then on the wrap for the drainage, we we wrapped quite a bit of it.
If we're gonna do if we're gonna do this and I I actually like your idea Scott, instead of using that crappy sand, let's get some crushed material in there or something.
Well Adrian, we start we we dug it all out, removed the material that was there, the existing material, and I put fabric right to the bottom. And then I put we put six inch rip wrap, a layer about, you know a foot 18 inches thick whatever. Then we put a little bit of two inch stone blended it in then we did another layer of wrap the the heavy modified another little layer of two inch so there's about two, three feet thick of stone as a as a base for the I
thought Eric had said that we got got the material from the the town gravel bank. Oh, above the flow. The original,
the original material that that bridge was built with was the I'm assuming the town of Andover's material when they originally built that bridge. Okay, that's what's there now. The stuff that we dug out. And where we put the flowable fill in. We put the wrap in first and the two inch stone well fabric wrapped all that up and then I put the flowable fill on top of that. But we only did half the bridge, a little better than yeah, about half the bridge So
we we have to we have to if we're gonna go this route right now, we have to decide what we're gonna put in for material to ease Adrian's mind and sealing it up right after it's done. Would think it rains or there's another storm event that it's sealed up and it doesn't get contaminated with water. Yeah, I would second go
ahead. The stuff we put in wasn't affected by this last storm. Wrap that we put in the flowable fill was not affected by the storm that we that put in it just washed some of the material at the top. That sinkhole was is coming from that Adrian was speaking of that little bit, that happened was, a little further in going the other way.
Yeah, and I guess our point and what to Scott's point and what my concern is, is we don't, we can't see what's happening underneath there, but we know the material is garbage that wasn't replaced, right? And it was pretty liquefied after that storm. So, I would feel better if we did flowable fill on the other half.
Actually, if you just filled the thing with flowable fill, I know it's a lot of flowable fill, but filled the whole thing capped it right away, that would be the best way to do it.
Well that was that was some of the concern about just using flowable fill all the way to the bottom, because flowable fill structurally doesn't it still can get disturbed. It's not like concrete, it's not like Portland cement, you know. It's like a wet mason cement. Well a lot
it's just not as firm as not even as structural as a Mason cement.
Right. No, it's not. You're right. So just a wet Mason cement is what I'm saying. Just do
what you did on the, do what you did on the other side. And then I would if we do that I would be fine with a one lane with, you know, a limited access so they had to stop. Okay. So I would agree to that.
I need to get a cover. So it's Monday night, you said two days, so by Thursday we can open it?
Yeah. You'd have to wait till next week because I don't have the manpower right now because we got that tree job going. I'm still marking trees. I mean we could get started on it. I can have the guys prep but until I
can dedicate some time myself being there. Here's the thing though, we also don't want it open if we got rain coming.
So wait until you have the people and then do it. Yeah, how much rain? That's the other question you guys gotta, you know, if it's just gonna be that that's I know what a regular
rainstorm is anymore these days. But listen, we're trusting you to make that judgment. We're just reminding you that don't do something that's not rational or smart because you feel like we're pushing you. Yeah, you know what I mean? We're not pushing you in that sense. We're just
trying to have a rainstorm Jay, you could throw a big tarp over the whole thing. If you got it all filled in, you're waiting for Abby to come by, then put a big tarp over keep the water out of it.
Yeah. I I honestly don't think the water from the top, you know, is the issue. That didn't affect. The issue is when the water's over the freaking bridge and the entire thing's underwater. That's a problem, you know.
Adrian, here's the thing that, here's the hearing that YouTube are both missing. If you get water saturation from the top and it does, it's got nowhere to dry to because you cap it, Then the next time you have a water event, you're more likely to have an intrusion quicker. You've saturated the base and then saturating that from the top is some of the fines out of the material, you've started the tear you start the deterioration. So although it doesn't look like an issue, it is an issue, you know. It's the beginning of a problem. It's not the end of one. Okay.
So if the real issue that we're trying to address here is do we want public works to sit there and do the renovation on the other side to attempt to try to get this open as soon as possible? Would be all for that with the caveat that the town attorney still goes through and lets us understand our liability issues so that we can minimize our liability when and if we do reopen.
Right. And we still put some type of restriction, you know.
And Jeff, another thing that we have to decide right now is that this, we're not going to wait until next month meeting. No, We can too call have a with all of us together at a moment's notice and talk about the opening back of the bridge. We don't need to wait a month for this.
You can have a Zoom call with twenty four hours notice if it's been properly noticed. Twenty four hours notice.
Well, okay. So let's sit there and vote on that right now to sit there. And if that's the decision that we need to make to get this moving along and reopened, I am all for it. All right. So I'll make a motion that we empower Public Works to
make the necessary repairs on the other side using the full method they used on the previous sinkhole, and then recap as needed. Reduce the bridge to one lane with low restrictions and proper signage, and that we refer to the matter to town attorney to address liability. I'll second that.
Okay. We do not need further discussion. So all those in favor, aye. Aye. Okay. Alrighty.
New business B, there is a Tuesday, September 28 Special TOM meeting for the election of the Region VIII RAM Board of Education member and related to the TOM ordinances. That information, I do believe, was in our Some of that information was in our packet. There's two candidates that I know of, and I know is the ordinance, and I apologize, this is probably on me. I did receive something related to ordinances earlier in the day. I need to forward it to you. So yes, we're going have to sit there and deal with the ordinance issue.
If I may, Mr. First Selectman. Sure, go ahead. That item that you got today was probably what I sent you that Carol Lee and I had worked on to create an agenda for that special town meeting in order for that to go forward you have to approve that agenda which includes all those ordinances and that particular election and send it to town meeting on the twenty eighth and that paperwork was you, you have it, Eric has it, Carol Lee has it, I have it. It's simply an agenda and it just needs the approval of a majority of the, of the, board of selectmen.
So, if you all look at the motions that I sent you, as possible motions to make the the back. The bottom of that was the document labeled special town meeting Tuesday, September 28, blah, blah, blah, with all the details. So you should all have a copy of that as written by Dennis. It was in the town clerk
and the town clerk. Ably assisted by the town clerk. Absolutely.
I will, by the way, if you wish, be happy to attend that meeting. That's an in person meeting. Believe it's been set up and I'll be happy to attend it and to advocate and to explain all the ordinances so that the public will better understand, you know, what they're being asked to vote on.
Did you find them yet? Is there like a heading that we can put them all together? Say that again, Scott? Is there a heading on Dennis's ordinances that we can just note in motion? We've
had the This motion should be related to the acceptance of the agenda for the special town meeting. We approved the ordinances at our last meeting, didn't we? Yes, we did. Did, yep. Yeah. What Dennis is asking us to do is to approve the agenda for the special town meeting.
So that the town clerk can publish it as required by law.
Okay. Right. Which you would know need to do pretty quickly.
Yeah. I I you know, this pretty much would have to be done tonight or very soon. Yeah. So let's do this unless somebody has a problem with it as written. Anybody?
No? Approve the agenda for a special town meeting on 09/28/2021.
Okay. I'll second that. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Jeff Murray, you good? I heard him say aye. Okay, good.
I didn't hear him. So we'll move on. So 11C, the RAM multiuse turf field field project.
So you don't have to approve of that going to referendum because you have no right to block it from going to referendum. Just notifying you that they have told us that it will go to referendum referendum on November, I think second. You as a board may weigh in on your opinion of whether you think it should pass or fail as a board if you so choose, or you can stay silent.
So we have till our next meeting to decide what we choose to do. So you can put this on the next agenda meeting, our next meeting agenda. Can you write us up a letter, Eric? I don't think you want me writing a letter.
So let's sit there and address this offline, and then we'll sit there and make a decision as to what we want to do with our next meeting. Is that acceptable to everybody? Yes. Okay. 11d, the request for proposal for cleaning services.
So, the only thing I want to say is that the RFP for that closes tomorrow. You know, we've given site walks to, I think eight vendors, seven vendors at this point. We can also consider if we want to pursue hiring Hebron's guy as our building maintenance guy, he would be willing to take on the cleaning also. So, on what the RFPs come back, it may choose, it may be more cost effective to just hire him as an employee. The reason why I wanted to ask the question of you before I pursued that, because you made it clear initially as a board that you wanted somebody that was a handyman that beyond a ten ninety nine. And the guy from Hebron is interested in being a ten ninety nine employee, he doesn't want to have to deal with that. We would have to just hire him and put him on the payroll. As a part time employee ten hours a week with all that entails. If that's an approach you want to consider, I can certainly pursue it with them. Or I know Adrian wanted to be in on the interviews, we can bring them back in and interview them and make them an offer if you want.
We should at least wait until the RFPs close and we know what those costs are going to be also.
He's a really good guy, Adrian and Jeff. Oh, you know him? Yeah, I do know him and he's very highly regarded and respected in the town of Hebron. So Eric, you interviewed him?
Yeah, we, we talked for a while about, you know, the potential of taking this on. I was also trying to convince him to be our animal control officer, but, I wasn't successful in getting that.
And so what's our what's our risk is that we hire him for a short period of time and sit there and and hire him as an employee. And if he likes it, he likes it. If he doesn't, he doesn't. Is that a risk?
Yes. I mean, the question becomes, you as a board were kind of adamant that you wanted them just a contractor as a ten ninety nine employee. And that's not something he's going to go for. Personally think it's probably the most cost effective way we can do this. You know, but.
But again, he doesn't want to be ten ninety nine. Right.
Well. Does that have a side business? He's too old for him. Having a ten ninety nine person is if we're buying somebody, then we we're not required to give them a certain number of hours. If we're not 10 somebody, then we have a fixed asset risk, a fixed risk.
I'm assuming that Eric is gonna sit there and say, Here is the project, and then manage the amount of time that he invests in that project. It's actually even easier.
I mean, we certainly have no shortage of projects we could set him to work on. I'm not concerned with that. It's just whichever approach we want to go. So we want to replace a cleaning service and have a separate ten ninety nine handyman, or do we want to try for one employee, that's a more traditional building custodian. That's it. Personally, I would probably try for the building custodian, but I don't want to say one way or the other till I see what all the cleaning bids come back if they come back in really high. So,
all right. So given that, can we look at this? I mean, think we have enough. It's 10, pushing ten third. We able this for a week and a half. Hopefully we can we open the bridge at that point and then address this. We'll have the bids in at that point. Yeah. When will the bids be in? Tomorrow, he opens them tomorrow, closes tomorrow.
So just see what that is first and then see if he'll do it for the same price that they'll do it for.
Well let's have a conversation about it as a group. Right, that's a good idea Adrian.
Great. Okay, Keep these things going. Move all these to solution.
All right. Yeah, so Eric, bids in, if you reach out to me, when you're trying to, wanna try to do an interview and we'll schedule it, you know. Okay. First thing in the morning or later in the afternoon works for me. He's done over Hebron at like what 02:30 or something? Three. Okay. Okay.
So we're gonna. So if you can do something around four, 04:30 would be great.
We're gonna move on to eleven E, the request for proposal on the town hall electrical work. Okay. So
the town hall has a bunch of stuff that needs to do for electrical work. I asked, or a while back, Jeff Murray had asked to review that when we talked about it. So I sent him the RFP I was proposing. He had some concerns based on the location of the oil fill pipes. So I reached out to the building inspector, you know, I took a bunch of pictures and the building inspector, and had a conversation with Randy about what we could do about it. Randy's conclusion was, he certainly would not permit a new electrical panel in that location, because it is clearly illegal, the way it's done now. He said he probably would let it go as an existing condition. You know, if he had to weigh in on that as a building official. I also spent a bunch of time, you know, trying to understand what the clearances had to be between oil fill pipes and windows and other things. It does look like it would be possible to move it over, put the fill pipes through the building office, and then come in to that the utility room from the side and avoid having it go over the existing panel. Would, that's going to cost us some money to do. But that's probably the cleanest solution to avoid the code violations. If we are going to do that at the same time, I would like to pursue getting rid of the existing oil tank and going to a Roth 400 gallon tank,
because we only have about seven days supply of oil there when it's cold, because we only have a single two seventy five gallon tank for the town hall and the community center. I asked M and M oil to come evaluate this with me. I asked Charlie Mancuso to just tell me whether this is doable or not code compliant or not, and what the cost would be to switch over to a 400 gallon tank. I don't have the answer for that. You know, that's where we are on that. So, the bottom line is, if we wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible, we could probably do exactly what Rick Langley suggested, which is build a hip wall, put an additional panel on, you know, that's not directly under the oil pipes, get rid of the stab lock panel, run everything over to the new panel.
If we want to do it right, we're going to have to open up the spigots and spend some more money, but I don't know what that dollar amount for doing it right is yet. I mean, $5, we're talking $25.
I think the tanks themselves are about $2,500, you know, to buy, and then, you know, redoing all the oil piping and then patching the old stuff. 2,500 for 400 gallon tank.
Yep. A double wall. Yeah, double wall stainless tech, double wall stainless cowboy tech. Why, why are we doing a double wall stainless.
Why wouldn't we do a double wall in a public building, you know, what what's wrong with us.
Just let's back up. When's the last time an oil tank failed that you know of In a building. Don't know, but I don't mean So
so why the overkill? Why aren't we just doing a standard tank? Why a double wall 400 stainless?
If it were me, would put in a stainless tank. Buy screw around.
Because I I have buildings that have tanks that are 40 years old and are perfectly fine and they're single wall. And I've never seen an oil tank leave or been punctured. It's not the warehouse, like people moving equipment around in there. How the heck is it going to get punctured? And if it's fuel oil, there's no water in it. If there's water in it, we can't burn it. So why do we need stainless?
Yeah, the only issue I ever had with those oil tanks is in there in a dirt basement. They'll actually rust from the outside in. But since we have concrete, it's relatively dry. It's relatively dry down there, I don't see a really issue.
Agree. I agree, Jeff. It's a dirt basement and you're not running a dehumidifier, you run a risk. But but again, they they they take forever to rust even at that point. Usually it's a fitting issue and you'll figure it out way before that tank leaks,
way before it leaks. Yeah, it's usually about fifty years. I had one about fifty years to start a leak. Okay. So
But what is it you want to do then? What is your instruction to me given that what I've said in your decision, you don't think it's worth buying a double wall thing? Do you want me to drop it? I mean, I was gonna go with the existing electrical. You're the ones that wanted me to pursue other alternatives. So what alternatives should I be pursuing?
You were gonna go with the existing one. We said no. I'm sorry. I'm trying to follow this conversation.
So Jeff was the one that said he did not feel it was appropriate to add on to an electrical system that wasn't currently code compliant. Right or wrong, you know, that was his feeling, you know, so I looked at it and said, okay, what are the options? The options are either relocating all of the electrical equipment or trying to figure out how to relocate the fill pipe. If we're going to all the trouble to replumb, that would be the ideal time to change out the tank because let's face it, we ran out of oil three times last winter and we ran out of oil twice the winter before, you know, because we can't get a fill schedule low enough to keep us from running out of fuel when it's cold. So, one of the things we need to do is we need to increase our oil capacity or decrease our heat load one or the other in the bill. So if we are going to relocate the fill pipe, we ought to consider solving both those problems at once. That's all I'm saying. Now, the only one I know of that would fit in that space and take up basically the same size as our existing two seventy five gallon tanks are the Roth tallboys, because they have basically the same footprint as the existing, but they're taller. There may be other cheaper solutions if we need to save money on a cheap oil tank
or a single wall tank if that's your desire.
So we have one single three thirty gallon tank. We have one two seventy five gallon tank.
So Okay. The 400 tallboy will fit in the same space?
Yes, it's got the same floor footprint. It's just taller. Yeah. And it's a square tank, not a round tank. So it's more volume in the same physical footprint. Sounds good to me. How are you getting the tank out of there?
Cut it in half. Right. No, they got it in, they'll get it out.
Okay. Jeff So Murray, you are the electrician. What is your take on this?
I think we need to relocate those oil pipes and do it right. Because I think if we don't do that, it's going to bite us in the long run. Okay. Because it's blatantly, I don't know who did it and when they did it, but it was a complete hack job, whoever did it. And it should not have been done that way at all. I mean, whoever ran oil lines over electrical panels, in my opinion, is an idiot. All right. No, you just don't do it.
So, I'm in agreement with trying to move the inflow, the oil inflow.
And the issue is we're not filling, we're not, but like a usual home will probably get three to four fills a season. We're getting a fill every week. So we have a potential of having a leak on those electrical panels at any time. I mean, those fittings, they're good, but I mean, you can't get a crack fitting, you can't get a leak and you won't even know it till the next day after they fill.
So, so here's a, I guess this goes back to, you know, sort of tying everything together and what's our long term is our long term that we're going to continue to use oil? I mean, if we build a new community center, are we going to go to propane and have the whole thing on propane so that your generator, the building, everything's on propane? You know, are we still going be using oil in one building and propane and another? You know, I would like to I mean, are multiple questions. There are multiple questions here to be answered. You know, I'd like to see us go to propane. And then the other thing is, and Jeff and I talked about this briefly. You know, should we be doing the electrical upgrade when we do the community center, because you're gonna want to tie both buildings onto the same generator. And so you're going to need to do a generator setup at the same, know, as you do it, you're going to have to tie them all together. Would it make more sense to do the electrical as one big service unit? Yes. With full service upgrade to both buildings. That makes common sense.
We already have a brand new load center already in the existing town hall. But the only problem is we have oil pipes running over the top of them. Yeah, the
load center we have now is that gonna We're gonna want the load center probably in the new building,
right? No, we probably want two independent load centers for each building. Okay. The question Because then you start dealing with a code issue, start locating breakers for another building into another building. I mean, all the breakers for that building should be located in that structure.
So if the electrical issue is that, it's the question of where would we get our heat and our hot water from? If we chose propane, wouldn't we buy a thousand gallon tank and bury it in that direction? Buy 2,003.
Whatever it takes, I don't care. We buy the tank, we own the tank and we get the propane for as inexpensive as we possibly can. So if that's the direction that we end up choosing to go, then we wanna do it all at once as Adrian suggested.
Okay. I do agree. My concern is that I really don't want to wait on doing the electrical issues because if we have another tropical storm and we wipe out the power to the town hall, our servers go down because they're not backed up. My office has no lights. We really struggled to function because they did such a bad job of allocating circuits on the backup generator panel. But since that panel is filled number one, and it's kind of illegal now anyway, because stab lock panels haven't been manufactured because they're a fire hazard, which is what the original reason we wanted to replace that. I really don't want to wait, you know, three years or however long it takes us to get a community center built and redo the heating system completely. So yes, you know, ultimately, we're probably not going to stay on fuel oil for the next ten years, you know, but how much does it cost us every time we run out of fuel oil? You know.
So we have work currently calling for fill up every time it gets to a certain amount.
So there's two things that happen. You know, we're on mid winter, we're on a seven day fill schedule for the town hall. So they come in and fill us up every seven days. Additionally, I have a monitor in my office, one of those rocket monitors for the tank. And when I see it come down to an eighth of the tank, and I know what day we're supposed to get filled, I call and they come do an emergency fill, you know, and drop a 100 gallons or 200 gallons or a 100 gallons of diesel because on any given day, they have the refueling trucks locally. They don't necessarily charge have heating oil trucks in our area every day. And they give us an emergency top off to get through. We do that four or five times a winter, you know, when we were looks like we're gonna run out before we, you know, plus we keep screwing up all our filters and our furnaces because you know, once you get down to the bottom of the tank and you got, you know, you're all the way down, you have problems pulling up sludge and stuff.
So that's what we're faced with now.
I don't think it's going to be that expensive to re pipe. I really don't. I don't think it's going be that big of a deal. I don't have a problem
re piping. I don't necessarily have a problem with the new tank. My question is do we really need a stainless steel double wall? Know, I'm not necessarily a fan of doing all the electrical now, given that we know we're going to have to do a major amount of electrical when we go to the new building.
Oh, we're going to have to do this panel no matter what, Adrian. I mean, these, these, these supplementary breakers have to be on a new panel.
The other thing, Adrian, is that, you know, I spent quite a bit of time with Rick Langley going over this originally, you know, making sure that we didn't do anything that we were going to have to undo when we added a new building. Okay, so there's nothing here that, you know, we know we need a new panel. So really the only question is where can we put the new panel and how can we reconfigure the circuits that are on the backup generator. Now, is possible that at some point we'll get a big enough generator and enough standby power that we can run everything, including the elevator, you know, in the future, and that will switch out from a manual transfer switch to an automatic transfer switch. Right now, we still have a manual transfer switch
until we know what full size we're gonna use. There's no sense putting in an automatic transfer switch because No. I I get all that. So
Rick has assured us that what we're going to do at this point is not going to be going be undone or be redundant to something we're doing in Lit. Correct. Okay. Correct.
If we move the oil points, I believe we could probably put that new panel in this old location, Correct? If the oil winds were out of the way.
I think only if we do it after we go to VoIP, we tear out all the electrical phone wiring connections that are there When are we looking at going to void?
I'm still waiting on secondary quotes from South Windsor's IT department. I'd like to do it in the next two to three months.
So, I mean, Adrian, we probably lose, we probably whatever money we're going to use moving those pipes, probably save it by rewiring the panel in the existing location. And not having to put a junction box there and running, you know, additional conductors over in a raceway over to the new panel.
Okay. Mean, I'm good with that. I would like to do it with the VOIP and stuff too, though, you know. Yeah. It's a rat's nest down there.
So, Eric, I I do you have any objection to to coordinating this around the VoIP?
No. No. If you want to wait to VoIP first and then do that, we can do that. In the meantime, I will pursue replacing the oil tank and replacing the fill. Do you want me to bring this back to you? Or if the costs are reasonable, do you want me to just do it? What's your desire with that? This is all coming out of LOSAB, right? No, we'd just be taking this out of our building maintenance funds.
We could use LOSA funds for this. I mean, this is a town. These are building maintenance issues.
I think we could probably apply for LOSA funding and get LOSA funding If you wanted to, that's gonna delay it a couple of months, but it's definitely doable.
Well, you've got to wait for the VoIP anyways. And we have lots of funds there that are approved. We have a certain amount sitting so. Makes sense to use that for these types of projects, you know. Okay Eric if it's reasonable I mean,
with us and we can sit there to determine which way is the best way. Yeah. You just email it to us, you know, and then, I mean, I would actually look into at least getting a 03:30. At least we'll gain another 50 gallons. I mean, that out to a three thirty. I mean, you're only going to gain like it's only a three thirty is about a foot longer versus the two seventy That tank's got to be at least 20 something years old. We might as well, if we're going reform it, might as well just put a new tank in. Tanks are cheap. You were going to a 400 gallon tank, which might get you an extra days. A
of days. A couple of days, yes. In the, in the bad season. I'm still trying to fathom how our, how our, we're going through that much oil though. Yeah, I feel awful about that. I mean, what's our what's our square footage of I
don't know. I don't. I can figure it out, but I don't know off the top of my head. It's gotta be under 4,000 though.
Anyway, we're wasting heat. We have we have electric under desk heaters going all over the building. So
Yeah. Have we talked to somebody about putting in the Monoflow fittings to get that before winter?
You want to talk about replumbing all of this to mono float piece?
No, you've got you. We know we've got two or three when the new part of the building was redone. They never put them in. Yep. So can't we do the balance? I mean, what do we need? Four or five fittings? You don't have to replumb the whole thing.
So that's something that can be evaluated and Eric can bring that to us next meeting just to sit there and see. But it does
seem like It addresses the heat issue. So where we stand right now is Eric's going to get an answer on the amounts and if they're reasonable he'll lock people up for contracts is that where we're leaving this? But we're going to coordinate everything behind VOIP.
Are we switching the size of the tank now? Or are we going to go with what Eric suggested? He said it would fit as long as he gets a single wall 400,
you guys all set with that or are you? I mean, I don't know if anybody makes a square single wall 400 gallon. I know Roth makes a square 400 gallon double wall bank, because I respect that out. I don't know what the other options are. I'm not saying what can fit in there. That's a tight. Standard
sizes are usually two seventy five and three thirty of the standard tanks. You can have just a little bit longer.
Yeah. And you can have two, You can have two, you know, two of the two of the two seventy fives.
Two two seventy five. Will Again. Not fit in that room.
That's the problem, Adrian. Getting, we get too close to the furnace at that point.
Oh. I mean the whole reason why I suggested what I suggested was because it'll fit
and because it at least gets us to 400 gallons. Oh okay Eric if it fits, just get us the price. Tell us You know what? It's a double wall tank, it's a double wall tank. If you can find a single wall tank that's less expensive, come back to us with a single wall tank. So we're all good.
Just, he doesn't, we're not gonna, we're not doing this for a couple months anyways, because we're behind him. Do the VOIP first. So if he can get another, if we could spec,
wait, why would you do the VoIP? The VoIP is related to the electricity. This is about moving the the tank fill.
Right. So the order you want to do this in then is oil, then a lot then void then electric. Yes. Yeah,
that's fine. I mean, if, if you want to try to locate the panel where the existing stab lock panel is, then, you have to do the fill because you can't put a new panel there because it's not code compliant. And you'd have to get all the
make sure we got all the telephone wires out of there, you know, and torn out before we do that. Yeah. Well, I'm my suggestion is it makes more sense to do it in the same location because otherwise you're going to have a massive junction box to run wires to a new location, which is the total, which is a total shit show for lack of a better term.
Well, I mean, the thing is, is that you're going to have to take a bunch of the circuits, you've got two sub panels separated by about six feet right now. Okay, a lot of the circuits in those subpanels are going to have to swap somehow or other. I'm not sure exactly how but, you know, you're going to have to either wire nut them in one panel and send them back in a conduit to the other. So,
you know. Yeah. But imagine trying to do that on top of moving the panel.
Know? So the logic of this is oil inlet intake tank, and then we move our ways through this. So Eric, please come back to us with some numbers so that we all agree because it makes sense. All right? All right, fine. Okay.
I'm going on to item 12, the approval of minute meetings A, the Monday, 08/09/2021 regular meeting minutes, and 12B, the approval of the minutes for the August 30 meeting. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
All right. Eric, 13, the finance department report. Anybody have any questions, any issues? Sorry. Had to close the front door. The dog came in. All right. Anybody have any questions? No? Any issues? Okay. Let's move on to item 14, the budget appropriation transfers and over expenditure requests. Eric, are there any? None at this point. Okay. We're going on to item 15, the tax collector's report. Are there any refund requests?
There are. There's one, two, three, four, five. There's a total of six, which collectively equal about $800 and refunds.
Somebody want to make a motion on that? Okay. Nobody. I'm okay if we don't refund taxes. I used to vote no all the time. You always voted no every single time.
Yeah. Anybody gonna make a motion on that? Let's go. Come on. We gotta get out of here. Make a motion to refund as listed. Certainly.
Alrighty. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Alright. For nothing, the assessors We're we're dragging the same way you are, Jeff. I know. The assessors report and evaluation services. Any information, Eric? We got nothing there. No? No. All right.
Department reports that have been available. The fire department report is available. The state police report is available. The assessor's office report for the number of community interactions is available, the assessor's report related to all of the tax adjustments. Okay, cars. Then there's the library report. There's senior transportation report, register of voter report. And those are the ones that we did receive. So anybody have any questions, any issues, no? Okay. Correspondence, Eric, none. And we are going go to public speak. Okay. Ed Srisley, you are up first. Okay, Diane Choquette, you're up next. Diane Left. Carol Lee, you're good? All right. Leigh Ann Hutchinson? All set. Thank you, Carol. Leigh Ann Hutchinson? Okay. I think we're good. Someone want to make a motion to move to executive session to discuss the union bargaining position for building and land use office? So moved. Okay. Seconded.
Seconded. All those in favor, aye. Aye. And we're going to invite the town administrator and the town attorney into that meeting.
I suggest you invite the town clerk also. Town clerk. I am so sorry, Carol.
Ken, we'll invite the town clerk in. Probably snoring by now. Heard her too. I heard her almost. Okay. So we're good. So, Amanda, if you could pass the meeting over to Eric, and then we can move this out. Everybody, thank you for joining us. We greatly appreciate your participation.