Meeting transcript
Board of Selectmen- Budget Workshop
January 24, 2024 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Okay. Sorry I'm a little late. We're gonna call to order the town of Andover Board of Selectmen, special meeting budget workshop, for January 22, and we're starting at, approximately 07:04. First order of business is, the pledge 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. Public speak, we have anybody? No? Seeing none, we'll move on. So we're gonna move to item three, budget workshop for okay. We'll take a step back. Joanne Ebert, you are the only member from the community who is here. Would you like to speak?
Still connecting. I don't know that she heard you. She was still connecting to audio.
All right. Joanne, you're the only member of the public for our meeting. Would you like to speak? Thank you. Yeah, no public speak for me. Just listening. Great. Thanks. Okay. So we're on item three budget workshop for fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five, and the proposed town budgets, and item A spending priorities. So, Eric, before we go through our spending priorities, just review the information that you provided us so everybody's aware of what we got.
So I sent you, essentially three documents. The first was kind of a list of what our budget priorities were overall, you know, because our job isn't to run a town hall. Our job is to make the lives better for the public. So I try to relate the budget back to what we actually try to do for community. Yeah, it's important to do all the functions of a government, but really you're trying to do it for the betterment of the population. So I kind of broke it down into a bunch of functional areas and gave you that. And what I would like to do when we get into this a little bit is just talk to all of you and make sure that my priorities are aligned up with what you want to do since ultimately, you folks are the ones that run the town. And the second thing was, like what the major cost drivers were for the town and what what was it that that what are the major things that are going to affect the budget in the upcoming cycle? And then the third thing was, and it may be a little hard to decipher, but we can kind of go through it, what the town personnel costs are. And that had, you know, basically personnel costs for everybody. And then on the second page of the spreadsheet
was healthcare, and on the third page was the FICA. So, because, you know, again, salary is one of the the town's portion of the budget, one of the biggest line items that we have to deal with.
Okay. Alright. Sorry about that. Eric, I was freaking cold. My house is cold. My wife is a penny pincher. So you know where I'm gonna go with this budget. We're gonna penny penny pinch. Right? No. I'm a little Understood. Alright. Understood.
So let let's let's talk about, as a group, Eric's major goals for 2024, 2025. And because Eric told me at our, at our event today that this is, we're gonna have to spend some more money to meet some of these priorities. So let's talk about
Hey, Jeff, do we wanna do this by sharing the screen so we're all looking at the same thing or?
Sure. Eric, can you share that budget and And Tom Perry's
then that way for the recording, the public can actually see what we're discussing. Yeah. No problem.
Hopefully, I got the right one up. Yep. You should see something that says 2425 budget and down priorities. Yep. That's it. Okay. Need to zoom in a little bit.
Yeah. You can just leave it there for a second. Yep. So. When you when you. Well, the top focused areas, I mean, obviously education is number one, but I mean, we should probably be putting things like, you know, how we're gonna deal with seniors and and senior issues. So housing and land use, Eric, just so we're aware, like, what other than passive recreation for ourselves and the need to have low income housing, what else are we looking at in that area, especially from a budget perspective?
I mean, I think ultimately we gotta be looking at doing something to increase the fraction of low income housing in the town of Ann Arbor. And I think whether we start the process or the state makes us start the process, it's something we're gonna have to deal with going forward.
Okay. And just so everybody's aware, I mean, from my end, besides supporting private development on it, what are the levers that you want us to deal with from that perspective? Like how as a board are we going to more than promote the development of low income or moderate income housing?
I mean, honestly, I think the old lever, the town, you know, the town has a couple things that it could consider. The first is, is the town willing to offer up some of its the property we already own to put a developed community in? So that's kind of the first big picture question, because we really only have two that would be possibilities. The first would be the piece that the transfer station is on, and the second would be the piece behind the town hall. Those are really your only two options, And that's a big lever, because if you're willing to do that, then you stand a chance of getting a developer that's interested in that. It's one of the things that because the state is pushing it so hard, I think if you were willing, you know, and you wanted to, if you got buy in from the community to do that, you could get state funding to study that and to help construct that, because they're so desperate for affordable housing that, you know, it's one area that we know the state will put money into if you want it. But it's not going to happen unless you actively want to do that. So, I mean, I wouldn't even consider pushing that unless the board really is on board with the idea of doing it, and you're willing to go to the public,
you know, and ask those questions. Because it would be an enormous amount of work to get something like that off the ground and go. So that's why I ask, is that something that you really want to pursue or not?
Well, I personally think it should be on the list. It just should be a lot further down the list. You know? So because I'm looking at these as you're looking at them going, this is area one, area two. I mean, for me, if I rank these, I'd go I'd put it alright. Education, we don't have control over it, but it's our biggest expenditure. So it's a definite area of focus for the community. And then, you know, for things that I would like to sit there and see, the community center, recreation health needs to be moved up further.
And addition- Well, first of all, I didn't rank these in order of- Priority? Priority.
I just said these are the towns focused. How about we rank them? Let's- Why don't we prioritize them then? Perfect. What's your greatest priority?
Well, education is obviously number one. I mean, simply because it's the largest expenditure and now it's in the community center. So you want community support as number two?
Well, I don't know. Eric, where does roads and bridges fit into all this? Yeah. Infrastructure. Does it fit in does it go under infrastructure?
Well, you've got a transportation category and an infrastructure category.
Well, says additional infrastructure. I just I wanted to capture, you know, road maintenance and road construction,
you know, bridges and bridges and roads. So let's let's Jeff, I agree with you. Let's take out the word additional and put infrastructure in there. Because infrastructure Maintenance and improvements. Yeah. Accounts for all
capital improvements, right? I mean Yeah. I mean, we got two major bridge projects coming and then a bunch of road work on the horizon, so I I think that's a major priority for the town.
So what are your priorities? And education is your first priority. What is your second priority?
I agree with Jeff. I put infrastructure next. Yeah. Bridges bridges, roads, and infrastructure. Then for me, the next one, I mean, I I obviously, the question is, you know, I'm assuming when you write governance, Eric, you're just talking about the operation of the town inclusive of the employees and everything else.
Yeah. What we have to do to actually do what we need to do. Okay. So let's call it,
let's let's not call it governance. Let's call it, something operational. Town operations.
I'll agree with that. It's the same words I was just thinking about.
Right. So town operations. So that would go under infrastructure. E, upper. Operation. Opera. Yeah. So you wanna say educations first?
A couple of pieces, put a couple spaces behind education, like get behind it and go tab, tab. Okay. Alright. Too many tabs. My bad. We'll get the backspace.
So you want number two to be what? You said infrastructure and transportation.
Yeah. Infrastructure. Don't really consider transportation. I mean, we're not doing transportation. I would get rid of the word transportation. Can we just say, like, roads, bridges, infrastructure? Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. But
the goal is transportation. I mean, a bridge by itself is is useless. Right? It's all because it's part of the transportation network.
Okay. Then then if you wanna use that terminology, then use infrastructure transportation. Yeah. I'm I'm thinking transportations like the senior transportation. Yeah. Buses. But that's and I think that could be under, you senior services and transportation, which should be a line item.
Yeah. So so how about we go infrastructure, roads, and bridges? K. I mean, obviously slash transportation.
That's Yeah. Leave that off. Alright. That's fine. Just change that to regular. You got it as a to tell.
I'll, I'll get that later. Don't worry about it. Okay. Okay. No problem. Okay. Then you gotta put town operations next. I really, why? That's where we spend our money.
That's not a focus area that just flows. I think we have to do things. Nobody
gives a crap whether the town is well run, they want their stuff done.
Eric, everybody cares that you're doing a great job running the town. So, okay, so within our budget priorities, we won't put that. That'll just be an operational flow we have to execute it. So that's fine. I mean, I I think town operations are important, but it's it's it's what you need for an end result. It's not a means to itself. K. Then
I think the recreation and health one then needs to be up there
to deal with And community support. That's the senior center and the community center and all that.
Understood. And recreation and health, you know, is related to the seniors and everything else. I mean, that's I mean, when you say community support, you know, is that a town focus area? I mean, Did I you look at his chart here listing?
Are we Yeah. They're all written out in the packet. Yeah. I see it.
I don't well, if that's how you wanna express it, that that to me is go ahead if that's if that is the community support, which references his construction of the community center staffing and and construction of the new senior transportation garage on Center Street.
CJ, I don't know. I think line three should be senior services, senior transportation, recreation, and health. Because that's all, I mean, with the community center, that's all intertwined. It's all intertwined.
I agree. I'm I'm trying to figure out how to phrase it to
I would just say, yeah, senior services, senior transportation, recreation, and health. That all involves the community center. Yeah. Senior services, senior transportation,
recreation, and golf. Recreation. Yeah. Put the helmets in there. Because recreation is encompasses both seniors and everybody. Everybody's invited to participate. Yeah. The field, the community center, all that. K.
Well, those are okay. If that's how you wanna group it, that's how you wanna group it.
Well, I just think that that whole envelope is a priority for us.
K. And then you really need to deal with additional infrastructure. You know? What do you call additional infrastructure?
Anything not related to roads and bridges. So any capital let's call it a capital improvements. Or Yeah.
What do you wanna call it? Let's call it capital improvements.
Now do you want does the board want to have housing and land use, safety, sustainability, or town operations in this list? Which is, this is the, this is our list because we're gonna fund things in these different areas. Mean, that's how I look at this. I don't anything that we put here that's more of a volunteer issue or we're gonna find a way to do it. It really need to be in part of the budget and the town priorities? That's the question.
Yeah. I mean I mean, that that's a good point. I mean, I look at it and I say every line item in the budget should come back to some town focus area. Because if it's not
something we're focused on, why are we spending any money on it? Well, you know, part of it is you have to spend money to operate the town. So that's why, you know, we were gonna put, I was looking at it, Eric, going, okay, we got town operations or a town focus area because we're spending money to functionally operate the community and the town, so town hall and all the offices. I mean, that would be a focus, but Right. Yep. It's something that just happens. We have to fund it. It's general funding. So is it a town focus? Not really. It's got to happen to live the day to day. I mean, I've just looked at the rest of these. Do we wanna put anything else in? Is safety
see, I look at safety as roads and bridges. You know, if we did the the traffic circles, they'd be part of infrastructure roads and bridges, and they would even be done outside of even this. Eric would have enough money and it would get it done.
Anybody else want to put any of these others as a tone focus or is for you guys remember last year's budget when we talked about affordable housing and how if we don't address it, it's gonna bite us at some point?
Yeah. It's probably gonna bite every other community that hasn't done very much on this. So the question is, what is the state doing or what are they gonna do to us if we don't address it? And and that's what we just talked about, Scott. What's the levers that we pull? The only lever that we really can effectively do is is are we willing to take the the acreage behind the community center and allow someone to develop it?
This is not gonna be a little group mission that gets together, committee gets together to spend $600 on the veterans part. It's be a big deal. It's it's gonna be, almost like a full time job for someone. It could turn into that. This affordable housing thing is very serious here in Connecticut now. K. And Eric, am I wrong about that? Nope.
Nope. And it's gonna get shoved down our throats at some point. Exactly. You're gonna you're either gonna address it or it's gonna get shoved down your throat.
I mean, I'm looking at this, and I could see two more items. I could see town operations and safety being combined, town operations and safety services, which would be the fire department and the resident trooper, and then the housing and land use. Okay, I have no problem with that. I I And the rest of the rest of the stuff falls under everything else that we've put up there on the top four. So
the one thing that I will talk to say to everybody on that, I am interested and maybe it's something Eric we get with state senator Ramdan. What are they gonna do to us? Like, as a small community that we are of 3,000 people, and they're gonna ask for mean, how far outside of the scope are we even with our, our our the low income program down at Long Hill?
How far out of compliance are we? I think we're a couple 100 houses out. The answer is quite a bit.
Yeah. And what are they gonna do to us? Mean, what is the state? I'm just asking you in a general sense. What is the state gonna come back to Andover and say, you have to you have to do x, like, and spend all kinds of money? It's not like we're Willamantic and we're getting funded by the state or we're Hartford and we're getting funded by the state. What are they gonna make us do?
Generally, the leavers of the state are punitive, not necessarily, you know, they operate on the carrot and the stick. So what they would do is they would just withhold funding, you know, dollars, state dollars from the town unless they're They're not money. Do we get any housing funding from them? We
haven't asked for any housing funding because nobody wants to tackle. It's gonna be a big deal.
And what defines low income housing? Do accessory apartments count as a low income unit? Possibly. So we probably need to get a listing of all the accessory apartments and units that we have. But as
far as I know, no, it only counts as low income housing if it is, you know, deed restricted low income housing. For forty years. Anything
that's an accessory apartment that's already been granted is not going to qualify. Understood. So going forward, the zoning commission has changed the rules to say going forward any, unless you do it by special permit, any ADU or accessory dwelling unit will have to be in that category. But, you know, it remains to be seen whether somebody is actually willing to build one with that caveat on it.
Because it's a pain in the butt to comply with the regs for that. Yeah, and I just see a hard time with the two pieces of the two parcels of land we have and trying to make something that's bike walk friendly or something that's accessible to the rail trail and the bus line. I mean, we should try to probably find something along Route 6 that, you know, bus accessible or accessible to the commuter line and accessible to the rail trail for, you know, if somebody wants to ride an e bike or something to commute to Old Manic or Manchester.
Well, do we need, do we need, I mean, can't we have a low income senior housing? What?
Cannot we make it low income senior housing? It doesn't need to be low income.
Right. Well, one thing that probably would be a good idea is if we talk to our new, planning guy and see what steps we really could take to start this whole process and what we need, we actually need. Okay. Well, then Eric The goal for
the low income housing is not only for seniors, but they want it for the young adult that are just starting out and can't afford to buy a big expensive house, but they need some housing. And it keeps them from moving out of Andover. It lets them stay in Andover if we had that kind of housing. Yeah, I think we just need to term it affordable instead of low income. That's usually the phrase, affordable. We
prioritize trees over the last five years, we've done, you know, I would say we probably did better than any other town in Connecticut. As far as I know, we don't have any problems with trees. We have to do the same thing we did with the trees for this low income housing. And we got to pick away at it and keep working on it, get more and more information and and get at it that way. We but we can't forget about it.
Okay. What were the Jeff Murray, what were the two other items that you wanted to add to this list? Town operations and what were the other? Town
operations. And safety. Safety, protective services. Yeah. Safety slash protective services.
What do you call what is a protective service? State trooper. Fire Department, Safety Protective Services, Fire Department. Yeah.
Town operations, basically public works, borrowing budget, equipment budget, you know, giving those guys what they need to do their jobs effectively. In change town.
Town. I thought you're writing an Asian menu or something.
As you can well see, spelling is not my strong suit. You don't use that spell check very often either.
And then just bring up housing and land use as item six, and then let's get rid of the rest of them. I think that's a good start.
K. So you have no interest in sustainability? Then why are we transitioning the town to propane? Why are we backing up the buildings? What's the point of that if that's not a priority? Well, all of capital improvement.
All of those things to me are are are financially smart. Sustainability to me, Eric, is are we gonna work harder on our, recycling program at the at at the trans that that's sustainability to me. You know, the things that you're talking about where you're going, we're moving to propane, well, I would rather spend money on propane than an oil, I think you're gonna have less volatility in your, your, your item, and it's cleaner, right? So I don't necessarily have a problem with sustainability. I'd leave it there because it's something to to look at. It's I don't think anybody here, well, I shouldn't say that. Are we gonna make a financial decision like sustainability to spend more money because it's sustainable with this group?
I don't think we are. No. I don't think we are. Hang on. I think it should be a consideration just like buying a senior transportation vehicle. We bought a hybrid instead of a regular gasoline vehicle. Yes. That's
putting a sustainability focus on that decision. Okay. So we'll leave it there as our as our last focus. That's fine. It's but it's not gonna impact. We, we, we look at those things as part of the overall picture. Right. We're not- Every decision we make, we keep that in mind. Yeah. We're not overspending at this point in time because of, of something just because it's sustainable. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, that shapes a lot of what I, you know, what we choose to go after, those grants and lots of things. Sure.
I mean, listen, I, in my head, think if we changed, you know, what we do at the transfer station, we could potentially help offset the cost of the transfer station, depending upon how we collect different materials like PET and, you know, you know, the thermoformable PET items and the PET water bottles actually have great value if you can collect them and isolate them. The way we do a lot of things now, we just jumble it up in one big mess, and then somebody else down the line is responsible for sorting. At the at the transfer station, we could sit there and do that, and it might generate some funds for us. It would put a lot more stress on the staff there, but that is what I look at sustainability as, so those types of programs. What is that program, Jeff, you're talking about?
That's the Jeff Maguire recycling program that if I had unlimited time and unlimited resources, I would put in place. I would I mean, a single stream is a is is really the downfall of recycling. Everybody made it out to be the best thing in the world, but really what it did was it pushed everything into one pile, and then the pile ends up getting thrown out. It used to go to China, and then when China stopped taking it, it just ends up in our landfills, but it's always been a problem. But if you wanted to sit there and look at materials that that have value, we could start identifying the materials that have value that somebody would pay us for. I know if we bundled pure PET, people would pay for the PET because it can be reused. And what you're finding out there right now is you have a whole post consumer content requirements that are coming into play across all of those, of that material specifically. So you need to, you're gonna end up having to get to a 25% post consumer content, and all the soda companies are just sucking up all the bottles. So that's that to me is sustainability. Those are things that if we we wanted to put some of those things in place,
I would hope that they would make money for us to generate money to put the programs in place.
That's Why are the soda companies why are the soda companies grabbing up all the bottles?
Because the retailers such as Walmart have, have sustainability goals, and all the soda companies are trying to, you know, Pepsi and Coke are just sitting there, you know, trying to get ahead of this. They wanna, they want to appear to be the leaders in what they're doing out there. So they built the infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure so that they can capture back the materials. So like a town like Andover or any other town in Connecticut, they don't really do the collection in that manner. It ends up going to a recycling center, and the recycling center is supposed to break down what we send them, but it doesn't happen. If a town like Andover wanted to do it right, you'd have to really, you know, you'd have to get everybody you'd have to get buy in from the senior the residents, and they'd have to bring it to the transfer station in a certain way, and they'd have to put it in the right bin. I mean, it's like Germany. You have seven bins in Germany.
You know, the Germans get fined if they don't do it correctly. So it'll never happen in The United States, but it is becoming a problem. All the retailers have goals. They all want goals. That's that's why you see a lot of things going on out there. We as a small town, you know, we could potentially make some money, but that's something we'd have to put some effort into, and it's not today's issue. So let's get this over with because I don't wanna keep everybody here for three hours like I saw the the list was. If those are the focuses that we're we're all in agreement on, and then we'll walk through the budget to sit there and say what is extra? Because I look at all these and go, education is outside of our purview. Alright, that's no big deal. Infrastructure and roads, we kind of know our ballpark that we spent on it in previous years. Are we planning on spending more? Those are things that we all have to decide. Recreation and and the the the senior center, we all talk about spending more money on it. We have to determine how much more money we're willing to spend on someone, managing that program. And then we have to give them a focus as to you know, they have to work toward paying off their own, expenditures and expenses. I do think we need to make that person work on programs, whether it's recreational programs that are pay for play, like we talked about the, the ACL, the Andover Cornhole League, or the Andover, you know, Pickleball League. We gotta have leagues, and we gotta have people helping us fund
what we're trying to do here in some way. And I and I think we should do that with the person that's in that position. Town operations and safety, we'll listen to Eric. Obviously, we're going to end up going up in some of those areas just simply because of, employee cost increases. And Eric, are we having, insurance cost increases of any significance?
Health insurance is going up a lot. Our regular insurance is going up, but not too bad.
Our health insurance, we're part of the pool. Right? Correct. And our costs are going up, we haven't had any pool savings because they've given us no money back since it started, have they?
No, no. The last two years prior to this, last year healthcare costs went up zero, the year before I think they went up 2.5%, but this year they're asking for a big increase, you know, based on the costs associated with running the program.
Have we had do they do a summary sheet so that everybody can see what's going on within the the the pool? I mean, has there been a significant spike in overall costs related to the pool since we're self insuring a lot of what we're doing?
Hell, if I know, I don't go to those meetings.
Okay. I probably should, but Well, what we should ask them for is they gotta have a summary page. You know, we should ask them for a summary of the, of that program so we all understand why they're asking for that, for an increase like that. Because, to me, they're they're we're self insuring and they have a stop loss insurance program. So unless we're exceeding, you know, our stop loss, our our our large lever, they should be refunding money to us. So I would like to sit there and see some kind of summary on the whole program so we understand what they're doing. And and what did we talk about? Well, we have to talk about employee raises and the rest of the issue that we're dealing with there. And so is there any of these what items here does everybody want to put money into? I mean, are we all into the recreation in the senior center increase? And is there anything else significant that anybody wants to have increased before we get started? Okay. So at least that's good. We're not gonna fight a lot. I mean, it's it's gonna be last year's numbers and, you know, increases that Eric's asking for, and we're gonna sit there and push back against them.
Yeah. I think number three is gonna be our big discussion point. Yeah. That's it's a new one. Yeah.
It's gonna be Have you put anything together for that, Eric? For what?
What we're expecting the new, community center and the new director?
Yeah. I mean, if you read through the documents I gave you Yeah. You would add it.
Yeah. Yeah. So did you put did you put that on the spreadsheet? Because I did not see that. On what spreadsheet? On a town personnel spreadsheet?
Yeah. Town personnel costs spreadsheet. Yeah. It should be on there as a single line item at the bottom for senior center director.
Yeah. Senior center director. Yeah. Okay. I did not see because I was I didn't see it. So, okay. I see it. Thank you. $60. Eric has in there for that person, that position. So we'll talk about that. So then how does everybody now want to if those are our if if Eric has laid out our our areas of focus, we all know that the biggest issue that we wanna add to is the senior center or the community center director, the recreation director. How much money that is is up for debate, but is there anything else that anybody sees as a need to increase overall spending? K.
When do you wanna go over that, Jeff? The whole new director.
Well, we can, you know, we have to ask ourselves, Eric put in $60,000 The question is, is it going to be a full time position? If it's a full time position, then it adds some additional cost to it. You know, do we wanna make it a part time position with limited benefits and then maybe have a secondary person that works for them? I mean, what what's our what's the goal? What what is everybody thinking?
So the first thing I'm gonna suggest is that you make sure you define what it is you want to do and what you want them to run. Because if you don't, the decision full time or part time and what you want to do flows from what they're actually going to be in charge. So that's really, this is what I would suggest that you have hired one person, and that would be the, what I would expect their job focuses would be. But that may be very different than what you want. So that's going to be kind of, to me, the first thing is, if you're going to hire somebody, what's their job description? I
really like what you have written down, to be honest with you. Yeah. This is a really good start. It is Eric, you did a good job with it. And you know what, if we could somehow roll up these programs and figure out what kind of revenue we would generate out of the community center, there may be an offset to that as well. So what we what we've taken in fees and for some of these programs that we're gonna be doing it, because everything I I mean, my my opinion is everything that we do in the community center, we should charge some sort of minimum fee to implement the program. That's I I don't know what everybody else thinks about that, but that's my thoughts. You're doing yoga or whatever, there should be some sign up fee because every other town's doing it.
I mean, currently senior transportation, senior luncheon, senior trips, those operate as a loss. The current recreational program operates as a loss, and shelter operations would definitely, operate at a loss. What recreational programs operate at a loss?
Well, we have a rec budget that we spend money on. Yeah, but they're not making what we spend. So I would say overall, the rec programming is losing money at this point.
That's because all of the programs for recreation are not managed by this individual or this organization. It's managed by parents outside of it. So if you sat there and took it all in, you would now sit there and take in all that revenue and be able to sit there and manage this a little differently. And So and that goes through every I mean, this goes into identifying the assets that you have and and verifying those assets are utilized the best possible way they can. And so there's a cost to everything. So, it would be this person would take in in the the soccer fields and make sure that the soccer fields are generating enough, as much money as they possibly can across the current individual or across organizations that might want to rent it in addition to what we're doing. I mean, thing with the basketball court, in AES, that would be the same thing. You would sit there and try to identify how you can do it. I mean, it's like Scott's group goes in and plays pickleball, and they do it, and there's no cost to them. They go in and do it. But the reality is it would be great if we had a program within the community to sit there and rent that facility for some value, not excessive amounts of money. I'm saying make millions on it, but it would be great to be able to go, okay, you're gonna spend a $100,000
on a director of recreation across all of these things. Maybe can we get back $40,000 or $50,000? That's what you try to do. I mean, that's, that's me.
And Jeff, I'm thinking about is if somebody wants to have a birthday party at the community center and they want to rent the bounce house, you know, we set a fee for the bounce house, we set a fee for the room for three hours and, you know, that's what we have to come up with. And that's what once this person is hired, come up with those. We come up with those amounts. Yeah.
Because we should make it affordable, but on the same token, we shouldn't make it, you know, just free for everybody to use.
No, you can't do that because then you get in other trouble. I mean, and it's like trying to identify ways to make money. I mean, like the planning and zoning, allowing signage on the field is a is a way for the recreation group to make money if you do it correctly. I mean, and obviously there's a lot of other issues related to it, but, you know, we as a board don't have time to execute it all. But if we put this person in place, that's one of the ways that we would say, okay, if you got 10 signs or 20 signs or whatever, that's $10,000 You know, there's, there's some return value for that. And maybe it's not a full $10,000. Maybe it's eight because you gotta pay for the signs or something along that lines, but that's what that person would be doing. Right. Organizing the whole thing. Yeah.
See new programs getting a fee. Think now, like senior transportation, do the seniors pay for each trip or is that something the talent covers the cost on? They don't have anything Pardon me? Currently, there's no fee for using senior transportation. Okay.
But I do think that, that all of that, Anne, should be looked at because we wanna make sure that people are using it for reasons that we say are, are free and not as, as, you know, as a taxi to various locations. And those are things that, you know, we probably at this point in time don't have the ability to evaluate. So it's just free because no one is overseeing it in the manner that maybe it might need to be overseen. But those are things that we gotta look at.
Yeah, like weekly shopping trips, maybe doctor's visits. But if we're taking somebody on a daily basis to adult assisted care, then, you know, on a daily basis, that should probably be a charge. You know, there should be some cost sharing with that. So Do other towns charge, Eric, that you know I have no idea.
And and that's fine. And we can we can evaluate the other towns. And we don't have to be like every town. If we choose to charge for it, it's you and know, we come up with a legitimate reason and logic as to why we're doing it, you know, I don't think people will get upset if we just are logical about it and this is what it is. And if they get upset and we get too much blowback, okay, then we get rid of the charges. But, you know, just evaluating what we're doing and trying to, you know, there's services that we need to provide to the community like plowing that is set, it's part of the whole thing, but there's certain things that certain people are taking advantage of more than others, and maybe there's a slight charge for it.
So is there anything in addition to what Eric has that anybody has an idea that it should be on that this list?
Yeah. What am I not covering? What else do you want that person to do that's not on the current list?
This include manning the building, you know, being there as many hours as it's open, or would you have somebody else to do that? Otherwise, I would think that'd be on their list to say they are there to watch what's going on.
Well, that's something we should discuss. What hours do you anticipate the building being open? Do you want it open during the day, during the evenings? Then what do you want it open for? Just when there's events scheduled, or do you want it open all the time so people can come in and relax and get a cup of coffee? Or what's your goal or thoughts on that?
Open only during events. It should not be open all the time. One thing that I actually think is a good model is I've rented J. B. Williams Park, the pavilion in Glassbury quite a bit, and have to you have to put down a deposit. You have to put a security deposit, and you have to agree to clean up after, you know, you're done. And there's usually a retiree or somebody that comes at the end of your rental period and validates that you've cleaned up and you've taken the trash down to the dumpster and you've, you know, left the facility in a, you know, reasonable condition. So, I mean, I could kind of see this per I could see a salary thing, but I could also see a couple part time people on weekends being used to just verify that, you know, things are clean, locked up, and, you know, secured, like bounce houses and trash, etcetera. So, I mean, I think their model is pretty good because usually when we're done and we're cleaning up from an event or a corporate event, that person usually comes by and inspects the facility and, you know, usually gives the sign off and then they release the security deposit to us, you know, back to, you know, the original user just to make sure there's no damage on the property. So that's something we really need to look at in the future.
So we talked about an idea down in the bottom of the building, maybe putting some recreation stuff down there. So that would only be accessible during events. I thought me I I kinda envisioned the building would be open if people wanna go down, if there's a pool table or seniors wanna go and sit on the couch and That's exactly what I imagined too, Paula. So
There's no way you're gonna be able to control who's in there and who's not in there. And if there's damage, you're not gonna know who was in there. Well, that's why there's so many, cameras in in the place now, Jeff. The director's gonna be able to watch every room.
Yeah. But if the director's down at the field working on something, we I I see what Jeff's saying, but maybe maybe over time we have to change it or figure something out because if it's a community center where people are coming to, you know, have community together,
that's- I envision it being open when the town hall's open at least.
Yeah. But if it's on a weekend, like a Friday night and kids wanna go down and play pool or something, maybe we just do, like, Friday night, Saturday night hours,
and we close at a reasonable time. Right. Yeah. Well, that one let oh, let's look. Standard hours would be, to me, the person whose job would be there is gonna have an office. They're gonna be there. They're gonna be expected to be there when the town hall is open. They may leave and I get it. But isn't what's gonna happen is, like, Kathy Palazzi is gonna have, like, a senior coffee scheduled. And she's got senior coffee scheduled at 10:00 every day, and she's gonna whoever comes comes, but Kathy Palazzi or some responsible senior is gonna be there to run that program. So to me, that building needs to be open a minimum of the hours the town hall is open. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. But just saying that Kathy would be a responsible user, right? So if you're a user of the facility, I mean, even we could just put a, we could put a passcode in there and whoever, I mean, we could just put a keypad code on the outside and we could just put a temporary code for a, a weekend, give her a code for that weekend. She can get in, use the facility and get out. Same with birthday parties, anything like that. And that code expires. I think that's what they've got that at the school. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the perfect way to settle this issue. If Is you're gonna write it to somebody, you charge security deposit, you give them the code and you come in. If somebody comes and checks on it and there's garbage all over and there's a mess, they don't get their security deposit back. But I would think the programs that Jeff is talking about are gonna be programs that Kathy's gonna
be taking care of, or is the director gonna be taking care of those programs? I'm just talking about birthday parties on a Saturday afternoon at five Yeah, o'clock or something like
not a code system is the way to go, right, exactly.
$250 deposit. And if they wreck the place, don't get their deposit back.
Right. But I think the original question was where Eric was looking for, are we keeping the building open just during events or, you know, are we all in agreement that during town hall hours, the building's gonna be open? Yeah, at the very least, that's what I would expect. Yeah.
Well, would actually say that what you do with the director is you say to the director, the town hall will be open this time. So that's when you're going to be there. I mean, you're going to have some, you know, some of that time has to be during the day because if you're calling people and scheduling things and stuff like that, you can't be doing that. But there doesn't, it doesn't mean that that person necessarily has a nine to five job. I mean, I would think, a community center director, you know, would work, when the operation is open, you know, similar to what we do with the town's librarian. I mean, Amy Orlamoski is there to work. You know, her hours vary, but most of the time the the library is open. She's there. Not always, but most.
Well, that's absolutely true. And listen, this is gonna be a work in progress. We're not gonna have anything lined up before this thing opens. I would sit there in my head is that the building can be accessible for town programs during normal business hours. And then as Jeff is talking about, if there's an organization or a family that wants to use the building, we're gonna have to go through this protocol of here's how you do it. This is your security deposit. This is what you need to do. And we're gonna have to get it all written up, but that's what this individual would assist to get done.
Or if it's a three hour event, we pay a high school student or somebody to sit there and police the facility. We'll have to make sure it's locked up at the end of the event, make sure they open it before the end of the event. We build that cost into the rental fee. There
you go. Yeah, that's good. We can employ, I mean, it'd be a great employment opportunity for some high school students that want to do some work. That's a great idea, yeah. I'm sure we have some responsible juniors and seniors around here that could use the work. And they all need volunteer hours. Yep.
The whole thing is we just got to make sure, like, the bathrooms are clean, it's returned in the condition that it started in.
Yeah, and I think realistically, you know, you're going to have to, you know, accept the fact that you're going to spend a fair, you know, we're going to bump up the town custodial line item, you know, a fair bit to cover, you know, cleaning of the community center.
Well, on the other hand, if we're to have an event with a 100 people there for birthday party, we're gonna build that into the cost. So that should cover the custodian. Right. Yeah. The cleaning fee.
Anytime you rent anything, there's a cleaning fee now. Mhmm. Understood. It's across the board.
And is and is our is our tongue custodian still, working with you, Eric?
He's the best, by the way. He is the best, and he's very happy that we finally got him hot water for his mop sink. The little things are important. Well, you're right. You're right. I mean, it's absolutely retarded that this building was built in the first place with no hot water to the mop sink. I mean, we all recognize that that was a dumb, you know, penny pinching decision. And I walked him through the building. We talked about floor choices, what went where and what had to happen, you know, what provisions we made for a mop sink and storage areas. And he was very thankful that we took his initial opinions, which we did a year or so ago when we were in the design phase, and it reflects a building that should be cleanable and maintainable in good shape. So Alright. Excellent. So on that basis, he's willing at least early, at least for a while, to clean that building in addition to the rest. Just he basically said, yeah, I'll start off cleaning it, and we'll see how it goes. And we'll you know,
as long as it doesn't get too much for us, you know, we're we're willing to do it. So I built the budget based on that. Okay.
Why don't we go through even though we broke Eric's Eric, start at number one and let's just go through what you got in your list. We're not changing the order. Just go back and, and so You mean in, in the cost drivers or the previous? Which form are we talking about?
The, the discrete categories, and you had broken them down and you had started to talk about things that were going to be, issues within those areas. So you had like education, Responsibility of the Board of Education, but the town is to support the role, including support of insurance, exterior maids, plow a solid drainage, right? Reclaim, repay the AES upper parking lot, plan for eventual repay of a lower lot. And then you wrote capital funding for, and you didn't write anything after it. Okay. So education, capital funding for AES,
there's two things that are going to be coming up. The first is going to be a major plumbing repair for AES. The original wing in the building that was built in 'forty seven, the bathrooms for that wing are now off limits because they've had a major plumbing leak in the waste vents that has been dealt with temporarily. They did apparently have to bring in Servpro to clean up all the, I know you don't like me to use the s h I t word, so I will say excrement. And there are currently three bathrooms that are not usable. Boy's bathroom, a women's bathroom and the teacher's bathroom are all no longer in service. It's going to be a pretty extensive repair. It's a lot of, you know, old, you know, 1940s cast iron piping, and a lot of it is in concrete. So they're going to have to basically probably tear out a significant fraction of three bathrooms. Bust up the concrete, replace the plumbing completely and then remodel. So I talked to Rick Wilson about it. He consulted with AES on it. He said, you know, he has not given them a hard, fast number,
but he said his ballpark is a little north of 200000 to do all that work. So that's a project that should go to RFP when it gets done. There are bathrooms somewhat near there that are usable. So it's not like the school can't function without those bathrooms, but eventually the town is going to have to fix those bathrooms. So that's a major capital item for the school. The second is the elevator in AES is old enough that the control systems for the hydraulics, they cannot get parts for them anymore. And so the contractors basically put them on notice that if they have an elevator failure, it's not fixable. There's nothing that could go wrong now that's fixable without a pretty significant capital expense. So that we also looked at what are the alternatives
to what would happen if the elevator broke. And the answer is they would then have to be able to use the outside paved sidewalk in the back of the building because they have no other way to get a handicapped individual between the two floors. And so we ought to think about a, you know, some sort of repair to that sidewalk network. There are some other things in there that I found that were, you know, troubling. There's one area where they have a roof leak near one of the entrances that should probably be dealt with. And they do have one section of old flat roof that's still the old, know, the old hot tar built up roofs that is 40 to 45 years old.
Not showing any major problems, not showing any leakage, but, you know, when you're sitting there with a 50 year old hot mopped car roof, you have to assume at some point you're going to have, you know,
you're going to have to deal with that. So, so the expectation would be that this, the, the school board would come and put these under capital improvements and sit there and put them on a list saying that we need to get them funded.
So, I have gotten a kind of a summary from so I have asked the board of ed to give me a five or ten year capital plan for the AES. But the reality is they're not going to be able to get that to us anytime soon. So I said, in the meantime, what I want to know is what are the biggest issues we have to deal with and ballpark costs for those issues. You know, the other thing, obviously, on their list was reclaim and repave of the upper parking lot. But at this point, my understanding is part of the reason we're not cashing the check from AES is according to the auditor, they really don't have the money there to pay that check. So there's a question about how much under budget they actually were last year, and how much is available from their funding to fund that project.
So that's an unknown at this point. So those are kind of the major capital things. So I'm going to suggest that the town puts money into a capital plan. We do we, you know, we the Board of Finance has established a capital plan for AES in but that instead of just funding it through leftover monies, they have that we're probably going to need to proactively be putting money into that into an established AES capital fund.
And to do that, we definitely need their input to say this is their expected costs of those items. So I know you're giving it to us and you're laying out for us, but in reality, that's not our it's not your job. Your job is to assist them to do it. It's not your job
Is that really the case? I mean, we as a town own the building. So at the end of the day, a capital expenditure of that building is ultimately a town event, not just an AES event.
They know the building. Exactly. They know they're in the building. They're overseeing the building. So they I think it's appropriate for them to put that list together.
Yeah. Because they're, they're, they're trying to do maintenance, let's say on the bathrooms, they realize they have a problem. Now it goes to the next step and goes, listen, we need to get this on a capital improvement list because it's failing. I mean, it's like the roof, they're trying to do maintenance on the roof, you know, and and I'll go within the last five years, we put $400,000 onto the roof. I don't know how much of that roof, was done at that point in time, but they know they're having a problem. Tell us what it's going to take. If it's a capital improvement, if they want to do a whole roof repair, like a tear off and a new put down, then they need to say, okay, we've got to do this, and then we've to go through the steps, Eric, you're right, of an RFP, and it's still town money because it's all our, it's all one town's funds, but they should come and say, here are the five projects we want to do, and here's our estimate of what it's going to cost. Not the final number, but the estimate of what it's going to cost. So we know what to do because
I'll speak for myself, I wouldn't mind putting $100,000 away into that fund every year, because you can see the things that the school is gonna need. I mean, it's a pretty big building. I mean, you haven't even gotten to the septic. Correct.
So I will give you, because I got it, it was actually dropped on my desk while I was at the veterans ceremony, a list from the school board in order of importance from their perspective of what they need. Okay. So I will provide that to you. Perfect. I've had it. It's sitting on my desk. I have briefly looked at it before this meeting, but I will give that.
K. So Is there any way you can send me the information? Do you Eric, do you have any information on that elevator upgrade? No. The elevator?
I do not. They were supposed to be getting the elevator person to give them a quote, with details from the elevator company.
Okay. Because if the clamps and the hydraulics and everything are good in the elevator, it should just get a controls retrofit. I've done it before. So I'd like to take a look at that possible. If you get that information, could you send it to me? Yep. Because you do not need to replace the elevator just because the controls are outdated. No. They they were they were talking about something like a 50 or $60,000 upgrade
Correct. To the control system, not Yep. An automation good program or automation controller that they can program for whatever inputs and stuff they have for the elevator. Yeah. It's a pretty it's a pretty simple swap. It shouldn't be that expensive.
Yeah. Item two, the housing demand use you have there, Eric. I look at this, and and and I think Scott said it before, we should get with the Tom Planner and get a list of things that we we should and can do. So no. Slide down. Slide down. Sorry. Right there. He could give us a direction, Jeff.
Yep, exactly. As to if you did this, these steps to be compliant. Right. And we could come back and figure out what we're gonna do. And and I don't necessarily know that this needs to be within this budget cycle, but we we should put it on the agenda, Scott, to say this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna work with playing and zoning. We're gonna work with the town planner. We're gonna figure out how to become compliant, as compliant as we possibly can be, for the state requirements.
So Anyway, it it is that something is that something I'm I'm just talking, Eric, but is this something that he can he add more hours to his schedule to work on if we find that it's necessary to work on this affordable housing thing? Or is he booked with plan a conservation development and the rest of the stuff that you have in mind?
I think based on what we pay him, we're going to be able to get him to nibble away at this. You know, my question is, do you want to go after a standalone funding for something like that? Go back to the state and ask for the funding. But if you're going to do it, you got to be willing, you got to know what you're willing to contribute. Then at this point, we don't know what the towns, you know, asking for feasibility funding, you know, what you do is you've got to go to them with a basic concept of what it is you want to do, and then you stand a chance of getting. But you can't go to them and say, we want to study this. You got to say to them, we have this discrete piece of property, we would be interested in figuring out what we can do to use this piece of property to promote affordable housing within the town, you know, and come up with some kind of design and a plan for how to do That is something that's potentially fundable through the state. But you've got to know what you want to do. And that's why I'm saying if it's not something that's a priority, then, you know, that's a lot of work to get to that point. It's a fair bit of board commitment on the board. It is a priority. This.
But it's, you know, it could be a five year priority. To you, Scott. Doesn't sound like it's priority to anybody else. I think it's a priority. I actually think it's a priority, but I just think we need to find a location that's suitable for it. I don't think the current It's not Two Tom properties we own are suitable properties for the affordable housing because they're all full of things. This
is not gonna happen. This is not gonna happen. Just you can't just hire somebody and get this done. It's you know, there's guidelines. There's The guy will be able to tell us what we need to do. It's not as simple as just go for affordable housing and behind the school. Oh,
agree a 100% because behind the school is not on the bus line. We don't have access to anything. So that's why I'm advocating we study it and figure out a good location for it. We have to have a long conversation with our planner. Somewhere between the Route 6 corridor and the rail trail.
Okay. Well, I think we know I think we know what the first step is. Right? Then
why not go with the property that's right off of Shawty Mill Road? Because, I mean, you're not very far from Route 6 there.
You're not close to the the commuter parking lot either. My goal would be to have people to be able to get on the commuter bus and commute to wherever they need to go in Hartford or whatever. So if you could live out and be in walking distance of the commuter bus station, then, you know, I would I would say that was a much better location than up on the hill in Shoddy Mill because you've got at least a mile walk probably by the time you put those houses in. You'd have to walk to the commuter lot.
Or they could get right on the railroad tracks there, Jeff, on the bicycles and get right to the commuter parking lot. Two minutes. There's an entrance off Wales, and you could have an entrance off of up at the transfer station. Have a through road. You can't take a bike on those trails. But if we built, if we built something, why wouldn't we just try to get a bus stop there? Right. Yeah. So our bus stop, that's the simple
I mean, listen, there's a lot of work to do and it is a five year plan. Yeah. I agree. No. That's a twenty year plan. Okay. Yeah. Well, could be. Could be. But
what you're saying, Eric, is let's not be in the line of sight for the state and Exactly. Work at it. Okay. You gotta stay within their road.
Regulations, you gotta work on it. Make sure that you're working on it. K.
Okay. So you don't wanna fund it, but you wanna work on it? We
we need talk to him before the budget passes, Eric, to find out how much funding we do need or will need
to get it going, get something We've talked to a town planner to find out what seed money we need. Yep. Okay. So that's something that you're gonna look into, Eric? No, I put that pretty fast in Jed's court.
Yeah. He's gonna go to the Tom Planner. We're gonna go to the Tom Planner and get an understanding of what can potentially be done to get us in compliance with the state requirements. All we need, right? I like to note that Eric is
do, and what Eric is gonna do is say, okay, the town planner says, to go and do the feasibility study, we need to determine which piece of property we're gonna utilize. Then it goes into what Jeff Murray is saying, maybe it's not one of the town properties, maybe it's another property that we have to sit there and go out and deal with. So let's see what the town planner says. And then we'll worry about the location
of what we're doing after the fact. Yeah. It's it's good that we have put this on a priority list. That's fine. So Okay. What do you want, Eric?
Well, I'm just trying to think about what to tell the town planner that he needs to look at housing and land use. We've already told him that. So Yeah. I mean
now we're asking for a focus. We'll talk to him and we'll ask him if there's some way that, you know, what are our options? That's all we're after. Right? What are options? Yeah.
What does he envision for the town of Andover to stay within the affordable housing,
What I would ask it's pretty disgusting is like, I would just ask him if land was not an issue, where would you locate this affordable housing within the town of Andover? Cost not a factor. Just like where was the best places to put it?
Well, is it affordable senior housing? Is it affordable workforce housing? Who's your target audience? Affordable housing. All all the above. All the above. All the above. They go in different spots. On the same parcel.
I mean, if you want affordable senior housing, the logical place to put it is right behind the town hall. There's no better spot than that. If you're talking about affordable workforce housing, you know, there are other locations that probably make more sense.
Yeah. But a senior down at Hop River Homes, if they really wanted to, they could walk to the library, they could walk to the church food pantry, they could use the walk track. If you put them up behind the elementary school, there's really nothing there. If they're not mobile, they don't drive.
Then they don't have senior transportation. A lot of them will drive.
But isn't that why we have senior transportation? We just, we would make it, hey, we're coming to your neighborhood. I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of different things that we we would talk about. Let's sit there and see what the planner says because we're definitely not going to solve this today. Sure. Issue is to to be in compliance with the state. And how do we get there?
Yeah. Well put. About 200 homes, low cost homes. Okay. Make them pay restricted.
Mean, that's such, that's so ridiculous. I'm just gonna flat out tell you. We have, we have how many homes in the town of Andover right now? 1,200? 1,300 or so. 1,300. And we're asking for 200 new units that are are affordable or Actually,
let me take that back. A 100 would be get us pretty close.
Yeah. This I mean, this looks It's a criteria, though, Jeff. It's not it's not what you're thinking. I got it. But someone's got to tell me someone's got to tell me the the the logic because, Scott, I'm looking at it. That's that's, you know, okay. A 100 is is almost 10% of the total stock of of homes within the town of Andover. Right. You know, well, and and I'm gonna go this way. Think about it from this standpoint. It's not as if the town of Andover, you know, we've gained population recently, but the state of Connecticut is not gaining population. So you're putting in all this affordable housing for all these people. Where are you gaining all of that population? I mean, there's a lot of other issues for me mentally that I'm like, just, let's get to the Tom Planner, let's figure out how we can do it. Right. Because we got issues like water and sewer we're gonna have to deal with. Sewer for a 100 houses is gonna be a lot. Yeah, how are you putting in that advanced septic field that that's gonna Yeah. Then we're gonna have to discharge into the river. Who knows? You know? So, okay. A lot of things to, to deal with, but that's a huge number. So,
in the, in the transportation section, Eric, number three, these are normal things. What are what what here are outside of the normal scope of what we normally complete, in the budget cycle? Like, where are we gonna have to come up with extra money on what you have going here?
Compared to what we have here, I mean, the real thing is going to be I mean, in terms of this budget, the cost adder is gonna be the new bridge slash culvert at Lake Road at Pasolo. That's gonna, we're gonna have to plus up funding to deal with that.
Okay. So culverts is our biggest issue within this coming cycle that we're gonna have to deal with, whether it's Lake Road culvert or Hutchinson Road or wherever, culvert.
Yep. Correct. Yeah. And just one other thing, three f, I don't know if I would try to bite off the pathway connecting to the rail trail from Hendy Road. I mean, I currently use Bailey or I use Burnett Brook to get to the rail trail. Both of those are readily pretty much accessible. So, I mean, I don't know. I think that's a long putt trying to get a pathway up there from Hendy Road to the rail trail. Since we already have two existing paths within a half a mile from there.
No. So that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting we get people across Route 6. If we're going to commit to a traffic light at Hendi, then we commit to a traffic light. One of the arguments for why we want to do that is to make the bikeped connection from that area across to the rail trail. Am I gonna do a path all the way up to the rail trail? No. I'm gonna I'm gonna do a short connecting section along Route 6, and I'm gonna send them up not Bailey. What's the other one?
Yeah. Bailey. Bailey. It's Bailey. I use I use Bailey all the time. And Right. Know what? Honestly, Eric, I've never had a problem going from Hendy to Route 6 to Bailey because the shoulder is at least 10 feet wide, and there's a turn lane there. I just wait for traffic to clear. I get in the turn lane, I cross over to Bailey and I'm fine. Right. You like me are
not the target audience for a connectivity project. There is nothing in this town that I personally care about as a connectivity project, because a bike ride for me is 100 miles. Very little of that's in Andover. There's no road in Andover I'm uncomfortable riding on, but I'm not, if you're going to get people to use it, then you're going to get widespread adoption, you know, I'm not, and you're not the person that we're aiming for. The person that we're aiming for is a parent with a 10 year old kid or an eight year old kid that wants to let their kid ride up to the school,
you know? Yes, I agree with you, Eric, but then if we go and put a path along the side of the road, we have to maintain it, which means we have to clear it, we have to snow blow it. You're right. And just like the, I mean, I'm okay with the one on Long Hill across the street. I mean, doesn't get cleared, but it's still, it's a short trail. This would be much longer and the plows usually plow it in. So, I mean, I don't really see that as a starter, to be honest with you. So that, I mean, that's just my 2¢.
And that's why we're having this conversation. And I have no desire to spend my time, you know, trying to grant fund something you don't want to do.
And so we scratch that, that's no problem. It's not that I don't want to do it. I just don't know if it's feasible, you know, with trying to clear it because the plows are going to plow it in in the winter. And, you know, I always end up with that, I mean, short one has always got full of debris and stuff just from the roadway, you know, in the spring from the plows. So I'm just thinking anytime liability wise, we don't have to worry about clearing something like that. It might be in our best interest just to keep those crossings at Bay Bailey and
Burnett Brook. As as they are. Yeah. But the average person, the average walker and cyclist is not gonna ride across there. That's why they don't drive their cars to the rail trip. Yeah.
Can I I see people riding down Route 6 all the time? Yeah. But wait a second. Isn't
the whole point of this, Eric, to get a light at Hendy? Forget getting into the trail. It's to get a light at Hendy. We need a light there.
Yeah. I think the the important thing that's what I'm saying. Traffic light at Hendi Road, then just scratch plus pathway connecting to rail trail, which is But but but again but again
road off the barriers are connecting it for why there should be a light there. Right? Because you don't meet the traffic criteria without it. If there's no bike head component to that. You're not getting a light. You're probably not getting a light. Right. If you wanna push forward without that, that's fine.
Well, they wanted to know, why would we waste our time pushing forward? They already told us we don't meet the criteria. We've asked for that light before. They came back and told us why they won't do the light. The only reason, in my head, Jeff, the only reason to do the trail issue and part of that is to get them to put in the light. So if we don't want the light,
then that's fine. Then you're not doing the trail thing either. Yeah. Well, just consider, consider the, consider the the maintenance and and liability of cleaning that path that you're gonna be putting in there. And that's fine. Right now we're not even plowing the one on the rail trail.
From all The easy board just need to decide if that light is important. And if that light
is important, then you gotta add a kicker on to get the state to do it. Maybe. Well, it's gonna have to be important because if Long Hill's gonna be closed for bridge construction, we're going to have to put, there's gonna, at least a temporary at the minimum is gonna have to be there. You need a light. So I've been told that's probably not
it hasn't been ruled out, but it's probably there's a good chance it will not be included as part of that project regardless of whether we want. Because the state's point is, so what if it takes you thirty minutes to go left? It's only for eight months. Why should we spend an extra $150,000
just because you know Every school bus is gonna have to turn left out of there to get to Andover Elementary School because it can't even go to Long Hill anymore. So it can go a little earlier.
Well. You know? Well, they can wait a half hour. I guess they could be half an hour late to school.
Yeah. I mean, it's Or, or put forth an application that encompasses the trail and maybe we get the light. Right. Probably ought to go And by Jeff, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. We gotta sit there and fund the maintenance of that until we decide not to fund the maintenance of that and then it gets crap on it.
But then we have our light. So like, it's all just a game. Yeah. Mean, I just don't see the return on investment with that, honestly. I mean, that's just me. It's
about the light. Next investment would be the town. How much might be a grant? I think it's worth trying to get that connection so that you have the light there. It's the light is the issue. We should vote on this right now. Okay, make a motion.
I motion to keep the traffic light at Hendee Plus Pathway connecting to Rail Trail on the budget as a priority in the future.
Well, we put it as a I'll second it. Okay. And seconded a discussion. We put it on there. The issue is not really to sit there and put it in on the budget. The issue is, like, this will have no budget impact to us until we get it approved, because you don't have to do maintenance for Jeff up a trail. The issue is, we going to give Eric the instruction to go after the light installation in in in essence with Right. The trail connector that would be
Ditch the ditch the budget thing and but just I can't see us getting the light there until we add something in, like Jeff McGuire is saying. It's not gonna happen. How are gonna put the connector in? You're gonna have to have the state okay that to put a sidewalk along the state road.
It's gonna be a disaster to try to get that through.
And it's probably not gonna get done. It's not gonna happen, I can tell you. Gonna happen before the Long Hill Bridge starts up. Then take it out.
No, Eric. Eric, that's not the point. The point is Right. Point is what do we need to do to entice the state to put the light there? They've already told us from a traffic study they're not doing it. It's there's is there something extra that we're going to authorize Eric to utilize? The Trail Connector to me is is is a viable thing. I'm probably with Jeff Murray, they probably wouldn't do it, But it's viable. It's it's an option. It's an opportunity. But maybe there's something else, Eric, and maybe there's something else that you can think of that and probably not. You're probably gonna have to go after the trail thing.
I mean, it's all ledge right there. There's no way you don't even have there's really no way to get a trail in there. If you look at it, they blasted all that up the up the road north of there to Bailey. It's all blasted. You can't there's no median there. It's it's ledge. And so that's what I'm trying to tell you. I would put the traffic data from Long Hill at 08:00 in the morning, plus the traffic data for Hendy Road at 08:00 in the morning, total the two together, and send that to DOT and say, look, this is the traffic volume we're gonna have at a stop sign on a major busy road.
Don't you think I've already done that? I know, but it just doesn't make any sense. We have a light, we have a light and a road at Long Hill. We have the traffic, now we're gonna close a bridge. We're gonna take all that traffic from Long Hill. We're gonna dump it on Hendi, and then we're expecting no light, which is ridiculous. Look. I know I I I understand, Eric, but what trying to say Wait.
And that's why I tried to put that in right at the initial design meeting of the bridge and say, this happens, this has to go in with a light at this. But that is not a normal, you know, that is not an A to B thing for the Department of Transportation. They're looking at something of municipal improvement two miles away or three miles away as being disconnected. I mean, the first thing I tried to do is I made them do a traffic study of that road, and because I said it was a minor collector, you know, to bump it up in category from rural road to minor collector. And I made them do a traffic study, and they came back to me and said, Nope, we won't make it a minor collector,
even though it's marginal for that. Mean, I would argue that there's more traffic on Hendy Road than there is on Long Hill, and Long Hill has a light and Hendy does not. I think the traffic volume on Hendy is much higher, because everybody comes from Coventry, they go down Hendi, and it's a backup I in the mean, I see it every day.
Well, maybe we need to look at this event a little differently. Maybe we need to look at it. We need to get to Steve Ware and get to MD and try to get them to something. So, I agree with that. Let's this
off For, for a little bit, we might still end up coming back to Eric at a future meeting and say, gotta go with the, the trail connector, if it, if it's at all possible and it will get us from point A to point B.
Well, remember my goal in that, I mean, I also want the traffic light handy because everybody whines about that. But more important than that, you know, I think the town needs to start working on making, you know, start seriously talking about how we can make a complete streets plan so we make the whole town walkable and bikeable and accessible. And it's really that simple. And that's not a short term process. You know, that's a forty year plan. But look at it this way. In 1970, the death rate for a cyclist in Holland was the same as it was in The US. And now it's seven times higher per mile in The US than Holland. And the fraction of people that cycle in Holland, you know, is 20 times what it is in The United States. So they've succeeded,
but it took them fifty years to do it. I mean, the thing is, is that you got to start and you got to just keep working away. I mean, if you think about the project going up Route 316, I mean, I've been working on that since 2050, you know, I mean, if I get it finished by 2030, I would consider that a really strong success. You know, this stuff takes a long time, you know, but you gotta just keep plunking away.
Okay. The light is a big I understand, I hear you, but that light at Hendi really is a big deal when we're doing the laundry. So we've gotta figure that one out a little differently. So Well, actually, maybe that's not in our best interests
to have a light there for cars. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, anything that makes it inconvenient to drive a car is probably a good thing. Why should we be prioritizing cars?
Well, I I get it, but that means everybody's gotta get to work. So I'd like to be able to get to work. Yeah. You're have any shopping. You gotta drive. Why do you have to drive? My gosh, okay. So
to Eric's point, the complete streets argument, that's why I want to have that part of that affordable housing plan, because with the popularity of e bikes and the range that they're getting now, I mean, there's a lot of younger people that actually use e bikes and do not have cars. So they usually use bus transportation or e bike. So that's why I would like that to be part of it because proximity to the rail trail is a big thing for this affordable housing proposal if we pick a site. Like you said, going up to the back of town hall, going up that hill is not feasible in the winter. We need something that somebody can actually probably get to on an e bike and get home if they have to. And we couldn't do that now without the infrastructure we have. No, but we can develop that infrastructure. That is true. K. But nothing happens unless you start.
Yep. K. If we move down to item three, anything else in this area that we need to talk about from a monetary standpoint? No, that's the major part. Alright.
Four, we talked about that. The, individual that's on the, you know, the the director line for recreation. So is there anything else on this and four that we need to talk about monetarily, Eric?
No. I've already laid out, what the cost when I give you the budget. Tomorrow you'll get a full breakdown of cost for the community center, cost of owning and running a community center slash senior center. Alright. Let's go No one's not. Yeah.
Slide slide your page down. There you go. Alright. So is there anything additional funding for five that we should be talking about?
Is there any way to get any more money for that, Eric?
Not that I know of. Let let let's go in here. Bucks. That's a pretty good start. K. So
the town will have to put money in for the Long Hill amenities. Right? 150,000. Correct. Right. So we gotta we gotta all look at that as build that into our our capital improvement, but our so that's a big hit right there. Item six,
anything in this? Just second, Jeff. Under item five, should we consider any of the garden requests that we have for the garden in 2024 under health?
Yeah. We should we should consider those, but those are not excessive.
Well, I just saw water spigot and power for softball, so I was just thinking that we include that in that line, or is that is a subset to five a? That's fine. I mean, look Community I've garden
told them multiple times. They're not getting an underground piping and, you know, potable water right at the garden. They're going to get it on the side of the community building, and they're going to run a hose for 100 feet to their garden. Because, you know, you cannot run that directly across the septic system. I just don't see that that being a viable request.
I've already talked to them about that. They they realize that.
I I told them that multiple times. They just don't believe me. Okay.
Alright. So So let's move on to, the next section. So safety, is there any increase in the resident state trooper program they're gonna wear up? We're gonna have to be made aware of the- Not at this time. Animal control. How much extra money is that gonna cost us?
In the beginning, it'll be 3,000 or so a year this year more. Ultimately, it's gonna be 6 to 10,000 a year more, switching over to a three pound, you know, an actual ACO that's low.
Right. I thought we were done with new fire trucks, fire department vehicles. Well, we've agreed to buy it. And we've already put the money up. Right?
Well, we've put one Payment? Pay in their fund enough for for one of the year's payments.
Okay. Understood. We got that. The purchase of a new ambulance is supposed to be out of their funds received from
Right. That that's not something that's gonna take town, but it is an expense. And it is an item the town's going to end up getting, but we're just not going to pay for it.
Understood. Tree removal last year, what did we spend on tree removal? 40,000 or $50,000 And we're anticipating keeping that same? $50,000
And yes, my suggestion is that we continue the same for at least one more year. At some point, we're gonna be able to be able to start dropping that down,
but not yet. Okay. And and you're talking about configuring the community centers, as an emergency shelter. I'm assuming that's gonna be done through some grant?
Yeah. I'm I I think we're gonna be able to put in a FEMA grant, to fund the cost of a new generator. Right now, I'm just trying to do the preliminaries, you know, while we're digging holes and running the conduit, but but that's gonna be a fairly large expense, and I'm gonna try to grant fund that.
Okay. Sustainability, I have no problem. We're trying to do that.
I just got I just have one question for Eric on 7A. What do we have for, you know, light switches and stuff in public works, you know, on all our town buildings as far as motion sensor switches, lights? Do we have anything like just let's say in your office for instance, do you have a motion sensor light when you walk in your office, it comes on? Yeah. Unfortunately, I do. Wave your arm once in a while?
Yeah, the lights go off on me regularly when I'm in the meeting, but if I move around in my chair, it usually stays on. Is that something that's usually widespread throughout town hall and the town buildings, especially the school? Well, I don't know about the school. That's not something I know of. I know on their longer, on their more aspirational goals, they would like to pursue a lighting retrofit, at least in part of the building.
I mean, that's a huge energy savings, even like the overhead lights at public works. You put motion sensors on it when you walk into the back of the building, the lights come on, nobody's back there moving, the lights go off. It's just a huge cost savings in the long run. So it's just, I saw you had sustainability on it, I just didn't know how much we should actually maybe look at that a little bit in the future.
Yeah, I totally agree that we should be thinking about, you know, what we're spending and in what ways can we reduce, you know, A, for cost control, you know, and B, just, you know, ultimately to do a little better environmentally.
Yep, exactly. So, I mean, that might be a focus we need to work on, and I'd be happy to help with that in the future too, if we need to. Sure.
Can't we Panther, you know, doesn't Eversource have some program that we can participate in?
You know, they can come and evaluate the various buildings to sit there and see what we can do differently. I know it works for companies and private individuals. I don't know if they have anything from municipalities, but we could probably check. Yeah, we do. And I've sat down and talked with them. I mean, from the town hall's perspective,
you know, the towns doing the swap to ductless heat pumps with propane as a backup is your biggest, you know, energy savings and cost savings that we can really do. I mean, all the lights, most of the building has gone through a retrofit once already. I mean, they're not perfect, but they're all at least T8s fluorescence. I mean, in some cases are LEDs better? But your marginal cost gain, you know, really the thing that town can do in terms of the town hall, the lower consumption is changing fuel source and getting away from really inefficient AC units. So that's a lot of what are the HVAC upgrades to here in the fire department are for.
And is the town is the new community center going to have those motion center section, motion sensor lights as well? Or are we just putting in standard switches? At this point, they're standard switches. Okay. So we need to probably look at upgrading those.
There'll be an awful lot we need to do that building once we've moved in in the first couple of years.
Okay. Eight, infrastructure and capital equipment. Is there anything in this this month this year's plan that you have for the town? Forget the school. So it was just the one culvert that we're dealing with.
I think the other thing we really need to do is we need to go after and figure out a reasonable plan for wall repair at Public Works. Because we got a lot of issues with the bricks falling in that building. And at some point we're going to have to do something to that. And I honestly don't know what the best solution, certainly while we did it, I'd like to make the building a little more energy efficient. Know, because right now it's just, it's a straight masonry, you know, it's either a concrete block or a brick building. So I think that I was hoping to put enough money in the building maintenance fund to at least hire an engineer to look at it and come back to us with a plan for what to do to make that work?
And that's
on top of the covert money that you want? Correct. Okay. Alright. We'll have to look at all those. And then item nine, governance. Is there anything, in the core of the budget that you're you're thinking is gonna end up being excessive, that is gonna be a bigger increase than we would be led to believe?
I mean, the only person the only staff I I can see a reasonable solution for the community center being adding a single person. And my suggestion is to not hire an admin assistant for me. Essentially make an agreement with Kate to assign that role to her as an additional responsibility. And there would have to be some compensation to do it, but it's going to be a hell of a lot less than a part time admin assistant. And then take that funding difference and use that to fund part of the hiring of somebody to be a essentially a projects manager, construction manager for the debt. Because right now, the problem is the limiting factor in us getting stuff done is my ability to manage projects. You know, and if I'm doing the grant writing, running the town, you know, and managing the projects all at the same time, you know, that that gets there's just a limitation on what we can do. And right now we have more grant funding than we could necessarily, you know, kind of manage and get done in a reasonable fashion. So I think that that needs and should be a priority for the town.
What what's your what do you envision for a project manager?
So I would like to be able to pawn off one project at a time time. Like, let's take the senior transportation garage. I'd like to be able to schlep that whole project on somebody and say, okay, here's the grant funding we have, here's the work to date, you know, here's SHPO, here's, you know, everything we have in terms of quotes and finances, get this project going. Because the reality is I haven't done a damn thing on that project, you know, in a couple of months, and I really need to be working on that certainly on a weekly basis if we're gonna make progress on it. So is this an employee or that you're envisioning?
I would say an employee or a contractor in some form. I mean, if it was gonna be an employee, I would say, you know, we're talking about a ten ninety nine employee.
Anybody who's a ten ninety nine is a contractor, anybody who's a W-two is an employee. So if it's ten ninety nine, it's a contractor. So, okay, so let's talk about that and how that would work. You know, in that situation, you gotta find the right person. Yeah, that's the hard part. No question.
Are there like engineers that would do that job as a part time kind of thing? There must be. All I have to say is good luck.
You'd have to find a retiree. You'd have to find somebody that has the time that could do it, that has the skills. Yep.
That's how I would envision it. I mean, if it was me, it would be It's a Richly kind of guy?
Yeah. Honestly, it would be it would be Ed or, you know, if you could, it would be someone like Adrian. That's the type of person that has the skill that could run that kind of project and make it work. Right. Yeah. Ed, seriously, Adrian? Someone like that. Yeah. Makes sense.
Just have to put the qualifications in there because you've you just said engineer. So
Well, it's you know, Jeff. It's not it's someone with construction background, somebody that Exactly. You need a construction superintendent.
Yep. Exactly. You don't need an engineer. So when you start putting engineer in there, you're still gonna start adding dollar signs. No. Construction superintendent.
Right. So, so that, so are there any other issues that anyone wants to discuss with priorities?
Are, are, is the, are the bus situation, the senior transportation, or after we get that new bus this spring, is that bus situation in a good spot, Eric?
Yeah, our hardest part is keeping drivers, I think as much as anything. It's as much a personnel issue as anything. So vehicles will have plenty of vehicles?
Yeah, we'll be in really good shape with vehicles. If we were going to do anything after that, I would look towards eventually, we'll need to replace the Dodge Caravan at some point, because that's already you know, well, it's a ten year old minivan. So, that would be, but I wouldn't budget for that this year, we would go after, you know, another state DOT grant to buy it. I think it would be appropriate to apply in the next grant cycle once we've got this vehicle, but I think we're okay overall.
Alright. So if our our priorities are set, now we need to sit there and work toward the details of what we're gonna put in the budget and out, like, what are the increases and where they're gonna be as they fall into our priority. So, our next meeting is scheduled for next Monday. Yep. And at that point in time, you're saying you're gonna give us the detailed budget?
So I'll dump you I should have a pretty good working copy of the budget tomorrow, which has the priorities built into it. There's a lot we're not gonna know. We don't know what the grand list increase is right now. We don't know what the increase from RAM or AES is. And what I had hoped to get from the RAM Superintendent Collin was what our levy percentage is. Because, you know, we're, the reason we've been saving money the last couple of years was that our relative percentage of kids in the high school has gone down. But when you look at our overall percentage of K through 12 kids, you know, it's 16.8%, yet our fraction in RAM right now is 14.9%, or was last year. So if you look at the implication of that, you know, and you compare that to our population, you know, the amount of kids we got going to RAM is around 12% low compared to our relative population. So that, you know, when that evens back out, and when I looked at the data last year, I didn't think it was going to even out this year. I thought it was going to start going back up next year. So I think we might even go down a little bit this year, but it's going to start biting us next year. And we're going to end up owing RAM at least a half million dollars a year more than we're paying now. Several years from now, just giving you that as a background. Alright.
So lots of unknowns at this point, but I'll give you what I have. Okay. So Sorry. Question. Sure. Jeff, you go first. No. No. No, Paulie. You
go. I think I'm changing the topic. My question is with all these unknowns, is it too soon? Or for next week's meeting, can we maybe say tonight, we're gonna focus on this, this, and this, just so we give you a little more direction on what you give us? Is that helpful or is it?
Sure. I'd love it if you tell me what you want presented to you at the next meeting.
I think we did that last year and that, and we were able to take away a meeting because we kinda, we did it in chunks and then we were, we were ahead of our thoughts. So it, it just, I think it's
helpful for Eric, but I don't I like your idea, Paula. Is there a way to scroll back up to our priorities? Do we wanna do like number one, number two first next week and then
start working down the list? Well, I think number one was an unknown. Right?
You mean the town focus areas? Yeah. Like, the education was an unknown, but the other two, number two, number three, maybe we start working down the list and get it in areas of priority first.
Yeah, I think that would make us keep our goal of hopefully an hour long and then we'll be more efficient so we know what we're preparing our minds for.
Well, why don't we go after the biggest section of the budget and go after the everything related to public works? Okay. So you wanna review just public public works.
And are we doing what we've done in the past? If if we're talking about public works, then Jay is coming. Talk to us. I and I I was gonna say when we talk about the affordable housing, do we bring in the planner to ask questions and make sure we know what's going on? Just things to think think about ahead of the schedule.
Okay. So it's a really good idea. Let's have public works come in next. Let's have Jay talk to us next next cycle. And Eric, present the whole budget, because if you don't present the whole budget, it's hard to break down the sections that we want you to to focus on for us.
I mean, I should by the close of business tomorrow, send you the Excel copy of the current budget. Just understand that there's a lot of things that are out of my control. Like, for instance, I have no idea on the income side. There's no budget passed yet. So, I mean, all I can do is base it off of in the legislature hasn't even met yet for their short section. I don't know what they're going to budget. So, I mean, all I can do is give you last year's numbers at this point. And there's a bunch of areas like that because I just, you know, other organizations haven't produced their budgets yet.
Yeah, we know that from past years, so we just gotta start somewhere, but understand.
But there's a lot of Listen, if the overall scope of the budget blew up, let's sit there and say, some reason, there's an excessive educational increase, you know, we might need to come back and rework our numbers to sit there and and bring down the overall spend. But we may as well just go through public works because in my head, that's 6 to $700,000 of the total budget. If we could sit there and at least have an understanding of where Jay is planning to go, then we'll knock that all off the list, Paul. And then maybe the next week when we have the full budget before the meeting, can go through and kind of identify, okay, these are sections of the budget we wanna go through next. And we go through at the next meeting these things, and we can all look at those sections and ask questions related to those sections because that's all we're focused on. Right. I agree. I great idea, Paula. I mean,
you know, if you want to look at major changes, you know, capital funds, public works, and personnel costs, you know, for the most part are going to be where the money is. So if you wanna knock off public works next time, that's a fine focus.
Yeah. Let's do that because I look at the overall, you know, the human resource or the the wage section is to be one of the last ones we do so that we understand what we're doing, and it all fits within the whole puzzle. So okay. Public works next week. Eric, will you provide us the spreadsheet with the entire budget? And then maybe what we'll do before the next meeting is sit there and kind of break down that budget. The the line items from Eric and say, these are the sections for the following week. These are sections for the following week, And we go through everything. Perfect.
And my other suggestion is let's try and think one or two meetings ahead because let's say the next meeting we're gonna talk about the affordable housing and maybe the planner is not available that meeting. So I'm just thinking we might have to think two weeks ahead in case.
I remember we had to change our planning and zoning meeting night from Monday to Tuesday because he wasn't available on Monday. Maybe some Mondays he is, but I know when we had our meeting he wasn't.
Yeah, and I think one or two of our meetings, I think one's on a Tuesday, one's on a Wednesday. So just something to think about when we're asking people to come join us.
Okay. All right. Does anybody else have anything they wanna talk about at this meeting? Okay. Eric, is there anything that we should address before we adjourn?
Nothing that I know of. It's a special meeting, so the only thing you can really deal with is budget direct budget related stuff anyway.
K. Well, that's what I was meaning. I like, it's budget related, but do you have anything?
No. I do not. Okay. Other than the need for a nap. Yeah. Anybody wanna make a motion?
Do we have public speak again or no? Oh, Joanne Ebert, public speak. No. I'm good. Thank you. No problem. Alright. Thank you. Motion to adjourn. Second.
Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Alright. Thank you very much. See you guys. Bye. Cheers. Bye.