TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ May 10, 2022

durham lord selectmen to order on may 10 2022 please stand for the pledge of allegiance united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um see if our chief is not here tonight right and you have a report to submit tonight or just the intel report okay we can talk

going to give us a little update on what's going on there well i appreciate the the time i'm secure and gentlemen the uh i thought it would be good to get to open up or continue the flow of information between the planning board and the selectmen so uh if it works out and if there's something to talk about talk to mitch about coming in the first meeting your first meeting the month which follows our regular meeting and just give you two minutes on what's happening uh what's before the board and what what's going on and what we're here so i will take my two minutes or two and a half minutes and do that so as kevin said i'm was elected the chair at our last meeting and uh replacing ann torgosa and anne because you know she's been on the planning board for a chunk of time and has done a superb job so we kind of want to publicly thank her for the work she's done in getting the town through a lot of

different uh ordinances and projects and so on and so forth and then the other thing i want to thank is that some of the new guys that we've got on board george the planner has been a big addition big plus over the last couple of meetings and keeping it straight and making sure we're staying on track and then a minor thing and he's sitting back there it's like him a big head but your new it hires that are superb i mean they've made a big difference just one getting me on the town email which uh i struggled to do but also uh getting things posted getting meetings recorded they have been a big addition so and we're looking forward to working with alan uh you did guys so had a chance to meet him the other day so we have one application before us now is a 13 lot cluster subdivision that is if it's approved will go in right down the road just past the school across route 9 from patriots way and kind of a narrow entrance in that

opens up in there it's a cluster and then for those who are familiar with that what the cluster subdivision does is allows in assuming this is all approved and allows a trade-off sort of one for one one acre of lot size given up for one acre of uh open space or fifteen thousand open space for fifteen thousand 000 a lot size reduction and so that's what they've come in and asked to do we had a sketch plan meeting at the beginning of the month we asked them recommended they make some changes to that sketch plan which they've done and they weren't big things just kind of make sure we clarified them the sketch plan is very informal that is just sit there talk about what needs to be in the plan as it moves forward to get approval if they get approval and there's no formal vote or whatever so the next step is this thursday and you're all invited at 5 pm we're meeting here planning board the developer and the

public is all aware of this and we're going to kind of review the new plan quickly so i need to take that plan that's on the board down because that's the old plan um go over that and i'm going to do the site walk and the next step after that depending on the speed at which the developer moves the applicant moves uh will be a preliminary plan and that's much more detailed you know probably spread to piece of the choir so i mean insulting and final plan that's all at the pace of the developer and assuming they get approval that we approve their preliminary plan and move forward after that so so that's the only pending not yet approved subdivision [Music]

right now all right uh coming in and so and then our next regular meeting is june 8th and we are following that but we we're going to have a uh another workshop where we are going to take a look at the com things in the comp plan that aren't in the ordinance and some of them are minor made sure there's 100 foot buffer off a road that we're in the comp plan some of the ideas that were there go through that in some detail put the good ideas into the into the ordinance subdivision control ordinance and then there are folks out there who want to have a discussion about slowing down stopping whatever term you want to use in new development and i don't think we're there yet i mean everybody will get a chance to say something and uh but i don't know that we the planning board are going to take formal action on that as we're going forward in the near term and that's a big deal that's you know there's talk of everything from

creating zoning news zoning districts to a whole bunch of stuff that but we do want to i think probably open up the the opportunity for people to discuss present their ideas and there probably are some good ones out there and then the other issue that uh for lack of a better term if punted to the conservation commission is resource protection and probably the better way or professional way to say it is they have picked up the wall and they're going to move forward on the resource protection thing with with mr thieber's help and trying to sort out phase one phase two and that is a big deal as you know and we broke it up into two phases for a reason uh it didn't pass and so they would like to take on trying to get a plan put together the only thing with that is that they they don't have any quasi-judicial authority the way that the planning board does so i think it's perfectly reasonable to get a heavy consult from them but

it's ultimately up to the planning board it is indeed what they have offered to take on putting ideas together and but at the end of the day i believe it has to be the way it has come to us for public hearing right and then the concern there is they obviously come at it from a certain point of view and um that we need to make sure that that process stays balanced it is yeah it's not necessarily bad but a couple of things that uh george is is going to work with him and so his time his part-time time is getting eaten up fairly quickly with a whole bunch of things yeah but george is going to take the good ideas he had um and presented at the uh tom meeting and work with them and try to to come up with that so yes and so i don't know that we are the balance but certainly there'll be plenty of opportunity because there's folks who want more resource protection there are some force some folks can be negatively impacted

uh perhaps by resource protection and it's got to be vetted through the town you know the town and what the public have they're saying and all that yeah so this is not um take the conservation commissions and just remember that okay um do you have any idea whether that subdivision over there is in the opera it is right on the edge and they're supposed to put it on the plans it's right on the school's welfare very well area and also right on the aqua aquifer area so yes and that was part of our discussion after the sketch plan there which is supposed to put it on the plan to show us where that is and they know they have to notify the school if it's in the wellhead protection and so on and so forth so but i don't i don't think it's on the edge i don't think the whole thing is but there may be a part of it that is so is this this cluster development covered by the ordinances we have today or is there anything obviously

everything that sticks out at this point they've not asked for a waiver so they're they've got there to meet the normal subdivision rules in the cluster so for posture can is a good example they have to they can decrease a lot size but have to create open spaces right but the other shop road lifts road frontage they've not asked for a waiver on any of that stuff thank you

you very much thank you for taking this off thank you we're still on number three so i'll circle back chief did you want to did you have anything you wanted to present tonight or you all said i am all set okay thank you cool people um yeah uh let's see um town manager's report thank you mr chairman several items of important to bring to your attention first of all i'd like to introduce mr alan plummer to the board members alan please stand up your camera can pick up alan has accepted the position of code enforcement officer and i believe that he is in transition within both where he's leading and at the same time he has spent time with calvin and he's also had opportunity to meet with george devage and i think that the team is rebuilding nicely great and well welcome glad to have you here any questions about anything or not yet i got answers yeah awesome thank you very much thank you can you is your

blind sis thank you thank you six local weekly papers uh seeking advocates for the part-time jeopardy clerk position if anyone is interested in that it is part-time and we ask that you go to our town's website and you'll see where the title of the position you click on it and all the application information is right there we're accepting applications for the position town manager and encouraging spirits and qualified individuals to go to the town's website click on town manager notice and get the rest of the details both jessica and janet continue their learning curve and their positions our customer our counter service continues to be very busy and we continue to be closed on wednesdays which are used to catch up on many of the items they complete they must complete in order to get ready for the finish finalizing of the auditor which we pretty well got most of the auditor stuff done but we haven't got

any final draft back for review at this point i also want to remind everyone that in between all of this janet who was actually a deputy treasurer and handles financing received a bill from one of our vendors downey synergy and they provide propane and she took it upon herself to call them up and by the time they were done they had gone from what the billing rate was down to 2.69.9 cents per gallon on the propane and then offered us a one-year contract at that price and she took it it should be in my contract stand in line

town yeah that's excellent overly simplified project vision update you have i believe a bigger narrative behind your agenda but for the public with the arrival of the new code enforcement officer we are pulling together the cost estimates that will allow us to approve the information to the town's website as well as conduct meetings of the select board and planning board at the eureka center kimberly and devin garno are working to improve the updating of our website as well as providing report and we're going to provide that report that will include hardware and software requirements so that we can be again as informative as possible to our public and just the comments from john means that the customers are getting information a whole lot better and i've made it a practice to post the draft of the forthcoming agendas through them onto the website and tried to answer information and questions

property cash and liability insurance on behalf of the town i submitted the renewal to maine municipal insurance trust and this should have been started months ago but we had transitions that were going on in your town and we appreciate the patience that the trust has provided so far i've got to do the the technological ones that covers all of our i.t related and that's taking a little bit longer but i'll get it to them as soon as possible

to use the first tranche or any part of it under armour funds for funding special projects that a special town meeting should be called at the most reasonable time possible the use of the funds through the warrant articles would be for specific projects that the staff has been working on and some needs to report to you in detail on but as i was talking with our chair earlier today we've got the vision project which is the i.t between this room and the room adjacent to us and the possibility of definitely getting it into the eureka house that opens this up for additional service oriented department planning such as code enforcement or planning whatever but it effectively puts off the question well do you have enough space well we have more space and it puts the question further back as to what's it going to look like in 20 years rather than in another two or three years and so there's a there's a cost benefit

there but in 20 years it's going to cost that much more to expand so you got to be cautious with that legislative policy committee and the spirit of america recommendations require the board's discussion and possible input and recommendations of local citizens who you believe might be interested the deadlines for the mma committee is june 22nd and the spirit of america is june 30th i'm also aware of the fact that you may need to appoint additional people kind of forward i thought i had it here

to you but there are vacancies occurring and we want to make sure that all of our committees and boards are full as appropriate the legislative committee for mma is a very important part of what affects municipalities going forward and if there are citizenry or yourselves that you think might want to participate in that now's the time to do it and they're getting ready for next fall when the legislation is reintroduced and it affects usually most communities where can someone get more information on what that would entail in terms of the type of work and the time commitment and so on i can call the mma and get that for you if you'd like generally my my recollection is they start meeting in the fall when both parts of the house and the governor's office start submitting legislation to the group and preparing for it and then it gets very intense between september and december so that the first session

in the biennium starts in january they're ready to start and the committee has done so obviously if it's an mma committee they're looking at laws ordinances things that may be a benefit or need to be changed to be a benefit to municipalities among other things or things that you might want to oppose and recommend opposition to that and you also have to make a committee appointment to gp cog that's what it was we deal with gp cog even though avcog is the county that we're serviced by gp cog also works with us and we've been invited to select two candidates for that legislative committee as well is that a new committee for them uh i don't think it's legislative so much as it is general planning and uh policy making for gp cog

um calm star security breach followers from comstar who does the billing for ems i love and apparently they got hacked and they want to make sure that any of their customers of which we are uh are aware of that they're sending out notices accordingly and i did talk briefly with the chief and constar handles everything so as far as we're concerned we're okay because i first thought maybe our computers had that information it does not we merely received the receipts of the billing process collection process coming forward i also want to remind you about energy issues and i want to talk briefly about that

jenna negotiate right we are facing some very unique times especially in the whole issue of energy and for the town propane eating new diesel gasoline electricity they're all part and parcel of what allow us to run we took a look at just the largest of our departments where you see the greatest amount of consumption and that's the public works department and what calvin put together and he's done some phone work and everything on the top part is his spreadsheet of what he planned for in the current budget that we're in now as an example heating fuel he estimated 2200 gallons diesel 12 200 gallons this will take us through december 31st of 2022 in gasoline 700 1750 we know that the same amount of the same fuel stock types such as propane and diesel and gasoline are used in a much smaller quantity over the fire department and so we took the biggest one whether it be the biggest impact of all

and calvin went back to his budget and the budget that he prepared for the year that we're in he based heating fuel at three dollars and 64 cents a gallon and at the time that these were prepared they were right on target diesel at 259 a gallon and gasoline at 237 a gallon as of may 10 and even these numbers changed since a few days ago we're now at a point where the same amount of units purchased is going to cost us far more how much more was what we tried to narrow down allow me to explain we also know that we just paid off a bill to one providers and we use the gallus from january 1st to april may to april 30th to determine what was expanded out of this budget year so far and how much money remains in the budget until december 31st that's the first constant the second is what our best prices were i'll get into that fiasco in a second but the best prices this minute not this day this minute

were based on 5.33 per gallon for heating fuel diesel at 556 and gasoline at 392. to the far right of the spreadsheet that you have you can see that they're fairly close between rinaldi and dead river we're not asking to sign a contract we're just using these comparative in the marketplace by subtracting out what we have used thus far how much we expect to use for the whole year the difference is approximately as as was finalized there's not forty two thousand but if you go down is approximately thirty thousand dollars just for that department that's the largest department and that's based on these prices that we now have in effect everyone in this community and quite frankly the united states is facing the same thing we would like to set janet up as our negotiator and but we will we will cautiously utilize her talents how's that

what i'm saying to you as your interim town manager is yeah we could go ahead and turn off the light here we can shut off something there we can pull the big big hole up and say no we're going to wait another hour let the snow come down deeper we're not going to use this we're going to use this as an alternative the reality is we are governed to a large degree by the expectations that we've built into our community and the surrounding communities and while black pavement is not necessarily the best policy it's by far a more expensive policy to maintain in the winter time but it's also safer so to you as the elected officials we are in a situation where we've already had our town meeting you've raised and appropriated the necessary dollars based on what we knew at that moment the term raised means you can go back and raise the taxes to get the money to pay for the appropriation what you approved as a

town meeting you can only do that once you can go back for a special town meeting to appropriate which means to authorize further expenditures but the source of that expenditure has to be your undesignated fund balance and as the chair has pointed out and i agree with him before we rush into it you need to understand what is the balance of our undesignated fund balance and if we were to have a special town meeting to handle things such as this in addition to anything else that is out there you need to know from the auditor's perspective are we still complying with generally accepted accounting principles which is usually 8.33 of operating expenses each month excluding school and county so basically age 16 24

so we will get that information for you but in the meantime you can see at the very bottom our recommendation is not to lock in until june we've already had those two dealers say we're not going to give contracts they don't even know what's happening and then you get into a very dicey situation that if you look at what they're predicting there's a dollar saving per gallon it's not a lot so then we're in a position of having to and i don't want to use the term crapshoot i already have you don't know what you're locking yourself into because the global situation or instability is what's forcing these issues going forward and we're not the only ones but we're a small enough community where it has a major impact if not fiscally but financially and morally psychologically what do we do and everyone in this community is saying how am i going to pay the election bill am i giving the propane bill right now it's

beautiful but come december it's not going to be pretty these numbers only take you to december 31st by then you'll have developed with the budget committee a new budget and you'll have to start the process based on the evidence at that time as to what your budgets are going to look like but we want you to be fully aware that we're going to have a potential deficit in that department and in other similar line items through fire and through the town offices in the eureka center unless something else changes drastically and right now i'm not a betting person that that's going to happen

just maybe i missed it but so how much have we expended so far out of the budget like how much how much time do we really have to make this decision i guess is a question actually that's two good questions the first is this only represents the public works department and originally he had planned 86 000

the current year is 44 000 the original projection was 86 000 for 12 months we're only nine eight months really detecting when you think about it yeah so it's from may 1st to december 31st that's the first part and that's a 30 000 deficit just in public works

government have anything to say about this because as you all realize this is new for you there's a little known statute that allows public works in the winter times to overexpand by 15 percent and that effectively could be one way to deal with it but i hate to think that that's how we're going to no i wasn't even suggesting that no but no the the option really is to report back to you the audited number for the undesignated fund balance and then you have to decide for yourself because it's a policy how are you going to make up the difference are we going to have the public come back to the table and allow us to dip into that undesignated fund balance or are we going to play it very close to the vest and not know until december 30th how it turned out that will let us but if if you do if you do overspend that article for winter the money comes from undesignated anyway right so it's other than the

other the public aspect of the process it's six and one half doesn't it yeah but that doesn't handle this building eureka and the fighting pile that's true that's true i just wanted to give you the biggest focus but don't forget the other parts of the same picture so it really begs a question of is there to be that's a policy issue a special town meeting and that's something that we've talked about it's if you're going to do it don't wait till september if you're going to do it don't do it just before the election in june so it's going to be somewhere be between the election date and maybe july and have certain things as the chairs pointed out these are priority we need to get these resolved and we'll put some other things on back burner wait till the fall and work on that there are ways of splitting that but you need to know what you're working with and the undesignated fund balance becomes for many communities the

sole answer to that yeah i i i get that i'll get the rationale behind this i think it's an important thing to try to forecast this point right now it's most impossible my only question on the sheet that you gave up uh and mitch maybe you know this and maybe you might have to ask calvin but is this correct that we budgeted diesel fuel at 259 a gallon was that number those are the budgeted numbers that he used because the chair had asked the question what did calvin build into the budget i understand that i'm just looking at 259 and we do our budgets and i don't think diesel price was up 259 by the end of this year so that's why that seems a little low on that i i think i would i think this is good that he put in that budget per gallon but i would like to see with the 2021 actuals were like how many gallons did we use divided by so oh go ahead now so last year's diesel price was 222 we were paying

and gasoline gasoline 187 and uh heating fuels 237 that's what we paid last year and based on what the uh suppliers were telling me i went with their recommendations on what to put in there for i mean this was pre uh this was pre uh ukraine russia yeah right so yeah i know my question was really because usually they're they're fairly close i mean eating these oil usually somewhere alive so if you formulate a budget let's say you call them in let's say november or december of last year i would i would think if if heating oil was that high diesel i mean diesel hasn't been that low for a while yep no last year actually that's that's 30 cents irons were paid last year so no it's higher than what you pay but what i'm saying is from a market price by the end of the year i think i just looked it up it was like 310 by the time we're in november last year just for a rack price we'll get you that information just as a

quickie in in diesel i converted the dollars expended since january one you know diesel we've used 3091 gallons just in diesel gasoline we've used 1 500 1 gallons and heating oil we use 809 gallons i have to tell you there's a question mark of how come we spent 1 500 one gallon so far but but that's what the building showed at 2 822. that had a dollar 88 you got 175 yeah so that that that threw me off a little bit but the others diesel and heating seem to be fairly right on target but we can provide that information for you going forward what would be the downside of waiting until september to ask for more money if we decided to go that route for for fuel we the market might settle down and be a little bit more predictable we would be more of a known at that point we're not a line item budget constrained operations so what what's what would be the downside if any of waiting until september to ask this

question not to be a smart aleck when does the budget committee and the select board start the process of developing their next budget well the for the select board and the budget committee don't won't see it until after the first of the year okay um that's but the cip process will start like in september

i think the downside is when you look back in the rearview mirror and say i wish we had done something if we can't predict what's going to happen what would what would we not be able to do if we didn't ask this question until that time in this particular case everything continues to function except for one fact if we find the price at the rack drops substantially because of some unique circumstances we don't have the authority to go out we have the authority to go out and ask for bids but we have no authority to sign it if that contract exceeds what the appropriations were authorized for that would be the only concern that i have

authorized to stand if it's above what's in the lineup right it just has to be redivided into other areas and what is it that you're willing to give up in the article to cover that if we if we ask the question in town said no but it's the same risk if we go and ask for the money now and the town says no we we still got to buy the fuel we're just going to have to you know um something something else would happen yeah i'm assuming calvin you you know because your budget is what around it's like 1.2 million and we're talking 30 000 shortfall you've already combed through your budget and there's not 30 000 worth of like something you can defer to the next year or anything like that well i mean we trimmed it pretty hard already we did i acknowledged that absolutely i mean i'm still asking the question yeah and i'll do the best i can but i i

really haven't been doing the code thing haven't really had a chance to uh i'm just coming up for air now so so so i get it and i don't i'm not i don't fault you for this for the reasons you just stated so you haven't really gone through your budget yet and say and say can i find 30 000 or something if i had to uh no okay yeah and even even if he hasn't or has either way i mean there's a good chance this town could say no and we by default have to get that 30 000 so we have to go through it and see what recommendation you're going to make to us to use any questions pulling the trigger yeah i guess i guess i'm torn i understand where you're coming from but i i'm leaning towards sort of where kevin is i think we keep this as an agenda item and something that i'd like to hear every every meeting yeah but i i don't know that i'd be prepared to present this to town in june as he proposed uh with the other issues

um i think i'd like to track it so that we can come back and say this is what we're expecting you know i think we're in august september we have this idea that we've been working on it for two three four months now i think that's that might be a better way to present it that way we're looking at all options or not i sort of feel like we're rushing into it at this point and that becomes the decision you have to make in the final analysis i use the term death by a thousand cuts but not quite sure which cut is going to be the one

things other than fuel and other than say upgrades on materials and are we looking at or just say materials that would be the other thing that would hit the public works department like so this is what two and a half percent of his budget their votes um what other things might come up other than fuel that

projects on the books right that are coming up paving what have you that are going to hit it's all oil-based swinging consider as a i'll say a lot of bigger bigger pictures in public works in the totality of well the totality of the town making public works in general is because we're we're kind of thinking on calvin you know how can he trim two and a half percent he's the top guy

eventually the town is going to feel this eventually from a number of different areas the to your question specifically for the meeting house meetings planning board meetings and all other meetings coupled with the i.t connectivity is one issue right there the second issue is the fact that your half of your building here does not have heating and cooling both of those units were installed at the same time one would begin to speculate how long before the other unit which was cranked up high to offset the other is going to last but our fire chief has also indicated an opportunity with regards to heat pump in certain areas of his building so that combination becomes another issue for appropriations slash alternative funding if you decide to use capital funds that are not generated at the local level right so that's two projects right there and what happens if we don't do those projects then we are potentially squeezing

full-time code enforcement into an already small room and i'm going to say we're moving all of these desks over here his office is going to be over here i mean there are ways of trying to ameliorate that hardship but i those are probably the big ones that i'm thinking of at the moment and you have to decide what do you what's the appetite how much can the public bear who are also facing the exact same thing but i can tell you standing at that desk listening to what's going on the ladies are that's why we're closed on wednesdays we're trying to catch up and we can't we still don't have the order back because it was delayed and it's those kinds of things that in and of themselves and they were the only one thing you don't pay attention to but there are several of those little things beginning to crop up and next winter is not the time to put someone up in the attic and said can you fix it now

yeah okay josh no i could have not oh you're about to say something todd did you have some i would i would also be concerned about the price of electricity yeah all energy if we're going to put in more heat bonds it's going to cost more money right to hit you one way or another yeah i think that um you know some of the points which is that were just made actually argued towards holding off to ask because then then we will have a better idea what we might need to ask for right um i think the of the handful of things that mitch has brought up that we've talked about in the past that that we we think are candidates for potential you know special tal meeting vote really the only like mission critical we got to do something sooner rather than later is the hvac um stuff and that that i could envision um a special town meeting fairly soon you know something close to the timeline that mitch put out um and

then perhaps even you know a second special town meeting in september for some of the other uh ideas we have like if there's you know i t expense to hook up eureka or you know other things that are important we want to get them done but they weren't necessarily like we got to do this now or else we're often happy building you know come winter um that's plus the other thing there is we we don't want to lose sight of the clear public sentiment we heard about people wanting input and how we're going to spend the arc of money so i think we can manage the communication and make a good case of like yeah understood we're going to have a robust public input process on you know how we're going to spend the vast majority of this of these upper funds but we need to put an hvac system in the town office like now and we have an opportunity to pay for that with these opera funds so we're just going to call a meeting we'll have a

discussion and we'll do it you know sorry we didn't have time to do a big you know public hearing on that one question but on the vast majority of the remainder we can go through that process and doing another meeting in september would give us time to do that and so you said in your notes you wanted to to approve a word article at our next meeting well that's what i said that's going to be we were talking about that before the meeting and we don't have actual bids and quotes that was my next question yes i'm not going to be here on the 24th and i would like to see i'm not either actually so to come to think of it so see if we're going to have a quorum that day so that that's that's about not that yeah that was my next question thank you

what i'm hearing is that uh there is sympathy and empathy for the mission critical hvac and i'll grab the fire department in that you know because that's a huge deal you get it you usually get better pricing that way and then come september actually through the summer and into september have the discussions on some of the other issues going forward uh there's nothing that's that stops us from talking about these other issues at the at the special time the first one right no right so so i think that would be important to discuss at that time well actually well actually we would actually have to put an article on the warrant to allow for that discussion because typically you can only talk about what there's an article yeah right but there's nothing that and i would certainly push for that because i think it's important to erase that that's a good idea you could tack on a little public hearing onto that and

that's a really good idea just uh just thinking back to what we're talking about earlier is to maybe prep some subjects or some of the ideas that we voted in already what might be something that can be moved to the right to hold off to offset some of the funding not not that i want to do that but it might be necessary depending on you know everybody you know again back to the public everybody we all we all are going to have this problem uh it's going to occur really bad this year is what it comes down to um so we ought to stop thinking about what what could go to the right you know without having services affected you know i don't want to take a plow truck off the road i don't want to not respond to something that's just that's just a non-starter in my mind um so um so i you know i think we do what we do as a town expect certain services and want the same level of service or better of course but um

but you know some of the some things might be quite comfortable without it affecting the long-term goals public works pertains to the winter budget only not the total budget right so people are doing the math and they're saying well i got 1.2 million times that's another 100 no yeah restricted the win but we don't we don't have we don't have a separate winter fuel budget or a winter here unfortunately but i think i think joe's point is a good one in that regardless of whether we make the decision at some point to ask to use some undesignated funds um the town could say no to that even if we if we decide to ask for it so every department head should be projecting what the potential exposure is and should have a contingency plan for how they're going to meet that if there is no more money coming right you know like what if like if if we don't how are we going to do this right there's a couple roads we can

push to the right or something something something that can yeah i mean again i'm picking on calvin but but i'm just thinking of items that cost a lot that you might be able to slide or something of that nature yeah because i think i i think and i think our

it's not a tax assessment it's still spending the town's money if we use unknowns and you have to replenish it yeah exactly right right he's doing the due diligence on looking at looking hard on the budget again and saying okay what that's why i think you know i think i think waiting until september or another magical september could be august could be october you know but later when we know more and have a clearer picture of what what our exposure might be you know at least to present it and then let everybody can educate this yeah yeah right special town meetings

um i think we're looking at one in early summer if we want to get a little to do hbbc two middle weekends of june otherwise once july 4th bell rings yeah you've lost las vegas and then you've got 15 and 20 people making a decision for 4 100 exactly so that means we need and i think there's been some work on this already but one thing that we should get as soon as possible are actual proposals and bids on the work to be done for the hvac that lock that in and that's probably um you know the next step on that i would think when you're getting proposals these days what kind of timeline are they adding are they putting on there for the proposal like you know sign up by next week or the 30 day or 60 day type i wish i could say we haven't gotten proposals in maximum crisis yeah but i suspect you're absolutely right for a disclaimer on the bottom really depends on what it is yeah and again under the heading of contingency

so like we know that we know that we have to do something with hvac in this building yeah chief i'm not sure i know i know we want to take advantage of the efficiencies and stuff but is the situation that the firehouse is that also like a must like

well that that's your decision it is a heating and cooling facility yeah it's the only facility in town for that yeah it's unification for the school and we have no cool okay so we have one window unit and a floor you know just to try to yeah so yeah i think it would be dude where i was going with that is uh contingencies like um if we were faced with some sort of a time thing then like do we even have enough money in our municipal capital account park on the side if we had to do something with hvac i think there's money in the municipal capital account that could cover that and we only it only takes a board vote to spend that money we don't have to go to the town so i think that that can take because of um that can take a little bit of the time crunch out so knowing that if we had to commit like let's say if we had to commit like let's say in two weeks whatever say okay this is your price if you sign the contract by x

yeah you sign the contract knowing that you got enough money in the capital account if you need to but it gives you time to go to voters and ask for permission to use a fund so you don't have to tap into that account but if you have to because you've got to do the work then you have the funds to cover yeah so

there is one angle that i'm gonna i'm questioning because i don't have the answer you've had a lot more experience with martha than i have with recent arpa cannot replace be raised by taxes to cover something had been funded by warrant articles

for these important factors these capital improvements to the building can you really do that with oprah funds because the art of funds are technically replacing i i agree and i think it's a timing thing so the scenario i laid out is you you sign the contract knowing that one way or the other you have the money to do the work it might come out of your capital account right or it might be as long as you realize that right but the preference is to get approval to use arpa funds before you have to take it out of the capital account i think that's a good news two-step approach right so do you have a list of companies

we will get one real quick there's some there's been some more i've done on this already i mean kathy did do some work on that so there's some stuff out there and those are all materials that are part of the supply chain that's why i think even if we move on this like that's why i think we need to move forward even if we don't have the actual answer to that question yet um because let's get that out of the way right now he pumps the furnace

work on this as well and he's got at least one brand that seems to have a fairly constant supply chain his his supply chain hasn't that was one question like can you get it not only can you do the work but can you get right and also you're all experts and business owners you're getting into the heating or actually cooling season so you either get it early or now you're just on a waiting list again depending on temperatures and where we're at so for a multitude of reasons we need to we need to move start moving forward on but the final comment here is you've had the public discussion you've started it it comes as no surprise and it should not be a surprise for anyone

actually i wish i had had the time to put something together but we're going to have to pull we'll get the specs and we'll we'll actually drive them or mail them to we will have something before you um one thing i kind of i want to throw out there the chief emailed about potential opportunity um a grant for generator replacement is that right and we know you can't use arpa or any other federal fund as you're matching funds for a grant that whether it's heartburn rate dance um but i i believe i don't think we put any money in it this year but i believe we have a matching

um that has money in it so we would need to have gina or whatever look at tree i'm pretty sure that we have a matching it i'm pretty sure it's over ten thousand um because every once in a while there's a warrant to put some money into it so we should look we should check and see if we actually have an account with some money in it and then we can move forward on that grain application for the generator okay

be going out over the next few weeks i think we have to do it by the end of may and we will have them out there in a timely fashion one question on spirit of america recommendations can we get like an input sheet on that as well and i know we've done something in the past on that but i think when do we have that was that in the past no um it came to me by an email like what it's something we've done in the past i know like um

i thought it would be skipping a year or two because it's been a while yeah like i think like we had some some people from the amvats got it you know i think in 2019 i believe the last one they presented before so just you know like what is it what's the criteria what who should we like what

i'm sorry to report that lack of volunteers will be though memorial parade okay on that same subject matter lisbon is having a parade freeport's having a parade we've been invited as the durham fire department to provide an engine and crew in freeport um so if town members want to be represented and go to a uh important memorial day parade we will have representation in freeport it'll be good to put the newsletter upcoming that that's happening

push it but we'll still get it well we know we do know from experience that you got to run those things right you can't just sit idle because meet house road have we done anything engineering is working on okay all right any other questions for mitch

how about comment nobody's here for a comment this week i got a quick tell me oh comment about trash because i had a couple people reach out to me this year yeah i was going to bring that up later too good and myself included um there seems to be a different maybe a regime train change or something in the local pickup so like a standard barrel that we advertised out here from pine tree if you fill that up by in the past that was gone now they're selecting maybe two or three bags depending upon their weight and they're leaving everything else with a nice green note on it or if you forgot your tag or to pick your tag who off they'll just leave your trash so i don't know what transpired that all of a sudden this is their new policy but um i think people should be aware that that's their new policy if in fact it is or if it's just some rogue trash folks running around that are now picking up oh well

i guess i was going to bring that up too and i i sent an email to mitch and he's going to he's got a call in because somebody have you got a paper charger called they haven't returned yeah but i do want to clarify it's it's um it's not casella's policy it is technically what our policy is and it's been yeah no no question no question that's not a policy but it's just now it's being maybe more force than it has in the past and it just transpired i agree and i yes it was like all of a sudden there's like some new guys right probably in training and here's durham's policy and they're just following the correct way then so what's very true what's very true right now is that um our policy and our citizen expectation and long-time enforcement are not aligned right not even close so i think we we will probably need to provide some you know some clarification to uh casella on you know kind of you know what we expect in terms of

enforcement or not i'm not all right the person i got in touch with is getting a hold of the first line supervisor who handles the roots and i want to ask those questions but you helped clarify it because i thought those were contract are those contractual policies or do they just simply comply with your policy well and now we need to say no that's our policy you're looking to change that no i think we we do a tag system and the tags are for basically up to 25 pounds and that could be on a single bag it could be on a barrel that has like three or four kitchen bags in it you know um it's not a tag per bag no matter what size the bag is it's definitely not that but you can have 10 25 pound bags yeah if you want to buy the tags that's so every household in durham is eligible um not everybody takes them but is eligible for 26 tags a year if you need more than that you can buy them with three dollars each

here at the town office and the theory behind that is that if you generate more trash you should pay more um pay as you throw money right so but the problem is as rich pointed out the the enforcement is not really down there um and then we but we have to be careful about we can't just say ah don't enforce it because the town voted for that system in the principle of of uh people generating more trash using more tags so i think what we have to make sure they understand is that um we uh the 25 pound you know per tag thing and then i think we also want to say probably like we don't want trash being left behind unless somebody is like a habitual offender you know like yeah i i think also though i think one thing to note i mean it's it's i agree with kevin and it's really not bad enforced especially to the level that we've seen in the past week um but in the past i understood it even more so why they would enforce it

because we were basically paying a set price correctly if i'm wrong and then a couple of years ago we went to a scaled price that actually can be ratcheted up so why they would do that now when they would actually make more money and not in the past doesn't make any sense to me that was a question i think it's always been a tonnage thing though i think it just became more visible i just don't remember it being a floating target per se from a budget standpoint we used to have one specific budget plus dumping we have a cap right and then if we went over that there was it was just a cap but we late i think it was two and a half years the last contract yeah correct

we typically use yeah and that's what they base the contract and anything plus or minus would be at a higher rate because of the recycling component of it there's no longer which is weird because it'll take your recycling you can put you can put the garage full of recycling actually across the town more per ton recycling than regular trash yeah which is kind of weird so i will i've already got to call it as the chair said but this is good information because at this point we have a picture of someone who has a barrel and then the barrel is a bag with a tag and and i didn't send you that picture but i was one of those folks and so on one day if they turned around and said well we've pulled three bags out that's 75 pounds worth that that that whole container had more than 25 pounds we look they're lucky

probably up until last week haven't been putting tags on their trash since and now they're having to which is great but the fact that you just draw a hard line and saying in one week is what the issue is right and i think that yeah that's that's the only issue i i have no problem with the enforcement i have no problem with the weight limits i have no problem with that it's just when you don't forewarn anybody and then you just cut off and basically that's we've got trash all over the town and people's stuff doesn't get picked up that's my problem as we address this it'll be i think we need to get what they're doing on the street and people's expectations a lot right so that so it might be you say hey okay just remind everybody this is the policy this was what town voters approved so this is the direction that we're giving casella you know so you might find and you need to use more tags than you have in the

past because they are going to be a little bit more aware right is it the board's intended way that the written policies that you have created over time no container should be any greater than 25 pounds which i think is fair because the workers comp injury yeah but regardless of the number that you have out in the front yard they all must be tagged and if it's a container rigid container or whether it be a bag it has to have a tag on it is that your intent because if i give them a gray area we're going to be back here again in another few weeks having another discussion and i want to be very clear obviously the whole thing's a great

screw you and left my trash there for an extra week and then i filled up the bag it was way more than 25 pounds i took it all the next week then the second time i called they sent somebody out that afternoon um but i think you know the rules are out by 7am [Music] 25 pounds indicator i don't know how they weigh them uh well that's that's the issue is part and that's why that's that's the issue i have is is even your 7 a.m i mean it used to be out by 7 a.m they used to come habitually at a specific time they changed people now that i mean my trash gets picked up at 6 30. 6 45 so and i'm right around the corner reviews the most difficult task for anybody is to take the policy maker's decision and then fuzzy it up a little bit for the people who have to implement it there's there's a sheep a small way and i think so it's your intent to follow the policy that you said that's all i need to know because if

that's what you want then i'm going to say okay boys and girls who are doing the pickup how lenient do you want to be because it's like for example we advertise them right there you got two casella dumpsters which they don't have more comp issues because they can put it on their truck and it lifts it forward yes so some people have those now that lately they're trying to figure out i mean that barrel already probably weighs close to 20 pounds sort of trying to figure out for the layperson like how much trash do i get in here when for at least this 18 years i've been living here you put something in there you put a tag on it they would take it on our website right now and it's not the actual part but we do there is a statement here the maximum weight allowance is 25 pounds per trash bag or trash can a standard 32 gallon trash can usually holds three typical 13 gallon kitchen garbage bags so you know use that as

like your benchmark like you've got a 32 gallon which is just again standard and that thing's full i think you you call that 25 pounds unless you're like filling in with you know a home that okay some of the feedback typically

unlimited right so people can put all the recycling out that they want yeah the problem with that was now people are putting trash on their recycling yes you know what i mean and the other issue is i've got three bags material no issue of recycling is trash roughly 13 pounds for the half so i put all three in and technically they're saying it's 39 pounds so they'll take the two bags and leave the last one that's what happened that's what recently

the bronx or something like every trash can out there then i get it leave it but especially going into the summer yeah we do not want trash left behind you know if that will create more problems than running down a habitual offender with their taxes so

trash have you grabbed a drink you got to stick around and grab the trash if it doesn't have to stick around they get one warning next week they don't have a sticker the tag system was is was approved and voted to tell me so that takes a towel meeting to change it to buy the tags but what i'm suggesting is the working policy for the contractor is

if they put in more than two tagged bags into a barrel then maybe the public needs to realize that they need to include only two bags that are tagged in the barrel and put the rest of the bags the tag the bags won't be individually tagged the barrel somebody like what i do is tap the barrel you fill the barrel and tag the barrel that's right or i wrap it on the top bag that's in the barrel but some people push it down so they can get as much into that and i understand that and that may be the issue that i just need i i'm not saying it's not the issue i'm saying it is the issue all i'm saying is there's been a shift in the past week that we didn't have all these issues i mean i i probably just in my neighborhood alone i had three four people come up to me baseball three four people come up to me this past week was an issue that's all i'm saying this one this one was definitely not just a facebook issue

this one people actually called yes people called on this that's good that they're calling and letting you know firsthand the elected officials i just to me i know nothing is ever black and white no and it's not the policy it's i think so every time in the state has issues with whatever their trash program is special bags or whatever all right so i will report back thanks thank you you'd like to know how many did a lot of people call them directly as well if they had an idea i might just i first heard of it through the grapevine yeah because it came out by people who produce that information it's a blog or something i don't i'm just curious how much you know we may have heard some of it but they may have heard a lot more the gentleman i called said oh rick you guys enjoy them are great to deal with and everything this is the first time hearing this i know a few people did call them i can't i can't obviously tell you how

many people but i know there was some people okay especially this past week and we have in the past because we used to direct people hey you have a problem with your you know rather than how many you're dealing with hey why don't you at least that was what this board is exactly why don't you feel free to give them the number if you saw what happened let me find out from their perspective of what is what that change about and why yeah it may be gorgeous just this time

new hire following what he read in the policy book you know all those same lines you have a new code officer i would take a soft line starting out just yeah yeah exactly good point we have three applications that came through

five business days i am checking the zip recruiter to see if we can set up a similar people go to that then they go to our website and you know the rest of the story lisbon is still having difficulties getting a town manager and it's happening throughout the whole state itself it's not only at the town management level town clerks are becoming a premium town finance people are becoming a premium and private sector is in the position of offering far more perks and dollars than we could ever think of offering but it's and quite frankly it's it's an employee opportunity people are really seeing this

that's thank you um as far as our nominees for our hiring and was everybody on board and accepted that we've heard nothing negative and everyone should have gotten our letter of yes you're in no you're not i made sure that happened that same week and let everyone help so nobody said hey no change my mind they haven't told me or the ladies up front usually i hear about it if the ladies get it

widow three applications at this point no i think if you're going to meet you have at least six or nine applications in hand to look at to make it worthwhile for yourselves and the citizens who are part of that process i think i i don't disagree with you but in today's market you may never get six or nine so i mean if you have anything that's worth reviewing leave one out of the three and maybe you to do so because you might not meet those numbers like you might have in the past you may not want to lose that person either well you might i don't know obviously i don't know if you're bible candidates yeah i mean at least have one bible candidate i would shake bush at this point if you would like is there a date that you'd like to meet i'll get the other citizen members and we'll do that and take full advantage and use it as a child run

their resumes or interest to that particular committee and said who do you guys think do you want to convene then go from that standpoint yeah i mean it might there might be some value in um like let's say for the sake of argument maybe one of those three is like really great and i wouldn't want to especially in the current environment potentially lose that candidate because we're waiting around for other you know for a certain number of candidates i think you know there's nothing that says we have to hire somebody out of that pool of three so you could you know run them by the committee and see what they think you know they're going to do the yes no maybe thing they might say you know what we don't see anybody here that we think is worthy of going on or they might say you know what we think this one has potential we should talk further with that one and would okay given that scenario

consider that i would not want to make copies and have those floating around outside of this building i think i understand the rationale and i agree with it so is wednesday the 25th or thursday the 26th of may a good night for every the three who were the initial screeners

so 26 should be i should be back in the morning but okay so the thursday the 26th we might have to do a look at them and if we want to do something right i mean yeah that's right you do the initial screen all right that's good and actually the initial screen is just the three citizens and you right although with only three i might expand that yeah i'd like to have the three select board members yeah uh the more fingerprints on it in this room the better yeah and so what time do you want to do that for the 26th uh what's convenient for you folks dinner time at 6 30 i think it's good to set that up because that's still two weeks away so you you set that as like an initial review and you might get some more applications between now and then you can also throw into the mix you know so it's good to actually put a date out there at least start reviewing may 26th call the time i'm flexible at this point

i want to work around seriously yeah the 600 is fine early it's fine too but so yeah you'll round up the committee members and it will be done to that upgrade next week early next week all right entertain um motion on the consent agenda

as ready all in favor upcoming meetings and town news actually what we just kind of you just took care of blue number eight on the water so we look we think the first town manager hiring meeting will be may 26th yes at 6

30 pm here at the town office for an initial review of whatever applications we have at that point um and that's not a number yeah i think that nine plus one plus one no since it's only three if it grows beyond that you get a judgment call you know if it gets you know if there's a fake pile i just don't want a thousand applications that don't have relevance either right right it doesn't do any good right yeah all right so we have number nine is oath of office this is like wave three and tonight we have the host uh for uh janet bowie an interim tax collector for our new code enforcement officer for the chief and the roles that he fills animal control and eureka center so i'll entertain a motion to approve the oaths as presented so josh moves seconds all in favor five zero good so everybody needs to sign a little sign party tonight um

pursuant to mrs4056a