Select Board Meeting ~ June 28, 2016

2016-06-28 · Select Board · 54:06 · watch on YouTube →

A Select Board meeting in late June 2016, recorded from several minutes before the call to order. The board accepted an amended consent agenda, heard the telecommunications committee's requests on the town website and IT, authorised a switch of the town's telephone service to FairPoint, and set the year's tax commitment at a mill rate of 18.8. It then took reports from the fire department, code enforcement, the town administrator and the road commissioner, covering a cell tower appeal, a stop work order on Meadow Road, a failed standby generator, the reopening of the bridge on 11 July and the summer's culvert, chip sealing and paving programme. The recording ends as a motion to go into executive session on a personnel matter is put to a vote.

What was discussed

1. 0:02
   Pre-meeting talk about the minimum wage question

   Before the meeting was called to order, board members argued over a minimum wage increase, one saying higher wages get spent on groceries and light bills rather than sitting in investment accounts, another that prices rise and they get no pay raise themselves. A member who had waited tables for years said she could not get her head around applying it to tipped employees, because customers who know a server earns twelve or fourteen dollars an hour will tip less.

2. 0:02
   Pre-meeting question about what the tax options cost a taxpayer

   A member asked what the difference between the three tax commitment options meant for an individual taxpayer, and was told the town did not have those figures to hand.

3. 0:02
   Free mapping software found in house

   Josh Libby had found QGIS, described as one of the best free GIS programs, and was working with it rather than buying Global Mapper at about $500. Members joked about the draft map on screen and about erasing complainers' roads from the town's GIS.

4. 0:02
   Call to order

   The chair called the meeting to order, noted a quorum with four of five selectmen present, and asked everyone to rise for the pledge of allegiance.

5. 5:02
   Amendments to the agenda

   Candy (?) asked to talk about members of the Historic District Commission, added as item 6D. The MMA official ballot for the Legislative Policy Committee was added under action and discussion, and the minutes of 7 June were added to the consent agenda.

6. 5:02
   Androscoggin County budget committee nomination

   A member drew attention to item E4, a letter from the Androscoggin County Commissioners about nominating the district's budget committee. Attendance is required this year rather than voting in absentia, the meeting is at 6:30 p.m. at the county building in Auburn, and as many board members as possible were asked to go.

7. 5:02
   Telecommunications committee: the town website

   The committee had met and Jeff Leighton (?) sent a letter of requests. The first was that the company that built the town website is unresponsive and the site, running on a version of WordPress about five releases behind, needs replacing; the town administrator was gathering quotes for different splits of work between the vendor and town staff.

8. 10:08
   What a new website would cost

   A member suggested software such as Expression Web, costing a few hundred dollars, and was told the figure under discussion for a company to do the work was around $20,000. Someone who used to teach the subject at Central Maine Community College offered to help, and the board asked the administrator to come back with realistic numbers.

9. 10:08
   Backups, passwords and ransomware

   Josh Libby said he would come in at the weekend to set up backups and start a KeePass database to consolidate the passwords currently on sticky notes around the building, then work with Burgess (?) the following week to install it. He argued the cost was worth it because towns hit by CryptoLocker either pay the ransom or start from scratch, whereas a good backup lets you delete the bad files and restore.

10. 10:08
    Wiring the Eureka Community Center

    The committee asked to go ahead with wiring the community centre to make it a viable alternative for meetings and events. The cost was expected to come out of the hardware budget line, which had plenty left.

11. 10:08
    Summer assistant for the public information work

    The committee asked to set aside $1,000 for a summer helper, 100 hours at $10 an hour, because the public information technician's time was being taken up by meetings that had run about one a week instead of three a month. The administrator said the money could be covered from the public information technician line at the average monthly spend.

12. 10:08
    FairPoint telephone offer

    The administrator reported back on questions from the previous meeting: the town can keep its existing lines and numbers, and the three-year contract carries a termination fee of $200 in the first year, $100 in the second and $50 in the third. The price is $20 a line for the three years, about $26.50 a line with taxes across eight lines, which the board said was cheaper than Comcast; the town decided against going the VoIP route for now.

13. 15:14
    Vote on the telephone switch

    A motion was made and seconded to authorise the town administrator to move forward with switching telephone service to FairPoint.

14. 15:14
    Tax commitment: three mill rate options

    The board was given three two-page packets with the mill rate highlighted on each. Asked what the difference meant on a $100,000 house, the administrator calculated about $130 more a year at 18.7, $140 at 18.8 and $150 at 18.9, and put the increase from 17.4 to 18.8 at about 8%.

15. 15:14
    The overlay and what it is for

    The overlay on the middle option was put at about 1.68%, down from 2.42% the year before. The board was told the overlay exists to cover abatements and non-payment, and should not be used as a way of building the undesignated fund balance, which belongs in the budget instead.

16. 20:27
    Mill rate set

    A member moved option B, described as a mill rate of 18.8, a little over an 8% increase. One member remarked that it at least stayed out of double digits.

17. 20:27
    Historic District Commission membership

    Members who have stopped attending will be sent letters ending their membership under a bylaw treating failure to attend three consecutive meetings without an excuse approved by the commission as abandonment of the position. Cliff Peterson (?) had come to one meeting in his whole time as an alternate, Corey Miller (?) had said family responsibilities prevented her continuing but had not resigned, and Seth Koig (?) has been deployed to Afghanistan for a year and will be brought back on when he returns. The board was told no motion was needed because it is in the bylaws, and that appointments to replace them would follow.

18. 20:27
    Historic house survey

    Sarah reported the survey has reached about the 75 oldest houses in town and is aiming at 100. Ruth produced a list of houses oldest to newest from the tax records, Donna is helping resolve cases where the taxpayer lives out of state, photographs have begun, and a second training session with Maine Preservation was due that Thursday.

19. 20:27
    MMA Legislative Policy Committee ballot

    The ballot carried one name and asked for two votes, so the board looked for a write-in. Josh Libby said he was usually working when the committee meets and had already done a term, but agreed to be written in and to ask his employer to work with him; the meetings run about two hours.

20. 25:51
    Fire department report: the gear extractor

    The chief was excused and Diana attended to answer questions. Other quotes had been obtained for the gear extractor and the only one close to the cost of repairing the existing machine was a 20-pound unit the chief did not think would do the job, so he recommended repairing it and applying for a grant for a replacement later. The chief also flagged coverage for the Fourth of July week.

21. 25:51
    Board of Appeals upholds a cell tower permit

    The code enforcement officer reported that the Board of Appeals had heard an appeal the previous night by abutters against the Planning Board's conditional use permit for a cell tower on Pinkham Brook Road, and had upheld the permit. He said he sympathised with the abutters' worry about property values, noted that the principal appellant worked for Verizon, and praised the Board of Appeals' professionalism.

22. 25:51
    Comprehensive plan committee and in-house mapping

    The comprehensive plan committee had its first round, elected officers and went home with training material. With Josh Libby's help the town downloaded a free GIS program, which should save the map development cost usually built into a comp plan and give the committee visual aids for subdivisions, conserved land and farmland.

23. 25:51
    Why the current maps are inadequate

    The code enforcement officer said the existing maps are rudimentary with poor transparencies. The resource protection district shown in dark green combines the flood zone, the Natural Resources Protection Act resource protection zone, the shoreland zone and further conserved land the town added, and it has been very hard for the Planning Board and permitting authorities to work out where those individual lines intersect.

24. 31:01
    Meadow Road stop work order

    The code enforcement officer met an engineer and a soils engineer at the Meadow Road property where a stop work order had been issued, and they appear to have a fix. He expected the paperwork setting out what the contractor must do that week or early the next, after which the stop work order could be lifted.

25. 31:01
    Generator failed in the power outage

    The administrator reported a power outage the previous day at about 4:15 that took out much of the town, during which the town's generator did not start. The technician found it had no antifreeze, and the level kept dropping after he filled it, so he was returning to recheck it; separately someone had finally been found to look at the air conditioning on the other side of the building, which does not work.

26. 31:01
    Administrator's absence on 9 August

    The administrator asked to be excused from the 9 August selectmen's meeting or to attend by Skype from her hotel at Sunday River, on account of a convention. The board saw no reason not to excuse her, provided the packets and agenda were ready.

27. 31:01
    Bridge reopening on 11 July

    An email from the Department of Transportation set the bridge opening for 11 July at 1:00 p.m. as a public event with a podium and speakers, at which Mr Parker (?) would drive across the new bridge and back across the Durham Bridge. Another layer of pavement is still to be laid, and the board discussed who would speak for the town, with the road commissioner and the chair both having work commitments that morning.

28. 36:14
    Historical material for the bridge opening

    The organisers had asked for historic information. A member had found the Massachusetts act that created the original bridge, a toll bridge, and said the Lisbon Historical Society holds many pictures; he had contacted Durham's own historical society.

29. 36:14
    Culvert replacement and slip lining

    The road commissioner said all the covers have been replaced on Runaround Pond and Rabbit roads except two, and he is getting a price from the Ted Berry Company for slip lining one of them, though he expects to replace it if the cost is close. One culvert by the two big maple trees on Runaround Pond Road, number nine, is about seven feet down; work was being held off for forecast lightning and should finish in a couple more working days.

30. 36:14
    Tree work, stolen firewood and field changes

    The tree work is finished. Someone had been taking the wood belonging to the resident with the maple trees, which was resolved by having it delivered to her house as the road commissioner had negotiated. The crew is also adjusting ditching where some sections drained better than others and adding superelevation on some curves.

31. 36:14
    Roof RFP for the public works building

    The road commissioner put the roof request for proposals in front of the board, and said it could go on the MMA website and the town website once they were satisfied with it.

32. 41:35
    Roof RFP terms and drip edge specification

    The board noted the RFP reserves the right to reject any and all bids, so putting it out does not commit the town to having the work done. They went back and forth over whether the existing drip edge is white or plain aluminium, agreed white would only cost a little more, and agreed the road commissioner could change the specification if he found otherwise on site.

33. 41:35
    State inspection of the public works building

    An inspector arrived looking for the fire department, found the chief out, and inspected the road commissioner's building instead. The findings were a broken electrical panel cover, a missing light cover upstairs, paintbrushes stored in a freezer with food, unlabelled breakers in the cold storage panel and a missing product label on the parts washer, plus training records the commissioner has since retrieved; the inspector said the town did better than most.

34. 41:35
    County emergency management equipment list and crack sealing

    The Androscoggin County Emergency Management Agency had been waiting some time for the town's list of equipment, used to work out which town has what to share in an emergency, and that has now been sent. Coastal Road Repair (?) did crack sealing on Auburn Pownal Road for $4,800, cheaper than the town could do it, and the road commissioner wants to build that into an annual programme of a set number of feet a year.

35. 47:26
    Cable trench and chip sealing schedule

    The cable company has laid new cable along Runaround Pond Road and the town needs to dig an 80-foot trench for it, after which the roadside clutter can go and the ditching becomes a permanent fix. Chip sealing of Auburn Pownal Road and Stackpole Road was set for that Thursday, with a contractor to do the Stackpole shoulders afterwards.

36. 47:26
    Paving budget and what is left

    The road commissioner said $285,000 was budgeted for surface treatment and paving for the year, gave a sealing figure of $7,666, and put the running total at about $256,000 once the shoulder work is done. He proposed spending the remainder on cold mix shim, for instance on the section of Bowie Hill Road turning off Davis Road where the first couple of thousand feet needs both hands on the wheel.

37. 47:26
    Bond spending and start of the major road work

    Ruth printed out what has been spent to date against the road bond, which covers all the culverts. Equipment is expected the following week with major work on those roads starting around the first of the week after, subject to final changes still being negotiated.

38. 47:26
    State potholes and a missing intersection warning

    The state filled only one of the potholes at a state intersection, and only about half full, so the board agreed to ask again and fix them itself if the state does not. A resident had reported an intersection with no warning sign on a long straightaway that looks like open field, and after the road commissioner called the Department of Transportation it agreed to look at putting intersection-ahead signs 500 feet either side; several members described near head-on collisions there caused by drivers passing lines of cars.

39. 52:36
    Resident's quitclaim deed

    A resident who had paid a large sum a couple of weeks earlier asked whether his release would be issued that night. He was told it was in the consent agenda already voted, and that the board only had to sign the quitclaim before it went to the county.

40. 52:36
    Upcoming meetings and holiday closure

    Regular selectmen's meetings were announced for Tuesday 12 July and Tuesday 26 July at 6:30 p.m., and the town office was to be closed on Monday 4 July for Independence Day.

41. 52:36
    Executive session

    A motion was made and seconded to go into executive session on a personnel matter, citing 1 M.R.S.A. section 405(6)(A). The recording cuts off as the vote is called.

What was decided

• 5:02
  Accept the consent agenda as amended, adding the minutes of 7 June, the Historic District Commission membership item as 6D and the MMA Legislative Policy Committee ballot under action and discussion. Moved and seconded, and the chair announced the motion carried.passed
• 10:08
  Post a summer assistant position of 100 hours at $10 an hour, about $1,000, to be covered from the public information technician budget line. Moved, and the chair announced the motion carried.passed
• 15:14
  Authorise the town administrator to move forward with switching the town's telephone service to FairPoint. Moved and seconded, and the chair announced the motion carried.passed
• 20:27
  Adopt option B of the tax commitment, setting the mill rate at 18.8, an increase of a little over 8%. Moved and seconded, and the chair announced the motion carried.passed
• 20:27
  Cast the town's MMA Legislative Policy Committee ballot for the town manager of Wayne, Aaron Kstowski (?), and write in Josh Libby, selectman of Durham. Moved and seconded, and the chair announced the motion carried with one abstention.passed
• 20:27
  No motion was made on removing Historic District Commission members who have stopped attending. The board was told the bylaws already provide for it, so letters will go out and replacement appointments will come back to the board later.outcome unclear
• 25:51
  Let the fire department go ahead with repairing the gear extractor rather than buying a replacement. No vote was taken: the amount, given as about $2,737, falls below the $5,000 threshold in the purchasing policy that requires a full select board vote, and no member objected.passed
• 31:01
  Excuse the town administrator from the 9 August selectmen's meeting, or let her attend by Skype, provided the packets and agenda are ready. Agreed informally rather than by motion.passed
• 41:35
  Issue the request for proposals for the public works building roof, with the road commissioner free to amend the drip edge specification if the existing material differs from the drawing. A vote was called on it but the result is not audible on the recording.outcome unclear
• 52:36
  Go into executive session on a personnel matter under 1 M.R.S.A. section 405(6)(A). Moved and seconded, and the vote was called, but the recording ends before any result is stated.outcome unclear

An outcome reads "unclear" where the recording does not state it plainly. The recogniser drops short words, and "the motion does not carry" is one missing word from its opposite.

Motions the minutes record

The town's own written account of what was decided, taken from select_board_minutes_6-28-20161.txt. It owes nothing to the recording or to a model: the clerk typed it, with the vote. Where the summary above claims a decision this list does not carry, the summary is the part to doubt.

• Approve the Consent Agenda as Amendedcarried 4-0

  Moved by Sarah Hall, seconded by Joshua Libby

• post a part-time summer position for a summer assistantcarried 4-0

  Moved by Sarah Hall, seconded by Joshua Libby

• Authorize the AA/TA to move forward with the switch to Fairpoint Communicationscarried 4-0

  Moved by Sarah Hall, seconded by Joshua Libby

• approve “Option B”, a mil rate of 0.018800, (an 8% increase), setting the tax mil rate of $18.80 per thousand dollars of valuationcarried 4-0

  Moved by Joshua Libby, seconded by Sarah Hall

• vote for Erin Chrostowsky, Town Manager of Wayne and write in Joshua Libby, Selectman for Durhamcarried 3-0

  Moved by Jeffrey Wakeman, seconded by Sarah Hall

• Authorize the Road Commissioner to Advertise the RFP in the usual manner for the roofing project at the DPW building, changing the color of the drip edge from white to galvanized if desiredcarried 4-0

  Moved by Joshua Libby, seconded by Mark Blake

• the Board into Executive Session #1 Pursuant to Title #1, M.R.S.A. ss. 405(6)(A) – Personnel preceded by a brief recess at 7:23 p.m. Chairman Wakeman Announced the Board came out of Executive Session at 7:32 p.m. ACTION …

  Moved by Jeffrey Wakeman, no seconder recorded; no outcome recorded

• the Town enter into a contract agreement with Calvin Beaumier for Road Commissioner services as edited with dates and amounts Amendedcarried 4-0

  Moved by Jeffrey Wakeman, seconded by Joshua Libby

• Approve the Road Commissioner Services Agreement with Pownal and Appendix “A” subject to Approval by Pownal as revised June 28th 2016carried 4-0

  Moved by Sarah Hall, seconded by Joshua Libby

• the Board into Executive Session Pursuant to Title #1, M.R.S.A. ss. 405(6)(A) at 7:35 p.mcarried 4-0

  Moved by Jeffrey Wakeman, seconded by Joshua Libby

• Adjourn at 7:47 p.mcarried 4-0

  Moved by Joshua Libby, seconded by Mark Blake

Worth knowing

• 20:27
  The board set the mill rate at 18.8, up from 17.4. On a $100,000 house that is about $140 more a year, an increase of a little over 8%; the overlay built into it is about 1.68%, down from 2.42% the previous year.
• 31:01
  The bridge reopens on 11 July at 1:00 p.m. as a public event with speakers, though a further layer of pavement is still to be laid.
• 25:51
  The Board of Appeals upheld the Planning Board's conditional use permit for a cell tower on Pinkham Brook Road against an appeal by abutters.
• 31:01
  The town's standby generator failed to start during a power outage the previous afternoon because it had no antifreeze, and the level kept dropping after the technician refilled it.

Motion language found in the transcript

Located by pattern matching, with no model involved: "I move that", "I'll second", "all those in favour". This is an independent check on the summary above: 5 passages of motion language, against 10 decisions summarised.

Elsewhere

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