TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ June 28, 2022

tonight's select board meeting 620 22 a call to order um everyone is here with the exception of uh chairman nato he was has an excuse absence but we do have a quorum could we all please rise from 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

yeah we're going to move item 7 to in front of item 3 we are going to take the setting the tax rate for 2022 billing prior to the reports from the fire chiefs road commissioner in favor i don't know if we needed to go for that but that's official okay so setting the tax rate for our 2022 billing um we are gonna go and um call miss donna hayes our tax assessor up for uh her expertise on this matter hi hello um so what you have in front of you tonight is actually one choice of tax rate we picked up 10 million dollars in new value this year which is a combination of cmp new england clean energy connect lots of new houses new subdivisions so it's it made a good impact which is great so with the combination of myself doing valuation and town manager doing the appropriations and revenues if we kept the tax rate exactly as it was last year we would also have a 135 000 overlay

our overlays tend to be last year it was 107. 100 to 125 usually um i guess that's about it we are at 80 percent of market value our our homesteads are going to be 20 000 this year veterans are 4 800 i also apply the percentage of market value to personal property tree growth central maine power anything else that comes in that's not real estate

and our and our current uh mill rate is 2070 2070 yes i think you're accustomed to having a choice of a low medium and a high change correct after reviewing with donna the proposed tax rate of remaining the same we felt that that was an appropriate way to go but we're actually increasing the amount of money that we take in because of the increased value of our property over the last year i think at this point everyone becomes a winner in the process the fact is that people even if they remember what the tax rate was for the previous tax period we're reminding them now that is remaining steady and it allows you to handle any discounts and abatements that may come under appeal and at the end of next year that is a way you will also replenish your undesignated fund balance which gives you a healthy reserve should you ever have a catastrophe and as has been pointed out in the economy in general

some of that extra money may have to go in to help support some of the energy related issues of our community going forward as far as projects as calvin has pointed out many times he gets x amount of dollars he planned on this to do 10 miles he only got this amount of money it may only be seven and a half miles he brings the project back to meet the appropriation at the time so all things considered you're moving forward and you're stable thank you

we have recommended to you retain the tax rate as it has been for two years in a row this would be the second year and we have signatures where the blue lines are and there's a blue pen that you have to sign just to give us the official okay and we will move forward from there

on to 2000 us to maintain the current tax mill rate of twenty dollars and seventy cents do we have a second any discussion what was the overlay last year donna 107 107 yes that might cause a little bit of inflation there right yeah for

it lower but i think under the circumstances this is more than appropriate all those in favor thank you very much thank you thank you good work jan any commentary from the deputy treasurer i don't have anything thank you folks

going to um swap out but we just really just moved up item number seven so our next step will be now item number four which is reports from the fire chief and the road commissioner no commission is here but our fire chief is vote commission should be showing up no problem

about once a month that we report but uh due to economic times and changing and whatnot it's been every every meeting i i told you last time we were going to implement our nfpa 3000 that's the active shooter protocol countrywide that we go to there's been no threats there's been no chatter it's just being prepared so we had a training on that and it's more than active shooter it's it's called asher active shooter hostile event and that could be anything so the department's been briefed and trained on that um and then the following thursday which was last week we did walk through the school so we had an alarm recently there we talked about the panel strategies and tactics trucks sprinklers and what would happen if an event happened at the school so just due diligence on today's climate and world and unfortunately you have to do it but but we are ready uh just know we have a active safety committee it's currently

led by chief st michelle retired chief saint michelle who looks over policies and procedures gear gear inspection keeps us honest uh we've been working with the town i.t on phones and cable and going back and forth on all that i'm glad calvin just showed up i need on the record a thank you to the public works and calvin they were doing the yellow lines and spraying the lines and that's important to us not about parking but that's what lines up all those trucks in the bays and that's what prevents them from going through the back side so very important and i appreciate his due diligence um i think i posted that but uh it's the little things in life so it's yellow painting lines really helps something of interest i was turned on by one of my guys the state of maine unclaimed money if you've ever gone on that uh two of them were under the durham fire department and that totaled 619.86 that we did get back gave it to

janet in two checks and i think she put it in uh general fund very difficult to do you think it would be easy but as the fire chief without an address uh i had you know notaries and and firstborn and whatnot but but we just so the townspeople know due diligence on every penny that is owed to us so and i'll be looking for that in my my budget next year but 619 um get you a tank of gas you know unfortunately it's a i got a thousand dollar diesel bill wagon with the uh interim on the opera funds just sort of heating and cooling and whatnot i think we can all feel it in here tonight um i'll let uh mitch talk about trek across maine the bicyclist i know that the chair the board chair was in it i know we followed him just in case in an ambulance wherever he went that's a joke that's a joke diesel prices we did not fall him um but there was no issues for us we did put on extra staff one extra person just in

case scaring with the siren i hope well casey fell over hiring new members so we just took one from the conservation commission so in today's climate we're still attracting members to our small fire department which was one of my goals and that's just an attestment to the to the townspeople really uh and today i met with the lisbon fire chief last um we'll be helping out i believe it's july 9th it's the moxie fest parade every year i guess we send an engine company over there for coverage the 10th you probably know is a fishing derby that's both above and below the dam so they'll they'll have boats lisbon and tops them i'm told but we'll be on standby um other than that that's all i have for you any questions

okay i'll take it thank you johnny thank you thank you chief [Music] i warmed up the crowd calvin oh i got two so i got two okay a couple of uh items from homework uh regarding stream crossing i did uh [Music] reach out to the town attorney he was on vacation he's back in the saddle tomorrow uh but his uh to ask the question about whether or not we could spend all of the money on one collard and the answer was yes from his associate but he wouldn't put in writing until jack got back and he wanted jack to do it so i said okay that was helpful so i called the mma legal department they gave me the same answer they said that the towns all over the state are in the same boat they've got money that was allocated to do a two-mile project they're only going to be able to do one because pricing and they're doing it he said this would be the same thing you're getting half the project done but it's the same project he said if you were to

go do some other intersection somewhere else that wasn't related that would be different but he said essentially you're in the same boat as about most every other town in the state so but he said he would give that to me in writing uh i called him back this week and he said he'd give it to me in rating again and i still don't have it so uh i don't know what it is but i can get it from jack if need be but i think if we back up i was waiting i think if we back up to the beginning of the state of the issue uh today got a revised bid from the contractor at 259 175

which is uh another 39 650 above the previous 54 500 increase due to the engineering changes and bottom line is you know we haven't had a contract signing prices have gone up and so they're just saying this is what they were for and that they've only been holding that bid for five days because of pricing fuel and things like that so i just got this today while i was in the chair getting a crown and my tooth my phone went off and hold it oh crap i gotta finally uh i got this back before the meeting but uh so i was i'd hoped to have this done earlier but i was in the chair a lot longer than i thought so uh it doesn't appear that we would have the time this year to get this done if you look at the well i guess if you look at the attached spreadsheet that shows where we're at the short the shortfall instead of being 2000 like it was before that i could have found in-house is now 41 675 which i

can't find which means we would i assume mitch have to go to a special town meeting and raise the money if that was something the board wanted to do i don't believe there's time for that because the window of opportunity to do the stream work is only july 15th to september 30th they would have to have 10 weeks lead time to order the bridge there's there's no way we're out of time

today again this morning and he said that we could be on the list for august when this uh new round comes available there should be more funding uh and it would be a shovel ready project already permitted designed and he thinks it would go right to the front of the list but that's something i have to bring back to you which if you guys want to pursue it i could submit it doesn't cost anything but most likely it's going to cost more money if you ask again well yeah i mean when this thing started when this thing started a couple of years ago the 125 was a good number it really could get the job done now it's less than half what it really cost to get it done so that's the federal government yeah well and that's the thing i know last time you guys said well if the dep created these increases they should pay for it and it really wasn't the dep it was the army corps of engineers federal he's a dp in fact he's we don't even

require a permit but and it's it's the army corps of engineers federal that steps in and when that happens dep's hands are tied and sun's d.o.t and so is everybody else's so that's where that stands i'm assuming you guys want to uh uh pull this project for the year well you want to wait till can you bring any novocaine with you she goes your face will be swollen feels all right

are there any safety issues that we should attend to between now and whenever the project is ever initiated to protect the public in that area they're they're functioning functioning and i mean the road floods there on a frequent basis but that's been happening for 50 years so how long has it been since it did it's been a while it's been a while sometime this winter it did it once right like late late winter i think if we have a significant flood that's one of the first spots that goes under is that that and uh 125 there are you probably know the usual spots yes that goes under yeah on both sides and everybody around so yeah yeah um and that's one of the things we mentioned in the permitting that brought that up to a high scoring level so it should be uh so i guess how do we proceed with that how's the rip the all the rip rap and everything around here is holding up well because i mean it's flooded a few times since you've

repaid it i'll say the last time you you would upgrade that culprit at one point or that we need floods we have to go down and put some more rocks along the edge of the pavement yeah yeah i don't know where you did that just do again so it's probably maybe last spring or last summer and you did that yeah correctly yeah so so how do we proceed any suggestions

well kevin just for clarification correct me if i'm wrong but this is somewhat expedited because grant funds were available it wasn't an immediate requirement or a necessity for lack of better words correct i i just went and identified some projects that would be a good candidate for these funds and that was one of them yeah that makes sense 50 match and so forth i get it no you're supposed to be 100 100 is even better but there was anonymous not mansion grant but uh you know prices have doubled so might i suggest given the circumstances that we now know that this board uh formally take a motion to direct staff to continue to monitor funding opportunities next round and to bring forth the recommendation to continue that appropriation into the next year at the next town meeting so that we can as a shovel ready project effectively look at the summer of 23 as an opportunity so we can keep the

present grant no that would go away goes away so you're really rolling the money to hold you give it yeah take it yeah yeah you're rolling the money just to hold it until it really happened i'll do it and then you know the town appropriated money right to grant money we're going to we're going to lose it right so the new round of money uh when i talked to dep uh he said these are actually the grant the the next round of funds is opera money so he said it's get federal fingers into it he said so your deadlines of getting the work done are absolute drop dead dates whereas dep has a little flexibility they said that won't be the case this time but that still gives you two years to get it done so if we're all permitted and ready to go different offer money yeah i've gotta say that's a different pile right different federal level state level we have received our second trench okay so this would be

another right so i'd make that motion to have the road commissioner review all possible grant opportunities matching opportunities and to ask at the next time meeting to uh to hold this money over now the money's in general going to be transferred over anyways because we didn't spend it so i'm assuming into the general is that correct mitch yes correct so the money's already money's already there money's already allocated for that yeah it'll be in reserve i don't it would just go in general i don't know if we could technically earmark it for that

the town meeting approved it for a specific purpose right and if you earmark it in reserve you're living up to the spirit and intent of their motion then we don't spend it go back to another town meeting or special town meeting and say we want to redirect that money to a different project altogether

designated money it's not necessarily undesignated money and once we don't spend it it would become undesignated so it's not really allocated for anything once we go to town meeting next year unless we get a repeat performance right right we have to re-request

so it's gonna have to go back and be redone as a bridge d.o.t is gonna have to get involved okay so we have a motion on the floor so let's let's address that and we can have discussion after that is there a second uh the motion on the floor now have all the discussion you want please going outside

so army corps of engineers hasn't looked at they have like the main house yes and they're the ones that determine now bridge yes both of them have to be concrete yes one will be under a bridge one will be over a bridge one will become a bridge and one will stay under the uh threshold right it won't be the right swap 20 feet is the magic number swampert will be 18.5 feet

yeah and i think that's what my my concern is as far as for lack of awards and i don't even know if we can do it as earmarking or something of that nature with this with this um with these funds simply because the whole job in total that we raise this money for as well it's been changed it's not the same thing that we raise the money for so i'd be hard-pressed to say hey we want to continue this forward when really what we ask for is not even in existence anymore it's a completely different project suppose we can use the permitting yeah to the point that you've gotten but yeah right you know what you have to do but let's do it yeah yeah i think the probably the best thing for calvin i mean this is just my opinion would be to just this money's going to probably go into undesignated and then he needs to bring up this particular or another project in tandem with it like we had the last time and

see if the town's vote to move x amount of dollars back on undesignated and designated for that and move forward that's a mouthful so any other further discussion sorry did you want to amend the um did you want to amend the motion or i don't even i don't even know how i would amend it because it like i said it's it's really we're amending our the project's amended right it's not the project that the money was allocated for is completely changed you know whether it's first it was allocated for two projects now it's down to one project so it's right for me it's yeah for me it's a completely different animal than what it really um its original intent was for when we asked voters for the money so that's what my issue is you're in your motion and seek town meeting approval by the preparation and the town meeting itself we should have a better handle on what we should or should not do with that money going forward if you do

nothing then your scenario comes into play and we it's undesignated at that point yeah yeah by that rationale though wouldn't we have to do nothing prior to that meeting that means we're not and currently right now we're really doing nothing with this money until probably next year after we have a board after we have a town meeting yeah we don't have time right yes it's half dozen right he should remain vigilant because if there's a window that opens up remember federal dollars go run every october right to september well i i don't think necessarily vigilance runs hand in hand with this project i think calvin's been pretty vigilant no matter what the process is and if funds are available for something whether it was this project or projects in the past or projects in the future if he sees money available then he'll bring it to the town i'm sure but the fact of the matter is i don't the funds that were raised for these two

projects the project's completely different project it's not the same entity the money's going to go away anyways we're not going to utilize it this year but i i i it's going to end up the same way either way it's working either way it's worded yeah so really i think the only question is is and i don't even know if this is a question mitch i've heard you obviously is

do further designs or to have that ready more so if like kelvin needed further engineering on that particular project could he use some of that money that the town has allocated but other than that that's really all we could do at this point i agree with your recommendation it is in fact the swamp road project and according to the verbal advice from mma in our own town council that means it was one article even though it was split into two it's still one article and one bottom line and as such your motion that's on the floor still has some life to it and to that extent if we need to do something else for the swamp road that's where the charges would go to and if something becomes available right take full advantage of it and hopefully your management at that time and yourselves can come to grips because you won't be able to start the project november next year but it will be prepared for the following

season right yeah we have it all together if the federal funding came through in october say then you could at least maybe prep something before winter or do something maybe yeah like i said other than new engineering which i think calvin but i mean you can't really do anything anything because time isn't there we don't buy the material the contractor does so you're really voting on something that the voters are going to have to vote on anyways yeah that's going to not it's going to be out of our hands but if something does occur in the interim that need those funds need to be expended for it's still there and it's designated for that so exactly yeah it's a placeholder yeah it allows us for you to move forward should something like that occur if not your scenario then is picked up at the march town meeting okay so we'll call the motion vote all those in favor okay and i'm against we'll go 3-1

one got those two on the border oh you guys know when you guys were looking at me a little funny started with a second it's okay i know you were we knew we know where you are so the uh paving uh brings you some more good news uh it seems nice all i got lately is fuel and paving and bridges and uh so the pavings uh right now up about 62 000 uh over what it was last this spring winter [Music] so that basically results in about 2.5 miles of road getting paved instead of three miles and that's and that that pretty much happens every year as liquid asphalt goes up and down some years we get more so i'm going to get less but so planning

section uh what bowie hill the section from the pit to stack pole stack pole from 136 up to up beyond your house on the sharp end and we had hunter hill ada and patriots so something's got to come off there and obviously it's going to be ada no it's going it's going to be

opinion it probably should be the the roads that are not the thoroughfares of the town the ones that are in better shape and those are bad shapes yeah so it's 100 so what you're saying is it's roughly 135 000 a mile and we got to shave off a half a mile yeah so the reality of math yeah exactly that's what it breaks down to i think so that's what i got on the paving um and you know that's where it is right now so and crooker said they can't even get here until august they should have been here by now can't get here till august and then they said it's probably going to be a subcontractor because they have no papers they no cruise they have no so cal just out of curio and i i don't remember the exact language but perhaps you could when we did that um we did somewhat of a for lack of a better word a price guarantee contract with crooker for the next i thought there was a three years are we still in that this is that second right

so with that said there was a specific max escalator was there not an escalator the escalator clause is a formula that is built into okay it wasn't a straight up two percent it was based off current it's the cost of liquid asphalt that's uh the market dictates on a weekly basis that changes fluctuates and so their unit price stays the same for the cost to put it down but the liquid asphalt uh if that goes up that 70 ton then becomes whatever the mathematical formula is i gotcha so the cost of labor and the cost of equipment is it's the cost of goods escalated for lack of better words the liquid asphalt they're eating everything out there they're paying their truckers all twelve dollars an hour more an hour to haul the asphalt they're paying their employees more they're paying diesel they're paying all the way around and they're eating that but they can't eat the liquid asphalt which is what all the towns do

so even the d.o.t scientology no no that's no that's perfectly reasonable i i get it i just want to i just want to refresh her on what exactly that escalator was thank you so but as they as they told me they have no they have no workers they they're down to one crew and they said in fact when they do see us in august it's going to be a life in america buddy contracting company that shows up and that's that's that's all they've got so we'll have to keep an eye on them you think you will be able to just out of curiosity and i don't want to belabor this but do you think you will be able to get the 2.6 miles in or do you think that's even going to be a struggle well i mean uh between now and august first and i mean unless liquid asphalt keeps climbing and that's that that's where we should i'm not talking about from a price standpoint i apologize for not going i'm saying from just from a a workload perspective on

crooker's end are we still going to be able to get at least 2.6 miles of the three that we anticipated they have a contract they guarantee it and they'll they'll get it done they said they'll send a sub in to do it but they're going to get it done okay so they've never let me down yet they've they've made me have a few nail biters and i get it but nobody's ever these are unprecedented i couldn't blame them if they did let you down i'll be honest but they haven't yet so okay so uh yep working on the heating and cooling i met with a contractor today here in the fire station we met with one yesterday and we have uh so i think that's i think we've got them all now and we followed your suggestion of getting quotes and in the process we wanted to make it very clear to the contractors that they must come with an electrical supplement as an example we need a whole new entry into the fire station to be

able to do the work they want to do only because they don't have an adequate supply the wiring beyond the box not an issue it's the entrance the panel itself you're out of slot so so we're still waiting for those and we have a july 1 deadline that we've put out there and because calvin has been beating the bushes we do have interest and we're hoping that we can get a party to identify with you as the lowest responsible quota and move forward with all of this but we have to also recognize how that's going to be paid for and that's a whole other discussion because i believe arpa was part and parcel of some of that payment

in your report dude just just but you're going to need to that's going to go to town meeting especially town meeting all of the arpa-related funds have to have town meeting approval and we need to be able to say project a project b project c project d now in front of you i'll jump a little bit but i thank you for reminding me one of the bullets that just came out about eligibility and it deals with the i.t component and then it has ineligible projects and it keeps reminding us and every time i see one of these notices coming through they become looser and looser and i think i figure by 2024 election

it's going to say just tell us you did the project right a bridge project underneath europa yeah yeah you would have had with the second tranche you do have money well that's what the ep told me said you can use your opera fund's time for funds he said that is approved so if you have any available you own spend you know we want to keep something i was kidding yeah and if you and you don't want to go to multiple special town meetings you want to get it all done once and be done with it

440 000 right now and that's helping our cash flow which postponed borrowing a tan for another week or two that's good so i guess my question mitch was so if the deadlines you put in the rfq you want it done by august 1st we can be flexible on the august 1st completion if that's what it's going to take to get a quote but it should be done before it snows yeah i mean this building gets very warm very quickly and i'm concerned about the staff and the alternative is if we extend that i may very well get uh pedestal fans and things to allow for the cooling to occur this side cools down but it doesn't get the cold over to that side so and if necessary shorts will be the dress of the day this side cools down yeah oh i turned it off that's the other problem so he could get the new egg and they know what you're saying so it's my day it's my desert blood if it's not a hundred i'm not hot yet so yeah because i know that some of the

contractors have been saying all of them have been saying that uh heat pumps are not available so there's a quite a lead time to get one we can lock them in i think that's the first important step they said this never happened before they said normally they could uh they said normally you could order a heat pump they'd price it today and put it in tomorrow now it doesn't surprise me i don't know if it's just they're all allocated i have a tenant that's in the heat pump business and i got a building full of them over by brunswick the ones they're telling me they can't get her mitsubishi's yeah the mitsubishi's are tough to get and that's why in the new um samsung you're gonna have to go to samsung yeah the samsungs are pretty readily available depending on what size you want is the town meeting already in motion to to the date to get the funds to pay for the project that's the question that we have to talk

later on as to when is the snipe board want to do the town meeting we discussed this two weeks ago and i i you're absolutely right for pushing it because having a town meeting in august doesn't really help us a whole lot we need to to move ahead and let the public know and quite frankly we're not the only town that's facing that issue and if 50 people show up for 500 people it's the will of the people to in the outcome but we've got to get permission to use those funds and that comes from a town meeting okay we can we can discuss that okay that's all i got thank you calvin thanks for the reminder thank you moving right along we're going to go to the town manager's report all right devon

information and devin's going to be reviewing this and there is a small but very precise memo to you that devin will go through and i have to tell you as of today my hard drive is on its last leg it makes more noise than tombs and so we've ordered an external hard drive cheap money and next week we hope to have uh transfer into it just in case that one goes but we're talking as devin will point out a movement forward and he's got the explanation i don't want to steal his thunder he's done a lot of work on this that helps identify what your costs are going to be then we can talk and this is part and parcel of my thinking because of the arpa funds and that's a town meeting approval issue as well

um so the first two pages that you have from me is stuff you've seen before just sort of cleaned up and put in other ways to look at the last two pages are the quote from bek about the air fiber system so it will be a one-time charge of a little over three grand to get that installed but it has the prerequisite of us having faster internet as well which makes it eligible for arpa yeah um so on the second page of my packet towards the bottom i have a breakdown our current yearly costs for internet and phone is eight hundred and forty seven dollars and sixty cents the option one that you see is doing the air fiber system so that will get us a sort of large one-time cost but a significantly less yearly cost as opposed to us having internet from comcast installed at eureka separately yeah and that i don't think would be a good idea anyway because the space will not be used enough to have dedicated internet make sense

with the air fiber system the only real requirements that we're going to face we need to have a clear line of sight from this building to eureka so we're going to have to cut some trees we'll try to find you know the shortest possible distance so we don't have to cut you know all the trees down

bk will do the installation for us um that's included in that three grand charge um the full breakdown of pretty much everything is listed if you needed to look at specifics i think calvin's crew would be doing the tree cutting and how much tree cutting would be involved you know i'm trying to picture this and i can't picture it how how wide would this have to be it should be functional six feet eight feet ten feet twelve bro it's as far as i'm aware it's a pretty narrow beam so it wouldn't be too much um i would say probably six feet clearances still want the branches yeah flopping around the the extreme weather conditions causing the effect that will cause the effect of the eureka center not here right right um and from all the research i've done on it it literally will take very intense weather for it to see it's housed on open type weather right yeah right so and so it's it would save us

in a year and a half we'd be we'd be saving that 3100 bucks anyway so and one of the things that i haven't shared with devon is there are times when you move forward with a project like this if it's approved you also ask for the first year operational cost to be built into the payment which would be allowable again under arpa so you pay off one year in advance and they guarantee warranty the whole nine yards and that may give you a little saving grace for a year on top of that as opposed to raising taxes to just pay the first year we can be creative

and i answered all my questions so it seems wireless you know suggest and i think this looks great is i would probably before we make an ultimate decision is just double check with calvin on the trees there's a lot of times in the town where um some of these trees it's not appropriate for our guys to cut down and we've had to sub that out so if that's the case and we do have to sub it out and they're going to be an added cost of three four i mean i never know what trees they can cost i don't know i don't know if you guys ever had a tree cut down but they get expensive um so i would just double check to make sure what we have to cut if kelvin's guys are capable of doing that or do we need to get another bid to do that and the other thing i was thinking is that if you could just limb them up and leave them and go underneath is the other option too make a canopy yeah then you know then you won't be maybe taking cold

trees and only if you're able to pull that out because the building this is kind of low building so you go 20 feet up and down again and that might that might require an arborist bucket truck where our guys wouldn't necessarily on your point yeah no you're absolutely right you know how and how long is something like that going to take i mean can we figure that out by our next meeting because i mean you've already said you want to try to do as much as we can in one meeting and it sounds like you know the hvac stuff has to get done quickly

i was about to suggest conditional approval on the part of the board subject to not having to go out to uh for tree limbing of any kind doing it in house and uh anything that we haven't exposed to you as a as a cost that would allow us to begin moving that project along if however calvin says we can't do any of that it's too dangerous then we get a quote and bring it back to you that would be the conditional approval otherwise i'll do this i thought he did yeah he said he's he'd probably right right yeah say he'd do he'd do it no matter what yeah but i think that condition placed on a motion would get it off your agenda we report the progress only from the standpoint that we're moving forward with it and we get all these things squared away i my old ears are getting tired of this phone system that i can't hear half the time in the breakup

importance of our phone and internet system even not even talking about eureka but what we already have is failing and it gets worse day by day week by week so what was the recommendation of you guys was it option one or option two i recommend option one because that is cheaper in the long run

option two is just getting comcast to install new service at eureka it it includes the same costs of internet and phones for everything else conditional motion like that but i think in these circumstances if things are as bad as you're saying i think it would be appropriate so i would i would make that motion that we conditionally approve option number one the ubiquity air fiber system

outlined in in this memo um conditional on whether or not there are other costs that need to be expended to complete the project a second any discussion yeah yes thank you sir all those in favor 4-0 thank you nice work thank you thank you thank you for doing all the research that's awesome

yeah you know everybody would go wild that doesn't have any effect on our our other contracts with combats or anything right nothing i'm aware of and you asked me to uh i might as well report it comcast has notified us it's now time to renew the franchise and no mma does not have a lead position in negotiating on behalf of towns and to their knowledge there isn't even a consortium of towns put together that go and negotiate with comcast so whether it starts while i'm here or whether it starts with the new manager once hired you're going to face a negotiation process that is very narrow in scope and we get roughly forty four thousand dollars a franchise fee for that negotiations and i think that ought to have escalators and other strategies attached to it which because of negotiation should be an executive session but i wanted to report that back to you as well

riding around durham running lines yes is that phone or is it called cable it's the lowest one and they believe it's phone i thought usually cable is a more shiny as opposed to flexible yeah and so i i'm glad to see that's happening because i've noticed phone interruptions and stuff should be a good option

is broadband right they can run broadband on there they can yeah and we can okay so is that a discussion you want to have tonight about the negotiations uh i don't think you need to have it tonight i think you should give some thought now as to what you want to get out of the negotiations we'll put a laundry list together in executive session and i will make contact with comcast they've already jay summers has made contact with me and chances are i'll i will pull together something what i'd appreciate however is that one or two of you therefore there's not a quorum sit with me for negotia with negotiations going forward uh someone who would be available daytime for that purpose so give some thought to that as well

that's our existing contract yes sir that's awesome most of it is boilerplate and you're saying it's gonna change well the only thing i would if you know any um i know you have a you know a lengthy network of connections if you know anybody who has recently maybe have gone through that and maybe could provide us with do's and don'ts for lack of better words of because i don't none of us this has never happened in my tenure on this board so i i don't even know what to begin to ask for or not to ask for contract i could ask somebody but it was yeah almost 40 years ago when they did it so that's the problem okay

writing the note no problem um the the other thing i can do is i want to take a closer look at the contract and make recommendations to you in written form that can carry through or at least be the starting point for your discussions i know that in my negotiations while i was in bridgeton we were getting ready to deal with warner time warner cable at the time and i have negotiated with time warner cable in other communities

that's what it boiled down to yeah and an access channel or something that but for the most part neither party walked away with all they wanted and that means it was a good negotiation sure are you able to share the current contract do we have that already he the guy from time warner emailed it at the end of last week i think okay all right email

know we briefly talked while calvin was here about the advertisement hvac and it's a request for quotes uh which is slightly different request for proposals and going through a formal bid process trying to expedite this and rely upon the standards in the industry for cubic feet that are being heating or cooling and electrical requirements things of that nature calvin has been doing a good job in contacting different people i don't know if the gentleman in the audience is part of that interest group or if it's something else okay but we're continually waiting for those quotes and come july 1 we'll see what we have in hand and then i'll report it to you at your july 12th meeting i believe it is pharaoh

have a part-time counter clerk on hand we lucked out great okay still working she survived janet and she survived uh jessica passed the test she actually is very well versed in areas of i.t with her master's degree right she's got the patience for customers and uh it's they're working as a team and that has immediately changed the dynamics of the office so that the counters being taken care of by this person and jessica while janet who is now getting caught up on different things including how to set the tax rate and all the other things that go with that right it's proving to be a relief valve and we will back her off on hours but right now we're at very intense points her name is cindy and she's a pleasant person to work with like the other two and ultimately you now have a staff that you can point your finger to that is trying to give customer service the goal is ultimately to open up at some point on wednesdays

for a while as well you must have some vacations coming up too you'll probably be in the fall and then you'll have to make that decision with your manager at that time good that's great news right indirectly calvin went out to look at it and then a miracle happened and there was a repair to the old city or the old town hall and union church and at the same time we're beginning to receive unofficial quotes if you will for lack of better term on replacing the whole roofing stream not the structure but the sheathing itself and that which came in i won't announce who it's from or its pricing but we are waiting to get other responses as well as an outsider i think my obligation to you is to ask the following questions not that you have to answer them tonight but these are the questions that i would be asking of any elected body who were dealing with an old building is your intention to get a return on your

investment and if so what is that return that you're expecting what are the potential uses in the future of that building or will it be a monument like a cemetery stone for the rest of your life hanging around your neck and sucking the lifeblood of money out of your treasury i have no connection to it but i see other towns are getting rid of some of their smaller buildings the cost of maintaining them with no return use to the benefit other than visual and historical value and i can't judge the historical value of that but i think these are questions that policy makers have to it probably is for this town this town it's probably the highest yep as far as the historical value knock this one down for you though and i'm raising the question because if i foul someone they can tell me leave town and i will but i have to tell you that those are options that policymakers have to deal with on an ongoing basis

you know you've already built some of the rebuilt some of the foundation for what i understand but what is its ultimate use other than a symbol of the starting of your town in a more formal government basis yeah i mean i understand and i i appreciate you posing the question um and i i think what we established there was when we um get situated in the future with um a seated town manager et cetera a committee would be formed on these buildings whether how to address them how to maintain them how to repair them etc moving forward i think it's a very legitimate question it's not you know the town as recently as a few years ago actually one of the churches we actually did um transfer to a um

a non-profit entity that took over and maintains and currently maintains that building so i mean it's not out of the realm but i do think it's a very important question to ask going into the future right challenging the policy makers because i think the public wants to hear from you your diligence on return on investment which is their hard earned tax dollars

i am pleased to inform you that the irs has changed its mileage rate for reimbursement it's a major change in two reasons one it's mid-year it starts this friday july 1. two it went from 0.585 to 0.625 and that may sound very little but if you get 20 miles to the gallon and you add that extra 5 cents or 4 cents it does have an impact on what it costs to put gas in the tank the problem is the irs mileage also takes into account depreciation wear and tear and the other things so that it's a short-term remedy and where any community has individuals using their personal vehicle for the purposes of conducting town business stop and go traffic doesn't get you the most efficient mileage but at this point we had one employee who raised the question and i said in all likelihood the policy is we follow the irs and that's your reimbursement and then i did the math for him so i just want to keep you informed that

that's out no we appreciate it so by um by having that um are we um meeting the needs of the employee um with this new adjustment just want to be fair and we want to be yeah you know i have to look at how many employees are impacted okay and my preliminary is that there's one actually there's two because someone goes to the post office and up to the other location and they're getting that but again depending on the mileage they get 18 20 you know we can do the math and determine that if they're getting 12 and 13 dollars that's more than enough for the the trap for the funeral trip and then some so i i would offer to you follow the irs for now uh i'd like to be able to say it to one but my experience tells me as soon as you make a move to do something different for one there's a domino effect in the organization yeah i mean i mean the only other thing you could do is you could do actual and that it's kind of a bit

harder but quite honestly actual doesn't get the person the money that the irs is actually paying them we've done that i've done that routine in both directions and i always make out with the 58 cents better than i do with the with you know giving them receipts and the other issue is if you exceed the irs does that count as income and does that impact their tax and our employer tax goes with it so for a host of different reasons yeah i think we're kind of stuck with yeah that was the irs i agree okay that was fyi i have

bond attorney they were the ones who've been involved with you on your last tans 1920 2021 and i'm putting together the package so that we can hopefully have attorney's opinion with the bond we're going to go to contact also the banks we deal with and see what their terms are and i'm i've already done a cash flow that will take us through probably to december 30th of this calendar year big things that you need to keep in mind in the cash flow is that once a month we pay out now 462 thousand dollars to the school district it was 455 before july one and now it's a higher rate and in the course of the four and five weeks of pay uh payables and payroll payroll is normally twelve to eighteen thousand dollars nineteen thousand when we do ems and so all things considered your six to seven hundred thousand dollars of expenses a month and if we're sitting on one point five million right now in the bank in hard

cash and that includes all cash not necessarily categorized for just one use we can replenish those accounts on paper in theory you can do the math very quickly that you're sitting on two maybe two and at best two months worth and we should be getting the tan out a lot sooner and that ties us into getting out our tax bills a lot sooner because during the last fiscal year your months the latter part the two weeks in july and the month of august you brought in

dollars in certain days of the week throughout each of those weeks in the month and that makes all the difference in the world because come september one we'll have already paid six hundred thousand six hundred four hundred dollars to the county for the county tax rate that has to be paid out and by december 30th you've got to pay back the tan plus interest and i figured the 10 interest would be somewhere best guess 39 to 44 000 for that period of time depending on the interest rate and it's a 1.5 million dollar tan

as needed i want to make sure that you're comfortable with that and if there's any questions please ask me i'll try to get the information if i haven't given it to you tonight but i believe you should authorize the tan going forward and here's where my memory is failing me did we do this at the last meeting we discussed it i don't think we authorized entertainment so i need to have authorization so you ask if we're comfortable is there another alternative no but yeah no but right uh that that's what i thought but i mean i think kevin touched on this last it this is um somewhat of a common practice in uh municipal government we've done this numerous times in the past it's not an atypical procedure by any by any by any uh imagination here it's it's it's something standard it's kind of an sop especially with us where we don't really necessarily fall in a fiscal tax year we you know that's really what the

issue is at hand it's we don't have the fiscal tax year we're allocating money in january and collecting taxes in august so i only asked because you used the word comfortable making me think there were other alternatives that i wasn't aware of income coffee january 1 you need at least 4.5 to 5 million in the coffers from collections from the previous year fiscal year is the answer to that you'll still borrow but for a lot shorter period of time yeah fiscal year and what a bi-annual tax bill right i'm a proponent of both it allows me and pepe to pay the smaller amount or the amount in half each time some prefer paying it all at once but they never do right taxpayers will tell you oh i'll be glad to how come you're charging us twice no you get one tax bill two tabs you pay one by this date and one by this state and if you want to talk about transitioning to a fiscal year i'll be glad to help you out they're really two

options a six-month fiscal year and then you go to a 12-month fiscal year after that yeah it's been on it's been on the floor for lack of a better words in terms of this establishment many times it's just with so many changes that we've done over the last few years it just hasn't been able to be thoroughly uh discussed it's the business of local government it's not just government anymore it's a business and you've got to look at the best options for yourselves and your taxpayers sure so with that said we'll entertain a motion to authorize the town manager to

apply and receive a tan through the local municipal bank of its choice by also using bernstein insurer as their bond attorney well we've done it just about here did we even use it last year right we did not use it but there was something in play there i think the reason why we didn't use it is because we had don't and i could be way off on this so i probably shouldn't even say it but i think we had money in reserves because we were waiting on projects that we had money to fund for example we had cash flow from maybe road projects things like that so um to get through yeah

discussion um all those in simply am recommending to you it's a style issue last several months and that's it started in march it goes too quickly sometimes there are different ways of setting up agendas i looked at your format and i said stick with what they generally have but i have provided for you perhaps a slightly more detailed agenda than you may want to get into but i'd recommend you considering it if you go down quickly you'll identify some of the very things that you've been doing now but

always claim these as major categories so that when we're taking notes or referring back to the date it'd be four dash whatever in the manager's report five dash a b c or d in the old business report or so on it's just a little bit more formal but it's great for being able to retrieve information uh at the same time if you really want to make a major change then i'll go back to to doing some further research because there are some very intricate agendas that are out there but i this one so when you mean old business you're not gonna like continuing business something from the previous once it comes up it's no longer new business it goes to an old business and you can see how many times it shows up and if you want to get detailed we could put on it 2022-6

month of the meeting when that happens and how many times does it keep coming back and then you monitor yourself say this has been here for the last six months why haven't we done anything then you look at the manager and you give a kick and you say okay get moving but it's it's different what level do you want is really up to you i'm just merely suggesting that this is a way to do it one way to do it i like that way personally but it makes no difference to me i'm not rushing into it because i'm not going to be your manager forever and you have to be comfortable with with your procedures yeah right that's what we did yeah that's good that's what they use at the county commission and that's what they've used right we do it in the great water district as a trustee and you see something come up and there's certain things right away why are we still doing that because we never finished the conversation shame on

me not on anybody else so the roof on the old town hall will come up his old business next time that is correct and it keeps recurring itself until you get a decision made or you say take it off we're not dealing with it any further which is a decision so thinking about it that way i kind of like i like that i hadn't thought of it but i would i would probably i think it should be a decision of five i was gonna i was gonna say this is very hard without the chair currently here i think i think he uh presides um

change the word old to continuing stuff like that yeah i i just i i would agree with mitch that i think this would need the consent of five before moving forward i mean with with that said i mean this notice of public hearing the way that it's formatted here it you know as far as it's it's been written this way it has been placed in different orders and so forth obviously it's changed with town manager report because you know change has happened so it's not an atypical request i just would feel more comfortable with the blessing of the chairman rather than you know five of us making that decision before moving forward i think it's a great idea though yeah it's for your discussion yeah

from the historical right uh aspect of it if you if you do have to find something it's a lot easier that way for people for people in the in the future rather than just us we may remember but sometimes these are historical records exactly so yeah exactly um anything else mr town manager for the moment that takes care of number four sir okay thank you with that said i'd like to open the floor up to public comment do we have anybody here for public comment and as a reminder public comment is limited to three minutes per person three minutes that's all i got come on up

russell 284 swamp i don't come here as a committee member or head of chair or nothing like that i come here as the flag guy yes i put the flags up from the store down to the invites hall and up to the school every year as you all know that started i don't know 15 or 20 years ago through the fire department and the memorial day parade committee started out i think with 15 or 20 flags at one point we were up to around 50 flags when the chief st michelle got done as the chief he kind of handed that responsibility to me as the deputy chief and i kind of took it on as a personal responsibility of my own and i've been putting the flags up for i don't know eight or nine years now and taking them down every year and typically i go through the memorial day committee they have always been responsible for maintaining the flags the last few years with kovidnall that kind of has fallen to the cracks and this year there really wasn't a

committee joe howe kind of tried to get it going but nothing happened and i personally love the looks of the flags i drive all over the state they're in i don't know how many towns out of the whole state but they're everywhere and usually they're every pole for through what i would call main street section i talked to todd about it a couple weeks ago and he said get a price um so i did all this is is just a simple price from the signs to work in auburn um i [Music] personally think that we should would like to see a flag on every pole from the davis road to the anvitz hall full flag down newell brook road and then up to the school entrance on hollow road at least at a minimum and that encompasses 66 poles we currently have 26 flags um one of them fell down recently up by the store i picked that up like i said over the last few years we've lost and deteriorated a bunch of flags um this proposal of 50 flags gets us back

to about 70 ish working flags so we'd have a five flag leeway and currently out of the 26 flags that i do have about half of them are fairly faded and adequate etiquette wise they probably should be replaced so this would get us probably into a 10-year cycle where we'd have enough flags to do what i'm looking at um and then going forward you know i would anticipate maybe 10 flags every couple two or three years that's what that would be my anticipation she did treat us fairly well on this price she gave us a 15 discount she had this stuff in stock so she didn't have to order anything um so this is the price for now you know if if it goes into next spring we have to go past town meeting to get the money i don't know what's in the memorial day fund i have nothing to do with that i've never had anything to do with that but i know there's been money set aside for that um just my little thing that i like to do

no i think it's great thank you one of those yeah it looks really nice which i don't i don't know and you know without kevin here kevin's probably the only one that might know that um if if in fact the memorial fund even still exists or if that got merged with everything else [Music] i think you're right i first heard about it when you emailed me the information but i have not had a chance to get into the details but i bet you kevin does have that information so you can keep that how long is this business before she didn't tell me specifically um

but i i would be surprised that it's more no more than 30 days i mean i'm in the business of retail and we don't hold a quote for more than 30 days for anything right now you can't would vote for this on heartbeat first and foremost i think everybody knows me but knows that but um i just that's why i was referring to mitch like yeah i'm all on board how do we pay for it yeah that's the only question i have i've been asking the question randomly for a couple years um but nobody's really in charge of it i guess right that's why i want to talk i don't think we can you go that route i just checked it out although i don't think that's a bad no no i mean you might be used to so that's uh so mitch let's say hypothetically the board was in favor of doing this how do we uh we just asked you to find the money how do we find the money yeah well coffee can you get out back mitch

sit down with janet and take a look at our undesignated fund balance i would look at anything related to public works that might have a few dollars but 3 000 is right now with everything else that you have faced with energy costs and the like i'm not so sure this qualifies even though it's patriotic yeah i don't know if it qualifies for arpa you know joking i would do that too because it's very patriotic it is that's why that's what went through america yeah yeah that's yeah we do things but the other thing would be is to look at if we the memorial committee fund well you see that's just that a lot of these funds got go away right well they didn't go away i think we we actually emerged them all into one so i don't know exactly what's there i don't think there's specific funds allocated i'm not saying across the board but in certain in certain um things like memorial fund and maybe i don't know there was a park and rex

fund or for lack of a better word a lot of that stuff got lumped into a general fund what did that occur i'd want to go two three three three years maybe i legal give an opinion as to uh the merging of all of those funds i'm curious i'd have to defer together on that kevin and ruth handled that we we elected we went that way as a board but how that all merged in the legalities of i would defer together the first thing that popped into my mind is if you're a trustee of a trust and this is not a trust you have obligations even if it's a dissolution of the trust and each of those contributing entities may have had conditions for which donations were made to them and as long as those conditions are not violated even when you amalgamate them into one larger then you probably have the ability to try to convince them to allow that to be paid for but it goes back to the actions that took place for

all together i think in 2019 was the last actual purchase that joe howe made i think he bought eight flags and 10 brackets which was right in the area of 500 and i think that's what he told me he got allotted for that fund it may sound like the interests of cruel only it it transpired i want to say that whole thing transpired right around when like for example when take the fire department for example when they would be under budget that would go back into the fire capital budget per se and then i think later on it started going into the general rather than a specific uh fund so um kevin kevin i guarantee you could speak to the nail if he was here on it um i just don't have the right answer on how to pay for it i'm all for it i think it's fantastic i think the town should be doing this every year i just just tell me how to pay for it we'll make it happen i mean i i i swallow a little bit after just having

that conversation about the tan yeah but but i agree that if you're gonna spend money this is something uh worth spending on yeah but i agree if we can find it and so i don't know if we should table this or if we can ask mitch to to work with kevin to yeah i think we could vote to approve it possibly contingent upon mitch um finding the right way to allocate the funds to it um contingent upon mitch being able to allocate funds to it something of that nature and then once he confirms with kevin or and or you know the accountants etc would that be then go so be it and then that way we don't have to wait for another meeting he can call up mr russell and and and run from there does that sound appropriate mitch or is that yeah there are two aspects that just i'm sorry just came into my mind i agree with everything you said mr chairman i'm just wondering if there's also the possibility of private sponsorships

like that would you like to and then i don't know who would do the legwork but that's one option i know for a fact that there are a couple businesses in town that were that have talked about that um but it would be one of those things where i'm not going to be the first guy to do it type of a thing know for a fact i've talked to a lot of people about flags and everybody wants to see it but but nobody's bucked up okay and that would take so much time that's right in the future right might be a great thing why don't why don't we go this way why don't um

if if it's if the funds are available for say that this might not even need board's approval i'm sure it does because it's because of the amount but if the funds are available let's say there is a parade fund or something that would be applicable to this or a memorial day fund we can go that way in the meantime um maybe mr russell and i don't mind helping out on this we can get together and we can talk to a few businesses and maybe we can raise a good portion of the money privately and then maybe the town could supplement the rest public private partnership correct

conditional approval subject to all the elements that you've raised or do you want i i i think if we're adding in multiple steps i'd prefer to table it i to me we're putting a condition on and it could i think we i think we should i think we can table it till the next time and i mean 14 days is what this is and i'm sure when we meet again if we're at dave if we're at day 15 and he has approval i'm sure they'll say well okay you might went up three percent but all the stuff's in stock so they don't have to buy anything for us so it's just a little bit of inventory and in the meantime um maybe mr russell can um like about words commandeer a few of the businesses around here to contribute some and um i wouldn't even be surprised i mean this is the type of thing that i mean you could ask a dollar from everybody in town and i'm pretty sure everybody would pitch in on this one i don't think this is a hard one to sell

to people are you suggesting that someone motioned that we tabled this to july 12th i would make a motion to table this till july 12th right now i would i would too i don't think there's going to be too many i think there'll be plenty of people that can get a good portion of this yeah

if it's a private thing we'll just put the money together give dude no i think i think you know for example we can work on that in the next two weeks and let's say we're able to raise for a lack of better words just a blanket number half of the money and then the town only has to come up with 1500 bucks i'm sure we can find something like that somewhere to make this right i mean it's it's the right thing to do for the town it's the right thing to do for the community and it's it formalizes your main street absolutely it does yeah absolutely without adding without adding the expensive sidewalks talk to calvin about that no we're not that's what i said without adding the expensive sidewalks [Laughter] so you've got a motion on the floor to table this subject hearing um no further discussion we'll call the vote

good guy all right article number eight we have a b-y i guess we'll call it as it is a byob for july 15th for 2022 for a wedding shower we have an applicant yes anybody can see that in the pack was that in there to be done tonight too sure i thought i put here it is right here sir okay i'm sorry so we have a byob for a um wedding shower uh at the residence of 45 stackpole road in durham again that is for the 15th of july again this is not this is just an event we're not granting a liquor license or anything of that nature this is just someone doing the appropriate thing when they have a large party and actually doing what is required by the bureau of alcohol and beverage department of the state of maine this is not anything atypical this is something that is just a routine permit that we've seen many times in the past

as a formal motion and then at the end of the meeting tonight with all of your executions you'll sign that as well so i'd make a motion to authorize a byob permit for 45 stackpole road durham maine from miss carrie washburn on july 15 2022 for a wedding shower

is there a second i'll second that any discussion did we skip over number six those are simply the results oh of the uh yeah because of the what's it called yeah we'll go back to that one right right now we skipped actually

we'll go back to that right now my fault all do we ever if you guys want to sign that we can go over there um back to the agenda of tax for regional school unit number five rsvp put the word results in no the tax thing got me yeah between the two of them next to each other with the uh town tax agenda so this is merely and i should have labeled it better these are the results they had their school meeting and it is what it is

do any good correct meeting as far as like um well it's important for you to know that and it gets recorded and it gets blasted all over because 70 cents of every dollar that's collected in this community taxes goes to school that's a great thing that's what makes durham what it is but that's 70 cents that leaves only 30 cents which covers the county and the rest is your operation

a different manager may have a different opinion no no i agree with it 100 it just i don't i don't think we need to read results or anything that nature they're all public record and they're all um easily accessible online if need be um okay well thank you [Music] uh number nine policy proposal occupancy of foreclosed property may i explain yes sir in cans that i've worked on over the last few decades

are forced into foreclosing on a piece of property are faced with a dubious task of having to decide whether they want to take the property not first of all even though the law says they're at that point in time when they can do that right but they have hesitated example double-wide pre-1976 trailers have a lot of asbestos in them and so for the few thousand dollars that you're getting is that really something that you want in some cases aunt lizzie lives in that trailer and is and we're foreclosing and no one wants to kick her out but what we have found out over time is that that's an exposure of liability to you the town because you now become technically the owner right and you've got to do asbestos abatement among other things and so this is one of those don't decide on it tonight uh even the town's attorney said where did this all come about and by email and it's just something that i bring with me

from experience make you aware of it it's a policy it doesn't preempt what the state law on tax liens requires and this step-by-step procedure to perfect the lien and when you go to foreclosure you have to decide whether you want occupancy or not in case in point by your own admission there's one piece of property in this town that no one wants to own it's because it was the toilet of the community for how many years so if you look at it give your your thoughts in mind what you might want to do with it you don't have to do anything but if you do something you should have a policy that is cogent with the state law and this would do that it gives you a back door out to say we're not taking mitch's property we're sorry there's just too many problems there and too much personal property that we're liable for you've got fire insurance liability yada yada yada that's what that is unfortunately it sets a tone

that others may play the same game but it's the risk you take and i'd rather have you not put the town in jeopardy by taking something and then becoming fully liable for it because you can't unload it no action required tonight we can put it on their old business the next time or thank you mitch we'll decide if we want to bring it up in the next manager yeah i think in the past we've been we've been we've had a few circumstances over the years where properties have gone and default et cetera um and what this board in the past is tend to do is simply follow the law and our legal advice pertaining to the law as in jack our attorney sometimes you know it's a policy is great but if you have a policy you have to follow a policy it doesn't really sometimes give you the wiggle room that you might need to not accept a property such as the old town dump or something of that nature that might be hazardous to the town so

but it is something to put into consideration and perhaps think it over and see how we want to progress and move forward with it on the next round so we don't have any policy not i'm aware of i'm not aware of either and like i said when this has come up in the past when people we've we have negotiated we have we have done things like that we have never that the town has don't get me wrong just in our tenure we've never really to my knowledge taking the property but we've had to negotiate because it's gotten to that point of possibly us taking the property um but it's always in tandem with the advice of our attorney absolutely so that's how that has played out in the past

things that policy makers have to which is just what you're doing now talk about it think about it which is when you go to town manager form of government that's really our main role as policy makers [Laughter] okay let's put that under consideration moving forward with that said and to lead right into it no you know how that works out but number 10 policy discussions old haul town hall roof repairs um which we kind of covered and also the additional flags for display which we also kind of covered so i'm not sure if there's anything mr town manager you'd like to add to those or if those have been satisfied for this evening for this evening and absent of anything else i'll follow my notes and if they are to be put on to the next meeting you'll see them on your agenda under old business do you want me to follow that agenda format or just let's continue with what we have now until you are a group of

just five like the old business personally that that to me i think is i think we can set it up as a trial for the next round and if uh mr nato is um you know because he is the chairman if if he finds fault with it i'm i can assure you he will bring it to our attention and uh yeah he could be i doubt it no he's not watching um and we can go that we can redirect from there but from right now we can try it and the only thing i would suggest and maybe i we never used to do this in the past but in the past the public comment was pretty much up front in the forward that way people could get here and they knew they could be here you know by 6 30 6 40. now we have people lingering around for an hour hour and 20 minutes and perhaps we could move that back to its original spot is that your wishes i will be glad to do that actually it should be number three no number three or number whatever whatever one was but to get it to that

point it just this way people have an idea what time they need to be here by um we're still going to maintain the three-minute policy and and um but it's just it's just some these people you know they want to stay they want to stay they can stay but sometimes they have to wait an hour hour and 20 minutes to be heard and that seems like an awful long time yeah i agree one thing i will say about the old town hall uh roof the two guys that have looked at it say that we don't want to be wasting too much time because it's brittle it's falling apart the shingles that are there right yeah are in tough shape which is surprising to me i

you guys got up there and looked at it do you have more bids come and talk i can i i only was able to get those two if you want to give me a guy no i only saw the one i didn't know we had two so i apologize only one i thought that was what i guess we didn't get it okay fair enough we didn't get it what did i not give you did bob bring it down here eight plus a plus roofing

yeah anyway well that one i think is you know two more as far as the agenda goes for next i mean it sounds like that one has to be on the higher priority list on the next one and we have to actually make a decision next time around um we're not changing any cosmetics on the building or anything of that nature so we don't really necessarily need to evolve and involve anything to change the color because there's only a few colors is it black yeah it's a greenish greenish like 10. i know you can't get any colors well i think i'd go this way if we're changing the color we may want to direct the town manager to ask the historical community what color we may be changing or possibly have to change to do yeah shingles from 1944 not being readily available

change the color of the base roof and not counting the steeple you have to get something because isn't there a cap on the top of that there's no shingles on it i think that's steel up there oh yeah it's not a steeple itself okay pretty perfect perfect yeah i would say just go black or charcoal or whatever whatever's available yeah on the truck that day nice blue roof nice red one is everything again yeah so yeah maybe we should ask um a member uh you did you did and they're okay with then they're discussing it okay so hopefully that you can get with them and they can give us an answer of their findings on the next meeting that's fantastic pick them up first i would think i would think of think getting it done would be the most important thing so it sounds good to me yeah yeah okay then i've got it down that you'll be reporting that for the 12th thank you talk thank you thank you okay moving right along the consent

agenda do we have a board member would like to request anything be removed or can we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as written please and move to it to accept as written is there a second i'll second that all right and all those in favor that's 4-0 mitch thank you

town news we have a rescheduled town manager hiring committee meeting posted for june 30th of this year that's old yes it's tomorrow amended to tomorrow 29th 29th tomorrow and time is different between six o'clock so we're going to be here all right um yeah it's 5 30 tonight delay my last here we go we're going to go town manager hiring committee meeting posted for june 29th at 6 00 p.m at the town office which will be an executive session not open to the public for personnel matters correct do we have an executive session that we need to attend to tonight mitch i don't believe so pretty much through everything and i'm pleased yup oath of office i told you that our part-time counter clerk is doing very well we request your final authorizations so that cynthia ferragi can be sworn in in accordance with the duties that are as a deputy registrar and a deputy clerk that way she can handle all of the work

first day she started picking up on it right that's awesome with that said we will entertain a motion for right finger that said we will entertain a motion for cynthia faragi ferragi the town of durham for an open office for um was it town clerk clerk and town registrar

so moved and i'll second that joe seconds any discussion that's great good job mitch and everybody else who had a hand in that you know that was a long time coming i have to tell you the process that we've exposed our staff to dealing the members who are dealing with the town manager's review are the ones who established the format that's great they did the interviews discussed it amongst themselves then they said trial by fire and we brought in three candidates paid them for their two hours time right sat down afterwards after each one and eventually shuttled one and so the process for them was they are the ones who selected and i affirmed because then i found out more of the details about her capabilities so we're in pretty good shape that's great your staff did a good job that's awesome that's great yeah excellent team effort that's what we want i have nothing else sir okay with no further

um business of the town for this week we will take a motion to adjourn do we have to go to executive session for tomorrow no we're already in executives we're already an executive but for tomorrow it's a carry technically it's a carryover

the next candidate i asked the same question yeah we went over that i'll make a motion that we adjourn ask you motion on the floor to adjourn do i have a second oh you do seconds is there any discussion with that being said have a good night everybody