TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ April 26, 2022

durham board of selectmen to order on april 26 2022 please stand for the party one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right so we have uh one board member with an excused absence tonight we'll do the business travel so that would be uh josh collin golden uh the other four members of president any amendments to the agenda

under the consent agenda actually two on the consent agenda 8 d will be the signing the annual signing of the oaths at least for cip committee town for memorial day parade committee scholarship committee the deputy fire chief and the interim town manager so this is wave two we did wave one last i hope there'll be a third wave um and then eight e is also the annual signing of the uh warrant for the school budget articles that will be posted for the three town uh school budget meeting which is on may 25th i believe at freeport high school so it's just like a town meeting except there's three towns combined and so there's a warrant with articles and the municipal officers from all three towns need to sign the warrant just like we do for our own county and so we need to do that tonight

the agenda i'm going to add something in my report to you just for consideration we can move forward then next on the agenda is reports and fire chiefs quick all right so three quick updates and a question uh so anheuser-busch came through with a grant for drinking water uh i'm told probably two pallets each one's 96 cases of drinking water is for rehab prehab wildland firefighting that type of stuff but it goes all year we stock the trucks uh it also will go back since we are a heating and cooling facility at the fire station and a reunification for the school so drinking water is always important yeah so that was nice very nice and again that that whole grain cycle is always ongoing that just happens to be one we got yesterday thursday's schedule if you drive by or stop by we have hose testing all day long every foot opposed i think there's over 12 000 feet so two and a half miles if you want to help pick up let me know

we also have uh visitors a retired fire chief's daughter is bringing her challenged class these are mentally challenged kids so they're going to special day at the firehouse sort of public education always nice nice to see them and then thursday night maybe you might have seen the trailer the state provides us with free training props so we have a forcible injury prop so we've invited paolo a few other people down where it's a big steel door and they can have added different techniques of reaching the door with wooden stoppers for realism so that's always nice on this upcoming saturday is the fire department banquet from five to ten it's in freeport we do have other fire departments covering just in case we do have a per game on duty it hasn't been i think a couple of years but it's our rainbow that's it for updates uh quick question uh that's come to fruition so i've been evaluating the different

components of the fire department and that includes apparatus training funding fees and now most importantly the building itself it is a town-owned asset it is very important and it's an aging facility i've been sure telling that before 1980 is when they doubled the size so 40 years ago last edition was exactly 20 years ago in july and we're coming upon some expenses so i'm starting to reach out about maybe a list for us uh for spending some of the funds in my research for the opera funds and it was not a deep dive but my research was just you know the non-reoccurring reoccurring expenditures that can be targeted for important you know long-term assets i don't think the fire department is a long-term asset and it talks about unique opportunities for state local to make strategic investments in long-lived assets currently i've identified the heating and cooling you know last year we did upgrade the heating system that totally

failed we're looking for heating heat pumps from cooling our request for a proposal just came in i have had a discussion with the town manager that was under 12 000 but that doesn't include the electrical component of that to upgrade that's another three so that's 15 000 we can shorten or take it upon myself to bundle or to look at assisting this facility with their heating issues if it came down to the same people same request for proposal also just yesterday our side door is going to fail we have a locked facility due to pharmacological drugs and in our assets uh we do have a unicam that does tell us who comes and goes via computer but that the seal is failing you can see under it it's walking steel that's coming anywhere from two to four thousand is that where the water issue was on the other side of the building no but there is a water station

cost revenues and ideas if we can i have looked at grants it's very difficult to find infrastructure grains other than the harbor that we have again talking with mitch if i can be on a committee or assist or if we can move some things up to the forefront in a timely fashion i'd appreciate it yeah [Music] heat pumps are you talking about cooling the whole time thank you no just the opposite so we do have three or four gas fed sort of for air furnace it for the for the bays and they're seem to work fine um just that training facility with the three and again we have stock important stock that's climate controlled record keeping medical things that do need a climate control heat's working okay but there is no cooling in the building and again doing the dive of the evaluation you know the school and the reunification and a heating and cooling facility for the tower you know on those 100 degree days if people need

to stop by that type of stuff that doesn't happen often but we do need to provide yes on the electrical side instead of 2 000 dollars is that because a panel you're out of room yes so that was upgraded like 200 amp services correct there's a panel there he has come to look at it that wasn't that was the exact to add for those heat pumps itself at one panel with the drop that's there i think it was a 200 if i recall sure just just for that increase and that does include i've had that same request for proposal local electrician that we've used in the past look at changing everything over to led lights for the entire that's on the outside and the inside i think he counted like 48 overhead you know lights that type of stuff there is a rebate that's different subject matter but yeah that's what we're doing so request for proposals sort of shovel ready projects for when you wrong okay any other questions or

no i think i want to take advantage though the opportunity um because chief and i talked about this a little bit uh earlier this week about arpa money and so i did some research on this and i've read through um maine municipal association legal guidance and for a town that has a town meeting form of government the um procedure for spending arpa money is going to require a town meeting because you have to do a spending article with something like to see if the town will spend x dollars on hvac for the fire department utilizing amplifiers you know something like that so we're we're going to have to talk not necessarily tonight during the week but at some point it might be a workshop type thing where we're going to have to talk through kind of the art but process and how we want to approach it you know we're definitely you know we want to make sure we have an opportunity for public input probably

fairly soon because i i would envision that we're not going to want to wait till next april before we right especially since open workshop community public hearing type of thing where there's an opportunity this you know an opportunity for the public to present ideas they might have about how our funds would be i would i would i was talking with mitch i would anticipate um building some sort of a presentation probably like a powerpoint that explains to people what arpa is what you can spend it on what you can't spend it on you know the process the procedure for spending it you know timelines things like that um to help educate people and then a list of things we're already considering so people could comment on that plus they could offer their own ideas so we're probably going to need to do that i mean you know within them fairly shortly after a new town manager was hired you know assuming we

do that according to our current schedule um if we don't then we might have to do it before we actually hire um so i i want to take the opportunity to kind of because everybody said well we can use our performance for that in our points for that and for a lot of things we can but it's going to require town meeting goals

time frame subject matters time is of the essence because of the subpoena issues but the chief has indicated by combining our hvac system requirements we probably already have a good opportunity to get a vendor that doesn't have the serious supply chain issue so i mean the main reason i want to mention it tonight and we should probably put something soon in one of the newsletters is to give people a heads up to pay attention because there's likely almost certainly going to be a special town meeting at least one if not more than one between now and april um so

probably a good chance this season yeah so that's that's what we have to title he is and the thing is we don't we don't have to decide all at once you know like we've got two projects like the hvac you know and we've got a total pool of somewhere around 400 000 and that's 70 jobs and we just go go to the town for approval on the 70 000. and then we you know we keep prioritizing and keep working through the other funds because we have you know three or four years to actually walk through 2026 is the audit requirement for final reporting i think uh yeah i thought it was eight but yeah but it's it's it's we have some time it's not this year so um i think you're actually i think you write this one so anyway so that was something to think about so thank you for putting a bug in our ear on that and getting that going anything awesome so like any other questions for the chief super good thank you

thank you okay um so uh mitch uh passed me you know i'm gonna um jump ahead a little bit here so a reminder about the process we're going through to select the committee to do the first round interviews for the new town manager three community members three staff members and three board members and we are in the process we scheduled most and there's one or two left to schedule interviews for people on the committee but we have two of the staff members are they're here tonight and mitch is asking if we can do their interviews um now and rather than we have them wait till the end of the meeting but that means we'd have to go into executive session to do it and then and everybody would have to leave and then we can come back in after the executive session probably would take that there's two right two fine women right in the hallway we're talking um you know we we've talked about doing five to ten

minute you know brief conversations and so taking 20 20 minutes or so to do that thoughts on that be more panics yeah so moments most of it we tried to get it we tried to get as many as possible on thursday night to do it but we did put it out there if there was somebody who wasn't available thursday night we could do it tonight and we have just the two um jessica ten total i don't know how many totals we have

tonight we'll leave you nine thursday and you actually have 15 minutes at the start of your meeting at 6 30 and at 6 45 every 15 minute slot you can go straight through yeah calvin is the third applicant through the town and he's at 645. but we don't have more than do we have more than we have one three no and that's the deadline by the net yes

spots on the committee there are only three staff applications um is there something you want to talk to the board about about being on the committee or the fact that we which we're happy to provide that if there's something you wanted to say about it an executive session to us about the committee or if you're good then

applied so it's the richest point so it's up to you if you're good without the interview then hey if you're good without the interview we're getting about the interview all right thank you wanted to say something yes okay so now we'll get back to the regular course of action here this account is not here tonight so there's number one report correct or are you entering that for it i'm kind of entering that in my manager's report okay so then we'll go to the manager

thursday night see them thank you and drop off on physical applications because i can't reduce the one that you sent got it thanks got several items i want to keep you informed about under departments the town court continues to complete various items including customer service at the calendar she also keeps in contact with our i.t team who are working on several items including daily updates to our website and review the speed for both upload and download we are concerned that the lack of speed is impacting the timeliness and effectiveness of our website we will report results to the strikeboard in the near future the deputy treasurer had been busy with both the auditors as well as preparing to establish the fy 22 approved budget in trio she will be busy with most of these during the week we are preparing for the transition to a regular code enforcement officer who is expected to be on board full time on may

16th his name is alvin plummer he's experienced and he's coming to us from the town of mechanic falls excellence he will work in concert with our town planner i would like to thank calvin comey for stepping in and handling the code enforcement issues over the last several months he has responded to many questions as well as dealt with enforcement as needed he is also looking forward to providing the transition on an ongoing basis now that we talk about the code officer i am going to interject a verbal amendment we have been scratching our heads over the last month into space and as you all know space is a consistent problem and now that we're going to have pretty much a full-time code enforcement officer where's that person going to go [Music]

let's leave the women's room alone let's look at something that's logical it doesn't have a whole lot of bricks and mortar to it effectively is least expensive and it allows maximum flexibility for the future despite all of the planning that you have for the next town hall expansion or whatever and that would be to run a rigid conduit connection between the office in the back here where it is all the way to the eureka home and we would run a double line so there's a redundancy if one should fail you can easily switch over calvin's people will be doing the excavation and backfill and we're we're doing now the exploration of costs so that you have a clear understanding of what that is the concept would be that this office then becomes the office from that doorbox to here we're going to have portable dividers and we've talked a little bit further in putting a mapping board and map systems against that wall people who come in

looking to do their own research on map lots and everything it could be right in there it doesn't interfere with what's happening here and it's all portable as far as the partitions the desk and file folder holding file drawers the chief did some exploration work with state surplus i think we found a logical solution to that equipment at a very minimal price other than tying gas

so i want you to consider that and that immediately frees up a whole lot more and gives you a larger meeting room for the public there will be some requirements that are having to be met in order to occupy that on a basis that we're talking about i say i say a fireproof steel jacket doors and exit on the first floor making sure that no one can get to the second floor the fire chief has a punch list of the things that he feels are necessary i'm not saying they're minor but they're not major either and we're not talking about bringing anyone up to the second floor for any reason the killer there is your second floor uh form of egress a second form of egress and until you have that one the other end of the building which is the front uh left side of the building is in detail understanding on the right side would be outside and that would have to be something of a fireplace so people get in and out plus the uh ada access on

the back why does uh why does having our meetings over there change the requirements in that building at all i mean there's already meetings this meeting over there right now because i mean there's already stuff happening i think the door was already part of the requirements even before the voting and the meeting but we should have done that i thought those would crash

something about it that's not meeting as it being used now i'm not meeting current fire code that's then we should look at that but i don't think us moving our meetings over there is going to change anything about code requirements it's just it's just another meeting i'm not sure it needs to be fire proof well maybe it needs to be outside swing crash bottom right uh well we don't know we'll need a report to come back you know we probably couldn't speculate on it but i think bigger issue is how we're going to get more space at this this building and utilize it to its maximum yeah okay okay can i answer so what's the hard wire for what are you running it would be the connectivity rather than do a wi-fi yeah data cable so i think it's been recommended up to this point and we're still waiting for be our ic people to conservative stuff just trying to figure

and it works through the wi-fi system in the router system and bek says it's not going to have any interference that's fine but right now we're doing a test that camera that is recording video is using our bandwidth as i understand it yeah and that may degradate to the wi-fi getting to the other end i'm not sure what comcast would need to be consulted with this as well right because we need to find out like i'm not sure we can there's probably gonna be an additional fee from the comcast for another location of you know internet service right we have to clarify online yeah just splicing two builders is essentially what you're doing that's

need to conduit but um but i think part of it was the av all the av equipment would still be in here right right you know the connection for the av equipment and the monitoring and how that's likely the problem so but i think you know and i think you're in the process of doing it there's more homework to be done on what the technical challenges are if you had said no tonight then we'd stop over there [Music]

of us and having our meetings over there sometime in maybe near future versus here i'm not opposed to that i mean my only thing is spending money on getting technology probably from i don't know looks like the av run of my junior high school over to a building where i would think if you do have funds available potentially that we would be upgrading the facility to handle this rather than trying to piggyback off of this building that's my own concern we need to look at the different options and again like our conversation the other day don't give them a solution give them the problem right and then and have the experts come up with some questions what we're trying to do is not move walls and leave the building in its best location and take full advantage of not having a recurring monthly expense if there's any costs associated with that if you did something at least make the building blocks for

technology operating later well i would think so i can and not necessarily a secondary service off of this particular service you know that's a lot of services but yeah you see what i'm saying going with that it's just we are due for an upgrade in technology that this is the bottom line both library and software both hardware so i think you know i think uh you know some sort of requirements document for bea and comcast to just lift up you know what you want to be able to do like we want we want to have our we want to have meetings over there we want to be able to broadcast and record um we need you know need internet access um we're not we're not looking to like move walls and do building additions and things of that sort you know just and then with those requirements see what they come back for uh come back with for solutions what's the fight and have now for internet access anything

but you might want to start comcast and sometimes they can recognize a solution yeah prior to the consulting fees that's the only thing space can be used in another way that's what we wanted to be like to be able to explore further yeah if if they do pull the pole so to speak without the wi-fi or the trench uh it would be considered for the fire department also depending on your funding revenues or ideas because i'm going to make sure we need upgrading also it be almost the town you know our side is the pole we have a drop feed from that yeah and i wonder in the case of the fire department is just a matter of you just need a higher tier service and then like is the hardware already there you know right yeah and i think that's why i start off with like a business i don't know what they have as far as musical but you know the business there's a comcast number you can follow it's a business consultant that come up

kind of give you delay in the land of what their recommendation is how many gigawatts service et cetera special report to the select board uh at your main meeting not may 26th but you may meeting regarding the impacts and costs of energy as we originally developed as part of the fy2 2022 budget process as an example right now the rap price is twice the cost of what it was last summer twice the cost and that was diesel fuel gasoline and as such we use 15 000 gallons of diesel alone and if you double that cost we're already in the hole just on that one area we haven't even touched the other forms of energy and we want to be a little bit more specific so the public understands we're facing on their behalf some of the same escalations and there's not much you can does he budgeted at ly cost uh he was paying because you said the difference between cost is doubling ly but what what was budgeted

what was budget but when i told you just a moment ago it's double what he was paying per gallon under contract for the delivery of diesel oil a year ago and that contract has ended it's actually more than doubled right now at the rack price right i understood like what what proposal what did he build into the 2022 budget i've got to figure that out okay okay you know i'm sure there was some small escalator but not not double and that's the biggest issue that everyone is facing yeah and uh we want to have a more detailed understanding of gallons and kilowatts and what it is that we're going to do so i think what would be what will once he once he kind of figures that out and comes up with an estimated you know total impact for the year maybe like if things don't change i think questions to him would be

absorb in his somehow in his current budget and if if he doesn't feel he can absorb it all is he literally going to need more money in which case we need to go that would be another article question on a special town meeting warren we can't we can't raise additional monies because you can only assess taxes once that's right um but we it would have to come from undesignated it would have to be under the appropriation approval right so we ran into that

know training sort of in-house not travel and we have been watching it for that kind of just adjusting talking to the so-called bitter supplier from yesterday today the rack price went up 25 cents and we are if you're a global watcher of politics you can understand where some of that is coming from

the year it's going to crash uh yeah everyone on notice that like business yeah we're being yep just my only follow-up question to that does calvin know how much he has for lacking other words in reserve of gas he has not used and when he will be encroaching on having to pay the higher rack or double rat price that's right we talked about that we know another few weeks of what's in the two tanks that he's using right now but after that you're then filling up they don't expect the price to drop much before june july period and even then they're banking on dollar drop so any way we do it minus what he built into it is the net increase of expenditure that we may have to deal with or hope for a warm winter not have to put out a lot of salt and i'm not a gambler yeah let's talk about you guys about all those eev plow trucks

advertisements soliciting applicants for both the combined citizen and select board application review committee and encouraging qualified individuals to submit their resumes and applications to be considered for the position of town manager have been placed as i've indicated to your chair we are recipients of two formal applications already our website was the first placement with the full explanation of the submittals needed followed by the newspapers in portland lewis in auburn and bangla as well as three northern state municipal association publications and websites i would expect that the initial reviews if things go well uh will get underway by the second week of may the market for the town manager code enforcement officers has become extremely competitive in the united states and i say that with all sincerity because it is having an impact like everything else i've talked to you about the border the

office space so i'm not going to go ahead and repeat myself respectfully submitted meeting was the um the the ordinance change where it's now up to us to approve a fee schedule for permits all the land use stuff so we need to go through we need to do the benchmarking of communities and kind of see where others are and actually heather roy has actually done some work here that might you might be able to leverage um and uh or at least use a starting point or a data point um because the idea is okay for the things that we have that we charge fees for various permits and developer fees and so on you know what did comparable towns charging and we would adjust our fees accordingly so it's just something that we shouldn't let slip away too long before we before we act on them okay that doesn't remind me that you certainly might want to program that for some time in may if you're fortunate to get that information yeah i don't

think it needs to be like in the next two weeks or anything like that you know but i just i just don't want to lose sight of it you know it might be that um that over the next few weeks you know we've developed a list of communities to check in with and you know that they have a lot of down moments but the office staff could you know when they have 20 minutes i'm going to call this town you know and it might take them a couple three weeks to get through the list but you know we would be working you know making progress anyway i'm glad you raised the issue about the office that has an extra 20 minutes

my observations are that we're going to continue to catch up on wednesdays by closing yeah it's an effective way to start that process but we've got two employees who will be wanting to take some vacation and that's going to be a problem sometime during the vacation period and

what we have or don't have in our budget there has to be someone else in training going through and i'd like to be able to put the advertisement out so that we could at least start getting applications for people who have that kind of interest the capability of working strictly part-time except for those weeks where we have people on vacation and only one of them at a time yeah and i think that's the only effective way to try to cover that i know that in the last few days it's like we were giving registrations away in terms of the numbers of

processing applications they had to deal with licensing and so on and we still have to get taxes ready for communities now that's a whole other issue and i may not be here for that but i'm going to plant the seed again collecting twice a year is a double-edged sword but it's usually in favor the taxpayer does have to pay it all at once and it does mean we have to collect a little bit more but it affects your cash flow and you don't necessarily borrow as much under your tax income tax anticipation though and paying interest on something that we should have the taxpayers themselves paid directly maybe twice a year some communities go four times a year but that may not suit wealthy two times a year and there's a reasonable transition from making that happen yeah yeah i've actually looked at that in detail and actually i have a project planned on my computer for that um uh they're um but i think it's

it's a year and a half process to do it yes you get to do it right right um so but i agree with you that eventually we need to get to that point but there's um a lot of discussion to be had before it's not going to happen this time here no it it has to be strategically planned out what i've been accustomed to seeing is people go from a normal 12-month calendar year to a six-month fiscal year and then it goes 12 months after yeah and your auditors have to be online with that it does have that change but in the long run it's effective the last thing is because we have two new members and we have senior members who've been here do you want me to set up some kind of workshop so that we can do orientation and reminders that would include foa as well as all the other things and if everything goes well we're probably gonna have to do it on an off night it can't be a regular meeting night you've got a month of may of

potential interviews so i'm scratching my head where to fit that in but it's probably going to be a good hour and a half to two hours it's public it's open but it helps you better understand and remind you of some of the things that may be coming out and as you get into getting a new manager on board you will be that much sharper and be able to keep up with that manager's training yeah and i know in joe you've probably done this in the past could be on the planning board but anybody who's newly elected is supposed to go to the main site online and do the training which the training is it's it's just it's tough to call it training basically you're supposed to read the faq and uh and then keep me awake and then and then certify that you actually read it and then yeah and then you print out the certificate and give it to the town floor so we keep it on file so that and then mma has newly elected officials

trainings and workshops which i highly recommend those if you don't have an mma login yet more then i would talk to jessica about getting money because there's a lot of really really good information on the mma website once we get you enrolled you'll also get from micromagazine and it's timely two topics yeah i remember getting that before yeah and i went to a lot of interceptions at one point oh the uh [Music]

orientation just enough so you stay ahead of the curve and it's why don't you continue that on your own not keep you there for eight hours and click you in the shins when your eyes start getting heavy yeah no that that's fine and a lot of it's good refresher for a lot of us he reminds me of things at times oh yeah okay i'm done all right moving along then um public comment so before i open it to um the public i want to yesterday uh yesterday last meeting um someone asked questions that we weren't able to answer in that meeting because there's a lot of information uh related to um and then use violation where the board um basically settled at a lower amount civil penalty that was in the judgment and people were asking why to do that so there's very good reason for it as nothing you know it's not always apparent so i thought i would respond to that tonight so um in late february um i'm just i'm not going to use a name

because the violator came to the select board was basically looking for a reduction in the civil penalty for the land use violations and at that time we told the violator that we not even going to consider a change or any discussion of a change until we knew that all of the corrective actions that were called for in the judgment had happened so we sent calvin and george out they went out the next day walked the property and they found that he was like 90 of the way there and then about a month later they walked it again and we were informed that he had met all the conditions uh all the corrective action conditions that were in uh the district court judgment that night because that happened to me the same day as a meeting we had in march that night a person came in an executive session we had a discussion of of the circumstances and the requests for a reduction of civil penalty the original penalty was 50 000

and uh but one thing that's important to realize is the reason that penalty was 50 000 because that's what we had asked for so in september there was a public hearing that this gentleman failed to appear for so there was a [Music] default judgment entered at that time and after that the judge basically asked the town what do you what are you seeking for a civil penalty we used um a hundred dollars a day from the date of the violation started to the date of the september court date it came up to like fifty thousand five hundred dollars so we rounded it to fifty thousand dollars and so that's what the judge put in the judgment that was issued in november okay then so that's what was communicated to this person they um so they were looking at the fifty thousand dollar fine um let me use my place on the sequence here so in asking for when we were talking with this person and we i think we kind of

knew this there was some uh one of the reasons we were amenable to a reduction was that there was there was reasonable chance that some of the delay in him taking the corrective actions was a result of less than ideal communication from the previous code enforcement officer if you recall at the time one of the issues with this gentleman's property was that the foundation that he had put in without a permit that's a separate issue was eight one corner of it was eight feet over the setback line which in durham is 100 feet from the stream the state limit is 75 feet and so he thought that was the limit he should be working with but at the time there was talk of an ordinance change in durham to potentially bring our 100 foot setback 275 feet so it would be the same as the state that didn't happen but during the course of that he had been advised by the previous code enforcement officer well you should

probably just wait and see if that ordinance change goes through because if it does you're not in violation of the step back in the world so that kind of dragged on it was a factual delay so that led to part of the consideration of of um the reduction the other piece that is not completely obvious is that it's um it's largely a legal strategy so and this is on the advice of town attorney so we haven't had a lot of these but in fact i think one or two when we're in litigation on a land use issue the when we're going when there's potential for a judgment we want that judgment to be a high level and that for for a couple reasons one it's motivating to the violator to you know get it taken care of because the judgment is typically a big number plus another initial have the big number and then if the verses walk away and don't do anything you have a judgment on you know on file with the court from

a judge that then gives the town the power to like you know lean or attach property or whatever we need to do to like recover the idea is that you have the big judgment and if the person or the violator is then like cooperative and you know after that point and understand if they want that cooperative up to that point because otherwise it wouldn't have been cool in the first place um but if after the judges they're cooperative they take care of the issues if things happen then oftentimes to considerations the penalty um the original if this gentleman had gone and gone to court originally in september he was probably looking at a maximum fine of 7 which there were three violations noted in the judgment each would have been a maximum of 2500 um but because he didn't show then that's where the civil penalty came in um so the amount of uh money he ended up paying 25 000 plus legal fees uh is more

than three times what his fine would have been if this had gone the normal course um and he was cooperative and took care of the issues you know once once the final judgment and final decision was made and 25 000 was actually was the amount his attorney had proposed as a as a compromise or settlement or whatever so that's um that was where we landed so in the end violations were corrected the town recovered as legal fees and violator paid a significant fine so that's that's the that's the story if you will for why we reduce the fine again we didn't the 50 000 was not a number that some judge came up with and said this is the reasonable appropriate amount the 50 000 is the number we came up with and so when adjusting that we adjusted our own number we weren't like overruling a judge as i heard somebody say that wasn't how it happened at all so um so anyway that is the that is the explanation in response to

the questions that we got in our last movement sorry real question um is that fee like something that would be like the schedule or is it a perfect basis it's a per case basis the law prescribes certain ranges of what your fines can be um but in some ordinances we'll prescribe certain fines and we may have some i don't know

yeah yeah more severe but um when we agreed to the reduction you know he he had 30 days to pay or else the original it reverted to the original terms which was fifty thousand dollars plus an additional hundred dollars a day for each additional day that it wasn't taken care of so he paid us um we the town has collected the money in depository yeah clear can we use that for fuel so you could if you had a warranty yeah right no i don't know all right so i will open it up are you here for public comment yes

introduce myself i'm eric brakey um not a resident of durham but i'm running to represent durham in the maine state senate and um with redistricting i i served in the main state senate representing auburn new gloucester pulling mining mechanic falls but after uh for two terms but with redistricting durham has returned to the district sadly they have lost mine at mechanic falls they're good people i miss them i'm looking forward to getting to know all the people during as i go out and outdoors and talk with voters so i just thought i'd never been to a i've never represented durham before i've never been to a durham select board meeting i figured i should come sit in seats and just say hello and meet you all great well nice to have you here so what is the whole town of durham in in that senate district or are we split all of durham okay because we've been split yeah yeah with um i think splits

generally happen more house seats than in senate seats um so i think that uh the only real split town i can think of as far as senate seats goes is portland because they're two pictures i will note that it is uh with this redistricting we're actually going back to the way the district was uh back when lois snow mellow was uh oh yeah she was a great mentor to me yeah yeah rest yourself so great well thank you uh thank you for being here appreciate it and um yeah well pleasure's all mine and i will say um if at any point i'm certain as things go on i'd love to get to reach out to you individually and hear any thoughts you have about anything's going on in augusta but if at any point as far as kind of interests of the town of durham go uh if there's anything that acosta is doing screw you that i that you'd like to bend my ear on or or just give stuck jeez i'll have to talk today be careful what you ask for

but if you like i can leave um i can leave my contact information and welcome hearing from any of you and i'm sure i'll probably be out knocking on your door sometime in the near future so great just you know i would advise you have somebody post on all things during the you know do that or else somebody like there's some weird guy driving around knocking on doors anybody know what this guy is so i usually try to put like the car magnets on so people don't think i'm like that's a good idea or something like that so yeah all right all right well thank you thank you very much

um [Music] down with the code enforcement officer he works a lot with the road commissioner anyway because they have to decide on driveways and this and that when they're getting some of the stuff done by the codes i think the logical place would be you know as far as the computers and stuff go i have my the store when i had the store i was able to work on the computer all the time from home and it was just as fast and the computer company anytime had any problems they jumped right online and fixed it right now i do the book work to three other companies from my house on the computer company when i call them up had a problem so you jump straight on fixes a phone that's working right from there i am able to get into anybody's computer or work right on and do it if they give me permission so um i didn't find wi-fi it's it's fast i don't have any problem with it i know this is totally different but i know the store

had a lot of a lot of stuff and a lot of different programs on it and i was able to get into everything the other thing is using your weaker setup okay a lot of people now a few people donated their time work effort energy

volunteered busted vital map to have it for a public place so they could do plant sales go whatever they want to do for the town for the public a place for the public i really feel if you go put the enforcement officer in there and then it's going to be locked up more they can't go in and out of it at night you're having meetings and it works because you don't have any records and public stuff you really look at and people can go in and out but i think it's going to take away my opinion is it's going to take away from the use of some of these people blood sweat and tears really work hard to renovate this place for them to have it for all the public to use not narrow it down for this and a code enforcement officer or somebody have to be in there they've got records in there exactly locked up you know peace and quiet and just my opinion yeah we're not just we're not talking about putting the code

enforcement officer over there well just to put your mind at you talk about maybe having our like just meeting here holding that meeting over there okay would still be over here okay well all right then if we can change the office put them down in public works

other thing is i've heard a lot of people not a lot probably eight nine of us all kind of talking about you know we volunteer down here to stuff envelopes um if they're doing like they they put out 300 mailers and stuff we could have come in here and just take the mailers and stuff them and do it there's a lot of volunteers that would gladly help so if there was a way to maybe um for the girls to have a sheet or have something or put on the town of durham site who is willing to volunteer hours or times to do and then say you know we've got a lot of envelopes this day who come in i work with the committee now and we had over 800 things to stop and she just put out there who's going to volunteer and 16 of us showed up and we were able to get that in a couple hours and then i was gone um and it was under her liking so that's kind of um it's just an idea that maybe the people are here some of the stuff is here

and i know sometimes it's hard to see the force through the trees and stuff but there's people willing to help and also do it for nothing help the taxpayers um and obviously i don't know volunteering between do the trio system but you know but there there's probably stuff that that might make sense that's exactly what we did prior to the annual town meeting that you had that thursday and friday we had volunteers in here people would come in like yourself and they actually we had to go through a whole lot of assembly to get the annual report ready for you for saturday and they did a great job i totally agree with that and i totally agree with the chair's assessment that that's the best place to use volunteers okay all right next on the objective is anybody so we'll close public comment um

uh item six on the agenda is discussion of the town manager search and the 3d review process so i think i said earlier the plan um we kind of talked about like how many outfits we have we're gonna watch we don't have any interviews tonight we have the staff members um and we'll interview citizens interested on thursday starting at 6 30 and we'll be here at 6 30. um i think the interviews actually start at 6 45 yes um we so when we come out of executive session um the motion uh won't be to adjourn it will be to recess and reconvene on thursday so that we're still operating under the same meeting notice as tonight so just to give everybody a heads up and while we're done

and then application tonight so we kind of watch this coming on thursday and we'll and then after uh interview survey the idea is that the board would continue to meet select the three citizens and three board members that would be on the committee and come out of that session but we actually announced those chosen or how do you want to communicate that we kind of have to right because that'll be the motion that's correct right and the fact that you're treating the applications as confidential is only to the point that you're having discussion and favoriting out which one once you've made your decision the offer to be appointed is made public yeah

point we should when we pick the committee we should pick a couple of colleagues okay if like here's alternate one alternate two yeah if one of the three we pick isn't available for some reason or changes their mind or whatever applause you think so but you know unforeseen things happen right you know they could

of the board members is married to one of the others because we do have that situation yeah yeah you know i don't think there's any hard fast rule against it disclosure is important the fact that the committee is merely doing the first run assessment into three categories and then it's up to you to decide based on your interviews where you want to go well once the committee doesn't need it once you've got your committee and going forward the disclosure still carries right and if that disclosure affects myself as a committee member and my wife is an applicant to be a town manager then i have to you know no no we don't have that situation no we have one of the citizen committee applicants is the wife of one of the board members yeah that's that's what was yeah but i'm using myself as an example in this context oh okay yeah the the conflict would be in the initial selection and appointment and then at that point

you've made your decision if in fact it was reversed and it was your wife who was an applicant for the town manager position you'd have to disclose and be accused yeah yeah that would definitely show that yeah yeah so um anyway so we'll talk about that

the committee the nine the the three citizens and you do the initial yes no maybe and then the full nine person committee and you does the first round interviews gets it down to you know three to a maximum of five finalists and then those the people then go and interview with the full board right so just to kind of reiterate anybody watching what that process looks like and i know that's hard for the public to sometimes follow so i'll repeat myself because all of this is personnel matters and secondly under the foyer statute it's part of what they call appointments even when they're done they can't talk about it because the applicant has an expectation of confidentiality in our files

kind of briefed us already that we had two applications so far the advertisements are out um so hopefully they'll stop seeing some some songs to pick up here did anyone see it in the sunday paper the portland press held or they were son

i'd have to look for it typically yeah seven basically we have a board of appeals reservation um so the uh resignation uh is barb schneider she is really sharp willing to serve the serve the appeal board really well um sorry to see her go um so uh no action to take on this tonight but [Music]

sorry about that can we edit that eight can we can we do take two yes okay i actually i don't know dean as well but we certainly appreciate his service so we will there are i think there are two alternates to the board of appeals right now so um we'll have to uh it's not too well it's up to the board to determine which alternate would be elevated to a you know full voting member i guess probably first step was probably to reach out to the two alternates and see if they're interested in that if they want that and if they both are then um then the board would discuss that depending on whether you don't know we could for instance bring them in for just a little meet and greet interview just to know who they are and kind of what they're thinking why they want to be fulfilling whatever or we if we know of people we're comfortable you know we can just you know make the call that would be an executive session

discussion because it's just it's just like filling a job really at all any appointment like that so um no but no reaction to take tonight on that both of those individuals yes please sorry yeah so i guess that would be the action is to reach out to the two alternates um let them know if there's been a resignation ask if they're interested in potentially being elevated to you know regular boarding them and uh go from there um you know uh support no especially isn't i i'm just getting back to planning four days i thought that was the plan where chairs

the board of appeals wants to make a recommendation that's right what it's what it's not as an automatic like it's not yeah it's not like okay who is an alternate first okay they're the next one to move up it's not it's not like that

um we'll have to find another alternate and we actually we don't really have there's no not urgencies but we actually have a vacant um budget committee seat that we need to appoint somebody to fill to finish out uh this term because her because her resignation was effective after the tao meeting in the annual election it falls to the select board to appoint somebody to so at some point and again this isn't urgent because it'd be a while for the budget committee meets on anything um the uh although if we import a special top meeting with a request for more money for public works then they'd have to they would have to do a recommendation on that so anyway so yeah we'll have that to the point so at some point we need to put out the word for if anybody's interested in being on a budget committee for a year to finish out the term they can probably do a similar thing like we did for applications for the

interview committee who's interested is it standard practice and customary for the chair of the selector then to send a thank you for your service letter it hasn't been but i think that's a nice idea yeah so if if um if the letter could be drafted um that would be that i think that's a nice very nice touch yeah don't send him to double yeah right sorry um

okay to approve the consent agenda as presented upcoming meetings um so the impossible town manager hiring community means week of may 9th that's very tentative at this point but just put it put it out there um and then i don't i don't have the dates for our next select board meetings here but it's the second and fourth um tuesday of each month so okay all right at this point uh [Music] we don't we do have i don't think the planner is

planning board meeting ah is his light on i don't think he's here us into executive session