TranscriptSelect Board Meeting - August 23, 2022

i'll call this meeting of the durham board of selectmen on august 23 2022 to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay

issue of the oath of office um for our new town manager jerry douglas that actually happened earlier today while the town clerk was here um because she's legally the one that does the oath so he has already been sworn in and officially welcome welcome all right um other amendments to the agenda

couple um on number eight under new business the first two items um about supplements and abatements that needs to actually be pulled out as a separate agenda item we'll make it 7a because we uh whenever we have things like this we have to formally go into an assessor's session and then when we're done with that business come out of assessor session and go back as uh selectmen because then this form of government we are actually the assessors donna hayes is our assessor's agent who actually does the work but we actually have the legal authority which is why we have to go in and out of assessor sessions um and then under new business i want to add a third item uh to talk about uh vacancies that we have on some town committees and boards and uh steps to solicit volunteers that might want to be appointed to fill those um until our next election so all right any other amendments to the agenda

third item on the agenda um use of arpa fund public input and i'll apologize if that title is a little bit misleading to people we're not actually soliciting public input tonight about specific proposals or projects tonight what we're going to talk about is the process for doing that you know like what is that going to look like so that anybody that has an interest or any group that has an interest [Music] we'll have an avenue to make that interest known you know what would what you know what do you want the money for what would you do with it how does it benefit the town you know and so on um and uh so that's what we're going to talk about a little bit about tonight under number three okay so i think the i think we all have the board member should all have and i believe this is online already correct the the letter about the use of opera funding is that already been put on the website i will check i'm not sure i had asked to

have it on okay but if not if it's not it's going up like any time now like tomorrow or whatever so basically there's um a letter going up which briefly explains um you know what arpa is um what what uh generally the requirements are you know a pretty high level similar to the fact sheet we had the special town meeting last week um and then it talks about next steps in like for instance the way this is drafted you know in august and september yeah the board would uh discuss developing some sort of uh request for funding process um and like what that might look like and we'll we'll talk a little bit about tonight about you know we'll review a sample application that jerry found and then that'll give us kind of a starting point to work on so maybe in you know august september we're working on that um september october uh you know we might conduct some surveys or we'll we'll open up special sections

of our regular meetings i think and invite people in to come in with their ideas and priorities that they have for that for that money keep going with that process in november december and at some point it'd be kind of like an application deadline and then ultimately it's the board's responsibility to determine you know after hearing all the public input and receiving and evaluating proposals you know it's up to us to decide what are we going to put before voters for approval because just like the last special town meeting um any the use of opera funds has to be approved at town meeting so so that's kind of generally what we're looking at so um does everybody have did you guys get your copies of this yeah so jerry did you want to take us through this a little bit on what you were yeah what you found and what you were thinking sure thank you mr chairman um i spent some time today looking at different applications that

are out there as far as grant applications specifically offer grant and what i found was that a lot of the grant applications were actually coming from the county the municipality was actually filling out a lot of these applications but they can be you know edited for uh non-profits or whomever to request money from the municipality um there are applications out there that are very complicated and there are some that are very short and sweet and easy to understand i actually printed off one that i thought was was one of the easier ones to give to the selectmen to kind of look at to see get a feel for what they would like to see as far as the greater application and that's what they have before them and there are there are a bunch of them and again mostly i i want to say that

they're actually coming from counties and municipalities and non-profits were asking money from through the grant through the application but to the county so it would be just the opposite for us not the opposite to be just a little different where the non-profits would be asking money from the town of durham yeah and it doesn't necessarily have to be a non-profit it could be yeah it could right you know i think one of the things we talked with uh we were when we were chatting in the office beforehand like for instance would we have for instance if the fire chief has a specific request yes would they use the same form town public works fire would use the same application for the same monies absolutely

section here where site specific language in the american rescue plan act that supports your request for funds because that's a really complicated law and the overview is like 47 pages long so imagine how long the actual law is um but i think that's the gist of it what i think anyway is what um and that might maybe i don't maybe that comes later but it's like what do you want the money for explain it in detail how does it benefit the town and how do you feel it qualifies for arpa funds you know those kind of kind of three general buckets there i don't know what you guys and we're not we don't we're not voting or just finalizing anything today we just want to maybe give a little direction uh to jerry and i think mitch is going to help him out with this to kind of go to the next step and start putting together you know an actual draft application and process for us so i i didn't see this in the email packet

yeah well we didn't have any of this in the email package that's that's kind of hard to it's got something to just see we can absolutely table this until the next meeting if you want my only question is is you know again i haven't really looked over this but it assumes like i'm assuming that we're taking the money that we received from arpa and we'd be offering that to non-profits etc potentially so so basically you know then i'll recap the special town meeting discussion a little bit is that um the the things that were approved a special town meeting was roughly 25 to 30 percent of the funds there's a big chunk left and so now it's you know as part of the public input process of okay what are we going to use that money for um we've uh it's also it's one potential use is uh

a grant to a non-profit organization you know like um it could be durham historical society could be amvets could be you know something else or there might be town projects like maybe refurbishing the ladder truck or maybe there's something at um public works like new garage doors i don't know i'm just making that up um but you know whatever it might be

then we would collect kind of you know build the wish list and then from that wish list we kind of have to as a board then we have to kind of based on public input and our own judgment what do we put before voters for approval for asked requested approval at town meeting but nonprofits are eligible um i think there's some conditions on that but you know we need to flush that out

just you know again just looking at it from the i would i would think before we start looking into basically charities that we would make sure that all the towns needs and bases covered before we would go out to for essentially a third party yeah i mean and i think that would be i think that's part of what we want to hear from the town like you know what are those priorities not just from um you know general citizens but also from the department heads like what are what are kind of critical needs that um maybe not critical needs i should because hopefully we've covered most of the like critical needs with what we just did last week but um but still needs you know we didn't cover everything last week so what else what else is out there that we didn't ask for funds for and i think we need so there's work to do there on the town side to kind of uh get our ducks in a row on what we think needs to be done or is the best use of

that money for taxpayers but others other groups are free to submit an application to um you know for some of those funds as well so for the for the funds that are submitted would that be determined by the town and is the town already saying hey we want to take in applications for um funds for nonprofits without even figuring out what this resource we could use here in town no no what uh i guess that's where i'm getting confused well basically the arpa law the arpa law the law states what the eligible uses are right i get you a lot so i'm just asking the priority i would think would have been out of the gate for the town that's where the money was given um and i think that's part of the priority discussion when we get that far but i think it's kind of like you know i think of a funnel you know we're going to start wide and get narrow right so when we start wide and as we kind of promise this to the town at town

meetings like you know we're going to have some um think that's crucial this is just the first time and forgive me i was on vacation last week this is the first time that i've heard of you know the nonprofit entities being brought in it was always somewhat whether it would be in the beginning or even in the past select board meeting the the monies were always kind of not necessarily earmarked but trying to figure out how we could disperse these in the municipality as far as the time of durham my sense is that'll will be the priority okay but uh it's it's i guess for clarification it's ultimately it's still the board's decision right yeah we where the this board will determine you know of all the information we get you know and all the potential um uh things that might need to be done you know were charged with taking that and deciding which questions to put before so is the non-profit something that was

brought up at the last meeting yeah that kind of came that's kind of people that came up with the last meeting okay i think the working assumption of a lot of people was that um was we weren't aware that non-profits would even be eligible for these funds right that's the first time i was hearing intuitions turns out they can be uh in certain situations okay and so there when we start talking about okay what should we do with this you know 300 000 plus whatever it is dollars

groups to say hey you know we'd like to have x amount of dollars to do x y and z and then it must be pretty clear language in the in the it is pretty clear it's very clear on what you can and can't do uh even as a non-profit yeah i think i think there's more research to be done there and and that's why we kind of charge the uh groups with providing that information so like they need to say yeah you know based on you know this section and have they're going to have to actually you know reference the section of the law that authorizes you know what they're saying they want to use it for and we'll verify that of course with the town attorney

as part of your process and thinking forward when jerry and i were talking about this we presumed subject to your approvals or not that the town projects that still are out there on the list would have to go through the same vetting process using the same application process and justifications so that you as a body would be able to balance carefully the final decisions based on what our priorities where's the best bang for the buck where's the best return on investment yeah i would i wouldn't dispute that because i think that does a couple of things one is it um it doesn't it doesn't make any determination as far as priority but it it gets everything in the same format and so then you know i would envision you know these are public documents or envision them being online and people you know can go and look at you know the various things and they can you know offer their input on what they

think the priorities are too because they can kind of see everything in the same context of whereas versus some things are formatted like this but other things are formatted a different way you know everything formatted the same way for the for the arpa

it's more transparent and i think it's just easier to follow if everything's in the same format is has anyone asked the county whether the county got any money county got a lot of money yeah i have not and so what are they doing with them they have their own budget committee they have their own process their own projects they've had they've had public meetings uh i don't know it has any way and i'm going to resume most other counties on so what

head around this i obviously the original intent was to figure out some uses for these monies and bring it to the town and let them decide which way they want to grow would you set it up somewhat like a cip where you would almost triage these to see what the best uses of this money was and who would i think that's i think that's part of our discussion tonight like would we use would we want to um would we want to establish you know some general criteria you know like for instance um and we this could get into the we could put more specific questions on an application like for instance we could say you know is there a financial benefit to the town if this money goes to this purpose so like for instance he uses as an example you know if if the chief came and said you know we'd like arpa funds to uh refurbish you know rather a fire truck rather than replace it then the financial benefit to the town

is that we don't have to use tax dollars prop we don't have to use property tax dollars to fund that i should think that would come first well again that'll be that's that'll be part of the prioritization we're just talking about process right now like it's it's not about what are we gonna decide but how are we going to consider it and how or what's the decision making process look like so i think we we get all those like we might be sitting at the end you know the process after you know a handful of public input opportunities and you know maybe there's a handful of organizations that submit applications and we then we review it and we prioritize because my assumption is and maybe maybe it won't work out this way we can send everything to voters my assumption is we're going to have more requests than we have funds right so that right i would bet so right um so that's we'll have to we'll have to make some decisions as a

board on you know what is most important uh prioritize what's most important for the town as a whole yeah yeah and put that out to voters and voters will say yay or nay yep interesting i didn't realize it would be from from the original low small scope of the apa funds it's changed a lot it has changed tremendously when it when it first started when it first came out figure out what we'd do with it it was so restrictive that yeah there was literally almost nothing we could do with it because you could uh do like public water and sewer which we don't have you um you know there were a few other things you do you could have paid you know hazard pay you know to people you there are a few other things you could do and there was this clause where you were if you could demonstrate lost revenue because of the pandemic then you could you had a lot more leeway in terms of what you could spend it on

under the lost revenue usage and but what they did is they the later version of the bill they applied essentially a 10 million dollar exemption on the lost revenue so basically what the government said is you don't have to document your first 10 million dollars of lost revenue you know think of it as like the standard deduction on your tax return right you may not have that many deductions but you can take that because that's the standard deduction and so that's what enables a small community like durham who our budget's nowhere near 10 million dollars that that's what enables us to have a lot more flexibility in how we use the arpa funds as long as we meet other requirements of the law so interesting

out of the six to ten grand applications that i saw and looked online the onus the the project justification the onus is on the applicant and there are going to be some hard questions and it's going to be a fair amount of work to fill out the grant application to meet those opera upper legislation those requirements so it's not it's not going to be you know a simple yes no there's going to be some you're going to have to justify why under the upper legislation that this project should move forward right grant writing is sometimes difficult and this is no different but you say the onus is on the individual of the applicant but the applicant's not necessarily the one giving the money the the onus is always on the one who distributes well the justification correct the justification you're making sure that a it's a level playing field in terms of everyone has that opportunity who may be eligible and

then you have to discern based on the information given to you in their application how that begins to rank whether you rank project a better than project b becomes part of that ultimately you have to have the backup documentation as fiduciaries to support the audit which has to be turned in by 2026 right and i think you know at some point you know we'll talk about um and you know even tonight like what

what are the most important criteria or some of the most important criteria we think need that a project needs to have for us to think we might support it and just to use an example that i've already used you know is there a financial benefit to the town you know that might be one of our criteria is like you know there needs to be a financial benefit to the town you know or or that's a maybe not be an absolute but it might be like that's a criteria that we put a lot of weight behind one of these if something doesn't have a financial benefit to the town there better be some other benefit to the town in terms of you know service provided or whatever right so that's and so whatever we think of as criteria we need to kind of build the application to uh pull out that information from the applicant on how are they meeting our criteria yeah it's going to take some time yeah yeah it's not a um i don't think you know and again but

again i don't think we want to over complicate it either i mean but it's kind of like you know you're why you're eligible what do you want to do with the money in detail like for instance you can't say you know we need x number of dollars to invest in in our to for improvements in our building okay i think we would need to go the next deadline yeah we need x number of dollars for improvement to the building but we need you know um uh you know 30 we have bids that estimates that it's going to be take 30 000 for the roof and we need you know 10 000 for a new sump pump and drainage and we need you know whatever it is um so that we're comfortable that the money's going for a good you know purpose that benefits the town yeah i think you know i again we're just diving into this on the top level here but um you know from my perspective this is kind of like your own personal finances when it comes to divino charity

first utilize the money for what it's kind of been noted for in terms of the town um and then if there's any left over then maybe you can take some applications for that standpoint but it just seems like all of a sudden we're getting ahead of the town's needs and going to non-profit seeds yeah um

that's kind of the example but um no i i get that it's just we haven't even really determined what the town needs out of these funds and we're already looking at other avenues where we can use these funds i think all we're trying to do is i i hear what you're saying but i just because we um put together a process and provide groups an opportunity to make their case doesn't doesn't you know if we take that and then when we start layering on you know the town's needs if in our prioritization discussion say look you know we need x dollars to do this within town buildings or town whatever there really isn't enough to do um these other things then that's it that's where it is yeah i think i think that's kind of hits the nail on the head as far as my point goes it's just we haven't even determined out what the town needs yet but we're kind of you know lag about words advertising that we we may have funds

available for non-profits and other entities et cetera but we don't we don't even know what that number is so what what what do you well i would think that we would i would think that we would figure out what the town needs whether it's like we did recently with the fire department whether it's the old town hall i mean there's a lot of needs in this town that this money could be utilized for before i mean non-profits have other avenues also as does the town taxes et cetera but the original intent when this was laid upon us as far as discussing with the town and and the select board it was going to be this was going to be monies used towards the town i don't think this discussion changes that at all no i don't think it is well i'm not saying it changes it i'm just saying it's it's it's providing it's it's opening up the doors for we don't even know what we have but i think but i think the federal government did

that no i think you should figure out what the town's needs are before we start saying hey by the way we're going to have an application process for you know private individuals we don't even know what we need to earmark for ourselves and you think we need to do that first and then before we offer others an opportunity to make their case i personally think that based on the way this was presented out of the gate yes and the way that i think people even myself being on this board or being in and i wasn't here last week i was on vacation but that was the original intent of the monies and i think that still is the intent i don't think that's changed the intent i think the intent in general is to use those funds in the best interest of the town okay right that's fair and that that might mean that it all gets used on you know um

you know what is under the purview of town government uh but it might also be for instance it may not have to be an either or thing like for instance if if there were a couple of worthy things where if you know if we could peel off you know ten thousand dollars to a particular group then you know ten thousand dollars could mean it could be a huge deal to that organization and have a significant benefit to the town whereas having ten thousand dollars less out of three hundred and something thousand you know we might be able to you know to live with that so that's that's why i think you know having everything at once looked at in context with each other and that's where you can make prioritization because if all you have is the town stuff because you i mean there's no no we'll spend the town stuff and it'll never get to anything else but i think and it might that still might be the case realistically

when we start having our prioritization discussion but i think we should at least provide those any group any you know whatever the opportunity to kind of make their case it may not make the cut it may not happen but at least at least they've maybe somebody will put something on the table that would be a great thing but and we didn't think of it before we used up all the money and other things we were thinking of so yep

how about this especially since there's only three of us here tonight um would you guys be okay with uh having uh jerry to continue to kind of draft what an application might look like and then have the you know have continuous discussion at our next uh board meeting yeah yeah i certainly don't have a no i certainly don't have a problem with that like i said there was there's really nothing in the agenda packet that i could yeah come in here with it you know it was kind of just it's on the agenda yeah no i it really that's kind of hard to formulate right on i know everybody's probably here for discussion and listen to discussion but there's really nothing that i could formulate you know a real true opinion on but um yeah i think so i think i think we could you know for lack of better words plagiarized from some other communities and so forth and see what they've done in the past i i think one of the questions that i

think is important on here whether it's private business or the private sector and in terms of nonprofits and so forth is um what how much money or have they received monies from the federal government so far um whether it's in the form of ppp or things of that nature um that could be one of the questions well i think that's what i was getting at if we if we had some type of question like that to make sure that um have you received other covid relief funds of some sort sure never detail that yeah yeah also do you suppose they could go to the county for the same thing i don't i don't i don't know how the county process is working it's a question

you know i'll use the amvets hall as an example because i know they're they're interested um you know i suspect i don't know but i suspect if they went to the county the county would tell them well come back that's a local thing you need to go to your town yeah i was just talking uh whereas if somebody in that regional transportation thing throughout the county that you know that might be a different yeah yeah i think the county with so many resources they have so many places that they could probably utilize this money in yeah i mean it's between using money buildings etc so okay all right so i think where we are is um if you based on this discussion i think you know do you feel like you have what you need to at least go to the next you know next draft of an application and like get at some of the questions that we talked about that we'd be interested in having you know query people on about

their suggested projects yes we've done a lot already and we'll talk more at our next meeting um because we you know we kind of on the the timetable that was laid out we kind of have august september is the time period that we're that we're doing this what we're doing right now it's like what is the budget what is this process going to look like yeah can you refresh me when do we have to use the money yeah so we have to we have to have allocated which means approved by voters what the money is going to be used for by the end of 24 2024 and then the money has to actually be expended by the end of 26. so for instance you know you could you know say the town and i'm making this up we're not asking for this the time you know because yeah by the end of 24 the town approves spending 200 000 on a expansion of the town office you know that money would have to be spent for that purpose by the end of 26

but it was approved by the end of 24. but it often gives you the flexibility of maybe doing this in rounds like the first round we're accepting i think that's an excellent point because one of the tricky things here is that you know we can't just take all the questions and send them to the voters right yeah because if they approve everything and that's more money than we have so we can't do that so we got to figure out how do we ask you know at any one meeting only what we actually have funds for so it might be that you know in the town meeting 23 town meeting we get 80 90 of the way there whatever and then we might have to whatever the next town meeting is april 24 or whatever okay we've got this much left that hasn't been allocated yet what are we gonna do with it you know so we don't it doesn't we don't have to allocate

um out of expended account does it have to be out of our checkbook into the end users and the end user has to be done with it or does it just have to be out of our checkbook for example if we give twenty thousand dollars to philadelphia the local whatever sonic society or whatever oh do they have to use that money by the 26. i don't believe so or does it just have to be out of our hands back and check mr chairman but my quick and dirty memory tells me in the audit report that is sent back to the federal government how was the money used now how do you define you is numbered but not expended in coverage yeah i would think it would have to be expensive you can't encumber for an outside an outside organization right so so let's say if we if we granted um you know five thousand dollars to durham softball right so i don't think and we wrote durham softball a check on december 30th 2026 i don't think they have to spend it by

december 31st 2026 but we need to confirm that we need to yeah and i only asked that because kind of the reasoning behind this was kind of get america back to work and they wanted to get this money into circulation by x amount of time so if you write durham softball let's say a check on the last day of the year of the december of 2026 and they don't cash until 2027 does that count as expensive i think that's a i think that's a good question to you know to follow up on and get an answer to my interpretation of spirit and intent is by 24 you've made a commitment to project x and over the next 18 to 24 months you're going to expend those monies not put it in your bank account and collect interest that's actually and that's a good point like on the on the softball thing we would have had to have allocated by the end of 24. yeah so i guess if you give it if you gave it to them it at the beginning of 25 but they still

hadn't spent it by the end of 26 what happens does this recapture does the money turn to dust or something unless there's a forgiveness cause that has yet to be legislated i'd be surprised if there's once it's been awarded if there's any requirements beyond that but perhaps one of the questions that jerry should consider putting in the application if awarded will you be able to complete the project prior to date certainly yeah i think that's paid in full i don't know if it's a requirement but i know a lot of times they do i just you know you know your fear is you know it's a poor reference but you know like the the monty brewster you know you end up with you know somebody drops you off the check for twenty thousand dollars at the end of your 30 million then you don't get nothing you know

into this yeah is not wanting to put this in the bank and just collect interest you want it to work yeah yeah yeah for sure okay do you have you got what you need on that one for now i do and you can certainly you know we can have follow-up conversations yeah i do want to say i mean if if they're saying allocated by 24 then there's no more to allocate and they just want that spent by 26. they're giving you two years so yeah you have to expend it by the 2020 right so you may allocate it towards a bridge but it's going to take a couple years to get back it's done right they want it done by 2020 exactly something to that effect yep all right all right so moving on so now um we have uh public comment i'll move on wait

tonight would not be then well i guess you know what i would public comment is open but tonight was not the night to advocate for a specific arpa project okay that that will come later okay all right any public comments alan purrington day road you know there last year there was a presentation by the d.o.t about dead man's curve and the possibility of adding a blinking light is down hacker road in brunswick grant this is kind of a question as to what the status of that might be

questions i guess and the tracy bridge is on metal brook that's about half a mile from on 125 when you turn across that was supposed to be replaced and the last time i knew it was supposed to be this fall and the reason i'm asking that is because there was going to be work done on swamp road and i know that's being delayed because of requirements have changed because the swamp road was done in tracy brook i'm in between that's how do i get around so that's why i'm asking these questions um i don't know calvin's not here tonight i don't know if he has heard anything specific from d.o.t i did uh happen to check the d.o.t work plan probably two weeks ago and both the lights you talk about at dead man's curve and the tracy bridge are still on the work plan for this year um but you know whether that's actually happening or not i'm not i can't i don't know because those work plans don't say yeah we're starting on this date it just

says it's it's on the plan is so um can we have calvin reach out to d.o.t and see if we can get an update on that i have seen them down there surveying at tracy bridge yeah so beyond that i haven't seen anything beyond that but they have surveyed it okay thank you okay

brianna drive uh sticking with the arpa funds and i'll be um to tonight's conversation of the process of the whole thing um first off i want to thank the town and commend the select board and the town managers for having open ears and at least having the discussion and bringing up the articles last week that i voted in favor of because in order to have it work in town the gears need to be fluid and operating appropriately so i voted in favor of all that it does concern me however that on the us department of treasury website in january of 2022 this year eight months ago they put out a coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds overview of the final rule eight months ago and in this 42 page packet that i have read every single word of its explains and answers all of your questions about non-profits about how to spend the money where to spend the money what to do with the money it it

lays it out pretty extensively specifically about non-profits on page 23. now is not the time to go over that but i highly recommend that we look at that it also concerns me that we have already spent 20 to 30 percent of the funds

without having to go through an application process that we're now creating or coming up with and having questions on how do we spend this money when the guidelines were laid out in january of this year eight months ago moving forward the only question i have is those six articles that were and i and i don't mind being educated i love learning those six articles that were moved and put to the town vote didn't go through any type of process i i take that back i don't uh discredit all the work i apologize please i'm retracting that immediately um but this expanded uh thing that we're discussing now it didn't get through that it just went straight to the town for vote we were not apprised to the line items that you may when you come up with this application process i asked specific questions last week about the forty five thousand dollars that were spent for technology i agree with it spend it but

i didn't have a line item of how many computers how many wireless internet stuff whatever there was never a breakdown and so i just cautioned to not set up an application process so complicated uh that the original six articles didn't have to follow that same process my next question is uh if if there's a legislation in the main state law i believe it's title 20-a of a citizens initiative if the town finds out about these funds is there a way to ask them i i should if there was 10 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election that sign a petition and say yes i know about these funds i agree with the u.s treasury that put out in january 2022 that they could be spent for these funds nowhere in that article does it talk about prioritizing nowhere in the final review does it say that it has to be spent on x y or z it just it's a blanket it could be spent on all these things right now

as a government you have to do it appropriately i and i'm all about having those conversations about doing it appropriately my question though is if the town finds out about it and does sign a petition and it does go to vote on the ballot how will the select board react to those type of votes or those type of things and how quickly if that does happen and there is a vote and the citizens you know sign the petition you get 10 percent everybody wants to see it on the ballot and it would read exactly like it read last week do you approve spending x amount of dollars on x amount of charity from the arpa funds yes or no question mark and if that was to move so fast as maybe this november how are you going to adjust your planning on this application process for other non-profits to get involved or other entities or other town workings uh the municipality so i just wanted to put that out there so that

we can generate more discussion and topic about it it's right on the website it's literally titled coronavirus state and local fiscal fiscal recovery funds overview of the final rule and it was put out in january of 2022 this year and it will answer all the questions you need on how arpa is funded and that's all i have for public comment thank you any other public comments

football welcome jerry thank you um i have a couple things first off i'd just like to say for the record that i'm in favor of the board soliciting all input from the community on using those funds i think it's important for you to have the full picture in front of you when you do start prioritizing and going through that the other thing i wanted to talk about is both the homestead act and the act where the seniors can fill out paperwork to have their taxes frozen or whatever i was just wondering if there are metrics on how many residents of durham participate in both of those programs and how many community members are

participate and if we do have those metrics is there a way possibly to create a program or contact individuals who are not participating but could and get a full 100 participation i think there are folks that could use the assistance and why not have everybody get those benefits if possible so i don't know the rules about how to if all that can be made public or the numbers could be made public possibly but not the names and if we do have the names of people not participating that could could a volunteer come in and help contact those people would that be in accordance with some rules or whatever but i think that um would be really good if the town if the town of durham was 100 percent participating in both of those programs for community members who are eligible to uh to answer your question um the town has in the past periodically uh reached out to people that are not claiming the homestead exemption and

made them aware that you know you qualify but they gotta they gotta come in and fill out the application and the the the uh senior i don't know what the actual name is but the property tax freeze law that's a new law so that's and so we do have information out on the website now i believe on applying for that and we have materials here so i don't know if anybody's applied yet that one's going to be trickier because on that one people need to apply for that every year whereas the homestead once you apply that's it you know you're you're in you know unless you break qualification for some reason so um but i think uh yeah i think the town staff agrees that you know we should um get as many people participating that as possible because the town doesn't lose any money on that it gets reimbursed by the state you know so you could say well it's your state tax dollars paying for it and it is you know it's coming from

somewhere um but in terms of the impact of property taxes the town is made whole if you will and if it is like legal to have people volunteer to help support reaching those goals how volunteer okay great her name's deb oliver so you can you know

all the applications in front of whomever is going to review them i like i grew up with charity starts at home but i think defining what home is in this town might be a little different for me um i kind of see the government maybe being mom and dad but you know some of the charities or non-profits or other organizations or the kids in the family and they may have a good point how it can help the family or help at least a large part of the family so i think that's an important question to consider on the application i would recommend that the board considers creating a committee like the cip um and the hiring committee where you do have um i like the cip part where it's literally like a number system so when you are looking at the applications they all get points and then that's kind of how they reach to the top of the priority list or at least you see the select board sees the points that

were generated um and in a part of the hiring committee how it was a combination of public and townspeople within that committee i think that shows the transparency and you know public input as well um i also like the point of having the applications made available online um especially or all of the projects posted somehow especially if we're not voting on all of them um because i might withhold my vote knowing that in 2024 you know the am vets are coming up and i'd rather you know the funds go to the amvets or the fire truck is coming up and i'd rather the funds go to the fire truck next year um so definitely making sure the townspeople aren't blindsided like oh if i had known i would have changed how i voted um [Music] i think part of the thought process should be consideration of future costs of the town um i think it was you know what's the cost benefit but also what's the cost detriment are we starting a new

government program that we're going to have to then keep going in the following years um there's one thing that nathan said that i disagree with a little bit because i paid attention a lot to how the warrants got created for the special town meeting i really think we need estimates not guesstimates um and there were a couple warrant articles that were just that they were guesstimates and i think if we're going to allocate the funds we need to know exactly what we're allocating them for um

another thought that i had and i don't even know how this would work out or if it's even legal or possible or anything but on the november election day is there a way that we can ask the townspeople kind of like a ranked choice voting but rank your voting choices of how you'd like our funds to be spent you know with town government you know increase future services charity the kids the seniors i don't know you guys can make it up but in a sense you're polling the town ahead of time to kind of get an idea of where where they do prioritize spending the funds just to answer yes that is possible in fact i actually talked with mitch about it earlier today and we've done it in the past i don't remember a few years ago we did that with regard to marijuana regulations it's a non-binding referendum is what it's called and it's essentially a survey and there have been a couple other questions that have come

up that we thought we might survey like for one is you know are are people interested in seeing a fireworks ordinance in town you know and to get because that's a tough one to get a sense of unless you do some sort of survey so the answer to the question is yes it's possible we just started you know talking about you know what that might look like for you know if we can pull that off in november and to deb's point about the homestead act and the seniors i don't have a whole lot of free time but i'm always willing to help too i was a homeowner i think for almost seven years before anybody even told me about the homestead act and even my parents were like what we never told you um so i think definitely any communication campaign is always a great idea thank you anyone else hey grab me sorry about that hey um darren baker run around pandro okay hey there um this may be more of a question um because i'm just learning about the

the arpa funds and i heard some conversations about you know examples of spending i'm not saying that's that's your intent but um what i didn't hear was the criteria with which this whole thing was set up for not just fixing the bridge because it needs to be fixed but how how how that project is related or had suffered uh as a as a result of the coronavirus um you know financially so is that still part of the consideration is that the rules change well the the rules um so there's four general categories and one of them is uh the lost revenue category and that's the one that has the um you know the 10 million dollar exemption if you will that essentially allows a smaller community or any community for the first 10 million of our funds which we obviously don't have that much have a lot more flexibility and on what to do with it like it can be used for you know it can be used for you know a fire truck or improvements at the town

office it it's not i think to answer your questions like no there doesn't have to be a direct link to covet impacts uh as far as we understand now to nate's point earlier you know nate i'm sure knows that law a lot better than we do right now but quite honestly because we had a long runway in a lot of time we had other priorities before we were studying that law so we're kind of at that point now so that's so where he he's a lot further down the road than we are uh on that so um but i think to answer your question no no it's not necessarily a requirement to demonstrate that whatever you're spending the money on as a result of impacts from the pandemic you had stated earlier that that 10 million dollar

[Music] justification or auditing purposes yeah so the way the law was originally put out there it um one of the categories was lost revenue but in order to uh so if a town could say yeah we lost you know two hundred 200 000 in excise tax revenue because nobody was buying cars during the pandemic you could essentially if you document that 200 000 loss of revenue you could essentially use that two hundred thousand dollars on uh not whatever you want but within the limits of the law like you can't pay off debt and you know of the the few restrictions are you can do what you want with it we durham actually really we had really no lost revenue you know our excise tax actually went up uh during the pandemic we had no problem collecting property taxes so we had no lost revenue to document but then the later in the process on the final rule the government changed that lost revenue portion of the law and said basically

brought in this 10 million dollar exemption it said every every unit is assumed to have had 10 million lost revenue whether you actually did or not and so that's what you know so the first 10 million dollars of arpa funds you can uh use under that lost revenue

purpose and which enables you to you know a small town like durham which we were on public water we have public sewer you know um to use it for other things that would benefit the town the last paragraph of that article date was talking about i because i was like hearing things it does say additional general restrictions the s-l-f-r-f funds may not be used for a project that conflicts with or contravenes the purpose of the american rescue plan act statute

mitigation practices in line with cdc guidance and recommendations i mean that that just still speak strongly to the spirit of what the money was for so i guess i'm asking you guys i think it says it can't undermine those it's they can't undermine the mitigation i understand i'm i'm sort of generalizing you know that i'm hoping you guys really focus that in that in that regard when you make your your you know your applications that that's an important piece i think that's what the money was for thank you

and move on to the agenda fire chief report certainly make this brief if for no other reason to lure town manager douglas into thinking we're brevity around here so um we completed pump testing last week on our four major apparatus two pumpers the quint and our tanker and next week one of those pumpers will be going out for fixing issues found during pump testing not a lot of issues and that's engine 21 it's a 2004 engine our oldest so going local to auburn a couple of primer type of pump issues that is always in my budget for fixing we started a discussion on restarting our firefighter explorer program that's for ages roughly 14 to 18 but that's with the boy scouts that has a fee i've had others in the past work through that program they're certainly the instructors are vetted through the scouts and sort of like quarry checks police that type of stuff you pay a fee for that but that is identified as one way to

really get volunteers so you start them young at 14 a lot of them are family members they love it they get their license they start more active by 18 they're getting their emt and really giving us time i did have a volunteer stop by today he's moving into town i think it's the pound road uh very excited for montana so it was like dropped in our lap i'll take it all day long we did get our new scba's our air tanks from the capital improvement that was voted on last year 63 000 those are in service ready to go which we appreciate so the bill will be coming due but all the crews appreciate they were up uh for renewal anyways you might have heard recently sabattus actually called us the town they had a mass casualty incident on a motor vehicle accident up to 10 patients we sent our rescue and transported out of there i think it was at least a crew of three uh in a timely fashion so um we weren't training but it was one

person at the station met up with two and went all the way to sabattus took care of a patient and transported and that's what the mutual aid is really about so i was proud of those guys very timely fashion and took care of a sick individual real quick save the date again october 15th it will be on the town's website is our open house and the entire town has invited uh 10 to 2 at the station and i expect the entire town to be there the 15th it is it is october 15th 10 to 2. ten to two dogs what are you doing there uh we will grill them you bring them we'll grill them out

suggestion like mine red of course you too yes um i'm going to start tonight a topic it's called on the radar we won't get into discussion but tonight there's two topics dry hydrants so as we know the town doesn't have any municipal fire hydrants we have 25 dry hydrants and more most recently i've been informed uh brianna drive i believe is dry um meaning the pond the fire pond itself has dried up drought conditions yeah yeah can we confirm that right yeah

and again it on the radar because i will be having discussion with the planning board with the select board really where we go from here other towns are taking that fire pond out for that reason in their articles and their discussion and their planning and putting only two choices now a cistern or sprinklers residential new construction sprinklers individual cisterns individual cisterns up to like 10 000 gallons all right type of stuff um for each new house new occupant really a swimming pool cow no i i uh

bring it up again you know we test these the town or the fire department sort of doesn't own them these are really about homeowners associations homeowners associations have gone defunct we don't don't there's nobody to talk to or send a bill to again on the radar these are things that are coming across my desk and i need you to be aware of them don't we currently require sprinklers and subdivisions show one of the one of the options one of the options yep so a cluster you know above three type of thing three to five you can do a hydraulically calculated fire pond you can do cisterns in your virtual cisterns or you can opt for individual sprinkler systems protection the chief has to sign off the planing board's well aware of it again on the onus of the developer to do that but i have recognized the problem now with homeowners associations going defunct or people move out nobody knows where there was there's not really

documentation they're sort of on the hook really for keeping those uh retention pawns up to speed and whatnot and and i know of two that that's not the case currently we do test them i've tested nine out of the 25 so far we'll probably test another nine thursday night so and again drought conditions so there are times where we can't use those dry hydrants around town the the other thing on on the radar is ems response you know medical response i was just told today and confirmed the town of auburn will not be sending their second ambulance their second rescue to normal routine medical calls and i think that was towards a private ambulance company that they border i mean within their own town on their on their boundaries on their mutual aid partner boundaries so they bounce they sort of are surrounded by a couple that are due are contracted with private ambulance private for-profit ambulance

and they're being used a lot more i bring it up on the radar because it affects durham that policy may affect durham of not sending a second rescue out or if they don't send a second rescue out lisbon does back up a private ambulance company and then we have to back up lisbon when they're out of position if you will and that's happened several times recently so again on the radar of discussion of other towns choices affect us and proportionate to our rescue um again we're doing 500 responses 365 with the ambulance however you know we've done three in the last 24 hours sometimes you go days without it but when other people's choices other towns payment lack of or whatever starts to affect us i just want it on the radar and we can discuss it later but that is what's happening i also want just to put maybe put on your radar i can't remember there was a there was an article or a news article fairly recently i can't remember the

town but where they were they were going to bill for a lot more calls they were going to bill insurance companies for response calls and that has come up here before i saw that that was in direct relation to motor vehicle accidents yeah they were going to build insurance companies right for some of the services yeah and again that's also on the radar that has come up i have a pamphlet we've been offered that opportunity yeah i think that was tabled for for a new town manager uh to see if if that's in the plan going forward i do have information on okay um and that was very difficult for that town because you cannot differentiate between well he's a long time local and he crashed recently or it's an out of towner buzzing through type of thing it was sort of all or nothing within parameters yep okay and we do offer those services we mitigate fluids we do a lot of traffic control i mean we do foot the bill and i say we

the town of durham foots the bill for hourly like the other night they're out there for an hour to direct in traffic uh they're certified to do so and we have the equipment that's again just putting on the radar i don't want to get into the actual discussion tonight but something we should talk about i know we talked about revenue increasing and that was one from the fire department side and last i would be remiss if i don't thank mitch for his work and being a friend to the fire department i've learned a lot i've relied on him for six months and i appreciate it sir thank you any questions for me more jerry no no questions all right well see brevity thank

no calvin came in to see me today and he said he had nothing new to report okay so but he will next week after he checks with the d.o.t and follows yeah so okay all right okay uh town managers report okay well thank you mr chairman so uh xfinity apparently is doing some channel changes so we want everyone to know the residents to know that they may see some funny stuff going on with their channels

also known as the forever chemicals so we got a letter from the dep stating that uh they will be monitoring wells it's it's not coming anytime soon they just want it on our radar that they will be looking at water quality in wales and right now they're really concentrating in fear field and that area yeah right but they they will branch out to other communities when they they so are they talking about like a voluntary program or some sort of mandatory program or do we know yet no no okay no just it's just on the radar that it's likely coming okay

homestead exemptions so i want you to know that contract yesterday uh they will be starting tomorrow oh great good um so they're estimated to be here two weeks so it's a week a unit a week via two weeks and then they'll move over to the fire department and uh they're hopefully said they would be done by the end of september okay great so that's i guess august or end of september end of september because september is just until some end of september and that's all i got for for right now any questions uh

oh then welcome oh thank you yes welcome the um can you find out what fidium is doing yeah it's vidium internet they're running fiber optic around the town and for some reason they never said anything to us [Music] i'm not sure they really needed to but it'd be free advertising for them so i would think that they would let us know and come here and get on the get on everybody's radar um

comcast uh situa it's gonna be a comcast earning situation i think because well we don't know anything about it right i mean they might just be passing through they might not know they're not going to pass them through they're running through it could be like the energy conductor here it's not really working here it's just going through yeah exactly right yeah no if you haven't gotten a pen flip they've already sent out pamphlets and it's pretty cheap internet fiber optic the speed is fast both ways very fast both ways too good let's at least find out absolutely and what's the name of them again if you look it up did you call it look them up on the web yeah i thought you got something in the mail rit specialist there you go might be something [Music]

people ask questions but ultimately this is it's a private business doing well ever apparently they're they're putting in fiber optic for consolidated communications it's the two of them together the phone company and this internet company are coming together to do fiber optic and can this is going to sound snide and i don't need it to sound this way but oh go ahead what does that have to do with town business well i'm a little surprised that they come to the town to say so at least because not our politics do you think they needed some are you saying you think they needed some kind of permit or something i think it'd be free advertising for them you know

renegotiation of their franchise via license and that'll be something that you and jerry will be working with but you're absolutely right more than anything and then when they're full and ready and up and running i expect they're going to go hard and heavy on competition with existing providers and it's going to be a buyer's market yeah that would be good competition is good we hope yeah especially for comcast yeah right we're surprised to get the employees to hang it up yeah right okay uh any other questions or comments for jerry okay thank you um old business general summary review uh the time meaning warren article we've kind of already covered this i mean the four spending articles all passed all pretty handily there wasn't there wasn't they weren't all unanimous but they were all overwhelmingly approved um and they were not a terrible turnout for a special town meeting i mean you always want to see more

my guess is there were 30ish people that weren't there because they were on a committee or they had a role of some sort you know that just came um i'm guessing around 30. so um yep um okay then as far as uh next steps we've already heard you know the hvc is already going um and then we'll get periodic updates you know as things happen you know jerry will keep us up to speed on on what's going on there

to the point um that a couple people made and that i agree with and i think we would all agree with it and it's a learning for next time is that you know whenever we're bringing a spending proposal or anything um to the town floor there there should be a physical out a sheet that clearly like on the tech one says you know it's forty five thousand dollars and and it's okay i would disagree with jill a little bit i we i don't believe it's necessary or even possible to have actual to the penny this is what it's going to cost you got to have good solid estimates based on information from from vendors that's reliable enough to know how much money you need to ask for but it should be spelled out in you know at least enough detail that people feel confident they know what the money's for like all right it's 45 000 and we expect you know 5 000 is going to be for the firewall and 6000 is going to be for this and you know

up to 12 000 for laptops depending on how much is left you know just so that people have understand the context so that just just a good learning for going forward to um anticipate the questions people are going to have and answer them because when when people are left to fill in the blanks on their own it generally doesn't go well so

um i think you're absolutely right um providing an exact estimate in today an estimate today is no good tomorrow so a lot of times what how we could do it is we budget for a certain many computers like three or four or six and this is what we're budgeting for it but to nail down a price is really i agree it's really making it it's backing us or myself into a corner because i don't know if i could back it up three weeks later or four weeks later or i think that's why you budget like say you know we're budgeting uh two thousand dollars per workstation right we think we can we need like five workstations so it's ten thousand dollars it might actually cost eight thousand two hundred and twenty three dollars or might cost ten thousand one hundred and two dollars and you gotta get 102 dollars from somewhere else within that article but but you you know i think we're on the same oh i definitely agree there needs to be

more detail yeah in that yes that devin and others did because i think they did the work i just think we didn't just go that final step and have it in a presentable format for the meeting so yeah um okay so move oh actually now so with the amendment to the agenda i am uh going to move that we go into assessors session uh to deal with some uh abatements and supplements was that a motion it wasn't rich seconds all in favor okay we are an assessor session so we have we got a doozy tonight um it's a little complicated well actually it's not that complicated so basically there was a uh a subdivision that the previous code enforcement officer asked the assessor's agent to um assign lots to and put them on the

tax rules the problem is the subdivision wasn't approved yet so that step should not have happened and they shouldn't have been taxed as if they were an approved building lot because they weren't they're just raw land which would be a different tax assessment that's strange so yeah this one is very strange so um this one is so and i'll just read what donna wrote so it says i have multiple abatements and supplementals that need approval regarding property identified as part of map 4 lot 32 and owned by curtis and janice pass i was approached by our prior ceo to assign lot numbers to six lots off holiday drive i had seen the draft of the proposed splits and believed the subdivision to have been approved this was not the case and six locks were split and the sale that happened uh this sentence doesn't makes it in this and the sale happened for the 2021 tax year i think that's what um there were two lots that were sold prior

to april 1st 2022 that will require supplemental bills to correct ownership and the location of a new dwelling is curtis and janice pass on five of the lots and the amounts are you guys don't have copies of this do you well i was i was just going to say this is kind of what i was referencing earlier i mean coming to these meetings would just this is the first time you see it it's impossible for me i got to have some context coming into these meetings i just can't get something read to me i just got that from the assessor and i understand oh i understand that but maybe it goes on the next meeting right yeah all right and then i'm gonna i'm gonna move that we table this i agree again let's get the information yep sent out so and i think i had a brief conversation with with uh with jerry and mitch before the meeting and basically making the point that you are rich that there should be nothing that

the board comes into a meeting and reads for the first time so um everything it should when the agenda goes out on friday the the packet should be with it like in pdf format so any um any of this stuff you know the warrant um basically any you know any uh you know the really we when we were for a while there should be the reports from department heads like everything should be there um and if it's if it's not confidential meaning like not public record then um it can be in the pdf and they can be posted with the agenda you know that's available for anybody to read so um but you know that's just uh it's just part of the continuous improvement process right so um so but i agree that this one is um so we'll need to pdf these abatements and um

supplementals and maybe maybe have donna provide a little bit more detailed context um yeah and i know and she can if she could address like if we ran into this the last time we had an abatement and a supplemental there was we were going to um abate one person for a particular amount on a property and supplementing supplementally tax another one and in our minds those two amounts should be the same but but they weren't they were really close they were within like a couple of bucks but if if our expectation is that they'd be the same but if they're not and i'm sorry i keep looking at mitch out of habit but but if they're not the same i'm in the back room if they're not the same an explanation well why aren't they the same yeah and then so that we'll understand and not have that expectation if we shouldn't have that expectation so all right all right so um any objection to tabling the uh i think it's good enough

hearing none consider that tabled um then i'm going to move us out of assessor session second all in favor all right we now return to our regularly scheduled program already in progress we have an authorized satisfactory judgment read dean smith so remember you know previously we voted um approved the final settlement and that he had met the conditions and dean smith right now what we're being asked to do is to basically vote to acknowledge that we have actually received the payment and cashed the check that he owed us for the um this on the in the settlement so i'm going to move that we acknowledge the receipt of hundred 26 five and fifty dollars from dean smith as settlement for the action uh brought by the town

any discussion lawyer said we needed to do this for some reason to acknowledge acknowledging that we accepted the money of the fines that we left yep exactly get recorded and be done no okay it's a procedural thing that the lawyer said we needed to talk about it okay any further discussion all in favor okay yes we have the money all right thank you um and then i think part of it while again it will be part of the packet we'll do our like the um the audit representation cover letter um

results of the annual audit and i signed it yeah but there were no red flags right or you always get red flags because of the size of your community this is kind of like the like it's the summary letter it's the last bit and we should be getting to complete printed and oh so this is different than we got a couple weeks ago yeah and basically from here they will release the full audit both for the website and hard copy for you folks yeah okay

so the um the item i added to the agenda is about some vacancies that we have and one of them i wish joe was here um so we have two vacancies on the budget committee now uh lois resigned right after town meeting and lee bollia fischer resigns just this past week notified mitch and myself so that puts us at seven and the way the budget committee bylaws work is that if somebody if somebody resigns after town meeting then the board of selectmen appoints a replacement to serve until the next town meeting where there'll be a special election or um or just a regular election like lois only had one year left in her term anyway so that seat was coming around again anyway i don't know how many years i thought we just just i thought she just came back on too but but um jane rice did that's true and uh so um so anyway so there's at least two budget committee uh spots that we need to appoint somebody for

i think there's at least one capital improvement committee seat we need to fill because joe was on that committee and now that he's a select person he's he's agreed to stay on the committee as the select board representative but we have a citizen position open on that and there might be others you know maybe check with jessica i'm not sure that we have two alternates for planning board and two alternates for board of appeals

too so we should determine what we have open and put some communication out there hey if people are interested these are open seats if you're interested in potentially serving you like um you know however you want to do it you know send us a letter of interest like which why you want to do it and why you think you would be you know why you want to serve and why whatever yeah did you pick one out of the menu or are you still waiting i know you're only the last person in the room i know everybody else got out as soon as he started mentioning it

they're all already all alone before yeah just move forward on that and get some communication out on that and because we especially with budget and cip cip is probably the most timely one because they should really be starting in september to work on some of their stuff and budget's not far behind that so we want to get some people appointed to fill those fellow slots

consent agenda i would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved all in favor all right all right upcoming meetings when is our next meeting 13th september 13th uh will be our next town meeting here knockout meeting select board meeting here at the town office um i don't believe we need an executive session tonight nope then i'm aware of sir all right love it then i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved first second talk ah yeah a second what was happening all in favor todd already adjourned all right we are adjourned thank you