TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ November 26, 2024

for cool all right everyone welcome to tonight's meeting of the second select board we have a quorum calling me into order and begin with the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible libery and justice for all all righty uh do we have any amendments to the agenda can we move the new business ahead of the old business just what I was going to yeah suggest as well um so Josh has proposed we move old business to after new business to be respectful of the time of folks who are here to present do we have a second on that or do we a second on that motion Heather any discussion on the motion all in favor any opposition seeing none passes unanimously so um we are have

public comment is anyone here to provide public we'll move into new business and we're going to start off with the main Do's presentation um Jerry did you want to introduce the speaker yeah sure uh thank you Mr chairman um yes main doot de Dennis emdy is here from Main doot to talk about the crashes that were experienced on Rabbit Road quier meeting house at

136 yes uh I've known Dennis for a long time we actually worked together uh do for several years so you're you're in good hands thank you thank you thank you yours yeah Jerry and I work together ination analysis for quite a while so my name is ten I'm the highway safety engineer from um office of safety and Mobility as you can see I prepared a presentation and I'll go through try to go through it quickly do you want to pull your chair up and just so the mic picks you up so that people at home can I mean unless you prefer to see them but I just need to have thank you sorry to interrupt you

so um uh so I'll talk about some of the road characteristics uh traffic uh traffic data crash data that's occurred there over the years uh we looked at different Alternatives and um we recommended an always stop there now you guys are familiar with always stops because you have one on the other end of that intersection so I won't go into a lot of details and but I I'll also talk about what it would look like afterwards so you know what's what's some of the problems here you can see on the P the numbers the slide is the slide numbers are highlighted in yellow uh second page some of the problems is um type to

crashes 72% of these crashes are uh angles okay hour but Vehicles looking at the TomTom data it's going like 56 and 57 miles hours as you approach that intersection uh there's been 18 crashes there in the last 10 years from 2014 to 2023 That's not including the five crashes that alone this year that that happened um um it's been a high crash location in the last few years U last past few years and given the uh the high

speed of vehicles and angle crashes that you know that often results in a bad situation and there's been uh 44 44% of the crashes have have been injury there's been injuries at least one injury in that in that crash um long term if you go back to

um like 2003 86% of the crashes were angles and 54% there were some injuries there so um it's ranked 71st in the state for the potential for a fatal or Serious injury um and it's uh it's experiencing it's experiencing three times as high for fatal and serious injury type crashes at 50 mil an hour compared to

simpar intersections and it's twice as high in percentages compared to the Fatal Serious injury and potential um minor injuries so looking at the so those are the problems I think you all slide three you're all familiar with the intersection where it is go down the road here um like I said the posted speed is 50 m hour because that going faster than that um uh 5 56 miles hour

going northbound and 57 coming southbound is the 85th percentile speed uh you know looking at page six the you know we one of the things that we look at is intersection sight distance for 55 mes uh for 50 mph it's 555 ft is

what you should have we measured over 600 in both on both sides of either Quaker or Rabbit Road so the site this isn't isn't the problem um Switching gears you know uh the traffic the annual average daily traffic is about 3600 on route 136 wow and about yeah and

uh and about 1,300 on on the minor roads and because you know that just tells and that's the amount of traffic in both directions as you you know on that leg that doesn't really tell us a lot so what we did is went out and collected some turning movements and I look at that on page n

uh that's a 12h hour count and so if you look at the green the green it shows where the vehicles are going so when you read this like 114 vehicles are going northbound on 136 and turning left on to Rabbit uh 1651 are going straight and 96

are turning right so that's how you read this and so we look at we look at the am and the PM peak hours on Slide 10 is the am Peak between 7:30 and 8:30 um and uh the PM Peak is between 445 and 545 which that was the higher volume so later on in the presentation I'll you know we have we want to look at Mobility what the impacts are on these different Alternatives so we um so that uh I'll

show you some of the PM results from from from the different alter from the from the Alternatives um so it's about a 3:1 ratio from the main line to the side Ro uh on the next page on 40 uh page 12 shows the crashes between 2014 and

2023 and you'll see on top on the right hand side uh the a b c and PD thankfully there hasn't been any fatals there but a is a a serious injury I think of like an ambulance uh B is uh suspected um minor injury um I think a broken bones blood and C is people complaining of injury and PD is property damage only but these these numbers are you know you can see there in that 10 year there's been three A's Four Four B's and 1C you can see that that's that's just the worst injury in the crash that's how we that's how we measure that injury crashes so in the last 10 years it was 44% this year 2025 uh 24

24 I'm Russian um three of the five had some some injuries so 60% this year 2024 so you can see on the next page on 13 uh even though there were 18 crashes in the last 10 years there were 23 injuries so there were third you know there was one crash that had one C but there were 13 C injuries in that 10year period three so

I'll you'll see that when I show you the diagram but the next page is um you know just it's just some statistics on the crashes you know it's most of the time it's clear 13 out of 18 uh 18 and dry Road surface you know looking at the months you know those four four in September um looking at the hours the highest was six to seven so no no real pattern in in here but this is on slide 17 you can see

that majority of the crashes are at during the daylight time but what's most concerning like I said earlier 13 of the 18 crashes were angle type crashes and that high speeds that's what we're concerned about meaning somebody's turning in front of another car soone could be going straight across from Quaker to to Rabbit and they get T-Bone that's that's like an angle that's an angle crash and they call it intersection movement I wish I call it I wish I call itle movement that's what they call it it could be somebody turning left and getting from the main line getting struck that way too so so this is the part that you know like I said it relates to higher percentage of injuries so when I compare this stage um this intersection to other intersection four-legged intersections um you can see that at 25 miles an hour

on the left column is the speed limit so 25 to 55 the likelihood of having an injury is about 26% at 25 okay at 55 it's about 50% that makes sense I mean the higher you go the more likelihood higher the speed into a crash the more likelihood you're going to get injured so what this is showing is that

you know the injuries and we did the same thing with k& which is a fatal and serious injuries normally it's about 5 and a half% this is 16 16 16.7 so it's more than three times what we would expect for the number of serious injuries at this intersection um and it's almost double the serious injury the fatals and and um minor injuries so it's it's experiencing you know some bad injuries here and those are injury crashes that's not the individual inj injuries is the injury crashes so here's a table that you know we look at um on page 19 it's we look at the potential for a

serious or fatal crash in the next 10 years and it's ranked 71st out of like 30 33,000 in sections so this is a this is this is a top 100 area um for potential and that's based on what's been happening out there you know what kind of classes you know the history as well as the potential for injuries based on the types of crash in the speed um and you can see that um on the right side um Statewide it's you know there were five crashes it's tied for Tenth in the state for uh K Anda crashes in the last 10 10 years it's tied for 11th in the state for um serious and fatal uh fatal injuries in the last 10 years and it's tied 15th in the state for right angles um at where the speed limit is 15

50 or more so this this really jumps out as a problem even though there's not a lot of crashes it it's it's people are getting hurt here so the next page on 20 looks at okay we our electronic records go back to 2003 and I just wanted to see from 2003 to uh last week okay there were um

30 37 crashes in that time period and 86% of the crashes were angle crashes so the it's it's even throughout time it's still angle crashes there and you know 54% injuries and again you could look at that table down below the number of injuries is 44 out of the 37 crashes so you can see multiple injuries and um it has been a high crash location from basically from 2016 to 2020 but if we had one more crash this year or even one next year it's going to be another high crash location

have eight or more crashes in a three-year period and where it's we're experiencing more crashes than what you would expect basically so the next page on 22 is we take all this police data and we and we put it all into a neat little diagram and it's basically showing you where the cars are just before they they got into a crash where they were coming from and and and how the crash was about and you can see there's some letters there like on the bottom left corner um the vehicle was coming from rabbit it wanted to go straight across the Quaker and it got struck by a vehicle going Southbound and all those letters next to it there was one a and four C's crash those are the injuries so you can see that you know there crashes coming most of the crashes are coming from Quaker trying to go across the ra r and they're getting struck by there's one two three four going northbound and five going Southbound and you can see

there's some serious injuries there and that was the all the all the sightings were for the people crossing the road most yeah most of them going straight across why does it say fail why does it say fail to yield if it's a stop sign there now they stopped but then they didn't yield to the vehicles going on the main line they just kept going after they stopped so it's well they didn't they didn't yeah they stopped and then went and then they went yeah they they weren't that's like they were expecting the vehicle to stop that was coming up to the intersection well they never stop oh I don't know I mean they say most likely they didn't see them you know or they were going too fast and they were weren you know but failed to yield is

that's how the police uh WR it up um so that's the 10-year period between 2014 and 23 and again there's five this year yeah so we looked at different Alternatives first thing that people ask like you asked me when I first got here are you going to look in at a light and a traffic signal and it didn't meet any of the um warrants the justification behind it so that's the the manual on uniform traffic control devices has like 11 warrants and not not none of them met you know based on volume or it did me a warrant for an always stop and when I talked to Calvin back in June he says did you look at a roundabout and I so I I looked at a roundabout he asked me to look at it

um so I looked at these Alternatives and um I usually have a big spiel about always stops but you guys are pretty familiar with always stops and I I do want to give you some statistics about it but normally uh we've done a lot of before and afters in in Maine and the Crash we see a 53% reduction in total crashes a 74% reduction in injury crashes that's your KABC and a 92% reduction in in in in Crash costs you

know and Statewide there's about a 61 I mean National Studies have shown a 61% and a 72% of injuries did you happen to go back and look at the other intersection that the four-way stop got put in and see if it yes yes and that's this is one of the examples I use oh awesome yeah slide 27 yeah slide 27 thank you I wasn't cheating so no

thanks but that was converted in March of 2018 and we did it 3 years before and a 3 years after and at that location we' seen a 72% reduction in crashes it went from 3.3 to .92 wow per year um 100% reduction in injuries and 100% reduction in fatal and serious injuries and a almost a 98% reduction in Crash cost and the Crash cost was about 400,000 compared to 10,000 that's that's basically property damage great so and the next page just like we I showed you earlier the crash diagram three years before and the 3 years after can you send us electronic copies of this uh slide 27 and 28 yeah awesome thanks please thank you sorry for my man it's all right I'll send it to Jerry right yeah um and you can see

you know just like just like over here rabbit and Quaker there's a lot of angle crashes before four right and you can see multiple injuries couple you know one with three A's and a b and lots of B's and then the on the other side you know very similar pattern right and on the other side they were all three property damages only that's great and I remember reading was a while back I think two people arrived at the same time and they stopped and then they went and they both went at the same time so but but the

point is it went from us looking at the left side all these injuries and the angle crashes to uh property damage only and and our first conversion was um a big conversion that we had was in Route 111 uh Route 11 121 I mean that those there was a fatal there and it was almost like a $4 million crash cost and now it's like 85,000 you know so not 98% reduction in Crash

before and after so back to the traffic what's happening out there right now and um during the PM peak hour um using the highway capacity manual um that looks at delay on average um it's 13 seconds of average delay per vehicle um on Rabbit Road and about 14 seconds on Quaker during that PM Peak and the the total intersection is about 3.8 seconds per vehicle if you take cuz route 136 doesn't have to stop so it's about 4 seconds so if we looked at and always stop using the same methodology during that PM peak hour um it's about it's 9.4 seconds so I went up about 5 and a half seconds in the delay between between uh um you know so

it's about 5 seconds difference between what it is right now for the average delay for the intersection and what it is um what it would be like um with an always stop and you know looking at it on the bottom in the leftand corner it's about you know two vehicles in length for the queue on in the in the so there wasn't much impact for the overall

of going quick so no no you're good so um in order to in order to when we look at these Alternatives our mission is to reduce the number of fatal and serious injuries that's our mission those those KS and A's and so we have to use a standard method we use the highway safety manual we use the highway capacity manual and we look at these different Alternatives in terms of safety as well as mobility and using the highway safety man is about a $3.5 million safety benefit by converting that from a two-way stop to an all-way stop and you know I we also look at and this is based on present worth based on 20 years and with a 6% discount rate so this is all present worth dollars um and the cost uh we we we

installed the the always stops ourselves um the one out in Durham and uh that was by construction and we found it the prices were just crazy so what our our maintenance forces do them now it's about 20,000 but since I bumped it up to 20 years so we have a benefit cost of 100 almost 108 looking at overhead

Beacon there only basically a 5% reduction in crashes and that's less than one so and order to be eligible for federal funds the benefit cost has to be greater than um greater than one and a roundabout I asked Calvin's not here but um I did look at the roundabout and there's a good safety benefit but it's also a very high cost um so that was less than one so um based on that slide 24 34 you

know the benefits of it all and you guys see this yourselves you know firsthand I mean it's a significant reduction in total crashes significant reduction in injury crashes there hasn't been any vehicular fatal crashes since uh electronic records of 2003 any always stop and it always stop

no vehicular crashes unfortunately in Durham or in the state in the whole state wow and we have MH um unfortunately there was a ruined my score um there was a uh a fatal pedestrian at an always stop so in Taco last year but it has a uh very as

you saw 108 almost 110 safety benefit the cost ratio and then what's good about this too is the vehicles enter at a slower speed remember that table with 25 versus 55 and you know just like at a signal if doesn't look like someone's going to stop you don't get you know I mean you have that ability and and like I said it's it still operates at a level service a so I just want to I have like a a concept plan

and um our last slide yeah okay we BL up uh sure I'm sorry I can do your work upside down so do um two weeks prior we have a changeable message sign that says it's coming uh what does it say uh new traffic pattern starting such and such date okay and then a after the changes then we say a uh new traffic pattern stop ahead so it allows time it's another precautionary way to look at you know 136 vehicles to

you know it's it's a change in pattern here so along with that we have um we're looking at reducing the speed limit about 800 ft or so on both sides of 136 to 35 miles hour so we're looking at reducing in the speed limits on the approaches um they would also be on double stop ahead on each approach that would be flashing all around okay on both sides of the road on both approaches on 136 and um two flashing stop ahe

heads on on each approach on on 136 I got a question oh I'm sorry no we we only allow public comment during the beginning of the of the um meeting no worries and there there's painting probably on yes oh thank you very much yeah I forgot that but there's gonna um on the uh we're going to probably put a 35 miles an hour uh speed limit sign on the road okay in paint 35 and then we'll have a stop ahead uh payment mockings at this you know where the stop stop ahead sign is and there would be uh a stop you

can see the stop stencil and a Stop Bar stop bars so that would be on on both approaches my only question is these These are flashing signs as well the the stop ahe heads the stop ahe heads um are those the exact locations where they're slated to be cuz I'm just thinking if there's any way to not put them direct directly in front of a residence yeah we we um I I understand that there there might not be a way to do that we like to have a a certain distance yeah okay and

we were able to do that on uh coming down the hill yeah okay and we also want to find the sun because he's are all solar and when talking to Calvin and I mean ideally I know we have this in here ideally it would be better to put it here but asked if we could put it there and it's a little further than we want Oh I thought there was one slated for right there and there's one right there okay that that I think there's a is it a flashing sign there now I'm not sure yeah I just was just curious if that was if there was any um wiggle room there but yeah I mean I mean this is a little bit we we tried tried to get it to get

sun certain distances so this is pretty much but we we you know we would be looking at um way you know I I'm pretty sure this is pretty much where they are going to be MH we went out there and tried to lay it out what it would look like so yes um I noticed when they did

the four-way stop at the Lunt Road and 125 they did the do well I'm just asking about the pr message so the do did nothing oh we we were not involved they didn't even ask permission oh okay well then I was going to say Freeport did like a video of like cars approaching and like whatever to like notify people and I I I assume that it was the dot because that's a state road so okay never mind we'll just move on yeah no we are addressing that right now okay sorry they they they installed it without asking permission on Route 125 so now did um you initiate this based on the data or did we come to you someone from the Durham area come to you this um

it's a little bit of both but it's the data you know when I see that this intersection is 71 out of like 33,000 intersections in the state you know that that that and we we did look at it with Calvin a few years back and we've had such good success with these always stops that didn't feel comfortable at that point four years ago or whatever it was and you know we're

seeing excellent results yeah it just looks like there's been an increase in frequency in the last four years well last this year well there was only three I think in that did are are you seeing that increased frequency tied to an incre increased passage rate as well or is it just similar passage rate but a higher rate of incident

day not not a lot of traffic yeah I mean it's not compared to some some those yeah I mean the last since 2017 you can see that it's it's kind of jumped up on page uh 20 yeah doing the change is it uh Duram respons do would do it would we would install it m i i maybe I missed something do you

need our permission to do this what what what are we doing what what's the outcome that you need of our board sorry I no no no um it would be good to have you guys on board um that that's you know a letter of support would be great mhm um you know uh I'm just bringing

this to your attention uh yeah a letter of support would be great and if we were to do it we would be doing it this spring spring of 2025 yes that from from us yes when oh whenever I support this yeah numbers seem to speak for themselves yeah so back to my online presence do guys do any kind of PR stuff regarding us being able to put that out on like town website Social Media stuff to notify residents that the change would be coming yeah sometimes that towns do that that that's that's good and I think we also may do a press release too but I mean that's why we have the changeable message boards two weeks prior it's amazing how much people call during that time period but yeah if you could do that as well usually the region traffic engineer keeps the we get the some of this like I said those two slides from you and then um just showing

that and we'll be able to put some I'd like for us to put something on our website and yeah if you can just send that that'd be great do we need to check with you before before we redistribute any of this stuff to no let all the community okay cool yeah I just think it's a it helps tie things in for people especially with the other intersection being so frequent everyone kind of remembers when that happens so um yeah the only thing I didn't put in this is well on that page 20 you could see that this five crashes so far this year so that's none of that is parted the Other M except for on page 20 yeah would you

like a motion for the board to vote on a uh I was going to ask if anyone had any more questions for him first um do the 9.8 seconds does that take into consideration the slower speeds before the stop signs it's basically the the delay at the intersection MH but

so and would you agree that 99% of these crashes are basically impatience or driver in attention I think it's driver in attention and it could be speed too because people are speeding and but we did that adequate sight distance it's um but it's not like they ran the stop sign they're not running the stop sign they're stopping and then they're going in front of somebody else so either misjudging misjudging yeah I feel like that's a common thing with small town

roads going into major state roads it's like I've seen it several times myself that this doesn't capture the near misses I think that you know several times myself someone pulls up thinks they're good takes off and then hits the brakes and you know someone coming down and you said average speed of 57 I'm sure the upper end of that uh that 99th percentiles it's probably higher I just I we have a TomTom program that tracks people and well and that's and the 85th percentile was 57 that's my my my concern is the 99th percentile I mean we know there's been some pretty egregious speeding incidents and that seems to be tied imagine is tied to those fatality you know issues so um does anyone else have any questions I just want to say thank when we were thinking about this and planning a you coming in I got to tell you I avoid 125 because I just hate the four-way intersection there yeah it's also where I live just

wants to Avo um but you know I do like Calvin's idea of the roundabout more just because but um but I appreciate you coming in with this information because uh I do think it's unfortunately a good idea unfortunately yes and you know I'd love to see the numbers on Route n in Rabbit Road and I'd love to see the a roundabout at Dead Man's Curve personally we have to do something that's route n right here M yeah

no no the big sharp curve going down to liis yeah that has that's it's got five spokes coming into it two stops in0 a grade I mean I don't think a roundabout I'm just thinking because we have five inlets right there it's not a four-way stop anyway not tonight's conversation anyways cool thank you for this right here and uh thank you for this presentation today very welcome yeah um I'd accept a motion for to offer a letter of support so I'd make that motion I'll second got a motion from Josh a second from Joe any additional discussion on the motion I think the data speaks for itself and I think that when you have uh results to extrapolate from from literally just the other side of the same road it really ties the message close to home and I know that uh if you pay attention to our uh scanner or our first responder data it's like that gets a lot of attention we see that here that will save some

money too not having them go couple hours yeah that's a and there's a lot of near misses there and so um because of that I'm I'm in favor of it too so any additional discussion I all in favor of issuing a letter of support any opposition seeing none thank you and I'll send we'll keep we'll keep this keep that and I got some extra cop thank you so much appreciate your time

and um our financial audit um update so Jen sure you want thanks it's a hard act of follow to talk about the results of the 2023 audit um I understand you all got copies of the presentation if you don't have a copy and I did bring some extras okay it's in our packet right here okay than make sure

um so this is just a brief overview of the audit itself um as usual if anyone has any questions or comments feel free to jump in at any time and I'll just get started so on the second graph we have an overview of the audit results uh discussion of the timing of the audit and the results of some of our testing so our audit was actually done the week of March 25th of 2024 um unfortunately we weren't able to finish everything that we needed to do during that week so we did come back for a couple of additional days uh reports were issued and dated as of September 9th 2024 the financial statements did receive an unmodified opinion uh which is a clean opinion on the financial statements and in addition to the audit of the financial statements we also uh conducting testing of internal controls and compliance um the internal controls as they relate to financial reporting and under that testing um there were no

material weaknesses which would be your highest level of finding uh that would be an indication of something that is basically systemic and then a step down from that would be a significant deficiency which is something that's not necessarily systemic but uh still significant enough to bring to your attention we had one significant deficiency related to uh Purchase card dispersements um and I can go into that in a little bit if you like I did want to point out that uh the

2023 audit was an improvement over the past couple of years um to kind of give you an idea um in 2022 we had one finding one material weakness related to cash and two significant deficiencies so definitely a big Improvement in that area in addition uh the past two years

2022 and 2021 we've had around 13 14 adjusting entries in 2023 we only had seven so that's kind of closer to what I would consider to be a normal amount of adjusting entries um the audit itself was a little bit later than we would normally like I'm sure you know that as well um so going forward we're optimistic that it will hopefully go out a little bit

have are um mostly a view overview of the general fund itself we focus on the general fund because it is the um the largest the most important fund for the town uh this was the first year that the town actually reported uh other types of funds uh by splitting out those Reserves that have typically been in the general fund so the amounts that are restricted or committed for specific purposes so on page three we have an overview of the general fund fund balance this is broken down into the five different categories that you can have for fund balance over the last five fiscal years um so you can see that it did change significantly uh mostly because the restricted balances and committed balances were transferred to other funds they now reported in what are called special Revenue funds uh permanent funds and capital projects funds uh so what you have left is the assigned portion uh which that is the

amount that is budgeted to be used in next year's uh budget of $668,000 and then you have unassigned fund balance which is basically what is left over it's the portion of your fund balance that carries over to be used in the next fiscal year basically for any purpose in total um fund balance before transfers actually increased by about $335,000 so that is your revenues exceeded your expenditures by that amount however you did transfer out uh the fund balance to those other funds so in total general fund fund balance decreased by 752 th000 from 2022 to 2023

four we have an overview of the general fund revenues uh this is a budget actual analysis um so you can see taxes were uh slightly higher than budget and that had to do with higher than anticipated uh vehicle excise taxes uh which were offset a little bit by a change in the Deferred taxes the state revenue sharing uh was about $189,000 higher than anticipated uh that's mostly because that amount was budgeted conservatively um based on prior years uh homestead exemption uh was actually under budget this year um although actual Revenue was closer to what you received in 2022 um what you received was actually less than that charges for services uh were higher than budget uh due to unbudgeted Cable franchise fees and higher than expect Ed rescue billing revenues and in total uh revenues were $322,000 over budget uh which was about 3% of the

budget on page five we have the same graph of budget to actual but this is for the expenditures for the general fund so again looking at some of the variances uh General government expenditures were under budget as Consulting Services were budgeted for the entire year but only started in May in addition there were changes in Staffing uh and related benefits for those staff Public Works expenditures were under budget due to lower than anticipated Paving and fuel costs unclassified expenditures were under budget as the budget included the amount raised in overlay but that was only used to offset around $8,300 in abatements in total uh expend before transfers were $152,000 under budget which is about 1% and I did want to point out that we typically look at the larger variances but you will notice there's also a very small variance uh for Public Safety uh Public Safety was actually underspent by

$184 which is .4% of the budget that is very close um overall um it's very close um I would say that you would probably want to be closer to the 2 to 3% of budget there's not a lot of wiggle room there so if you had uh some unanticipated cost that came up uh you could have easily overspent your

again the general fund expenditures uh as a pie chart so this is each category expressed as a percentage of your total expenditures and then on the next page we actually have the same chart for 2022 so that you can compare the two years overall um the categories stayed relatively the same uh they either increased 1% or decreased 1% uh the only category that is missing completely is capital outlay and that is because uh any amounts that were spent on Capital items have been moved out of the general fund and are now in the capital projects funds and I also wanted to point out that uh community services and unclassified both say 0% but that's not because you didn't have expenditures in those categories it's just that they are less than

are some of those other funds that I me mentioned before they were previously shown as reserves in the general fund and now they have been U presented as either special Revenue funds or Capital project funds special Revenue funds are funds that have Revenue sources that either are restricted um by legislation or by some

outside Source such as um the state or granting Authority uh Capital project funds those are amounts that are set aside specifically for um Capital items um so in total uh let's see the special Revenue funds did decrease from 254,000 to 206,000 uh the biggest change being under telecommunication uh which is um the planned use of franchise fees and the capital projects funds went from $854,000 down to 397 7,000 the two

biggest decreases took place in the fire rescue Capital uh Reserve which uh that had to do with the purchase of a vehicle and then the Public Works Capital uh Reserve which that had to do with uh the Swamp Road and culbert project and the purchase of a plow truck

on here on page nine um is a graph that we've had in here for a couple of years it is an analysis of the operating cash so this is um the town's uh operating cash account and um its projection of its use over the next eight months so um you can see that total operating cash actually decreased from 2023 to 2022 it went from about 4.4 million excuse me went from 4.8 million down to $4.4

million um now what we have done is uh each for each year we calculated one month's worth of expenditures at the bottom and then um we basically projected um the basically cash flows between the end of the fiscal year and when you are collecting taxes which uh they are assessed in June and then collected in August so for 2023 uh you're starting with around 4.4 million in cash uh estimated non-t tax revenues are about 1.5 million estimated expenditures based on the one's month one month's worth of expenditures is around 6.1 U so you can see that that's a projected shortfall of about

you know cash flows come in on an even basis um there's an fluctuation it's just assuming that amounts are going to come in on a regular basis um and you can see that the amount available for expenditures uh is about one four months worth of expenditures any questions on this there's a there are a lot of numbers there

right um going back to the uh comments that we had uh as I mentioned we did have a significant deficiency related to purchase card dispersements um so we actually selected 29 transactions from three separate months in 20203 and of those transaction sections 10 were actually missing a receipt or an invoice in addition 10 of the 29 uh we selected 29 to test and there were 10 that were missing invoices or receipts um in addition we also looked at the um signed credit card agreements that employees signed to make sure that they're going to use the cards um the way they're supposed to um and there were a couple of missing agreements uh we also selected the month of February 2023 to test and uh the credit card statement and related documentation could not be located and so for those reasons um this that's why this comment has been elevated to a significant deficiency just because of the the number of of

issues that we ran into of course a lot of this had to do with the fact that the town did have turnover in staff um and because of the turnover there were some inconsistencies with how document ation was filed and retained so that contributed to it we did also have another uh couple of non just minor comments and they both actually came down to the same thing uh one was for regular uh accounts payable dispersements and another one was for payroll dispersements and in both of those instances uh there were um there was documentation that was missing um that could not be located so

um I would assume that now that you don't have as much turnover that hopefully there won't be as much of an issue going forward and that was it for the comments um do anyone have any questions about any of this can we ask Jerry a question um so do you believe the followup we filled the gaps that this problem won't happen again uh I I'll say won't ever happen again people make mistakes and but I mean from a process perspective a new employee signs paperwork it gets put somewhere all the records that they're looking for found in this same

sorry information Overlook no it's it's good especially because we made some significant changes on how we uh organize everything last year seeing I'm sure that was fun to track through the whole process of on your end well I don't say I don't think I'd use the word fun I think the part that um was informative for me was that we're a

1% difference and that you're recommending a 2 to 3% difference in what we're budgeting versus what the expenditures yeah well well yeah I'm as I said there's there's not a lot of wiggle room there so yeah that's a big takeaway um that's very very tight budget that's zero wiggle room and it

could yeah that's a different discussion for us to have for sure we did actually run into that in 2022 as well um we had a finding in 2022 related to I believe it was public works was actually overspent in their budget Public Safety y oh Public Safety sorry yeah so yeah

yep perfect well this is really good information for us to have as part of our budget planning process which is starting and is this document the official audit report what you what we were looking at today which that power point that we're looking at this is just a summ m so the AIT report then has these um significant deficiency findings in writing black and white so then Jerry you were looking at those yes there were uh three reports that were issued one was uh the financial statements themselves um one is uh the compliance report which has uh the significant deficiency and then our other comments and then there's also uh separate letter uh that goes to the board that talks about just different things related to the audit such as if you had adopted a new accounting policy um or accounting

principles that would be included in there um the adjusting entries that we had those are attached to that um typically if we run into any significant deficiencies um excuse me no significant issues during the audit uh that would also be included in that okay so any questions on this any other

concerns that might not have risen to the level of significant deficiencies but something we should keep an eye on in the other comments that had to do um again with missing documentation um so I would just say procedures as far as how things are filed and just making sure that they're retained um we did have a recommend ation for the um purchase cards that you

might want to revisit the Purchase Card policy because it doesn't seem that a lot of employees are actually sticking to it so that might mean either going back and revisiting the policy or getting stricter about it one of the two so um otherwise no we really didn't have any other recommendations um we would normally put it in the report if we did and and overall compared to Prior years POS we should be positive this yes definitely that's what I was going to say this is a good story from where we were I just wanted to hear yeah yeah yes officially I can say yes for sure this is Kudos I know that's something Jerry's been working on to improve so it's nice to see that that's Kudos is to staff on keeping to the budget and uh keeping everything straight right it's not any easy thing to do sometimes any other questions jar did the department heads um get a briefing of this as well because it does really represent their

time really appreciate you're welcome thanks for having me there's been a lot of numbers tonight we'll go we'll make it easier we'll just talk jump into legal spe next yeah right um actually we have our discussion on the Eureka Community um Center doors next

yes think after the meeting the other night the need yeah it was pretty clear when we had the special town meeting that those doors need replacing yeah um Jerry did you have an update for us here so did you need we we've already approved this did you need anything else from us you didn't approve this you need you needed this backup information table it okay cool you table this one so I just give you the rundown so we have 9130 set aside in ARA funds to help

offset the cost of this if you add the labor which is 5,800 bucks to the materials it's going to cost to buy the three doors and all the hardware that comes to 14,32 19832 45 okay so you're going to roughly use 10,700 from uh reserves if he doesn't find any raw or anything you'll have to add addition to yeah

this is something that the community has asked us to fix it was what came it came out of our last town meeting and uh that space gets used a lot and last week's meeting was a reminder of how poor conditioned those things are over there and so we have to use the we have to commit the arpa funds by the end of next month right yeah there has to be a contract in yeah so uh any any questions

for Jerry before we make a motion didn't think we could add funds to the oper for uh items I I didn't think it was an additive process so you got to either have a project for 9130 no you just can't add additional you can't add other Grant funds to ARA funds what we we we talked about that last meeting and Jerry double checked on it okay yeah I asked the same question John yeah yeah I because I remember there was something about yeah you can't have you can't pair other federal grants with arpa funds to to use that be hard to find a

rest of it out of our Revenue it's not not an issue so my only I brought this up last time too that we were our options are out of the Eureka Reserve fund which we established and deposited money into or the municipal buildings capital and do you have a

recommendation of which one budget wise makes more sense I would exactly is there other work on that building that needs to be considered in the near future parking lot foundation work parking lot handicap accessibility my my question I guess boils down to is I think the town wants to continue using that building is this the best first

foundation something that we should look at first and I think that's a discussion that you folks should have but as some on the board have said these doors have been promised to the residents that put in mhm I think this is the first step and then but the doors don't do any good if the foundation I I understand I'm not I get what you're saying my thought on this is we have told the community that we're placing the doors we have to commit arpa funds by December or we lose them and we

have the budget available to do the doors um and we are seeing that it's problematic the doors are problematic right now now and this space gets used a lot so I think for me that brings it up to a high level right now um without going into a full um you know facility

cost index on it and looking at things like the foundation and stuff like that it's you know it's what space is going to be used for another year um to do everything it's been doing so I think that the doors are important Josh are you saying that because you're saying that maybe we should not take it out of your if there's more work to be done and that it should come out of buildings instead of eure I mean it's the same thing basically right so I mean that it's

the the more I'm thinking about it the more to me it's a question of priority what should be done first you know so Foundation is rotted can't be repaired we just spent $220,000 on Doors doesn't do us any good um I think for me the the difference is that we have to commit the funds by the end of the year or we lose them and that's only a month

on it as well is people have been asking for this would we told them we were going to deliver it we're going to lose the funds if we don't use them um and if we wanted to explore if it needed a foundation jacking it up and replacing a foundation is a whole another Capital line that we we don't have and would have to be a whole another town meeting process and stuff like that so Jerry yeah there there has been talk about putting another heat Source in there right now we're running the heat pumps and I if it gets really cold the heat pumps really sufficient enough to heat it um we could I know C has explored at

putting another furnace like there was in there before we could look at that we' have to move even quicker next month if if that's what something you want to do just to use the oper funds because the oper funds we use for Eureka upgrades that's really it's that 9 third that we want to make sure we want to spend because that doesn't hit the the tax base right you've got that option too we've got a month to kind of make our minds on which want you got two years to do it which I don't think you want to wait two years if it's a warm winter like last winter I think the heat pumps did okay it's just they're really not well the building envelop is not efficient so you need to over engineer a heating system for it does the maintenance work um is that included in the charter for the Eureka committee I mean would they know maintenance SCH no Kelvin as the Kelvin as the Public Works director as the one

who does Building was just going to ask if it's realistic to to um if we pause on this right now get a heating estimate for December and then choose between the heating in the doors if if that's what people want to do is that realistic to be able to get those numbers in front of us in December I think so I think Calvin has look into it Josh do you feel the same way about a heating system as you do about the doors if the foundation is it's yeah I it's the same if it feel if it feels like the same thing to you then I think we should move forward with a little on the

the vast majority of the weather conditions we experience the doors don't function on any given day and so in my mindset we're looking at an option of fixing something that's always problematic or looking at something that could use some assistance on particularly cold days if there is a need to use the building and so for my mind that brings the doors up to a higher level regardless of the the heat situation personally

um any other questions or thoughts on the Jerry to expend funds for the uh doors in line with the quote we have in hand do I have a motion I make the motion but the funds come out of the the ARA funds or the Eureka building yeah I'll second that Mo second all right so the motion is to uh accept the uh approved Jerry to spend the money necessary to fill out the uh to fulfill this bid I mean this contract using arpa funds and then uh filling the balance with the Eureka Capital Improvement funds any discussion on that all right all in favor any opposition see none Devin did you get the the motion in the second yeah okay perfect all righty um

to now it's uh 7:40 and so I'd like to um uh move that again because I would like to deal with our um executive session first because we need to consult with legal services a legal counsel and rather than um making legal accounts wait longer I'd like to just have that discussion now does anyone have a issue with that okay all right so I would accept a

motion to move into executive session pursuant MRSA 405 6f cons consultation with legal counsel so move a second and Josh any questions all right all in favor any opposition seeing none cool all righty for [Music] oh [Music]

yeah yeah that would be awesome if you could stick around that now okay I think we're back on we're just confirming I think we're thank you all [Music] session after Consulting with the town attorney and we discussed merits pertaining to our B

discussion that's been going on and direction to take to best represent the town's interest moving forward um and I would like to uh entertain a motion to direct the town attorney to develop a contract zoning ordinance in conjunction with the town planner so moved I'll second second so

any questions on the motion so this would just be to um make sure that we have a tool available to help with the sighting of any potential application in conjunction with uh our Our Town ordinances and give the uh town the ability to vote on the approval of certain projects as a as a town much like we do have other votes at town meeting and really give them that legislative power and uh do I have any other discussion or question on the motion I just think um you use the acronym yes sorry the battery energy storage systems and so um contract zoning is where you give the opportunity to the select board to negotiate some terms that help with the citing of a project and then the ultimate approval is then issued by the town voters at a town meeting as opposed to how current projects could approved by either code enforcement officer or planning board approval so this um allows for the town to consider certain um standards and

then apply them with Town approval and so it's the way to get the best input from everybody any additional questions all right seeing none all in favor of the motion any opposition seeing none and then um I also wanted to entertain a motion to direct the planning board to develop uh a draft of minimum standards pertaining to batter energy storage system that mandates contract zoning so move there motion a second and

we have a second um so any questions so this would just be to follow up on the feedback from our special town meeting to pursue an ordinance pertaining to batter battery energy storage systems and since we're looking to develop a way to utilize the contract zoning like we discussed earlier this would um mandate that be applied in the ordinance and the goal of this ordinance would to be develop minimum standards for the actual construction and then reference the contract Zone in in an effort to deal with sighting and then final approval from the town so any other discussion or questions all right all in favor all oppos seeing none all righty

um so we're into our old business which is the D discussion on land use article 12 and section 5 .4 the Durham historic district uh we've received in advance the town planner recommendations a memo from the town attor attorney and also um

a uh the recommendations that or the draft that was sent to us from the Durham historic district commission uh so as we know this has been a process we've been going through for a while this year we have recommendations from the Durham historic district commission where they did a markup of a draft we have recommendations from our town planner and our town attorney and also uh earlier this week or last week we received an email from the Durham historic district commission asking that we don't move forward on any ordinance changes uh until they have a chance to review and make recommendations based off of the attorney's input um just want to know what people think about our our next steps if they feel like we should hold off longer or if we should uh work another Direction while the durm historic district commission is is working on

um and you know I see that um our legal council and George seem to be in um alignment with each other I us to the direction um the you know the the ordinances are um need to be Rewritten in that area clearly Rewritten um just from my own read through them um adding more into them I don't believe is um um advantageous um as the historic

district commission has currently submitted uh additions to something that needs a rewrite completely taking out um you know they need more of a a charter separate from the ordinances that doesn't need to be in there there's a number of nuances in the ordinances that just should be just clearly removed uh to make the ordinances more in line with other ordinances in town so um you know I'd say moving forward with um you know again George did a really good job last year um taking a stab at this I think it was actually maybe a year ago not even last year so um you know I think that we should continue in that direction and get these ordinances cleared up um from from my read through and then my n years on the planning board previously I mean that this this area needs a lot of help yeah and that's one of my concerns about waiting to make any movement here is because something needs to change here

because there's a lot of uh frustration both with with members of the community and staff around this ordinance it's very confusing there's um a lot of elements that shouldn't be in there and so so while I understand wanting to uh wait to hear feedback from the Durham historic district commission personally I think that moving forward with asking the town uh attorney to draft an ordinance based off of the recommendations out of her letter would be a good move in my opinion we can then have a draft ordinance and while the Durham historic district commission works on whatever other reviews that they want we at least are developing some ordinance language you know from the onset this entire process we said please come forward and give us your recommendations we want to get recommendations from our staff and we want to get recommendations from legal council and then we are going to marry the three of them where it makes sense

and that's where we're at now and so if the Durham historic district commission wants to submit separate feedback based off of the lawyers feedback I think that's fine but I want us to be moving the ball forward here um what are your all thoughts I mean for me BEC I I I I I tend to agree because it's not we're not moving the ball forward forward we're just getting a a more formal rewrite that we can then review present and they'll have an opportunity to review yeah

it's that they would have that and be here to have this discussion tonight so um but uh I mean yeah my expectation was for them to submit this like they did a while back and us to ask them questions and get clarification from them and then we had the same conversation with the town planner got clarification from them got the legal council opinion and now tonight was where we were going to draft what we think is a direction that we need to go um and so that's where I think we are and I think that going with having legal counsil develop an ordinance based off of their comments um which are in line with what we are all interested in is a good place and if the Durham historic district commission wants to submit additional comments about that after we get the our draft pulled together I think that's fine you know it's still still creates that buyin but it gets us moving forward towards a draft rather than an edit of another of

an edit of an edited draft you know and so then we have something a draft to work off of for the town meeting next year Heather um I spent like six hours on this today um and so one of the things that I would like to say is that yes I absolutely want to move the ball forward I I strongly feel like the commission deserves the right to also review whatever is put together as the next draft and then give us their recommendations on that new draft because I think what everyone was looking at before you know we didn't have the legal opinion that some of that isn't necessarily aligning with state law and I mean George definitely has told us that and alluded to that but now we have like the town attorney telling us that so with all of those things in mind I I don't want to wait until April of 2026 but I do want them to be able to

review whatever is is written and then give their recommendations I just wrote a little summary of all the work that I did today and if everybody could just bear with me for one minute to read it I would appreciate it I recognize the need to clear up the pering authority chain of command however I respect the commission's word so I went to the the uh commission's last meeting and sat through that whole thing and really tried to figure out what the communication disconnect is and so some of this is my takeaway from that meeting um worry that the recommendation to make them an Advisory Board will deem them insignificant the reason that I agree is that while the ordinance currently states that a review by the planning board on a subdivision or site plan of viw it it do it review it does currently leave out the conditional use review which the comp plan identifies um as a need there it does not specifically

state that the planning board shall cons consult them for their recommendations unless this is written into the ordinance that they must or will obtain recommendations regarding these applications I share the concern that it's being overlooked and that's a gap um the Parker Schoolhouse is an excellent example of what can happen um if we clarify this the current language states that the applicant must submit a letter from the main historic preservation and that happened for the Parker Schoolhouse but no no people that are local and invested in the local

preservation had any input in that and so luckily the developer let the commission go to the Parker Schoolhouse and they were able to save the doorway and they were you know there were things that they were able to get out of that to preserve and I think unless there's Clarity in the ordinance around that situation things like the demolition permit for the Parker schoolhouse happening without them having an opportunity in writing that we got lucky that the developer allowed that it's not written into our ordinance that that is a necessity and I think that that is a gap that needs to be addressed and I think that will go along way and them feeling like they still have input into

historic preservation in Durham that's not only Under the Umbrella of people that are at the state level that aren't invested in our local community so MH that's my 6-hour summary really boil well I know that Kristen pointed out concerns around um demolition within our current

ordinance so I would imagine that the draft would help help deal with some of that and I think that what we need to do right now is we need to have a draft that we can work off of that's at least on its basis following state law and in

line with a comprehensive plan and then if we need to go through and make edits to make sure those key concerns are brought up that I think that makes sense I just wanted to give that information while she was sitting in the room I also agree that the commission should be looking and working with the the attorney and having their stake in it before it comes to us and we're I I feel like the historic commission should be prior prior to us getting the should absorb the comments uh from the attorney understanding George's influence on it and I was expecting to see an a a document you

know that included all of that and that's what we're looking at I don't think the select board should be taking three different opinions and try to put something together that's what we had highlighted from the beginning though because there's three differing opinions and ultimately we have to be the ones who provide more language you know but the attorney's you know uh guidance is critical and they have to follow I mean that has to be followed and they're the experts they should be absorbing what George is saying and then putting a final document in front of the select board that would be my suggestion would it make sense to have a joint Workshop to for me to go through the draft um with the commission and the a draft that you prepare yeah I think that would be any questions I think that that would make sense to do that jointly um just so we can make sure that there's not was but what's that I I I was conf I was

I thought that's what we were talking about yeah so um but I I'd raise another issue that I have and that is the chairperson of the historic commission said she's done in April MH last time she tried to step away nobody stepped up mhm and so I agree that they should have a voice in this but they have to understand that somebody has to step up or they're not and that is a concern because I do think

they have new board members there now and I think that that situation has changed based on based on what I saw at the last meeting yeah but that's but I mean I do think it need Josh's concern is important though because ultimately we need to deliver warrant language to be voted on and it seems like there's we keep hitting hurdles along this process we've been working on it for a couple years and so that's why I'm advocating that maybe we need to take more of a front seat here because we're a consistent board who has to approve the language it has to we're the ones who craft you know put the warrant language on on the ballot and so I think that if we're getting more involved here after getting all the input and feedback from other people and ultimately we have to craft the warrant language and what's what's Arisen out of a process that we've asked everyone to participate in is differing opinions on how it needs to

go go forward and so there's been workshops between Town staff and the Durham historic district or there's been communication between Town staff and the Durham historic district Commission on the ordinance language and on the recommendations and that path has been utilized but we haven't gotten a deliverable that meets the the select board's goals so at this point we now have to take everyone's input and try to bring it to something that we can put on the uh the warrant article um and so that's why I think that we need to have it be a little bit more in the driver's seat now that everyone's had the chance to give their their feedback and I would not advocate for us to get something from the town attorney and not include their feedback but we just I'm just saying we need to direct the town attorney to start start developing something and I would be more comfortable with that rather than me or

anyone else on the board taking the the memo the draft and Georgia and the town planers memo and then trying to write something up without having that legal background I just think it'd be better to have Kristen do that and then we can work from that as the next as the next piece can I finish though what yeah sure one of my my other concern is my recollection is is that there are supposed to be people with specific expertise on the commission and we need to make sure we have that because if we're lacking that then that becomes a concern because

if uh I mean you put me on on the board on that commission I would be looking for you know maintaining the historic value or whatever but is that what we're supposed to be looking at and so I want to make sure we have the right people and that's something for us that we need to make sure we have because I think my recollection is that we were missing some of the expertise that the we were supposed to have on that commission um and and and I'll be honest this is you know we're discussing at our next meeting something with them and I'm at a loss for why we

were having that discussion I think our expectations were clear and uh asking us to do all this stuff for them that was put on on their Lab at their suggestion um raises red flags for me as well um and so you know I think we need to have a serious conversation about what what that commission is doing

whether it is fulfilling the obligations you know for example one of the obligations is when buildings in that in in the district uh need repairs they're supposed to help right um I don't think that's been happening um and so we need to make sure that they're there for the right reason and not just um for whatever and so I'm not saying that they are but we need to make sure their goals

they what they need to do is being met um and so that's that's a a concern I have um and so I fully support having the town attorney draft something and then having a conversation letting them review it and either present something to us or have another a workshop with us to discuss it but um I think I I think we need to move on that and there's this has been out there for yeah how long since they first gave that draft that's part coup years yeah that's part of my challenge is that we had this language come forward and we're trying to work through it but then once we got it presented to us we said please give us your recommendations we got the recommendations and then when we asked followup questions they said Well we'd have to look over these before we recommend them and it's like we've got to move it forward because we've asked for this you've given it to us and now you're saying uh I don't know if that's

actually our recommendations you know and so that's why I just think we need to we need to come up with the draft to work off of because because we've asked them to prepare a draft to work off of and now what they've handed us from the time they've handed it to us to now they're saying well that's not really what we want to be considered as our recommendations anymore and so fine we'll come up with a draft ordance and we'll do it the reverse way we'll say you can provide recommendations on our draft ordinance and then we can figure out how to move forward with your input there but we just got to I think we're on the same page with that so Heather two things respectfully they gave us their stuff in June and our town attorney recommendation came in October so I I think you know well that was by Design we wanted to get all of their stuff first I understand but they're making recommendations as a board of

non-legal people and then when they see that we have an legal opinion I I fully respect the fact that they're like wait a second this doesn't align we need to revisit this I mean I I get that I I get that and I think that's responsible on their part to say well now we have this legal opinion and if our stuff doesn't align we know it doesn't make sense we need to review it I think that that's fair Kristen can I just clarify when you said a workshop what that means to you that means um we would go through the ordinance as drafted and hear any feedback from select board members or the commission members and I would let you know whether I think that's a good idea or not and the goal is to try to get to a pretty close to a working document by but mhm okay yeah that's that's what and my thought process is before we can do something like that we need to have a draft ordinance absolutely we're all saying the same

thing we're all saying the same thing we're rather than rather than Kristen draft an ordinance send it to the durm historic district commission get their feedback and then come back to us we get we get that at the same time and we sit down and we yeah I think that's and I honestly think that that's what they want too that's what they wanted that day they were here and they didn't understand that that's not the way that it was going I'm trying to build a bridge because there is a there is a communication disconnect so I think we're all saying the same thing let's make the motion and move on I have one other question though um was the survey that's mentioned you know we're going to talk about that at our next meeting okay so the survey that's a separate issue it doesn't have any impact or potential well my thought process is that they want to get the architectural survey done of the buildings if there's a difference

if there's a change in ordinance I don't know if that would impact that what they are Desiring at all just about the build what what could happen is right now the ordinance talks about you know buffers around certain buildings and stuff like that and so how our ordinances written might change how it's applied if other buildings are added or subtracted or whatever that's my that's my understanding of it I'm not an expert on it but I think that they are separate enough at this point that they don't need to be done at the same time I think part of why Debb's bringing that up which is part of why I also found today in my research is that when you look at the comp plan and you actually look at the land use ordinance the survey is where all of the planning starts and so it kind of seems like we're going in a little bit reverse order based on what is laid out in the documents that like the survey is where

the changes and the things are supposed to come from because the survey would inform they brought the ordinance as their priority to us over long before the I'm not talking about them I'm talking about the comp plan and our current land use ordinance identify the survey as the starting point for making changes do do you agree would accept the fact that you already have orans and whole right administrative process in motion now without so and so that's and that doesn't meet legal requirements and it's totally unwieldy and ineffective as a process so I think fixing the process and then doing the survey to make it uh more effective in terms of detailed information for working within that process I think it works and under the best of situations the survey gets approved the funding the budget gets pulled together and if the survey budget gets approved in April you're still now waiting till sometime

during 2025 to do that and we and then we're talking about 2026 before we're doing an adjust and we cannot have this unwieldy AG warrant for another year I completely agree with all of that um anyways uh do I have a motion to direct the town attorney to draft an ordinance um relating to 5.14 5.14 and article 5.14 and 12 so

move second any additional questions or discussions all right seeing none all in favor all opposed all righty um that brings us to uh are we putting a timeline on it any thought or no I I think that she manages a Time La yeah do we have a no that I'm sure she does but I think that so we're about to go into budget season but we will um need to whatever comes out of whatever is obviously we need to be able to have the official hearing before our town meeting which has to be what no sooner than 7 days no later than 30 days before the town meeting for Warrant language so I think April yes so we would need to be doing a hearing sometime during March February March so I don't think we need this in December because we're going to be busy with budget stuff but having something ready for the the new year because you know we're going to hand our budget off in February to the to the budget committee then maybe we can do this in

February after that um after our budget's been handed over is if things do get muddled in the process we end up needing more time what about a January draft then for yeah I mean I can get the draft out in December okay that's if that works for your schedule I was directed to do for sure okay if that works for your schedule yeah it's just a matter it's better to have it there and give people time to read it

you um cool uh board member reports man manager report sorry manager report skip you Jerry thanks appreciate that the skipping yeah thank you both thank you very much for your time thank you thank you too all right let's do this in seven

presentation from the a post the AUD about is our new IT services they are going to be online December 1st okay so that process is gone pretty smoothly but I just hand it out to server who 7 years old course they're looking at all the stuff

um so to replace the offer funds let's see how what I did there break down so that , 785 is is left after everything's kind of been obligated that's what we have about because not everything came to the warrant article amounts including this is less the um doors the doors yes yes

like if you notice oh I see that sorry right there yeah so what I'm recommending to you is that we do replace that server we use you know pretty close to the remaining B off funds and then in your the page behind it got your uh fund balances we' got 88,000 in the Telecom

reserve line that we can use to pay for the we upgrade the IT services utilizing arpa funds and the remaining pay for the remaining using the telecom's uh about it you can have that just we'll just need to know would like to discuss yeah so discussion so I just want to point out this is something I think that we had talked about prev ly that we wanted to put on the the agenda and not take votes on stuff that is sort of an as surprise not

only to us but to the the public at large so I I I support this it's necessary it we we're expending the ARA funds that need to get done quickly uh and it's coming out of the Telecommunications budget which I think we rarely use uh so I I don't mind but I think in the future this is something that should be on the agenda before we really move forward with and it can be I just it very it can be you can put it on we can put it on the agenda I just

understand that this is my first time seeing it too but these are the sorts of things that are just it's just doing doing business I mean I understand putting some of the you know Superfluous or do we really need this or do we really need that items up for a more robust process but like we need a server except this came in last Wednesday the agenda didn't go on until Thursday yeah so this could have gone on the agenda is is the point I'm trying to make okay then remind me the right that's if I don't have any other things to do right so I mean yeah cuz right I don't don't make it please don't make it sound like I you know didn't get right on this I mean it did come in on November 20th so I'm sorry didn't make the agenda I was probably doing some something else um so the Telecommunications line item is money raised via taxes or does that franch the

is $888,000 right now particular person or that Mak This is Our IT service compan IT service company and as they're doing the audit they're saying we need update the servers absolutely all right with that um I I everybody has said here and so I think just for the fact that to to be consistent we just like we did with the door quote that we put this on the agenda for our next meeting so are we discussing the merits of having a server no because that's my that's my only thing is I I understand wanting to put things on the agenda for discussion and invite people to come in and provide public comment but like do we want to put and I'm not saying this to be a jerk but do we want to put the on the agenda like paying the heat bill this year or buying oil for it is on the it is on the agenda in the cassette agenda it's but it's but it's not no one sees the we're not talking about putting it out as a

separate line of should we should we pay to use essential services that we need like we don't have on the agenda are we going to fill up the gas in the trucks this year I just I think for me the Optics of it are that we at every meeting lately have been spending money whether we have the authority to do that which we obviously do whether we have you know these things here to show us what what makes sense of that and for me it's that at every meeting that we've had for the last multiple meetings we've been we've been stamping yes to all of these expenditures and I and I I know

that these are things that need to take place I do think that that it's important for us to follow a process so I so where do we draw the line between putting it on an agenda item to discuss it and just understanding that we need to approve the the functions of of the town I mean this is a capital expense so I mean I get it it's you know so normally this would show up on the capital Improvement list of things um at the in September that oh we need to upgrade our server so I think it should be an agenda item at least since we don't go through that process with these items I mean you basically just answered all the questions we would discuss during that meeting but to formally do it right it should be on an as an agenda item because it is above the amount that we can approve it's $14,000 so well it's not above the amount we can prove yeah it is 10, 9, not not if we're proving out of the accounts which was permission given to

us by the town but we're not but the telecommunication the telecommunication fund isn't a capital reserve right they're all Reserve accounts except for the committed ones yeah they're in a reserve account for well but putting it on the agenda gives the public a chance to understand the issue come and make comment if they want to but no I mean we can do it it's not that I wouldn't approve it it's just that the process I'll withdraw my Mo motion if we want to have this same conversation next week or next meeting yeah if it makes folks feel feel better but could we preliminary Target the funding to be used on this and approve that and we need to go past 9:00 so we need to have that I also don't think it's appropriate to those comments or not well I'm saying if we want to have the same all I said if it makes people feel better it's not a helpful comment for this meeting and and and it's frankly disrespectful and I

don't appreciate it well I'm sorry com dis all I did was present a comment that was based on conversations we've had in Prior meetings and if you don't like that I'm sorry but that's a conversation we've had and we need to come to a consens about how we're going to run these meetings if we're going to be consistent or not and one thing we have tried to do and we have all talked about is being consistent throughout all of our meetings and and that is the only point I was trying to raise is last time this came up we moved it to another meeting I don't have an issue with this because we're not expending any funds raised by taxes in this circumstance today to get this done because it's important because we're switching over soon I I'm willing to make an exception but in the future what I'm saying is if we're going to be voting on expending funds I think it needs to be an agenda item and I am 99% sure every one of us

has agreed with that in the past so I think we need to make I'll make a motion to extend the meeting to extend the meeting by 10 minutes so moved second any discussion all in favor any opposition we're extending to 9 13 yeah I just this is I understand that

we want to put things on I did not I do not mean disrespect I'm sorry if it was flippant just at what point do we want to draw the line of what we need to have called out as separate because like you said we have our our warrant articles and stuff so if we want to be consistent I understand on things that don't need to be done you know or you can discuss the merits of do we need to have a generator do we need to this but when it comes to that we just need to do to function as a town where do we want to draw the line and I'm this I'm not asking this flippantly I'm asking this 100% seriously where do we want to draw the line as to what are things that we need put out in advance and Joe's point of expending capital that could be the line and that's that's fine I just want to make sure I understand I think if it's an amount that's over the

I think if it's something that we have to approve with a vote to spend the money then it needs to be an agenda item that that's my opinion but we technically do vote to spend all the other money too every every week right but that's available on the agenda that's like part of the agenda this is so so it if this I'm just again I'm not asking this flippant I'm TR purely trying to understand so if this was just listed on the agenda prior even though we might be seeing it for the first time that's what people are okay with so in case someone wanted to come comment as to whether they felt we needed a server upgrade or something they could the specifics of this one are the server but we're talking about a more General process conversation right this came up as a manager's report item right it's not a yeah and then I made the motion to to bring it up for vote now so that wasn't Jerry asking us to vote for it now was making that

motion cuz I just thought that this coming to us so this item is not a big deal bod on say yes it's not that's not the big deal it's it should just be an agenda item that's it all right I'll note that then cuz like I said I was just making the motion because it seemed like a very obvious move for us and so I think that I hadn't talked to Jerry about the uh uh This Server but I think that the intent Jerry was you just putting this on our radar tonight right and just you caveat it with nothing has to be done right now I was just making the motion to do it now because it's seems very straightforward to me but if people are comfort more comfortable with waiting until our next meeting I think that's the 10th we can do it then we still have time but so I'll withdraw my motion let's vote on it because I think well I withdrew my motion so if I I don't want people to feel pushed into this that's not my intent if people want to wait

that's one 100% okay we can just wait for it till next meeting so I'll put it on the agenda for next week uh next if I came off flippantly that wasn't my intent Heather I understand your your comments as well about the that Joe I understand yours about the $999 even though we're allowed to I just this was one that I thought was a little bit fine but it's 100% fine with waiting is this something that's going to be installed when they're doing their other it'll take a little bit of a time they're still working on the whole switching some stuff out um they just had gone through it and noticed that the server they even put on the first page started September 21st 2017 so he's just recommending and uh and part of their it service too that they're going to provide for us is when we should replace these things so I got this on November 20th no it didn't it didn't make the agenda I just wanted to give it to you

just so you could chew on it make a decision and I'm just recommending that you probably have to go through with this but you've got a couple weeks to as long as I can sign it or give me the authorization to sign it before December 31st we're okay and it could go in February March even when they get ready there's a lot of stuff that they're cleaning up in that in that cabinet that computer cabinet we have a lot of redundancy going on and um this is just one of the things that highly recommended we we change well we'll put it on for next meeting did you have anything else in your manager report oh other than that um real real

real quick before you leave this bring some more information with you what do you have in there now what kind of server is it that's in there that they need to replace is that what you want to know yeah just well that's what they're putting in no that's the one we have oh that's the one we have yeah still want tell me what you want for info and I'll I'll grab it just trying to get

tonight no we don't want to solve it tonight that's all right it's just information for you to chew on that's I just wanted to give it to you I want you to give me the email that I got and you can make a decision next next time and if you have any questions at all between now and the next meeting find me an email there much easier for me to research them then then answer them in a off the cup on maybe we need to know what would happen if we did not approve the funding would they still be able to do the thing would we have lesser you know what would be the impact of um not

updating the uh couple last week in um in Gray and met with GP Cog and uh I think uh pel wasn't there but they were invited but they're they're going through some Administration changes right now but gray was there in new gler it's the northern region of the GP Cog it was a really good meeting I think Joe Tom went last year um it was a it was a really good meeting and you know what what come out of that is you know a lot of lot of us towns municipalities go through the same thing I mean it was really the same story as we went around the room and what we struggle with as far as you know Staffing and training and we all suffer the the same stuff um but one good thing

that came out of it for for us is where we're going through the fiscal year change gpcog will help us um get that message out either through a a video they'll help us put it together we can put it out there so I plan on me at least calling the guy I used to work for the Portland Press Herald I think is what he said I plan on giving him a shout and get together with him to help us put together a a a video I mean he seemed to be pretty well versed in the whole you know putting putting things together for JP Cog I think he's does a pretty nice job um so that's that's good news you know we'll have we'll should have something to educate the residents on what this fiscal year had changed looks like feels like and that sort of thing so plan on doing that um other than that um it was it was it was a great meeting and I would recommend any of you to go um when they have those things because it really kind

of it's kind of therapy if you will because we all do the same thing right so we're all have the same business model it's good meeting think that that invite went to to the board as a whole like two or three months ago yeah and there's an RSVP that went out so if you all didn't get it please let me know cuz I thought that I think that all my stuff that has to do with GP Cog goes through that Barracuda thing and I don't get it okay I'll just flag in the future then anything that is open to more than just one board member to make double check with everyone to get it then and and that's and speaking of Barracuda that's one thing that I want to mention is that that's where the audit got held up that's why it's so late and get it cuz I didn't get it until recently when we was going through this chain so need that thing we need that resolved well that's all part of this right thisth yeah getting that

getting the whole system upgraded it'll be much better when we're done with this manag service my question was just about the um fiscal year change like PR do you anticipate like a video like that being able to go out in like January or later than that just because if people start paying attention to our budget conversation in December January I think it would be nice if it was a long that they could like have that information when we start you know what I mean I do but I don't have an answer for you that's fine you know I I don't know I'm going to call him next week I me this was just off the cuff in the meeting saying he could help us and I plan on tapping into that resource perfect thank you anything else Jerry no I think that's it yeah yeah my only update for me was going to be that Jerry and I attended that um and lots of great opportunity unties and one thing I think they said that they offer that it's one

free um Workshop a year and so I think just with so much changes going on in our town trying to tap into one of the free workshops a year that they do would be great they also brought up uh that they can do facilitation of meetings so especially like I'm thinking maybe like a workshop that we might need to do in the future we could have a third party facilitator there um cuz that could just be helpful to keep things keep things moving um extend the meeting five more minutes y I'll move to extend the meeting five minutes second all in favor opposition

um and then the only other thing I was going to say is I was I haven't sent it yet but I was planning on sending a uh email to the budget committee to invite them to uh attend our first budget committee our first meeting with Jerry on the budget um not to be there to participate in it because this is really where we're all going to have a discussion with Jerry about budget priorities and things we might want to see them do next year things or budget for next year whether it's increasing this or decreasing that conceptually um but I want them to be there to see where some of that Direction's coming from and so they have it on the front because I feel like the last few things times with the budget committee I've seen they get the information they're like it would have been nice to know that you are all interested in increasing this before today right and so one thing they actually brought up at that Workshop

that we were at the other day is that even just inviting people up front to a meeting to say hey why don't you all come to this meeting so you can see it and the whole idea of saying well all of our meetings are public and anyone can attend to any meeting they want yeah that's true but sending a dedicated invite of hey we're going to be talking about something of your board's interest tonight please come in and take a watch so I was just going to send that to the budget committee um just simply saying please join us as a attendee at the meeting on I think it's December 10th or 17th um yeah December 10th sorry where we're going to talk about the beginnings of the budget process so just want to let you all know um and I can CC everyone on that when I send it to the to the chair of the budget committee so but I had nothing else does any else have any board member reports Josh uh just that I spoke to the sheriff and

deputy sheriff uh about the vote and uh they both said that uh if we ever want to have the conversation again we'll just reach out let them know good thank you um I have a the solid waste committee has a meeting coming up where they're going to approve the charter and as as I was helping them edit it I noticed that we don't have a standard format for committee Charters kind of all resemble each other but I was thinking maybe there should be a standard form so they all look the same and any I'm going to throw that in there and then um asking about the agriculture committee or whatever the name of that is you know we signed all those folks into as part of that did everyone get notified and are they meeting or where are we with that and maybe we should we could we could so with the commit with it being committees they fall under us so we could just reach out to them and ask them to come to a meeting and give

us an update on where where they're at the people that were notifi so once we signed the sign them all in at that meeting then how do they how did they get officially know notified some yeah they get they get usually they get told and then we used to back in the day everyone will go get sworn in I don't think we have to sworn people in anymore um but they get told that they're they're on the committee and the committee's formed and then from there and so is there going to be a liaison from the select board to that committee or well we could do that like because you've kind of been working as a liaison between I think we said we were going to do that yeah did you by default it's historic group yeah I mean I'll glad be

the leaz on to the committee so I can any I want throw that out there I think we should make sure everyone's in alignment that they're on the committee and they got their Charter going they selected a chair and a co-chair

double like loop back and say Hey you know and they upate you know I don't know if the um website is updated with that and write their Town emails and that's all connected and yeah we try to do the best we can with those types of things when they're not at the they we try to the best we can Joe Tom I'm good Heather um I talked about a

little bit earlier went to the Duram historic district commission meeting and I'm not going to speak about the content of that anymore than I already have but I will say that I think it's really important that we have a discussion or we just Implement that all Town

committee board and meetings are um recorded if not live streamed and put on our town website or YouTube channel or whatever it is I think that if we don't have the opportunity to attend those meetings they we need to at least be able to have the opportunity to view the content and sometimes the meeting minutes aren't pulling enough context out of what is taking place at those meetings keep that in mind for when we have the discussion about budget priorities because I think that that something that you might need to budget more for whether it's staff or equipment or whatever depending on the local so I think that's good to note when we have that discussion I'll forget it so I'm just and then my only other thing is we were using Debs tracker kind of sheet

and I just wonder if we're still I feel like the last couple of meetings we've kind of thrown a lot of tasks out on the table and I don't know if those are getting recorded I can update that with our agenda if you'd like okay and then recirculate it okay perfect thank you like I know there were some things that you took on your plate and I offered to help and I just want to make sure that like those things are like all that you know what I mean we were all kind of anyway making sure we're closing Loops get ready wrap okay let's go uh Jos you good everyone got everything so um seeing nothing else do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda Jos motion Joe seconds all in favor any discussion see none all

second any discussion all in favor any opposition seeing none we adjourn at 9:119