TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ June 27, 2017

now. All right. Uh call this meeting to order. All five suck when here. Can we raise for the pledge of allegiance? of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

and the vice chair. I'll take a motion on the chair first. If anybody was thinking about I don't want the chair's position. I'm not saying anybody was thinking that. But if you was I I was kind of wondering if you were interested.

No, I'm not interested in the chair's position. So, I was definitely wondering if you were interested. [laughter] Well, Kevin, you want to do it? I I I'm I will do it. I mean, I ideally, you know, I know it's we're in an unusual situation because we have, you know, four of the five of us are

very green. Um I would do it especially if uh you know, Mark continue as vice chair at least. Um, I I would I'll do that. I'll make that motion. I'll nominate Kevin for chair and Mark for vice chair. Second that. Any more discussion? No more nominations. All the nominations ceased. All those in favor. It's a vote.

There you go. C. [laughter] All right. I will need much guidance on procedure. I'm sure at this point other than winging it. We all kind of got some of the same. Oh, you got the agenda. I do trustee meetings every month. They're similar. So, good help you out.

All right. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Yes. I would like to ask for an executive session um to uh go over the codes. Okay. We'll add that to the end. Agree. So that will be 10 A or whatever you want to call it, I guess. Okay. Any other amendments to the agenda? No. Okay. Uh I don't see any public here

for public comment. No. Jill, you got anything to say? Truffles. Truffles. Okay. [laughter] All right. Uh consent agenda. Is there a motion there? I'll make a motion we accept the consent cons consent agenda as presented.

I'll second that. All in favor? I'll abstain since I wasn't on the board for the meetings and the uh warrants and so forth. So, Get away with that next time. I know. [laughter] technician job description. Ruth, do you have a update on that? She sent around a uh

I I did send around a sheet that all the um I'm having computer issues. Um that showed the updates. Um it's it's a clean version with all the updates there. Um I don't know if you guys want to take a quick look through it.

[sighs] Yeah, I was mainly looking at uh like I thought the one thing they did that I that I liked on the new job description and you added it which was good is the whole desirable knowledge skills and abilities like proficiency with social media platforms and stuff like that. Thought that was good. But the rest of it is pretty much pretty close to what it was originally. Is that correct?

Well, it's pretty close to the last one that I showed you. I didn't do a lot of changes from when they did it. Um, the old PIT, and I probably should have given this to you, but I've been kind of stressed lately. Um, the old PIT position had a lot of um,

Hey, Colin. Um, stuff to do with it, right? [clears throat] And and that's not something that off. I mean, if somebody has that qualification, awesome. I'll use it. Sure. But if they don't have it, then it's not the end of the world.

And so, this position is already posted with the original one. Are you looking for us to basically give you uh uh if you if you like it, I can you can do a motion to change it to that and [clears throat] I will fix that on the internet and um submit that to the telecommunications committee.

Have we had any applicants [music] so far? Not a one. How much does this pay? 15 to 18 hourly. Yeah, that might have changed. I think originally it was 12 to 18, right? Didn't we change that at one point? Yes, I did change it.

I like I mean I like how it's written. I'd move that we approve this as as presented. Yeah, I'd second that to take it as the revision and go with that from here. Any uh discussion on that? No. All in favor? Opposed? Okay, good.

I had forgotten to mention the the um orientation. I don't know if you want to fit that in anywhere. The what? The orientation. We talked about doing a short orientation just to flip through a couple things. Mhm. Yeah. Why don't we um so orientation on

what? Just town office type stuff. Yeah. Your job. Yeah. No, that I think I think we would find that valuable. Um, any objection to adding that uh to the agenda at the end before the executive sessions? That's fine. Should we do it at

or before the department committee reports? Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Do it. 7 G. We'll make it G. Yep. Make it 7G. That'll work. Okay. So, next runaround pond suggestion revival of conservation commission. So Rich and I went to the Royal River Conservation Trust. I guess it was a

week party thing at the river uh runaround pond park. Looks beautiful. Um and they did a ton of cleanup. They picked up a lot of trash. And one of the things that they said that they found um was a lot of drug paraphernalia and and other assorted things. So, one of the issues is on that that map, the circle is a parking place. So, people drive back in there behind the rock where the trees are and nobody can see them and they do things that they probably shouldn't be doing and then they leave their garbage there.

And uh Allan had [clears throat] suggested that where those lines are, we actually place a number of rocks there so that cars cannot get back there. Um, you can still walk there, but you could still walk there, but you would be able to back and turn into the boat launch. Okay,

you can still back and turn into the boat launch. There's actually a ton of uh parking on the edge of Runaround Pond Road. So, it won't really cut out the amount of use that you could do there. It makes sense. So, is that is that like a public works thing? The guys could put some rocks over there.

Yeah, I think so. They must [laughter] have some I would think so. He's not here, so let's just direct. He was here about 10 seconds. disappeared. [laughter] It's his problem. He walked down. Congratulations. When he comes back, we'll inform him.

I mean, if we I don't know about getting They can certainly place the rocks. I don't know if we have access to them. Anyway, source or he must have some must. Must have some some I think I've seen some down to the out back there, though.

But he doesn't. I got a few we can have. He just drove by. So, yeah, he just must have forgotten called Yeah. or something. I I think we can have them place whatever he thinks he needs to place there. So So the other issue is with the the resignation of um um brain anyways there's only one person on the conservation commission now committee now and the conservation committee basically is not active. of the reason it's still in existence um is because the town funnels um money to go

to the 4 club for the people at the school through it. Um I would like to see and I don't know how you guys feel. I would like to see it become much more active and I would like to see them tasked with um upkeep of runaround pond and river park um as a start and then if they decide that they want further stuff to do. When you say charged with upkeep, what do you mean by that?

Uh, I mean like every year they have should have clean up of the trails, cutting the trails, repairing the um there's a a couple of logs um where River Park um there's a trail and there's a brook and there's the you know the branches or logs that go across it and they're all rotted and falling apart.

Oh, that's not good. No. [laughter] And and that trail is a big mess. I mean, somebody really needs to go and and clean up the trail and and um mark it and make sure that the boats can get down to the boat launch, the canoes.

Somebody fell in the boat. So, is that I mean, from us, it just means that we have to allow them to do it or um they used to Well, you would you would tell me to advertise it so that we can get more members um and work towards creating

put it as part of their program. Yeah. that they it's part of what they do. Yeah, sounds good to me. If you can find the volunteers, [laughter] there is always that. Yes, that's the challenge. What happened to the conservation commission? Was it when John died?

No. Well, I don't [sighs] I know that it was it was moving around from place to place and not all the members were getting invited because they didn't all agree on his outlook. So sometimes I think with that happening, we move from house to house got changed a little bit. A couple of members mentioned that to me and they weren't getting calls. So I think it petered down. I don't think it's gone, but there isn't much happening with it.

Do we have any documentation on like like what the committee is supposed to do or its mission statement or anything like that? Not that I know of. Yeah, that may have kind of started from scratch for a long time. They were

seven, right members at one time. They were working on the river park. there was a um a a grant for the river park um in that building and then the the barn I guess had to come down [clears throat] and then there's a couple of uh picnic tables up there and

yeah I was there was seven or eight members once so they may still be out there they just never have gotten together so maybe we could put that up on the internet they were pretty strong at one time should we put together almost I mean maybe mission statement is probably too formal, but just like what we want

statement of work, what we want the commission to do or or what activities and what to accomplish and then put it out there say, "Hey, we're looking to form a committee and this is what we asking the committee to do." Yeah. Revitalizing.

There's got to be some information somewhere in the office because they used to meet quite a quite a bit for a while. Isn't uh is so is the lone member Steve? Huh? Oh, well, Steve, I guess, is still on it, but he might have some

documentation copies or Russ. Yeah, Russ is the one who just recently was [clears throat] he on that committee, too. I think so. I think he was. I know Warren Boy was on it, but he was one of the ones that missed a few of the meetings.

Not his choice, I don't think. I think it's like what is the purpose of the committee and what do we want him to do? I mean I think we need maybe a little clarity on that and then before we go out to they must have a current mandate the committee

that's what I'm that's what I'm looking for is current mandate and then do we need to expand their duties or roles maybe we do a little research on that and and talk about it in our [clears throat] at our next meeting. Uh you might want to make that the meeting after but yeah cuz I won't be here next meeting.

Okay. So y so a month from now. So at runaround pond, would they be in conjunction with the runaround pond? At one time they was they took care of that and the river park and the town the town takes care of runaround pond um park the recreation area there. The Royal River Conservation Truster

owns a bunch of land around there and offered to help us with that and went out and cleaned it all up and did kind of a plaque and the whole nice thing, but they're not responsible for the park itself. The recreation the town is.

Yeah, they they looking to help manage it a little bit, but there's got to be a list here somewhere. at least some of the past members even if they're, you know, maybe they just don't realize that it's still up and going. So, we had that list at one time. So, we must have a list here somewhere. So, maybe a little research will find that out.

Yeah. Kind of I I'll ask one of the people I know if they remember who was on it. I suspect that we might get some people who are interested. Yeah. If we put it [clears throat] out on the internet, I I would agree, but I think we want to put it out with like a clear clear mandate and this is this is what we're looking for. And if we can get some history of what we had, we could work from that.

According to the list, it was Roberto Brzinski, Rush Java, who just resigned, and Steve Senezy. That's it. Yeah, there was I know there was two or three. I know there was more than that, but Okay. Having some serious issues. So, are you looking for action from us or just

eventually? But that is correct. Well, until then, would it be a good idea to ask public works to go down and place the rocks? Change the rocks. Yes. Well, place the rocks, but maybe every week pick up trash. Oh. Until we get somebody to

Pat, where are we at? Run around Palm. Pat doesn't want to do it anymore. No, no, Pat wants it. But the issue is that well you know that they were down there cleaning up runaround pond and that area back behind the rock they found a lot of drug paraphernalia and condoms and stuff like that and so they cleaned it all up for us

and they have made the suggestion two suggestions. One that we block that area off so nobody can go back there and park and the other suggestion is that we get um a group together to go and and clean the park every once in a while.

Um but but They did block it off once and we got complaints. Well, we didn't fell down. So, we wanted to block it off the tree complaint. What was that bottom one? Kelvin had some large dotted line as well. The other ones,

we had a big top of that pine fell off there and we left it across there. Yeah, I didn't think about that. You could just use a telephone pole to block that. Off the pole or it's a lot easier than log or tree button. Well, it's

so you got to be able to walk there though. Yeah, that's the thing. If if I don't know how many people go up there in wheelchairs. Well, I just think if somebody went up there in a wheelchair or one of them I don't know if people long as they can get through that.

That's the only thing. Well, you could leave like 3 feet on. Yeah. Technical cut split it. So, you got No, I was just from a from an ease perspective. I think that would be a lot easier than trying to rustle up a couple of goodiz rocks.

That works for me. Yep. All right. Well, we'll check that out. Make it nice and decorative. Shellac it. Do the whole thing. [laughter] Yeah. Get the guy with the chainsaw over here to cop. There you go. Make it nice. Go.

Okay. Okay. So, as far as the uh the conservation commission, is is it enough for now to We're going to do a little research and see what we can find out about if you want to. Yeah. I think it's worth Oh, yeah. I think so.

Okay. So, you want to do the research first and then Yeah. Find out if we members. I'll ask some people that I knew that was on it and see if they remember and even if they're interested. Yeah. I think we need a little homework first before we

just put it out there. Okay. One of the things I want to mention at sometime I got to look into is the the dam. There's a dam that makes that haunt. But and um I just became aware this year. I guess those are our dams. So if if anything ever happens to them, I just know from experience that there was a fish and run gun club, a fishing game club down that had a pond like that with a dam and they let go and hurricane and they had to pay for the houses down. So they got rid of the pond afterwards. I just I assume they must be insured for that. I don't know if those are getting inspected or if they need an inspection. I mean [clears throat]

seems like it was years ago, five or six years ago, maybe longer than that. That was repaired once. Well, I don't know anything about but I don't know what it looks like now, but it might have been 10 years ago, but it was repaired cuz it was in tough shape.

But I don't know. And I almost thought the state donated something. Yeah. Okay. That's what it was. The state rebuilt it. I think so. When they did that bridge and guard rail, did that must have done the dam, but I don't I don't know that it's been inspected since then.

That's right. Cuz they they had damn coffer dam across. I checked with DOT and they said it's not there or they said that we own the the dam. Yeah. Yeah. And it was right about that time when they did that. That that was when I think they did fix it at the time, but that's when it separated and it was it wasn't their responsibility. The road was, but that part wasn't anymore. I don't remember what happened, but

I wasn't really involved, but I remember hearing bits and pieces about it. But there's some type of agreement where they actually own the land, but we have to maintain it, right? Yes. And there was money at one time for that. I know it got repaired, but I don't know what shape it's in now.

Well, it just dawned. I mean, we better be keeping an eye on that and getting that inspected. So, yeah. Is there should we uh find out like is there some sort of like recommended inspection interval or how or process that we should

we'll look into that? Okay. But the bridges, I know they do it every two years. They they come out and do it automatically. Damn. I don't Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. And and there may be a there may be somebody from the state that would come and look at that. I don't know. But yeah, so I don't know. There's got to be a certain criteria for different size dam. So

yeah, that dam that whole millions of gallons of water would be going down okay. information slashinsert. Yeah. Yeah. UM, [laughter] and round for the last couple days with different people talking to everybody. Um, and everybody tells me the same thing that we should not commit taxes until um,

we know. We know except for MMA. MMA legal thinks that perhaps we can commit taxes because what they're doing in the legislature doesn't affect this year because April 1st is passed. Now, I don't think that's entirely true, but it's possible that they can't change it from the 20,000 to 15,000, which is what I was concerned with, changing the homestead exemption, moving it down. But I'm 99% sure that they can still determine what they want for reimbursement. So, do a $20,000 homestead exemption and then decide whether they want to reimburse the municipality at 62.5% or 50%. Um, which

makes a huge difference. It's like $44,000 for us. Um, so and and once you commit taxes, you can't you can't come back and say, "No, I need more taxes." So, when do we think we're going to have an answer on this? By Friday. Well, no, because because if the legislature does manage to get a budget through by Friday, um Governor Leage has said that he will not sign it unless it's the Republicans's version, which is unlikely to go through the legislature as is. So, that would mean that he would, if he does what he says he's going to do, hold on to the budget package for 10 days and then veto it. So you're looking at July 10th at the very beginning, very very first part where it goes back to the legislature and then they have to override the veto. So

um unfortunately this is extremely stressful for me because I'm flying away on July 8th and will not be back until July 23rd. And when do we have to commit taxes? We were supposed to commit taxes last week. Last week? Yeah.

What's the drop deadline of the commitment? like when's you've got to commit by X. There is no drop dead um commitment date. The issue is that we're running out of money. Pushes us deeper into the budget year without be a long time.

We will not be able to afford the next school payment as things stand now. So, there's a couple of things that we can do. I have a call into our banker to see if they'll um front us a line of credit in case we do have these issues and we can't I mean, we could go out for a tan. Um it's short notice, but I think we could probably get it done fast enough. Um and then I mean since it's emergency, we might not even have to go out as far as um bid, you know, we might be able to just go with Androska Bank, who is our bank. Um the other option is one year you guys had this issue and I guess um the treasurer sent out notices to people or put it out there that that we were running out of cash and could you please come and pay your taxes and a lot of people did. Um, so

but you don't know what they're going to be yet. Well, they could pay the amount of Well, the only issue is if they pay the amount to last year, um, and we keep the tax rate the same, but they do raise it to the 20,000, they'd be overpaying their taxes.

Um, but if they underpay their taxes, then they would just owe a little extra. It it creates a bit of a conundrum because then how do you make sure that everybody knows that they owe a little extra so that we don't run into the issue of next year we'll have, you know, 500 lean notices going out at $200 a piece because somebody came in and paid last year's taxes for whatever reason.

Is the school the only concern for these funds? I think that I could make it through July. Okay. If I didn't have the school payment. And are we the only I'm assuming Panel or Freeport also has this school payment. Are we the only

Well, they're on fiscal years though, right? I mean, what what I mean, the kids aren't in school right now, but what what what is what what's the ramifications if we're 30 days late to the school? I mean, they got to understand we didn't we didn't cause this issue. Well, that's a good question and I've kind of been floating that and and legally um there could be ramifications, but there wouldn't be right away because they would have to do statutory ramifications. So, you know, conceivably I could call up, you know, the RSU5 and say, "Hey, look, can we be like 10 days late?" And conceivably they might say,

"Okay, [laughter] it's worth five minutes." We haven't had any of those conversations yet. No, I was afraid to have that conversation. Yeah, I I just don't I I just don't I think it's not like we're going to be late because we're doing I mean this is, you know, some voodoo math or something. This is a this is a state issue that we're just not getting funding on them, which I'm pretty sure they're aware of. If we just make that contact and get some communication and some dialogue going with them, I can't see how they wouldn't be like, "Yeah, if it's only going to be another 10 days, we understand."

Well, there was one time where they didn't receive it and it' only been two days and it wasn't it was going it just was two days different than what they wanted and they made the phone call. Well, they wonder where it was.

Well, they can ask where it was. That's no problem. But I mean, all I'm getting at is Well, if there was Yeah, if there was upfront communication. What would the interest be on being late? I mean, is that our That's our tan right there.

Ours is 7%. So, I assume that they wouldn't be able to charge us more than 7% interest, but I can ask Michelle. Yeah. So, either way, you're paying the seven. That's what I'm saying. Just if we hold it and we're going to hold it for 30 days, charge us interest.

You only paid 3% on the 10. I think we paid 325 or something last year. You know, for lack of better words, we give the RSU a little juice and we all move on. I mean, they're just gonna have to wait a little bit. What else? What else can we do?

Well, if you had I wonder if it's a multiro like if you have a conversation with the school and say, look, this is the scenario, you know, um or because we're not actually waiting on state money. We're waiting on a state decision so that we can send the bill,

right, for taxes, right? So, it's not like we're waiting for a check from the state. So we we can choose to send the bills when we want. We just how much risk do we want to take that the bills will be wrong. Right. Right. So if we talk to the school and

get a little bit of a you know grace period if you will from them understanding and in the meantime also put the tan into motion. Y um and cuz there's no harm, correct me if I'm wrong in in getting it into motion and getting it kind of like there ready to go and then is if we don't need it.

Don't need it, don't take it. But if you need it, it's ready. Yeah, there'd be some some fee. There's always a fee with a because you have to have um um I forget what the bond council. Sure. That that but that's it wasn't much the last time we did one. It was

the quagmire of sending out potentially incorrect and trying to correct and recollect and refund and and oh my god. Is there a way that's not even legal to do? Is [clears throat] there a way though that we could make an action that depends on the town's

on what the state decides? So as soon as she gets an answer, we've already taken like we're going to commit to whatever percentage gives us $91,4560 take an action like that so the second the the decision's made, she's good to go?

Is that the issue or is it the issue that you're not here? Yeah, I was going to say that if if she's not here, the only one that's really in line that would try to attempt that would be Pam, and she hasn't never done one. That would be kind of unfair to

The issue is that then I have to take that commitment and make it into tax bills. Um, and then send it to the printers who then go on to do all the other stuff. So, it's it's a process. I'm just saying I don't want to hold this up for another two weeks while we wait for you to get back and then [clears throat] we have to wait for us to have a meeting.

I'm hoping [laughter] that the best case scenario happens and they decide by the end of this week and the governor decides to sign it and everything's cool and I call you guys next week and say, "Hey guys, could you come in for a half an hour so we can commit taxes?" And I do a file and I get it to the printers and then Pam can take it from there. That's what I'm hoping for.

Worst case scenario, the government shuts down. We have no idea what's going to happen and we don't commit until the 24th when I come back from vacation. So should are you should we just plan now on coming like can we stay in PA and just plan on coming in like what Monday or or Tuesday night or whatever next week and then we make the call in because if if the governor if if the state is passed the budget then we're good to go and if not then we go to plan B but in the meantime I think it still would be a good idea to have the conversation with the RSU

and the TAN just to kind of Worst case scenario, have it ready. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, call us Wednesday if you need us. Not Monday or Tuesday. What's that? Next week. All right. Wednesday if you need us. Not Monday or Tuesday.

I think I think if if everything goes perfectly, Wednesday evening would be would be fine. Okay. So, let's So, we all tentatively plan on Wednesday evening. Well, you let us I'll send you guys an email. I got to be here on Monday anyways. Well, you'll

Oh, Wednesday. Nobody's here. You would You will gen Yeah, I was going to say you will generally know. You can just email those guys and you got my phone number. Would you like me to call the governor? You can call me. Yeah. [laughter] Whatever works, Mark.

Please, if you know the governor, give him a call. Okay. Okay. All right. So, we'll wait to hear from you, but we'll we'll all tend to be ready to come in on Wednesday uh next week and make a move. Okay. Yes. 6:30 or Well, actually, we'll let Ruth We'll let Ruth What's for Ruth?

Yeah, I Anytime. 6 6:30. Well, if you find out early, if it's just to come in and make a decision, then it's literally going to be like 20 minutes. I'm going to We could do it right after whatever time anybody gets out of work or something. Make it easier so you can get home or it's a day off anyways.

Yeah. Make any difference to me. You guys, when can you get here? I can get here at 3:15. I know you can get here. 5 is the earliest I could get here. I can get here at 5:00. I can get here whenever you guys want. Me, too.

I'm working back in town, so I'll So, why don't we say 5:30? Make it easy. 5:30. Okay. Deal. 5:30. Um, and as far as the insert is concerned, I have just been so slammed with other stuff, I haven't done an insert. And so, I think maybe if you don't mind, we'll just skip it this year. And

I would agree. effect, especially since we're looking at a level tax rate. I think it's more important if we've got some spleening to do. [laughter] No, I agree. I agree. I agree. I got my fingers crossed. Yeah. So, okay.

Okay. Get my agenda back here. I'm I'm having some issues with my computer. It doesn't Okay. So, the next one next item on the agenda is uh townowned buildings. I I didn't really do much with this one, so we're probably going to talk about it more afterwards. There's a couple of town owned [clears throat] buildings. There's the Methodist church and the town hall. Um, as far long as I've been here, nobody's done any work on those buildings. Um, there had been a [clears throat] plan in place by the historic society to do some renovations on the place. Um, and I've been asked recently if if they can do kind of a show on the Methodist church. um invite people there and try and get some kind of interest um in the church because they're dilapitated buildings and they're both having issues. So, I think that it's at a point where the town probably needs to try and make a decision and become involved in this

property that we own, but the historic society, which is not a town committee, is the ones that seem to bear the burden. They're not a town committee. No, the historic society is not a town committee, but they're their own entity and they formed themselves.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, you're talking about the the old town hall town hall which actually was painted probably what 20 years ago and the bell part was redone probably 20 25. Yeah. But I've been driving by that place for a lot year and there's there's been like paper over the window. Yeah.

And cuz I assume cuz one of the panes of window is broken. So and nobody's What resides in the town hall now? Anything? Uh a lot of old um historic It's kind of like a little bit like a storage. Well, they they actually open up so people can go in and look around and stuff like that. There's a lot.

If you ever want to go and you have time, let me know. I can take you over there. It's beautiful. Yeah, we ought to probably see. Let's check it out. At least get the window. [clears throat] Yeah, we should probably. Yeah, I think.

And I would I would like to I've never been to the Methodist church either, so maybe that's a good building. You never been inside of it. Well, Janice said there's a Janet says there's a ghost in there cuz she was in there with Sean. Some funny things, but nobody conducts services or anything like that.

So, right now that's another vacant/ that's the one that Sean got locked in. Beautiful historic buildings. Okay. When was the last time somebody was in there? I don't know. I think they got in there. The door mysteriously shut and locked them in. And

yeah, they couldn't unlock it from the inside. They couldn't get out. You think they went out a window? which is probably nobody's nobody's I was in [laughter] the paper King. [laughter] It sounds like a good place. We could raise some money while the kids trick or treat.

Let's plan Let's plan a field trip. [laughter] We set it up right. Let's go look at the buildings and make a determination off of that. I think Paul might have gone in that building once for some reason. He may have. I That was about That's about it. Calvin, you been in there?

And then shortly after that, he left. You've been in it? [laughter] Oh, Calvin, what's your take on the buildings? It's starting to fall apart rapidly. Yeah. The ceilings are starting to just just just with no heat. Yeah.

Plaster starting to break, starting to fall off the ceilings. I think this one's probably in the same boat over here. I did look at the old school house up on Bowie Hill Road. Yeah. And it's a shame. Mhm. really a shame that 20 years ago, 15 years ago, some money wasn't put into that building, the little one room schoolhouse, because it's just the structure still seemed to be okay on the inside. The floor is gone. The second floor has fallen into the first floor had 15 years ago. Right now, it's a dangerous building that needs to be removed. Needs to be taken down

beyond repair unfortunately. I don't The town doesn't own that, though. I don't think Oh, I Yeah, I think [laughter] that belongs on private property. Yeah. Oh, it is. Yeah, I think I think about that one there, buddy. [laughter]

down. [laughter] I know someone who probably knows who the owner is of that. I think they're out of state. I think they're in Massachusetts. I mean, typically a building like that, you would send them a letter under the dangerous building in under a statute. It should be it should convey. But before these owners were getting that boat, we ought to look at

seeing what could be done. I bet it was 30 years ago. My father and I went over to look at rehabbing it for the people that own it. Yeah. Do it from away. 30 years ago. Yeah. Is is it possible we could get whoever's on that committee to maybe meet us as a group and Kelvin and we take a quick tour of these and make some type of decision?

Yeah. Because I mean, Rita is the chair, so I will contact her. Yep. And we'll go from there cuz ultimately the town will have to decide what they how much they want to invest if any in that. I don't know when they meet exactly. Um from what I understand it's it's become a little bit more rejuvenated. I guess it was kind of lagging for a while but members and some more interest in in the society

in the historic society. But you know me which is kind of cool. Okay. Yeah. Touchy. You want a dozer renovation? Is that what you want? Give it a good time. Okay. [laughter] Okay. Let's move on. I want information. I need I [clears throat] need help before we move on.

Good. I can't make my p uh PowerPoint come up and I don't know why. It's probably showing up. Which one? On showing up somewhere else set up. Yes. That's my my suspicion, but I can't figure out how to fix So there's usually

you can make money on the Methodist church. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Should be especially around Halloween. Oh yeah. If it was rejuvenated enough so people could go in there. Oh we'd have Stephen King fans over there droves. Which which church is the Methodist church?

Around corner. What is it? Three houses in the buildings in I know where you are. Just off route nine. Yeah. Just just before the just before the dirt rat goes straight and it starts to go to the left of the curve right there.

Do we move along with that or uh we used I don't know if No, I don't know the going to mess up here. Yeah, there is no there ain't really much here for a little bit. Yeah, I think the property is actually right on the edge of the buildings are on the edge of the property I believe. Yeah.

Probably one of those abing houses used to be a parsonage or something. Could be lived a little I think the property that goes with that church now was pretty much turn that. What I do you can walk around Yeah. They used to hold services

down in the lower and the right. Get rid of that presenter view and then you can get it all from there. Okay. Except that's not the right thing. Well, anyway, thank you. So, the next thing on the agenda is preliminary bond information.

All right. So there were some some there was some interest in learning about road bonds and you had come up with a couple of questions Kevin and so I had put together Is that thing crooked or is it me? It's crooked. Sorry about that guys.

It's all right. It's amazing. Well, it's not when you like this. So it will drain well. [laughter] That's right. No, not protected view. I'll get better at this. I'm not good at this yet. That's okay. You're doing fine. Okay. So, financial considerations of borrowing money to fix roads. So, is according to the state, these are borrowing limits. State statutes say that we cannot borrow more than 7 and a half% of the last full state valuation and that does not include any monies that's borrowed for school purposes. So in n in 2016 our state valuation was $348,97490

So we can borrow up to $26 million. Do we want to ask the [laughter] next question? I think the answer to that is no. So here's the amount of debt that we are carrying as of 1231 and this is an audited amount. So the if you look at the bottom the total debt less school projects I took the school projects out because we don't have to take those into consideration and those actually are included in our school um money. The money that we give the school they pay that. So we don't

it's not doesn't even show up in our Yeah, it doesn't even show up, but it comes out of tax revenue. It's not doesn't come out of state school funds, right? Doesn't go against our bonding, right? Um so we have over a little over $3 million worth of debt right now.

legally borrow $23 million. Of course, we need to be able to pay it back, too. Won't you? No. [laughter] So, there's different options we can do for borrowing. We're somewhat limited. We could issue an offering statement. So, issue our own bonds. Um, you'd have to get a financial advisor. Um, there's some transaction costs that are associated with that. Um, I'd have to do more work. Um, it you could get a lower interest rate. Um, but you have more added costs.

The other option is you issue an RFP. And that's what we've done previously for TANS um to local banks. Um and we we would get between uh 3 and a half to maybe 3.57% [music] interest. The last road bond we did we did through the main municipal bond bank. The average rate is 1.47% that we got for this bond over seven years. It varies from year to year, but that's the average rate of the seven years. I don't think you can do much better than that. Um [laughter]

got 1% totally all three of them. You got 1% 1% for 20 years. How much did you borrow? 23 22 million. 22 million. Oh well. Okay. I get that. [laughter] Is that all? Yeah. Um so we could borrow the full amount which is what we were talking was about 5 million is what we would need to fix the roads in town. So you couldn't borrow $5 million in one year. Um if you borrow the five million in one year, you would ha if you if you borrow more than 5 million in one year, you have to spend it to according to a special spend down schedule. And usually it's within two years and there's thresholds every six months that you have to meet. If we borrow less than $5 million, there's uh three years that you have three years to spend it all from the date of the bond issue. So those are different options. I mean there are other options obviously we can split it out you know. So estimate of additional taxes to be

committed for yearly payment of a bond. So this is the amounts go from 1 million to $5 million and the the period time is from seven to 15 years. Um generally I've been told that 10 years is a good road bond number because they last about 10 years. So um 15 years might be pushing it a little bit. Um, this assumes that there's a 2%

interest rate and it assumes that the town valuation that we have this year would stay the same. Um, we don't use any capital funds to help pay back these bonds. Um, and each of these dollar amounts is additional taxes per $100,000 of property valuation. So, if say for instance we borrowed $5 million for 10 years um and you have a house that's worth $200,000, you're looking at about $320 extra

for 10 years. Every year. Right. Every year for 10 years, not including whatever else it taxes might go up. Right. Right. 18 bucks. Exactly. Yeah. And what other bonds are going to be? Right. We'll get there in a second. Yeah.

Um, these are the total cost of interest over the life of the bond. And obviously it varies depending on how long the the the shorter the period, the less interest you're paying. But of course, the higher the the payment is. Um,

and so that gives you an idea of what you'd be paying out in interest. So on a $5 million bond, um you're looking between $362,000 to $791,000 of interest. That's at 2%, not 1.4 too, right? That's at 2%. Yes. Right. So So it's it is possible. You know, you got to make certain assumptions. And my assumption is that the interest rates actually going to go up a little bit.

Yep. So this is a little small, but what I did is I took the years and I I spread them out. So, there's the building bond, which we have now, which was a 15-year bond, um, and it goes out to 2029. There's the equipment bond that we have for public works. Uh, that was a 10-year bond, that goes out to 2024. We have the road bond, which we took out for 7 years, which goes out to 2023. Um, and then I did a couple of assumptions. The 2018 road bond, I assumed that we would take out a a bond in 2018 for $2 million. And that $2 million bond uh would be at 2% and we would have to start paying it back in 2019 and that would be over 12 years. And then and of course we can always change whatever assumptions we want to do. And then I assumed that in 2020 we would take out another road bond for $2 million um and hopefully be able to finish most of the roads. Um and if we take it out in 2020, the payments

wouldn't start being due until 2021. So, it shows the total payments per year from 2018 all the way through 2030. Can I Can I ask what you I think we you said there's $5 million worth of work, but you've got two $2 million bonds.

Well, my thought was that we might be able to pick up some extra money from our paving projects. Or maybe no. Pick what? I don't understand. What do you mean pick up extra money from? Well, every year we budget, this year we budget what? $385,000,000 less than all the all the formulas tell you that you need an overlay project every 10 years. So, I need for I've got 47 miles of road. I need $470,000 to

I I agree with Calvin and and uh but we're still not up there. We've come a long way. We've come from 100,000 up to 300 something,000. So, if you do another uh another half a million dollars, you're probably looking I'm doing my math, which is not always

Well, actually, that money he's talking about is basic prevent the maintenance budget. You don't want to touch that. I don't know. I was I was kind of hoping that Calvin could make it cheaper. That's how we got to where we're at now. [laughter]

Yeah, exactly. and and um at some point we talked about having u Paul first come in and talk to us about a capital improvement plan committee and how that works and I've talked to him a little bit about it but one of the things he definitely called out is that you know you your road maintenance and your road rebuild budgets really need to stay separate and you don't compromise one for the other.

Um because if you start if you start compromising your maintenance, they'll be back there again fast. If we can get the roads done and then put them on a capital improvement plan and start putting that money in every year for road construction and not taking away from your maintenance, you'll never get in the position we're in now again.

So, where' the 5 million number come from, though? Well, we got 12 miles of road currently in the rebuild category. Using $100 a foot, you're at 6.3 million. Oh, now we're at six. 6.3. [laughter] So, wait a second here. But I think we can do it for less than that. I mean, we just spent 60 something a foot on on the last one we did, but that was us doing good part of the work. But if we were to go do it all at once, we wouldn't be able to do that.

Right. That's Yeah, that was my other say. If we if we borrowed we'll say 5 million and you had to have it spent by within two years like that was showing, is that even possible with the amount of work that was done? Cuz you're probably not going to get one contractor that's going to come in and do it. You're going to have two or three or four. If you're lucky,

then do it. Yeah, you'd get it. We would not bid. You get Yeah. That's fact. I've had uh folks suggest to me just that, you know, get a if you have a big enough project, put the whole thing out. Yeah. And and have like a single contractor and you might get a better price cuz it's such a big chunk of work and they can count on it, especially if it's spans a couple three seasons. I mean, I don't know. You would know more about that than I do.

Yeah. If they knew the year before. Yeah. So, so and in the reconstru I mean is that how did you grade the roads? I mean do you use the RSMS from the state or did you just ride them or look at them stuff that's beyond shims and they got to be ground up

and ditching and everything else as part of that? I mean I don't doubt it. I I'm just I think it could be 8 million, [laughter] you know. The budget number of Yeah. Is there is there a way uh to get a more to have um I don't not get official bids I guess yet but to have somebody you know go through and do a survey of the roads and come back to us with what they think um you know the miles might cost or

yeah um I've kind of done that and come up with going rate is around 100 bucks a foot but we just did the easier for 65. But that's was with you doing the ditching though, right? And you wouldn't be able to do all the ditching.

Oh, with a project of this magnitude probably. No, cuz you would be able to stay ahead of it fast enough, right? Right. Either either with them doing the ditch or not doing the ditching, we're still paying for the ditching,

right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's Yeah. And something of this magnitude, six and a half dozen of the comes with the money. you probably want it all done at once, but probably be more efficient and that way we can have more accountability if we all have it done at once with one particular contractor rather than our guys doing one thing, them doing another thing.

One of the things though is you're not going to see even if it's five or 8 million, there's 12 miles of road and like we talked about, it's it's difficult to get 12 miles done in a year. Oh yeah. So one of the options is like let's pick three or four good miles. Let's bond that. let's do it and then see what the reaction is to that and was it worth it and what were those numbers before rather than just doing all five million. I mean every town any town Maine has a few million dollars worth of road repairs that they need to do right now. So to bring them all up to snuff it's not even really

the public doesn't even expect it. I don't think it's uh I don't think anybody's talking about a one-year thing. What I did wonder about though was saying, okay, you know, cuz a na if we wanted to do it in two years and what do we say? 8 miles or something. So four miles a year. If we wanted to have an aggressive like twoyear schedule, this is how much it would cost. This is this is the bond. This is what it would be. and then or if we wanted to spread it over 3 years and financed it seven years, finance it 10 years and and then have like some public hearings about it and see what people had an appetite for cuz if we prioritize there's going to be some people on roads that really need to be rebuilt like yesterday that are still going to be three or four years away from

right from getting their road. And and maybe they maybe they maybe they're like, "Yeah, well, we'll just that's just the way it's going to be." But is there an appetite out there for a more aggressive schedule? Would you say the lifespan of a road was 10 years?

Well, I I disagree with that number. I a lot of people will give you that number, but in my opinion, the 10ear cycle is for preventive maintenance. That's for shims and overlays. If you build that road now 10 years ago, you won't have to rebuild. You're going to have to do something. You're going to have to put a inch inch and a half overlay or something on it. So, that number is considerably less. So just just

but that's what that that's where I got that the $400 something thousand a year number from is just for shims overlays make prevent to keep them from getting where they are now a complete rebuild Calvin just a complete rebuild your best hypothesis how long do we get out of that ro

I'm I'm I'm saying 30 30 years assuming you do 10 year maintenance you're going to resurface it twice keep it in that time You can maintain one more. So keep it. But that number is already that number is already fixed. The maintenance if the roads were all done was already fixed at 400. That number I have in that chart 400 something a year is what you need just to maintain what you have on a 10ear cycle. So that number is not not

going to change that. we can ignore that number and go do what we were doing before and just throw 100,000 at it and then you just, you know, it's a compound problem. You end up with roads like you have now. But [clears throat]

how do you get to it? I guess I I'd defer to you, Rob, or any of you, I guess. But how do you get to it so it's not a revolving so we're not a revolving um town in constant flux with debt service or is that just the commonality of these towns that the debt is debt? We're just going to have debt forever. that I mean that's the reality of it cuz we're never going to I mean what he's talking about is what we'd have to do is we'd have to spend $5 million now to repair our roads and we'd also have to increase our maintenance budget to the $450,000 he's saying plus if we've got 47 miles of road we still need to rebuild a mile and a half every year on top of that. So we'd have to get to a $2 million a year this or what's a mile amp, right? So the idea

has to be one and a quarter million dollars for road maintenance and reconstruction. How do how do we sit per capita in terms of miles of road? I mean that seems like a has 80 miles and um what do they got? 10,000 people.

Okay. Oh, our ratio is a lot worse than that. And Brunswick Brunswick's like 100 miles with 15,000 people. So we're saying 50, but we we made that decision, you know, but we made the decision to make everyone have 300 feet of road frontage. Well,

I know. I don't know if that's the right decision for 300 ft of road frontage now. Well, that was a long time ago. [laughter] But I think that's what needs to be going forward with these because unless you somehow increase the dollars coming in, you're just going to constantly get this

all that road frontage a little bit and you need to get rid of that back lot thing. That was a horrendous. The reality is though is that the public doesn't expect perfect roads everywhere. It there it's it's an expectation

going down boy hill. Well some you know what I'm saying. Yeah. But there's a reality to it that we're willing to accept some roads. It's just it's that conundrum, right? When you pave the dead end road with eight houses on it, then all of a sudden you got a speeding problem, right? Because now they got a nice road.

That's right. And so some people are are okay with it. And you know, we're used to a certain amount and and the the reality is is we got to look at all the towns around us and say we want to be a little better than that.

Do we? I think so. I don't say that to be a smart guy or anything. I just I mean, is that are we trying to keep up with the Joneses or exceed the Joneses? I don't know. But, you know, most of us are driving pickup trucks and we can get away with it. But,

you know, I I get that. for the size town that we are and what what we are to try to keep up with the Joneses seems to or better yet exceed the Joneses seems to be a little bit I I don't know about I don't know about the keeping up with the Joneses thing but all of my interest is is

running the numbers on a few different options and and bringing it to people and hey what do you think you want to go keep going kind of the way we are with every other year we do a couple of miles or do you want to you know be a little more aggressive for you seven to 10 years and and like make some progress on digging out of the hole and then go to a maintain, you know, what what do people want to do? What do they have an appetite for?

I think um I think as years go on and the taxes go up, they do expect a little bit more of this and that, you know, I because if you if your if your taxes went from 2,000 and you looked here now and now you're paying 3500, they're going, "Well, I I think that I'm paying enough. I would have a little bit better of that." And so it kind of as the taxes grow the wants kind of grow a little bit with it.

It's a balance. It's a vicious cycle. It is. I think you guys need to go ride me road. No, I don't need to. Oh [laughter] yeah. You're in my neighborhood. Yeah. No, I think we've all driven those roads. I don't think there's any question on that.

There's roads that need repaired. I don't think we have changes. And the alternative would be we just stop throwing stuff at it and then we throw in good money after bad. We have an option of Rob start do we want to just start

bandating it and but is that a reasonable plan? If you do all the roads at once what's what's a good plan per say for a town of this size? I mean, there's got to be a model out there that we could look at that's Well, I think I think we realistically say, "All right, let's put a couple million into them."

Okay. And and see how far we can stretch it, prioritize it, you know, and then and then let's see where that goes and and then if if we can do it, then we I I wouldn't do all Isn't that what we just did with Runaround Pond, though?

We pretty much because of the traffic, but there's nothing wrong with those. And then those bonds, you know, expire at different times and but you you don't stay ahead of it. You you don't I mean without spending, right? I I think the bution and that may very well be where we end up and that's and that's fine. But I I do want to put a couple of other more aggressive options out there for at least for discussion because the the difference or the I think we and maybe we're not, but it feels like and I think the sense that we have is that we're in a bigger hole than would be normal in terms of the state of our roads and that we need a little bit of a short-term pain catchup strategy and then uh and then level it out on the long term. But my question would be is if if you don't

do some some one year and some the other what if you do all your roads at once then 30 years down the line you're right back in the same place you are with all your roads needing to be redone. You can't let your budget down. I mean we just did this at sewer district $22 million bond. Our bond payments like $1.2 million a year. We've also had to increase our maintenance budget because we have to take care of that new asset. Right.

So it wasn't 1.2 2 million. It's 1.5 million, right? And that's what it's going to stay for 25 years until we do our next block. And if you if you uh if you keep up with the maintenance program, then you don't have all those miles of road like crumbling and needing to be done at once in the future. You can you can stagger it and plan it out. If as long as the maintenance program is

right, there's no doubt. And I don't think anybody's saying do it all in one year. Right. Cuz cuz that tax increase, not including the other increases, people will will not be happy, right? No, I agree. But see, I don't know. I say this is all about, you know, 100 foot options out there. Let people decide what they exactly.

Think about this though. 300 ft of road for most houses. 100 bucks a foot. Everybody's on the hook for $30,000 worth of roads in town. Basically, that's some some more, some a little less, but it's 30,000 bucks for each person to maintain that section of road in front of their house. [laughter]

That's a sobering thought. Yeah. So now tax I mean, so that's, you know, 10 years worth of taxes just to pay your road. Yeah. So and and the other problem is well, we don't really have a central district like some towns do. We don't have the sewer district and none of that stuff to take care of that central area. So if you if you make your lots too small and you start putting all them septic systems in, you can kind of create another problem.

So okay, well um you can keep acreage saying just shorten the road for [laughter] you spaghetti lots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have we have great great uh first step forward. Thank you very much. And I think um at a future meeting we'll talk about you know what are our next steps with this? Where do we want to go? Well, I'll email you guys this so you guys can take a look at some of the numbers and then yeah, just tell me where to go from there.

2 million. What was going to be the We may need to run it with a bigger estimate if it was two $2 million. Well, the what I was pulling up is um it was per$100,000. I think it [clears throat] was 2 million was like $200.

The right one. Hold on. So, these are the the actual payments per year of a 10y year or 15year um um loan. So these are the 1 million to 5 million. So if you're getting down to 5 million, if we want 2 million, it would be what would that cost the average taxpayer per year?

Well, that's what I was figuring with the 2 million. But but you can do that with the the 5 million, too. So if you borrow 5 million for 10 years, you're talking about a $550,000 payment. Who wants to know per 100,000 evaluation? You had that slide

down the bottom that be $28 on your taxes. I No, that's not No, no. There was a slide that you had that show the last slide. All right. One above it. Wasn't Yeah, it wasn't that one. Yeah, it was. So, the tax Well, this is for the payments. So, if you were borrowed to

That's everything all in, not just the right. Okay. 216 road bond. 2 million. That was for Oh, no. No. 218. 218 is a 2 million road bond. So that that's assuming that we do two 2 million road bonds staggered at two years apart.

I think you were talking like $94 per 100,000 valuation for $2 million. Do you have it on another slide? Go back. Okay, hold on. Just press the left arrow. Thank you. [laughter] Yeah, there you go. This one 882 or 6360 roughly for a 10-year bond

on 2 million per 100,000. Right. Per 100. Some people. So you're looking at $200,000 house would be 120. So yeah, 120 bucks a year. Yeah. For 10 years, not including what the taxes actually go up in between each year after that.

Yeah. During that. Yeah. But people might people might swallow that if it saves them from one blown tire. Well, I tell you sometimes getting a bind where they keep doing all the peacemailing a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. When you get down to your last couple of roads, you'll never get it approved.

It's just gone. There's not enough people to There is a such There is a there is a uh the bond fatigue syndrome for sure. you get down to the bottom last two or three roads, you'll never get them approved because people are like

because a majority of the population has had their road paved road. Yeah. Do it all at once or don't do it right. Yeah. Calvin, how many miles is Davis Road in Boho? Davis and Bo? I don't know. Well, so the piece that has to be done on Davis Road is 1.8 miles that needs to be done. The piece that was already built is exactly one mile.

So there's 1.8 left. I think Boy Hill's almost two miles step pole to Davis, I think. Can you send Rob your spreadsheet? He cuz he wasn't he sent it to me. Yeah, it' be 3.8. Wouldn't that be it? Out of all the residents in Durham, how many live on

town roads versus roads? Is there a way around four miles pull that data out? It was just under. So you could say out of these 41 miles, was it just under 60% of our residents are affected. The other 40% live on state. 47.

Yeah. But even the people on state roads still pay towards roads. I don't Yeah. No, I get that. I get that. I was just curious as to So, you got people we we keep going back to, you know, everybody will swallow 120 bucks per per house or whatever that. I mean, it's it's really not $120 per road in the town of Durham because some of these people don't even live on town roads,

right? And some of them live on gravel roads. Six miles of gravel. Some of them live on, right? Some live on private roads. You know what I mean? And they're still going to pay. And they're still going to pay. And that's

Yeah, that's the way it is. No, that's the way it is, guys. It's It's decent data to to look at. How How long was runaround a rabbit road? Rabbit roads a mile. 3 just 3.89 miles. Okay. So, it was just under four. So, how much was that?

Million. 1.1 million was the bond. If we're going to do a big thing like this, we won't be doing some of that work cuz we won't have time to do some of that. So that's where the price is going to jump. And that's a grind in grade. It's not necessarily a full depth reconstruction. It's

Well, it's not a box cut now. Yeah. We were building on top of what was there, which is good in in most rural cases. That's the thing is to build your road up. You get deeper dig, right? So, but there is take advantage of the good gravel that's already there because if you box cut, you got to take out that 18 inches or foot,

right? Then you got to take the muck that's under it. Yeah. And now that gravel is contaminated where back four ft of gravel. So get to replace that foot of gravel. You better have to build on top of what you have. Yeah.

And that's problem with Davis is there is no drainage cuz there's no ditch really. Yeah. Down in the water, right? And the ditches they did put in some of them I looked at on Davis are Yeah. vertical straight down about three or four feet and like figure have to do some under training there.

All right. So, yeah. So, um this one is this the other question I asked you. Yeah. Yeah. So [laughter] um so a while ago and I think I mentioned it at a meeting um I was in reading in the forecaster North Yarmouth has a program where if you've if you're and I may get the requirements wrong but the gist of it will be right is that if you're 70 years old and have lived in town for at least 10 years been in your current residence for at least a year uh you get uh a $1,000 credit on your property tax bill. And you know, we hear all the time at town meeting about, you know, um looking for ways to ease the tax burden on uh the elderly population in town. So I asked Ruth to what would it look like if we if we uh did something like that? Like what because obviously if you give someone a credit, somebody else has got to pay the difference. So, if we had how many people would even qualify for that in town and and and

then how much would that add to everybody else's tax bill if we did a program like that? So, I haven't gotten to that part yet. Okay. Um most of my information comes from Cumberland. They have a the town of Cumberland has a pretty um nice senior tax assistance program. Um the manager in Cumberland's very gung-ho about it. Um, so senior property tax assessment program. Um, so in order to adopt an assistance program, um, we would actually have to adopt it by ordinance. So the town would have to approve an ordinance that stated that this was what we were going to do. Um, so first we would have to research and write the ordinance and then the town would have to vote it in at town meeting. Do we need an ordinance? So I I looked at some of the numbers. In 2015, over 20% of our population in Durham was 60 years or over. Um, and in

the same year, over 10% of our population was 65 and older. So, the the table shows you that the residents that are 75 and over, we have probably about 3%. um the 65 and over it runs about 11% and then the 20% 21% 22% for so so we

have a pretty substantial number of residents who who are 60 or over um and a pretty substantial resident number of residents who are 65 and older. Um so over the years from 1990 to 2010 there's been a steady increase in the elderly population durm. you'll notice that the biggest increase in is in residents 60 and older. Um, and you'll you'll al if you look at it too, the one that I find interesting is is the orange line because um the Cumberland uh program handles um residents who are 67 and up. They originally had started with 62 and up, but found that that was too much of a a burden and so they started at 67. So if you do all residents 65 and older in 2010, you're looking at a percentage of probably about a little over 9%. And then now 2015, 5 years later, we're looking at over 10%. So we're aging in place basically. People are staying in their homes and

whole state is. Yeah. And they're they're getting older. Um so this is going to be something that continues to be an issue. um percentage of people whose income in the past 12 months was below the poverty level for 65 years and older. In 2015, 6.4% of the people who are 65 years and older in Durham uh were under the poverty level and in 2011 it was only 6%. So that's increasing too.

As the people get older, they seem to be um well actually as a percentage the increase in population grew. That's as a percent. Yeah. So that numbers so it's okay. Gotcha. So it would actually be more a little bit more. Yeah.

That's not um poverty guidelines for the 48 contiguous states one person family of poverty. If you're make below $12,60 you're under the poverty Live line. And if there's two people in your household, and I'm making the assumption that elderly people would only have one or two people in their household, um it's 16,240. Um some of the other programs maybe 200% if you qualify if you're 200% of the poverty or 300% above the poverty line. So um you could conceivably have a person who lives alone in their house that doesn't make over $24,000 and would qualify for the program basically. Um, in Durham in 2015, the mean household income for everybody in Durham was $81,521.

live on social security and their mean income was $18,473. these are combined. So there are some people that may take social security and retirement, but with retirement income 355 and their mean retirement income is $22,584.

town of Durham is $162,200. The tax bill for a house assessed at $16200 at a mill rate of $18.8 is $3,50. So you think if a senior citizen collects social security of $18,473 and owns a house at the median assessment, their tax bill is more than 16% of their annual income. If you wanted to qualify for the tax fairness credit in the state and they did away with the circuit breaker um I thought that was a mistake, but they did away with the circuit breaker program and they made it the tax fairness credit. Um, in order to qualify as a single person, you have to make no more than 33,000 and you have to pay no less than 6% of your income and property taxes. So, what that shows you is the fact that this person who's making 18,000 uh pays 16% of their income and property taxes, that's a huge amount. So, the state considers 6% the cut off uh in the amount that you should be paying in your property taxes.

But Ruth, how do you know for seniors, for example, yes, they may only make social security of $12,000, but you don't know what they're getting for retirement assets or things of that? Well, they would have to qualify. There there would be a qualification thing where they would actually have to come in and fill out forms and and prove to me that they qualify. So, like I do with general assistance, people come in, they have to prove to me, they have to show me payubs, they have to show me um their bills, they have to show me any bank accounts that they have, they have to tell me about any assets that they own, um any people that they can get money from. So, it would be the same sort of thing. So, it wouldn't only be based on on social security. They'd have to come in and and tell me, you know, what their income was for the year, um what kind of assets they had available.

Yeah. Have we seen in the past where situations have arised where some of these people don't even necessarily file taxes? How would how do you how do you vet them type of folks? Well, the Social Security Administration still sends out

Well, they may, but that doesn't mean that that's their if they're $3 million in the bank. You're not going to know about Well, they're supposed to, you know, it's a legal thing. You have them sign off that this is their only income. And I know that that it's possible for people to lie and it's possible for people to take advantage of. So you you've kind of gone down like a poverty income related path and and the the the

program that I was asking was there's really no income component to it at all. It's just a if you're a certain age and you've been in town a certain amount of time it may, you know, and maybe there would be some sort of a means testing for it. I don't know. Like if you were

So you weren't thinking means, you were just thinking like if you're 70 years or older, uh you can get a $1,000 back on your taxes. That was the initial question because that's that's that's how the uh the example I read about in the paper was was structured. It's not in

so it don't matter if you make $1,000 a year or a million dollars. If you're 70, that's what that's basically and and I don't I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm just saying that's that's what you were thinking. But a mean, you know, a means tested thing. I mean, that's a I mean, that's that's a completely different um uh ball

game. Yeah, we have avenues for that. I mean, if they're at a poverty level, they can apply for assistance. Correct. We've seen that they can, but it's a much more narrow I mean, you you really have to prove I mean, as you guys have seen, cuz you guys have sat through one of these already, you know, you have to prove that they don't make enough money [clears throat] to pay their taxes. It's a different It's a different level. I mean, you have to prove that you cannot at all give to

the the town, whereas this would be more of you you have to prove that it's a hardship for you to give to the town. I think is Go ahead. No, I was that's actually yours. So, you go ahead. I was just going to say I think the intention was or maybe I'm wrong was that we give a credit to try to keep these people from living here year round irregardless of income or whatever. If you're 70, you've been living here for 10 years, going to knock a thousand. I'm again I'm not even personally proposing this. It's just it was I thought it was a cuz we had actually been uh it had come up in the past and we there was kind of some there was a misunderstanding. I think there was a thought on the board at the time that it wasn't even legal to do that type of thing. And it actually turns out that it is if you follow do the ordinance and follow the requirements.

Well, if you had an or more of an age-based tax credit, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm just, you know, is is there an interest in exploring um some sort of tax relief for uh senior citizens with the or or seniors or however we want to define it. Um

well, if you're thinking about as far as just the number of people, so so there's roughly 450 people in town that are over 65. So maybe cut that down by a 100. So 350 that are over 60. So if you're given a $1,000 credit for everybody who's over um 70

I would think that'd be a little heavy. I would think 500 would make them would would be a nice gesture towards even at 500 that's 180 grand right? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think the first, you know, is to see, you know, how many how many people would we even be talking about? And

so I had a I had a gentleman come up to me and asked me about taxes and he said that years ago, now I don't remember this, uh that if you paid them when your tax bill came out, if you paid them by a certain time, you used to get 1% back or something like that.

Yep. And I I don't I don't know about that, but that's what they told me. They used to happen here in town because I asked actually there's two people that mentioned to me, but yeah. Can we do that? In doing that, get some money in the door.

You still got to somehow you got to be able to judge what that might be because somebody still make the difference somewhere. That's the tough part. Yeah. Cuz if you know if whatever your taxes are, you get 1% back. You know that could be 300 bucks, could be 500, whatever it is. And if 30, 40 people do that, you got to make it up somewhere.

don't think I mean I I don't know if it's worth I mean, if if you have somebody who who is wealthy and and comes into town and purchases a home worth $350,000 a year. Um well, there's and and I I don't disagree. I mean, I think it's probably some sort of means testing makes sense, but there's other requirements here, too. Remember, like in the model that I laid out, you know, 10year residence, so it's not like somebody moves in and does this and you've been in the same house for at least a year, you know, similar to the homestead exemption. So, and whatever we put requirements on it we want, you know, as far as age or length of residence. So, but I guess if it's to address what you hear is, you know, on town floor a lot is, you know, these long-term residents that are getting taxed out of their homes,

you know, so those people are still here every year at the meeting. So, [laughter] understood. Plus, they're on vacation, right? I guess I just made the assumption that they were being taxed out of their home because they couldn't afford the taxes,

right? That was my assumption. I think that's a good assumption and and I you know I don't know I don't know if we have any documentation on how often that has actually happened or how much of it is just people talking. Um but the other

thing how much of our age population for that age that demographic's gone up. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to make that argument that's happening all the time. I can see somebody making the argument well I've lived here for 40 years

and I'm only 55 years old. Mhm. I don't get no break. I can hear somebody saying that. Yeah. Yeah. So, maybe this is, you know, this isn't something we want to, right? Yeah. It's worth throwing out there. Just I've been here 49 years. So,

hard to appease [laughter] everybody no matter what you do. After 50 years, you can pay double. How's that? [laughter] I am more than double. All right. Well, we can we can mow that over and, you know, put it on the bar. mold that one over. I'll also send you the ordinance from Cumberland. Um, and then you guys can send me whatever direction you want when I get back from vacation.

Okay. Um, you're coming back from vacation, right? Maybe. [laughter] we actually added one thing to the agenda before you, Rob. Um, I I'll try and make this fast. And this this is a little this is really kind of Yeah, I got to wait till Rob comes back. But um I I kind of lifted this from a different town. So and I tried to throw out some things that weren't good for us.

You lifted it. I lifted it. Yeah. One of my old manager friends sent it to me. [laughter] Did a little R&D rip off and duplicate. Yes, we do that a lot in my [laughter] profession. All right, new board orientation. I'll make this quick. So, somebody had asked once what the structure of the town was. So, this shows you the structure of the town. There's the voters, and this is as it is now. You guys can change it if you want. There's the voters. You can't change that one. The board of selectmen, [laughter] and then on the same level, we have the code enforcement officer, the road commissioner, the fire chief, and myself. And then I oversee the town clerk and the deputy tax collector who also have a bunch of other positions. Um, the fire chief oversees his part-time staff, his volunteer firefighters, and his PDM staff. Calvin oversees the foreman, who is Ron, and Ron oversees the rest of the employees,

although Calvin is quite involved in that as well. So, that's the basic structure of our town. Uh, statutes, ordinances, policies. Durham does not have a charter. So, we are subject to 20 title 21A and title 30A that sets forth how our municipal government runs. So, if you're ever looking to figure out how something happens, that's where you go look. Um, and beyond that, there's ordinances, which are the the laws of the town that are passed at town meeting. I can send this to you, too. You don't have to write down anything.

Um, they're adopted by the voters at town meeting. and you cannot pass an ordinance that's not consistent with state statute. Um, and you don't have certain authority. So, you can't change, we can't change the drinking age in town. We can't decide that we want a 18-year-old drinking age because Durham's special. Um, and then [laughter] beyond that, there's the policies of the town, which you guys set. You guys set the policy of the of the town. They're the established practices that we I I follow here in in my office. We have a whole book of these different policies that we have. Um Calvin follows the policies. Um I'm assuming Chief follows the policies. [laughter] Um and those are adopted by you guys. It's it's a s simple majority vote. They they pass. We put them in the book. Um usually they're internally focused. So they focus on the government within Durham. me my power as town administrator. I don't have any powers

according to the state as a town administrator except for the powers that you guys give me. Um so um I'm the administrative head of the town office and I'm in charge of the operations here. Um but my power ex only resides in

you guys. What you give me by policy or direction. Um, so I just am an a person who advises you guys and disseminates information. Concigary, huh? [laughter] What is that? You're a consigliary. Concigary. I I've actually never heard that word.

You got to watch The Godfather movie. [laughter] It's a position of honor. So, your powers um interactions with staff, you are residents of the town and you should feel free to call any member of the staff here and ask them questions like, you know, or tell us there's a pothole I know on Brunswick Road or where can I find a copy of the homestead exemption or when's the next planning board meeting. You should direct operational questions to the department head. So Calvin, myself or the codes enforcement officer when we get one and chief. So that's you know things like you know where did we get this truck? How much did it cost? Um why is public works doing whatever it's doing on Runaround Pond Road? Um so those those kind of questions should come directly to the department head. Um, and then the next idea is that the select board acts as a whole and the wants and the ideals of an individual

board member shouldn't interfere with the town operations. Um, so Mark, I'm using Mark because he's an easy peg. He can't come in here and tell me that I should pay Calvin $500 an hour. That's an exaggeration. Um, I won't.

He won't. [laughter] because that's something that has to be passed by the whole board or he he shouldn't do that. Um so the policies are voted by you guys. They're implemented by us as department heads and staff. Um if you want to do something differently than we do, then you bring a policy before the board and you you guys talk about it and decide what policy you want to do and then you vote on it and whatever you guys decide we do. Um, obviously we'll have an opinion about that, but but that's what we do. Um, and the problem with acting outside the scope of your powers is there's liability, and we'll get into that in a minute. Um, we are always happy to talk to you guys and get you information and discuss concerns. So, you know, don't hesitate to call any one of us. Of course, Calvin may be sitting a [laughter] different opinion. Um, so I am required as a as a member of

the main town and city managers association uh to abide by a code of ethics. Um, and I can send you guys all a copy of the code of ethics because it's long and drawn out. Um, but just so you guys know, uh, there was a a lot of corruption of officials and public distrust, and I'm required by my, um,

professional organization to follow these ethics. Main Tor claims act. Municipalities are covered by the main tort claims act. It was passed in the 70s to limit the exposure for municipal governments. um we have immunity for most things. The only thing that we don't have immunity um is negligence and malice of intent. So if we are negligent or we do something on purpose to injure somebody, we are not covered by the tort claims act which makes I think sense.

Shouldn't put a spike strip down there on bone road. No, that would be a bad idea. [laughter] affirmative duty to defend and indemnify its officials and employees. We're all insured through MMA. Uh, there's a limit of 400,000 per occurrence. If there is a tort brought against the town, there are some lower limits. Um if a person wants to bring a tort the tort needs to be filed within 880 days of the knowledge of the tort and um you have 180 days to actually file after the notice. Uh public officials liability covers all acts of the board of selectman for acts within their official capacity. So you guys are all covered by insurance. But you have to think is your action within the scope of your duty and without malice and intent or outside of your scope of duty and with and or with malice and intent. And if it is outside the scope of your duty, you may not be covered by the liability insurance that

the town carries. So you guys should be aware of that. Uh conflicts of interest. Municipal officers are sworn into the office and serve the interests of the public as a whole. Um there's an expectation that you'll disclose and excuse yourself from anything that you have a 10% or greater financial interest in. Um that's under consideration. Uh and there's also a softer expectation that you would attempt to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest by disclosure of any conflict of interest that that may arise in your duties as a selectman.

also sometimes do quasi judicial functions such usually the personnel type of stuff. These are like you're hearing the facts and making a judgment um uh and you have to be totally disinterest in disinterested in these quasi judicial functions um financially familial. Um, so if somebody here were related to like um one of my employees or an employee in town and they came before the board for uh um

because they did something wrong, then you would probably want to abstain. Yeah. [clears throat] Uh board meetings, you guys probably already got this. It's every other week beginning at 6:30 p.m. We can change that as we feel. Feel free to email with agenda items and information you may want on the agenda. I have no problem doing research and putting things on the agenda as Kevin now knows. Um

yeah, [laughter] careful what you ask for. Yeah, you got to be careful what you ask for. Um I try and get the email out with attachments on the Friday before the meeting. Um and then of course residents will email your town email as well. Um, executive executive session materials I generally send in a separate email because they are confidential and all the stuff that I send out for executive sessions should be kept confidential. Um, we are streamed live over the internet now and all of our um, meetings are available on the website. Um, so we have microphones here so people can hear us. And I'm sure you guys all are take note that that we're actually on camera. Um, if you don't understand something, municipal government I I'm still just learning and I've been in municipal government since 2008. So if you guys have any questions whatsoever, just just ask.

That last line I think is in incorrect. Why? Because I think people do expect you to know everything. They do. [laughter] I however do not I however do not expect you to know everything. Um right to know law. There's a made them free main freedom of access act. So you guys all need within 120 days of taking office to complete your training. Um which will tell you about the freedom of access act. Um you can meet the requirements by reviewing their FAQ um and then completing the form that says that you have done that. I think

Todd, you've done that. Mhm. And I did it for you, but you need to do it for segment, too. Um, the other option is MMA does uh set forth classes for elected officials. Um, obviously it's probably hard for you guys to necessarily go to them, but you're you're welcome to go to them. And if you're looking at MMA and there's other classes that you guys are interested in taking, um, the town will certainly send you to them.

They have some at night sometimes, too, cuz I've Yeah, the fast. I've been to the elected officials ones are not, you know, a lot of actually feeds you too. A lot. Yeah, they do. They feed you very well. Last week spaghetti, but it was good.

Yeah. Yeah. But um I see a lot of of elected officials at some of my my uh uh trainings because people want to know what I know. [laughter] Um public meetings um anything any function that affects any or all citizens by of the state by any board, commission, agency or authority of any county, municipality, school district or any regional or other political administrative sub subdivision is a public meeting and and people need to be allowed to attend. Um as such we have to notice our meetings. Um generally it's just a place where um where can be readily available. In our case, it's usually the website. Um, we don't need to do an agenda. I do do an agenda and I do, but legally we don't need to do an agenda. Um, and we have to keep a record of of our meetings. Um, if there are three members of you outside of a meeting and you are discussing transactions or political transactions of the town business, then

that is considered a public meeting. Um, and you need to not do that. [laughter] you can you can break the the law by doing email chains. You don't got to worry about me with email. Yeah. Well, where you're discussing different things. Uh so the best thing to probably do is to ask me a question and I'll disseminate information to all of you because I think you guys should all have the information anyways. Um we do have the right to have executive sessions. Three out of five of you have to vote to go into executive session. um personnel executive sessions. The person who is um in the executive session has the right to have it as an open session if they want. Um so you have to do the motion and we will have a couple of those executive sessions this evening. These are the basic reasons for an executive session. There's personnel um where the a public

discussion could harm an employes reputation. So any kind of of issues in the office or public works um have to be done in executive session. Pay for us does not have to be done in in executive session. The reason being is is it's public knowledge how much we get paid.

Real estate economic development projects. Uh you've probably seen this sometimes in executive session. We'll discuss tax acquired properties and what we're going to do with the tax acquired properties. That's basically the only time that we use this one um because we don't have any commercial development projects in town. Um labor contracts. We don't really have that many labor contracts in town, but you know, if we do end up having them, you know, who knows? Um and consultation with legal counsel. Now, that generally means that you have to have either the legal counsel present at the meeting or you have to have them on the phone. So, those are the basics. Sorry, Todd. I'm trying to hurry through this. Uh, what's a public record? Anything. Any written, printed, graphic, or any mechanical or electronic data that's in the custody of a public entity or official or has been received or prepared for the use in

connection with transaction of public governmental business is a public record and is is open to the public. Um, any person has the right to inspect a public record. They usually request it. We're allowed to charge certain amount of money after the first hour. If it takes us more than an hour to compile the records, um we can charge people for that. Uh but we have to tell them how much we're going to charge it before we do it. Um and there are limitations to that. So it includes any of your emails, texts, or other written correspondents you send or receive through any medium. So don't erase anything. [laughter]

Don't don't create anything. And don't create anything. There you go. So you know this. All right. All right. So, your major duty of the select board is the budget. Every year you guys get the budget. The town runs on a calendar year. Um, I'm interested too to look into changing that to fiscal year, but it's not as simple as we would like. Um, we get the authority from the previous warrant to spend up to one-third of the previous year's budget before town meeting, which is how we can have town meeting the first of Saturday in April. Um, we have

the operating costs, the capital costs, education and county. Education and county we don't include in our budget because we have no say over them. They're tax assessments. So, we have no control. Um, I think I'm just going to probably skip right past that one then. Uh, most of our general fund budget comes from property taxes. The rest come from excise taxes and other fees. Um and then sometime some of it comes from the government. Um usually the timeline is early in early November. I try and get out department heads and committees. I get them letters to ask for their budget requests by mid December and late December. By this time I'm getting ready for my audit. Um which always happens the first week of January. Late December I'm putting together the requests in January. This is all theoretically the select board should review and vote on all the budget items and in February the select board

should present its budget to the budget committee. And obviously if you can speed this up a little bit this that works too. Prior to March 1st ideally the warrant should be set and the warrant should be signed so that we can put it into the town report and get it printed um in advance of town meeting. And I usually try and get it out there two weeks before town meeting. We try and commit taxes in mid to late June [laughter] and mail them out the first week in July. And they're usually due, well, this last time they're due 45 days after commitment, which is usually early August. And that's it. Unless you guys have questions.

That's awesome. Good. Thank you. Thank you. And if if you have any questions about stuff, just don't hesitate to call. Okay. All right. I am giving it back to you then. All right. So, uh, department committee reports, uh, Calvin Public Works is

I'll keep that one. Disregard the, uh, raindrops. Just that where you went back to get these raindrops. All right. See, you good enough? Yeah, it's good. no. Forget me. I had one for you. I got enough. Uh, you're looking at granite post.

So, we're not going to do granite post. Do won't let me because it's in the in the right away. Nope. to sell any wood. Uh the I really wanted to do what Lisbon did, build the the stone, but I can't put it back far enough because the ice in the winter off that ledge is about that that would bury the sign. I have to keep it up near the edge of the road because of that or I got to blast the top shelf and put it on the shelf up there. [laughter] Guess I won't do that. So, so that's the sign. I went and paid the deposit today. Uh 50% down, $1,700. This will be handcarved or I don't know if it's hand carved, but it's carved.

Mhm. And 18 karat inlay gold leaf lettering. And uh so that's what it looks like. Has the town seal. I like it. So they're trying to find somebody to weld the brackets, those black brackets on either side, because the guy that does their welding passed away this year. So I said I don't who's in the price. So all I know is you're going to So they're going to find something about it that

Oh, the sign guys going to find somebody. Who's they? Uh the sign people carrot sign. Okay. They're putting in the post. No, they're going to put in the post. Yeah. They're going to look wicked. So make it look decent. I'll make it look good. Fantastic.

Is it was that a public works budget item to do the sign? So, are you planning to like do another sign next year for another major road and budget for that? Y on the Auburn 136, get one on the Yeport side. Start to have some civic pride.

One a year or something like that was what we had discussed. Yeah. Well, I saw Lisbon sign up and I'm kind of competitive so I well if they Jones again [laughter] if their roads are bear mine are going to be bare and [clears throat]

it's a good idea people come in to take some pride and ownership and so uh this is a for this. Wow. knee surgery. So, hoping to have a full crew next week. I've got one that's out sick this week. Um, paving scheduled for July 10th and 12th. 10th through the 12th. Um,

on what room? On Cedar Pond and u uh stack pole. You got covers done? Uh, yep. We have one we're going to change tomorrow on cedar pedal grout. One left to do across pipe. Um, The other end is tackle roads all the all new covers.

Yep. Yeah. Uh well, we didn't have any to do. They were all like 15 years old. They're all plastic. I've inspected them all. Okay. Otherwise, spot by the power lines, that cross spot that always dips in there. Is that a pullet or is that something else? Is that just

the bridge? Oh, that is a bridge. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. All these years I've been driving over that. [laughter] You knew that? You just I didn't realize it was a bridge. I was out there on a Sunday out there painting them all and marking them out and uh the guy that put it in stopped and talked to me about it.

Okay. Put did that. So, he said about 15 years ago. So, that's about how old those culpits are all the way through. Uh and you know, we got 15 years roughly since that roof was done. We're looking to overlay it. I think it should have been done a couple years ago or three or four years ago, but we're getting it now. So,

that that [clears throat] area right there, we should have gotten more money from the from the pipeline to repair that because they left us a mess. Yeah, it's just I was pissed off still. So, yeah, we're a little behind schedule, but we're cranking and we're going to hopefully now with a full crew back and we'll

we'll get it going. We did uh that machine they had up there that the convention with the eight tires and the rubber tired excavator. We we tried it today. They dropped it off. So I had two different crews and don't it's not working out so good. [laughter]

What's it doing? It's an excavator on rubber tires and it just it all you do is bounce. you move and it just keeps bouncing, bounce and and then it just keeps getting worse and you have to stop, wait for the bounce and stop and start again. So, I'm not sure if this is

I don't know. We just tried it and I have not got good reviews today. So, I'm not happy. There's no outriggers at all. No. Is that the new thing? Yeah. You didn't like it? No. Oh, we just tried it. We was hoping that we could was hoping this would be the It goes down the road 30 m an hour. We could have put a mowing attachment on it. we could have done and we could have just hopped in it, turned the key and been gone. So, [snorts] tried a couple more days and if if I was was hoping at some point maybe we could trade in our excavator, but we'll let you know how the verdict what the verdict is on that after a couple more days. But, u

so I've got a a temporary guy for a couple of weeks to come in help us get caught up and um [clears throat] temporary guy. Is he going on our payroll or is he a subcontractor? Be on payroll. So just like a like a on call plow drivers are just a on call.

Okay. Um we got the trees cut long stack pulled up. If any of you noticed that there was two very large uh oak stumps on the right hand side, put barricades up. I've got somebody to come and grind those. Uh I've got to get a hold of them to come in next week and get that done to grind the stumps. If I pull them, I'm going to pull half the road out. So, I'm going to just grind them right down below the shoulder, gravel shoulder. And

I figured after a while the plows would have clipped that so it would have fell over. But I figured after a while the plow the wing would be laying on the road. Yeah, that's true. I I'm just amazed that no one has hit that. And

are these the are those the two trees that we got the complaint from the citizen about? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they were like I mean the tiles almost touched the trees. I mean, literally how close the road they are. It's that far off the pavement. I don't know how someone has.

I've said that for years driving down through there. I mean, if there was ever a tree that I would never have expected they could complain about, it was that one. I didn't even know that. I can't even see a house. I've looked. It's like in the middle of I mean, if it was on somebody's front lawn or usually, you can tell a sensitive tree of where I want to go talk to the landowner. This would not have been one I would have ever imagined would have been one that uh just

Well, it's in the dish line anyways. It was in the It's in the rightway. Yeah. I mean, when it's that far from the pavement, I just Oh, it's in the rightway. So, it's not there. No, it belongs to the town. Yeah. I mean, not only in the rightway, it's that far from the pavement. I guess it's beyond in the rightway. We don't have a shower there. So,

I don't know how. But anyway, there that's [snorts] going um have you talked to Eric about it? I had Barry go up and talk to the Oh, brought the wood up and gave it to him. Said he was happy. Okay. He called me. I called uh Barry and said, "Hey, what'd you just do? Cut them trees down." I said, "Well, you better go give him the wood and go talk to him." So, he went talked to him, delivered the wood to his house. So, I still can't I still don't think you can see a house in me. I

I think he owns property on the other side of the road, too. Yeah. I I I couldn't see a house in any direction. You know [clears throat] where he lives? No. Well, just beyond where you cut all those trees at the farm or just beyond where you cut all those trees.

Yeah. Just right on the edge of a nice nice looking cottage. He hasn't moved from there. He's he's actually in the old farmhouse. Okay. Up in up at where his father was. That's where he actually lives now. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, his other house he sold. So he is okay. He's up at the farm. Yeah, he didn't realize that. Anyway, that's was a lot of hazard trees there that was falling in the road. The big huge pines that were dead. Now I understand which ones you're talking about.

so bunky waste day. I mean that was thought a great success. on this year. We've moved things rapidly and people that used to come and say they were here all day or were able to get a couple trips in instead of one. Uh so the crew soon as we get this done and ready um we will be uh moving back

to uh moving moving once we get see the pond and stack pole done we'll be moving back to running around pond. Um, I looked at uh uh the we were going to do a shim and overlay on that first section of Boy Hill Road. And when I looked at the numbers, I just [sighs] for what it was going to cost $80,000 I can grind it and put two and a half inches of binder on it and do it right. So, I couldn't see for, you know, for 10,000 more I could actually do it right. So, I just it's we were having that discussion earlier. It's like, do we start putting band-aids on stuff? This one is so close that I'll find the I'll find the money to make it happen. [clears throat] And then next year I'll put the surface on it. That'll be part of our paving plan for next year to put the inch and a half surface on it. But

so we won't do Bowie Hill with the other two. The other two will get done first and then we'll go ditch the Bowie Hill and the driveway coits and get that done. Then I'm just going to grind it up and put uh hot mix u just regular 19 mm

2 and 12 inch binder on it. [clears throat] Base. Yep. base there to Yeah. Well, I'll put some I'll put some reclaim in. Probably an average of three or four inches of reclaim on top of it. For the most part, I don't see that that it's a subbase failure. I think it was a drain some drainage issues and uh

of and Yeah. Uh well, there's a swamp right back on the other side of that, too. It's been there forever. Um during the swamp. [laughter] Yeah. So the engineer's done. Uh we did the bridge. We got uh from the bridge from the engineer from the two crossings on runaround on Auburn panel road. U the

we're going to go out and do some test bits on July 5th to size to get so they can do some soil testing to size the footing. Who's the engineer? Uh ah Hudson Hudson Engineering. Uh the budget the numbers came back for the bridge uh originally if you thought that quote I had given you at 40,000 $48,000 a piece for the structures they came back at 29,000 a piece. So that's about $40,000 right there. That will be less. We were glad to hear that number but before it was a budget number. Now we've got

multiplay structure. Yeah. So that'll be uh and we're also looking at a possible prefab all together and have delivered. That's what I thought you would do. Yeah. Okay. But regardless, it's going to have a foundation. So

Mhm. [clears throat] [snorts] Um so I paid for the sign. I gave you that already. Uh the gazebo is still going to be painted. I don't know. How much money do you have left in that account? Probably enough for paint. [laughter]

Paint. Well, it's got to be painted badly. The roof. The roof is wooden. See the shingles and they're all I don't know if it's seed them or whatever. They have shingles. Oh, they're wood. White seated. Yeah. They're all warped and they're I I'm afraid if we stepped on them, they would just crumble. So, we'd have to do it from We've got to get those uh

sealed. So, I'd have have to get a lift, go up and spray it. Spray it from the lift. We don't mind. What about the seats and stuff? That and that'll have to be painted, too. That wasn't part of the deal. No. And the floor should be stripped, power washed, and that was painted.

Yeah. Yeah, that was uh it was never primed and it's just peeling off. And I guess it was done by the prisoners. Shannon told me. Yeah, they were. Yeah. So, needs to be done, right? So, if anybody knows anybody that wants to pay

I don't tell any of those prisoners they didn't do it right. If anybody knows anybody I'll see if we can get time later this summer. We'll see if it happens. We don't have a power washer, do we? Yeah, we do. Well, pick that up anyways.

Yep. So, um, and some of those, uh, the shrubs, the those flowering quints by the Route 9 side, Route 136 side, um, probably started as one small bush, then now it's just Yeah, they need to be trimmed back. They need to be parted out and cut back. And

if you The idea was people could sit there during the parade. And once I got up there and actually settle, you can't even see the road. So, yeah. Um, that really I think ought to be ought to be we ought to take some of those out and move them somewhere.

We have questions. We talked about at some point maybe kind of taking that banking that's down there and kind of filling that in. We I don't know if we've really thought much about it since that conversation, but is that something that I mean it's not something we have. It's not critical, but if we can kind of fill that cuz that drops right off right back there. Kind of fill that in with some of that fill we've gotten around. We could kind of make it a little bit more flat for people that are hanging out there and it's that's all our property.

And if I remember right, we looked into that and filling it isn't going to affect anything. Rather, it's water, drainage, nothing else. So, I mean, it's I wouldn't I wouldn't make that a priority, but I mean, if we at some point when we got a minute or two that we could

I've always been interested, you know, that the the Boy Scouts put in a an electrical outlet there. It would be really cool to have concerts on the band stand during the summertime. You know, people don't even necessarily need to be in front of the band stand. You could be anywhere on the lawn and hear.

Yeah. But you're looking at That's just something we can think about down there. Amen, man. I'll I'll go with you. [laughter] Amen. Y I I Huh? I'm in. Did um do you contact the state about the road signs on Gan not being

We got a complaint on the low narrow. I think they took care of it. I that stuff that they think is bamboo. It isn't bamboo, right? It's bamboo. It's some other some invasive species that actually this stuff that's growing all over the place.

No, it's not. Some bamboo. It's not. It's not actually bamboo. It looks like it. It looks like it, but it's an invasion. Yeah, it's a Hold on. I'll have for you. It's very tough. Usually what we deal with every year is that bamboo.

Japanese knotw weed. Yep. It looks like I'll send you an email. You sure we don't call it bamboo? American bamboo is definitely not we there's uh full disclosure, my wife sent an email to the um to the board and I don't think it's gotten to you yet. Um, basically there's it's it's a big problem in several surrounding communities and they have eradication programs going and it involves um I think in some towns they're mowing it like multiple times a year to try to keep it down. Well, one of the problems I I knew it wasn't on the power on the power line when I was running the environmental crews on the the MPP was if we had an invasive species and we mowed it. That's why I'm not a great I'm not a big fan of roadside mowing because you you you transfer that seed all over town. You start with bamboo here and by the time there's the seed gets all up in your blades and you

Yeah, there's there's this I and I don't pretend to know what the right method is, but there's this email will have all kinds of links and information to um burn it. I don't know. I guess it's pretty difficult to get rid of.

Yeah. Well, DOT we is a challenge every year to get them to go cut it. Last year we had just ended up doing it ourselves and we probably end up doing it again in certain places. But yeah. Okay. They don't like taking care of some of their own stuff, do they?

Cuz they're not worried so much about our roads, their roads, and they can see going straight. So, but people got to come out of the side roads to get onto their road. If you can't see you. Well, I'm talking about like that big hole that keeps showing up on their road at the end of my road

that they don't seem to Oh, yeah. want to fix. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate you getting back to me about that. Thank you. I mean, I think they filled it last year cuz I mentioned it a couple times. You did, right?

We ended up doing it again. Okay. Okay. Anything else, Calvin? Good. All right. Ruth, did you have anything else? I think I've just about had my bet. We appreciate that. [laughter] Okay. Good good presentation. Yeah, really good. Good work, good homework. Thank you.

Um, okay. Upcoming meetings, regular selectman's meetings held uh next one Tuesday, July 11th at 6:30 and Tuesday, July 25th at 6:30 p.m. And July 11th one is in Hawaii. Yes. Yeah. [laughter] Are you skyping in? Yeah. Yeah.

No. So, all right. So I'll take a motion to go into executive session pursuant to one MRSA 4056A personnel. So move there. Second. Nothing with you. Mark second. All in favor?