TranscriptSelect Board Meeting ~ May 24, 2022

home we'd like to call this meeting to order before we begin can we all rise for the pledge of allegiance america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so i will be filling in for them um we do have a forum with three of us here so we will begin

the application for liquor licenses outdoor events okay [Music] amendments okay let's go where the report from the fire chief is up first tonight are up on the poles that was taken upon keith russell and it really took it upon himself so uh i'll claim a long-time member of the fire department but he really did it on his own uh again no no parade but we are sending one again to three four so one pumper truck

management side uh three weeks three day threat and hazard identification and risk assessment through uh interstage county uh helps to play well with others it helped me understand you know the river everything from um the news tonight so anything from threats like that to flooding to winter weather to ice storms that type of stuff also will be on the hook for uh getting some local grants so

you're a team player and you sort of participate over there this is very important we just finished up ems week and one of our emts was actually nominated and received emt of the year for the american legion so lieutenant joe lamont through the legion i think there was 143 posts or something in the state and he's going to be emt of the year so june 11th i'll be traveling to brewer i believe for his convention to represent us certainly a proud moment for durham fire a longtime member it's cool that's awesome it's fantastic um at acostas i sent a member recently to a grant writing class two-day class he's writing a roughly quarter million dollar grant for our radios so that doesn't open until october and then it's like a six-month window you know the afg grant from the federal theme aside um but it really helped him so which helps us and he's going to practice on the smaller brands as i've told you before

grant all is just a cycle of opening close and pending and whatnot and i'll let you know what we apply for but he is already pushing together it's about 40 hours worth of mark to put one of these grants together again roughly 250 to 300 000 for a full radio system so we're hoping to get that uh i've been working closer with the planning board and doing the walkthroughs i i just got the latest so it was nice to get an invitation by the board we started a house numbering program recently we had a difficulty on an ems call trying to find the house so we invested pub ed money into house numbering so if we find that scenario we just asked permission to put four inch house numbers out front so if you know of anything or anyone ever calls we can do that for them and finally and then we had a long discussion on diesel and gas prices so i read through our numbers and the basic numbers are we're just a smaller version of public

works and calvin so we budget for 4 400 a year on our call volume um last year at 4 400 we spent four thousand so we're pretty close and we didn't have a contract so it was just whatever the goal rate was sometimes it was two sometimes it was three you know it's up to four uh so out of the 4 400 this year first quarter we've spent 3 000. so we're on pace for 12 000. nine to 12. uh i've talked to mitch about it i don't know if we can absorb that um we have put in stock gap measures you know about training and you know keeping the engines and the bigger trucks off the roads really except for calls so unless you have another idea we are getting to the contract with calvin sort of mirroring that um janet's helping us keeping our costs down but mitch has been aware of it that's where we stand with that that's it any questions

thank you thank you thank you i warmed him up i woke up the crowd you know uh over the last few weeks we've been working on the town property sitting there dividers and the urinals and painted those and then covered the roster

that built with a salt shaped door and back of building its ditching went down on sand hill today wrapped that up and we moved over to davis road to pick up some trees that cmp left on some of those long that were about three or four feet across that they couldn't figure out what to do with so we had to be able to pick those up because uh if we know what the tree would fall on the road anyway so they're in the right way we won't pick

engineers that's about that and so last year there were some significant changes which is why we didn't get the culverts in last year because of the new gep you require the army corps requirements it changed the stream crossings to significant salmon habitat and army corps got much more involved in the process with um so unlike the last ones that we put in which were and once we do the one once we get here these year they didn't accept and we have to step back and redesign everything they wanted stream shots elevation shots way upstream way downstream to see if the stream that was actually where it should be or if it was a report if it had it was a product of improperly installed culverts in the past and that is why we have so they they want to restore the actual screen event to where it should be as they want 20 capacity on both the top of the pipe for a degree to fit through and there were all kinds

of requirements so um and as you look at this email if you have this email this explains from the engineer what happened how we got here army corps of engineers the other this is the one on the swamp road the one on um quaker media house road did not get completed to finish that and make it fit the criteria for army corps of engineers actually that's going to turn into a bridge because it will be over 20 feet long and when you hit 20 feet the dod classifies the bridge it has to be numbered with this state it has to be inspected every two years and this one stayed just under a bridge at 18.5 feet but the other one would be over 20. but to make this work we had to change it from an arched plate to concrete abutments and concrete slabs across the top

last a lot longer but the cost is a 54 000 uh increase and so if you look at this other piece of paper here is a one-page summary of uh the funding for this project where we stand the gdp grant is one point product per cover so we have 125 8 500 we've already spent in engineering for the government that's come out of those funds so leaving us 165 capital raise at town meeting was 1-1 leaving a remaining fund balance of 217.5 cost to complete the project the bid amount was 165 oh 25. added expense of 54.5 total needed 219

525 shortage 2025 and that would be paid for out of the professional services line of my professional services so that is where we are at would uh resubmit that second one for this year's round which is out now i'm assuming they've approved it once that they would approve it again but uh um i guess i would need to know how the board wants to proceed let's choose this this is this is where we're at this is really stepped up their criteria for improving these projects great but kevin just for clarification it's down to one correct yep and in this one there's some changes what is resulting in an in an expense of an additional two thousand fifty three dollars no additional two thousand twenty five dollars well the two thousand the additional expense to change from this uh to change from the uh metal arch plate to the concrete new design that's required to give us the volume of water to go under that road with 20 extra capacity

for debris is 54 500 to change that from a metal arch plate to a essentially it's a bridge no i i see the i see the 54 5 this says to me clear that you're short two thousand twenty five dollars right so so i guess i'm missing what i'm missing what am i visiting basically you've got it he's covering it with his professional line item services so that we're not asking for any additional appropriations but the public needs to understand you're only getting one structure and not both of them i think i got it now so what we're what we're saying now is the town is funded directly from wrong here the town has funded two we're going to allocate both of those monies so this is one project and then you're gonna make up the difference of two thousand fifty dollars from the line item of uh engineering costs cause those are coming in a little less now i guess the question that i would pose is how do we do that because there was two

separate questions that my memory said to me um i think it was one question on the uh you made on the water yeah i thought we were talking about two different projects on that one no they were they went together as one i don't know

has to be done in stream work has to be done between july 15th and september 30. so it wouldn't be started that let's just deal with the one that is a question because we've already known that we can't do both okay the question really lies is whether or not we can spend the money and allocate that money to merge into one rather than telling the talented people where our original intent was to do two and now we're down to one that's really the question as far as the atlantic salmon god bless them very tasty and when i wanted to flourish but that's not really the problem at hand here i suggest it's very simple you might outline the challenge and that the board of three members tonight authorizes the words directed to proceed subject to the legal allocation from the town meeting so we compare what the warrant article said and if it simply combined both of those into one then we're all set if in fact it is too

separate we'll report that into your first true i i also had a question about the dep grant money i thought that came in two separate packages as well i thought that the and i thought you had that explanation into it so they were two separate applications yeah we're both approved and uh put the warrant uncle we asked i believe no but what but the problem is you've got two different projects from the dep that got out in uh signed off and said you can combine them into the one did they will no the gdp will take back that 125 for that second column the second code

the number here i mean they extended that we're already on our one round extension that's why it's possible okay i understand that there's there's a few facets to this that needs a clarification so for all intents and purposes and really good for a little cya here let's let's do our due diligence let's get some of these questions answered and then let's let's bring this up at the next meeting if we don't mind okay thank you

in uh been working with him transitioning things over to him and he's uh in class he should be back tomorrow and my phone is ringing a lot less so i'm able to get back to just spend more time on this now and then uh i think uh uh mitch is going to talk about the fuel later and i had some issues with family last week

figuring out how i'm going to rebudge it to make things work but for the next meeting i can have that put together does anybody have any questions for calvin chef thank you well kevin i'd like to say thank you we also want to say thank you for helping us get the code officer especially with the inboarding and so forth and keeping the town afloat while that position was vacant once again we're in a little bit of addition to your service we really appreciate it um so thank you very much for uh stepping in when we really need you thank you thank you thank you welcome thank you to the crew as well i've been hearing on the street they're doing a really good job out there all the work there

somewhat like what the chief had outlined tonight if you could somewhat forecast not even forecast but at least bring us up to date where you are at in regards to that future discussion thanks cap okay with that said without the item four is the uh certified ratio declaration for board approval signature required a majority uh are we just outlining here or is there something that you would need us to do here there is a signature requirement we uh from our assessor we are required annually to report to the main revenue services what in fact are certified ratio of declaration is this form requires your signatures it must be returned by june 1st the state has certified a ratio of for 2022

and 73 to which we are allowed to adjust by 10 resulting in our declared ratio of 80 this ratio must be applied to all exemptions personal property cmd and tree growth values this information is specifically used by main revenue for our reimbursement of the homestead exemption if you have any questions please let know donna hayes our cma assessor's agent and i'll pass to you so at the end of the evening when you sign off this is what you have to do annually you go through it some background information and i think you're going to find that's what it is what this may in fact be one of the elements that ultimately is the chairman and members leads towards his fact that pricing in the marketplace today versus what our assessed values are is widening and ultimately we have to do more than just simply do a mathematical upgrade and that would be potentially the footballing rebel but i'm not going to suggest that it'd be

next year but one of the things you might consider is probably every community in this state is waiting to see what the impacts will be post code we're not post covered yet and secondly they're starting to put money away for entry level surveys meaning you're not going to dorm you're going to do an inspection as opposed to a windshield inspection only from the car itself we're doing a windshield inspection now that's correct i believe we've allocated this year this year but i i can only suggest to you that which would bring us up today correct which would bring us that's the reason why we're doing that is to get to that above that eighty percent exactly correct and you you have a fluctuation of ten percent below which is ninety percent or ten percent above which is a hundred and percent and you are obviously too far below which means you're falling behind right and yes this is a stop gap measure by doing what you're doing

but in the next few years you're going to be probably facing a full-blown rebound as will many other communities because of this unless the market changes and i'm not so sure people want to give up the value of their homes in the market today or tomorrow for that matter

in another way too right i mean it's it's a very similar situation and there's a lot of unknowns out there um but with that said the town has been being prepared for this for the last couple years and our assessor mr hayes has provided us and i believe the top approved it this year my membership today right so we are on track this is just to get us over the hump in the interim until that evaluation can be done so that said you need us to um or is this just something that there will be actions for you to sign and that's the documentation that's all you need from that tonight just for clarification though we don't need an action as a forward on this uh i believe you should still by formal motion adopt and execute okay um i have a motion to adopt and execute the

declaration for board approval for the certified ratio uh all in favor okay that's three and just for everyone at home in fact there is emotion and only two out of us approve that that motion will not pass it has to be um

fairly lengthy i thank your patients i'll try to get through them real quickly first and foremost you need to understand that we are going to be sending out the letters that are due by statute called the 30-day tasking notices and we will have them dated so that they become effective for the 30-day period june 1st straight through and this gives property owners who are delinquent notice that they need to pay up or it starts the sequence that ultimately could lead to the taking of the property meaning that we have a lien on the property which exceeds all other statutory liens and if you end up taking the property for the value of the taxes if you take the property you have the ability to resell that you also have the ability not to take the property depending on what's on the property itself therefore she is recommending that the select board vote to approve that any amount under twenty dollars

no longer be noticed in court this year we have eleven parcels under twenty dollars due to town for a total of thirty five dollars and cents the cost to mail the certified letters to residents alone would cost 7.38 per letter plus staff time it's not cost effective not unusual and therefore we are asking for a formal vote approving this policy effective 24th of may 2022 meaning if mitch berkowitz's property still had 18 due town it's not worth sending the notice because you have to send them to all you just can't pick and choose if it's under 20 and you've said that you have the right to say mitch we're not going anywhere is there a reason why that we have a bunch of very small numbers it could be that they didn't give us the full amount when they made the tax payments is probably the most and then there are fees attached to it so any number of small reasons

sometimes just is not cost effective to do that not unusual in towns in cities throughout the state or states in new england but in this case 20 just seems to be perfect because if it's twenty dollars in one cent we're sending it and it deserves your right to ultimately take the property if they fail to pay the taxes that are due

one uh is i would assume was this like when it's that small amount we don't have any properties this is kind of the fluid to um we have any properties that have a taxable 20 so my assumption would be some of this is because of they relate interest et cetera

are we basically um taking this twenty dollars off the books or is it coming you're writing a right office again it's a standard practice in municipalities especially large cities where you're spending a lot more money to get a little bit what's the unintended consequence that's my only but i'm just i don't have enough in the municipal government as you do what is the unintended consequence of doing this because there seems like there possibly could be opening up to something in the few years that i've been in the business the human behaviors ah i screwed the town sure twenty dollars if that makes them happy good luck but to go ahead and take and do the 11 additional in this case it's a small number but it's 11 properties just not worth for the 35 you're gonna get can we add the 20 dollars

asking we would be we would be charging this off the 30-day notice yeah is a polaroid is a polaroid picture a static picture at that moment in time of what was owed to town and someone may have come in and paid 19. or 1900 and it was 1925

but they only had 1900 and they figured they'd be paying the rest of it well if they did that within that one year then we wouldn't be here talking about them tonight but some people forget that last bit so the unintended consequence is we still sell send bills out for the current year and you'll more than make that up for the most part especially when we're talking as little as 36 dollars

pretty soon on fees right i don't know i i guess i'm not feeling that comfortable just writing it off i mean why are we up to fee dollar bill i mean i get it people make a mistake but you know this adds up you start having 500 houses that's ten thousand dollars a year the time doesn't get because people make a mistake and don't know what to put on their checkbook or their bank doesn't pay it correctly

in all the towns that i've worked in every one of them recognized at a certain point it's not cost effective to proceed and with the total number who get this notice approximately between 85 and 110 people a year so i got a

the analysis nor did i think you wanted me to do the analysis of the number of property tax bills going if i was talking about that many it must be he's not saying we're not going after somebody that owns 150 or a thousand dollars my apologies it really simplifies us the cost of doing business is more than what the debt is

out of your collection more than what you're collecting back on those 11 properties okay as long as it didn't get so evidently you know yeah 120 yeah and then is there any cost on the back end for writing it off what's the downfall of doing that how does that look um i mean what does that do to the person well if you have 11 people and they'll say oh 20 bucks you're you're missing 220 out of your annual that you were expected what is that what's that check box that the auditor needs to do that we're paying for on the other end if if you in turn anticipated one hundred thousand twenty two dollars of tax collection and you had to write off twenty two dollars worth for this cost benefit they just simply note it and it's business practice it's not a under generally accepted accounting principles it's a normal course of doing business in municipalities if in fact you wrote off anything under a hundred dollars

i think you would raise the eyebrows of the auditor sufficiently to say what are you doing and i think every elected official struggles with well everyone else states why shouldn't they and that's a reality but on the other hand we hear the taxpayers are telling me can't you be more cost effective in doing what you do

philosophy going on here so my recommendation is this is a small bitter pill but in comparison to what you will collect it's you know very little rich are you looking for just this year and these particularly lower number but you did approve i think a smaller amount i don't recall this the ladies had said something about 10 or 15 and anything greater than that i'm not saying we didn't um maybe it didn't come up this way it might have been worded a little differently i'm not 100 i don't remember this sometimes things like this that are that you know you're talking about 220 on a you know um it's not even around anywhere really with the decision you know she did the analysis there are 11 parcels that come to a total due of 35.83

that's what you're losing okay that's a little different than that was just yeah okay so that might have come up so the question is do we want to wait 35 and 18 cents which is based on which is cheaper than the labor itself never mind the stamps never mind just janet to finagle these letters and stamp them and get them to the mailbox et cetera everybody's 7.38

yeah i'm going to put the question out there to set the minimal amount for collection collection of tax liens at twenty dollars or greater or greater for for this year yes for this year okay there is a second we will move into discussion any further discussion so this is only for this year only for these 11 properties for it will not

amend todd you're welcome to do that if you want to invent your motion for a total of thirty dollars thirty five dollars which is what we believe hairy out of the gate but i think everybody's everybody's fine with 35 bucks

you know i know you will that's why i was i think my memory is i do remember something that it wasn't a blanket thing it was like it wasn't a mouth we run the list and that's how she came to that number okay the second item please mr i.t you know devin and kimberly are i.t team yes each has their own specialty and we've been able to now respond to one of the issues and that is getting things up onto our website a little bit quicker a little bit more informative from the public and i have to thank both of them for stepping in and doing this and i think that we're heading in the right direction we have noticed and you have noticed that when people are using our wi-fi in this building to also video record and then send it out plus what we're trying to do is a degradation of service i.t is whether we like it or not here to stay and as you probably in your own business world and personal world know that

every 30 seconds something new comes out on the market and you've got to keep up with it we're still back at a point where the model t is just reshaping itself and one of the things that we have found out that we can do right now is change the upload and download speeds to something that may very well help us in the interim be more realistic real time and effective for our public and i'm going to take the hit by saying that i pushed devon to research this and we found that with comcast who now changed the modem that's the first thing we did at no cost to us i believe we need to subscribe to a higher upload and download speed whether we want to or not those pictures that are on the content that's on just chew up capacity very quickly so we need a bigger motor and a pipeline if you will as a result of that that for the remainder of this fiscal year if you approve it it's going to go to 179.93

that's i rounded off 280 dollars a month that's 1260 dollars for this year as a subscription but that should begin to show right away our abilities to be able to use some of the equipment that we have while we're making the decisions of whether there'll be a special tile meaning to use our funds for the full upgrades that are necessary i'm going to stop there because that's the extent of my knowledge and ask devon to finish it off please yeah so what we're talking about right now is just internet speed upgrades i know you guys are talking about september for the hardware related things so in the meantime speaking with bek who's our iq services company they recommend for upload which would be what we need for streaming at least 30 megabits per second the first tier of plans that i've spoken with comcast that have that is the one that we are suggesting and that also gives us 300 megabits per

second down now this will help us here in the office the ladies that work here every day will see faster speeds when they do their everyday jobs they'll get through customers faster i know when whenever i come in i would much rather do my work at home because it's so much faster than doing it here so with that we will have much better speeds here as well as in september when we also have new equipment at eureka we'll have enough bandwidth there and here it covers both but any questions you have for me are you still talking about running a wire computer to eureka or are you coming off the pole we are using something called air fiber so it's like a satellite dish that will beam it from this building to eureka to a wacom line of sight might have to cut down a tree or two but um but no trenches need to be done for that look of heavy-duty rubber yeah big road yeah the um

running here is on the server in the town hall or the town website is located somewhere else the stuff that's on our website as far as i'm aware is stored through the drupal is the company that has a website they have their own servers that's okay all the time so we're okay i just think so we're upgrading it just so we have faster faster service faster speed here

um and then if somebody happens to hop on during one of our meetings and streaming something then that'll advise you you won't cut into what we need to do well that would be nice i think the public will experience a better visitation to the website well so that's what doesn't make if the website isn't posted on so that has nothing to do with the public to get an access to the website that's why i was asking the question yes well i think if someone was video recording okay

yeah i depends on who's in the audience right but also somebody's sitting here uploading if somebody's watching it in here they're downloading too which is here 300 but if we've got a slow speed right now they're both gonna use the same pipe and it's gonna slow everything down all right so but if somebody outside is having issues seeing what's going on inside it could be a problem in their own residence as well they may need better download speeds it's not found itself so i don't mind doing this first of all and just i'm just i just want to clear up as to what the what the speeds are going to get everybody i think getting the office running faster is the best thing that can come from this the rest of it as far as the streaming that goes on if it it doesn't work as well as so maybe it's better but that shouldn't be the driving factor per se it should be the office work itself

you know again i'm not not not against doing this i think it's a good good step and um i am concerned about the line of sight during inclement weather um so you know you could have a bad bad day for any number of reasons fog and different things so i i don't i don't know that you could have some interference um as far as i know bk when they came over they did a site walk with us to figure out what's the best course of action they said that because the distance is not that great we shouldn't see really any issues that's what they said i don't know if that's the full truth or not so so it's line of sight with um with life yeah so okay so we've got everything just needs to be located well yeah um just to give you more clarification right now truck in front of it won't work uh i think you're gonna answer my question right now we according to comcast are supposed to be getting sixteen down and five that's slow

five yeah that's aol stuff yeah yeah it is 5 mbs yes wow that's like my iphone yeah i get that i just they should be sure i'm sure you're sure but uh we because that i don't think anything would even work here that was called gas okay and most of what we do here almost down but when it comes to streaming it's all streaming um streams are struggling yeah

regards since we're talking numbers here is what is our current plan cost raise it to i never asked that question okay well those things need to be there because when this board met on this topic especially when regarding to the eureka center the thought of the board was only because i could be getting contact with comcast and have them look at both because the original plan that was presented was us uh doing a trench out here and running basically our own fiber optic or whatever we're running out there cat5 or whatever to the eureka and our position was can we get in touch with comcast or whoever our provider is yes and see about even providing a separate service so there separated they're not we're not malware so my guess would be if we went with this satellite service in the future which is not a cost that's incurred by this 148 there'd be an additional cost on top of that per month to have this satellite

download correct i it's you just be paying for the hardware so one time it would be a capital cost initially and then that would be it of what is the difference between putting their own their own service in over at the urethra if we do that that would mean that would you also want here to be upgraded in that scenario we may have to do that i mean this is kind of the so you know this question was posed correct me if i'm wrong but originally this question was posed because we were talking about getting service to the eureka center now the question is first we need to upgrade here because there was never really any concerns of upgrade because of people not being able to stream or us that i can recall the the root of this concern was to get service to the eureka

right so we don't even know if this the cost is going to pacify that yet because we're not even sure on the infrastructure cost that's going to be needed for the satellite up link right right so if we go with both having both buildings of their own you wouldn't be looking at the 179.94 double double your chemistry

but that i get that but it's it's odd to me that it's 179 additionally of what we're paying now well i think i think with the problem the problem might be and correct me if i'm wrong but the way it was explained to me is that the service we have is basically equivalent to somebody's house service at this point well my last service is greater than this this is the house service right i think you have a better service yeah well i well i'd probably pay this 179 or they're about this same same up

upgrade here but um i was going to say i thought though that we were going to go and look at a business package to encompass the eureka center in here which does upgrade you automatically it gets you out of the two router thing which then becomes a double the cost i mean i imagine that this 179 pays for internet phone and uh whatever all the benefits you get all the cable channels okay that's just international no you're probably not paying that at home for just internet no i'm not but but it is but you understand we already have a fee right now oh i get it i get it i just when i know about the current fee from what janet's wanted to tell me it's a run i don't have the thing in front of me but it's around 60 dollars it covers our cable and we basically get the internet for free it's deducted off of it so yeah so we do the real old plan yeah you know structured like that well i mean it's that's a pretty big

ongoing expense i mean it doesn't sound like much it's a couple hundred bucks a month it's tight budget as it is already we have unforeseen consequences with today's economy and so forth so um at this point i wouldn't feel comfortable with just three of us making that decision so let's move on from that particular and then we'll we'll bring that up at the next business package yeah i believe i thought my understanding was we were gonna approach comcast

all three locations as town manner which we do and you know because if i i look at the upload you know even if it was 68 bucks at all four locations that's still a lot of money per month well no that's not even 178 dollars that's just this location right but i still think you could have something a little different like that i don't know i i think i don't know what be k i don't know what the involvement is it's nothing like i said i feel comfortable doing without the entire board because i think this is one of those things that might induce more charges that we're not even aware of as yeah i'm just afraid when we get the board together we're going to come to the same conclusion that we need well i think we need to do like the original board thought is maybe get comcast down actually telling us what we have what we're currently paying et cetera et cetera what that entails and then incorporate whether it's the

three the four the two or just for one and let's go from there and start from the grass roots of this and build it up from there rather than just piling on top of something this is great stuff so this is this is exactly the beginning of what we need to start so so so you have added a new router right we have a new

see after the meeting tonight to see if it's improved at all our stream as far as i know it's still running um but i'm thinking that that is part of the issue however with five uh it's slow it's still not youtube streaming which is what was brought to me a while last year um you're going to want 1080

personally feel we should be starting with the isp to the internet service provider before we go to our consultants and so forth figure out what they can do what we have what their capabilities are here before we launch into our um

see what our what the isp provided if it's possible to get comcast right over here to talk to us well that's all they have to do is just know i mean it's a it's different because it's a municipality but they need to we need to find out what the isp of what we're actually got and and go from there i mean we need to know those numbers too what we have and what we're paying are they a sole source strictly for this area yeah yes we have to use comcast if we don't ask whatever so if we don't ask they're going to charge us as much as they can oh yeah i don't know

um price based on per customer i mean they have a price of do you need x amount of like devin's explaining what what upload speeds do you need that cost x it's there's no i already asked that question sure i wanted to break up because 300 down great you don't necessarily need that but there's no tier level that gives us that 30 up until you get to that level and i already asked you to break it up when the lady had to talk to you so sure do they have somebody that i mean obviously you did some work with them do they have somebody that maybe we should just say what do we have and what because sometimes if a first of all is that capable in this area you've already called that out right yeah so i mean i just think we need a few more steps and really my biggest um hesitation here is just it's a lot of money and it's a process especially from we're involved in the eureka center et cetera it really needs full board approval at

least in my opinion little bit more boots on the ground before we come to a conclusion on this see if we can get all four buildings into one package that'll be up to the board let's just go that way but let's just focus on where what the task all right so to repeat we will make contact with comcast try to determine what tuesday night they'd be available and basically we want to see what packaging they can do based on four buildings three buildings two building one building what's the benefit to us and taxpayers

to get a full package versus only service one builder and i did if i misunderstood it's my fault not theirs because once they said you don't have to dig a trench you can shoot straight across i said we're now taking care of one of the problems yeah which i the only i agree with you everything that you just said with the exception of i don't think we necessarily need comcast here for one of our meetings they just need to delay what our options are to rit department and yourself and then you can relay that back to us i don't think we need a reference just a really easy matrix so if we do this or do this or do this can we get a package and is it scalable because i think as time goes on you're going to be not necessarily growing again yeah yeah those are always those are all great questions but i think that's what that's why we i think we need to start with the internet service provider more so than be k because we need to know

what their capabilities are what our infrastructure currently is and move forward from there and what makes the best sense from the lack of awareness of business standpoint of how we proceed whether we incorporate this building the building over there or all four buildings is that will be up to the board at a later date but for now we just need to know what we have and what the capabilities are and the other thing i would say i just looked it up i'm 310 up there's not a lot of things that go up

like you said the download they do mostly download here so i can have upwards of six or seven devices going at any one time in my house between kids studying streaming tvs at the same time us being on vpn networks into the business both of us on vpns which uses a ton of bandwidth and we don't have a big

problem so i'm i'm skeptical that we need to go and upgrade the 30 up i i get what why i guess because that's a cost driver right there the 300 down they give me right i understand that you know i don't want to get you off but just to keep us moving because i don't want to deliberate this tonight let's just move forward and get the information so the board can make a solid decision moving forward any suggestions of what else do we want to look at give some thought to it and we can talk further

have done a good job and be aware that we were just talking about our website itself and although we know that drupal technically the web we can't make certain adjustments we don't know that'll be a discussion for another day yeah so mr garneau is there anything further that we can entertain you on tonight no all right we appreciate your time and thank you so much

and we have been invited to determine if we have anyone who's interested in in fact being nominated to their board so i bring it to your attention i don't know if you've had this opportunity in the past but we ought to seriously consider do we want representation in gp cog and if so how do we want to select that representative my memory serves me correctly i'm todd you've been around just as long as i have you have had an opportunity in the past it's just you have a hard enough time filling the boards in our specific towns more so than trying to for that now if you want to put something on a website or something that we're looking for volunteers for gp cog but i mean it's it's really hard for people let's say for lack of a words layman people out there saying hey they need to volunteer for x well we don't really know what x is we don't know what you're volunteering for we'd love you to volunteer but we have no idea what it

entails and that's what some of the issue has been in the past i understand what gp cog does for us is the municipality unless there was a board member here that necessarily wanted to volunteer their services we don't know what that time commitment is either typically we have typically moved on

ponto is off that leaves kevin neto is your only representative that sounds fantastic great example though of like both of those individuals um taking kevin out of the equation uh rob had fantastic knowledge of what she become actually is as did ruth where most of the folks in town or people on this board don't necessarily understand what the commitment is or the what the ask is really so it's normal for a group like gp cog to go back out to the people they serve and ask for representation because sure oh it's important absolutely yes absolutely so we will try to put a description together on the website and see if we have any nibbles you can get rob to do it thank you all right energy costs we're basically in a standstill we're not moving forward in any kind of contractual basis things are too volatile at this point no understandable i think we last left it that we would discuss this later on down

here okay fantastic i put down here is a tickler something for the board to keep in mind and that is if i understand correctly we now have appointment of one of the two appeals board alternates that has been moved up so we have a vacancy potentially so you have to tell me how and when you want to proceed with looking for an alternate set in there just so that we don't get caught with only one alternate but have two alternates to choose from when that vacancy occurs again as a regular sure have we filled the vacancy has one of our alternates accepted that role of being a permanent i believe paul first was the individual i'm not sure i'm getting appeals board and planning no you're on you're right it was the if my memory shows me the two alternates um as mr first and miss roy and paul was the more paul's more senior and the question that the appeals board was going to get back to this board or

yourself would be if um either one of them had an interest specifically paul being he was the senior individual do we know if he has made um the lack of other words if you want to take on that responsibility did agree i got it second hand the degree you would step up to the plate and that's why i'm saying you now have potential vacancy

didn't know if you were looking for the board to appoint paul as a permanent member of the appeals board i think you should a do that and b authorize the manager to accept applications do we have a motion to appoint offers to the appeals board and authorize the top manager to look for another ultimate is there a sound also any discussion

three thank you i would like to beg the indulgence of our board to allow the historic commission their three minutes now and then i can go on to other things after they're done so you want to skip the 5a of the store i thought we added them in oh you get them in and out that much quicker i'll be glad to stop my commentary get a breath of fresh air and then i'll come back to you nope that's fine it's just the question was really is is it a public comment or is this added to the 5a that you wanted to add the historical society because if i add them as a public comment we have a strict rule of three minutes i would say is the part of the manager's report that way you can bring it in and you can show today a little bit okay but i still think that uh they need to recognize your parameters of time right so we'll treat it i'll tell you what there's joking hey i'll tell you what there's two minutes here there's two of

you here so we'll treat it as public but you know whoever's speaking will go a total of six minutes um and then mitch can elaborate therefore after okay does that sound fair well that's good europe love to run around and i'm one of the people who's on the durham historic district commission and can't you just set this on the historic district commission 136 next to the union church and i'm next to the western methodist church um so we just as the commission we wanted to make sure that the select board was understanding of what our role is and what we think we perhaps need to change to so right now we have some responsibilities as the as a commission that when we talked with um george the verb barge [Music] we learned that we actually have some liability in the decisions that we make as commission as the commission and so he and we spent a lot of time talking about what we need and what the town needs

so this is pretty much laid out for you in the letter but um do is we need to um if we can we understand that that's going to have to be done through an ordinance change because because it's excuse me because it's defined right now in the land use ornaments and so

to make changes we'll have to have a vote from the town to make sure to make any difference to make any changes to it will be different um so i'm hoping that the town will make us into more of a committee so that rather than making um calls rather than making decisions on people's property and um having it lay entirely on us along with

along with the code officer then in fact what we need to do is we need for to become more of a town decision and we would take on the role of an oversight committee sort of so it's laid out in this and hopefully you have a chance to read the three pages i know it's long but um rather than go through it all i think that if you have questions of us we can answer the questions

doing now and what we'd like to be doing the nail on the head there when this this to change a process in the town obviously requires a we don't have that authority obviously um but it's you know do you gentlemen have any questions

are you looking to expand the historic district to include osgood bagley house and the methodist church one of the things we talked about was the possibility of doing away with the historic district and having us have oversight over the 10 pieces of property in town that are either on the national registry or are eligible for the nationals correct yes so that more aligns with what other towns do with the historic district it sounds familiar so yes but so the towns that have either commissions or committees

are not really similar to durham a lot of towns in in durham's situation an agricultural background don't have anything to protect the historical pieces when we start looking at topsim there's certainly a demographic difference when we look at castine where there's a beautiful process that their town uses but it's not demographically the same as what durham is and so it's hard to compare what other towns do to what durham does because we're sort of the outlier for agricultural and rural communities

some other um that would be one possibility it's down the road that i mean it all has to come from the town so it's down the road on whether or not the town wants us to we'll say expand to the tan and and not just focus on the historic district because the historic district doesn't even have all of the five on the registry on the national registry in the district right yeah okay right it took a lot for the parties to come together to find common ground as i understand in discussions and if you look at how the past way back when how was the historic property decided it's a school building don't touch it it's a church don't touch it and things were created to save the memory right but the continuity of the historic district was never really a district it was everything that you tried to save and all of a sudden you've got things occurring and competing in the same district for different things

and from what i'm told this is a better position for the committee commission to become a committee as advisory so that they can get input and what you're seeing is the coordination between the historic committee to be the planner the comprehensive plan and the code enforcement officer and ultimately how all that works together to preserve the values that you have in your communities so you really change i know this is outside a little bit but you actually change the audiences then you just just have a set of guidelines for historic

there are some bullets and it says in an effort to simplify it start that's where it starts that's section 514 which is out of the land use ordinance so though that actually is layperson's terms but someone who reads through it hopefully will be able to understand what is what what the requirements are so for instance the piece about stone walls the second one down stone walls granite posts abutments markers over 100 years cannot be torn down unless we relocated cemeteries can't be disturbed those sorts of things very clear so right now if i can use an example right now there is a town there is a piece of property in town that's privately owned it's one of the old schools and

on what should happen to that old school so um think obviously this um first and foremost thank you guys very much the three of us can tackle obviously we can maybe reconvene mitch at a time where we can actually physically put them on the agenda i know we've added them today on 5a when we're going to have a full board presence because quite frankly this seems like it's going to take a couple of board meetings some input from other various groups in town and then it sounds like a town vote before we could actually change something here so i think this puts it on the radar and i think that's great yeah so we appreciate that um and then we can uh reconvene and rehash this uh further at a date later on when we have a full panel agreed we i was when i heard that two people were gonna be missing tonight there was a question on whether or not we should even come tonight and try to present but you thought it was

important to quote-unquote push you're saying i don't know if we can achieve this before anything is finalized there i just want to be clear there um because this is going to take some time this isn't going to be a way for the half out of select board

gave you six but because you technically just so i don't run into this or excuse me yeah mr neighbor those are running this in the future uh we did add the historical society to our agenda tonight on 5a it's just the complexity of what is being brought before the board tonight really needs the attention of all five members to really push it forward that's um that's where we're at with that i'll give you a i'll give you a little bit of leeway here if you want to just i just want the the ornaments does state schools that are 100 years old so that was i mean that's why there's you know i think the issue i think the issue there lies on when it becomes private property or whether or not it's still in towns brought hands i don't i don't know enough about it and it's not really

preview of this board that's really and i even at this point kind of kicking myself or even opened into the window that's really another section of the town government that handles that type of stuff we can act on what you're asking for the future yeah but what is transpired now or possibly transpiring until we act on this in the future or the acts of this is the future it's really nothing that this board could entertain at this point i would just add um as as you'll see in here that um we were working with the main historic preservation commission and with george for quite a while and kind of ended up with george's suggestions and they're on the second page the one two three are the things that we were really happy to change that would play with the district to focus on the end properties that the state has identified in our town and to um revise the 5.14 anyway to to look at right now if when you have a historic

property you're looking at 1500 feet and he's suggesting just the abutting properties not going 1500 feet and then to revise the charter for us to be an advisory group um you're talking about going with not just a historic building

properties can't be done thank you i'm not going to get into the semantics of this is all codes this is this is planning board and guild wars stuff it has this is not the venue to for lack of better arms litigate this okay um is there anything else you ladies wanted to add i have just one question or one is there anything about the liability you mentioned in here you don't have to answer just a yes or no i would say yes it explains that there is something explains the liabilities it doesn't explain the liability but it is my changes when we do have another when we reconvene on this later that that's well laid out as to what liability the board has to your board has today

versus what the town might take over by changing this there's a lot more yeah i think so it's just it's just giving the time constraints and really it needs to go through it needs to be better through the proper channels it doesn't necessarily start here right um where does it start why not excuse me i think it starts i would start at with the george is a good starting point and then reference that from there it may go to the playing board it may go through codes and it might circle all the way back until it ends up on our desk but it has to go through the proper channels before it comes okay

objective question was there an expectation of a particular town meeting year that you wanted to try to address this the next thing putting it on was not to delay the understanding that with all of the discussions that you've outlined as chair tonight you're absolutely right but there is an expectation for some kind of community response at your next well i think as i illustrated and articulated that's fine we need to put it when the entire board's here i didn't say that it can go on next year's or you know we can do this in a month we can add it to an agenda that would be your call niche we don't we don't set our agenda we'll be happy to hear it it just needs to be done in the right fashion and we at least should have the majority of our board here i think something else just to let you know is that we've talked about the possibility of having a meeting with the owners of some of those 10

properties so that they know about this and possibly even even with the owners of a budding properties that the business of the abundant properties is already in the ordinances that's not something that would you know but they need to know i don't think this board would ever stop you from i think you're welcome to do that on your own whether it's as a private citizen or within your group um in the more lack of better words champions you get in the town because everything is based off of the people of the town and the majority of the town and how they feel and this won't be the five of us deciding what transpires here this will to what you're telling me and what you're laying out this will go before the town right that's the only folks that are going to have the authority to make that change it might be a good idea to put together a workshop with those people hi george

one question absolutely i just used the time that i thought was on um the manager's report i have two questions to ask during the public comments sure may i still do that absolutely absolutely that is now the appropriate time or shall we wait are we going to close 5a everybody's good for 5a then we'll open it up for public comment for the the second time how's that thank you we'll still treat that as 5a these are two questions so the first just to remind yes we have three minutes so the first question is in i believe december of 2021

the board voted to have a committee put together for the union church and i'm curious what the status is for that because i'm not it's not ringing a bell and because of all the verb and this is not an excuse it's just the reality of it because of all the change over turnover et cetera et cetera um that's a great question and we'll have to get back to you okay perfect that's all i want to do and then the second question i have is if a person files an appeal on something

that a quotes officer has determined and submitted a permit who does the appeal go to to the codes officer or to the town manager or to the select board i don't know who it someone we have what's called the board of appeals right they would be the authority on that okay so i submitted an appeal okay

and mitch was not here that day okay and the codes officer took it because he said you submit that to me the new codes i didn't address who you submitted it to i just addressed who hears who would hear it so i gave it to the code office i just want to make sure that you gave it may i ask which code because we've had two of them in the last couple of years

mitch do some research on that with alan and then uh we can get back to you thanks thank you thanks anyone else here for public comment three events at the top of your announcements you know i'm heather roy 777 come down real quick i was watching at home um and just addressed the streaming thing when i am streaming i'm using my data so i don't want you to like take that into consideration when you're discussing those details because when i'm streaming i'm using my data thing to do that i'm not using the town's wi-fi um and then the other thing was that i know that there's been a little bit of talk about a special potentially a special town meeting and i know that a little while back a woman named michelle came in and was talking about a fireworks appointment and as we're getting closer to the fourth of july she had real concerns about the livestock in town um and so i was going to put out

because like we're saying in one of my recent emails to you about how things only pass when the residents vote for them and so i think it's really important to to pull for lack of a better word the public or the residents to get their input for what they're going to vote for i think that piggybacks on what they're here talking about tonight right like you're saying it needs to go through the proper channels i wrote that email not too long ago about how i think the proper channel needs to start with the residents and so back to the fireworks thing i would like to put out a survey like i have done in the past to get a sense for what um the residents would vote for in terms of the fireworks ordinance but if that's not something that you guys are going to entertain that takes me a lot of time to do that so i don't necessarily i'm not going to be offended if you say no right i just want to put the time and

effort into that if that's not even on your radar answer obviously the board has entertained that the year before we could even present the question because it was it was presented twice once when i was not there and once later on and we're very sympathetic but we just didn't have the time to address it last year mitch can certainly add it you can do i mean no one's gonna stop anyone from doing anything on their own would you would you would you find that data helpful as you try to make a decision about what you might put out like last time my survey garnered like 100 responses i mean that's yeah i mean a hundreds i'm pretty good i mean it's sample

i'm just an individual okay so i don't want to speak myself i mean the board will take i mean the best thing on something like that when the board is having a decision on something of that nature because believe it or not my guess is that one depending on the way that was written last time it was very restrictive um and it needed a lot of cleanup before at least before myself and i'm speaking for myself would push something like that forward to the town um so i mean it needs work and if someone wants to champion and be the person to try to petition the town to go that route and bring it before the board and i mean obviously we're going to object to it we'll listen to anybody all the time okay um but what you do is okay i think i mean i think that what she's really asking for is very reasonable not to like do a kind of ban or anything like that but just to have like some set times or days or you know

saturdays or you know that type of thing just to see like put it out there like what would people actually vote for yeah i that's like i said we could entertain that i think like i said we ran out of time and there was a lot of restrictions and a lot of times on that and quite frankly as i'm sure you know um we have kind of a law in effect that you can't light these things off x amount of times and things like that and because of the lack of response from the county and so forth it's very hard to enforce these things someone locally on-site boots on the ground yeah she wants to bring that back up to the board i think the board again we apologize we've had a lot of trouble from school yeah no that's that's completely understandable it just hasn't been we've been dealing with so much stuff since after town meeting and now we're in this crisis with gas pricing and things of that nature we have just

so much on our plate that it's hard to get to but we certainly welcome anything that any citizen wants to bring to the board and we'll entertain anything okay so the one other thing that i wanna yeah real quick with the internet thing is that i know that in some other towns and i'm not sure if it's with internet or not but i know like rob and brunswick they did this thing where they all bought into the solar beat right and so the all the municipality buildings and you know that whole type of thing so i don't know if there would be some sort of business package that would be worth looking at where even the businesses in durham could partner with the town and all of that like people could sort of buy into some sort of package deal where businesses are joined together as like a co-op type situation with pumpkins i don't know if they do it with compass or not i'm just saying it might be much

than i have so please default to him i don't know if anybody read it before the meeting but we read it but seniors should be the first to be elevated yeah that's strictly what i did and just so happened that seemed to be weird okay perfect that was that was what i was asking for you guys to do so wonderful thank you did a great job

report when you're ready mr chair yes at this time we're going to close public comment if i knew there was more of the report we would never open public comment but we will reopen and go back to the town i thought we were on 5am expo please proceed i apologize no problem we're all right we're all winging it tonight for the best weekend so bear with us here with us i think the chair and the group is is handling it it says thrown at you and dispensing it appropriately that's a good bias but keep going just to let you know uh the tax lien notices 30 day notices will be going out they'll be dated june 1st and that'll be the 30-day period for which people who have been notified are put on notice accordingly it's not something we like to do it's a statutory requirement

we have received notification that the city of auburn has requested that the department of agriculture conservation and forestry review the municipal comprehensive plan amendment for consistency with maine's growth management act there's more information available if anyone is interested please contact the county office but they are asking for opinions the city of auburn city of auburn city of auburn's looking at our comprehensive plan no bears there and they're taking comments about their draft

towns right green lewiston minor new gloucester poland turner and of course that we would happy to give input if you know the planning board would like to participate in something like that but it's really not yeah i'd say and i always say that only because is there anything that they have coming up and this is a comment to the planning board anything that they have coming up up there that might affect our board in some way yeah like i said

like power like power lines or all the you know maybe development right on the town line or something i don't know i wonder if it has anything to do with the insurance department i think they're just looking for big um androscoggin county

again time for caucus for the purpose of nominating budget committee members so that has come across this desk a couple every year annually it's a uh perennial event um and we never have any takers on that one either uh we'll be welcome we can that's another one of those things we're welcome to post and make it public if someone wants to volunteer well so we'll give him the information and let him go direct yes sir thank you i'm done i have a question if you don't mind mitch i i just um something that um did

the other day and uh she bought a brought up a good point that i thought was actually a good idea that the board might consider is that during kobe we voted due to the fact that everybody couldn't have town meeting and didn't know if um you know we had somewhere in the range i want to say about 100 people or more

voted and went to the polls for town meeting warrant articles versus i believe we had a hundred and voters at town meeting the other day a couple a month ago or so i'm just wondering if um you know something that the board might want to consider something the logic board should probably consider is that when we go to do some of these these we may want to consider in the future uh putting these warrant articles out as a vote doesn't mean you have to do away with town meeting per se for the dialogue you could do that ahead of time for the dialogue so that everybody gets their their their their viewpoints out on there and then have the vote follow town meetings as a polled item so that everybody can somewhat be educated it's a thought i thought it was a really good thought because of the numbers you know we and that just it's just something i thought i'd bring up at this point enough you're talking about allowing the

absentee balloting and everything yeah this question is it it's a it's a bigger issue i get it i understand and uh the questions have been posed before a few times here and it's it's the way it's been described in the past and obviously if our chairman was here tonight he would be able to articulate

right it's the process that's in place it's our form of government so we can have separate foreign items et cetera off to build out but then you have to have an actual boat and all that stuff and set up all these resources right the town has always been with the exception of the coveted year the form of the time and so um i it'd be hard to change that out at this point but we can certainly talk about it kevin like i said would i did a poor job there kevin would articulate much better than i would be um and there's some reasonings and some laws and so forth that um there's nothing wrong with putting something on about it's just it alleviates itself from discussion etc the problem is if it's on a ballot like you saw that happen this year at the top meeting is people sometimes change the question yes so that goes to if people don't elect to take it that means everybody has to vote that way yeah so i agree

there's a lot of there's a lot of issues with it like i said if uh our chairman was here tonight and not you know me filling in he could he could certainly explain a lot better and he has in the past because this has come up but um it is a great question i agree with it but i think you almost have to go to look complete differently but it doesn't give people the leeway of changing and there's no discussion right it's black and white it's also secret ballot which some people is less intimidating [Music] with no question all right thank you do you want the manager's office to do anything at this time or do you want to repeat that with a full board discussion no i think you'd probably just have a discussion full board to see if there's any merit to going in the next step but i think yeah obviously we can entertain that i mean if you really want a discussion on it that should be added to the agenda um

what i personally would do because i've had this conversation because i'm actually in agreement with jess we've all a lot of us have had that coverage yeah when you see kevin maybe before you have to ask him if your questions answered so be it if not you want to keep it let's put it on an agenda and let's break through the flagpole okay all right so mitch are you uh completed i just want to make sure i don't forget this very important and that's the request

there so that x 5c 8c is where i believe comes about hc was on that i actually might i did have a question on that in the past we have had these on the consent agenda as it is because it's not we're not granting a quote-unquote liquor license it's a one-day it's a one-day use and a lot of times if my memory starts and i actually did reach out to the chairman on this one when i first saw it and i think unless you have an objection to it mitch i unless you know something i think it's okay where it's at on the consent agenda as is okay uh if somebody wants to raise a question when we um oppose to accept the consent agenda or wants to pull it out of the consent agenda we can certainly do that take it as a separate item but i believe in the past this isn't an atypical process for the amvets to hold this we've had weddings in town where this has been used we've had different social events et cetera

so it's to repeat again it's not a full-blown liquor license it is for a one-day event essentially a party um and this is commonly where i think we've had it in the past and and again it was more of a reminder to myself i just want to make sure that i didn't forget it because it's time sensitive absolutely no we'll we'll um once we're um done with the um discussion of the town manager we'll get into the consent agenda and if that's approved we'll go from there perfect

to the discussion lots of hits as i reported and we now have five applications so that this thursday night which is a special select board citizen staff meeting that we posted in advance we the chair will open the meeting and go immediately into executive session on personnel matters that will be the extent of public coverage they will have an opportunity to review the applications that we've received up to that point and as you have prescribed they will fulfill their duties to try to set them into three categories yes no and that is a personal matter and if there's follow-up from that he will follow the procedures that we've established when i first arrived with your assistants to be able to bring you hopefully fruitfully to a manager position i will let you know that just in the last month and a half

positions that are opening up in the state it is and they're just leaving they're not moving to other locations other than to retire or i've had enough real difficult market out there the other news is we've had three applications all from durham for the part-time deputy 10 to 20 hours depending on what the needs are so the two staff members in the front office and myself will invite them in and we're going to interview them on a wednesday that's absolutely go through that that is awesome and then i will bring to you an executive session what my recommendation decision is rather than taking the full authority that the manager has to hire i think it's only fair to keep you in the loop because i'm on the interim and you end up owning those kinds of decisions in the long run that's nice you can't pass the buck after you leave here

mitch's comments no that's good good news all right it's good here yeah keep our fingers crossed motion to accept the consent agenda as written any board member may request to have an item removed uh if so be john the discussion as we just previously mentioned

approved the consent agenda thank you and town news uh town manager hiring committee being posted for may 26 20 22 at 6 30 pm at the town office we are going to reconvene our regular session tonight of the durham select board um

pursuant to article mrsa4056a we are going to enter executive session for personnel matters i have a motion and you in second odd second jumping just jumping like it did rio thank you