December 22, 2020 ~ Select Board Meeting

2020-12-22 · Select Board · 1:13:14 · watch on YouTube →

Select board meeting of December 22, 2020, held on Zoom with roll call votes. The board encumbered $188,600 for a public works plow truck and $8,000 for the town manager search into 2021, reworked the January budget calendar down to two department presentations, and closed the town offices on New Year's Eve with eight hours of comp time for full-time employees outside the office, that last on a 4-1 vote. It gave Ruth permission, without a vote, to move the town off its current email system to Google after a renewed wave of spam. The longest discussion was the Southern Maine public works mutual aid compact brought forward by road commissioner Calvin Beaumier, which several members argued only formalised help the town already gives its neighbours and which the fire chief characterised as essentially a billing arrangement; it was signed 3-2 with Calvin named as the town's authorized representative. The board also heard the fire chief on vaccine scheduling and on widening the scope of the fire services RFP, approved the consent agenda 5-0, and went into executive session on a personnel matter.

What was discussed

1. 0:14
   Call to order and roll call

   Kevin Nadeau called the meeting to order on Zoom and took a roll call of Rob Pontau, Richard George, Todd Beaulieu and himself, with Marc Farrin still to join. There were no amendments to the agenda and nobody offered public comment.

2. 0:14
   Items to encumber for 2021

   Ruth (?) said there were two things to carry over: the public works truck and the $8,000 for the town manager search. Members asked for the exact figures for the minutes and were given $188,600 for the truck and $8,000 for the search.

3. 0:14
   What encumbering means

   For the benefit of people watching, the board explained that encumbering means the funds do not go back to undesignated but are held over into the next budget year for the purpose the town already voted on, so no second town vote is needed. The money was not spent this year because of COVID and delays with the public works truck.

4. 5:14
   Encumbrance vote

   The motion carried 4-0. Marc Farrin, who had joined late, abstained because he had not heard all the discussion.

5. 5:14
   Why the budget has to be out by early February

   Ruth (?) said that if the town is going to use a ballot, the budget has to be printed and out by the beginning of February to hold town meeting on the first Saturday in April. Two constraints were cited: the town may only spend about a quarter of its budget before then, and the date was voted at town meeting in 2006, with elections the first Friday before the first Saturday in April. Kevin Nadeau argued such votes are not binding beyond the year they were taken for, so the date is the intent rather than a hard line.

6. 5:14
   Draft budget calendar

   The draft had an MMA select board meeting on January 5, budget presentations on the 7th, the 11th and either the 12th or the 14th, select board recommendations the following week, budget committee recommendations the week after, and warrant approval on the 28th. Wednesdays were avoided because the office is closed and a budget committee member has a standing commitment, which Kevin Nadeau questioned as accommodating one person.

7. 10:20
   Keeping January clear for the budget

   The board agreed January should be focused on the budget with optional items kept off agendas until February, while noting the 12th and 26th are regular select board meetings that also have to deal with the town manager question. Attendance at budget committee meetings is not required of the select board, though it helps to have someone there to explain things.

8. 10:20
   Department budgets ready

   Ruth (?) said department heads had got their budgets to her and she would put them into books to print the following Monday and Tuesday for people to pick up. Some year-to-date spending figures will have to be estimated because items are still outstanding, which a member said would be good practice for moving to a fiscal year.

9. 10:20
   Condensing the presentations to two nights

   Kevin Nadeau said he did not need department heads to go line by line, preferring last year's figure, a readout on over or under spending, this year's ask and the reason for it, with heads prepared to answer at line item level if asked. The board agreed to drop the January 11 presentation and the January 28 warrant approval, hold presentations on the 7th and 12th with the 14th kept available, take select board recommendations on the 19th, ask the budget committee to meet on the 21st and 25th, and approve the warrant at the regular meeting on the 26th.

10. 15:35
    New Year's Eve as a day off

    Ruth (?) said several communities in the area are giving New Year's Eve in appreciation of the work done during COVID, and raised it because the town cannot give bonuses. Another view was that a bonus is possible under the personnel and benefits policy and that no statute forbids it, though nobody had seen one at a municipality.

11. 15:35
    How the office currently handles the day

    The office traditionally closes half a day early on New Year's Eve to close the books out. Under the proposal it would be open a full day on the Tuesday, staff would come in Wednesday for as long as closing the books takes, and take Thursday off.

12. 15:35
    Overtime concern if it snows

    Rob Pontau said his only reservation was paying overtime on top of holiday pay if there is a storm and public works is plowing that day. Calvin Beaumier (?) said he would have to pay holiday pay plus potentially time and a half if the week ran into overtime, though holiday hours do not themselves count toward the 40, and that working an actual holiday is automatically time and a half.

13. 20:48
    Comp time instead of a holiday

    To avoid the premium, the board settled on not declaring it a holiday at all: the town office would simply be closed that day, and full-time employees outside the office would have eight hours added to the comp time line in the payroll system, drawn down when they take it.

14. 20:48
    Objection from Richard George

    Richard George said he was not in favour of adding holidays and time off, and that the board seems to have this discussion every six months whenever one holiday falls near another. Kevin Nadeau said he would not favour it in a normal year but was comfortable given COVID and the demands of the election effort, and members praised the fire department for handling more calls, public works, and Becky for her work on the elections.

15. 20:48
    New Year's Eve vote

    Rob Pontau moved to close the town office on New Year's Eve and add eight hours of comp time for full-time employees not based in the office, seconded by Marc Farrin. It carried 4-1, Richard George voting no.

16. 20:48
    Town email service and renewed spam

    The chair said the spam had picked up again and the town could not keep going as it was. Ruth (?) said the suspicion is that somebody bought the address list rather than the server being compromised again, and reported that Google accounts can be had at $6 apiece per month with a domain at $12 a year, and that Google has a government programme that is no cheaper but carries more security. She thought she and Tammy could transfer most of it themselves.

17. 26:08
    What the move would cost

    The town has about 33 addresses and expects a final number between 33 and 40, putting the Google option at about $3,000 a year against roughly $2,200 now, though the Comcast addresses would also go away and staff would have one address instead of several. The $6 plan gives a 30 gigabyte limit and the document tools; recording meetings needs the $12 tier, so the board decided it made more sense to stay with Zoom.

18. 26:08
    Why not a .gov address

    Calvin Beaumier (?) asked why other towns have .gov addresses and Durham does not. Ruth had been looking at a .org address for the town and said the .gov version she checked was not available, but she would ask Google about it. Members noted .gov looks more official and is more trusted, and that domains are often bought up by others first.

19. 26:08
    Risk of carrying infection across

    Asked whether forwarding everything to a new system risks contaminating it, Tammy (?) said potentially yes, and advocated having the town's IT vendor, BEK (?), do the transfer because they are better at checking email signatures and already have a handle on the virus mail. The vendor charges $135 an hour and the email migration was quoted at about $1,160; the code enforcement officer's account was named as the most infected.

20. 31:31
    Ask Google about migration too

    A member asked whether Google itself had been approached about migrating the mail rather than the IT vendor. Ruth had not asked, and was told they will migrate and are a full shop, so it was worth a call setting out the situation and asking what it would cost.

21. 31:31
    Board tells Ruth to move now

    The chair said the town needed to move on this immediately rather than wait for a report at the next meeting. Since no vote was required, Ruth was to go ahead with the fact finding, keep the board informed, and call a meeting if something came up that needed a vote.

22. 31:31
    Fire chief's report and vaccine scheduling

    The fire chief said there was very little in his report and the department continues to manage calls. On the vaccine he is working with the county EMA and Maine EMS to get staff coordinated, but Durham is low on the list because of its call volume and because it has yet to transport a COVID positive patient, those going to Auburn, Brunswick and other larger centres; he expects to be scheduled early in the year.

23. 31:31
    Fire services RFP

    Only the two responses sent out at the start had come in and nothing since. Kevin Nadeau said the RFP could go out without waiting for a town manager to be hired, and that he wanted to add a section asking bidders to take a bottom-up view: if Durham had no fire department or EMS today, what would be appropriate given the town's characteristics and fiscal capacity.

24. 36:47
    Fleet evaluation against a fire protection study

    The fire chief said that is a fire protection study rather than the fleet evaluation originally pitched, and that the cost will rise with the wider scope. He cited Falmouth, which recently had one done and went to full-time staffing, roughly tripling the size of its department. Kevin Nadeau said evaluating equipment without first asking whether the town needs that equipment makes little sense given the lack of a commercial tax base.

25. 36:47
    Timing against the budget

    Nobody expected hard numbers by the end of January, and the chief said any firm that turned that much information round that fast would not be producing a quality product. The board agreed to use 2021 to get the number and budget for it in 2022, noting the unknowns coming out of COVID around local revenue sharing and school aid, and that a town manager should be involved. Kevin Nadeau agreed to write up his suggested additional RFP section and circulate it for feedback.

26. 36:47
    Call volume

    Asked for the total, the chief said the department is at about 341 calls for the year, 20 ahead of last year, roughly four and a half to five percent. The figure is broken out into fire and EMS at year end, and last year was abnormally low against the year before.

27. 42:06
    Road commissioner's report

    Shouldering finished on one road and was about 600 feet short of finishing the final lane on another when the snow came; the names are not clear on the recording. Rather than lay reclaim over snow in the shoulder and have it melt in the spring, the work was stopped and will be finished in the spring at about $3,000 in next year's budget. Ditching has also stopped for the season.

28. 42:06
    Training and regional meetings

    Calvin Beaumier got the 2021 public works budget to Ruth that day, and he and Ron (?) completed a webinar on motivating, engaging and inspiring employees which they are putting into practice. He attended the Southern Maine public works group session hosted by GPCOG and the GPCOG town managers meeting, and the final version of the compact in his report reflects the managers' input.

29. 42:06
    Where other towns stand on the compact

    Calvin Beaumier (?) said Tony Plant of GPCOG (?) reported a lot of interest from town managers, with everyone now waiting on their boards to sign and return the agreement.

30. 42:06
    Rob Pontau's reading of the compact

    Rob Pontau said he had read it twice and had seen similar documents in his own work. Each request is decided instance by instance, towns can use their own contracts and the FEMA rate, and either party can leave at any time with or without cause, which he said made it almost symbolic. He was content to sign provided it added no liability, and noted Ruth had asked Jack to look at it.

31. 42:06
    Liability question

    A member asked where liability falls if a Durham plow driver loaned to another town sideswipes a parked car there, since the agreement does not address it. Calvin Beaumier (?) said the town managers' meeting agreed each town covers its own employee, and the view taken was that liability follows the vehicle unless the driver was impaired.

32. 47:41
    Authorized representative required

    Section one, paragraph E requires each town to designate an authorized representative to negotiate sending or receiving equipment, which needs a board vote. Members said they would lean on Calvin Beaumier for that decision since he knows what the town's resources can handle.

33. 47:41
    Whether the compact adds anything

    Members said other public works directors had reacted to it with the observation that they have always simply helped each other when asked, and that this puts legality or bureaucracy around it. The arguments made for it were that it cites the statutory authority, widens the range of communities involved, and spells out how reimbursement is expected to work rather than leaving it to a handshake.

34. 47:41
    Which towns are actually in GPCOG

    A member worried that larger cities would draw on a slower town like Durham. It was noted that Durham sits at the very northern edge of GPCOG; one view was that most surrounding towns other than Freeport and Pownal would not be members, another that four of the six abutting towns, Freeport, Pownal, Brunswick and New Gloucester, are in Cumberland County, with Lisbon and Topsham the exceptions.

35. 47:41
    Richard George wants to wait for other towns

    Richard George said he did not want Durham to be the first to sign, found it odd that no other town had returned it, and wanted to see what the other boards do first. A conditional approval was floated, signing once something like 80 percent of GPCOG towns had signed on, with the counter that every town could take the same position and somebody has to go first.

36. 53:28
    Comparison with fire mutual aid

    The fire chief said he had reviewed and updated the fire department's mutual aid agreements last year, but that fire mutual aid is a different animal: there is no billing and no recouping of money, and if a Durham truck sent to a fire in another town has an accident, that is on Durham. He said what this document really sounds like is an agreement allowing communities to bill each other, essentially a formalised billing plan.

37. 53:28
    What Calvin Beaumier (?) says he needs it for

    Calvin Beaumier (?) said that without a signed agreement he would not send a truck out of town and would not want to accept another town's truck without the board's authorization, and that the compact opens that gate so he can negotiate. Asked why board approval is needed when the statute already allows mutual aid, he said the managers' meeting advised against acting without board approval, though the town has borrowed a grader from Pownal in past years without a board vote.

38. 53:28
    Money and liability

    A member said that once money changes hands liability changes hands with it, and that this agreement tries to have money exchange without liability exchanging, which he would not get into. Others said that other than bureaucratic structure they could not see what purpose it serves.

39. 58:49
    Whether Durham gains or loses

    One argument was that as a smaller town with fewer resources Durham is more likely to need help than give it, leaving it on the hook to pay other communities. The counter, made by Calvin Beaumier, was that Durham has no transfer station, public water or sewer and no full-time employee for every plow route, so it is more vulnerable than most and stands to gain from being able to call larger towns such as Portland, Gorham or South Portland if COVID took out part of its crew.

40. 58:49
    Why not just call the neighbours

    Richard George asked what stops Calvin Beaumier from making arrangements directly with Lisbon, Freeport, Pownal or Auburn through his own networking rather than a GPCOG document. He was told GPCOG has put the legal and contractual work in, and that doing it locally would mean paying Jack to draw up an agreement. Calvin Beaumier (?) said what the document really does is give him the authority to act, which a member said meant the board was effectively being asked to grant that authority.

41. 1:03:56
    Argument for signing

    Kevin Nadeau argued that larger towns managing larger departments need rules of the road, and that where a driver is paid by one town's taxpayers to help another, the receiving town's taxpayers should reimburse them. He said that since the agreement operates on an as needed, as able basis, with no commitment and no added liability, he could see no downside to signing.

42. 1:03:56
    Vote on the mutual aid compact

    Rob Pontau moved to approve the memorandum of understanding, the public works mutual aid compact, and to appoint Calvin Beaumier as the authorized representative, seconded by Kevin Nadeau. Members added that he should consult the chair, or another selectman in the chair's absence, before anything left town. It carried 3-2, Richard George and Marc Farrin voting no.

43. 1:09:10
    New plow truck

    Calvin Beaumier (?) reported the new plow truck is in Durham being painted and could be finished next week, with the builder saying about the first of the year, though delivery remains a 2021 matter. Since no money is due until 2021 the board left the encumbrance in place rather than trying to pay in the last eight or nine days of the year.

44. 1:09:10
    Consent agenda

    Nothing was pulled off the consent agenda and Ruth had nothing further to raise. Richard George moved to accept it as written, seconded by Marc Farrin, and it carried 5-0.

45. 1:09:10
    Upcoming meetings

    The next meeting is a workshop on Tuesday, January 5 at 6 p.m. with David Barrett of MMA, a public input session on the needs assessment for the town manager search, inviting residents to say what skills and characteristics matter in a town manager for Durham. Regular meetings follow on January 12 and January 26 at 6:30, with several budget meetings in between.

46. 1:09:10
    Executive session

    Kevin Nadeau moved to enter executive session under 1 MRSA 405(6)(A) on a personnel matter, seconded by Richard George. It carried 5-0 and the recording ends there.

What was decided

• 5:14
  Encumber for 2021 $188,600 for a public works plow truck and $8,000 for the town manager search (moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Todd Beaulieu; Marc Farrin abstained as he had joined late)passed
• 15:35
  Agreed, without a vote, to revise the January budget calendar: drop the January 11 presentation and the January 28 warrant approval, hold budget presentations on the 7th and 12th with the 14th held in reserve, take select board recommendations on the 19th, ask the budget committee to meet on the 21st and 25th, and approve the warrant at the regular meeting on the 26thpassed
• 20:48
  Close the Durham town offices on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2020, and add eight hours of comp time for full-time employees not based in the town offices (moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Marc Farrin), carried 4-1 with Richard George opposedpassed
• 26:08
  Agreed, without a vote, that Ruth should go ahead with moving the town's email to Google, no board vote being required, and report back if anything needing a vote arisespassed
• 36:47
  Agreed, without a vote, that Kevin Nadeau would draft an additional section for the fire services RFP taking a broader look at what fire and EMS provision the town needs, circulate it for feedback, and that 2021 would be used to get a number rather than carrying one in the 2021 budgetpassed
• 1:03:56
  Sign the public works mutual aid compact and appoint road commissioner Calvin Beaumier as the town's authorized representative (moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Kevin Nadeau), carried 3-2 with Richard George and Marc Farrin opposedpassed
• 1:09:10
  Approve the consent agenda as presented (moved by Richard George, seconded by Marc Farrin), carried 5-0passed
• 1:09:10
  Go into executive session under 1 MRSA 405(6)(A) on a personnel matter (moved by Kevin Nadeau, seconded by Richard George), carried 5-0passed

An outcome reads "unclear" where the recording does not state it plainly. The recogniser drops short words, and "the motion does not carry" is one missing word from its opposite.

Motions the minutes record

The town's own written account of what was decided, taken from select_board_minutes_12-22-20_final.txt. It owes nothing to the recording or to a model: the clerk typed it, with the vote. Where the summary above claims a decision this list does not carry, the summary is the part to doubt.

• encumber for 2021: $188,600 for a Public Works plow truck; and $8,000 for the Durham Town Manager searchcarried 4-0

  Moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Todd Beaulieu

• close the Durham Town Offices on New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2020), and other full-time non- Durham Town Offices employees will receive 8 (eight) hours of compensatory timecarried 4-1

  Moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Marc Farrin

• sign the Southern Maine Public Works Aid Contract with Road Commissioner Calvin Beaumier as the authorized representative to sign itcarried 3-2

  Moved by Rob Pontau, seconded by Kevin Nadeau

• approve the Consent Agenda as presentedcarried 5-0

  Moved by Richard George, seconded by Marc Farrin

• go into Executive Session at 7:50 p.mcarried 5-0

  Moved by Kevin Nadeau, seconded by Richard George

• come out of Executive Session at 8:00 p.mcarried 5-0

  Moved by Kevin Nadeau, seconded by Richard George

Worth knowing

• 20:48
  The town offices closed on New Year's Eve and full-time employees outside the office got eight hours of comp time, structured that way rather than as a holiday so the town would not owe holiday pay on top of overtime if it snowed. Richard George voted against, saying the board seems to have this discussion every six months whenever one holiday falls near another.
• 26:08
  Spam on town addresses has picked up again, with the suspicion that the address list was sold rather than the server compromised a second time. Moving to Google would cost about $3,000 a year against roughly $2,200 now for 33 to 40 addresses, with migration quoted at about $1,160 and the IT vendor charging $135 an hour; the code enforcement officer's account was named as the worst affected.
• 1:03:56
  The public works mutual aid compact passed only 3-2. Several members said the town has always simply helped its neighbours without a document, the fire chief described the agreement as essentially a formalised billing plan rather than mutual aid, and it was noted that the compact does not address who is liable when a loaned truck causes damage.
• 1:09:10
  A public input workshop on the town manager search is set for Tuesday, January 5 at 6 p.m., with David Barrett of MMA, specifically to hear what residents think the important skills and characteristics of a Durham town manager are.

Motion language found in the transcript

Located by pattern matching, with no model involved: "I move that", "I'll second", "all those in favour". This is an independent check on the summary above: 2 passages of motion language, against 8 decisions summarised.

Elsewhere

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