TranscriptSpecial Town Meeting - August 16, 2022

pick up the whole room so just be courteous to um one nation under god indivisible with liberty greetings in the name of state of maine you are hereby required to notify and warn the inhabitants of the town of durham in said county and state qualified by law to vote in town affairs to assemble durham unique eureka community center 606 holloway room durham maine on tuesday august 16th 2022 at 6 p.m then in air to activecon articles 1 through 6 has set out to wit article 1 to choose a moderator to preside a said meeting do i hear any nominations for moderator nominee bill schneider

please nominations closed phil schneider has been nominated can i please have the written votes for the moderator in the municipality of durham maine on 16 august 2022 i william j schneider do swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and of this state so long as i shall continue as citizen thereof i william j schneider do swear that i will faithfully discharge to the best of my abilities the duties incumbent on me as moderator of this meeting according to the constitution and the law of the state and i will sign this

schneider all right thank you very much um i want to introduce myself just a little bit first i'm bill schneider i live over on rough rider road on the west side of durham it's off of the stackpole road and i have an old farm house that has a great view over fields and forests and it's just my little slice of heaven i've been elected and sworn in to be your moderator tonight and i will discharge my duties faithfully

off or silence your phones and i'll ask you again the first uh i'm joined tonight by the select board on my right and the budget committee on my left both of whom have drafted and worked on these articles that we're going to vote on tonight i would move that we adopt the main moderator's manual as a guide to procedure for our meeting tonight it lines out it's kind of like robert's rules of order but it lines up the procedures or town meetings like this and uh it it will be a useful help if we uh if we adopt it is there a second second thank you it's been moved and seconded that we adopt the main moderators manual for the uh to the procedure of this meeting is there any discussion seeing none does anybody object to adopting the main moderator's manual for the for the purpose of this meeting okay the main moderation manual is adopted because nobody has objected we have a couple of non-residents who

may find it necessary to speak at the town meeting and we can the residents can allow them to speak by voting by two-thirds margin that we want to allow them to speak here are the specific people that may have cause to speak tonight mitchell berkowitz robert tripp calvin beaumier alan plummer janet bowie george the barge and jerry douglas

i move that those people non-residents are allowed to speak at the meeting tonight is there a second second is there any discussion on the issue if everyone who would like to allow these people to speak would raise your green card right now

who would not like to allow these people to speak please raise your green card okay by more than two-thirds margin the uh the town meeting has decided to allow these folks to speak at town meeting now um we're going to go through these articles and uh they'll the general procedure will be that there will be a motion to adopt the article there will be a second to adopt the article and then we'll have a chance to debate and so debate or discuss it if you wish so i would ask that only one person at a time will come up to the microphone and be ready to discuss the the article and that you wait until i recognize you before you speak and when you speak i'd like to have you introduce yourself by name and tell us where you live

you have any questions ask the questions of me and i will try to find an answer to the questions usually i'll turn to the select board or the budget committee or somebody who has more information about the question to get the questions answered um i'd like to take this uh moment to introduce jerry douglas if you stand up jerry jerry douglas has been hired to be our uh our new town manager and uh he comes with a great pedigree he's worked in gardner for quite a while and i'm really personally i'm very excited to see him here i think he's going to be a great addition to the to the team and the in the office and i can't wait to have him start on monday thank you [Applause]

uh recognize kevin if you'd like to say a few words uh yeah very briefly just i want to thank you for those of you coming out tonight beautiful summer night in maine i'm sure there's a lot of things that people would rather be doing but it's really these are really important meetings and having the public involved is important so thank you for uh for making that effort hopefully everybody grabbed an info sheet on the way in uh it's one we published a few weeks ago to get some information out there but it may answer a lot of fairly basic questions about arpa and what the funds can be used for or not so that is available to you tonight so on our funds as she said durham received a little over 420 000

and there are some things we can or can't spend them on if it's pretty much though if it's got to do with low capital expenditures or operating the government it's a good chance we can use our funds for it the way they structured the program so tonight we have a handful of articles that staff and town manager brought to the board and said these were things they considered like you know we these are more short-term things that need to be done in the short term and really can't wait until a vote in april uh the most pressing need being the heating situation at the town office so we're taking the opportunity to ask the question on a handful of uh mostly capital uh projects to get the ball rolling on that and then later this fall that now used somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of the money um i can't remember the exact figure but a couple times this fall we'll have additional public hearing meetings where

it'll be instead of the must-do stuff but what are ideas people have that they'd like to see done with the remainder of the money which will be you know around 300 000 or so what what do we want to do with that and that'll be a little bit more blue sky a little more more optional there'll be some choice points there but tonight is really about kind of the keeping the wheels on the wagon and keeping operations

into the work here article three on the warrant is to see if the town will vote to appropriate twenty three thousand two and thirty dollars from corona violent coconut virus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or carpool funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the fire station uh do i have a motion a move we approve article three second it's been moved and seconded that article three is approved is there any discussion

uh we'll we'll call for a vote everyone who would like to see if the town will vote to appropriate twenty three thousand two hundred thirty dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the fire station if you wish to

green card to appropriate that money please raise your green card thank you it's been moved and seconded and voted in the affirmative that article three passes to see if the town will vote to appropriate twenty no the town has voted to appropriate twenty three thousand two hundred thirty dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or article funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the fire station on to article 4 to see if the town will vote to appropriate 34 500 from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the town office do we have a motion i move movie accept article four is there a second okay it's been moved and seconded that article four is passed is there any discussion

gay durham i got some questions pertaining to what is being installed has there been a cost analysis for not just installation and purchase of the product but also long term over the life of the system for this system that you're installing because there were some questions about this at the last town meeting and you didn't answer well i didn't have that no no i'm referring to somebody else um is anybody prepared to answer the questions i would refer to town manager mr moderator i have i had some input that's realistic on that terrific the heating cooling load in the town office has not changed the the requirement for the heating and cooling system is the same so there is no increase in energy costs

the system itself is a little bit larger there may be a little more electricity involved in turning the motor relatively minor and you would think long-term maintenance costs will be a lot less than what we have so you're not installing something new and completely different i need to ask questions of me if you're not installing something new and completely different like a heat pump or you're just reinstalling another furnace mr barry or oh mr berkowitz for clarification what we're talking about is two york ac units one furnace replacement and a smaller hot water heater that will actually save us money instead of heating large amounts and that's at the town hall at the fire station we're talking about two samsung units and one ducked it off that inducted through the offices in essence we are getting more efficiency with some less dollar operational dollars okay is that an answer question that

does directly thank you would anybody else yes ma'am hi my name is debbie oliver from cottage woods road um i have a question on the this system that we're installing does it we talked a lot about revising the town office um its arrangement and whether it was suitable for our needs right now is the will this plan impact that was the plan for the town office considered um you know in the end result of the cost of this system yeah future growth yep is anybody prepared that mr berkwick thank you moderator the attempt here is to replace some kind but when you're putting in 2022 units it's the year 2022 there's going to be some good longevity there this will give this community time to now think through what they will need in the way of space to operate their local government and serve the public and it may be additions it may be complete tear down i have no idea where you're going to go but it will give you that kind of time

to anticipate building something bigger because you are like you're not growing yes i can just add on to that the the changes that have been discussed so far in town office are pretty minor it's more like reconfiguration like the biggest change that's been considered is using what is currently the meeting space uh for office space and if that's the case it's really no different in terms of you know heating or cooling it's just being used for a different purpose does that answer your question yes thank you terrific anybody else have anything they'd like to say or questions they'd like to ask okay seeing none we'll move on to the vote you're voting to see if the town will vote to appropriate thirty four thousand five hundred dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the

town office everyone who would like to appropriate that money please raise your green card appropriate that money please raise your green card okay by overwhelming majority article four passes the town has voted to appropriate thirty four thousand five hundred dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arbor funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project hvac work at the town office we'll move on to article 5 to see if the town will vote to appropriate 45 000 from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or our performance received by the town from the federal government for the following project communication and information technology upgrades for town office public works fire station would someone like to make a motion sentence of article 5 is there a second house after that okay it's been moved and seconded

uh article 5. is there any discussion on article 5. like once again pierre gaston gay durham um where do you live in durham's stackpole road you're asking to replace all of the computers within this town is that correct would anybody like to address that possibly at some point they'll all need to be replaced i think it's fair to say that there's still work being done in some aspects of this gathering specific cost information so the goal at this point would be to prioritize what's most important to be done within this area at town office and things like you know firewall work or and things of that sort like data security issues and then you know if we if we could if there's enough money left to buy all you know replace all the computers at once perhaps we would do that if not we would do what we can uh and if there's more work to be done in this area then there might be another question on at the april town meeting

about some additional work that might be needed in this area most of my life and i know that you do not buy all new equipment of one particular item at once you always buy in waves that way you don't hit our town for 50 grand every three years for all new computers and do we really need as many computers as we currently have

would behoove us to take some of the computers that are currently there continue to use them in a lesser atm application such as maybe a parts department instead of in the town hall where they're getting heavy use and replace just a few of our computers as opposed to spending

most normal people make in a year on computers is anybody prepared to answer it so the board actually i think was in our last meeting we actually raised the same point about well if you replace them all now does that set which and let's keep in mind that the money that we're talking about here it's you know it's it's like bonus money oh no no no no no no it comes out of my pocket okay it's it's bonus money in the sense of it's not raised from local property taxes it's obviously tax money because everything that comes from the federal government was tax money at some point right so but there's but it's it's this pool of money that literally the government dropped in our lap and we have a certain amount of time to spend it or lose it now we've got a pretty long one runway right now we have until the end of 2024 to officially allocate the money to specific purposes and then we have until the end of 2026 to actually

like have the money be gone from the account and be spent on what it was so but back to the rotation question the board raised that same concern and and we spoke about that you know we want to set up much like we did with fire department gear a few years ago when we replaced a lot of it once set it up on a rotation so that some of these new computers might go four years some might go five some might even stretch to six so that we can set up a rotation where there's a regular small number being replaced year after year but in the upfront when the upfront cost to replace the mall is not being born by local property taxes it's a unique opportunity to take care of that need at the town office in the view of the board and sir mr berkowitz would like to answer as well excellent question and we debated on and on and on ironically the computer seemed to be the antenna a lightning rod for the discussion

prior to the purchase of the computers and not all computers will get replaced we're dealing with issues such as firewall protection that we really need to have there's replacing the other hardware that has to get done not on computers but the communication devices that you folks rely upon so that we can get information from our meetings out to you rather quickly i'd like mr moderator to call on devon who can better explain this because quite frankly one of the most weakest points in this whole discussion has ever been raised and that is the age and the lack of capability of our phone system and this is part and parcel of that infrastructure so if the chair wouldn't mind i'd like to have devon complete that i have one comment for that well let's let's hear from devon that you can you can comment on all the answers okay um hi everyone my name is devin garno i'm the information technology officer

i want to stress that not all of this money is for new computers primarily it is going to be used for new phones and better internet connectivity at not only the town office but also at the fire station and publix works office so that will cover a little under half of the money to get all that stuff up to date the rest of the money will be used to get mission critical computers stuff like at the town office but the ladies use at the window those will get priority because they see the most use we will begin to cycle new computers not all at once but based on need but unfortunately before the computers were purchased in bulk so we're dealing with all of them being old at the same time so i would like to set up a cycle but we don't have them currently devon in case somebody here hasn't met you could you tell what your role in the title office is yup i'm the information technology officer thank you yes sir

so to your comment yes it is tax money and as much as people wish to say it's free money the fed is a giant chunk of my paycheck every week did anybody look into leasing computers as opposed to buying we plan to do that sorry can i answer that please um that actually came up with the last board meeting as well and that's some people are going uh to look into as well so yes that did come up and yes we are gonna look into that okay so so that maybe that should have been looked at before this got put in front of us can i answer that please i mean you can you can certainly make that argument but um i think you know the most pressing thing that time was an issue we you know because we needed to get the heating ventilation and air conditioning work approved before the winter that was where the timing of this meeting was really determined and so while we were having this meeting there are some other critical needs

infrastructure the technical infrastructures we've been talking about that we wanted to have some funds so that we could start to address some of those issues too we do not at this point have a line by line to the penny this however every single dollar has got to be spent but what we're looking for is authorization to use up to this amount of money for this purpose and then town staff and the town manager will and any outside contractors they have to bring in like comcast or whatever will you know determine what specifically is most important to be done and then start that work okay so i guess if if i was to vote for this now i know that there's phones in here which are desperately needed and there's in higher speed internet you probably would have been wise i think to have separated out computers and your bare necessities so thank you todd did you want to say something here yeah part of it is going

to be to get internet capability over here because we plan on eventually using this as meeting space and we want to get internet into this sorry um jane rice bowie hill i'm glad to hear todd say that they're going to get internet here because i think when we sat around and learned what we were going to spend the money on i was pretty disheartened that we didn't include this building um because there were meetings that i came that heather actually like streamed it and that is is unacceptable in my eyes i'm glad she did it but as a townsperson we really need that out there but i was told that we didn't have hard numbers to be able to do here and they wanted to do more research so i'm assuming that come april that will be on the ballot to get this up and running as a functional meeting place for the town so that we can stream and and have records um okay all right any other oh you could approach

somebody um can i answer like well actually this gentleman was help go ahead hello i'm nate ledger i live on brianna drive i have a few points one i just have a question as much as we all hate taxes you can't give that money back correct uh that's unclear i think it would be in the main municipal association document that's kind of guiding what towns do um their opinion is that you could give the money back but it would probably it would require a town vote but it won't it's hard to cut you off it won't end up back in my pocket if you give it back to the federal government so the money we got to spend the money as much as we don't like it it has gone through the circle and is now here in the town of durham whether we want to reverse that and think it's going to come back in our paycheck i'm sorry to tell you not yet just to be clear we did not apply for or ask for this money okay it just literally shows up that's a whole

different discussion we can have later yeah my i guess just by sitting here i'm confused that okay i get the 23 000 that's pretty straightforward hvac work and you provided what we're going to install same with the fire department i'm a little confused on 45 000 but we don't have an exact line item like when i do my business and i ask for a quote i have a line item of of what i've gotten what i'm spending my money on it seems here even this 23 and 230 34 and 500 this is a flat for 45 000 that is they're gonna be do we have a line item that brought us to forty five thousand dollars or are we guesstimating and possibly might spend more or less than that number would anybody like to address that do you wanna take a crack at that devin i don't want to put you on the spot but i can answer a couple of them um so with the computers i finally did get a full replace every computer quote and it exceeds this amount so that's already

off the table however with the phone and i'll try to pull up specifics here with the phone and internet and the firewalls and new cables that we have to put in and all that we're looking at and we have 20 to 25 000 being just to get that stuff taken care of the rest of it will go to mission critical computers and whatever we can get done until next april when we consider using more or doing something different and so then mr moderator my question to you would be how how does the town know at what dollar amount we've reached at what point and how much is going to go back into the coffers to be spent elsewhere because just like this building i am a member and a harton member i'm proud to be of the american veterans club that's right down the road and we too have major issues that 2020 set us back from fundraising and doing mission critical things for the community that that building wasn't even well it's not part of the town and

i get that but you'll be seeing my face a lot uh over the next until we figure this out because there's a lot of money there from the federal government that we can utilize uh gratefully um so i just i and i'm getting kind of confused i don't want to start a controversy but i'm hearing that we have time until 2024 but it's mission critical we've got to do it now and then we don't have a itemized list of what we're spending money on we'll let you know in april if we hit the 40 if this this one article just seems to have a lot of gray area gray matter yeah so there's you know and this is true of articles in any um you never have all the line item detail in the article but there's been a significant amount of work by devin and other people on staff to you know get bring in okay what do we think it's going to cost to you know update the phone system what do we think it's going to do for the firewall and whatever

there were some other numbers that were not quite as sperm like the computer numbers and so on so in the interest of of getting the work going and being able to take care of the most mission critical issues at the town office then that's why we're asking for some money now to get started and get well down the road of taking care of what needs to be taken care of over there the 2024 thing is related to arca funds in general where basically we have until the end december 31st of 2024 to basically say this is what we're going to spend this money use it or lose it and then you've got two more years to actually expend the money i got you if just to put in if there's a better explanation before april of where we're at with that 45 000 will there be a better explanation uh yeah will there be i would expect that will there be an update yes i expected april we would come if there's another technology question on you know for

april if we're asking to use more funds for that there would be a this is what this is what we've done so far this is how much it costs this is what we think still needs to be done this is what we estimated and my end goal is not to i it needs to it needs to happen sure get it done get the government working i just want to know what's going to be left over so that we can have debates on that number and it may be 10 000 more you know i mean you can you know what i'm saying i want to have a better figure on what extra funds that we have and that will ultimately be up to the town on i don't i honestly don't think there's going to be anything left over for this 45 i think it's likely that it's going to be higher than this in the long run especially once we start talking about bringing the eureka center us up to being able to live stream and uh meetings from here and and have the recording equipment

here to do that that's that's a whole separate deal i appreciate your time and mr berkowitz would like to say you raised a very good point and that's why brought up the fact that the hardware computers is the last item on the list of items that has to get done it will expand or contract to the others that are more prioritized secondly your town manager currently and in the future reports to the select board the progress of these projects and what may very well be short or over and what we're doing going forward so you won't have to wait till april to find out that we've got the phones installed and there's this amount of money left you won't have to wait to april to find out after we've completed the connection and the connectivity here that we're going to need something else any unexpended funds from these articles under our book if we decide we're not going any further has to go back to the offer general fund

not your tax general fund the arker fund that we keep separately on the books awesome i hope that it does absolutely and then i'm assuming you have contractors and everybody already lined up you've gotten quotes that's why we're still refining those because just today we found out that there's another opportunity but we're not so sure we want to be the newbies on the block to use it gotcha thank you for your time thanks thank you yes man hi i'm catherine curtis i'm from brianna drive and i just wanted to compliment that you're actually considering using this space and not considering making the town office the taj mahal or something so i think that this step i know you will no no no listen i've been in the town office late at night counting ballots rock county ballots by helping to finalize things it's a small space they do need more room and i compliment you that you took the action to get the furnace fixed

add a few other things in there while you're at it so that we're not coming back every month for special meeting and also considering using the space so i just wanted to put that out there that you're asking for very reasonable things right now so i just wanted to compliment you for that thank you ma'am would you like to say something um i just wanted to share please approach them i'm just i'm speaking as a budget can be better now i'm sorry at my table but i'm heather roy hollowell road um todd mentioned the utilizing this space for meeting space when we were talking about the 45 000 and so i just wanted to be really clear when jane came up and addressed that that that 45 000 my understanding is that that doesn't have anything to do with bringing this space up to speed in terms of um the funds that it will take to do that that's something that we're going to come back to so i just want to make

sure that people yeah okay and then there was something else but i can't remember what it was um and i just want to really say thank you very much for your questions and your um your request for detail i'm on the budget committee and i'm usually the one that's like right there with my thumb on top of it asking for those details and i kind of get a hard time because of that so i appreciate that i'm not the only one in town that really wants to see those numbers um

drive um i'm just wondering what and what the accounting would look like at the end of each of these projects mr brookwoods what the accounting would look like i think it's fairly straightforward starting amount itemized expenditures by contract service and invoicing balance remaining period because we can't go over what you've authorized and your new town manager follows the basic same things where he's been now in his current business as well as the business here so that that would become public knowledge and that's reported to our select board let's assume we executed one of the contracts tomorrow and paid out forty five thousand and i would say we executed forty five thousand it's working zero balance thank you man just one additional comment to that the arbor program itself has some pretty rigorous um documentation requirements and that um to establish that it's eligible for our funding so that's something that you

know like janet and jerry will have to be on top of to make sure that we're following all those requirements okay thank you anybody else like to speak on this article okay see no one and we'll move on to a vote to see if the town will vote to appropriate 45 000 from our book funds received by the town for communication and information technology upgrades for the town office public works and fire station now if you want to appropriate that money please raise your green cards if you do okay put them down if you do not want to appropriate that money please raise your green cards okay an overwhelming majority has voted to appropriate 45 000 from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project communication and information technology upgrades for town office public works fire station so we'll move on to article six

to see if the town will vote to appropriate sixteen thousand dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project gis tax mapping work would anybody like to make a motion when we accept article six is presented is there a second i'll second that okay it's been moved and seconded to adopt article six is there any discussions

road um just kind of wondering similar to the last line of questioning with the sixteen thousand dollars are we looking at purchasing an arc license if so what program and is that a single use license or a continuous use license or are we looking at having a third party digitize the data layers for us does anybody have a good answer i will start and then i will ask the moderator call upon alan plummer our code enforcement officer to finish it the issue will be third party the vendor and that includes two years of updating as well it isn't just acquisition but it's also servicing the purpose of maps are critical to not only knowing what we're doing with our zoning areas within those zones and our code enforcement as well as preparation or tax bills i know no one's nice to talk about tax bills but if we delay in our tax billing because of inefficient records and keeping retreats and maps that are not

updated we effectively run ourselves into a position where cash flow out is greater than cash flow in so effectively this is also going to allow the improvement for our tax billing and one of their benefits that comes from this is the number of calls that we get from real estate agents about different parcels of land effectively can be answered now at our website once this is on board but i'd like alan to come forward if you would wherever you are ellen and please finish off what i have started

officer for durham um george the burj who's the town planner was tasked to seek out some parties that can fulfill our tax map requirement so if you didn't know up until 2020 we had mylar tax maps which are literally pieces of plastic that are drawn on erased and updated that way and we had john o'donnell an associate's tax company that took care of our tax map for us so they would update them update them in that way we now have those mylars actually rolled up in a case in our office they're no longer doing it the person that was doing their tax maps is um is ill and will not be doing that any longer and the company is stopping doing that so we haven't had any updates since then so no no tax map updates since then we have a record of those map changes that have occurred and those occur on a regular daily basis the number of calls that i get as the code enforcement officer about boundaries and my property and can i do

this and how much road frontage is constant all day long so we don't have those updates we needed to find somebody there is nobody so a donald associates had numerous towns 15 20 towns that they did that for all of those towns are looking for map people now so what george did was researched tax gis companies so gis is a step beyond what mylar tax maps are it's gis so positioning through satellites and so forth and maps would show up with better detail or better specifics than a mylar adjusted tax map so he looked into those companies came up with two companies that were more reasonable than others we could spend many thousands of dollars to do that and there are some towns that have the funds to do that two companies came up that were reasonable and we would get far beyond what we currently have or well what we currently had and those were spatial alternatives inc and arcgis a company out of portland and not

positive the name of the company but we looked at those two companies the tax assessor myself and george the burge we looked at all of the things that they had to offer we decided that spatial alternatives was the company that best fit our needs um the other company had lots of bells and whistles but we might not actually use all those things and and we didn't see why would we pay for that stuff so we would use that company they would apply our tax maps to the existing layers that they had for data for satellite images and those kind of things adjust them appropriately as they needed to be adjusted and those would be hosted on their website so as mitch said it's a two or three year uh was it two mitch or three years contract so two years we'd pay for um updates for three years i'm sorry i was a teacher in my other life i hate to talk to you like that um so uh we would pay for two years of updates

and that that encompasses the things that we get on a daily basis so we would turn those in at a specific time during the year they would do those updates and they would show up on our system so not only do we have would we have those digital images online to use but they'll print us out regular tax maps like we currently have so we'll get paper copies you don't need a computer to go to see the tax maps and things like that you can come in just like you can come in now and see the tax maps and would put those on pdf online so you could open those up and view them but you could also go on the computer and look at them and see where your property is and look at a satellite view and see where your house sits compared to your property lines so the bang for the buck going with this i would say normally small towns can't afford that really i came from another small town where i used to be the code officer and

they can't afford to do that unfortunately they use o'donnell as well so they're going to have to do something having the money come in a bunch like that and saying you can use this on capital improvements that will help people access your information from online and they don't have to come into the office and that kind of stuff is really a boost so there's a bunch of other things in that in the program that we'll be able to use as town staff for finding out who the abutters are very quickly um cutting down on my time um looking for the abutters finding their addresses i got to tell you the way i do things now is i'm i was shocked when i got to town and i have to do it that way i just blows my mind that i have to look at those kind of things it's just really really slow and it takes a lot of time to do everything i have to do uh in this job so i was very excited to hear that we might be able to get js mapping

for the town i think it's a great step it's it's the way of the future 10 or 15 years ago so it's great that we're going there now take it um did i answer all of your questions yep then answer your questions yeah i'm sorry i have an additional okay please yeah joe roy pink on brook road i just want to echo kind of what alan was saying i fully support the use of gis i use it every single day with mapping if we're trying to move into the 20 and 21st century we should probably digitize these data um i was just curious about whether we were having a third party do it or done internally because the licensing is very expensive and there's a very large learning curve to to being in with it so i'm happy to hear we're considering it and i think it's a really good thing for our town moving forward thank you very much ma'am

i'm this comment is as a budget committee member i am an advocate of this um i just think it's really important when we're that residents understand that this becomes a budget item in terms of this subscription cost so that's been touched on but i just want yeah so after the two years that cost no longer can be used by arpa funds to be paid for that becomes a budgetary item that the town will have as part of its annual budget going forward and then my comment or my question rather as a resident is um i've heard about a lot of various ways that this is going to save money by cutting down on the hours that town staff has to spend doing the work that they're doing which is great and then um i'm also curious if this will allow more accurate acreage

if there's like measurements that are available through this um because in a recent application through the planning board uh the a lot was being taxed as 41 acres when they had their survey done it came back as 52 acres and so i'm wondering if that is a potential avenue that will create additional revenue for the town

the third vendor was 21 000 a year so you need to put that in comparison and that's for their preparation and that did include annual subscription to your two questions that were raised in general we will have to wait and see the total impact but on a daily basis we probably get five to six calls from realtors across the united states asking about property that may be for sale or specific properties that may be in the process as alan has pointed out there's a second part to your question will the gis produce accurate um lot sizes to our understanding within a few inches of each lot line it's supposed to be dead on center and they go ahead with that

also goes to the issue of how quickly and accurately we get out our tax bills which in turn affects our cash flow which in turn may help save us from having to borrow a tax anticipation note these are all tied together they're just not standalone items please i'm glad you brought up the parcel measurements so to keep the cost down that might be something that comes up later and you could advocate for further spending for that however to keep the cost down if we said we need you to look at our deeds and analyze them and put those measurements into the map that's a humongous font that's a that's a lot more cost so we we didn't include that at all i wondered if like because when you look at google earth you can see a house proportionate to the size if that like automatically made the reference land around it also the case and would maybe be more accurate it's going to be more accurate they're going to stretch the satellite

imagery to match our contours and roads and things like that it will be more accurate and the i think the great thing is starting when we start with the company and a new lot comes in with the deed we're gonna we will ask for that and we have those but they're in our files and none of those measurements from the deed transfer it to our tax maps that was the hardest thing for me when i looked at our tax math and went where's the measurements where do they go anything coming in after we get this company they will scan the deed and the measurements will be on that parcel so whenever they add that parcel to the gis layer the measurements will be on there so and it will be the measurements from the d so that's that's a humongous steps for the town yeah is roy does that answer your question

future tax implications that may come up uh what is this annual subscription per year and is there any way we can use these arpa funds to pay say 10 years in advance so that it doesn't come back on the durham taxpayers if we're only at sixteen thousand can we can we pay ten years in advance good question any answers you've already taken that philosophy and added two years subscription to the ten thousand dollar preparation okay so this is expensive to answer the question further the likelihood is no because at some point it becomes a burden to the local taxpayer and you can't replace those dollars with our funds so by 2026 we will be pretty well extended of the opera funds you will be taking this on on an ongoing basis through your local taxes and so i guess what is the annual subscription what do what do we need to cover depending on the activity if you've got a lot of subdivisions and new lots being

developed obviously there's a lot more work if you had a no growth community no changes to speak of you probably don't have as much as much to do so that's why there's the range and we took the top range year divide that by however many taxpayers you're looking at an increase of what on the property

correct thank you thank you another good question that i can answer if that's okay um uh so that the annual cost if it if we have a low year where nothing split up or little stuff is split off they said they can take that and if we have a light year we can say hey we'd like you to do these parcels we'd like you to add the measurements for these partials for that here so take this section and do that extensive research into the deed and they'll do that section of town with the parcel um square foot the square line footage so that's awesome um oh i was going to say something else i forgot standing in front of all these people um that's right if it comes yeah yeah speak again great yes sir jeroy banker brook road same question as the guy before me he already answered that um so i guess my question would be a clarification it sounds like from what mr palmer is saying this is just digitizing our existing data and not

reassessing the information that goes in because your maps can be accurate but in the example of surveys that aren't done properly or something like that it's not going to make any adjustments so it sounds like this isn't doing deed research or reassessing or redeveloping the map it's just digitizing our existing map just looking for clarification

you know correct that's just what i was curious about awesome and you said so it sounds like it's a initial cost of ten thousand and then one to three thousand dollars annually depending on activity yes in the first two years of subscription and updating is built into the 16 000 uh article that you're holding yeah yeah round numbers just always look suspicious on a budget so

remember that we pay a fairly substantial amount now for john o'donnell to pencil in our maps on the on the plastic in and it's probably on par with the annual cost for this so we currently pay that anyway um that's actually what i was going to say we're already paying for some of the service anyway and we could also if we know it's going to be 6 000 a year say they go up a lot we can put that into our fee structure when people ask for subdivision fees we could we could put that cost into the fee structure to help supplement the cost of doing it

sir eastern moderator brian lonwa robert road since it seems like there's going to be a little bit of money on the table has any consideration or discussion been put into expanding the gis system past tax maps into maybe utilities throughout the town that may help dpw would anybody like to ask i i can

separately uh you know the public works director the town manager had conversations about that but it's not something that was brought before the board at this point we wanted to get the foundation in place that will be at the discretion of future leadership in the public great thank you but honestly if that's something that you think would be a good idea i encourage you to contact the select board yeah i think that's an example of what i meant referenced earlier there'll be some we'll have some public opportunities for hey what else could we do with this with the remaining arc of money and you know that might be a great you know thing to do i will thank you thank you mr plumbing sorry i have something to add to that um so we had talked about that there are um further things that can happen with this particular software package so we could do alternate layers different layers and things that could affect public works as

well um so that's a possibility and was that yes sir uh gerry pinkenbrook road i guess one clarifying question then um you know speak kind of compounding on what the previous gentleman had said gis is a huge iceberg and we're using a snowflake on the tip of it so there's a lot of really great tools that can be used here this is digitizing our tax maps is it also digitizing our current resource uh layers or like zoning layers and the stuff like that that is currently drawn on the tax maps

question i have one more question please how about that does that then become the official town map the way the ordinance reads it says the way it's defined on the talent map so does that then when you zoom in and blow it up and you can see the line of resource protection does that then become the official town map

just maybe it would be subject to a town boat just like on the last time meeting where one of the votes was do you accept the new updated town map yeah yeah we have to go through that boat okay so correct yeah and i'm not i'm unsure about which would be used so right now we have one that's voted signed by the clerk it's on the wall that is official um i think we will have a printed copy we'll have printed copies of those i don't know legally if that is the official copy and if there's an anomaly when you're looking at it and you're doing some analysis whatever that doesn't have to do with the passing of the font yeah sorry yeah clarify one thing on that though even even the official map we have is

is a starting point it's not to the level of detail oftentimes to make some decisions that need to be made it's often time you have to go to on the ground survey work to actually confirm you know what you think the map is showing because it's like it's like trying to build a house on a crayon sketch you know it's just it's not enough detail you've done that

this does not believe the surveyor the seller or the buyers surveyor of their obligation and duty to properly uh not assess but to measure the lot lines as accurately and do the research that is necessary in the court of law the gis may be part of the evidence but i think the preponderance of evidence comes from the on the ground work as the chairman is pointed out thank you did that answer your question yes very well thank you anybody else like to speak on the uh on the issue yes sir

question is the initial ten thousand dollars i've heard spoken of uh is that work that's done for that amount of money at the end of the subscription gonna be something that we can take with us if we go to another company is it going to be something that they're going to have sole possession of does anybody have an answer if i may and subject to alan's crew generally we're paying for that map that comes out that year that becomes the town's property if the software that they're using is proprietary the new company may have to use their software and convert it to their software but generally speaking we own the map

yeah and we own the data it's the town's data it's not the company does not retain any rights to that it's definitely even the just the gis data is our data and we can remove that whenever we decide to do that and go to a different company although that may not be an easy change

question will vote to appropriate sixteen thousand dollars from arpa funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project gis tax mapping work if you would like to appropriate that money please raise your card okay please put them down if you would like to not appropriate that money please raise your card

a large majority having voted the town will appropriate sixteen thousand dollars from coronavirus local fiscal recovery funds aka american rescue plan or arco funds received by the town from the federal government for the following project gis tax map award and that brings us to the end of the business is there any other business to come before the uh i just wanted to um say thank you to mitch for being here

this has obviously been a very tough period for the time of durham and we still have a learning curve to go with our new town manager so um but mitch has been a godsend and i can't imagine what the last few months would have been uh without you mitch and um very grateful for the work you've done and i think i think we may have finished him off though he said he's probably not taking any more interim town managers

searches and things of that sort so but really the town owes you a great debt he put in way more time than we actually contracted for and so we're just very very grateful thank you debate so let's take a vote everyone who would like to adjourn

which means completely and forever and i just want to mention that there's a candidate for maine senate here betty sheets and she's in the back of the room and i'm sure she'd be happy to talk to anybody who'd love to speak with him thank you all for coming thank you everybody