##VIDEO ID:YwDPQ8E7WvE## [Music] good afternoon everyone today is Tuesday October 8th 2024 it is 400 p.m. this is a meeting of the board of Selectmen is there a motion to call the meeting to order so moved second all those in favor hi this meeting will be audio and video recording please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance pled of alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right first thing on the agenda gentlemen we have some meeting minutes to approve uh before we go into that uh we have a correction on the July 31st 2024 meeting minutes it's listed as regular meeting that was an executive session um so before we approve them I'd like to make that correction uh the July 31st should list as executive session both in our recorded minutes and on the agenda uh with that being said is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes for July 24th 2024 so moved second all those in favor all is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes for July 31st 2024 with the corrections sove second in favor right right uh we are going to skip over the appointments as you all know that the golf committee could not make it tonight because of the gentleman doing the presentation we will reschedule that in the future Mr chairman yes it is on the agenda um you know the gulf so I don't want to go out of it but you I know we've all talked you've talked about it Mr Gasper talked about it about some type of facility improvement over there the current state of that can't even call it a clubhouse that structure yep is a disaster and I'm just asking that we look to uh you know talk to the committee about that when they come in um you know we got some concept again I you know I think a separate feasibility or study committee separate from the golf management committee would be an approach because we've got people who are interested in serving and helping out the golf course but there are really no slots so I just ask that we place that on that we place that on the agenda is part of that meeting uh to discuss that sure you know okay all right new business number one we got a couple letters of interest for the golf committee um I'm sure you gentlemen got to read through both of these letters um either choice on this would actually be quite a benefit to our community we have two Avid golfers one that has helped coach there and one that actually work there for 10 years Mr chairman to this to the point right we've got a lot of people with a lot of interest could we hold off until we at least have the discussion possibly on whether or not we create a second committee to look at the facility because then maybe one of these gentlemen would want to serve there I don't know um but if you want to move forward with an appointment tonight that's fine too but I just feel like to have a clear picture um of what direction we want to go and would help at least help me make an informed decision Mr Gasper Mr inkle any problems with that no all right so we will pass over the letters of Interest until next meeting uh new business number two uh gentlemen our paramedic career fir fighter Wendy Ashworth has decided to retire after 15 years with a um Wendy was always a staple at pretty much everything uh even when it was the bad stuff she was always one of the first ones there um I wish Wendy nothing but the best and congratulator on a retirement Mr chairman Mr Gasper I would second what you said and Wendy um it's regrettable that you are um retiring but congratulations on your retirement and so everybody knows in the community she's always been a asset to this community into our fire and EMS Department um I've gotten a known Wendy on a personal level um she's full of excitement when she's even on the job um as hot as that job can be she always brings a good attitude to the scene um and she's an incredible um employee and she'll be sadly missed yeah back I Echo those comments all right next up on the agenda Enterprise funds template Mr Kelly this one's all you uh the first one uh I'd like to take up is the template for the budget for the golf Enterprise fund I'm uh scheduled a meeting with uh the director of golf and the superintendent of golf the superintendant uh was able to meet with me the director did not not so there are some still some questions as far as the clubhouse uh expense budget but uh Mr tibbles and I went over the maintenance budget not as far as the numbers but just as far as setting it up so we could actually see Clubhouse expenses versus maintenance expenses both for personnel and for the regular the various other expenses you will also see that I set up a SE separate section for indirect costs and I've started to work with the treasure collector's office the town accountant and it to update those as well as health insurance uh I'm also meeting with the general insurance broker we're going over all the vehicles to make sure that the vehicle inventory is up to date and the insurance is up to date on that and then you see the jet Service uh just a couple typos just one typo and the last page the second page it says sewer Enterprise fund I'm sure you did like a copy and paste just to clean that up well that's a sore oh okay I'm sorry I was looking at superintendent oh okay my my fault uh and I started to do excuse me the just put a template together for sewer that also allows the indirect cost and as we started to look into it uh for example example is uh sewer billing and sewer and postage turns out that we use the same company for billing for sewer and water as we do for taxes uh we send out four bills a year for sewer and water two bills a year for taxes but they've got two qu is for the taxes uh so we have six Billings but two of those uh two times a year we send out bills approximately 2 weeks maybe 10 days apart we're build per uh item m uh it's the same company there is the contract uh goes back to 2014 they every year or so they put it up 5% from what I can see the question is uh whether uh we could and we download from the treasur our collector's office ATT tax to the company we download to from sewer and uh water to the company question is unipay right huh is that unipay bill trust Bill trust okay the question is uh if there's some way we could move uh condense it a little bit uh that and so we could send the tax bills and one qu of the water bills out at the same time sure twice a year uh we would save some money sure Mr chairman gas I think we years ago I don't remember exactly what year we did it but we did it so that we weren't overburdened in the taxpayer and the residents of a cushion it to put everybody on the same cycle so we joged that out I don't know if it was two weeks or a full month so that people aren't getting slammed with a tax bill plus a water sewer bill um so I don't if I want to take that risk of running parallels with building cycles and then screwing up water and billing to save ourselves a couple thousand bucks we were in that condition we're rubbing two nickels together to come up with a couple of grand over postage we have bigger problems than what we're discussing now so I I would have to look into that with DBW to find out but I'm pretty sure I'm right about the building Cycles um I think the board of selectman actually initiated that to get them off each other so they're not getting slammed like that um people that are getting their tax bill plus a sewer and water bill um it's quite a bit to come up with in a 30-day period and that's the reason why we stagged the building it makes sense sometimes all right so this is um just a expanded version of the current budget because all these budgets have already been these are not proposed yeah so this this is just a template a template okay that can't take effect none of this can take effect until the next fiscal year Mr chairman the the budgets have been voted by town meeting cannot be changed now in indirect costs I don't believe have been vetted with the golf committee and all anybody from water and sewer department and or the board of Selectmen so we've talked about it numerous times over numerous administrations and we've gone nowhere with it and if we're going to talk about it then we need to bring in golf committee and vet that out as as well this is just for the templates all right yeah I'll take a look at this too cuz it's I like I like how everything's broken down a little bit more appropriately but like Mr Gasper said we'll have to really focus on if we want to tackle the indirect costs we should do that set that up in the future Co all right anything else you've done some indirect costs already with golf correct and it's there's been some indirect cost over the years in golf um and I and I think we did their budget already with some additional indirect costs that we have not been capturing over the years right but this expands on those indirect costs what is that Financial impact I don't know yet y we'll Dive In uh next on the agenda flowable Phil Road trenches uh Mr Gasper I believe you asked to put this on the agenda I took it off the Whiteboard but somehow it ended up back on the agenda um because I was concerned over some of the trenching work that we actually do the town actually does right it's sinking trenches right um we have one over here on South Bane Street we put in a SE line reconnected a SE line um and that one's fallen in pretty substantial and I got a price from LNS concrete on fillable flow but what I didn't realize is you can't just use a 6in layer of fillable flow So based on the price that I got for 6 in 2 ft wide 300 ft length in trench it was only 1,500 bucks I was like worth it all day long after to speaking there some people in the construction business they said you cannot fill a trench that way with regular dirt and growel underneath of it it will still sink the only option that you have would be the fill the trench either with stone all the way up until you hit that 6 in below and then use fiable flow or use gravel all the way up so I don't know what I speaking to missad I know a lot of trenches that he's been doing um some of them are 6 ft deep some are 8 ft deep so that 1,500 bucks you know 10 xit right so now you're talking you know in the realm of 20 25 G's to fill in a trench 2 feet wide 300 ft in depth uh 300 ft long in 6 ft in depth 10x that 6 in right you're 15 18 Grand if it's 8 ft deep you're talking 20 25 Grand adds a substantial cost to it certainly um but INF fillable flow is not foolproof either to not let sink it although it does work better that's hence the reason why they've used it right y um but it is a conversation to have depending I guess on where we're trenching it might be wise to to have that dialogue with Mr Manata DPW director but you know it's entirely up to the board um that's just something I I kind of did my own little background research on to figure it out right because that trench on South Main Street bugs me yeah um and I've watched all the gas beains from eversource and how much those collapse as well right they can't use fillable flow on gas beans CU they can't detect gas leaks through fillable flow right so that's that that's my uh my basic explanation on flowable fill fillable flow whatever they want to call it um I'd be open to uh you know some of the smaller ones or repairs when we don't have you know a schedul Road opening for a while you know if they're very small I'd be interested into seeing if the cost is relatively close so like the one on halfway that's the one I was just going to say right so you live down that way and I remember being on that water main break and I'll call it a 6x6 square right that they plunged down and did a water ban break I think and I understand the time of day and everything else he might not be able to get it but you can plate the road until the next day and then come back and fill it the right way right so it's just a conversation I think we need to have with a DPW director and say in these kind of circumstances especially halfway it's just turned just at its fifth birthday right where you can't touch a road and open up a road although that was a watermain break and we out of town so we were forced to get in there and cut that road open it was after a 5e anniversary of the bylaw so we have to do what we have to do right I think in a c circumstance like that where you had a brand new road it would have probably been in a Town's best interest to to fill the trench with fillable flow yep right so we don't have that collapsing problem like we have last time I checked that that patch is pretty collapsed yeah right so we it's dangerous for our residents and that's my concern can we you know I'm just kind of thanks to you Mr G for for educating us on this but you know if we can get with Dan for all these projects and just come up with a minimum standard so we don't even it shouldn't even be like should we or should we not right like this is what you got to do to make sure it's done properly the first time complete it so we don't have to come back to it right we should just have minimum standards and you know budget for it appropriately because there's nothing more frustrating than trying to do something half measure and then you got to come back and fix it just do it right once the first time we'll be done with it best we can so but you're right soel like I mean we have chapter 90 funds we have DPW in the dpw's budget I think this we carry 200 grand for Road materials right um and I understand that the more we spend fixing this patch over here will'll have less to do in future projects but you have to you have to weigh that right is what's the best scenario for the town's people right do you spend the extra 25 Grand getting it done and done right there's there's multiple options and I just think that we you know we need to do better job when we're working within our own scope of services right we need to have that like you said a basic standard right and figure out what that's going to be whether it's fill it all the way up with stone or fill it with fillable flow either or or half and half I don't know yeah we get into more conversations with more construction people like I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends that are in the construction business and I can hit them up whenever I want and they talk to me and they say ah you can't do like the the 6 inch thing right I thought it was just you know you know the top coat put that in there be strong enough but I guess it's pretty it's pretty it's not concrete it's a concrete mix but it's watered down concrete mix so you can easily be excavat right you can break through it pretty simple but yet it holds up from dropping down so you know I'm not a rocking science on fillable flow flowable fill whatever the words they want to use but um the more and more I talk to people the more and more I get educated and sometimes it's interesting and sometimes it's boring but sometimes that's what it takes to get a job done that's that's what I do yep thank you so that's that selectman's announcements no other than Mr chairman look there's a lot of snowbirds from the area who are down on the west down in Florida who go have properties down there um just wish them safety you know whether they're down there now or not um it's still I'm sure very unsettling and we're thinking about you dud so I have a question one question for the town administrators where we at with the police chief Assessment Center cuz that's kind of been off the radar for a little while we need to get um active on that again so I'll throw that out and then I also want to just apologize for the miscommunications between our vendors uh DPW staff there's been an ongoing discussion with vendors for Paving Milling structure resetting on NIS Lane Randall Kendrick rck and all you folks that had your road reclaimed on Helen Joseph and Earl I apologize for the delay and it not being paved I don't know why I'm apologizing but I feel I have to apologize to you folks because now I'm being told normally we would have that done in a week to 10 days um and I'm being told that the paven company that won the bid is not PJ keing it's pcket asalt and I'm being told that they cannot get here until the third week of October so I'm not happy with that situation I'm with all you folks that are a little bit aggravated about the road conditions but there's nothing that I can do about it I can't pave those roads myself unfortunately but we're going to have to live with that for at least a couple more weeks and we're doing our best to keep the lines of communications open um throughout our vendors to make sure this mishap don't happen but sometimes when you have multiple vendors um this is what happens because it's the end of the paving season and everybody's scrambling to get things done so we were told by certain vendors that we'd be there in 2 weeks we'd be there in a week I can't get there in two weeks but I can go there now and it just got a little messy so for that I apologize to all our residents instead of being inconvenience by our roadways Mr Gasper so was there did they have to in the contract that was awarded that was there a time that they were supposed to complete it in so I think one of them Mr Kelly he did the bid opening I didn't do that but I know that there was a comment about the one that won the bid for pav and said Within 30 days I don't even know if they've gotten a contract back to us we sent it out a little bit late from what I understand from our office um working on templates and figuring out how to put contracts together whatever that misstep was but we got it out and last I checked I think it was late last week when Mr Kelly and Sydney I think you were helping us out trying to figure it out we have not gotten it back from that paven company what I will bring to the board's attention after I looked at it and found some problems unfortunately that's what I have to do I will say this I think because of this mishap I've learned a lesson and that lesson is I don't believe that the town should allow to go out to bid and put bids out for milling and Paving separately right we should hold it to one company so that company's now responsible to M to Mill the roads do the structures and then come in and pave the road what happened in this last one on NIS Lane Randall and Kendrick is one company won the paving bid another company won the Milling bid right I think if we could do it I don't know if it's legal we have to figure that out but my recommendation to the board would be is and to DPW is before we ever go back out and put road paving Milling road paving out to bid we put it as one bid so you have you have one person one entity bidding on both milling and Paving so we don't get caught in this that's how we got to this right and I didn't realize all of this stuff until I started digging into the surface and saying how did we get this screwed up how was this delay happening so I started doing my research on everything following looking at the bid specs and I'm like why do we do this we we to to make sure this never happens again and again I don't know if it's legal I think Jamie shaking his head saying we can do it if we can do it then that why wouldn't we do it that way just put it all as one we shouldn't allow one company from timb 2 to bid on milling and another company from timb 2 the wins the bid on Paving and then they can't coordinate with each other on hey I'm coming in to Mill and you got to be there next week cuz they got to reset structures and I take a couple of days and D that's how we ended up in this well I would just ask if and I'm caught up with all the residents if any of those companies who won the bid did not do what the bid said and if they're delayed or whatever I would just ask that they B I don't if there's a way we can do it legally but they'd be disqualified from bidding on any any other future projects in town I don't know if we can do that and I don't know the circumstance aners I just ask that you look into it you don't have to answer now but yeah yeah so I am thank you David I am looking into that actually because I'm trying to look at fortunately again I'm looking at how it was put out to bid right and I know that the bid came back in from one of them one of the vendors saying if we can't do the job in 30 days then we can't do the job right the other person only missed that bid by I think it was like 5,500 bucks the next bidder so we can't look at that and I guess we' go down that road and if that company's not even given us back the contract and you know when the bid opening was if that 30 days done then can we we'd have to talk to council and say can we just you know withdraw that contract and give it to the other company to get them in here to do it sooner right yeah anyway I was trying to this other company isn't from around here that won the paven contract and it would would be nice to see somebody else's work right unfortunately you can win at that you can lose at that right it's a gamble does the company do better work than the company that's been bidding and getting the jobs or do they do equal work and it doesn't really matter anymore or do they do worse work and you never use them again now you have a reason to deny right and do we have a local a like a bilocal provision at all with this stuff you at least going to be instate because this company's from puet right or something or other yeah a lot of the um that's the name of it Southeast Massachusetts cities and towns have started to use pck okay all right I don't want to be late and another uh most of the contracts I've seen lately what they go out at the beginning of the year for not for projects but for the year to provide all the services for the year and they're renewable for two years after that year to year the problem the problem with what Mr Kelly just said is I I talked to pavin companies um on what he's describing right now and that's basically what they like to do is come in and and some towns getting like networks where they all join into this little Network and do that right I forgot the exact terminology but we'll call it networking for now right the problem with that is they look at how much money you're getting in chapter 90 funds the 315 we get and they say this is what I would tell you to do with you 315 would really not that kind of a municipality right they come in and they say well we can do that road and that Road and that road for that 315 right that's not how we've operated because you never know what you need to do From Any Given year right we got the bridge being done um Hamlin Street Bridges getting closer to completion under the select's announcements Mr chairman I was down here last week I talked to the engineer I talked to the construction supervisor it's looking good they're getting there they they're attempt is to try to open up the road for the Fall Again they're on the restraints for Paving if they can't do it I think their stop Gap is November 15th so if they're not up there and ready to put pavement down by November 15th I think the state tells them stop and the bridge will stay closed for the winter right that's where we're at with that ladies and gentlemen I've heard a lot from a lot of our residents about Hamlet Street bridge I'm constantly down there I try to leave them alone so now I'm down there every 3 to four weeks just seeing their progress they're getting there it's still about 10 ft below grade but they're moving pretty quickly no 15th will be here very soon right it's going to be nice when it's done it looks pretty sharp with all the ston workor and it it's going to be really nice it is so again that's the problem with that plan that Mr Kelly just laid out about how all the towns are doing it and you know you can give them an idea say this road this road and this road but you commit to that and then you get something else that happens you kind of screwed so we kind of leave that wide open um every year for discussion right most of the most of the paving that we've been doing in the town in the last 6 months really cuz evosaur is so delayed um that's coming from most of that money is coming from Ur So we're doing the best we can with the resources that we have as far as this board goes um it's just waiting for money from urce to get here so we can go out the bed so we're getting the job done it's just taking a little bit and again I apologize to everybody in those streets that I've named we we're working on it thanks for looking into it Mr gas police Assessment Center is important no agreed we uh uh there's a document I don't know if everybody picked it up that they issued October 2nd which is the new E&E requirements and uh we're we've set up or attempting to set up uh call between the interim police chief myself and the hrd exam person uh that also does the certification on the assessment centers to see how this new uh rulings would impact on that right so what triggered me not only have I been hurting from my police officer but on page of 505 of our minutes that we just approved says chairman Hanley instructed Mr Kelly to contact town councel and obtain a de delegation letter he also instructed Chief Richmond to keep communication lines open with Mr Kelly to expedite the process so that's why I'm bringing it up Town Council needs to be involved with a delegation letter and what we can and can't do and provide the board with some clarity on how we can score things and things of the like before we just get dictated to by civil service that's what I think the board was looking to do so I would keep that in mind um with the provisional Chief Mr Tommy Karu which is doing a fabulous job for us I know Mr Richmond retired but Mr K's on top of his game over there and he's doing a hell of a job for the police department so thanks to Tommy Karu for stepping up jumped right in appreciate it all right anything else gentlemen we have some executive sessions executive session under Mass general Law chapter 30A subsection 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation finance department golf Department United Steel Workers or ask me if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares and the board will not return to public session at the conclusion of the executive session and an executive session under masteral Law chapter 30A subsection 21 A1 to discuss the reputation character physical condition or mental health rather than professional competence of an individual or discuss the discipline or dismissal of or complaints or charges against the public officer employee staff member or individual Personnel DPW if the chair declares that an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the governing body and the board will not return to public session at the conclusion of the executive session is there a motion to go into executive session so move second all those in favor Mr rner roll call yes Mr Gasper yes I me yes we're an executive SE [Music]