good evening this is June June 4th 2024 at 6 o'clock pm uh in the selectman's chambers I'd like to call this meeting to order and a roll call please pres Jo shank pres CH duranium pres stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America stands Nation indivisible jice for all thank all those who had served both past and present um I know they're doing uh their the fireman's doing their memorial too tonight 7 o'clock um and I express to them that we were a little busy tonight we wouldn't be able to uh to attend but do a nice job there uh the meeting is being recorded and it will be uploaded at a later time to YouTube is anybody else recording uh Chairman's additions and deletions I do not have any I good all set okay uh review and approve uh any meeting minutes we do not have any but I do plan on taking care of that on the 18th um 605 603 probably do 3.1 we could do 3.1 so I'll entertain a motion to appoint Jeremiah Ford as a part-time intermittent seasoned laborer to the cemeterian parks department with a start uh effective date of 617 20124 so second at all the paperwork I didn't see anything any discussion on that in favor we're all present so we can just vote we don't need to roll call makes it easier um we'll jump into 605 joint meeting with the Board of Health um this is for an appointment for the Board of Health so the Board of Health would you like to call your meeting to order yes we let do the talking this Dr Christian RZ um Vice chairman of the board of health um so the Board of Health on the last meeting um have voted I apologize second you first you need to to call the meeting order take a roll call just so because you have an efficient just like you were havinge downstairs before you do any talking you just have an actual meeting first all right call of officers question C all present I call a meeting to order on June 4th at 6:05 p.m sorry about that I just wanted to make sure we were all official we're all official so on our last meeting of the Board of Health um we had um decided to move forward um recommending Mr Charles Shen as um as the clerk for um the Board of Health for um for the position that was open um after discussing um uh and we we wanted an ously having him appointed as part of the board of house okay so Mr chair just as a a reminder the because this is an elected board um it's not solely within the purview of the board of Selectmen to make an appointment to full vacancy the reason we have a joint meeting is because the the two boards will not act as as one to vote on an individual to fill the remaining vacancy this is for um Chris nella's remaining term position and we do have two there were two from the paperwork I received there were two candidates we do have one candidate that's here and then if I'm correct it's someone needs to be the um a motion needs to be made and then the five the five individuals would vote V everybody um I wish to um let this board know that is in the hospital um and he could make it today so but he expressed to us that he is interest on participating the board of a motion yeah I make a motion we point Todd Asal the bo for remaining term that would be a term to expire on April 28 2025 for a second second is a motion on the floor to appoint Tod Todd Arsenal as um thew position for the Board of Health any further discussion I'd like to voice opion at please you have a recommendation from the Board of Health elect officials and we're recommending I'm use the term call Serene to do this and you're going to turn around and decide to do what you want to do your way we have there's a motion on the floor and we're going to vote on the motion that's on the floor any further discussion on this all those in favor shank yes say no CH section Duran yes okay so is there a motion on the floor doesn't the nose get it so three NOS to two so the motion failed right I make motion to call for to call for Char call Char for of second been made in seconded all those in favor yes shank noan no okay Mr serus made the uh let's see we'll talk to close meeting yeah you to I make a motion to all favor and Paul will need to see the town clerk to get sworn in and make sure we inform that's all thank you thank you for coming out thanks uh let's see 4.1 um review and set meeting dates for July 20 uh 2024 to December um Sabrina has put that in SharePoint to do guys review have you reviewed those no I haven't I can see where is it inpoint it would be listed under 4.1 under meeting business not taking any discuss how about this side of the table I will entertain I will not be available on the two July dates correct and we knew that though didn't we yes I think so and I'm not available on site for either of the August ones but I can zoom in I'm only in May okay and you're okay to zoom in yourself I'm okay with all of the 6th and the 20th of o back I have to as long as we can get to zoom do you make a round trip might have a passenger yeah come down come back together I'm coming I'm driving down coming back no what you should do is say so I'll entertain a motion to accept the before dates from July to December 2024 move second um any further discussion all those in favor I I was just G to suggest you could just drive over to Jo you can zoom together from one location from the SEC I don't think we can do that because if she's not in he's not you know and I'm I'm not here I don't think just one person sit can we still we don't need a physic you don't need a phical I have November which is a Tuesday that's the presid on the fth yes off the top of your head so why don't we take that out how about did you have one September 3D yes they got September 3rd and 17th the third is the um the primary the primary yeah we could also meet the library or something or you could just move it to the next week when you do that September 10th and November 12th this is a long month so you can put still get two weeks a thought and still be in sep okay so why don't we do this what you want to do is September 10th September 24th and November 12th correct update that and send it to us be here thank you yeah better they'll have you back so if she updates that then we don't have to vote on it again yeah we can just say with am thank you interrupt no that's very good information all right um Just for information on 4.2 I'm going to move that to 7 o'clock because I have another individual that's going to be talking about the mark proposed on the uh enhancing the right Service uh 4.3 discuss and review the impact of bond Bill H 4459 yes so um this is the first of a couple of really uh impactful bills that have been announced recently um the uh h449 is the the um the Economic Development Fund bill um it includes a raft of proposals um for economic development a lot of which have the potential to impact um town so uh it includes you know 400 million for massw Works infrastructure that is a public infrastructure for private development just note that is one of the grants that is on The Chopping Block if you don't pass the NBTA communities but that's $400 million $250 million for Mass impact which is um transform transformational economic uh impact projects $100 million for the Rural Development Fund so um uh is to provide financial support for infrastructure improvements and Community planning efforts in rural communities so towns would be eligible potentially for that um there's $100 million for Local Economic Development grants um uh $90 million for the underutilized property program to support the Redevelopment of underutilized blighted or abandoned buildings um there's money set aside for broad field ground Fields Redevelopment uh Broadband expansion um improve improve sight Readiness for economic development proposals um uh uh importantly one of the things this does is codifies the rural community designation so one of the challenges that I think municipalities of towns and size were having previously was the fact that many different parts of the state government had different definitions for what was a rural community and this is one of the things we brought up uh in meetings with uh um an GOI who's our world development coordinator executive director executive director um for Ral Affairs and um so they put in this bill to have a specific designation that would be ubiquitous for what constitutes a rural community um so that we will know thon's going to I believe fall within that designation that we'll be eligible for everything that's the targets communities um uh there are some reforms to permitting um uh there are um significant Capital authorizations for Workforce training for internships nonprofits there's um money for climate technology there's money for Life Sciences there's money for business competitiveness um and importantly I think for a town like Townson there's money for small business Community Development so while it might not be realistic for Townson to Target a large scale you know e Economic Development like another Sterilite which I think everybody would love to have but may not be realistic um the ability to to Target impacts for small business might enable us to do the kind of expansion of small business I think we'd like to see in the downtown corridor um um and kind of maybe even you know affect the the corridor around school that we're having that impact study done the corridor study being done on um um there's money for micro businesses so uh the you know business startups uh and for public construction um uh I I think there's money for tourism and the creative economy um we've been working uh with a group of um both public and private individuals from the kind of the geographic area Gren peppol Ashby um uh Dunstable um to look at um some potential for tourism growth uh resulting out of the beautiful facility that they have in grotten the the the was recently opened um and so there's aund $50 million for cultural facilities fund $40 million for Destination development grants um and so that cultural economy money might be the kind of thing that we could use um to to you know maybe make some impacts in the historic um District areas in town just maybe draw in some more tourism doar uh if there's going to be some some outflow from Gren or people looking for other things to do when they come to Gren Hills um something that we might be able to Avail ourselves and that group is looking at ways to impact it across the region Margaret Scarsdale has a range for that group and we've met you know a dozen times over the last year or so so that's a this is called the the mass leads Act and U so I I I think it's important that we we reach out to rep garsdale and encourage her to support the passage of this act because I think it has a lot of different Provisions that could impact towns and and and make us more eligible and competitive for some of the grants that I think we need to rely on to kind of move move the town forward I had asked Eric to to definitely take a look at this um he and I have been working with the executive director an goby in regards to the world communities as historically anything past 495 tends to fall off the map when it comes to allocating money um but the executive director has been very active in putting us all together to be able to uh Define what a royal commun rural community is uh because the the definitions because there's so many different definitions uh sometimes we fall into uh the ability to get additional funds and sometimes we don't to me the there it's the equity is not there so also um with the NBTA communities that that we are coming up uh as an nbat NBTA community and we do have to have zoning plans for um that particular law that has been placed into effect this uh there are certain grants that uh we would if we don't have that zoning law on the books we may not be able to get some of the grants that we're looking for for some of um development within Town increasing the tourism we've got we're on that that swing right now to do a lot of really good things as we've talked about in our goals over over the last few years and I want to be able to continue with that um at some point I'd like to be able to bring Margaret in uh once they they have a better idea of how this money is being allocated she can talk to us about it but the rural communities is one thing the um the small business um Association uh I've been to several meetings with that which is really I think she's doing a good job with that particular area of it um and there's also uh the tourism I've been on a couple of meetings with that as well so I want to be able to keep that going so that we can start pulling more money in help us with some of our infrastructure more importantly I want to be able to have some of these grants take care of some of the extemporaneous stuff so that we can focus on things like roads because that's really important upw um with the looking at the corridor as as Eric said from Proctor Road in front of the high school has always historically been a very bad intersection having that engineered and studied and we' come up with options and we'd be able to go for Grants to be able to fix that and that's kind of contingent upon what we're talking about in this bill that's why I asked them to to give us an idea of what's going on with that you guys have any questions on that thank you Eric for I appreciate that is there any followup required out of that or um for right now Margaret's been um pretty vocal uh with me in regards to that um you will be uh entering into a meeting I think shortly one of the meetings that we do have coming up so you can get your information with Margaret she can keep us both informed about how to move forward with it let's see about about seven minutes um we can jump down to um 4.4 the uh public comment policy um I wanted to touch base on that because the current public comment policy that is um currently in fact was signed in on July 10th of 2018 and in new of the conversations that we've had with um Town Council uh I felt that we might want to bring this up I'm not looking to to do anything right now but I'm looking for some direction from the board um do you want to um strike this policy do you want to um change it amend it I guess you know there's there's two thoughts number one we can strike this and come up with a new one we can keep this in in in play right now until we work on the other um I did put in um public policy um for com comment participation that I found from another town which I thought was way they split it up kind of made more of sense to me each board is responsible for whether or not they want to do public comment the public comment period um is you know I under certain certain circumstances I think it's important to get the um to get comment but having an open comment with the beginning of it can sometimes be so my opinion on this is I like the larbage and a lot a lot of this and it clearly states here that no person shall address the body without the permission of the chair however it does say the board of selection Selectmen will have a public period at each meeting if we could just strike that and just say public comment will only be allow if uh allow something authorized by the chair authorized by the chair but then keep all that other stuff because when you do allow it you want to it gives you rules that you know at times that you can't so I think if we just stripe out that it's every there will be a set 15 minute period and that there will be public uh comment only at the discuss or at the discussion of the chair I think we can keep the policy as it is and still obtain what ad Adam and Town Council Stu I just mentioned that sure I think what probably makes the most sense is to maybe have Adam take a look at the policy in lie of the the court decision and just say is this because are there things in here that are quite frankly unenforceable know this court decision what's the point of having a a policy that says X when we can't enforce it because the court says that's a violation of free speech um so I think first and foremost it might make sense just to say let's have Town Council look at this existing policy and and aine as to whether there are parts of it need to be stricken in addition to the one that that that Teresa had mentioned right because when you my thoughts are you have if when you have public comment it just means that they can talk about anything within the the given parameters of time 15 minutes 10 minutes whatever it's three minutes right this which one are you talking about the the one that recently signed one adopted or the one that stated May 22nd 23 that was just an example no no no the one underneath one public me see the date on it it's on um it was the one that was signed by um2 and yeah the that's the town Poli that's the existing one that's the existing one doesn't it say three minutes in there this one I read Bard selectman will have a 15 minute public comment period I think individually it might individual a time limit of three minutes per person so the and and I agree with you we should we should definitely talk with Adam about it um he he said to me that he if we wanted to have him write an opinion on it we could do that but I would think it would be easier for us just to talk to him when he comes in for his oh sure his session s having an open comment period meaning that anybody can come in and have their three minutes of saying whatever they want or um we can have it so that if somebody wants to upine on on one of the agenda items you know and have it specific to what the agenda items are you know it's there's there's many different ways to do that but again I I put this out here to kind of get some direction on how you guys want to want to go forward with it because what we have now we're not really sure if it's I think if we start with that that's a good when is Adam's next usually the last yeah I think this be the 25th we have a date yet Sabrina from Adam 25th [Music] W okay so at 6:30 we're gonna jump back up to 2.2 um I want to thank Kathy and and the chief for being here um for this discussion I think it's a very important discussion uh full disclosure Chief and I have talked about this at at some length in regards to where we are with public records and the concern that um that that I have is that we have um we have potentially um a lot of time and effort especially clerk's office uh of putting together certain public records requests um the uh the policy that that the clerk has to follow um I think does sometimes uh May consume a lot of time in the different departments I know chief his record's request um tend to turn into some kind of financial burden I guess is the best way to put it yeah so what we uh what what I would like to find out some Direction I did talk to Adam about it Adam said that um he not to come up with a fee schedule but to come up with a protocol um we need to have a protocol especially with emails if we have to do a forensic email um there's a form that has to have two signatures on it that we send to Guardian guardian then gives us in a format that we then have to go through and and print it out um if it's if it's of uh great length then we may have to give it to to Adam to or Town Council to redact if we needed to redact and then send out and that that can be cost cost some money yeah not to mention on your end of it too your time is there any state guidelines that it can't be Beyond a certain fee or any anything State guidelines on anything on the public request I'm going to let the chief talk about sure yes we were we were faced with a pretty similar problem back when I first joined the agency back about six or seven years ago and it came up with a multi-year kind of approach to try and fix the issue first things first is we were not I don't think tracking properly the number of requests we got we get more than about 400 a year we get we get quite a few now that is a across the agency so it involves Discovery matters administrative requests action report so it's a fairly wide ranging um kind of swath of information that we end up releasing some is public records some is not public but the but the uh citizens or entities have access to that those records in a different way so yes we can charge agencies under the size of or yeah agencies or organizations under the 20,000 population Mark can charge for an hourly rate problem with that is that hourly rate cannot exceed $25 which I I I don't know where that comes from which just one of those uh holdovers from Days of old when $25 was actually an hourly rate um that said we do are regularly charge we a few years ago you may remember I think many of you sitting at the table were inable and us getting a revolving account going uh in which we charge we deposit those funds into there and we draw from that it's important to stop and think about what we use those funds for uh we purchase on a regular basis thumb drives and viset office supplies but the biggest driver of cost for us seems to be in addition to time is software we utilize software to Video Edit we have to have higher additions of adobe to do proper redactions uh we have 911 dispatch logs and tapes that need to be redacted so we've got some audio redactions to do as well so we have we have pretty cost uh you know high cost items to do so that's what we use to draw those funds uh to to um to handle what we end up doing is we take in the request and we perform a review we have four people that are trained the agency I am the records access officer J de Mayo is the primary person that does that function and we both have backups Lieutenant Peach for me and Trish Beno for for Jess so the four of us uh in some form or fashion will perform a review sometimes that involves costing something out and giving it a spitball cost as to what it takes some of them are we get some really crazy requests up colleges that want to know the criminal justice data forever I mean we get some really goofy ones but we do conduct a review We estimate it we share that amongst each other to see if there's anything that strikes us as very odd and then we'll put together almost a an estimate a bid of sorts and we will reply to them with that bid we have found in our personal experiences that engaging with people making these requests is the and Kathy and I do that regularly as well uh engaging is the best thing because to find out what they really need even though they're not required to tell us and they certainly don't need to but it does help us hone in on that information and make that process a little bit more efficient so once we gather that kind of cost together we will issue them a letter and oftentimes we'll call them to kind of walk them through it and then if they agree to that fee schedule we will uh we will roll out that information we have um we have added some uh some things to our website to make it a little bit more efficient we have a Q&A that's going up in the next few days I think that covers most of the questions that we have about public records we get a lot of questions as if they want to call me and give me a build of particulars of questions like I'm going to sit down and be interviewed like I'm the entity and I'm going to answer these questions well we we don't do that tell me what you're looking to get for in the way of a record and we we Supply that record so there's another there's a bunch of other very F very frequent questions that we get for a Q&A up there and we have a form online for people to uh request our records which is the vast majority of requests we get is that the you and I talked about so the Q&A I think I sent you a sample of the Q&A that we're going to put up on our website yes and a lot of these public records well public records is one law I and it's a it is a very difficult law to review all the exceptions are in this one law it crosses professions we're we're subject to the same public records requests and laws that uh the town is certainly we have additional requirements and additional responsibilities based on the profession administratively and and otherwise but we follow the same exact um uh laws obviously we provide our people training at least annually uh we are certified to uh in that regard and we keep that certification going by I think it's have to go two years or something along them lines but we do cross training as well I'd certainly be willing to share that information about where we get our training and also our goal buys we have some boiler plates that we utilize to assemble those costs I how long it takes to review and segregate the record and then kind of an approximate amount of time takes for redaction I think one of the if I could yeah I was going to ask Kathy if she can kind of give me some idea on your end what your finding and is it you know your ideas um when we get a public records request chances are I don't have my office if I if I can go over to a draug pull it out copy it or scan it email it it's not a big deal it's getting it from other department is that is the challenge because sometimes they miss an email because I'll forward it on to them um and when it's a larger request we we do charge um I usually send out an email stating what the fees will be and if they want to go forward because I don't want to go through the working and have them say no never mind I don't want that that's that's one of the the factors that because it takes a lot of time and effort to get it ready and then they decide they don't want it after we've already done the work and sometimes we for um any kind of plant for the building department or land use we don't have a way to copy those unless we go down to the water department and disturb Dave vigant and have him do it but that's not cost effective at all right so then we have to go take it to Staples or one of those press or something hav but all that gets charged to the request correct um go ahead no I was just say I think based on my observations the the the biggest challenge um is unfortunately the town has to rely on outside vendors for some of the things we're getting requests for and I I think we just need to make sure that when we have those requests come in that the protocol should be we get it in we get an estimate from the outside vendor as to how what it's going to take and we send that estimate through the the the clerk's office back to the requestor and make sure that they pay it prior to us engaging the outside vendor to to have those costs that's that's my biggest that's that's the biggest thing because you know it would be the same thing because Chief and I had talked and he had a situation where he had everything already and nobody came to pick it up yeah it happens fairly frequently for us we've gotten better at it now that the video video is a significant issue if we have one incident for instance we have a property owners that are arguing bickering and maybe turns violent I we'll send three guys well we have three body cameras and three body cameras rolling for 45 minutes or an hour however long they're there and each one of those needs to be redacted take away license places all kinds of rules are regarding that withy so it's prte for us we've gotten ater what the C will be but the amount of time you take in estimating that is time you will never get back it is just a built-in time we've really Whitted away at our um at our records Clerk's job and I will be bringing some stuff to the board to reconcile that in the coming year um more than likely for fiscal 26 or or something along them lines but yeah we we are finding it to be more laborious for sure we're getting better at that we do not have the problem that he's describing all the records do generally reside within our building if not we point them to where to go and get that record um that's one of the reasons I think we have handled public records requests the way Kathy and I do now where I don't like to do them through her because I think it's a better record of the entire process just going clean and having that person come to their Police Department just makes more sense from this and that we don't miss stuff if we if we too many people involved if we have the record we are it's the most pure copy of that record that you may get that is available so it it can be cumbersome for sure we have gotten better at the records so law needs to catch up with technology certainly there is that but that there I can't find any way of making up for that a lot of times what I'll do is I'll reach out or have the records Clerk or one of the records clerks reach out and say Hey listen this is what I'm seeing it's pretty significant record request this is what it's going to take for me to even assemble that just to get a sense of whether or not the person is serious and it's just not nuisance requests which we do get a bunch of uh time wasting nuisance requests we've had um a few of those we've had to you know almost cease and deist type letters um to make sure that they're requesting information in a in a manner that's consistent with the law and consistent with our policy we've had that um I I think supported by Town Council and by uh public records in Boston when we have pushed back like that we have had records requests appeal to Boston generally speaking that's a fairly easy process they're really easy to deal with we go back and forth uh we didn't feel we should release this for whatever reason uh yes or no and and they'll guide us to the proper answer so it's not that bad um I do find that triggering the first continuance if you will or extension is almost necessary in in those types of requir that involves a lot of information theoc not doing it with intent if it's multiple emails that they're looking for it's it's it's out of your hands it's out of our hands we have to give it to Guardian same thing with the chief Who video so we need I talked with Adam the best thing is to have a protocol that if it's email we need to look at how many people that it involves you know we had a recent one where there were three or four people involved and it looked like yeah it was written on one request but technically when we send it over to Guardian it was actually 12 separate requests for okay you see what I mean yeah like one between you and I and then from and Ross and and turned into them having to actually do uh 12 different queries on the emails to put them all together and then to put them all together it comes in a format where we're goingon to have to sit down print it out or two we have to go through it all because there is the first and I and I make it to days Rock please help me but first one is 10 days and we can automatically get the 25 I believe it is which is the second so generally speaking if the first record comes in and to your point if we have easy access to if it's an accident report or a log entry or a specific report someone's ask well we can get that PDF often times that day out to them if it's involved we will almost automatically trigger that one we'll respond within the 10 days to say hey we're taking a look this but to your point it's not really one record here you're asking for you're asking for some research involved to determine what even records exist so we're going to trigger the second one it gives us a little bit more more breathing it's not forgiving though I'll tell you that that 25 days comes up quick particularly when the conveyor belt does not stop at the agency and I feel like Le and Shirley dated reference as it is you know where it's just coming and coming we don't have the time to just shut the doors and let let that go I want to be you know oh it's a little older right for me right now is that you know we are um we are having difficulties in regards to our budget and I want to show the residents that we are being fiscally responsible and I know that there's a lot of time that that gets spent on public records is BL and we need to to to be able to if something comes in you review it and say this is going to be more than you know the normal you open the drawer pull it out copy it give it to right and I will talk to the Departments and say when I think it's something more extensive yeah how much time do you think this is going to take yeah said that he has letters he has like letter templates that he he'd be more than glad to let us use okay if if it has that and that way we can say well we're gonna have to you know talk to a vendor to get emails you know there's there's other costs involved in just copy it's not as easy as jumping on and it out exactly it takes a little bit teres we have you're talking about having to send these to Guardian and that of course time and expense to it is there software with resources people something that we can do to cut down the times that it has to go to Gan I don't I don't think so because it has to be captured at the server level I believe and that's yeah the request comes in for we're talking about requests for emails or requests for um the that's typically the thing that would go to Guardian or if it's for a different department like it's for the water department they have White Mountain I think the the you guys have a different correct email company that handles your email so that outside company is the one that archives all of those old emails so it's it's not the I think the risk that you run if you don't send it out to that person is that you're not going to be completely compliant with the RIS and then you run the risk of of running a foul ofate withholding records you unintentionally but if you try to let just some staff memb say oh I can find all my emails about this you run the risk that they're not going to find them all whereas the the places like guardan in White Mountain have protocols for how they do their searches that that are compliant with and then they have they have their own protocols like for Guardian there has to be two signatures under request to go out there because they have to cover themselves as well yeah they're incurring cost at that point and I think that the most important part of the protocol I think needs to be if you're touching an outside vendor you got to get a quote First and they have to pay it before we touch the outside vend you know so if you if you're if you're going to Guardian if you're going to White Mountain if you have to go to tcam to get videos and it's a vendor that's not a town Department the first foremost thing is we need to get that's from that vendor as to what it's going to cost and we need to send that out and and you mentioned tcam that that tcam is a vendor they are not the town that's a big big misnomer that people think that tcam is the town and it is not it's a it's a separate we have contractual relation correct so if if there's um if they're requesting records it actually doesn't go through Kathy they'll have to ask tcam and tcam will be the one to say whether or not they they want to be able to release the records or not it's completely up to that so but but I think that kind of and I think that's something that I think we we just need to kind of keep in everybody's head is that the minute you're talking to a vendor they're gonna charge us and the minute they're going to charge us we need to get an invoice an investment and send it back out to the requestor and say you have to pay this first because we're not it's not fair to the towns fol for us to being J charges when there's a possibility you might just walk away and pay for it yeah having done this now and thrown some elbows and gotten to you know a point where we've had hearings about these and back and forth with public records and then the education that we've had and we've all had I think I I'm left with two big takeaways one is really having a clear understanding of the exceptions to public records laws and the things that are a public record and things that are not a public record and asking questions is not a public record I mean there's there are things that you can do to significantly cut down your time and just understanding and distinguishing what is and is not a public record on number one and number two I think for us and this may have some relevancy on your end as well is realizing what you have to keep and what you do not have to keep and having a purging policy that's consistent with public records law I think is critical because all you're doing is hanging on to liabilities that you don't need to hang on to public records I think is very thoughtful in what they make you keep and the timelines they make you keep them for I think they're they're driven by policy they're driven by some study they're driven by the legal process and legal system so we can take a lot of guidance from those laws and develop processes within our agency and within our different departments to purge when we need the purge and that way there're we're not sifting through irrelevant data to get to relevant data I I I'm hesitant to do that in purposes of being as transparent as I can and you do have to have sign off to destroy those records and there is a process for that and I certainly think that you should adhere to that but I do think that the law is written in a very thoughtful and deliberate way and really does account for the reasons you would keep records so I do think that those two things I I really I I try to underscore a lot at our department understanding public records what they are what the exceptions to that rules and laws are and then two what are our responsibilities as far as what we have to keep how long and do we have processes in place to make sure that that stuff is is taken care of in a timely fashion so how would you guys what would what would your suggestions be about moving forward with this would you want us to take a stab with working with Town Council and then letting you guys pour over it and think that'd be a great idea boiler plate policy would be good I'm sure that Adam understands that we're under some different um provisions and I know he's good about carving out the Departments that have different you know if you're an Enterprise you may have different records um requests and and different you know schedules that you need to keep it for and then review it and then kind of go back and forth that would be a good idea I think okay making sure that ours doesn't step on it or vice versa right so what I can do is I'll go ahead and and talk with Adam um the um it really would be updating what we have currently in the system um in regards to that so um I'll give him what we have and then um I know that he's got a couple of like I said templates that we can kind of follow but I think if we're all on the same page it'll it'll streamline the the the request itself number one but number two is we need to be able to charge right up front so getting the money up front before we even do it so we're not spinning our Wheels CU I know how frustrating it is when you put it all together yeah yeah so I'm good with that a you guys are good with that and I appreciate both of your time thank you very good thanks uh 4.5 review and improve NPC pass control contract guys have any questions comments concerns about that a motion to approve monachus region Pest Control Inc for the 24 25 contract second seconded any discussion on it all in favor 46 um it has been brought to my attention that um we have an individual that has more than 30 years service with the 46 exact the question is um our our standard was to to um send out a certificate um certificate of appreciation and after some conversations with several people I'm thinking that we could do something a little more with somebody that has that amount of service I'm so coming up with an idea of maybe doing a plaque for somebody over 30 years they' spent over 30 years I just want to know what your guys thoughts of I'm I got a bunch hanging on my walls I think we need to do PL for over 30 years so we can or we can CH put it to whatever time period it is but I know that we go ahead my only concern as to whether or not the that's going to be considered to be a public purpose for purpose of spending Town funds say again whether or not that would be considered to be a public purpose for purpose of spending Town funds so like a certificate is something that's not significant use of town resources but buying a plaque is that the kind of I'm just trying to say how's that different from us sending flowers to someone who's passed away which we can't do because that's not a town purpose you're sending something to an individual I'm just just throwing that out there as that is that you know we've had those issues come up as to whether or not we as a town are allowed to spend money that way if it's under $25 yeah it's not an Ethics I mean there's a $50 ethics thing so so if it's under $50 it's not an Ethics issue the question is whether or not like for instance we can't buy food for a a meeting staff if it's under $50 we could use our own money and do it oh there's no question that you guys could use your own money and do it I'm just wanted I just wanted to not trying to be a fly in the equipment I just wanted to say yes you are just wanted to say there that we've had concerns come pack come up over the past year about you know different kind of spending that has kind of maybe run a foul and we could do that kind of spend what other the rules it could like select me can you do 50 50 50 and 150 no right it has to be less would be the the value of the of the item would have to be $50 or less even if it's from three it I mean that's not a plaque is certainly less than $50 it's not a right I don't think that I don't think it's it's not a concern about the cost of the item for me it's more a concern about we have had some we've we've we've worked hard to make sure that we're following all the right protocols fiscally and expenditures on that sort of thing might run a foul of our accountant saying you can't can't spend Town money on that like when we were GNA spend Town money on contemplated spending money on flowers for from the board of sled before someone who passed away and we were informed that that's not a town expense so we had to pay for that ourselves I know when I was on the school committee we always gave the chair when they retired we always gave them a FL um but we couldn't use School funds for it and we all just pitched in that's the thing so we couldn't use talent I think doing it is a great idea I think it's an important thing I'm just not sure we could use Talent money to do it I I'll make it simple I whatever we need to do donate to $50 but I think we should do a PL yeah that I age I don't mind split it three ways I just paid a $50 and just will we've gota say the right wording on this block well for the for the individual for the individual we can deal with um outside of the meeting but I was I was looking at you know I guess we we're not going to have a policy because we something that you guys do individually outside of town spending Town money that's just all right so Ross might disagree with me no I don't I don't want be the fly and the O because I know that's still your your role for the next couple days two more days I kind of feel that 30 years thanks here's a here's a plaque is is kind of minimal I feel that way with a certificate of appreciation yes um as Eric explained you can't give them a thousand do you know thank you for your service which would be more meaningful and it can't ask the selectman to cough that up on their own sure so maybe it's the plaque and the recognition celebration you know I mean at least get everybody together and let people elsewhere in town know that hey well just for the record didn't they did have a thing at the firehouse a week ago over a week I think and uh was out there was a barbecue a lot of people showed up and thank them but I think this here should at least come from the board to say they've already done the public thing people know but I think bring him in with the fire department in the background and get it presented from the board to him it ain't like we're just giving them a plaque they've already the fire department has really gone above and beyond did a great thing it was a great showing and um I just yeah great food and I just think this is just more the board okay that's you know something minimum it needs to be done at at this meeting but it be even better in my opinion if it's done in a town meeting FR of everybody so the question is whether that's yeah well some of those are announcements maybe the moderator starts off town meeting I want to recognize the following people who are retiring my own to Y to heard I've heard Town mod to that is timely as a plaque and maybe coming to this meeting we getting picked a plaque we don't need a policy we just we don't need a policy and we don't need a vot because it seems like we are all in agreement so we'll work with um with Sabrina to to get something together yeah right wording on it for him and uh and I'll just pay the $50 that's what is and we're going to present it to him at a yeah we can do it in a s yeah there's nothing nothing wrong with that recognizing him giving apply that's okay issue um 4.7 discuss refund a previously paid fee by a conable applicant want to deal with this so I can explain I I think folks will remember um Francis do um had applied to be a constable he applied when we were working on the Constable policy so his application was held until the Cal policy was finalized once the cable policy was finalized he paid $150 as required by the policy to to apply um he was not selected as a constable and the last time the board met about the conso policy because we were having some concerns about it um the policy was changed such that a person could make a request of the board of Select me to get refunded that $150 they weren't actually selected if they were selected no if they weren't s yeah I think they could I think the policy says you can request a refund of the of the of the $150 fee for the board um so the question is does is it does the board wish to refund this Fe it's making the request being a constable I mean I I was under the assumption that they correct me if I'm wrong and maybe we have to listen to the tape but I thought it was they could request the the money back if we hide them that's what we talked about go get it come present it the the policy states this is amendment number two that was signed into to it was adopted on 41624 the application process under the application process number seven states the select board reserves the right to wave any fees associated with this application process I don't think there's a not locked we need to make a motion is that how it works so we just make looking for an agreement I think they would I think because it's the board there would need to be a motion and a vote so I make a motion that we refund the Constable she that was paid the person name Francis FR Francis do FR Francis do do do I'll second it but we have discussion my biggest concern is that when he first applied there wasn't even $150 and that just came as a surprise to her was also a very big surprise he wasn't selected but you never know he did nobody knows why any of the things happen when you get involved with with the state um so I I feel I'd like to see that the money's returned to so I he wasn't hired I there's reasons we didn't put him on so why are we going to give back money that you know I'm talk about fiscally responsible you got to be fiscally responsible here um he originally applied um while we were putting everything together yes um so this was on June 14th 22 the um conable policy came back back out was adopted on 9 2022 there was a memorandum that went out in November November 15 of 22 that stated that the board of selectman had created a conable policy in the policy can be found at and it gives the link it says for prospective applicants should you be interested in serving as Constable for the town of towns and please fill out the attached and forward to this office with a check or cash payment of $150 covering the application fee so this was sent out to the individual right but that was after his application was already in right and then on January of 23d is when we received $150 in the office today cash for Francis old application so he paid $150 after right after he got the letter because he hadn't turned back right so we didn't took his application before the policy we didn't get the money until after because there was no policy for the money correct correct then on February 17th of 23 is when letter had gone out show that saying that he was not accepted there was also a question of um him reactivating his application or whatever I don't think that's been resolved that's not that's not an issue now not an issue so this is just1 whether or not there's so I guess at this point there any further discussion on this those in favor of the motion yes motion is to refund his money shank no chess no um 4.8 uh last year we did uh we sponsored The Refreshments what's the term the lawn party the lawn party yes I was Betty May made sure that I said the right thing um we sponsored the lawn party for the kids country playground committee um we have been scheduled or the kids country playground committee has been scheduled for July 18th um and um I've been approached and asked by uh the committee if we would um help them out again this year I don't have a problem with it you two have a problem with that what time would it be um want to say we got there around six last time I can't remember the band concer starts at seven I think I think it was more like five well we get there at 5 I've I've got um the grill coming at around 5:00 5:30 G to get set up ready that took us about an hour to get that done and then and or if you want to come when do we start serving we didn't start serving until well people get there around 65 6:30 around 6:30 I think we started serving so I I I have no problem doing it Teresa I can be I can't be sure okay Jo I'll do it okay well I will let Karen know that we will definitely do that again Le two of us well um 4.9 review uh vote on Municipal relief transfers so do you have the originals or just ch so um this is the time of year when start doing Municipal relief transfers um I will say that um I'm GNA give all the credit to Katie kazin down the accountants office we have significantly less transfers this year than we've had in past years she has been doing a really good job of making sure the Departments aren't um getting in trouble with their lawn lines and and and making sure they're staying within their spending for the year so um there's only a small amount of transfers that we requesting so we have this year four um uh the first one is for um $1,040 to be transferred uh to the no Board of Health line will be transferred from the landfill line um um this is a deficit the bill for the the show Board of Health came in as higher than was in the budget for fy2 24 by $14 so this is it's coming from another Board of Health line that oversees the land fund are we GNA do these one by one yes yes that's not the way they oh I'm sorry I you want me to start in the other direction yeah let give you it was the was it the 72,000 the first one the health insurance one yes okay yes all right so um there's a transfer of $72,000 we transferred to health insurance from two lines um one is uh $150,000 that's in the unemployment line and $60,000 from the highway wages line this health insurance line um $72,000 is a health insurance cost that was was anticipated transfering just 72 because there was more than that and in two line items 60 and 15 16 15 you said oh you said more than not requested a 72,000 60k yeah I think that's that's that's that is a I apologize that's yeah it's 60 and 15 75,000 75,000 60 from Highway wages and 15 from unemployment so I'll entertain a motion to uh affect a municipal transfer from the highway weight from Highway wages um line item ending in 5110 for 60,000 and unemployment um line item ending in 5750 for 15,000 so move to health insurance um line ending in 5740 so second all those in favor you say [Music] motion um the second uh transfer is uh to General Insurance uh from veterans benefits so it's uh General we be looking for a motion to transfer $2,000 from veterans benefits line ending in 53000 to The General Insurance line ending in 5740 so second yeah what how are those lines related they're not so what when we do Municipal relief transes we're just taking money from one line to try to cover a deficit in another line and the veterans line has a significant amount of money available at the end of the year it's not something that we could save it's going to go into free cash if we don't we need to fix that um yeah so the the the um uh The General Insurance line has an increase because we've added vehicles to our Fleet above and beyond so all right we talk about that but have we last time we had conversation the insurance is is that on here somewhere that is 411 um yeah so The General Insurance uh line is is um in deficit because of new vehicles that were added that increase the the auto insurance line over what was originally voted that's the reason for the that increase motion on the table is it seconded yeah second all those in favor shank yes yes the third one is uh it's a $58 deficit um there was just a error in the amount for the mrpc dues that were due um so we' be looking for a motion to transfer from the veterans benefits line 50 in 530 to the mrpc dues lines is 5730 for $58 second discussion all those in favor and then the third one was the first one that I started talking about which is um the nooba the nooba board of health line um so we'd be looking for a motion to transfer money from the landfill line that ends in 53000 to the NOA Board of Health line 53000 for amount of $1,040 second all those in favoring at yeah these do ins sign [Music] chair so so Beth was in the I text her she she she might be in there she shot up her her video that the you still on I didn't even realize we went yeah hey Here Am hello I'm sorry I went past 7 o'clock and didn't even think about it that's quite all right it's quite all right thank you for having me so um I wanted to jump to the um 4.2 discussed smart proposal on enhancing the ride service um this as you know is the um bus service that we're providing for individuals um Beth you want to give them a little understanding of what what we're doing here tonight if you don't mind oh yeah I'd be happy to you um so the bus service started um as a pre-service uh the shuttle the towns in shuttle I think it started what almost uh 7 months ago now um the ridership has been a little bit low um so they originally it was running seven days a week um and then the weekend rots were dropped um and they're still finding the ridership a little bit on the low side so um we had a meeting with um Mark Representatives and they're proposing changing the um pickup to an on call service sort of an on demand rather than having the shuttle come twice a day you know to Townsen and not pick up passengers so basically uh that's the topic of discussion is um how to transition whether you want to transition to that and and the logistics of doing that so we also had a discussion in regard to um there were there was a representative from gron as well that was interested in um also having Mark service out there and they asked us if we would contact UM the Gren individual to see if they would want to come over here and and use our facility as well um I think being able to regionalized we Beth it took us how long did it take us to get this established it was it was a pretty long process proc wasn't it yeah the town had to be um you know join U Mark be a member Community um it was a lot of work you know attending meetings and uh proposals and that sort of thing to get the service in the first place so um it's a really a good it's really a good thing for the town uh if we can keep it with the on demand and Market it um I think that would be key is to get the marketing going and you know like you said the regionalization with some AB budding towns so some specific um so if it is on demand it would be something like you sign up within an ex amount period it can't be like asked that morning and hopefully show up right so corre can you give me some of those ideas yeah the there's there was a flyer that was in you want to show that to the U that's what they gave us for those are the the proposed times okay and then they would have to call uh in advance to be able to say that they're going have service and we would open this to gr and maybe peppol and Ashby as well if they if they were willing to to to do that Mark said that they don't have a problem with us doing that um I think a it would help uh regionalize the area um with those times that's number one uh I will say that um what the numbers I put the spreadsheet in the in the SharePoint for you guys um the numbers aren't high but I will say that they're uh according to what they were telling us um there were a couple of people that were utilizing it often right be the one person was using it almost every day yeah yeah so that's good i' would like to see um perhaps some students get in there um that's why I was wondering about a little Outreach to the high school seniors when they're making their choices for college I mean they can easily jump into pitchburg and get on the train and get into Boston um so we can you know hopefully do some more Outreach and some more marketing and really utilize that I think the seniors are pretty much all set with the shuttle bus that they have but I think we need to reach out to commuters and um students maybe who want to go to school in Boston but don't want to you know board at the University or whatever you know so there's a lot of Pitsburg State you know you can uh from Fitchburg Intermodal you can get a bus to Fitchburg State um a lot of really good options so what does this cost in US per year so this is the the fee for Mart is being paid out of the um the MBTA allocation we get from the state that was money that uh that's the towns contribut ution to the MBTA um that comes out of state funding so we never see it it's it's kind of like a hey there's $119,000 that's Town portion that's going to the NBTA but we don't pay it the state pays it so Mar because we signed up for Mart can use that money for because it's for transportation we wouldn't receive that money if we didn't have this we wouldn't receive it right so if we canceled this we wouldn't get any money back so it's not it's not costing us any money w't understand not that's that MBTA thing is in the in the state allocation every year it is okay and we we what what Beth and I are are and the reason why I wanted Beth on here is number one to give her recognition for her work on this because she's doing a lot of work outside of her normal stuff um but we would like to move it to an ond demand service for right now and we were told that we can also change it back to to a scheduled service at any time going forward that's number one and number two is Beth and I will be looking into And discussing with Mar the marketing end of it so we would be marketing more to the schools um Pittsburgh state um and any other because they have a marketing department with Mark and we'll be working with them to get Flyers out and and they have mailers and stuff so we'd be able to at their expense not ours so if you guys are are okay with it then then it right Teresa I'm okay you're okay with that yeah all right so Beth we'll um we'll work on this tomorrow and we'll uh we'll give Bruno uh a call and and let him know that we're going to do that and then we'll give the particulars and and then I'll submit it back out to the board okay fantastic thank you so much all right thank you have a good night bye bye now [Music] 410 the Consolidated water Highway Union contract yeah so this is not um just to be clear not any new Provisions these Provisions are ones that were already voted in theou that we did um we voted on earlier for the water Highway and also everyou has been in existence since the last signed contract which I think was in 2016 so there's been a bunch of ofus in the interim um we have been working very hard over the last couple of years to consolidate all of the contracts we don't have those outstanding you know sheaths of paper that areus that we have to interpret this is the last one to be Consolidated um so it just requires a vote of the board to approve the Consolidated contract um as included in the share point show second any discussion I have a comment thank you because that was a mess and it's nice to see that all of the contracts are straight now yeah I was glad to finally get this last one this last one done that was the worst one too yeah it was the one that was the hardest because some some some moving Parts on the union side made this one particularly challenging but uh um uh get getting the the all of the contracts approved and signed was one of my personal goals to try to get those all Consolidated so just to make it just easy for the next guy you know to be able guy thank you for that so there's only one contract you have to look at and every all the all the reams of paper don't mean anything before it was like you know remember the holiday we have to look at all the different contracts separate know this one does this and this one does that and it was just that's it yeah this goes to that get oh yeah it's the 15us break it because this one amends an earlier one so you have to read them in order it's was brutal all those in favor yes so my I will have um uh we need to get two wet signatures from uh the board on this so before the end of the night I'll print out a second one for just one to sign I'll print out a second one to sign cop sign the union signment my anticipation is tomorrow uh 4.11 review or vote on The General insurance quotes for fiscal year 25 um so we did get a two quotes in for General Insurance um we took a look at them and um it appears as though we have the ability to to get insurance within the budget that we set in the in the uh in the annual Bud the fy2 budget however before the board votes on it I want to sit down with Jason phoh who had the low came with the low bit and make sure that we're getting Apples to Apples and just go over and make sure that all the deductions are all or the deductibles are all the same but there's nothing hidden in there that I have missed and then we put it on for the 18th we've got some looking at just the figures and not EX L what it is because we had questions about the Cyber insurance and and that kind of stuff we just want to make sure that the coverages are the same yeah yeah we're not and I think there are I was able to find some of them but some of them it's not immediately clear yeah you know how Insurance works for example my business came up for Renewal insurance company decided and fine Frank well we're going to change the value of your building $200,000 oh wait a minute yeah you know well that's what they want to do well that a what I want to do right right so just make sure we yeah we're not getting over and I appreciate Eric's um info because we the three of us looked at it today yeah you know the um the my main concern is that we just have the same coverage as we had last year yeah and that's what I want to make sure as long as we're comparing Apples to Apples it's very you know it's it's easy to tell what we're doing the other thing I'm going to do is make sure um I'm going to send out a copy of all the the vehicles that they have recorded and the properties they have recorded and make sure that those are all still accurate yeah um and because that if some of those vehicles have been disposed of then we can drop them off the insurance and right so I would like to put that on the 18 the 18 then we can decide on that you okay with that Teresa yes I am 4.2 um grants options and letter of support for underutilized property properties grants all right I put a lot of stuff and I apologize and SharePoint in regards to this um yeah my FR to give you guys an idea of what the reasoning behind all of this um I took our selectman's goals uh what we've all decided on what what we want to be able to work with in the next fiscal year and I sat down with uh eron our grant administrator and we looked at what the grant schedules were and what you guys put down for what we all put down for what our goals are for next year and we actually Consolidated a lot of um ideas that you guys had uh into a couple of grants that we want to go for right away all right so I'm going to talk about the first thing I'm going to talk about is the the more immediate one that's due um in two days that we've already we've pretty pretty much got it written um but I just need to to get approval uh and the letter of support um um if you could give me the uh the okay to do to write a letter of support um but we'll talk about what they are the first thing that was that I had put in there was all of the grants that we discussed so these are all the grants that would be available for all of the things that we had put down on our goals that we have available we're not going to be applying for all of them but I'm just saying that the the granting is is going to be there um the goal that or the um one of the biggest ones that um I had for three years I think Joe you had it on actually all three of us we had it on there is to develop our historic buildings excuse me we have um achieved that goal except for one building all right so we had the center fire station and the old Harbor fire station is is both of those are going to be under renovation one is under now one will be under shortly uh we also have the uh The Harbor Church is is getting uh getting redone and this is all not with Town Money so no no resen Penny tax money has been done on that um one of the biggest things when we when we initially started this process if you guys can remember it's I'm really doing this more for the Public's knowledge uh we had uh had a survey and we enlisted uh feedback from all of the residents on all of these buildings that are now being worked on um one of those buildings was the heartt library over here now the heart Library uh it came up with uh the majority of them were um that it would be something to do with the Arts would be a gallery it would be some sort of meeting room um because of the way the funding was that building was kind of left out of it and I have been founding the pavement looking at ways in which we can get that building at least to utilize um the grant that I would like to go for is um the underutilized properties Grant and that Grant is only for uh an architect and an engineer and that's really for planning purposes so that they will go in they will look at it they will um look to see what needs to be done as far as upgrades uh we also know that it's going to need to be ADA Compliant so they're going to give us ideas on what that is so that that Grant is only for the planning purposes of it okay that's number one uh number two is what we discussed earlier with Margaret in regards to the rural towns they are looking for to increase tourism there's also um two other grants that I'd like to go for for the heart Library one is for Mass development and mass development will uh assist us in being able to do any structural or any kind of Grants um that we would need to do for renovations for that um the other Grant is for the mass cultural Council and the Massachusetts cultural Council uh will help us develop a plan and help um us be able to fund that plan to turn that into a gallery um that would be also part of the local cultural Council that we have here that Alice strs um is the U the chairperson for this will enhance um two different things number one it would increase the um uh the cultural impact of the town we also have the museum on Main Street that we talked about earlier um that would be a prime place to to be able to have something like that in there um which we are we are still in contention for which I think is a good idea um the other thing is is connectivity to other natural uh the other resources we have in town so we have the rail trail that's right around the corner from here we have um the uh historic Harbor Village that they're planning on putting so it's all within foot bicycle path um and I think it fits into all of the the planning that we've done over the last three years actually four years four years now um so what I would be looking for from the both of you is um your permission to be able to write a letter of support for underutilized properties Grant and finish up with Aaron to be able to send that Grant out I think it's due on the six so second any further discussion just can you tell me how this fits into the preservation project plan are they interacted or those set so that's a good question the preservation the preservation fund it fits in two two different ways um I would like to be a able to to put in a grant for the preservation fund to be able to get that on the national register and the state Register of historic properties if we can do that it opens up for state and federal grants that we wouldn't normally have if it's not on the register so that's why I have that in there okay thank you yeah the um um there there are disability grants that are available that we could use for Ada because remember we didn't have I think you were on when we were talking about we we the RFP that went out for that building we didn't get any any any responses to it right so we said that we let's try to do a PE me so this is my way of kind of trying to do a pie me um to get the building at least into some condition where we can actually use it what's that UND yeah um there's also other grants that are on here that I want you guys to kind of keep your um eyes and ears open um there's a couple of trans uh Transportation grants which we can use for um the MBTA that we just talked about um they have a shelter that um they'll be able to give us for the the bus for for the Mart bus that we just talked about and we talked about putting it down on on the bottom of the field and maybe put some parking down there there's uh also the um Teresa you had on one of your goals uh was to talk about um the film industry and to kind of encourage that um if you don't mind I'm going to task you with a couple of things um the Massachusetts film office um has a listing uh and if you could make sure that we update that listing uh and maybe there's a Eric is currently the contact on that okay um but somehow get contact with them out what else we need to do they're looking for um information about our town some of our history pictures and all that kind of stuff if you could be so so kind as to to follow up on that once we we get um registered with them we'd be able to then um if they have any production companies that are looking for remote locations or whatever they'll be getting in contact with you and all of that um and Joe um I didn't leave you out I hope you don't mind me volunteering you for a couple of things um when we get to the point where uh we have gone through the building assessments um we're going to need to look at um if there is going to be um some fixing on some of these buildings that we know you and I already know that there's a couple that need some work um we're going to need to talk with Aaron to see if we can get some um some grant money to be able to get those buildings fixed or even just upgrades or whatever we need to do and there are some buildings that can make some serious yes um that'll ductail into the the Ada grants uh the Ada assessments that we're going to do so what I'm trying to do is get them all together so we can get it all done at the same time biggest bang for the B and I guess again I'm going to stress that this is not tax money this is this is money to get our town buildings fixed with grants back to the the hot Library um has any consideration or can you explain to me how they would determine if there's any value books um I know people are into uh antique architecture stuff I mean is that what they would do with that first there is no books in there yeah the library when they vacated the space they took out all the vacated they vac they over there is junk junk files that are molding the interior architecture is still interesting but I think the goal would be using these C of Grants to try to preserve it as opposed to we can find use for it but I want to preserve it there some documents need to be preserved or retained yeah I don't know there's any that have historical value to them yeah there's there's a there's just a lot I'll show you the pictures afterwards I I I do want to say that there is there's a lot of towns and history in that building and I really do think we need to I mean that fireplace is gorgeous in there the chandeliers in there are gorgeous well that's what I was thinking about are we going to try to preserve that all yeah some of the shelving that's in there the old bookc cases they have they have the ne lights on them and yeah it's it's just but right now it's like a paranormal Adventure but um there may be some some ways for us to maybe even rent out the bottom for somebody or artists or whatever I mean to be able to create a fund to to keep the building maintaining it with its own funds is another another way to do it but again um going through uh Mass cultural they'll be able to help us set up something and if we needed to start a fund or however you would do that they would point us in the right direction for that and that will go into hand inand with what the the residents have said they wanted for that m um so if you could um at some point when we get to when Aon and I finish um separately you guys can contact her and just talk with her about your pieces of the the pie and see what she can do for the grants um she is an amazing find for us um she she's very easy to work with and she has a lot of knowledge excuse me about we got to get the assessment back first so we know what we're up for you yes um Mr chair there is still a motion on the table that need to get voted on to all those in favor sorry um and I did want to follow up with the the NFC Grant that's the National Fitness Council we are currently uh waiting for a cement vendor I sent that out just so you know hopefully next day or so I'll get it okay I get a price from there I I also talked with the building inspector and it's all when he says when we're ready to go just you know bring bring the paperwork bringing the paperwork and he's he's already reviewed it said that's that's going to be fine so that would be the next step but I do want to say that the recreation department has really done a lot of work on this this has been something that again it's been three years four years and that's it on grants you guys got any comments on grants at this point no we just need $1.7 million where can we get it they've been looking for that Grant ain't out there I can't find it uh 4.13 this is in regards to the extended SE septic for AR Church you help me out with that one sure so as as folks may know the um uh the Historic Society has engaged with the donor to do a renovation of The Harbor Church that's in process that renovation does require an uh an updated septic system so the current proposal is for a piece of land on the other side of of 11 19 to be donated as the place for the septic the septic system would have to run underneath the state highway um this involves our our friends at Mast do um and so um this would be a letter support from the town for the the extending that septic system under Route 119 to be able to have a septic on the far side if this wasn't approved there's not sufficient space I don't I don't believe over there for them to have no we gotta correct that that's all through you Mr chair just to correct it the project as it stands now is 100% approved there is a septic system they're already approved on that property Oh I thought it wasn't you that's what I want just so this doesn't so this doesn't get mated here so the present condition the way it's set up right now is there is a septic system going to be approved as you drive into the right hand side what they would like to do is that takes away a lot of packing there the donor as you said is willing to give some land across the street so they can pump underneath 119 into a new septic across the street and then turn that into approximately 20 or 25 parking SP apologize I just want to make that correct so it's not approved it is approved as it is but it would really be a great asset for the town because if they utilize that it gives that much more parking and it's it's a better I think it's and it's it was also mentioned to me that the conservation would feel much more comfortable having it away from the the further you pull that away from the the pond the better it would be but there is a septic design approved but it' be nice if we if we as a board authorized chair or whoever send a letter and see if we can go underneath the road that'd be awesome and the donation is for the creation of the SE system in the land well the land the septics already being paid under the under the private donor but I mean the septic on the other side will also be paid yeah it will be so it it' be everything there wouldn't be any cost anybody okay so I entertain a motion to um allow the chair to write a letter of support for so Mo second in favor I yes so yes we have a lot to do tomorrow th that's right um all right work session 5.0 ARA funds um I put in what we had for ARA fund um part of the reason why I did this is to to get Ross up to on on what we're doing the um we have this as a revolving item on our agenda for arpa so that if we have if anything comes up during the week in regards to arpa we can address it in this particular section um my uh my question to you Eric is that um is there any transfers or anything that we need to do right now before the end of the fiscal year no the next big arpa deadline is December that's the date at which everything has to be obligated the federal government changed ARA rules such that if the funds that are not obligated according to their guidelines by December of 2024 will revert back to the federal government so we have we have obligated a lot of these funds right so what what counts is obligated and it's important for I think people to to to to to keep that in mind is if funds are being spent on salary and benefits those are counted as obligated so any line that's a salary line or benefit line is counted as obligated if we have written contracts for funds that's counted as obligated so anything that on there that's got a written contract um that's counted as obligated um uh if we've got POS or invoices those are counted as obligated so we can issue purchase orders through the accountants office for specific items and if purchase order does count as an obligation Katie and um uh Jennifer from Capital stre strategic Solutions uh and I uh along with Elizabeth who's from from markam have had several meetings on it to make sure that we grasp the current federal regulations on obligation but we did sit down and go through all of the the lines there are some that still need to be obligated so for instance um the uh the refrigerator the $122,000 for the refrigerator for Teo um we haven't signed an agreement with them yet and they haven't gotten the money yet so the answer I think in that one is just quite simply we need to just provide them they need to sign the sub agreement just write them in chat the $122,000 um um but I think that's the next thing before June we we're not we don't need to have anything now we also talked about with the sidewalks yeah so that's the the the the goal well there's there's 60 a little over $60,000 in arpa funds that are set aside for the mass Trail sidewalk project right um the goal is to go out to bid for that sometime in June and hopefully have a contract sometime this summer and once it's under contract that becomes obligated if for some reason that bid also fails as the last bid failed for being too expensive we we're going to need to make sure that I say we I mean the town is going to need to make sure that we take some steps to get that money spent or obligated before December now we can spend that money on our engineer which we've already you know we can we can um uh so we could probably get that those funds spent on at Le part part of those funds reallocated to inste of from the mass Trails we' spend that the the arpa money and the masss money can obviously go past DEC we have an extension till next June on masss okay so can you just help me understand what's obligated and not just sh me one one if but I'll take a line and to show me so I'm looking at the Broadband right and it says year dat adjusted and then the actual expended so it gives you unexpended - 66509 something is that not obligated with the negative in front of it no so that the the the way it's listed on the spreadsheet you have doesn't sort between obligated and non obligated the whether something's obligated or not depends on whether that line has is under contract or whether that line is for salary and wages so you've got funds there for um uh the community um Wellness position because that's for salary and wages those funds in their entirety are considered obligated for federal purposes the meals the senior meals money which being is being spent on salary and wages in the Council on Aging is considered obligated because it's it's going to Sellar wages so what about the Broadband in town the the Broadband is um is part of that was funding some of the the WAN project infrastructure part of that was um was going guard here yeah to wiring here so if if it's not something that's already spent I don't believe we have a subsequent contract we would need to make sure that we obligated that before December thank um so those that that's what I'm talking about Teresa what we don't have obligated we might need to look at and if we can have it broken out by by Katie is I will just say Katie is very much on top of this she has a list of all of these ARA funds knows which ones are obligated and which ones have challenges that we have to correct before we s back and that's what I don't want I don't want I don't want to wait get because there's um and I also wanted to work into the conversation because there has been some uh misinformation being passed in regards to salaries that are are that have been arpa funds have been used for salaries we have been incorporating U money into our budget to make those positions sustainable so it's not that we're on a fiscal cliff when it comes to those positions we have been funding those um a little out of time and those positions will be fully funded by the time um these These funds that we've allocated have been expended that's the point to try to avoid that Cliff so because rather than having it come up with a full salary when the arch funds go away it's beened and we do have we are working yes that's the plan so we wanted to to make sure that that was that was brought out um as far as anything else um it would be I think easier for me personally to to know what we have left that is not obligated if Katie can pull that out yeah to all of us yeah so yeah I can talk to Katie about that so we can figure that out all right 5.1 Town Administrator updates and reports thank you very much Mr chair I um a couple of different updates uh the first is we already talked about one major bill that's coming out of it's working its way through the state legislature there's a second one that was just announced today um from the house it's a $6.2 billion of affordable housing Bill house um uh some large chunks of it are not really pertinent to Townsen but there are several things that I wanted to to um uh highlight from this bill um the first is uh they're setting aside $150 million for uh the commercial the for town city and towns to work with developers to convert commercial space underutilize commercial space into into housing space there are a couple of things in housing in Townson that might fit into that um uh into into that sort of of a project um I know we've had some requests that have come in for the Old Farm what's the um Ste old Poor Farm po Farm CR yes so that building somebody has already asked about whether or not that's possible to convert that into housing um so that might be yeah that might be the kind of thing that if somebody could had access to some State funds to help do it might make it you know viable economically viable um and there's some other locations in town might um they also set aside $200 million for uh housing for um uh populations and that need support So veterans elders and victims of domestic violence um and so everybody knows that the the demographics of towns are such that there significant number of veterans there are significant of Elders in towns and so that may be another Pool of of funding that the town could could access to if this Bill gets passed um could have access to for uh create some more affordable housing um the third is something that I've mentioned to members of the board before today which is that um there's a proposal in this bill to make accessory dwelling units uh available as a matter of right and Zoning only subject to things like an extra parking space requirement or site review but they would not require a special permit any longer and it would be subject to the town approval just in the zone again so this is obviously still a bill so it hasn't been passed but this is something I think people were forecasting was going to come down the pipe for accessory housing accessory dwelling units um so if that Bill gets passed in its current form that is included so that would supersede on any bylaws supersede any local zoning if we have a zoning that says a special permit but the zoning act says you don't need a special permit The Zing special permits would be taken gone yeah all the special permits would be null importantly in the in the um house version of this bill it doesn't require things to be owner occupied certainly doesn't require them to be affordable you're just allowed to do it as a matter of frame one thing you can do is put a restriction on it can't be used for short-term housing so you can't have it near PP if you if the town will do that they could do it but um what's that going to change for these houses that are out there in-laws that are out there that the town says it only can be rented to family members so as I say the current version of the bill says you it's a matter of right so if you had a special permit for something that then becomes a matter of right the special permit is no longer valid however the the bill does talk about having some special conditions about size the town could have conditions about size and conditions about um s plan review and conditions about um uh uh a a about parking and so if those were conditions that were on that the town had imposed those conditions would still exist well I guess like we'll find out where it goes because that's one of the big things that everyone talks about is you know yeah you can build an in-law apartment well P example I built one but as long as I'm there it's fine when I leave my family can't rent that to a friend of someone that has to be go out to low income houses right so current the current version of the bill and just to be clear it's a bill in the house could change but the current version doesn't have any restrictions on affordability or owner o okay so all right be good to see so just something to keep an eye on over the next a few months when the P there's also part of that bill uh is well the main impetus behind it is to increase the housing in Massachusetts the main impetus there's been some action in regards to the devans area there's something about devans in in in density and specifically in Dev that they're gonna they're gonna allow devons to explode basically yeah so there's gonna a lot more development of devans than there has been over the last decade state state mandated as opposed to Big going local so yeah um the second thing is I did want to give an update on the today's meeting of the um ta search committee um just a very brief very broad update which is uh the search committee reviewed 16 applications today um they chose um to interview five individuals from those 16 applications um they're having a a subsequent meeting a zoom only meeting on June 11th at 4 o'clock um they have already decided to do two nights of interview two on one night three on another but they haven't set the dates of those interviews and I believe they asked Ross to do some Outreach to the individuals soon as I get the list of dates I will contact or and I will contact the five and schedule for Zoom session so I just wanted to that update from the T um and then the last thing is I do want to take a minute um to thank the board for the last two years um this is my last meeting I am moving of the building yeah I'm moving on to a new position as the town manager in Wilmington I'm starting next Monday um I I I I do want to thank the the board members who have all been on the the board since I got here I really appreciate being work with the board I really appreciate you Ross both at the beginning and the end of my tenure um I I I I feel like I've been really fortunate um to work in a town like Townson with the great staff that work for the town and with the wonderful um residents who are so concerned about the town and and reach out to volunteer and and spend their time on the boards and committees and come out to functions um I uh I I can honestly say that I feel like I'm a much better qualified person for Municipal Service as a result of my time here um it is Bittersweet I've made a lot of friends and I've got to work with some great people and I um you know I I'm gonna miss those relationships um um and I I did want to say thank you I I I have harbored no ill feelings towards towns and I really enjoyed my time here um but I I wanted to thank and I want to thank Sabrina for all her help over the last couple of years since she and I started on the same day back on May 16 2022 um uh she has been an excellent uh you know sidekick um partner in crime she's been really spectacular and I think she's a real asset to the town um the board and whoever the next da is it's lucky to have her um but I I could say that about lots of different staff here the the there are so many people who work for this town who really love the town and and want to do the best for the town um I I certainly hope that um the town and all the rest people in the town appreciate what they have in the staff that work for the town of Townson and I I I um I I certainly appreciate all the work that they've done so I just wanted to say thank you thank you very much Eric thank you very much thank you sir that's it that's ta up that's your ta up last one 5.2 reports from Board leaon General government so um I had a couple meetings uh first was with the audit committee um we we're hoping to meet with the treasur and go to a last year's audit and see where we areed because we were expecting this year's a anytime now we did get their letter to tell them it was on our way um we now we are being told that they do want us set a meeting and go over um the results for this year's audit but we were hoping to at least see the letter beforehand did you are we going to be able to get that um then we had a joint commit meeting meeting with the audit committee and the finance just to go over you know what we're see what we see the progress we know we made pum last time even though the treasurer wasn't able to come up a lot of stuff we were able to to go to had a quick meeting with energy um nothing really B going on there they just continue work with the green Community experience and um they needed confidence that the money that came through for that one grand um to proceed um because it was approved at Town Town Hall so they're going to be working um with the gentleman that does the work that was approved from that there was a conservation meeting but it happened on the evening that I wasn't available so elected boards this kind of of a weird time because it's we had such a a spot that was several weeks that we didn't have any meetings but we were busy with the budget stuff so but I've met with the board of cessors and then we we also then met with properties after that um there are some properties that um that they're looking at that may come into decisions as far as what the town is concerned and then I'll bring those in front of the board once they once that happens um cemetery and Parks um I actually had gone down uh we have equipment coming for the new fitness uh court and um we need to store that equipment when it gets here so um I I was looking I went up to Highway and looked to see what space they have in Highway and when I was over at cemeterian parks the foreman was putting oil and changing a blade on a lawnmower and you had to take everything out of the garage in order to change the oil and put a blade on there and I just I know I felt kind of bad because it's like and then after he finished normally it would be what a 10 minute job or whatever ended up being a half an hour and move everything back in right so anyway I I came over here um I think the best thing to do is to put um that equipment over here to store it because then they could just bring it right out to where it is after we get the concrete set and all that kind of stuff um there's also um there could be some reorganizing I think over there to allow cemeterian parks to be able to to at least do maintenance on their their there's a small Bay that's over there that should be enough room for them to be able to do that but I just I noticed that and it it's it just made sense to me in regards to that and I I I um thought something that we can kind of work on for for them um Highway Department uh they're in uh the the paving that they had already talked to us about dur in F swing with that um there was a couple of um little things some pot Pooles and that had been uh brought to the attention of of the town uh he went and filled both patched him so he's been he's been uh kind of going through what he needs to go through um land use also I've been working with land use on a couple of the grants we had the uh the mass Trails grants for the sidewalk to connect the um the rail trail in the harbor um they have to also do some work on the uh to make that ADA Compliant with where the uh the crosswalks are and stuff um but I do want to say that it's really nice to see that office fully working and and doing the things that they need to do between conservation the conservation agent um the land use the housing um zoning planning and land use it's just it's it's some good stuff to see we also have um nishoba Valley had their graduation which we were invited to however we also had the um the trail so it happened on the same day and I had already committed to to speak at that so I didn't get get out to Mich the valley but that's always a good thing planning and zoning I do want to mention um they were uh really lacking in volunteers um I had um put in volunteer form after I checked with the um ethics uh for for the associate member position for the planning board uh if they had uh because of all the projects we've got going on in town if they didn't have a quum and they didn't have an associate there's they would have to cancel meetings and they've had a couple of meetings where they couldn't move through with what they had um so I put in a volunteer form for that to to help them out um under the condition that the minute somebody volunteers then I'm going to step right right down um but they've got a lot to do and I don't it's frustrating for me to see a committee or or a commission that wants to do something and they can't because they don't have a forum it's just it becomes very very frustrating that's all like Public Safety Public Safety I we all know where they all stand they're all Sweating Bullets right now fire department police department they're they're concerned as to where this whole thing's going to go what they're going to need to do um nothing's really changed since the last time we had a conversation things are running very smooth and they're hoping to keep it smooth the the quality of professionalism that's out there with the paramedics and stuff they really they've expanded and that's really helpful to them because it brings a lot of extra money into the town when they do the transfer into the uh general fund but you know there there are a group of guys that in all about two seconds any town around us would steal every one of them you know so we got to make sure and I think we're going the right way to make sure we protect that um Police Department is working on you know the new cars the leases you know things uh once again status quo opening that no big Dr drastic Cuts have to be done here come June but you know we'll see uh far as building department I had a conversation last meeting and you know things are going good there just you know hopefully it will stay running smooth other than that there's not really much to talk about conversation with him today he's quite a colorful character that one we'll tell you how it yes he does um 5.3 announcements and Communications so the only thing I have is um by unanimous vote the heroes Act was approved with amendments that were made by people right here in Townson uh maybe the da that DFW were actively involved in uh making some amendments to that theyve got the min at the final minutes and that was approved by an animous vote um and we're looking uh for it to go forward to the Senate and asking all veterans to reach out to your senators and see that they approve it and what this changes is some of the uh things regarding getting handicapped plates and things like that just to make it a little easier well teres I know you were very instrumental in that good job thank you good J um I have the joint committee on Community Development and small business um this is H something that another group that goes along with what I was telling you about earlier with Margaret representative of Scarsdale she's having a um she calls it a question answer it's on June 24th um it she's inviting all small um all of the small businesses that are in the area to um she wants to know what they're finding difficult um thinks that they have suggestions on changing on what we need to do to uh encourage their growth and to try to get more small businesses in not only in towns but in other towns as well um so I'm looking forward to that particular conversation and that's all I have Joey uh 5.4 next meeting is going to be Tuesday June 18th and um 5.5 I'll entertain a motion to review and sign payroll and ghost payable warrants out of session second all those in favor Iain a motion to enter into executive session presant to General Law chapter 3A section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair so declares and he does and this is in regards to the fire Union negotiations and we will adjourn from executive session some second discussion all those in favor I I thank you