Planning Board - Regular Meeting

One, two, three, four, five.

You can hear it on the phone. No. Yes, yes.

Thank you.

Test, test.

Test, test.

Yes, this one works. Perfect. Okay. Jimmy shout is not here today he had a scheduled absence so unfortunately he won't be here today but we're gonna try to move forward anybody want to make a motion on the all in favor non-public minutes we have any we had none so that's off And now we're going to do the payroll. We'll try to move these quickly. You want me to read?

I'll read them and you can just... Benedicts, 1,034.79. Bird, 381.56. Zaccali, 457.67. Collins, 1,238. Oop, it sounded like it. Cooper, 1,029.64. Sanuski, 1,018.22. Donas-Swall, 1,154.62. Gagnon, 7.59. Giroux, 9.87.27. Haggett, 7.17.89. Heffernan, 3.69.05. Ingalls, 1,674. Hegel, 374.88. Kennedy, 753.71. Labonte, 271.51. Lambert, 501.50. Lambrow, 645.02. Levine, 705.83. Leo, 127.79. Lord, 387.24. Markey, 12.23.02. Marsden, 11.33.80. Martinez, 1,024.78. McCauley, 51.27. Murch, 22.80.37. Murphy, 235.47. Newman, 17.58.99. O'Brien, 274.74. Olson, 14.98.52. O'Neill, 13.23.28. Polasek, 6.77.20 or 28.22. That could work. Ranouska, 913.10. Robinson, 1394.27. Saltzman, 169.70. Sattar, 890.76. Spitaleri, 1940.44. Stevens, 1230.58. Tennant, 1009.84. Tilby, 1655.04. Tilby, 56-56. Tilby, 7-20-90. Turner, 3-11-42. Tuttle, 3-11-42. Whitby, 15-70-77. Weers, 11-72-34. Wood, 12-45-95. Wass, 11-74-17.

Total direct deposit is $39,911.25 and checks is $9,557.93 for a total of $5,493.96. Thank you. Airgas is $279. Amazon Capital Services is $183.61. AT&T Mobility is $763.54. TD Bank is $1,031.95.

Okay, block five.

1031 95. Brentwood newsletter fund 4000 312 50. To sell a waste systems $51,460 and 84 cents. Chapel tractor sales Inc is 119 23. Connected office technologies is 7652. David J. Field Plumbing and Heating is $1,133.44. E&J Auto Parts is $267.40. Idemia Identity and Security USA LLC is $3,530. Motoring Images is $250. Municipal Resources is $525. Promptu 10-Minute Oil Change is $82.45. Revision Energy is $620. Rome Construction is $88. Roy E. Olson is $350. State of New Hampshire DMV is $32. Sullivan Tire Company is $1,702.30. Toshiba Business Solutions is $60.48. Universe Corporation is $140.64. Valick is $110.00. WB Mason is is $74.91 for a total of $67,115.60. This is the ambulance fee account. I can reconcile. So we have air gas USAA is 188.52 and then boundary medical is 2,983.74. That's in order. All right, this is the rec manifest. We have Amy Patterson, $175. Debbie Deary is $100. We have Jason Gagnon is $100. We have Margaret Sweeney is $280.

We have Rebecca Perlrich is $100. That's it.

That's everything. I already signed everything. Alright, do we have a motion for accepting the accounts payable registry and the payroll? First and a second from Paul and Dave. All in favor? Lady? Do you want to wait for your call? So aye. Four. Okay. Treasurer's report. Stand up there because that microphone works. That's probably the best bit. I don't know if anybody will hear you on the thing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Yeah. The emergency management fund was a really round number. Is that not in an interest-bearing account? OK. Great. Thank you.

OK. So we're in the process of trying to get that over to interest-bearing. All right.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. We're all set. Thank you very much. I think that's it. Thank you. Daphne, come on in. Yeah, that one's working. Oh, it's not? Test, test, test. Oh, this one is.

I can't win.

All right, the first thing, I don't believe I mentioned this to you guys, but this is the audit report from my office. If anybody wanted to look at it, the state comes and audits my office every year. And I just wanted to show you we're in compliance. And sometimes you guys ask for it and sometimes you don't. Well, here it is. Any questions about it? Not that you've looked at it. You betcha. The next thing I wanted to talk about was the warrant for unlicensed dogs. So it's civil forfeiture time. And I have, there's 188 dogs, which is much less than last year. So that's fantastic. I just need the warrant signed and then I will give this to the chief in the morning. There's only three lines there. That's not my fault. That's just the program. We'll get that fixed, but I need everybody to sign it. I don't know. I don't think so. And then I'll take that back and give it to the chief tomorrow. Do they go around house to house? Well, not to get the money, to serve the warrant. And then the folks can either pay online or come in. Oh, I wish. That would be awesome. I'll take everyone's dogs. Thank you. 188, yes, I would love that. It sure would. Yes. And then the last thing for me is to discuss poll pads. This is the second step and we first got the new voting machines and now these through voting works also have poll pads. Many towns use them and what it is is you check in with the poll pad you will no longer have to check out at the end of the day, which people seem to struggle with. So you would just go and check in and then you get a little ticket, you go over and get your ballot, and you're on your way. And it's like real time updating the checklist. The current cost of these is, because we would need five of them, you need three for the check-ins, one for the supervisors, and one for the moderator to use for absentee ballots. So the five poll pads would be nine thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. I was hoping so. And then if we waited until after July 15th it goes up another two hundred dollars. I was hoping to get that in right away if possible. And just also there would be an additional $1,500 a year for maintenance, which kind of is the same with our. Well, you didn't give me a chance to tell you that. I've got it.

I've got it.

Yes, that'll be in my budget. That's not impact fees. I don't know. Can we? The following year, I would have that in my budget, yes. Yes, this year we would have to. I was just going to say $1,500 for the maintenance fee.

Thank you.

Enjoy all the 188 puppies that will be playing in town hall.

Jason, you're next.

No worries. So I'm here on behalf of the Parks and Recreation Commission to try to move along our bylaws. Our commission has been working in the last four or so months on updating our bylaws. I believe that was sent out ahead of time, but I have additional copies here for anyone who would like a copy.

Certainly.

The biggest note, the differences between the last edition of the bylaws and the current ones is a lot of the verbiage. Earlier this year, we turned into the Parks and Recreation Department and the Parks and Recreation Commission. So a lot of the verbiage reflects that now in the new bylaws. We also implemented a change to the composition of the commission where the ex officio of the select board is a voting member on the commission. So that's also reflected. CHOOSE ME ALSO REFLECTED HERE IN THESE BYLAWS AS WELL AND JUST GENERAL UPDATES AS WELL AS IMPLEMENTED INTO THESE BYLAWS SO THE COMMISSION'S HOPING THAT WE CAN APPROVE THESE AND THEN WHEN TERMS EXPIRE HERE AT THE END OF THE MONTH WE CAN GO AHEAD INTO JULY UNDER THE NEW STRUCTURES IN THE BYLAWS. Sure, yeah, so it does say under Article 1 that the Parks and Recreation Commission is an advisory board to the select board, and thus the powers that set forth in RSA 35B3 are reserved to the select board's determination. That's what you're referring to? Perfect.

So I think if I recall correctly originally these this the park or when the recognition was originally founded had to go in front of town meeting, and it was actually a word article are we allowed to make these changes, not on a word article. I mean, we're changing the supervision, we're changing voting.

I don't know the answer.

I'm wondering if somebody considered that. It was the full, it was almost like a planning board thing where it was like all of the things under whatever this is, 35. Okay. Okay. I just didn't know because it's now Parks and Rec versus just, I didn't know if there was like a level of change that.

Additionally, the select board has historically over as long as I can remember appointed the people from the recommend to the recognition they've been appointed through the select board so that would tell me that it is our advisory because they're not elected. This is a mission statement, vision statement. And it's their bylaws. So I think it's just what we want the Commission to basically go by. I do know that when Nick was here, one of the things that did come up was the bylaws that were changed before when Andy was here, I guess, was they removed the select board's vote on the bylaws. And Nick said there was an RSA that they had to have a vote on. And so that's one of the reasons they started looking at the bylaws and changing them to make them compliant with 91? I thought it was like 91 or so. I wish Kathy St. Hilaire was here. I would ask her, but she was, I know, one of the earlier finding people on it. I don't know. And pretty much you guys just changed a couple things in here. Have you added anything else besides verbiage? No.

So I'm actually on the board and we help work on the minutes. And a lot of it was cleaning up the language. And I know Paul had us change that first line because it was implied that we reported to you because it was very vague. It was like based on the law. But all he did was just clarify it. It didn't change. And when I came on before the other bylaws existed, I was told we were an advisory board, that we were not the director's boss, that We report it to the select board. All we did was take what we were existing doing, tighten the language, make it more clear. There was a lot of things that were in odd places. So you talk about one thing over here, but then you talk about the same subject elsewhere. So we literally just tightened up the language, made it more clear, but I don't think we changed. We were an advisory board with the last bylaw minutes. We just clarified that we are an advisory board and Paul used more precise language. what happened it was but it didn't actually what you put didn't change it it was just implied you had the original copy

Yeah.

We could revisit it if that is what is ultimately found or determined. We could also put a pin in it for a week if people really want to research this. I'm open to either. At least historically I thought that was the understanding. Do you have an understanding, Chet?

We got here in 85 and Our recreation was done by people who were interested in providing recreation for baseball, basketball. We didn't have soccer then. And at one point, it was decided that we probably should coordinate and come together. But at least at that point, I can assure you, we always thought we were serving at the will of the select board. It was just barely come together because we were going a lot of different directions.

I'm going to make a motion at this time. Again, I think we can revisit it, but I'm going to make a motion that we accept the bylaws so that way you can go back to the rec commission and try to move these things forward. Do I have a second? All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

So we have three yeses, one no. Yep. If you could just look and email the old bylaws that you just had, and we'll take a look at those. Thank you.

Yes, so we have the Fourth of July parade coming right around the corner here. And I've been approached by several members of the parade committee asking for us to look into creating a Venmo account for the Parks and Rec Department. So that way we can take a digital form of payment. We have a business who's offered to donate a bunch of food for the event and the proceeds will go back to the Rec Department. But we'd like to have potentially a different payment method other than just physical cash to accept at the parade.

So we weren't sure

Okay, I'm unfamiliar with that, so I was just approached and asked to talk to you guys about Venmo. Sure. Mm-hmm. Okay. I mean, as long as you guys are comfortable with me logging on my personal phone or device, I guess, or whoever's going to do it would have to connect to the account. Oh, so you're saying there's a device thing? Okay. Okay. We can look into that then. Well, yeah. I just don't know if it transitions. Like, can people with MOUs? I just don't know. We could... I don't know how to do that. I can follow up on the Stripe side of things. I can take a look into that. I just didn't know about that previously. Yeah, that's currently how we receive our online registration, just through Stripe. I was not familiar with tapping. Yeah. OK. OK. OK. I'll look into that then. And then worst case scenario, I'll be back in two weeks. All right. Thank you.

All right. And then first, Magnusson was supposed to be here. about standard power agreement, but she's not here, so we will move past that. They had a committee that was set up, and she wanted to come forward and talk to it, put on the agenda, so we did, because they haven't had a meeting in a while. Yes. Go ahead.

There was some activity at the end of 2024, beginning of 2025. They reached out to us about what the power prices were at that time. And because Brentwood has three different power providers, they couldn't promise that everyone would get a better deal. I don't know what's happened since then because there were other town administrators.

would be about a year and a half at this point.

And Chris had sent over a thing. And one of the concerns she had was there's been no meetings, no discussions on it from that committee. So it's been kind of inactive. So I think that she wanted to bring it up. So I will invite her to come back at some point since she's not here today. Maybe something came up, and then we'll move forward. Now we're going to move to the AV equipment, service for meetings, which clearly we have speed bumps that we need to run over on.

There were several meetings last week, I believe, a few anyway, that we did not have the AV equipment available for. So I asked Mark Kennedy if he wouldn't mind taking on that task for me to try to figure out what some options would be. He called Comcast because at one point we were told that they offer a municipal package and they said they wouldn't recommend themselves for that and suggested the gentleman who came today did seem very knowledgeable I'm shocked that it's not working because he he was great he said our equipment is superb and that the wiring is not and that he would need several hours to go through all of the wiring but did some stuff that plate over there and made some other changes with the wiring of the microphones but said he would need more time to come back and fix it if we wanted to stick with our current equipment. Another option that a lot of towns use is town hall streams which would not be a YouTube channel posting uh they have monthly fee of three hundred dollars for unlimited live streaming and five years on-demand playback would be their equipment they would be maintaining it there's no cost to people who are going to watch it you just log on and watch it. So those are the town hall streams. You want to see their proposal. It's 300 a month. Right. That was our thought is that we spent a lot of money on and have some good equipment here. It just needs. Right. SOS was his. He... He... He said it would cost, he charges $175 per hour. He thinks it would take four hours to do what he needs to do. And he's going to put together a quote for him to be our on-call person. He's recommending we put in a switch that would reset the equipment nightly from, it would shut it off from like 1 a.m. to, right, right, every night. And he would have the ability remotely to be able to, Right, to call in and fix it, and if need be, we could contact him and he would come in, and he's going to get us an estimate for that.

It sounds like the initial, like, getting the wiring or whatever situated is one part of it, but then the ongoing maintenance and having someone on the call is a separate thing. Do you have a sense of how long it's going to take to get that quote and that? Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'd love to see that.

My thoughts are four hours is 700 bucks. And so that seems a lot better than $3,600 a year. And then throwing out our equipment. Especially if he feels we've got good equipment. I just want it to work. And I can tell you, I hit the room controls. It shows the microphones.

And right now, it will bounce back out of it in about five seconds.

And then I can't see any of the microphones. So clearly, there's something going on here with the communication. But if he mentioned that there was wiring issues, I'd like to explore and try to get some type of budget and analysis. I mean, we send it up to YouTube. And it's not there for just five years. forever. So if we went with this other company, it's $3,600. It's only there for five years. I mean, they haven't touched it. A lot of YouTubers out there making money.

If they want to start paying for ours, then we'll set up a Stripe account.

When I was with one startup I worked with for a while, we actually found success in the AV area with local colleges and they would come in and do it And I understand that's even expanded to some high schools that have maybe the tech in town that would be looking for those types of opportunities. Plus, they could also be here at night. When we were in the startup, we were just trying to stay alive. And it all worked out really pretty well because they were enthusiastic. They had jobs. And it was the right price.

Something more to explore on that. Abatements, credits, and exemptions? Well, actually, before we continue, I wanted to recognize the podium has been, we got this cool thing. And I'm afraid to spin it so I can show it towards the camera. But I'm going to try and, well, what can I do, mess up the microphones? So this was dedicated to Dick Chamberlain, who was our town moderator from 1979 to 2024. And I thought it was a great addition to our podium. And so it's dedicated to Dick, and I want to make sure everyone can see that. I see people taking pictures. I'll let them do it. Doug, great job installing. We need some wheels and a motor. Yeah, no more town meetings. Yeah, we can do deliverance. So I wanted to recognize that because I thought that was awesome.

Okay, before I start with all of the credits, exemptions, et cetera, I just want to read something that Adrian is submitting to you regarding your decision about KRT's extensions. She says, I strongly recommend that the Board of Selectmen approve the extension requested by KRT. Granting this extension is in the best interest of the town and its residents and will help ensure that the reevaluation is completed thoroughly, accurately, and fairly. KRT has committed to completing the remaining work within the next 90 days, which will allow the town to receive the full measure and list that residents deserve. The reality is that there is a significant shortage of qualified measurers and listers throughout New Hampshire, and municipalities across the state are facing the same challenge. Finding and retaining qualified personnel has become increasingly difficult. I can speak to this challenge firsthand. I personally perform contract measuring work on the weekends for another company simply because there are not enough qualified people available to complete the required field visits. Many people are not interested in doing this type of work and the shortage continues to worsen. My concern is that if the extension is denied, KRT may decide to walk away from the project altogether. If that happens, the town could be left with a substantial portion of properties, potentially as much as a quarter of the town not having been visited. The town would then be forced to hire another company likely at additional expense and with further delays to finish the work. Importantly, as long as the remaining work is completed before September 1, 2026, when the MS1 is due, there is no adverse impact on the town's assessing obligations. The town remains on schedule and there is no assessing related reason to deny the extension. This is an opportunity to do the job right. Approving the extension will provide continuity, avoid unnecessary costs, and ensure that the residents of the town receive a complete and accurate assessment program. For these reasons, I urge the board to approve KRT's request for an extension. So I know you voted last week to do 45 days. She is recommending you agree to their 90 day.

I can tell you they were out today to my house. I let them in. They inspected my house. Fortunately, they didn't get mauled by four dogs, so that was a good thing. Otherwise, Daphne would have four more sitting in the office. I mean, it's one person I know that's running around doing these. I can see, I want to get this done. I don't want to have to go into what's going on in Hampton right now where they're having to redo it all over again. And it was challenged. So I mean, for me, I'm going to make a motion that we extend it to the September 1st. Do I have a second?

Okay, Paul seconded it. In that folder, isn't there something from DRA about they checked a handful of properties and those property cards are wrong? But KRT did that. So like... I hear Adrienne saying that if we wait, we'll get the thing that is right and good. But I haven't seen any evidence of that being the case. The picture in the system for my house is over a decade old, even though they've supposedly updated it twice in the last decade. So I hear what she's saying, and that's fine. My concern is we wait. Because they didn't give us any warning before they were like, oh, we're not going to meet your deadline. So what is the confidence that we're going to really have it done by September 1st?

And if we approve the extension for the 90 days, I think we just have to be pretty firm that there will be no further extensions. So we will go to the September 1st, and that's it. We expect you to finish your project as outlined originally in your contract and finalize this up. I can tell you that I reached out to them because... when they initially did it and whatever transferred from Patriot to Avatar, when they transferred over, for some reason I got an extra bathroom and an extra bedroom, then I was like, I have now more space than I thought. So then I had them correct it, and then they went in, and I lost a bedroom and then gained another bathroom. And I was like, we're not sleeping in tubs. So I had called, and then they told me when he was going to be in my neighborhood.

And I said, great, what day, what time?

And they sent me over a thing and said he was going to be there between 9 and 4 today. He was at my house at 10. And he did the inspection. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm hoping that it'll be interesting to see when they input the stuff. But I know when I talked to him, they said, Oh, we're going to correct it right now online. they didn't correct it online because then my numbers in my bedrooms and bathrooms was even further off. So I was like, somebody can please fix this. So I was happy they came out and physically came into my house and inspected it today.

Feedback, huh? Oh, okay. So I think we're talking about two issues. One is a timing issue and really involves is there prejudice in some manner in terms of providing the extra time so that we get what we need done and compliant. I mean the other issue is sort of a separate issue is to You know the quality and that's something that we can always discuss next time we're putting this out for bid. But at this point it doesn't seem to me to provide any kind of prejudice to allow the extension and to move forward.

I guess just because Hampton was brought up. The reason Hampton has to redo theirs is because their information was wrong. So if people are coming back and saying, well, you said I have six bedrooms and I only have four, and you were supposed to come out and check, and apparently you didn't catch that, then that's the kind of information.

Sure, I mean there are going to be some isolated issues, there's no doubt about that. I mean we were talking about something in Hampton that was entirely systemic and involved an entirely different issue than what we're talking about in terms of isolated errors that may be seen across the board. Not that I'm forgiving that, just saying that for purposes of what's on the table, which is an extension, I don't see any prejudice moving forward.

If what you said, it was a transition error between the two systems, does that mean that it's more widespread than we realize? Yes. Can they do that online yet? OK.

Okay.

Or they could email assessing at brettwin at h.gov and get a copy of their property card if they have questions.

We can cross our fingers and our toes and pray for the best. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? All right. Three to one.

Now I'll start going through all of these. We have a request from Adrian for a supplemental tax warrant for Rockingham County. During a review of the property record, it was determined that a portion of the property that is subject to taxation was inadvertently omitted from the annual tax billing process because the parcel was carried under the county's exempt ownership status. While the majority of the property qualifies for exemption, certain components do not qualify and remain taxable. I won't go into the rest of it, but it would be for $3,075. $3,075. There's a few that need to be requalified. These are for veterans. And veterans and an elderly exemption, just some exemptions that we had previously and now they're in a trust. So they're requalifying under a trust. And they previously met all the requirements and they still meet all the requirements.

It doesn't change anything. When people set up those revocable trusts, they're transparent, see-through trusts. It doesn't change any of the dynamics in terms of credits or obligations or anything like that.

While we're signing, I'll just mention that unfortunately, we are going to be losing Adrian, who's been our assessor since we started with Whitney. She's in the process of training someone else. She's still going to be with Whitney. She's just being reallocated. And Bob was nice enough to write them a letter at my request, as well as Mark Kennedy and Daphne. And the owner came in and spoke with me and was apologetic, but just said, as Adrienne mentions in her letter, there's staffing issues throughout the industry, and it's what they had to do. Yes, yeah. And we've met Katie. She's going to be the new assessor. She was in last week and will be in this week working with Adrienne for the next couple weeks. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven new veterans-related tax credits that all meet the requirements. Oh, well, there's two. One's elderly and one's dead.

Thank you.

Okay, we have a couple of in-house abatements. One is for the parcel on Route 125 where Stone Creek is being built and the property was still taxed, the land was still taxed. So the reason for the abatement is that the lot no longer exists. It's been converted to the 13 lot subdivision. So the amount of credit applied is $305. The next one also for Langdon Construction is for one of the homes being built. The property was assessed as being 100% complete for the first tax bill, but the assessor went out on April 1st and it was only 48% complete. So asking for the administrative abatement to be signed because the property is selling in two weeks and proration at closing should be based on the assessment at 48% and not 100%. So the amount of the credit would be $3,557. The rest are all KRT abatements. The first is for 26 Peabody Drive. The subject is improved with a colonial situated on 3.47 acres. The applicant believes the property is disproportionately assessed because of the market data based on the last three sales on Peabody Drive, which support a lower valuation than currently assessed. All three sales were 1,048 square feet, 1,315 square feet, and 1,531. Smaller than the subject property with two sales, a cape and a ranch. Inferior in construction quality. Four Brentwood colonial assessment comparables, all similar in construction quality, and three similar in condition were reviewed on an assessed per square foot basis. They ranged from 271 square feet to 317 with a median of 299, and the subject is assessed at 290 per square foot. Within this range of assessments appears to be fairly and equitably assessed, so they recommend that the abatement be denied.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm just going to read the last paragraph on these. The taxpayer provided, this is for 32 Prescott Road, the taxpayer provided four sale properties in support of their market value opinion at $815,000. One sale included two dwellings not comparable to the subject. The other three sales sold on an assessed per square foot basis of $235 per square feet to 375 square feet with a median of 297. The subject is assessed for $280,000 The subject assessed within this range appears to be fairly and equitably assessed, so they recommend the abatement be denied.

Second. Second.

172 Pickpocket Road, seven sale comparables were provided, though only two were ranches. Another ranch sale not provided was 146 Scrabble Road. These sales were respectively 72, 20, and 36 years older than the subject dwelling, which has an age of 20-22. given the difference in depreciation applied to these sales in relation to the subject the fact that the subject assessment was just above the sales range of 648 4 to 775 would indicate that the subject appears to be fair and equitable in relation to these ranch properties so again they recommend the abatement be denied 24 Homestead Lane, three neighborhood contemporary homes, all like the subject in lot size, age, living area, bedroom construction, quality, and condition were reviewed. Their assessments range from 794.7 to 832.2 with a median of 825. The subject is assessed for 785.5, just below this range. These three homes were assessed on a square foot basis and range from While to say with a median of 337 square foot, the subject assessed for 333 and appears to be fair and equitable in relation to these similar properties, we recommend the abatement be denied. I can, I'll go, yeah, I'll go through them all and do them. This is one like we've seen previously during this process where they recommend the abatement be denied, but the assessment be adjusted, resulting in an assessment of 351.2 from 549.8. There were photos taken of the property that showed damage You want me to read more than that I can but it's disproportionately assessed based on physical changes to the subject dwelling and removal of outbuildings prior to the property sale date condition is for its age is very poor needing structural work, no heat, no kitchen, no bathrooms. one-story sub area with no heat. The two-story sub area had no heat for the duration of 2025. The dwelling was inhabitable as of April 1st, 2025. As of March 2026, floors and some exterior walls were replaced due to severe water damage. 16, Scrabble. It was inhabitable. 26. Oh, these are for, yeah, this is for the, no, this is for tax year 2025. Well, they're reducing it. Abatement of 200, changing the assessment to 351.2. From 549.2. 25. I think they're saying for 2026 it should be. Did not, yes. But they, right.

Right.

36 Fellows Road. The applicant believes the property is disproportionately assessed because of a submitted comparative market analysis, quoting a market value of 799 and a Zillow estimate of 784.2. The subject's assessment is within the range of both approaches. Four of Fellows Road Colonials, all like the subject, in lot size, age, bedrooms, construction quality, and condition, were reviewed. Their assessments ranged from 788.9 to 893.1, with a median of 879.4. The subject is assessed for 868.2, which within this range, it appears to be fair and equitable, and recommend that the abatement be denied. Last one, 57 Northrop Drive, four Northrop Drive Colonials, all like the subject and lot size, age, construction quality, and mostly size and condition were reviewed. Their assessments on a square foot basis have a median of 328 per square foot. The subject is assessed at $320 per square foot, which is within the range and appears to be fair and equitable, so they recommend the abatement be denied.

Yay. All right. Go ahead.

At the election, we had tabled one that was a workforce housing. They haven't done anything with any of those yet? OK.

I have the MS-232 that needs to be submitted to the DRA. It just requires your signatures. It basically is a report of what was appropriated at town meeting.

Motion. Second. All in favor?

I did make a correction in there. You'll see one thing that was not on there. The other thing I need you to sign is I had you guys sign the updated select board guidelines and handbook, and I found we didn't get signed. Near the back, but not that one.

I want to commend the fire department and the police department. There was an escort yesterday for, I'm going to say, a K-9 police officer, a K-9 that had passed away at the Brentwood Hospital, and they did an animal hospital, and they escorted it to UNH. I thought that was great that they got together and recognized that. So I want to commend them for working together and doing that. That was yesterday at around 1210.

So I know I had some people reach out to me and said, what was going on on 125?

That's what was going on on 125. So I want to commend them for recognizing the canine. Old business? We got old business?

Yeah, so we had the Seabrook Trail a couple weeks ago, and there were some things that came up. Getting the emergency management credit card. I know that the previous emergency management director had one. I don't know if whatever process needs to happen to get that issued in the new director's name. Great, business cards for him, perfect. So when he took over the position, there was an issue because the way that the email account had been set up previously was they were forwarded and deleted, and so I didn't know if the board wanted to make a policy that you are not allowed to use your email account like that, just in terms of continuity. so that that doesn't happen moving forward so but that's so the yes and so currently as far as i understand it anyone can do that with any of our brett1h.gov emails and then there's no record so i didn't know if we wanted to

Think about a policy.

It's OK if you want to forward them to your other account, but forward and delete. Clearly not, because he was unable to access any of the previous emails.

He did.

Okay. And then I had mentioned getting the emergency management director set up with the alert capabilities that the current website has. He didn't realize that there is an ability to blast out an email or blast out a text message to anyone who's signed up for those. So I don't know if that's something that you want to give him access to that feature or...

Nope, I literally.

All right, committee updates. I know the new subcommittee, Jeff Gardner's on it, Ted's on it. They have started to talk to each other, so that's in the works, and that's to work with the fire department on exploring the Fremont integration. I don't even remember at this point. Jim? Jim, yeah. It's a subcommittee, so I think Jeff Gardner, he was willing to be the chair, so that was one of the things that they were just still formulizing it. Chad, have you had any meetings at all or anything? Nothing? Okay, so it's still kind of in the works. It's in the works, that's all I know. Five, I believe so.

Has that got five?

Yep, so we got five, so here we go. The recreation chair, okay, so I'll let you talk.

And Laura couldn't chime in, but the rec chair, Julie, we met yesterday, Julie. Reisner ended up, she'll be moving to Manchester, so she's no longer able to serve as chair. So we met yesterday, we spoke about open positions, who could potentially be chair and vice chair, and those things will be sorted out at the next meeting. Is there anything else to add to that? Okay, and planning board on Thursday.

If nothing other than the conservation, we'll meet again on the 14th, on the 8th of July.

So there was a budget committee meeting that week and they talked about the impact fees. Could you just update us if we're in good shape there? Are we in compliance? Are we reporting the way we need to? Just in terms of the budget committee's repeated request for the reporting that's supposed to be in the town report, is that, are we caught up on that? I just want to be clear. I'm not talking about the audit. I'm talking about RSA.

I don't know if it's the same thing.

wanted to I want to see what the board's thoughts are because we have some interviews this week is pretty packed with interviews for town administrator and for and I know it's kind of critical and I know Julie fill some of these critical positions and so I was thinking about moving the meeting from from the 30th to the 23rd. And I want to see what the interest was of everyone to move it up the next week because I just think we're going to have to make some decisions. Yeah, I'm hoping we'll be ready to make recommendations since we have a ton of you. I mean we're we do have the panels that are meeting with these individuals and then I think we would be coming forward to say what's everyone's thoughts and. Well we have for. and Daphne as part. So we got four panel doing the interviews for that. And then for the REC, we have Jim McIntyre from the REC. We have Jim Michaud and myself that are currently on that panel. And we've done two interviews and I think we have another one coming in. Three more this week? Five. It'll be five total. Four?

Yeah.

And we've already done three, and we have one more open for tomorrow. Is that the one? Tomorrow. There is one. Yep. Yep. So, and we're trying to jam that one in as quick as possible so we can get those done. And then we can hopefully make some recommendations so the board can review. But I think I don't want to punt it out two weeks because we want to try to fill these positions as soon as possible. So I'm going to make a motion that we move it from the 30th to the 23rd, which will be next Tuesday. What's everyone's thoughts?

Okay.

And I can't check with Jim, he's out because he's on vacation or out. to, we can have an emergency meeting if we have to, or to talk to people. And if you, if we bring forth who we're looking at, and you want to have a meeting, we can also do, we can invite them to do a FaceTime meet, basically. Okay, I'm fine with, I mean, Some are internal and some are external candidates. I'll just leave it at that. We're still in the process, like I said, of going through these and screening everybody. But I'd like to, I think we'll be in a good position by next Tuesday to hopefully make some recommendations and then go from there. So I'd like to, if we're going to come in to discuss that, I'd much rather just have a meeting and get it done with.

Okay.

Yep. So, and we'll see what happens. So, all in favor of doing that next week? All in favor? Aye. Next week we'll be meeting instead of the 30th. The public is now aware.

And then after that, the next meeting will be the 7th. So then we'll be back to the 7th. All right. Any other matter? Oh, that's all right.

So I was listening to the previous select board meeting, and I heard that Paul likes spreadsheets, so I thought I'd put one together. So during our short meeting during the town meeting, I raised the question around trash. And where I was hearing a lot of comments on around town was that we were going to limit them to one barrel of trash. And I asked the board what you know where the one came from and they said that was the recommendation So I thought I'd try to apply a little discipline to it from because I was curious probably more than anything else and I pulled numbers Julie provided me numbers from to a right to know question and then a Town meeting The county report had the other numbers. But here's what, looking at it, and this is just for your consideration, just a thought. To make, you know, I did a lot of change management. If anybody was in the industry since 1976, we started with benefits, for instance, in medical that were indemnity plans that were very inexpensive and wonderful. And as you know, throughout that time, going from managed care back to indemnity plans, going from pension plans to 401K plans. Anyhow, I've been involved in a lot of change management. One of the things you look for as you go through this and we experienced was that you look at where the problems are going to come up. And if you go through that process with the trash, I don't think anybody's going to care whether you pick it up with a person or with a machine. I think what people will get their attention is if you tell me now I have just one can. However, that's where I heard all the verbiage on. The one can is really a non-issue. I'll demonstrate that with a spreadsheet. Because if you take the one can, it will actually cover more than the current amount of trash we put out every year. But people are going to only hear from, oh my god, you're cutting me to one can. And I think the easiest solution to reduce the noise is simply to let people buy the next can at cost. I think somebody said a can would cost about $35, but we were talking about charging people $200, $250 for it. I guess the thought there was to shorten the trash Amount that went out but as you can see from the spreadsheet That's not the case the If you look at my spreadsheet, you'll see a yellow header which are basically from the bills that the town got for for trash from Casella and If you look at the orange actually what we had on our various accounts in the town report Over in the case of the bills, it was 11 months. I annualized it. And then on the other side, it was for 2000 and what was it? 21 out to 26. Those numbers agree very closely with what the special subcommittee is doing. And I don't want to interfere with that at all. But to walk you through this, the... Blue is the conversion factor. So the hardest part about this is . What we give to the various or build on is the tonnage, which makes a whole lot more sense to me. But that's how it comes out. So you had to convert it. So I went out and I looked for various solutions on the website. And there's probably as many conversion factors out there as you can. choose to find. I chose a very small one because it would, I think, reflect it most accurately. But you can go out and choose any one because it isn't going to change the outcome. And the conversion factor I use is if you go to the next page on the handout, you can see how it worked. We had 1,478 tons in last year, and that converts to a million gallons. As you walk your way down the left-hand column, the green is the amount of trash produced by Brentwood. The red is the total housing units. That's pulled off of the bills from Estella. The orange is the trash policy, and that's also the last page on the handout that we have, which is basically we allow people up to 280 gallons a week. And finally, green with the $24 million is trash policy gallons per year, and the red is what we would do in auto pickup with the 95-gallon containers. But as you look at the numbers, the trash for 2025 is $1 million. The auto pickup is $8 million. So, you know, the impact on one can is like a million. But I can guarantee you, if you tell people they're going to get one can, you can show them these numbers. Maybe some of them will listen to it. So what I'd ask you to consider is simply that, is it worth the fight? Because if you look at it from, OK, we want to reduce the amount of trash we produce, go up to the top of the spreadsheet over on the orange. And it shows you that our cost is driven by Castella, nobody else. I mean, the recycling went up over that period of time, 88 something. But the waste, the trash at the dump went up $12,000 in that So that's, you know, if we're trying to reduce the amount of waste we have, reducing the cans, I don't think gets you anywhere. But it's, for your consideration, having done change management for a while, if you could take away the big argument, I mean, you're not going to get rid of all the arguments because if you change something, people are going to argue. I mean, that's a guarantee. But as an offer, I would just, I know Paul wanted to surprise you, so I The other aspect of that is the conversion factor. You can go out on the website, and if you want the spreadsheet, I'll send it to you, and you can plug it in, and you're going to see the relationship is we're still good at one thing. We really are. But you're not going to convince people of that. And it's much easier to say, hey, $35, you can buy another one. I think I heard at that meeting, actually, a town meeting, you guys were discussing it and you talked about the amount of the actual container and what you guys wanted to charge for it. That's not the number. Okay, I mean, is it over 100? Well, when you... Yeah, to pick it up a second time? Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah. Even if it's that, you do it once. They don't have to do it every year. I mean, I think you have a great opportunity to go back and talk to Costello about their contract on a number of bases. But it's a consideration just to take the argument away. If you don't think it's worth it, that's fine with me. I'm just giving you a heads up. The other part I noticed, I was listening to the June 2nd discussion about the fire department. At that point, I didn't know I was going to be a participant, but I'm glad I am. And the contracting to me is one of the responsibilities I had for the last 47 years. First, I negotiated with labor unions, and then I negotiated with insurance companies. But you guys don't know me from Adam. I mean, I've been here longer than you have, and you've all taken over, and we're sitting in the back kind of dying slowly. But I wanted to give you some indication of what my experiences are. And, you know, we have the... Go away the senior leadership every year and the ceo stands up and hands out stuff um and You know, they I was the only person ever in a staff position to to receive it. I mean we're a technology company and uh scientists and engineers and Guys who did stuff that I can't even comprehend are the people who usually got them But allegedly they think I have some skill in the area but uh I would be happy to help in any way as purely an advisor or in any other function.

Thanks. Eric Turp, Peabody Drive. Just wanted to follow up on the discussions that have happened in the last couple of meetings regarding the 287G. I did actually have an opportunity to sit down with the chief, and we had what I'll call a constructive discussion about this. And at the time that we got together, he provided me with the policy that the police department has adopted since that initial select board meeting where I discussed what the sheriff's department did, the policy he adopted, is effectively now identical to the policy that the Sheriff's Department put in place. And we discussed how he plans to operationalize that, and it sounds like he's got the same idea. He's basically going to limit the activity under that agreement to essentially acting on existing detainers that are encountered in the normal course of law enforcement activities, you know, for infractions that he would have acted on anyway. That was great. I was very glad to see that we now had that policy in place, so I just wanted to make sure that's clear. I will say, again, as I said, I wish we had done that up front so that people were aware that this was coming and were able to sort of weigh in on it, maybe you all as well, but I wanted to give you that update because I think it's important. That was when I met with him, yes. No, I appreciate it.

Betsy Ibbotson, Scrabble Road. First, Eric, thank you so much for looking into that and getting back to us with that information. What Chet was saying about the trash, from Casella it was $130, and we had talked about charging them $230. I think it was a select board meeting I have it written down around February, 2024 maybe if there's one around then. I think that's what it was. And KRT, I personally have some concerns. They came to my house. They never even asked to go in. I said to them, do you want to come in? Well, are you really sure? Do you want me to come in? It's like, I thought that's what you guys were supposed to. And I've talked to a lot of other people that said the same thing. They just find someone out wandering in their yard. You know, so, and the guy, you know, I said, so, you guys kind of just get to pick whatever price you want, and you can say it's more if they don't let you in. He says, well, I personally try not to do that.

So I don't know what others are going to do, but that kind of concerns me. It sounds like you're getting kind of mixed messages. Yeah. Right, and I was just surprised that they didn't knock on my door. They just kind of showed up, and we walked out to meet them and say, do you want to come in?

Do you want to come in? Almost had to persuade the guy to come in. Yep, same here.

And they weren't there. I mean, they were very polite.

They were there maybe 10 minutes. You know, the guy sat in the driveway longer going out and stuff than he did actually the time that he spent in the house. So they were very polite.

But I was just concerned that they really weren't going in on people.

All right. We are going to have some non-public today. So I'm going to make a motion to go into non-public for 91A, 311, and that's for A. All in favor? Thank you, everyone, for coming.