Select Board - Regular Meeting

I can't get logged in now.

Good day. All right, we're in public session. Steve, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You didn't bring the expense.

They sent me a whole flag and a whole. They didn't send the pieces. I ordered. I tried to order the spread of things to actually spread the flag out. That is too funny.

Really? Anyway. All right. Is there a motion for the non-Republican public meeting minutes?

Do not do August 13th. So I'll just explain really quick. Your August 13th meeting video did not have any sound. I made a mistake. So I have to recreate it from scratch. I just haven't been able to finish it. So I will have August 13th at the next meeting.

So we want to approve. non-public and public meeting minutes for August 20th, 2026. Sorry.

I'm having technical difficulties. There you go, go ahead.

Okay, I make a motion to approve the non-public and public meeting minutes for August 20th, 2026. And do I want to do the sealing of those?

Yeah, for a second. Is there a second? Second. Second by Scott. Any questions or comments on those minutes? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? That's 4-0. Okay.

I want to make a motion to seal the non-public meeting that's August 20th, 2026, because it determined the development of this information likely would affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of this board.

Is there a second? Second. Second by Scott. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Who's opposed? Abstentions? That's equal to zero.

I make a motion to approve the consent agenda for 9-3-26. You have to read it. I know, yeah, I got it. So for accounts payable special batch manifest 8-25-26, accounts payable ACH payment manifest 8-27-26, accounts payable Payment manifest 8-27-26, accounts payable. Payment manifest 9-3-26, accounts payable. ACH payment manifest 9-3-26, accounts payable. Special payment manifest 9-3-26, payroll payment manifest dated 8-27-26. no longer qualifies removal of veterans credit for map lot 221-003 is it no longer qualifies?

Second. Second by Scott. Any questions or comments or any single item anyone wants to take off the consent agenda? All right. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Water and sewer update. Jeff. I got you on camera a couple times, Jeff. Do you? Yeah, I had that. down at... Storm Center? Storm Center by the culvert. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've got you and your guy, and I've got a bear, a fox, and a bobcat.

Oh, nice. Yeah, I'd like to check that out. Yeah.

That's funny. When I looked at the transfer station camera...

Facebook page. I'm going to work with Katie on doing all that stuff.

There was an animal that crossed into the transfer station one night too, but I can't tell what it was. It was short.

There was even one of a, there's a daddy longlegs right on the camera while a raccoon, two raccoons going up the tree.

I had a bull moose down there. I was inside the storm center building and they came walking down. It was that nighttime. It was an emergency. We were down there. I was kind of pinned in the building for a while while I stood outside. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to make the dash to my truck. Very good.

What do we, all right, what do we got tonight?

We have a couple things, but the, I don't know if you want to start with your updates first.

If you want to get the.

Which one do you want me to do?

Probably the amendment to the .

Okay, that's in, yep, I'll pull it up on the screen too. So under number six is an engineering agreement amendment. There are two documents there. One is the document that, as I open, one is I bulleted out here. You want to look at it that way? I bulleted, bulleted is not the right language. I set some requested action reasons for change on one of the documents. What the financial impact is. um where the money will come from and if you agree the motion is all on the first document the second document is it is is a breakdown actually from underwood um explaining where the money the adjustment is going to be need made because the project do you want me to keep going jeff

You can, or I can explain. It's just the additional work that's required of them. Just designing the new path that was taken for the, because they couldn't do the directional drill, they had to do an open cut. And then they also brought on additional on-site engineering, resident, I call it resident engineering, project management.

So that document up on the screen shows the breakdown where they are asking for the adjustment because of the extended time of the completion of the project. And this is for Underwood Engineering. This is not for the contractor or their work. Underwood has done an extensive amount of extra work with this project because we have the USDA funding. We have the, we will have the USDA funding, but even though that funding hasn't kicked in, they have to follow and time worked and they have to supply all of these documents. Then we have EPA funding and we also have CDBG funding. So there is an extensive amount of extra work that they have done. But because the project has been extended, they're asking for an adjustment to construction administration and resident project representation. It totals $40,950. So what we did before was the project. That was Sargent's cost for the project. So that amount of money would be coming from the contingency split. I think it was almost a split, not fully. But half of, part of that money came from the contingency and the other part is coming from the sewer capital reserve. There is one more tonight that we, I have, which we might as well talk about right now.

The asbestos removal. No.

So when, going back, I realize, going back to the beginning, of this project, the project, and I don't have the document right in front of me, and I'm sorry, but the project was roughly 2.9 million, but we knew $40,500 was not funded in any part of that project, and we agreed to move forward back then. But we never said where that money was coming from. So I have that tonight to talk to, Jeff and I have talked about it as well, so it's 40,500 plus this 40,000, 950. We have to decide where that funding is coming. If we approve the addition to the engineering amendment, if we approve that, one, and then two, where is that funding coming from? The 40,500 was approved previously. We just have to decide now where that money is coming from, so. And I didn't want to miss this, so. Go ahead. I can't tell you to go ahead.

All right, yeah, let's deal with one thing at a time. Yes.

Well, he's giving me the look on that. So for this one, it is an additional $40,950 for the engineering on this project. and for them their construction oversight of that for the project.

So it's already been done, right? No, this one. This is the project that we did that meeting where we kind of went through with them around all of the changes to go from the board to the .

This is technically a second change order that will be over the contracted amount. So we have to agree whether we agree This is justified, the $40,950. And whether we, if we agree it is, we have to approve the change order. And if we agree it is, then we have to approve where the money is coming from. Right. So.

So I'm guessing if one of this project keep going, we have a choice, right?

The engineering firm is, you know, they do a lot of work for us.

They're also the ones who pat our back on that. And fought for us for a reasonable result on the other projects.

What's the balance on the capital reserve?

It's over a million. Well, I can't give you an exact number. We're waiting for a transfer to finalize from the checking. But I think it is over a million.

Is that your suggestion, Jeff?

It is money, yeah. Just keep the project moving forward without having to go to taxpayers. We set the money aside for occasions like this.

Are they on track to finish before winter?

November 30th, yeah.

What does the contract say?

The engineering contract? It's that before you.

There's no T's and C's with the engineering folks?

So there, and I did talk to the town's attorney. The town's attorney did say.

So it's time and material, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, because their contract is broken down by, so there were six categories in their contract. Yeah. Six or seven categories, and I think they're the ones that are there. So when we get, so each bill had a specific amount of money, so construction administration, we agreed to $190,000. on our contract, so.

I just want to be clear. Yeah. Just to be on the same page with everybody, okay? I'm not saying that we should not try to make sure we fund appropriately because they clearly have done extra stuff. What I'm trying to verify is the original agreement that we entered into with them, how are we with that? And then have they notified us in the timeframe defined by the contract to make sure that everybody's behaving appropriately? When we get into like the back and forth with the last time when we were talking about the drilling and whatnot, it was all about, well, this one left and this one did this and this one did that. And it was more just trying to like tie off, okay, what does the contract say they're responsible for for us?

That's what's coming down. So what the contract says they're responsible for are those tasks there at $445,000. So that's what they're responsible for. But there is no time limit on when they can put in a change order. More of the time limits when we were talking last time was did they notify us before they stopped doing work? And did they notify us that, yeah. These guys are still working.

They're just notifying. But in construction administration, I guess what I'm getting at is they're adding $21,100 to construction administration for $190,000. So it just seems like an interesting number. So how, why is construction administration going up? Like what was the thing that?

We were supposed to be done in June. We're not getting done until November.

Yeah, and they're just having personnel on board overseeing. What they thought they were going to be overseeing is directional drilling, and now they're overseeing a whole.

Horizontal day.

That's part of it. Okay.

And we're extending the whole project. We've extended the project twice. So we've extended it from .

I'm not saying it's bad. I'm trying to tie off between, we originally said the project was this, and then we bottom line it, they're not the ones running the shovel, right? Like they're overseeing it, so I just want to make sure that it's .

Also, just to give you the number, the number for sewer capital reserve, once the transfer is complete, will be just over a million.

resident project representative for 20 grand.

We have to have somebody on site because of the horizontal cut now. Not the horizontal drill, the cut, the open cut, sorry.

Well, they're documenting all the work, making sure that the contractor is doing as specified, so. They do a daily report, fill out all the information, pull ties and whatnot. Oh, okay. It's quite a bit that they're doing on site.

So those are really the two things that are causing it. The extension from... to November and we have to have somebody, we don't, they have to have somebody on site just making sure everything's done appropriately.

I'll make a motion that we approve $40,950.

And? It's on the bottom of that dollar.

The first sheet. The engineering agreement. I'll look at the amendments.

There's two that say amendment. I should have clarified that.

40,950.

And then it says amendment.

Motion to approve the amendment of the engineering agreement in the amount of 40,950, authorizing the use of the sewer capital reserve to fund and authorize the town ministry to execute any necessary documents related to the project update.

I'll second that. Okay. Motion by John, second by Scott. Any comments or further questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye.

extensions for zero Do you just want to keep going in order? Actually, we brought this to you to approve the purchase order it is within the my Authority, but we thought it would be good to make sure the board understood it Those are the two there.

Did you need me to sign this?

Okay, yeah, this is a

Asbestos removal asbestos was found on that property When you started looking started planning on tearing that building down That was that would have been a change order to do the Asbestos removal We got some local pricing to get an idea what that's going to cost us that price came in just shy of seven grand sixty five hundred actually

7B and 7C are the two quotes that he's talking about. If you wanted to look at them, one is from Always Wrecking and the other is from?

Yeah, I think it's Sargent's.

Sargent recommended them, which ACM demo group.

I think they were around 14, was it?

Yep, 14,000. And then there's a purchase order number in there. So why didn't it become part of the project?

It was unknown if it was going to actually be in there until the project started taking place and then we did the, we paid for the asbestos testing of the site, asbestos and lead paint and what not. I think it was $1,500 back when it first started and then once they determined how much they were going to be for a quantity then we moved forward with getting prices. I think initially they could have included that in the contingency fund, but now that that's depleted, I think it's a way for us. We would have to pay for it one way or the other. If we went through Sargent, it would be probably around that $14,000. We'd just pay it out of pocket directly. Save us some money.

So we just want to make sure that you knew. I can. It's within my authority if you're okay with it, but we wanted to make sure that you knew. I've also started a document that tracks any costs outside of the project that we're paying for. It has everything in it, legal, document fees for the ban. This would be tracked in it as well, so I know exactly what we spent on the whole project when we're done. Including interest. I did not. Thank you, John.

Should we do that?

That's next. Add interest. So again, this one is kind of an after the fact. It just is something that we realized that we never voted where that money was coming from. We just said, yeah, go ahead with the project. So it was $40,500. And actually, here, I might be able to share my screen. If you're connecting back to the Zoom, just don't connect the audio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. This gives you a rough idea of where the funding was coming from, so you can see them not making up the number totally. But the original, so this is the $40,000 that was approved. It's coming from engineering. That's not included in the first one that you voted. But this is what we were supposed to pay for, but it's not budgeted anywhere. It's over and above. come from the capital reserve capital reserve so you could use the same motion that you just made but tweak it a little um if you're okay with that i didn't get to prepare your document for that that's fine and then this is the we're keeping track of where the right now this is everything we've been spending on this side and then the funding that we're getting. So, and also so that you know that we are pulling from the band as needed. Right now, we've gotten funding that equals what we've spent on the project. So, it's good news. We are keeping back up on it. But we only have about 600,000 left of the band. So, but we're winding down. So, .

agreement the amount of $40,500 authorizing the use of the sewer capital reserve to fund and authorize the town administrator to execute any necessary documents related to this project update. I'll second.

Okay, we have All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? Opposed? Zero. So you just made me think of something too, Christian, and Sean, something for us.

You know, when we have this band, we've had various tans and whatnot.

One of the things that we may want to make sure we know about when we do the budget, like that budget day. Right. Overall budget. How do we line up against all of them? Because we still have debt for public safety buildings. We still have debt for other things.

So debt is regulated by the DRA. I'll get you that information, but we have a certain percent that we're not allowed to go over. Correct.

I'm curious about where are we at in relation to that?

Well, right now, now that where values are, where they're at, that is much higher that we're allowed to have. We aren't near there, though. Right. Good idea.

I think it was a year or so ago we said we would get close.

We were until we did the rebound, but that changes things. Not that I would ever vote to go into more debt.

I was going to say, for everyone's knowledge, Christina wants us to. I do not want to.

I want to finish the projects we have. So Jeff is actually here also to give you water sewer update. Do you want to talk to them about the Pleasant Street tank?

I might have that on my list.

Okay, go ahead.

So I'll start off with a little bit of an update on the project. A couple weeks ago, we did the bypass. They did the bypass pump and tie-in, and what that did is It tied in down on Central Street, Merrimack Street intersection and tied back in at the top of Merrimack Street. We're utilizing HDPE pipe to get around all the construction that's taking place. As they do the open cut, they're ripping out the existing force main and replacing it with the new. they've encountered a pretty good sized boulder I sent that picture along but it's probably about the size of their excavator look like oh yeah they actually had to dig a hole beside it and push it in because it was too large is that the one you sent to us?

I think so yeah

But yeah, they're up in front of the first house almost at Spring Street right now. they uh we did close down the road uh wednesday and uh they encountered ledge as soon as they got on the central street so now they're bringing in a whole ram next week so we had to reschedule that uh road closure we'll fill in the details to the public on what day those and that'll take place oh that's a goodie that was a good size one so But I think they're averaging only about 80 feet a day, and they're hoping to speed that up a bit. They're working in some tight areas where between their existing gravity feed, ripping out the force main, the highways, storm water is laid right there as well. And passing some of those old brick structures at the catch basins, they're just taking their time. We touched a little bit.

So that line that goes along Merrimack that we're replacing,

force main that's not connected to all the houses correct it's just yeah just no laterals coming off it but they have encountered some of the laterals as they passed the one that they passed they hit so they're making those repairs as they go along trying to avoid them they did hit the gravity feed sewer and they didn't they plan on not hitting that again we'll see how that goes

It really is nothing worse than hitting water stuff.

Yeah.

Well, sewer's worse.

Like I say, this, of course, this is pushing the whole project out to the end of November now. But that would, the end of November, that old pump station will be torn down by then and the foundation will be buried what's left of that. Sorry, I meant to print this out, but my printer wasn't working, so it's on my phone. The guys, they've been working down the treatment plant. Our buildings needed painting, so they've been pressure washing, scraping, getting ready to paint those buildings. Couple of doors needed to replace and so they're working on that just just grounds maintenance or building maintenance There's some paving that we're going to be working with the highway they're doing Danforth Brook Road initially Victor felt that the mantles didn't need to be addressed because they were just going to grind the pavement down and Sounds like he's going to have a talk with them on Tuesday because they're talking about taking the frames and covers right out and grinding the road and then going back and adjusting those. He'll be talking to them on Tuesday to find out what we need to do or if they're going to take care of that themselves. But along with paving, we have a lot of patches that we need to do, addressing some of the manholes, like on Hillside Avenue, his plow catches some manholes, so we're going to be working with them, kind of feathering them out so that doesn't happen. We're currently scheduling out our backflow testing throughout town with backflow devices. Our guys are trained to test those. So that's what they're doing. We're scheduled seasonals for the middle of October, hydrant flushing. So this is taking place over the next month or two. We had our last tour, we had a few of the residents come, it was pretty successful. We had a little guy, a little six year old came and he was pretty impressed. I saw his dad, his dad said he's holding the lab coat on and mixing stuff. So he's filling out an application.

Tell me I'll have a spot in 12 years. We had

expedite our valve service. Normally we have valve service done at our booster station in November, but this year we started having some problems just in the past week or two. So I'm having that guy come in sooner and address that. We are called out there on a Sunday to a week. Had to do a repair of the backhoe piston for the thumb. We have a leaking hydraulic tank. We have to get that repaired. We looked into a replacement of that tank and it's $6,500 for a tank for that backhoe. So I think we can make the repair a lot cheaper.

Not that I want to volunteer, but do you ever talk to Victor about his guy who does mechanic work for him?

Yeah, we've utilized him too, the welder. Guy, yeah.

No, their in-house person. Oh, Jonathan? Yeah. Not that he could spare him right now with the short crew, but it might be something to think about.

Yeah, our guys are pretty good too. We got Jesse, that's what he came in. Oh, Jesse. Yeah, he was a mechanic. Let's see. Oh, the utility truck's been down for about two weeks now. Vacuum pump, booster pump for the brakes and... Power steering failed. It's over auto trends. They ordered a part. They received a damaged one. They're expecting to get it tomorrow. This truck is a 2017. It's scheduled to be replaced in next year's budget. I just got a placeholder right now of about $85,000. I know I can get a truck a lot cheaper than that, but I just start out with it on the budget because this is a utility body truck, so four-wheel drive and a diesel at that, so. And the oil spill down there, we're waiting to hear back from the customer that's responsible for the cleanup. If we do not hear from them, I think in the next, I think we got one more week that we gave them to them. We will do the cleanup ourselves or pay for it and then just put it onto his bill.

I'll check the, yeah, I think it's one more week though for the deadline, yeah.

And then there was the propane that Christina mentioned down to Pleasant Street Pump Station. We have a backup generator down there. It's only got about 20% left in the tank. So that's causing the issue with the generator running. This tank was supposed to be topped off, but it didn't pass a test. They have a You know, bags that kind of, it's a sacrificial bag that takes the corrosion away from the tank. That has failed. They did a couple of tests. So they feel as though that tank needs to be dug up and replaced. Dead River has taken ownership of the tank and will replace the tank. However, we're responsible for excavation. It's a thousand gallon tank that's in the ground. My concern when I spoke initially with them is there's a $500, 450 annual fee for that tank. So my thought was that we would buy the tank. That's what we've done with other projects that we had. We purchased the tanks and then we don't have a tank rental and reduced costs for the propane itself. talking with Bill Karkat, he said they waived the rental fee, so it would be worth probably just having them stick the tank back in. But in the future when the town does go out to propane bid, that's one of the things that they should consider is, you know, are they willing to waive the rental fee to keep that cost down?

We do think it might be a bigger conversation that we probably need to have, too, because we own some tanks. We don't own some tanks. We're finding with Central Street, they contracted with Suburban. That's not part of the company. We haven't gone out to RFP yet, but it's not the one we've been contracted with.

so we're just we think it's a bigger discussion i think sergeant may have been talking dead river too today because that's where bill called from yeah he was at central street so i think they're trying to work out something but it would be nice just to i'm trying to keep a handle on what we own because we did ask them to we said that suburban wasn't our normal provider and at the time they they were checking to see if they could potentially change their contract because

we wanted to stay with our current provider, they're filling all of our tanks.

They did say if I was to purchase the tank it was $5,000 for the tank too. It does have me thinking too, one of the wastewater plants that was installed in 1969, a 1,000 gallon tank, right now it's at 70% and they continue to fill it as needed, but it's only running the generator, so it was over a year ago when it was last filled. But that, the one at Pleasant Street was installed in 1998, so I don't know, there's no guarantees of how long these tanks will last.

Well, generally, it's the anode bags that really that you've got to worry about.

Yeah, that's what's happening. Pleasant Street, obviously, but that has made it only 20 years.

And Bill thought maybe it's just the soil conditions, the water. It is close to the river there. Just something to keep in mind. They did agree that they would put 20% in it and hopefully get us back so we can at least operate that generator more than 20 minutes. If it happens, it fails.

200 gallons, I think they said, they would be delivered today. Yeah.

Okay. And I think October 10th is when they plan on doing the tank replacement and we'll... trying to figure out which way that path goes because i think it may go underneath the existing pavement we dug up the last one when they did central street years ago we can dig up this one again so okay i just checked the letter his his time was up so we'll move forward now with the upper ditch and we will do what we it says oh it is okay yeah yeah

What was going on at School Street yesterday?

That was a customer's leak, 128 School Street. It got worse. We actually had to shut it off, which kind of forced the guy to have to get somebody out there. The piece of equipment that they used was a vat truck. It was hydraulic. excavation yeah yeah it's a pretty neat way to do it there was a sewer line right in the way and they were able to they take a basically a pressure washer loosen the ground and vacuum it's nice because this guy's right down the road he lives right next oh this business is right next to the Smith River yeah we could utilize him in the future on something I actually thought of maybe the propane tank, get a price from him to see what it would take. It might be a cleaner way to do that.

All right. I hit a button on the keyboard and it turned the volume on. Sorry. All right.

Any other questions for? No. Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you, guys. See you around. Bye, Jeff.

It's easy when you have a million dollars to cover that. It does make it a little bit simple. It makes it a little easier. A little more straightforward.

Yeah. Come on up, Chief. In your folders, there is a memo from Chief under number nine.

If I can, I'd love to get to that last. Okay. Okay. Just because I think it'll be a little longer conversation maybe. So I just start with the update that, you know, we're kind of due for after seeing you guys in May. Hit a couple of things. So we're at full staff, you know, I mean, Not to toot our horns, but it's always a nice thing to hear from the department where they're at. But we are at full staff. Pretty much all those new hires are at the end or technically over the end of their probationary period. We just need to get reviews finalized and probably next meeting you'll have three of the four of those. The fourth one was hired late in December and is in his AEMT class now, which would be one of the last requirements on his probation. So his may be extended just because that class kind of ends at the end of his probation and he'll need to test and all that stuff. That class is being held at the Public Safety Building. We worked with Becker Training last year to run an EMT class in the fall, which was super successful, put a lot of people in the area through, and the same thing this year. I mean, there's people from all over the place coming to it, but another good number from the area, from our department and surrounding departments. So that's exciting. I say we're at full staff. We're at full staff career-wise. Our per diem cadre is pretty good. We still miss a Saturday or a Sunday coverage period here and there just based on availability. A few more people may join into that pretty soon. Call company numbers are still kind of an issue. Even at the staffing level of three and basically five of us around during the daytime and some of the good stuff we've been able to do because of that, you still need a good active call company. And our call company, what we have left, is good and solid and have been around for a while and know what is going on. What's kind of exciting is it's been a lot of travel and time away, but I've been to a number of conferences really this year, kind of partly in that position as the president of the Fire Chiefs Association was at least helped pay for some of it. But the New England division of IFC has a recruitment and retention safer grant right now. It's just over $3.3 million. A big chunk of that is the ability for basically almost every department in the New England area to take and bring on up to five, provided the funding stays, up to five new call or volunteer responders. They reimburse $400 of a physical. They reimburse $4,100 worth of gear. And they'll reimburse, I think it's like $2,500 or something like that toward those initial trainings, Fire 1, Fire 2, EMT. We're just going to have people to take advantage of it. So, yes, it would still, you know, if we could bring on, you know, two or three people and take advantage of that, or just one person take advantage of that grant, it would still cost us, we'll call it $2,500 or $3,000, but offset by, you know, $7,000, $8,000 worth of grant funds, which would be great. The IFF has a marketing campaign supposedly designed toward... the Generation Z crowd, called The Hustle Worth Having. There's not a lot of money per se, but it's marketing material that you can have access to and get banners and postcards and some social media marketing out there. So now that I've kind of gone through that conference cycle and we're starting to put some plans together, we'll at least start pushing it out there. And if we can capture some people, that'd be fantastic. So I think I said we're a little behind during the last update, just statistically a few percent behind. We're probably still a few behind, but we just went over 1,000 calls and did a couple more today. So that keeps us back on track for what we've seen the last couple of years, around 1,500 calls for the year. Some of the recent incidents, you know, Obviously as the fire chief, I'm super proud of how they've gone. We've had a number of fires in the area, both outside and structural fires. Obviously the big one was the Manor Estates one. And that was a crazy amount of fire in a five, six, five unit townhouse style condo. And while there was some fire damage to one of the adjoining units and some water damage to the other adjoining unit, we basically kept it to the unit of origin, which is really at the end of the day, almost unheard of in the fire service. It's a non protected building. A number of residents and past residents will claim that there are firewalls. There are not firewalls separating those occupancies. Um, so, you know, certainly that crew that day and Deputy Dolph taking command initially because was in vacation mode and out of town and then was back off of vacation mode and back here for it but they did a fantastic job and it really just comes down to right having the staffing having the training and having that mindset of you know we're going to get there with a quick response we're going to aggressively attack this fire and and then just the ton of training that they do so Very proud of them and the mutual aid partners. We had a great turnout for mutual aid, which we really rely on, right? Because not only for manpower and for other pieces of equipment, we've only got so many fire trucks at the end of the day, but we needed another ladder. Ashland's ladder came down and assisted with that. It's in the Hydrant District, which is great, but if you want to get water on the fire fast, somebody coming in behind you, which is usually a mutual aid partner, needs to get that water supply established and it happened relatively quickly. Some stuff we reviewed, but for the most part it was fine. Because of those partners, New Hampton, You have to have some hydrants, but you have to know that companies like that, they don't have hydrants, but they trade with us all the time or they work with us all the time and we can trust them to get that done. So that was a big one, obviously very visible, but it was it was a big stop and a good job for the department. I also want to point out with some of those events and kind of thank the board for when we replaced car one last year, it allowed us to keep the old car one, make it car three. We haven't labeled it yet, but to make it car three. So it gives, I apologize. I meant to start here for those of you who don't know this. He's been around a while, but I keep him in an office and don't let him out very often. But he's here, one, to kind of get a feel for this, but two, as we talk about Engine 2, he's headed up that truck committee. So even though I don't think we'll get two in the weeds on that tonight, hopefully he can answer questions or tell me that I'm wrong. So... Up until that point, Aaron and his role as the deputy doing a lot of fire prevention work, attending a lot of meetings, would use the utility truck. And one of the big things that I wanted to be able to do when we went to that staffing of three is to use the utility truck, which is a smaller vehicle, more normal for people to drive, to chase, right? Hey, we need an extra set of hands versus sending an engine like a lot of bigger cities do. or other towns do because it's crazy to put a million dollar 40, 50, 60,000 pound vehicle on the road just to go give a hand when we have a pickup truck that can do the same thing. But when Aaron's using the pickup truck most every hour of every day, it doesn't afford to do that. So you're chasing the ambulance or the rescue or whatever. So it gives him a vehicle to use routinely during the day. It gives his gears there, whatever. What else we've been able to do is like, you know, especially April vacation, not that Aaron doesn't have kids, but he doesn't go on vacation. Uh, myself, deputy dollar for usually somewhere out of state during April vacation. So April vacation, he could take that car home, quickly respond back. We had like two brush fire incidents during that week, you know, in the weekend and overnight period. That was basically like having me still around or Dolphin Town dealing with it. We did the same thing when I went to Alaska at the end of July. And then this month, most of the month on and off, he's had it kind of going back and forth and dealing with meetings and callbacks. Same thing, we had the fire on Round Top was in that time period, Aaron was able to quickly get back. So we're super appreciative that we still have that and we'll continue to kind of work it that way and working toward ultimately kind of where everybody, where most other departments are at and that Eventually that becomes a more normal take-home vehicle for those period times. But trialing it has worked out exactly like we expected it to. So more to talk about that at some point. But that's car three. Budget prep. Obviously we're going to hit budget in another month, but that's kind of a big one right now with... Everybody's kind of on the schedule. Aaron's got project areas or budget lines that he manages. Every officer pretty much has a budget line or project area, and then some of the firefighters as well. So those meetings are scheduled for, like, the next week or two. I think the early look, we're in pretty good shape. Obviously, you know, we presented it last year, right, that our budget is 80-plus percent personnel. Not a lot you can do about it. Out of that 20% that's left over, about half of it, there's really nothing we can do. It's EMS billing, it's the dispatch contract, there's some kind of required and statutory maintenance in there that you gotta have a contract, you gotta have those expenses. Well, 10% of our budget is a fair amount of money. It really only leaves 10% to kind of from one year to the next, get projects done. And, um, we've been pretty effective. I think the last couple of years doing that, where that 10% doesn't see much of an increase. We can say things like, you know, last year, the year before. There was some money to upfit the new ambulance. That's a project. We've completed it. We don't need those funds anymore, but now it's time to repair pagers or we need to, you know, it's a big year where we do hydro testing, not hydro testing, but yeah, hydro testing on all the air pack bottles and move those funds around to use it. We did it with training last year, largely because of that training contract. My hope this year is not only to keep it funded there, but it may be potentially even go a little bit higher. I tell our crew and especially the officers all the time. We really have three jobs We need to respond to emergencies need to make sure equipment's ready to respond to emergencies and people are ready to respond to emergencies and We respond to emergencies and certainly the work we've done and what we'll talk about with engine 2 and the upcoming ambulance purchase We've set ourselves up to have you know, at least good equipment and then we maintain it on a day-to-day basis that training number is has never really been a good number for a long time, but especially now with 11 full-time guys on the floor, Aaron, myself, and the rest of the staff, it just needs to be a bigger number to ensure that they're getting what they need training-wise. So we'll talk about that during the budget stuff, but that's kind of a big goal for me this year. One of the projects, so I use budget prep time. It's a good time of year, right? You're in that last third. You're in the home stretch to say, what haven't we got done? What do we still need to get done? And then maybe through budget constraints, what do we need to hold off on? So that'll be the focus over the next two weeks, getting everybody aligned for the rest of the season. One of those projects that wasn't necessarily on the radar, it is in the plan in the next year or two, we would replace the hydraulic tools, but There's some really good trade in value stuff right now. So we started that process. Captain Marsh started that process over like the last month, has gotten vendor numbers, had all the vendors in for product demos. So probably in the next month I'll be bringing that forward to at least look at and see if we want to move forward with it this year or not. I'll take a moment to say thank you as usual to Steam Gilpatrick and Gilpatrick Metal Recycling. anytime we call and particularly during these demos we've got a bunch of cars up which certainly isn't a big deal to him but we appreciate the space and the ability to just go up there and there was even some confusion on the last one he said i just go down there don't cut my torch truck call whatever else you want effectively you know so um we certainly appreciate their help whether it's that or safe prom exercises or other stuff we do at the station they're always awesome So the only other stuff to get into is kind of where we're at on the ambulance and engine replacements. And I bring up the ambulance for kind of a reason. So the ambulance, we had gotten a number last year when we took delivery of the truck. Hey, obviously we're paying the price on three years ago. Where are we at now? That number has inflated a lot more than I anticipated. That said, I asked Lieutenant O'Neill when he started looking into the ambulance prices and new specifications, where are we at when it comes to remounting, right? I've talked about it for years. I wanted to be there. The only issue is that we have to remount that ambulance onto a van chassis. We have two four-wheel drive trucks. If we buy a van and it's really cruddy weather, we can very easily switch over and run one of those first due during that period. we can easily run over and switch it to first dew for the four to eight, however long winter is at this point. Three months, some winters it seems like. So that price is about half of buying a new truck ambulance. So that's going to make a ton of sense. It's obviously going to give us some wiggle room in that plan. That down the road, like I was talking to Scott earlier about the replacement numbers and projecting them, I feel pretty good about them, but we're a couple years out from potentially ordering the ladder. We're 14 years out from from engine four, if there's a little bit more increase than we anticipate, now we know there's probably 100 to 150 grand total that we've kind of saved here and can be used down the road, which would be great. So depending on how some of this other discussion goes tonight, we'll probably won't be back until about this time next year to approve the remount on the ambulance. Obviously, we're taking one of the three ambulances that we have. It goes out pretty frequently. We use it for detail coverage. And so we kind of have to time when that goes out. So roughly that October, November time frame, if it goes out to, I think it's Missouri. Right now, we'll see where we end up. But if it goes out to Missouri, it's there for up to six months, probably at least five months. Now it's back in May. We get it back ahead of. summer season, swim of the mission detail, and then football details in the fall. So if the money's not quite right, we'll have to wait another year. At least waiting another year on the ambulance at a 5% increase is $10,000 more as opposed to waiting another year on the engine, which is $50,000 to $70,000 more. So that's where the ambulance is at. Just kind of a, it's coming, but not quite yet.

What do you do with that? Do you drive that out there or do you put it on a truck?

Well, actually, now that I say that, the company they were talking about was Tennessee. And I was thinking about driving it out and maybe lining up with Waterfowl's. just a little trip but yeah we'll evaluate you know is it which is more cost effective right you know depending on sometimes you look into shipping stuff like that and it's surprisingly cheaper than you think it would be and then sometimes you're like another $5,000 when an airline ticket or two you know whatever and some fuel um So yeah, all that will be ironed out then. Engine two. So engine two really for the past two years now, or better part of two years, Deputy Chief, Deputy Heath and the group that he put together has been looking at the replacement of engine two. We've been talking about it for a while now. That's why we made a bunch of moves at town meeting this year. And it's time to move forward with it. We, as a kind of reminder or education, engine two is our first new truck. It's our primary attack piece. It has 50-some-odd thousand miles on it now at this point after about 20, 21 years or 21 years in service. I just have to believe. Yeah, yeah. I don't know when we bought it. Because I had been here for a little while before. Yeah. Remember, we were going to buy a ladder. Right. And then we bought an engine. Right. And then we quickly bought a ladder, which, of course, is an issue for now, too. So Engine 2 is the first new truck. Engine 2, it's come up a couple times. When this thing, we sign off on it and it gets delivered, you're going to look and go, well, did we get anything different? It'll look somewhat different, right, side by side. But it's going to be largely the same. We did a re- I think. I wasn't heading it up, but I was on that committee. We did a really good job designing engine two when we first got it. Now, 20 years have gone by. The call company looks a little different. Our mutual aid partners look a little different. Part of that is, hey, if we could put some more water on it. We don't need another tanker, but another 250 gallons of water is another minute and a half worth of active firefighting for that mutual aid company to come and get the hydrant connected. Or when we're out of the hydrant district, another tanker to show up and somebody to start drafting out of the Remick Pond or Mooney Clark or whatever. So we also do a lot on our rear hose loads. So for me, not a big deal that they're seven feet in the air, but getting them down to four and a half, five feet or whatever makes a huge difference for everybody else deploying those hose loads. And then, you know, obviously, between LED and low voltage stuff, we've come leaps and bounds in 20 years. And the idea of having another hydraulic generator that we're replacing the stator on every five years goes out the window, put an inverter and all 12-volt light system on. So... That is kind of the high level where we're at with engine two. I put in this that I sent you just kind of what the financial picture looks like. As I have it laid out what we were working on and you saw bigger versions of this last year as we had the discussion on changing that revolving fund. That gives you something of a snapshot at least kind of through when the latter's potential payment will be done. We talked to, I say we, they, I didn't deal with any of it, a number of companies. So they're all listed there, four guys, Smeal, we have all Smeal's right now. I'll say it now, Smeal's kind of out of the running based on their price. We've been very satisfied with Spiel. And from a dealership standpoint, I think overall we've been more or less satisfied with doing the buyer equipment and apparatus. The issue is in 2005 and even still in 2009 when we got the ladder, they had a great mobile service department. So even though they're in Connecticut, they could come up pretty quickly. They were fairly fair on pricing. They knew what they were doing. They were quick to resolve issues. That just isn't the case anymore. If you take it down there, they still do a great job fixing it, but taking it to Connecticut is a real pain in the butt. So when you have Lakes Region an hour away and Dingy an hour that way and a couple of better options that you can go to in the state, But they're servicing other vehicles and busy and not necessarily a Smeal manufacturer. So, Alexis Fire is sold by Lakes Region Fire. Sutphin we kind of knew was going to be a really high number and it really was. And then Toyne Fire Apparatus. So, we're kind of right now down to two of those manufacturers. They're super close pricing-wise. Their specs are super close. One of them got back a little bit late, but they are kind of probably going to be the lower number, so it's worth evaluating more, just making sure that that spec really matches up correctly. And so probably at the next meeting, I would really like to be coming in here with a sales agreement so that we can get that truck on order. Again, oh. So Tuesday, we will know, we put in for one of the DES grants. So we did a highway truck, I think, through a DES grant, or at least we had looked at it. There's still money available. That grant was supposed to be completely wrapped up. I think in the spring they still had about a million and a half dollars. Pretty sure I know all the grants that they've given out since, so they're down to probably about $750,000 now. With the August 31st was this last deadline period, that'll probably be the end of it would be my guess. They'll probably find three places to award grants to or five for smaller vehicles. The max on it is $250,000. You know, certainly the one disadvantage, and I bring it up because a budget committee and a member and I have had a lot of conversations about it, it would kill any conversation over keeping Engine 2 as a reserve piece, the old Engine 2, which I'm not... 100% sold when the new one comes, that that would even be a good option. If we get the DES grant, it's not. We've got to punch a hole in the block and cut the frame and send it off to Steens and get a few bucks for it. But it's $250,000. The issue is it's a reimbursement grant, so... I think it'll be an interesting conversation on what funds we apply to the purchase to make sure that we don't screw up the financial plans that we kind of developed over here over the last year. Because there's really no way to then put that money back into the revolving fund because it has to be EMS billing. And even if it comes from the CRF, then you've got to make that sales pitch on the floor to say, hey, we didn't plan on using this. We got it as a grant, but let's return it. or put it in the general fund, but then kind of everything gets screwed up. So the warrant's an option, but then of course if it doesn't pass, no means no, and we ordered a fire truck six months before that. So that could be a big issue. So that brings me to the revolving fund, and I'd like to just hit it really quick. There's a lot here. I wasn't planning on talking about it. It was kind of last minute just throwing stuff on there because I think they go hand in hand. The big concern with the revolving fund right now is that we i knew going into this really the first five years was going to be the trickiest five years we've got to get engine two ordered and paid for we've got to get a1's replacement ordered and paid for and we at least got to get the ladder ordered in that time if not delivered but certainly ordered and so um that money needs to be there obviously one of the issues that we're running into which is really good is that um We're well down out of that four and five years that it was taken to get fire trucks. So one of the bids right now is like the max on it was 800 days. So we'll put us roughly in November of 2028, you know, for like next month. We signed it this month. So it'd be November of 2028. Well, that's all fine, except if we're not making those deposits, if we're continuing to make those deposits at the end of the year like we've done forever, we're probably not going to have enough money to pay that bill potentially, right? So the other issue is this, the other one is about 600 days, which would be May of 2028. I definitely know we're going to be struggling at that point. My guess, one of the questions, knowing that it would be asked, and it's an important question from a cash standpoint, is how many sales in the last, I asked three, they gave me two, because that's kind of when the window shrunk, in the last two years have, I didn't have to ask exceed, because none of them have exceeded that timeline from that manufacturer in particular. How many have come early? Because if it shows up at 700 days and we're $100,000 short in that fund, now we're paying interest because we can't pay the bill, right? And the answer was in the last two years about 70% they've delivered ahead of time. So my guess is in talking to Aaron, and it seems like the big issue really is the chassis. and the chassis timeframe's been moving up, moving up, moving up, right, and getting shorter. And so now instead of two years to get a chassis, we're down, that quote's 12 to 14 months to get a chassis. The 600-day one's more like 10 to 12 months to get a chassis. They're the same chassis, which means this guy will get it early, and instead of 800 days, it's going to come in 600 anyway, regardless of who we go with. So my big ask on the revolving fund side is, The way that is written up, and I understand it says up to, and I believe the issue with the language is it's not intended to say... And you're the board, you can decide whatever you want, right? It's not intended to be, well, some years we could do 400 or some years we could do 300 and then some years we could do up to 500. It just sets the max. You can only put 500 in there. That's really the intended use of that language. The other side of it is it's the first monies that come in from billing revenues. I don't really care, right? But what I do care about is in two years' time, we may owe a million, we owe 1.1, maybe a little bit more for this fire truck, and $300,000 to $400,000 for the ambulance remount all at the same time when we have, if we continue to make the deposit $500,000 at a time in December, we're going to have about $1.1 million. We can push the ambulance and that's fine. It'll get more expensive, not as much expensive. The other side of it is the more that that money's in that fund, the more, if it's in the general fund, it's getting bank interest. If it's in that fund, the trustees have it and they're doing a good job earning interest on it. I would really like to see us say, you know, whatever the procedure needs to be. But Christina and I talked about it a lot. You do it quarterly. Quarterly still puts you kind of in a bind for the first few years. Maybe at some point you change it to quarterly so it's not as cumbersome on finance and the treasurer. But if you go to monthly and you just, oh, we took this in last month and now by the second meeting of, February we're depositing that money in June and you can't necessarily say like I wrote it up as forty one thousand six hundred sixty six dollars, right? That's Well, it's five hundred divided by twelve right but you obviously can't do that because in January our receipts might be twenty three thousand dollars and then we get February and ski season picks up and we get a lot of ragged checks and it's sixty five thousand dollars and Just take it, and then once we hit 500, which we're at now, it doesn't necessarily reflect in the books, but we're over 500,000 now, so everything we collect now for the rest of the year is good money that can go into the general fund and help offset the tax rate. And then we just stop doing it, and that's great. You know, and it paints to me a little bit bigger picture, because if you're just doing 41.6, you come really close. But I know most of that $500,000 is going to be in there by May when those bills are due, which means there's no real big issue. So that's the high level, and we can get into it.

We don't have to keep the truck.

Okay. So here's the most intriguing thing that you just said, which I think is awesome. I'm not suggesting to do that. All I'm suggesting is I think we have to do a better job of reporting. It's this many calls. It's produced this much. We just have to have a better way to be able to take a look at that because I agree with you. If you collected $24,682.79 last month in whatever, my perspective, it should just move and sit over there and then it's just there. Things that do come to mind, though, like just generically, particularly about the ambulance. I'm not saying we shouldn't have ambulances, right? So it's the same argument I've had before. At no point am I telling you you shouldn't have the equipment you need to do the job you need to do. But I do think we have to be articulate in each vehicle. We expect them to do roughly X number of calls. We have that load to maintain three vehicles, right? I don't think we should just talk about the aggregate of we've got 1,000 calls or whatever the number is, right? I'm not trying to say that because I'm devaluing the things that you guys do because that's not the case at all. It's more of we've got three ambulances. We've set it up that way to go in three different directions. And even your explanation of the pickup truck earlier is a great one, right? Because I cited it the other day when we were talking about the backhoe for the highway department. Right? Hey, it's not quite dead yet. You know, it's almost like the Monty Python . That's the thing that I keep hearing, right? But like, all right, we still have use, but to have use means there is a maintenance fee, there is fuel, there is this stuff that goes along with the thing. I think it behooves us to make sure that we're justifying that we keep the things. Right? So I just want to make sure that as we kind of go through all this, So we're looking at ambulance one and we go, okay, now we have three vehicles. Here's the call rate. Here's how we look at it. They're going out this many times. They're responding this many miles. Whatever the good criterion is, and I say good because sometimes what I would do is I would try to compare us. do these things they have this many things but now we also provide contract services to these other towns right like it doesn't have to be perfect comparisons but but that way that's how we bring along people that aren't experts or professionals in the field so like that that's the things that i keep like ringing my head so like when you talk about the pickup in particular I'm like, okay, because when you came in last year and we talked about it, I think I asked this question last time. Because I think one of the explanations was, hey, we don't have to send the engine. When there's an ambulatory call, we can send the pickup. Did we do that? How successful was it? We did it X number of times, which then saved us and puts us in a better position for the engine. You know what I mean? Like that kind of stuff. But I like, by the way, thank you for the table, right? Because I think that demonstrates what we talked about last year. Because one way or another, to hit that $2 million number that you've got in the bottom there at 2032, we were either keeping it in the general fund and sort of squishing it around, not really seeing it per se, and then going, we still need $2 million, or here's how we're going to cash flow effectively. Right.

Overall, the general plan, what would the impact to you be if this was done monthly?

I think monthly is better. Well, monthly or... Let's start with monthly. I think monthly is better because you're spreading out the impact over the 12 months instead of we wait until May. We haven't got taxes in now, so we have to give $400,000 or whatever at that time. it hits us harder. But monthly we're spreading it out and we can plan it better.

But the thing is, it's coming in anyways, right? Like it's sitting there. It means we're not borrowing against it is really what it is. Correct.

But we are also...

So now we're using his money, his money, not him. We're using the money to pay bills potentially. where we haven't taken a tan if we don't have to take a tan. But I get where he's coming from, though, because he's planning on that interest in those accounts to be able to continue to buy those vehicles.

So I just want to, and I brought it up to you, Scott, earlier, and I've said it to a few people. So the issue is... I would never, I wouldn't sit here tonight and say, hey, starting now, we should do this monthly and get you to do it. The big reason is, right, because everybody knows you set tax rate last November. And last November, you anticipated that $500,000 in revenue or $450,000 in revenue being there. And that's what the tax rate was set on. So not like it's a huge influx or, I mean, it's going to, I talked about it's roughly the third, potentially third. But now when you set the tax rate at the end of this year, you're not going to be calculating that $500,000 in revenue. So that tax rate should be set a little bit more appropriately. And you combine that with, like I said to Christina earlier, next month or later this month, there's, whatever the number is, $250,000, $300,000 coming in from the second half of the EMS contracts and splitting that between April and September helps some cash flow. So I certainly, again, I would never have recommended to do it this year because if we had cash flow issues, we would have bigger cash flow issues. But moving forward, And at least through that tricky period, and then maybe we reevaluate in a few years and say, we could go to quarterly because the purchases are spread out more. But to get us through the next couple of years, a system like that is going to make a ton of sense.

So I think monthly is better, though, because it does spread it out.

The whole point isn't like, oh my god, it's a light switch, we're either on or off. It needs to be how do we get there effectively, and it does come back to cash flow. So it's not the talk again.

But we do have to decide what we're moving now. If we're going to move something now and

I think it'd be a good thing to move something sooner than the end of the year, because if nothing else, you've got a few extra months that you're earning interest on it. And earning interest on $400,000 or whatever might get moved is a pretty significant number. Yeah, I guess to John's point, too, is, you know, even if we said, well, let's start this in July of next year or a little bit later, the real big one is those... first five months of 2028, making sure that all of that's there. Because the rest of it is the rest of it. I don't have it. I haven't factored in earning on an annual basis, right? So anything I figured out interest-wise on that fund is annual anyway. It's just that last five to six months before those bills come due, we need that half, so to speak, of that year's deposit. So, you know, if it doesn't happen until another, you know, if it takes another month or two, or we wait until we know there's 500 and then we're just doing it once for this year, I think I would be happy with just knowing there's a good plan.

Since we're in September and we've already got the 500, do we know roughly, I mean, projection-wise, what do we think is coming in between the rest of September, October, November, and December? Like, is it another 100,000?

You mean for just any patient?

Yes.

would be a conservative number. I think it'll be a little bit more than that. And we've got a pretty decent way of at least taking the previous year's numbers and projecting it out against what we've seen for increases. It's like 530, 540, but again, that's the number that Ingrid gave me for up to the end of August yesterday. So not all that's been booked.

The reason I ask the question is... Okay, let's just, for argument's sake, it's conservative, it's $100,000, right? So that means it's $635,000 for the year. So we know if there's another $100,000 coming, depending on how we move, you know, we can make a conservative estimate and use that in our cash flow calculation. Yeah. My guess, and this is just my two cents, like we maybe do something Like actually do the calculations. Because between now and a couple of weeks, I'm not sure it necessarily matters.

Right.

But at least, you know, that way we don't just sort of like pick a number out of the air. Yeah.

Yeah, because if I looked at the system right now, it's only 470,000 booked. But I can see that there are some unbooked deposits in the system, so.

And again, if we're planning on just using the number for now, 100,000, you know, obviously that's conservative.

And probably then, too, I will also come back to you to talk to you about, because we only have a million of the TAN that we're allowed to take if we need to. And I'm thinking we should close this TAN out and open a new one. It's going to cost us $500 in document fees and a little bit illegal, but I think it would be better to have the full 1.7 potentially that we can have. than to only have a million if we needed more than a million. I don't want to put us in a spot that we have no money, so. Yeah. But I should know more by the 17th, so. All right.

Anyway, that's just my two cents. I mean, you may want to pick a number, but I'd rather do the math.

No, I think we have a lot of the information, and we can make that decision. I do think the monthly is the way to go.

Yeah. Well, you could, so.

Yeah.

One thing, how do you feel about making that motion to approve that for starting January 1st? We would issue monthly payments to the ambulance fund so that it's all set for next year. Or do you feel that we have to make that vote every year?

Then we'd monthly until you hit, basically everything until you hit 500. 500, right.

And if we had to revisit it, you can always revisit it. But I don't know how you feel about it. If you're comfortable with the monthly, which I am comfortable, I think it's a good plan, then we know starting June 1st, we're all set. We don't have to talk about it again. We just have to figure out what we're doing this year. But next year, we just start normal. Or do you want to wait and have that discussion next meeting too? Personally, I think we...

just have one discussion of the process of the number and how we get to between now and the end of the year. Not avoiding it, just I want to just kind of think it through.

Chief, as always, thank you. It's a lot of information. Talking about drinking from a fire hose. But it's It's well worth it and well needed. Like you said, we were looking at buying a ladder. We had a committee put together and they decided And I voted for it at the time, but you're right. It's like, okay, well, all of a sudden you have to make a decision, right? And this is, I think, better for us to have long-term planning, long-range planning, and all of you guys' work on that is much appreciated.

Yeah, thank you. So I will just say the only other thing I have is next week, not next week, next meeting, The plan is to come forward with that sales agreement once we've, you know, hashed through all those. They did a ton of it today, so they're probably at that point, but I haven't heard any of it yet. So the, you know, the next meeting, we'll have some stuff, right? If you're going to spend $1.1 million or whatever that number is, you should at least see a picture or a drawing of it. So we'll bring some of that stuff.

Well, hold on. I brought a picture for you today. Yeah, there you go. That's it.

That might be our old truck.

That's from the guys at Revere. I was down at Uber today, and they were serving lunch right out of the pizza oven right in the back.

That's awesome. So I asked one of the manufacturers, you know, a bunch of specific questions that I think would be interesting. A lot of that stuff was around the delivery time stuff, particularly around overrun stuff, which we had started hearing was a thing. They're claiming it's really not. They have no increases over contract price outside of change orders, right? We really want to see a rolling tray in that compartment. It's going to be an extra $2,000. So I have that and I'll have it ready in case it gets asked. Certainly whether it's sitting here tonight or... Between now and then if there's something specific about the engine or whatever that you'd like to know That we can have some prep time for that'd be great, but otherwise It'll mostly be him talking about the engine in two weeks Time to shine Time to do something Time to use all that sick time That I throw away every year Alright

Thank you guys.

Before they leave, sorry. I did want to, I did, this is a request that had come in weeks ago, but I actually will tell everybody I dropped the ball, but I did talk to Chris and Chief today, Chief Bean and Chief LaRouche, about John Miller had requested going back to a quarterly plan. quarterly session a discussion about public safety building and any of the outstanding issues on the building so I reached out to Chris and Ben today and we've got a list but apparently there are some new things that I just found out today about what during our tour a new item but I just wanted to touch base on some of the stuff that had come up in the quarterly session and then we can Let Ben know the new item in case he didn't know. The bathroom had been brought up in the quarterly session that the pitch was not correct. The pipe didn't have the correct pitch, so it was clogging. What I told you at the quarterly session was that they had changed out the toilet to a powerful flush. So I have found out today that there's As far as we know, there have not been any additional issues since that one time shortly after they moved in.

Oh, okay.

Yep.

For the record, I use it frequently. It's got to be all right.

Obviously, I mean, you guys know this. We want you to have the right stuff. And there's a lot of stuff invested in there. You know, sort of the biggest thing that sends me sort of sideways is when we start the conversation, nobody's at fault. At the end of the day, the taxpayers own the bill no matter what we do. Right? So I'm just trying to make sure, like, we've spent a lot of money on the building. It needs to be a certain way. We shouldn't be...

accepting of oh yeah that's that's still a thing like you know we should make sure it's right yeah you guys stand for the taxpayers there's some there's some issues right there's a few things that kind of are on the list aren't on the list or things that we've talked about there's There's phone issues that continue. That's outside of the building project. Maybe the granite curving was never the right way. I think it looks great. That's a separate issue. Yeah. So there's some granite. You might have noticed it today. That's out of place. Victor had a lot of new people last year. They didn't really start out with the same plan as we had the year previous. A couple of pieces got dislodged, and we'll continue to work with Victor and figure out getting those replaced. Not replaced, but fixed up. Really, the three big issues that we've had with that building were those ceiling units, the heater units, which was a failure of the HVAC company. It grew and took care of. All set, right? All set. So all three of them are brand new and they've been converted for propane use.

Were those through the full building?

Yeah, because people didn't want to follow my plan as far as how we were going to heat the apparatus bay and they got fired up. And so it smoked those ones too and our side, which very rarely run with that radiant heating. So those got replaced, grew and took care of it. The drainage pitch issue there, which had to be somewhere along the lines because myself and Earl Middlemiss from the state did all the plumbing inspections and everything was in the right spot at the time, whatever, during installation. And to your point, it's somebody's fault, but who knows what the fault is. We did, you know, that was the first, and I will say, right, and Kerwin may or may not be in business anymore, but they... That was the plan. Hey, let's try this, right? Because obviously if we buy a new $500 toilet, that's much better than ripping this whole thing up. But they were ready. If it didn't work, they were going to rip that whole thing up and figure it out. And I think it worked fine. We haven't had any issues with it. And then the one kind of outstanding one that Tim has started to slash has a plan to address at the PD is, is the drainage out of the sally port. I was never super in love with how we designed that, but the police chief at the time, who was my cohort in figuring this out with the building background and the whole nine yards, said, oh, this will be fine. It probably was never going to be fine, but that's how we moved forward. It probably didn't get done even to the way he envisioned it, but at that point he wasn't here anymore, so I was like, ah, there's a pitch to it. I guess it's fine. Um, so I do think using, you know, those, those, I still can't think of the word that I'm thinking of, but, um, you know, just better materials for a wet environment, I guess is the best thing, you know, that the plan that Tim has, I think will satisfy it. And I said to Christine, I said, at some point down the road, we should probably evaluate what it looks like to put a drain in that floor. It's not as simple as it sounds, right? Certainly pulling up a bunch of concrete doesn't sound simple at all, but you've got to then get the water separator in and then you've got to get it out to where the sewer tie is, which is basically outside of that first apparatus bay on our side. But if we do ever move forward with top coating it,

before that we will at least get a price on it because that's the time to do it obviously uh just before you throw another hundred or two hundred thousand dollars in pavement on top of the south port in particular right so like the things that come to mind for me when it comes to the pd the justification when when i was voting for that building was like looking at the pd going they're taking prisoners in through this area, down into a bank, all kinds of trouble. Now we're in an area significantly better for sure, but if there's water everywhere, there's a chance to slip and fall like this, we shouldn't allow that. And from a taxpayer perspective, we should expect that, hey, we spent almost $5 million per building should be well situated.

Yeah, like I said, some of that started with the previous fella and I like Jim and he had a lot of great ideas and a lot of good input to it. I think he was thinking more from a residential usage and that thing is not a residential garage. They're in and out and the winter's the winter and those vehicles they're running and the tires they're running, they come in with three yards of snow attached to the underside of them and it just all goes boop, boop, boop. So I think at least short term, the plan to correct some of it will be good and then long term we'll figure out if we have any options to fix it. But that's really the one outstanding thing. There's sometimes you walk through there I hate to say it, but at the end of the day, we only built a $5.3 million building, not the 10. Northampton did theirs at the same time frame. They spent almost 10,000 on it. And sure, you walk through there and go, yeah, some of the fit and finish is a little bit nicer. but it's still a very functional building, and that's what we needed, right? It was a functional building with a good meeting room space, with good training space, and space to kind of, maybe not expand, but at least continue to do our job and train in the apparatus bay like we can now, so.

Yeah. The only thing that came up today during the tour was that the CO detection unit in the Sallyport isn't working correctly either, so. That wasn't one of the things that's even on the list I got back from Chief Bean that came up during the tour.

Yeah, we just dealt with that company. It's going to be calibrated again, and we'll probably do. I'll talk to Noel about that. He had a plan, and they did a train-the-trainer deal with him on how to calibrate those, so it's probably just due for him to get it. Captain Norman then kind of deals with all the building stuff.

From my perspective anyways, if these guys say they're fine and the thing we need to figure out is the sally port effectively, because again, a non-functioning toilet was making my head want to explode because I'm like, that is just silly to me. did we tell the contractors now we're way outside of it but like from the contractor perspective then okay guys would you help us put this thing in if it's pitching all over it's pitching based on what we found today it's pitching all over the place not incorrectly say in one direction because if it's incorrectly in one direction you can go all right well it's just in the wrong direction So it sounds like that's the only real issue?

Yeah. Yeah, and at least to keep the building functional and whatnot and not damaging it and safe. I think the short-term plan is good. Potentially long-term it's a bigger thing and we'll cross that bridge in three and a half years.

Sean's going to give me a contact name too. There's a, that does, Flooring, thank you. Epoxy flooring that might be able to do some type of crown with the epoxy.

To help with the drainage. The pitch, if they could build it up.

Yeah, that was the cheaper long-term, you've got to do this now to figure it out and then Do we look at that or do we look at tearing, not the whole thing up, but doing something with a better drain? Because I still think long-term that's best because that initial plan of, well, let's have a drain out the front door really works at your house when you're backing into your garage and going through the man door into the house. The door still freezes shut, though. Well, the door freezes shut, or now you've got basically a swimming pool ice rink in February outside of the bay because two cars were in there and six yards of snow and dirt cut off of them. Yeah. Oh, it's good. We're glad to have you guys back again. It doesn't feel like it's been that long, but...

i won't i won't let christina keep it here any longer yeah i will see you tomorrow have a good day have a good weekend um all right cleaning rfp um so we didn't get uh we got three and what i did with it's under number how'd you put that together I was like, do this. And they're like, no, that's wrong. Do it, fix this. And then I ended up talking back and forth with it. So, but it came out. So I really liked what I did though. So 11A is where you see the breakdown of the three and the ones under it, B, C, and D are the quotes that we got in. We were, I've got to be very careful. We were hoping to come back with more options but we can't if you look at the annual base price. I mean granted this is going to change a little too. Let me start over. So water and sewer I had put into this quote cleaning twice a week their bathrooms and when we realized they only wanted it done twice a month. I'm like, okay, great. That will adjust this price a little bit. But they now want to add the conference room, which makes sense because the guys are cleaning it. So there are going to be some adjustments, but this gives you a breakdown about annual costs. So number one is obviously the least. annual costs for all of the buildings that we've included. So the buildings that were included in this RFP is this building twice a week, they'll clean it. We were also looking at how much it would cost for carpet cleaning twice a year because we haven't been doing that and the floors are starting to look rough. The other building is the historic town hall. We added that in because we are cleaning it after or before events in order to prep for them. Bathrooms and mainly, we usually hire a different company to do the flooring. We are overdue. We are supposed to be doing that flooring every three years, and we haven't done it. But it still looked good, so I was trying to stall a little bit. So that included the cleaning for events while the historic town hall was open. It also included Kelly Park. We have them clean the bathroom. We have them do a full cleaning of the concession building when we open it. And we have them clean the bathrooms every Thursday during concerts, July and August. Just because we have quite a few people go to concerts and we don't, the bathrooms need to be clean. Especially when you have camp using the bathrooms during the summer. And then a full cleaning usually after Old Home Day because it is quite a mess usually after Old Home Day. And then we'll close the building down. and then um so water and sewer i told you about his highway is also doing cleaning right now and it's mainly their two bathrooms the one thing i talked them into doing was cleaning their break room so that's been added so so the costs are there so number one um is the least um it is the current Number two is the next highest, and then number three is totally out of, I'm not, they don't even have anybody hired in the area, so they would hire only if they got this contract. So I wouldn't recommend the third one at all, so.

What's the number of cleaning differences between the first and second one? number two we're saying okay it's a hundred and four times so so it's like so it's twice a week at the town offices oh yeah i did say it's twice a week yeah yeah because it says 104 but like what cb annual or yeah no or virtuosity annual right like how many times are they coming are they coming in for the same number of times yes yes they have to

They were, when they were bidding, it's the exact same thing that I just told you was for the number of cleanings. But Virtuosity, I can break it down too. They gave a per, everybody gave a price per cleaning, but I figured if I showed you the annual, that was probably better. Yeah. So they would have to do exactly the same number of cleanings as the number one, so.

say something appropriately. What is, let me think about how to say this or ask this. What would be accomplished or achieved that isn't being achieved by going with the second bit?

I don't know for sure. I will, because I don't know how this second bid person is going to be. I did check their, I did Google them and check some of their comments. They have a different, another, they've only been in business three years. That's the only thing on the second one. But they had no bad comments about them anywhere that I could see. I believe that by taking a different, potentially a new company, you may see some different changes. Right. Versus... You may see some different changes. Does...

These bids represent a different price than, does that bid represent a different price?

It is, yes. So number one is higher than what we're paying now. So there would be an increase in the budget because we did add. But some of that would be booked from, we did, so right now we're paying. So it is higher, but it's probably $3,000 to $4,000 higher. than what we're paying now, but some of that will come out of the water and sewer budget because.

Is there currently a contract or do we just have? No. Okay, so this would have a contract saying. This would be a contract. This is what you need to meet.

And what we try, what we, it doesn't mean, yes, there would be a contract that says this is what we need to meet. And we have done, it doesn't mean we have to do this, but we've offered the possibility of a three-year contract. because then we would hold the pricing for three years, except for slight market adjustments is what we put into it, so.

Do we have a copy of what their typical contract is?

We're going to create the contract.

Good. I would say that given what we're trying to accomplish, I, we might, spend a few dollars more, but I'd rather do it here and see how that works.

See how it works, yeah.

Because there's no real, so generally when you get to a three-year contract, there's generally probably a 10 or 15% sort of benefit. Yeah. Now there are certain things like cleaning supplies and certain things that aren't over time.

We're paying for, we are paying for some of that stuff. reason that i put it in for us to stock some of that stuff is because um we've had an issue with the smelly bags and people can't i will be honest i have bag i couldn't figure out why i kept smelling smoke i have a sensitive nose apparently but so other people in their offices it was the bags yeah so so we refused we told them i agree with sean one year contract number one to sort of test it out number two to

unless there's a good financial incentive.

Yeah. And this number is going to come down some because I have to do, I do have to change the water and sewer because that was in here incorrectly. It wasn't, we put it in for twice a week. We're going to adjust it to twice a month after cleaning the, so the conference room, so that will change. But we might be able to fine tune the numbers a little bit better, too, because we estimated how many cleanings at the Stark Town Hall based on event usage. We may not need that many cleanings. Same thing with Kelly Park.

I think we should get it in for Johnstein with their background. Yeah. The website doesn't give you that much.

It doesn't give you much. It's three years. But he has three other businesses. Virtuosity has three other businesses from what I found so that was my own those are my concerns about that one my concerns about number one is I think we just need to set some if we chose that really specific ground rules because yeah absolutely I would even build it in that there would be like a

Three month probationary period. Yeah, basically an opt-out clause.

And I wonder if that value might change too because if that price is estimated on what's currently being done, it's not acceptable. Right. So that's potential, during the week it's not acceptable. Yeah. The weekend one is great. So that price might also change slightly. My best bet is to talk with the parties and see how their price would change, not the number three. I don't think I would do anything, but talk with one and two and give them the adjustments and see what their price changes to and bring it back to you on the 17th. Tell them it would be a one-year contract and how would that affect their.

Right.

Yeah. Does that sound good to you?

Yes. Okay.

I did send them out ahead Under number So we did have them reviewed by the town's attorney and we've incorporated the slight changes that he made which were minor changes one of the things that we didn't take out that he recommended to take out was there was a definition of residence and there was we were going to require proof of residence and So he recommended to take that up because there is a requirement on emergency services that you have to provide. However, there is a new statute. And I read through the statute with the other day. And I feel that based on the statute, we can leave that language in there. about residency, so that's why we've left it in. Again, that was the only thing that we didn't take out that the attorney recommended to take out. But everything else, it was just minor correction of an RSA, minor changes. So I don't know if you had a chance to go through it when I sent you, but we've cleaned up the coffee that's in there. There's two coffees in there. There's a word copy with some comments on it. And then number 12B is the clean copy.

The application is pretty straightforward.

Yeah. That was definitely a major improvement because it went from like a 20-something page application, so. Yeah. So if you are comfortable with moving forward with this, it has been reviewed by the attorney. It has been incorporated the changes from NHMA and the new law changes and the attorney has reviewed it.

So under Section 4, roles of local governing body, it basically says it's a select board.

Sorry, repeat that. I was spacing. Section 4?

Section 4, roles of local governing body, which is us.

Yep.

So it basically says unless the select board appoints somebody. So I'm assuming is that going to be Teela? Like how is that?

Well, she's hired as a welfare officer by you, so yes. Okay. So...

Because what was interesting was it also talks about how, you know, that last paragraph, there must be access to the program five days a week, and an emergency person has to receive response within 72 hours. Yes. So I'm just curious. We've got, so process-wise, we're all good with meeting all of that.

Yes, yes. We've always been responsive to emergencies within 72 hours, but we do have a welfare phone. cell phone that we also have. One thing we're working on changing with the current phone company is that the calls, right now the calls will not go straight through to Teela during the week because you say by appointment only, but she feels that she should be able to answer those calls Monday through Friday during the day, so we're changing that and she will be answering the calls Monday through Friday during the day.

Cool.

So yes, we are meeting them.

All right, cool. The way it called up the RSA for the select board, I was like, okay, I'm going to make sure that we're doing that right. All right.

So if you're good, I need a motion and you need to sign.

Okay. What, to just approve it? Guidelines in the application? Yeah. Okay. No. Okay.

September 3rd.

Effective September 3rd, 2026. All right.

Is that good? Second. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Abstentions? That's 4-0. TA report.

Number 13 is the info only report which has just three things on there. I'll let you take a look at those and see if you have any questions.

All right.

All right, under the discussion items, number one is employee appreciation, and we do that. Oh, it's funny. She told me Sean's here on the document. We opened it. Why is it telling me Sean is here? So under, we do every, the first of every month, we do employee recognition for celebrating anniversaries. So congratulations on another year with the Town of Bristol. We are grateful for your continued dedication, positive attitude, and the quality of work you bring. Executive Department, we have Ruby Hill, one year. I'm going to skip to the next one. Fire Department, Ingrid Heidenreich, seven years. Nicholas Marsh, six years. And Police Department, Harold Bomer has been with the crossing guards for 24 years. Wow. Yeah. TA number two, there are pictures of, I just, it's really funny, sorry. I just get notified everybody's here. Number two, the Kelly Park sidewalk. Second phase of the Kelly Park sidewalk has been cut in and brought to subgrade for asphalt. There are three pictures in there showing that. Victor's contacting GMI this week to confirm the paving, when the paving will be scheduled. We did find out, Yesterday, GMI was here marking down for the Brookburn. Saw that, yeah. So we anticipate the start date for both of them to be within, we think next week, but I'm saying two to be safe. Okay. But number three, there is a volunteer appreciation agenda in your folders. I sent you your invites. I've invited, I've sent all the committees their invites. Arrangements have been made for this year's recipient to attend with some family members. And then I just need to confirm numbers from the board and who's the chef going to be.

I'll be there, right? What day is it?

Friday, September. Dawn can't be there. I already know that. But Friday, September 18th, we have it. I did say. No, that's not right. So 6 to 8. But I said select board members who are available to cook should plan on starting to cook at around 5 or 5.30. So music has been scheduled to play from 538 because we have people arriving between 530 and 6. We are doing kind of mirroring, we're kind of copying the mandatory training barbecue we decided. We used a similar theme and we are going play some games with this group. Alrighty.

That'll be fun.

Yeah, so we're going to do the table challenge, the shout-out wall. We're putting out some guessing games for them. I thought we'd do a little bit something different in the building. I can't tell you about the bingo game during public because I can't ruin it, but I will let you know that we're doing that. We'll do the recognition, and I still need raffle prizes. I've gotten some more, but I only have like five or six. I've got a couple more. I've reached out to some vendors. I reached out specifically to Stay Rooted. I've reached out to the fire department and police department asking for them to donate because they have t-shirts and sweatshirts or coins. So I asked them to donate. I can't remember who else. I've reached out to four or five other people I've emailed and asked if they would donate. We may have a potential, which I'll know by the 17th and I'll let you know, but we may have some funding to pay for some of the food. So hopefully that will go through. If it does, I'll let you know that. But that's pretty much it. And we don't have to clean up that night. We just have to put the food in the fridge and we can clean it up on Monday. Other than that, Are you all? I think Scott responded. He was coming, but are you coming? I got to see. Okay.

I'm traveling again. I think I'm traveling that day.

We'll find out. Okay.

That's the day after court.

Yeah, it's the day after court.

Yeah. It's also the end of our quarter, so I got to find the month, so. Maybe in Boston.

Transfer station stickers is next. So I'm not saying that this is pretty or not, but in the folder there are some samples from other towns that I found. It's hard, nobody puts their stickers publicly apparently, but very few do. So, and they are not nice looking stickers, but you can look in the first folder which says samples found under, Under TA4, it's the folder transfer station stickers. So those are the only ones I could find. Those are types of samples that I found. So you're welcome to look at those. I also found two things that I think were good ideas, so if you look under that folder, that folder is sample flyers and signs. So I'm going to, I can post it up on the screen. I think we should put this at the, so absent of having a sticker that scans and says that you need to do, that you need to, can't go through a gate, I saw this, and I thought we should put this up before they go through the entrance. Not the same wording, but similar. So you would say transfer station permits are required.

Does that say thank you, your SMUG select one? Yes.

Is that what it says?

No.

I can't see that. Oh, John. Oh, thank you for your cooperation.

We should. Just a profile. Just a sketch profile.

But my thoughts are the colors that are valid, instead of this, there would be whatever colors are valid that if you don't have one of those stickers on your car, don't come through or you're not going to be allowed to, you know, potentially. So that's, I wanted to show you that, but I also thought, what's the other thing? Wrong mouse, sorry. I also saw this, which I thought was interesting. I haven't talked to Chuck yet, but is it gonna show? No, stop share. I saw this in another town that shows where the sticker should be placed. So, and I think the side sticker going into the transfer station is probably a better place to put it than on the front windshield. But I don't know what Chuck or the people at the transfer station think.

I don't want a sticker on my window.

You be quiet. It's a window that goes up and down.

Oh, it might pull off. So we are telling them they have to fix it to their front windshield, though. Yeah. So...

I don't mind where it's at. I think, has Chuck complained about where it's at?

People are. Some people do. Yeah.

Yeah, it was me. Yeah. People who have complained about that.

We don't have a better place to suggest, though. No.

But I thought, so if we stick to the front, then we should do a picture like this, too, showing placement. Yeah.

I think it might be reasonable to let them put it up top corner, also. Yeah.

So we could give them alternatives. If we're going to stick to the front, we could show them placement.

Like the right side, bottom corner or top corner. The passenger side, top or bottom corner. Okay.

Yep. Some have a fixed window, like the little triangle, something like that.

So I'm also here because we have to get ready to order them to ask you to look at.

Did any of them say they produced them themselves or are they purchasing them all? So we talked about . Yeah, anything on that?

No.

Was that the 13th video that I can't listen to?

Sorry. It looks like a lot of your samples have like license plate numbers. Well, so. And how are they putting that there? I can't believe they're all peeling it off and writing on it and then giving it to you.

I was going to say that's what we're doing with ours, but so I did. Here's my share button. So I didn't make it perfect, obviously, but I added the town of Bristol emblem and this would be a Hebron. The 12 would be handwritten and the license plate would be handwritten. But I wanted to reach back out because I know you thought it should be more, should be different, should be more professional. And then this would be the Bristol one. So you can clearly see the, has Hebron and Bristol as they come in, which could, if you're tallying them, you could tally them. And you can clearly see the 12th month that expires.

And Hebron doesn't have a month that expires, right? It's all 12.

Yeah, so they'd all be 12. We actually might build a print hall there as age 12 then.

Yeah.

But ours, we would have to handwrite the month in.

And the year, you want the year to be?

It would be colored.

It would be colored. Okay. The whole thing would be colored? I just couldn't, I'm not a, I just did it in Word real quick to show you what it would look like.

Chet would be doing the color.

I could have done that.

Imagine it.

got the crystal colors there and then if the whole thing is like orange or green or pink or whatever color. I put the color seal in, but the thing could be, I could just, we also have black and white. Yeah, I can show you what the black and white looks like.

If you're going to keep the color seal and color this thicker, you're probably going to have to block out like a square on the seal so it doesn't blend in with the color.

Yeah, something like that.

Or maybe just a color stripe across the bottom.

I don't know. I know it was Scott Severn that was concerned about the other drawing that we had done. Is there something else you were thinking? No, no, no. I like this direction. Sorry, I got lost. Where is it? Desktop. I was gonna show you the other, we have different, so here's another thing, we have word markups too, or mockups or whatever they call them that are part of our guidelines for design. Let's see, I can show you all of them. I have to stop sharing, it's blocking my screen. Hang on a second. They're going somewhere. All right, we have, let's see if it'll open. I may just leave it on the side because when I open them it makes me stop sharing. So these are called cabin and mill icons. They're part of the design for the town too. They have the black and white. Well, that one's white on white. They have the green seal. We have the black seal. Come on.

I think the seal might not look good in that small an image. I think it would lose all the detail in the borders and things.

Well, so what's really funny, this is a prison catalog. So we looked at their decal. There's what they offer. So Bristol's one of the ones they advertise in their flyer, our seal. So they can do it. We do it on the letterhead too, the envelopes too. Yeah.

I just lost. How large are those?

This is popular custom size. It's two and a half inches, three inches, four, six, eight. So they can do all of them. I just lost something though. Yeah, the other one is not filling up.

Hang on a second.

It's because I have my background is black. Here, I can show you this one.

I think I'm going to vote against the seal because I think the size is not going to look good. But I think one of the icon, iconic . Yeah.

So this is the black seal, sorry. It took me. It wouldn't show.

It would be great. Because it all.

Okay, so do you think the markup words would be better? No seal.

I think one of the other images, like the .

Because it does say Bristol down below. Yeah.

So maybe just the, oh, here's word markup. I didn't show you those yet. Hang on a second.

I just put it in the co-pilot. Go away.

Did it design something different?

Of course it did. It's the same concept.

It's the same concept. So this one I like, actually. This might be what you're thinking. little there yeah so you could take the bristle out of the below and just say 2027 transfer station permit and put that bristol mark up yeah i think you're good with that i think so okay i think that's it just yeah it uses our brand and some of our vehicles have this on them on the side on the side of them instead of the seal yeah so okay are you good with And so I will put that in and show you what it looks like and then they'll send us a proof and once I get the proof I'll just make sure that you see what it looks like. And then ask them about a printer. Oh yeah, I got to ask Towns about a printer. Let me write that down. Yeah, there's got to be a blueprint.

In the best case, do a label maker, and at least that would be printed on there. Stick the label on it. It would be legible font, like consistent. White on white, or clear. You get the clear, black lettering with clear background, so it just goes right over that white sticker.

I can't read. There's a fly in here. All right, I'll ask . Maybe what I'll do is try to get that information at your next meeting. We do have to try and order these right by your next meeting if we are going to order them from the prison or not. But, and go from here.

Yeah, it might be too late to do the for this year.

But if we get the numbers, we can put it in the budget.

Yeah. Yeah.

Inside Scoop, she's doing some really good work with it. I'm going to pull it up on the screen. There's some really interesting things in here. We're doing some other extra things with it as well. I will pull it up eventually. So I like the, she's done a really nice job with the inside scoop, the colors on it, the September theme. These are the, our messages this month were much larger than they have been. So they're in there. I'll email these out to you too. But highway department, the library, they've submitted stuff in here. Pictures have been in. Town clerk tax collector. One thing I will announce publicly too is next week, mainly it's for employees, which is a nice touch from the cemetery trustees, but the select board could go if they're available. September 10th, 10 a.m. at Worthen Cemetery, the cemetery trustees are doing a walk and talk event for town employees. um they will it's about an hour long introduction of the trustees explain the responsibilities of the trustees and take a tour of the cemetery and show how they clean the stones so it's always a nice touch from the trustees um beach is issued their thank you we will be doing the beach closeout on september 17th i have um chief bean Cheryl Harper and Deb Tivy coming to discuss with the board. They're concerned about another board member's conversation at quarterly post check about day passes. So we'll have all those conversations together. Transfer station did hold their household hazardous waste tonight. It was two to six tonight. So, well, we, he comes in in October, so we'll hold and give a report on how that went in October.

What Sean and I did,

Yeah. Busy. It usually is.

You said when you first opened, the line was all the way up to 104?

Yeah.

Wow. Listen, that's good, right? Because it's just keeping it at home and getting it done in places it shouldn't be.

The fire department, it does introduce the, I'll show you the picture. These are our three interns. There's a little information about them. Cole Emanuel, Caden Doherty, and Cole Mobley. The interesting thing is they are all from fire families. So one, his father is the chief of the Durham Fire Department. Another one, his father is a firefighter paramedic at Wyndham Fire Department. And another one is his father is serving as a national firefighter.

That's kind of cool that they're coming from communities pretty far away. Yeah.

We are going to be, there's a wellness article in here, so see if you guys are getting some neat in your days. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It's called. So water and sewer have put some information in. It was neat to see the boulder, but I also thought, let me skip down. This is actually neat. So in theirs, they said, where is it? Fun fact, look at the rates that used to be under the Bristol Aqueduct Company in 1894. Wow. So this is what Jeff put in. They were kind of cool to see. So we tried to make the page bigger so you could see the rates, but it's kind of hard. like $6, $5 for a water closet. They called them water closet. Private stables, $5. That was a lot of money. Yeah. Apothecary was $10, so it's kind of neat to see that. Some of this I'm going to try to share out now, too. We're going to change the town administrator's corner to the inside scoop, but there's certain things we won't share out, but we'll put that on the website.

That's right.

And then these are the next month's challenge. Can you figure out which baby I am? But you can't say it. Oh, actually you can say it because it's not really a competition. So they were only six that got submitted. So can you figure out which baby I am?

Number two. Two. I'm going to say three.

Any other guesses? No, I'm number five. I'm number five.

Wow, you're old.

Hey. No, my mother's pictures are fading. They used to style my hair like my dad with the cowlick.

Oh, that's awful dresses too. Oh, I know.

But do you remember the last time with throwback challenge? So now they tell you who's who. So Richard Poitras, row two, the fourth picture, is Richard Poitras. Victor is row four, the second picture. I thought Jeff was up in the top row. Nope. Jeff is row six, third picture. Let me see if I can make it bigger. Oops, sorry. I don't think you can see it any better. So Jeff is row six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three. Three, so that's Jeff. And now, if you look it up close, it is Jeff. You can see it, now you know. So we thought that was cute. And then the last piece to remind you, so we did do some, added some executive, based it off of the theme. So Ruby's our chief corn counter. Tila is the keeper of the pumpkin patch. Deb is the hay bale coordinator extraordinaire, and I am an honorary scarecrow and head scarecrow and chief crow chaser. And then just a reminder, if you are participating in the flu clinic, check with us. If you haven't registered, register, because if we don't get 20, They're going to cancel on us. There's a QR code. Actually, it's right there. So September 9th, 10 to 1 at the Public Safety Building. That's where they'll be. You can get flu shot, you can get pneumonia, and you can get COVID if you want to. Those are the three you can get. Note, though, if you've not gotten pneumonia before, pneumonia requires two shots. You have to get the second one six months later on your own. It was in that email also. I can send the scoop up to you guys, too, so you can look at it better. All right, let me go on. Fireworks Committee is having a closeout meeting on September 9th at 830 here. I've got the small group coming in to close out the event. So on September 17th, I'll bring in info about financials and anything that came out of that closeout meeting. PEMI PAC update. So we received from Army Corps, they're beginning to do the final edit of the draft partnership agreement this month. They have been, apologize that they've been very busy with the summer duties. So the archeologist is working on the NEPA report and has informed us that they are currently in the comment period. They have. The comment period goes through September 21st. Once that's done, they will be ready to finalize the NEPA categorical exclusion. And they've also told us they've received concurrence with SHPO already and do not anticipate any more issues but will keep us posted. So, one step. Great. And then elections. I need to make sure that I have three of you there next Tuesday. Next Tuesday? Next Tuesday. The 8th. The 8th. Next Tuesday. No, you can stagger it as long as there's three there. But you will have to be there at the end. Everybody should be there at the end of the day for the counting and signing off.

I wish I had known that sooner. I'm so sorry.

I mentioned it at the last meeting, but Don can't be there until 10, so he will be there from 10 o'clock on.

I think this is going to be... Well, you know, I could probably go... What time is the polls open?

8. They're 8 to 7.

So I could probably do 8 to 9.45, run for my 10 o'clock, or I'll do my 10 o'clock in the parking lot.

Or do it from here.

Oh, yeah. Is it here?

No, the voting is here. Oh, yeah. Because we couldn't get the high school. So voting is here at the Historic Town Hall for September. This parking lot is no parking for us. Yeah, so I'll work upstairs. So you can come work upstairs. I'll book the room.

But I'll go back and forth with you. Okay.

I'll book the room for you. Okay.

Okay, because I have a 10 to 12.

So even if you can't be there the whole day, so Cheryl is going to take care of the coffee and breakfast. We're ordering sandwich platter. Oh, well then I'll be there then. For lunch. So Deb's going to order it tomorrow and we'll pick it up Tuesday. And then we're ordering, it's probably going to be a Hannaford sandwich platter.

All right, all right.

And then we'll be ordering pizza.

Do you have vouchers for the shop?

No, you won't need it because the town is... No, you need your insurance card. You guys would need your insurance card usually. The town, it's covered under our stuff. Well, that's a question in the future. Do we want to... We should find out how much they are and if that's something we want to. So I just need any preference on where we order the pizza from? None of our staff will be parked here. Do you feel there's a need for a driver to drive people anywhere? Okay. I just want to make sure. The only thing that will be parked here will be the town car. We're going to leave that there, but we'll all be parked either at the church or other places in town. I've already sent that info out to the department and to our building. And then I don't know what else. I think that covers it because we don't need to do anything else.

This will be the first election in...

warranty for 30 years with a new yep rob rob was here today testing them all right so rob was testing the ballot machine today because that's one of the requirements yeah so yeah um they've already set up highways already set up um the building because especially with the long weekend, so they've set it up already. I've actually given some of the drinks from the, if I have to, I've given them all the chips, so you'll have all the chips, and I've given them some of the drinks from the donations for that event, whatever's left, they'll leave for the volunteer appreciation. I actually have plenty left, I was surprised. All right. Oh, going back to transfer station stickers, John, I'm throwing you under the bus a lot tonight, so sorry. But John had previously talked about not charging for stickers. And I think that we need to have that quick discussion tonight to decide. if we're leaving everything status quo or not because.

We've got to change policy, right?

We've got to change policy.

Listen, I'm not saying, right now, my only point was is why pull people in the eye twice, mainly because it's like we're doing that. I'm totally fine if we leave it be for now and we kind of look at that next year. All right. Good.

I mean, how much do we spend on stickers?

Hebron pays for their own and they actually, what Cheryl told me today is they order 800 stickers, Hebron.

Will we pay them for stickers?

I have to look, but last bill I thought it was $1,200.

But we collect basically like, my point was we collect basically like $12,000 or $15,000, but it's a $400,000 budget line item and we don't, it's not like we, we do cost recovery in stickers. That was my point. Like, I feel like because the entire bill is then distributed against all of Bristol, everybody should get a sticker. You want a second sticker, then I'm totally fine, like, . So, he wins a different story, right? Like, that's different because that allows us to. No, I get where you're going. That's all.

But you'd be eliminating that from income.

Yeah.

Correct.

That would be another thing you'd take out of revenue.

Because if we did cost recovery for stickers, it would be like $160 a sticker. That's what you'd pay. Right? So for that matter, that's just, you know, you just stop doing the math. So anyway, it's all going to . Selecting the mill wants to charge $100.

about it for next year. Because it might be a really fun message. A good message. There's no cost to get your sticker. It's easy. It's quick. You're still paying for it.

Yeah, you've got to make up that in the tax rate. So the bottom line is I'm totally good with it. It's like everything else. It's what's the process? How do we decide what's logical?

I think we didn't tell Cheryl that the account numbers changed, so I think we've been booking them wrong all this time. I'll fix that.

Maybe we do it at the same time we put up a new . Yeah, yeah, yeah. A whole, yeah, a reinvention of the, we don't need to complicate matters.

Okay, I'm going to put that on hold then. I'm going to put a pin in it. I just got an email from Lakes Region Planning Commission asking, they're going to host a Brownsfield meeting on October 6th. So Brownsfield, they have money. Do we have any, so my question would be, do we have any properties that we, I know that when we did the Eagle Scout Park, that was a Brownsfield issue at the time.

Steve, did you?

I was going to ask, going way back to the beginning of the meeting,

I was going to go back to the meeting about the choice of the asbestos remediation. I was trying to follow that discussion. Did you go to the $7,500 bid? Was that what I heard? $6,500. $6,500. Have you done due diligence on the people who are doing that?

a ton of demolition work.

And asbestos. Yes. That's not stuff you just want dumped in here. No, that's part of their company. That's great.

It's the name of the, it's always wrecking. So they do do this.

Okay, as long as you, yeah, because low bids and that sort of thing would be a huge mistake. Yeah. Second is the concern we may have about the plum stickers, if they're too large, you might want to consider going with something smaller that might get less pushback. I don't know. That's fair. Well, yes.

that is a good comment the reason we went with the larger was at the request of the employees because it was really it was really hard to reach the expiration or and if they and they have to get right up on the car we might be able to go smaller though yeah right and if it's going to be a you can't get in without the sticker i guess there's some sort of

The gate situation, it doesn't matter anymore being able to see it. Right. So this is the size now. I was going to say maybe we have some better eyes there, but we probably don't. You might not want to think about that. I mean, you guys are working.

I think this size is probably, we probably can't go much smaller than this.

I wouldn't go larger either, though. What? I wouldn't go larger either.

No, that looked larger in the picture, but I think it was just because I was drawing it in Word. I think this size, the transfer station really wanted to stay with this size, but I wonder, it is a good question.

Yeah, we'll take it under . Yep. Well, just that problem is a pushback . Yeah. It's too big, but I wanted to tell you the town square is really spiffy this summer. You guys have done great work there taking down that place and opening it up. It's a huge benefit. It's a much better . I just wanted to mention that. And I can't think of anything else. I thank the chief for that quick work on the Round Top Fire, which was great. Well, that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you very much for your work. Yeah.

Have a good night. employees can get home too but do we want to reconsider that at some point or just keep it and move it to the end of the night so that people can get them public earlier we had a general public comment earlier yeah yeah probably i would think um maybe after the idea after any of the normal stuff like what would that be agenda or minutes after we take care of that stuff.

So after do the pledge, the non-public, the consent agenda, the regular agenda items before the TA or before the regular agenda items? Before the regular agenda.

Because someone just wants to come and say their piece about something else. Yep. And then we can have one at the end too with a, you know, someone who sat through the meeting and they want to talk about something . Yeah. Okay.

So this is a grant that we can apply for. And they are hosting a meeting to talk about virtually that I can't go attend. But I didn't know if we still had any. So it just said, bronze fields are vacant, abandoned, underutilized properties where the presence or potential presence of hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant makes redevelopment challenging and costly.

Do they have to be town-owned properties?

I don't think so because I think we talked about, let's see, says that this meeting will update everyone in the status of current grant who still have money left to spend and what type of work is available. We will work on brainstorming and identify potential Brownsville sites with your communities. LRPC is in the process of developing an application and then the third Manage, distribute. So I think they would manage and distribute the funds, but it doesn't sound like it has to be a town. So I can attend the meeting and then come back because it doesn't say when the grants would be due.

I think it's really easy to go onto the DES website and do a one-stop query. I see. For the town and, you know, I was actually just looking at some stuff yesterday.

Because I know that the post office parking lot was a brown steel site, but if we're not doing anything with it.

Yeah, it's got to be. But maybe if we're going to do some redevelopment of the park. Oh, yeah? Yeah, that would be a good idea. Or along the bike path just north of the park. Yeah.

Okay. And the bike path. Oh, that's right, because we talked about there too. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, because I was just, I just did a quick search. R&D Paving has got some of this, like in Franklin. Yeah. It's kind of interesting.

Yeah. There's quite a few places there at the state still that haven't had anything done with them. Yeah. I mean, our biggest one was the Micah Building. Right. Where the Micah Building was, where the park was, but. Okay, that's that one.

Basically any place that ever had dry cleaning or no.

Or a gas station, like the library property. Because we had that old gas station and then window place before it went away. Where the library parking lot is used to be a gas station and then a window. They got rid of the gas station and then it was a window something. And then that got torn down. I have gotten feedback from the attorney on short-term rental finally. He apologized profusely. I will have that not until your October 1st meeting because I have Joanne's scheduled for October 1st. Let me make sure I have that right.

One of the things that actually on that subject and actually was brought up by a town resident. I'll have that at your next meeting, sorry. Okay. To a town resident to me was, okay, if you don't do licensing fees, then you could do an inspection fee for the fire department.

He said that... He's got some comments and suggestions concerning the most recent draft, which was the last thing that we talked about what we wanted to do. Okay. But as discussed many times before, the town must be very careful to narrowly tailor this process to only addressing life safety issues rather than trying to incorporate.

What I was told was Meredith has a whole process in place.

We'll look at that.

Yeah.

But we should be able to bring this back and we'll check Meredith before we come back.

Yeah. Did you have a chance to speak with that other resident that I mentioned to you about this that has a place in Florida that you wanted to talk to?

No.

Tell you, or tell us like what they do in Florida?

Did you give me a number to call?

I gave you a name. I'll tell you a name.

I know, okay. I'll tell you after. If it was August 13th.

Okay. And now is probably a good time. Now it's not December 7th, it's probably a good time.

Okay, perfect. The other thing that we got to try to talk for family members, even if you intend to have an ADU and rent it out.

Do you remember, Scott, if anything was being addressed with ADUs? It wasn't this year, right?

Because I think we've got to get something on the planning board.

Oh, no, which Scott is on the planning board. I am. Thank you.

So we're, we decided not to do anything about that new yurt thing.

Yeah.

Right, just for now. The state now allows us to.

Yurts are allowed as residents, I think. Yep. Yep. Okay.

And so we're just punting on that. No one's, you know, we can decide someday to make that change. We don't have to. And then we're, I believe we're proposing to reduce the minimum square footage required for ADU. Yes. I guess I'm thinking about the, not about short-term rentals specifically.

No, but I mean think about the chart for a second. We basically say these are the zones that short-term rentals are allowed in. when that was all concocted and worked out, ADUs weren't a thing.

But ADUs are on the chart now.

Right. So my point is, is do ADUs have a .

So ADUs were a thing, but we didn't allow them, except for specific rules.

What I'm saying is, to say ADU short-term rentals, like a category. So that way you don't have to get into the square footage and the this and the that, right? Because I think when we get into, oh, it's a year, it's not a year, it's a this, it's a that, we're going to drive ourselves nuts versus going, you know what, you can have ADUs all day long, but an ADU is short-term. Just add a category, because then you can say they can exist.

You can't just add a category, because those are uses, so you would have to have a zoning amendment, and you'd have to pick what district

That's the thing, because in the spirit of all the law changes, it's all about addressing long-term housing.

But it isn't. Well, the spirit is addressing long-term housing, but it really doesn't address long-term housing.

I'm not going to argue that point one way or the other. I'm saying the spirit of it is that. in town over the last 10 years. That would just make it more complicated.

Anyway. So, yeah, especially the line unit isn't even on here, which is a problem.

Is it on where?

It isn't on the chart. Yeah. It should be.

I think it's being added, isn't it?

Is it being added? Okay. We'll double check, but it should, because it's not on the chart currently, but is it?

The code, we're definitely modifying the language to match what the state requires. And you have to, basically, if you're allowed to have a house, you're allowed to have an ADU.

That's correct. So there's no, I mean, from my perspective, I'm not trying to fight that. I'm trying to enable what they're asking for, which is housing so that we can have folks that want to move into town. reasonable manner versus just about only regular short-term rentals.

Can I clarify that? You say you're trying to get people who want to move into town for housing. You don't want them to be used for short-term rentals. Correct. Can you legally restrict them though? I guess that's a question we would have to check on.

I guess that we had a mechanism that we were saying ADUs are allowed here and here and whatever, whatever happened before. I was thinking the same thing.

They're not listed as unallowable uses because they're now the new law. They're pretty much allowed everywhere. But we do have a section regulating what size they are. Okay. Georgian actually is coming next, the next meeting, September 17th, so I will bring the short-term stuff back then, and hopefully we will also have an MS1 at that meeting, question mark.

That looks like we are allowed to regulate short-term rentals via zoning and via permits. Yes. caps it looks like so yeah there's all kinds of stuff i mean the point is is short-term rentals drive investment decisions like i'm buying the investment property versus the family who's trying to correct that's all i'm saying yeah no it's

economy that's driven by the lake and the environment. That's all. I'm not trying to shut anybody up.

I also received a notice to vacate documents from the attorney for the property. I'm having it served by, I haven't talked to the police yet, so I'm having the police department serve it hopefully next week. We do have to, first step is to do the notice to vacate and have it served, which would show official record of service. So I will get the letter signed.

Does that have a time frame on it?

Yeah, it says once the letter is fully complete with all the necessary information, it goes on, sorry. If the occupants do not vacate, I have to notify the attorney after the deadline has passed in the notice. So I think he is recommending, I think last I checked this, it was a 30-day. Yeah, it's 30 days. So if we serve it next week, it won't be until October. Okay. But at least we're now moving forward. He did apologize profusely that this fell through the cracks for him. But he got me three things that were overdue this week, so good news. There is a question that came from our H and H were the people for the bridges, right? So this says in our meeting, I believe Sean mentioned that the town has historical documentation. Could you please connect this? They've introduced me to a person named Carly to get access to this information. Was it the Historical Society or was it?

Which bridge were we talking about?

It doesn't say. Well, it says Bristol 14.

No, it's the South Main.

It's the South Main Bridge.

I was just referring to what was in Musgrove's history.

Okay.

The different generations of the... Which is available on Internet Archive in search of that.

I'll send that to her. And then I think that just went out. I think that's it. Let me just double check one thing. I sorted them by select board here. I did think it was nice to share this comment. Old home day was this weekend. It looked great. And let me, that mural, when you came down from the elementary, I went through the elementary school because the parking was so full. I parked over here and walked down. when you came across and saw the park and saw that mural, it was like, holy cow. But so this person was a vendor and said they just wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you to Utsa Les and everyone involved at the Bristol Old Home Day. Everyone involved in putting together such a wonderful event. We had an absolutely fantastic time being part of Bristol Old Home Day. The event was so well organized. The community was amazing, and we truly appreciated being welcomed as a vendor. It was such a great day for them, and we are incredibly grateful for all the hard work that went into making it such a success. So it was really nice. They would love to come back, and we may consider them part of the fireworks. The pictures looked awesome. Yeah, it was nice.

It looked like there was a little turnout for the car show. Cars. I thought so, too.

But I met three cars headed to Plymouth, so I was wondering if there was something going on in that direction. Another show. Because on my way down, I met them all headed that way, so. But that's it.

How do the golf carts work out?

I reserve. I don't know. I reserved to call a column boat. But I don't know the golf cart. They only had one. We only sent one down. because Dan had a different golf cart that he was using too. So as far as I know, they worked well. I did see it buzzing around. Yeah.

Was that on your list?

No, no. I just know they've been a sore spot for a couple of folks. I didn't know if you had poked at the bear.

No, I did not.

Wow. You're going to have to tell me that after.

No, it's no secret.

Oh, sorry. Oh, for the store? Uh-oh. No, just that we bought them. Oh. We do need to talk about, right now it's booked to contingency, but I looked at, there might be some money in the fireworks fund after, but no money left out of the Warren article. So... So we can decide if we're going to leave it under contingency fund or not. Even if we did leave it, we still have, we don't have to make that decision tonight, but we still have contingency. I have one thing to finish paying, which is the downtown plaque. It's supposed to be installed soon, once it is, I'll let you know. But based on that payment I still have to pay, we still have $13,250. Okay. I had to book all of the golf cart maintenance to it. Yep. And the downtown plaque, and then we approved the Zoll monitor, and then the purchase of the golf carts. Okay.

All right. What's going on at Kelly Park behind the softball field? There's no fence up.

Are they doing a project? No, they were redoing the hill. Oh, reseeding the hill? Yeah, the hill took a beating during the softball season.

Okay. Now's a good time of year to get some grass done.

Okay.

I think that's it. Alright.

I think we're going to also go out to RFP on the lawn care provider.

Thank you. I was going to bring that up.

We did have a conversation. I did tell him that I didn't believe he was doing the work and that he needed to put signs out because he hasn't been putting signs out and he's been sick.

So yeah, that was on my list. So thank you. It was brought, someone else in town mentioned that it did look so great.

It does, it looks better than last year, but last year everything was burnt brown.

No, not the, yeah, like, are they also doing the square? Yes. Like with the treatments and stuff? Yes.

Yeah, that needs. And this built, so they do this building, the Eagle Scout Park, the square, the historic town hall is supposed to be being done.

Yeah, so I agree that should go up.

projects for more, is there anything that we're going to propose? I think there's a couple that I have in mind, but we haven't discussed anything.

Not yet. We usually do that right after budget. But I don't have anything specific coming from department heads yet, except for the normal capital reserves stuff. But this building, depending on what you want to do, is one of them. And then If we do go out to, if we get the RFPs done, we're also.

I crossed my feet. That's what I did.

If I do, we are talking about RFPs on the phone system because we continue to have some issues. And that will require an upfront cost. So to do phones, last time it cost us, if I remember correctly, $10,000 upfront. And we only pay $280 a month, but. But it's time because we did this. We talk about doing some of these things five to six. It's been longer than that. We did that phone system in 2008. We moved in here in 19, so we did it in 2018.

All right. So we can.

2018 we bought these phones.

We talked about that a bunch, but like there's hundreds of ways to skin that cow, right? Especially when we talk about all the issues At least if I still have a phone issue, that makes zero sense.

They've resolved most of it except for two things. The delay and the captain's phone isn't working again for some reason. Those are the two things that we've got it resolved to down there. They're the only ones, not the only, let me rephrase that. They're the ones that seem to be having the biggest issues.

can maybe think about what questions, because we said that during the load of the backhoe, we said it give them a heads up and say, hey, let's have that discussion. What does success look like if it then stays? So that's one. Two, Christina, I don't know if you can quickly share it or... Oh, yeah.

I did drop it in the file, so I think it's on the book.

So I sent Christina...

It was in last week's meeting, but we never got to, not last week's meeting, the last meeting because it was a long night.

So basically it's above the lake level, right? So in talking to Greg and talking to some other folks, they're definitely seeing some of the tourist stuff sort of tail off, you know, fall off a little bit, right? It's anecdotal at best right now. There's not like there's hard data. and you see a whole bunch of people complaining about holding their boats. Well, when the boats come out of the water, they're not buying gas, they're not going to stores. There's a bunch of stuff that they're not doing. So basically what that report shows is DES has said that they use what's called the 1982 curve to manage the lake level, okay? And we've been below the curve all summer. and it started really in June. What I'd like to do is, this is not about telling DES that they did something wrong, but I do believe, honestly, that when you look at all the information that's there, they're definitely trying to maintain a level. But basically, early in the season, a lot of water was let out, and then we didn't, we haven't gotten any rain to make up the difference, okay? If we're managing to that curve, how do you recognize it sooner on the front end? Because as the season goes on, you have more headroom to manage it. You have more ability to let stuff up. You have no ability to bring more in, right?

It's in your folders now under the number 13 select board item.

I try to do rainfall, the curve compared to the height by the middle of the month. So anyways, I would like us, if it's at all possible, to figure out how do we communicate with DES. I'm not sure the best mechanism to do that, to be honest. Greg Wagner did say to me today, he said, you guys should also reach out to NLRA, so I'm happy to do that, because he said between NLRA, Fish and Game, and everybody, they have had a lot of discussions around the lake levels too, so they may have some good input. in a row that the methodology that you've said you're using we're not really tracking to right so so how do we how do we find middle ground because one of the primary questions you'll see it on the front page is if you take a look at the current lake level we're basically almost five weeks ahead of schedule that's taking an entire month out of the boating season that isn't very long to begin with right so

How long ago did they have that discussion? I remember they had a forum. I think, wasn't it in Bridgewater?

Yeah, it was about the town . They wrote a report. They sent it in. The U.S. reviewed it, sent them back a denial about changing it. It got appealed, and then I think they got a second denial.

Yeah. Which I shared in those documents.

The state itself had like a two-year period where they said, we're changing the way we manage it to see if it works. And then at the end of that, they went back to the 1980s way.

So again, I'm not looking for something different.

as good as it, you know, it used to be the guy came to the dam and made an adjustment and left and then he came back a couple days later and now everything is automatic so no one is there they don't see the lake they just see dial on a screen given our dependence locally we need to figure out how to be engaged in a different way that's really all I'm

On the highway, would the requirements document be something that you would potentially have those questions answered that way?

Oh, I mean, we could. We could use that to flesh it out.

Look, at the end of the day, all I'm saying is, is like... What are our metrics that we're trying to... That's it.

Is it number of hours? Is it number of jobs? I'm looking for us, if we're saying we're going to evaluate something at a future date, we're going to try this out and see what it is, then we should. How much more did we get down versus what we spent? Right.

Right. Or did the budget go up because of gas or fuel or whatever?

Whatever the appropriate criteria is. If the budget goes up.

If he overspends.

20%, not the whole budget, but the budget for that machine. Right. But we've got twice as much done. Than . Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right, but if it's 60% and 10%, it doesn't work.

Right, because if you take today's hours and then, okay, we think we're going to use it this much, and then tomorrow's hours is really only 10 more. Something to that effect. Oh, EDC was the last one. So, Christine and I went back and forth last week about a potential grant. And we ultimately decided to not push it.

I thought it was that note. I couldn't figure out what that note was. Sorry.

Okay. So, we ultimately decided to not push it. And it was really because it was like, okay, sort of back to the budget. fit into the master plan because there's already the, what was it, the 73 what?

So we are, downtown we already have the 79E, revitalization district. So what this was is an opportunity zone, which would bring investors in. But when we started looking at it, we're like, well where? Where do we have that we could bring investors in? Where's the investors? Right.