Select Board - Regular Meeting

And the first item is the pledge. Joanne, will you lead us tonight?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great.

Thank you.

to accept the non-public public events of August 13, September 3, 2026 as written. Thank you.

Motion by Don. Is there a second? Second. Second by Scott. Any questions or comments on the meeting? The meeting. The meeting. The meeting.

On the August 13 public , the only thing I have to do is add the appendix,

that says that these minutes, the video didn't work correctly and these minutes were created from, and they may not represent the whole meeting. From notes, yeah.

Right, so. Colleen, any other questions or comments?

Counts payable payment manifested 9-10-26. Counts payable payment manifested 9-17-26. Payable payment manifested 9-10-26. Removal of veterans credit from that block number 217-028 as it no longer qualifies.

I just will add the reason that there's a 910 manifest is that it was from last week. I ran it at the beginning of the meeting and decided it didn't make sense to try and get your approvals through email, so I just saved it for this meeting. And there is a document in there that points out some key things if you needed it on the manifest. But it's not a ratification, sorry. Most of them, there's nothing new, so I didn't touch base on things that really weren't new that were every day.

Yeah. All right. All right. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Abstentions? That's 5-0. Thank you. I will note, although it looks like maybe we won't have to use it tonight, We did add a public comment section to the beginning of our agenda so that if there are folks here who would like to discuss something, rather than waiting until the end of the meeting, that we will have another public comment section. Is there anyone in the audience tonight that's not on the agenda and would like to talk? No? Okay, there we go. All right, let's talk about the town of Beaches.

So Cheryl and Deb are here. In your folders, there is the visual links in case there's anything you want to look at on your ordinance or have any questions before they're in the mail.

But they are prepared to give you a report on each. All right. Thank you very much.

So Cheryl and I did a tally of passes sold for 2026. And for our beach combo permits, we sold 21 of them at the town offices. We had nine guest permits sold. Our beach permits, we had 1,584 sold. And our beach trust permits, we had four of those sold. Did a total of $17,240 in permits this year. It was $195 more this year than it was last year. trust permit people who own trusts um or had requested because they were only allowed at one time two permits per trust So if a family of seven people wanted to get permits during those times, only two of them could get them with their vehicles. So we created a trust permit that's $100 and they can put all the license plates of people in that trust if they have the proper paperwork and bring it to Cheryl's office to get a trust.

So is there a maximum number of permits they can get under a trust?

And it's a transferable placard. They get one sticker and a transferable placard, right?

Okay. So it's not anyone who goes to the building. It's anyone who has their name included in the trust.

Correct. Right. Right. And only two vehicles can go to the transfer station. Yeah. Only two vehicles can be parked at the beach at any one time. They can't bring all seven vehicles if there are seven people in the house.

Only seven stickers. They get a sticker.

around the areas because it's obviously it's like the convo sticker the convo sticker does the same thing except for okay both of them make sure that no more than two vehicles can be there at one time so i think we had a fabulous speech season this year um we had our returning staff And 1 staff member who had left us for a little while, and then came back for the summer. So they were all veteran attendance and knew what they were doing. The season started off really strong on May 9th. We held an orientation here at the office with the police department. And we talked about the ordinances. We talked about our expectations. And police chief and Kirsten Marsh, the administrative assistant, went over the new regulations for writing tickets and how to keep track of those because it was going to be enforced. This year our attendance wrote 18 tickets at Avery Beach and two tickets at Cummings Beach and all of those tickets have been paid with the police department. None of them have been wavered and we are not taking anybody to court on those 20 tickets.

We had very few issues at the beach this summer.

Initially, we had to call the police about five times. We have an educational period from Memorial Day until about June 15th, where our attendants just educate the public again that the speeches are for taxpayer and residents. You have to have your permits. We don't write tickets. We're there to help them to enforce and remind them of what the ordinances look like. We're not recommending any changes for any ordinances for next year. And we had very few issues when we did call the police. We called them five times at the beginning of the summer. They came and helped us out. Three of those were with drug paraphernalia that needed to be picked up by an officer and discarded. The other one, two were just disorderly people that when the police arrived, weren't so disorderly anymore. Yes, very nice. But no issues with the beach. Hoping that our attendants return next year. They all said at the end of the year that they hoped to, but You never know what the year will bring. Some of them have health issues. Some of them are looking for other places to live and other employment. So if we have them all back, I'd gladly take them all back in a heartbeat.

I agree with you. It seemed to go smooth. It also seemed, and it might be, it might have been the weather. I don't know. There were stretches that were cooler and a lot of people weren't there. It seemed that there's some capacity on most days, except for the busiest, like the busiest, certainly not around like the holiday weekend or that sort of thing. So you're not, You don't recommend, say, a limited number of day passes?

We, I would not recommend day passes at all. In the month of July, we did have a busy July, especially on the weekends. And I had two attendants on, actually three attendants, two at Avery and one at Cummings. to help with that increase of people in July. August definitely was not busy. It was a slow start to the season as well, I think because of the weather. But July was busy. And it did come up at a pulse check about day passes. And I had said, I think, to Mr. Milbrand. Yeah, we talked. Yeah, please, not on the weekends. We just can't on the weekends, especially for the month of July. I wouldn't recommend keeping it the way it is just because taxpayers and residents respect our beaches and they come there to enjoy them. Sometimes when other people come, they don't have the respect for our attendance, for the beaches themselves, for the trash removal. They don't want to adhere to the ordinances like a taxpayer or a resident typically does. That's a good point.

Yeah, the other point that you had made was just the handling of cash by the attorneys is actually, it's sort of not an annoyance, it's just, it's not good, plus it's a liability, and I agree with that. And we're not going to have somebody at the tenant office during the weekends for some reason. I thought that was a good point against doing the day passes. Even though I had the same comment you did. I was the one who brought it up on the conversation that I saw capacity.

And I know that Chief Bean had said, since there has been no day passes, He he did say the last couple of years have been a lot better at the beach. Yeah. They haven't had to go there and, you know, arrest people or have cars to do anything like that. So. Yeah, I think that's gotten around that. You can't just right.

Because well, we can just end up there.

Yeah.

And that's what will typically happen when Wellington is full.

Um, yeah, the story is only had. What about from a parking capacity? How often is the parking lot in full?

At Avery Beach on the weekends in July it was full. At Cummings Beach, not so much. Not full, but busy.

I guess the question becomes, the balancing act I think is, is there a revenue opportunity that we should explore? generally at capacity, and exploring the revenue opportunity is nonsensical, because then we don't have the space for parking. But if there's space, and then we address the permitting fees in a way where it becomes a revenue, then, I mean, at the end of the day, one of our greatest assets as a community is the lake.

What if we restricted it to just comments? If we did it, right, if we were to consider it? Would that be too hard to enforce? Like Dave asked, is that Cummings only?

Cummings doesn't have a lot of beach area.

Right, but there's parking available.

Correct. But a lot of people that are down on the beach come down from the bungalows. So they're not bringing their cars down a lot of the time. So the beach itself can be full. and you don't see that from the road, and the parking lot might look like it's not because those people, some of them are walking down, not bringing their vehicle, or dropping their things off, and they're bringing their vehicles back up.

So at the end of the day, again, from a revenue perspective, if that's the asset, that we then have space that people can then utilize. Again, if we think that the beach itself is capacity to say it's 100 people, If there's 100 people there on a regular basis, then yeah, we're at capacity. It's kind of like Wellington, right? Like Wellington's got, they've got their parking capacity and then there's the capacity of the beach itself. So do we have a number then that says what the beach capacities are?

No. No.

So, I mean.

We don't base it on parking capacity. Obviously, if people are sitting on top of each other, that's a problem. You're going to have more fighting potential.

So I guess all I'm saying is we're continually kind of looking for what are our business opportunities. We either need to then set the capacity, like say whatever it is, and then we can then figure out how we manage that.

I think you have to look at, the only way you can judge capacity there, because the only time it's really, really elbow to elbow is the fireworks. Even though I'm busy, you have people close to each other, but it's not like we're not stepping on each other. It's power.

From the beach.

We sell parking access. But the argument is, hey, the beach is pretty busy because these people come down and they don't bring cars, which is why there's a parking available. Right. Which then means we either need to set a beach capacity or we have parking available that we could potentially sell permits for.

But if the beach is full and you sell parking passes.

Without establishing capacity, How do we know the beach is full? That's, I guess, what I'm saying.

Okay.

Well, Mr. Chairman. Yes. Ben, I've asked the question of you because I know you do capacity for buildings. Is there such a thing for your department to do capacity for a beach? Okay. That's the question. Sorry.

So you're saying potentially sell day permits if there aren't many people on the beach, if a beach isn't full.

Well, if the Cummings, if the thing that we sell is parking, I'm not even talking about Avery, I'm talking about the Commodore of Cummings, okay? If the thing that we sell is a day pass and we only do it for Cummings, and Cummings has parking capacity, then the argument against it right now is the beach is full. And I'm going, how do we know the beach is full when we don't have the capacity? Because the beach attendants see the people. But the whole, if you go down here, so some people are sitting in the grass. Some people are enjoying the area as a park. So all I'm saying is as a community, we pay taxes for that entire area. So all the person should be able to use it. But if we have extra capacity and we have the ability to generate revenue, then we need to look at that. If the parking is always full in July, then again, it's an nonsensical argument. I'm not looking to blow up the parking. I'm saying if the parking has availability, we should look to explore. If there was big demand for the parking, we'd be hearing about it. True. But we've also stopped the day pass for the last couple of years.

We do hear a little bit about it. People complain that they can't, from other towns, that they can't use the beach. And I always tell them, you can, you just can't park there. If you can find a place to park and walk down to it. I don't know.

I was going to add, too, because you were hearing the complaints from the other towns that they can't just go to the beach. But you're also, we used to hear all the time that people who pay taxes...

I'm not questioning that at all. I think it's been a great policy, especially... During and through COVID and the years following when things were insane. I think it was the right thing to do. And I'm not saying it's not the right thing to do now. I just, I drove by there a lot this summer and saw And I don't know, does that bring economic, not just the permit, does it bring economic activity to the town? Correct.

It's not just the beaches that are affected either when we open it up to other people. It's our trash, so it's our transfer station. It's our police department. It's our highway department. It's the beach. It's the town's tax collector. So it affects all of these departments that work with us on the beaches, and they become busier as well.

I completely agree with you. However, the challenge becomes very simple, right? When you look at where the economy of the town, where the revenue is coming from, from a business perspective on down, and then you look at the community surveys from a Master plan perspective, the time has been very clear for a very long time. We've wanted the taxes to go down. Taxes are a function of services or taxpayers, right? So we just have to figure out where the right balance is. Again, if the argument is that the parking lot's full, I'm good. I'm not here to argue that we should all of a sudden try to figure out how to have a day pass. I'm saying if we don't have a capacity set on the beach, then that's not the argument we use for not selling the permit. Because if there's parking lot capacity, then I'm okay with that. If there isn't, you know, that's all I'm saying. It's a balancing act.

I don't want to argue something with somebody else.

So my other question would be, so when you went by, let's just talk about Cummings. Did you go by Cummings? Yeah. So about how many parking spaces were open during the week, if you would say, if you estimated. What's the cost of the day pass? Was it $5?

No, it was $10, but that was several years ago.

So that's $60 to $100, maybe.

Yeah, and you're not going to get it all.

But also, that's the police coming more, the trash more. You know, more for our office, and I don't have the capacity for that. Not in the summer.

Their office sold about $1,613. permits and passes this year to our beaches. So that is quite a bit.

We sold more. So I think this year is a weird year. Obviously fireworks were weird. There wasn't as big of a crowd for fireworks, which we blame mainly because it was afterwards. But we sold more permits, but less people visiting the beach.

Yeah. I do think there were a lot of days that were like in the 70s and crazy. Yeah. OK.

all right so that would be my recommendation too and um i love my beach attendants but for the most part they're my age and um sean i'm getting old i love them and they do a great job but there is a limit to and i love having them because I also think back to the days where we had high school students and college students and the problems we had down there because people didn't respect them. We don't seem to have that with our adults that we do hire right now.

And being residents.

That's correct.

So just for the sake of discussion, if we were to do this down the road, they would have to be cashless. Yeah. But then right now we're talking about a fee. Because I'm assuming we don't have any credit card capabilities right now on the device.

What we used many years ago when I was on the beach is we tried using credit card, and we'd attach them to our cell phones. But we didn't always have the internet able to bring it back to the town office. So we did have some technological issues with that.

Yes, you did have that.

We did buy phones before, and they probably still cover this building, but.

We're doing like everywhere you go in Boston, you have to go through them now. Yeah. Right, but this little service fee. Right, that would be the only. The cost to us. That would be the only. So we'd have to build that into John's cost analysis that he's going to do.

I don't remember. because I wasn't that involved at the time, but you and Don might be, have more information on this. When we did sell day passes, when we did sell permits, I don't think we brought in enough revenue either. I'd like to compare those years of revenue with the years that we have now to see what that.

Absolutely true. However, here are a couple of the other sort of ancillary tests. how much fuel and stuff is sold between Shackett's and the West Chenault Marine. Again, from a business perspective, when I talk to them, they're saying that some of the revenues, particularly towards the end of the summer, were down. Oh, definitely. One of my other arguments is the lake level. There's not one thing that is the solution to it. But the fact of the matter is, as a community, The primary purpose of this town right now is about retirement and vacationing. If you look at the way we do things, the number of people in town, how the population has grown, there's a bunch of different metrics that we can talk back and forth about. But at the end of the day, those are the ones that are bringing the revenue into the community. So it's just a matter of where do we have an opportunity to look at something and where do we have to go, you know what, that's probably not worth it. If there's capacity, then there might be something to do. So to me, that's the piece. The reason why I fought back against the, well, beach is full, because we don't have a capacity set. So full is one person's interpretation. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying because we don't have a capacity, it's hard to say what's full. Because maybe I look down there and I go, there's room for 10 more people. I don't know.

So I've been in a lot of conversations and because they get day passes to Wellington, a yearly pass cheap to Wellington. It doesn't do you very well if you have to make a reservation and it's closed, you know, it's full all the time. So that's changed, you know, it was a pretty good deal for them, but it's not anymore because they can't really access it. And, you know, maybe that's what we do with the ambulance. Maybe we have a Yeah, we get to share all. It's not a problem. I can't help it.

I just, I think the beach is full, and the attendants think the beach is full, then the beach is full. If you add more people, there's going to be more things happening there. I don't think $60 a day is going to do anything for the town, honestly. I just don't, I don't see it. But

Again, just to be clear, it's not the 60 bucks.

Right. Right. No, it's about the conversation. And that's why we want to hear from you. So I appreciate that.

However, bringing up the Alexandria thing, the same way we do with transfer station passes with abram you know maybe we do give alexandria a limited number of beach passes to to sell i don't know yeah they could they could they could basically buy them from us they don't make the revenue from it they they would sell them Those people didn't go to the beach, probably.

But just state that. You're just talking about the single, not a two-householder.

But he's talking seasonal. I think it'd be a seasonal, but it'd be like a number, like with the cabin.

Yeah, like start off with just 50, you know, that they could get 50.

I guess I'd want them to know as well if they think they're going to Avery Beach. They might not have that option. They might be going to Cummings Beach. We can limit it to one beach.

Just as an experiment to see how it works out. I mean, make it 30 passes for Cummins and just see how the dynamics work out. Because, again, you're going to get residents that care. So that part of the argument, at least, is good.

Would it be the same permit as we have in Bristol so that our attendants can go?

Yeah, it would just be a parking permit. Just so. so we could do something similar.

We did. No, you did.

So, yeah. And then you wouldn't, I kind of like that idea with testing. Just test it out, try it out. Because Alexander is interested with working back and forth. Right.

Oh, also I want to point out the guest passes that get sold are the Airbnb passes. And those I'd like to push more because they're $50 per week. The guest passes that we do sell are people that Airbnb and we have a form that they fill out and they get a copy of the registration from whomever's going to rent the place and then they come and get a guest pass.

Nine of those were sold.

Yeah. It would be nice if we could put that on our website, you know, just for, or maybe not, it might confuse some people.

Or reach out to the folks we know that are doing that in town. If we had a list of all the Airbnbs that we have.

But they don't want to give you this. If we had a license.

That could be a definite revenue, because I know that Airbnb is crazy on the lake, so.

I would like to say that I know the effort that goes into it from both of you. And it goes on set, but we appreciate the work that's done. I know that crew can be getting all of the schedules and dealing with all the set up and the prep for the season. And thank you both so much for the work that you do there. Thank you. So intricate to the community.

We have a great crew working for us.

No, she's older than most of them. She's my young nurse. Mr.

Chair, may I come back with a follow-up question on the trust permits? Yeah. I'm looking at the ordinance, and it looks like you as a trust, you get two transferable permits, not a sticker and a transfer. Is that what you're doing in practice?

No, we're giving one sticker, one transferable.

We might need to fix that because it does say two transferable.

And then my follow-up question is, why, well, I think it'd be good to have an offering similar to that for residents, two transferable. So the trust can have two.

It's still only two vehicles. I understand.

Okay. My household has four cars. Yeah. And I would be able to bring any of them home.

Isn't that your combo? We have a combo.

We have a combo, but it's not two transferable. It's one transferable.

One, right. One transferable. Okay. is if we're letting a trust do two transferables, and a trust is still a household, it's one house, it's one property, right? Right.

Can't a household have two transferable funds? They're not doing the true transferable. No, that's a problem.

The ordinance is incorrect there.

Or I should say, we're not doing what the ordinance says. Correct. Can I ask a follow-up to that? Yeah.

What would be the purpose of true transferables for the household?

I have four cars in the household. See, I go out to the beach, and my son wants to go to the beach, and the sticker is on my wife's car, and she's not. Yeah, I mean, I understand. There's more flexibility. If we're not doing it for a trust, then I'm okay with not doing it for a household.

I think it's worded wrong because it does insinuate that this transferable permit will list all vehicles covered. So it indicates that there's only one transferable permit, but it's not worded correctly.

It says that the permits are limited to per trust and the fee is $100.

Yeah, it's written wrong. We're doing one sticker and one transferable permit. So we need to fix this?

Yes. I've always been an advocate of doing away with stickers and just doing the black line. Because you can write down the license plate numbers

Well, then again, yeah. And also, those can be replicated, I think, a lot easier than the stickers.

I guess the fundamental thing that I, at least the rules I try to, when I look at anything we're trying to do, it doesn't matter what it is. The ones that are paying the bills, which are the people in Bristol, they should be the ones with the most amount of flexibility and options. When we allow others to utilize any of the service, doesn't matter what it is, whether it's a guest or whatever, whatever it is, they should potentially be either the same or the ones receiving more restrictions, not less, i.e. if we did Cummings, it would be, oh, that's only for Cummings, not Cummings and Avery, right? But the Bristol folks that are actually paying the bills, they're the ones with the most flexibility. So if we're gonna address the, the piece around this from fixing it to be one part and one transferable, are you saying that that then matches what the Bristol residents do?

Yes.

Okay. But we need to fix the organs. So we either fix that or we go the other way. That's all I'm saying.

Or we do two transferable.

It doesn't matter to us either way, you know.

All right. So I guess I need clarification from the board right now. Right now. Because two things, are we going to fix the ordinance to one sticker and one transferable? That's what we're currently doing.

Correct. I feel like we need to change the ordinance to that. To what we're doing. Yeah, at least have that consistent.

Do we reach out to Alexandria and ask, is that what you want us to do, is reach out to Alexandria and talk to them about purchasing a set of day passes from, or not day passes, sorry, a beach pass for us?

Yes. So we've got to reach out to the board first to make sure they want to be able to administer that because they're going to have to point out a check at some point at the end of the season for returning the day passes.

Would you limit how many permits? Oh, for them.

For the unused ones. No, the unused ones. I think we're, I don't know, like 30. Leave it at 30. Yeah, what's that, 5% of the population?

Yeah. But then how do we?

I'm not complaining about it.

And it's an Alexandria resident when they park at?

It won't matter because it'll just be a permit. Right.

There'll be a five-year?

No, it'll just be a parking permit.

Unless you put an A in front of the license plate or on top of it. Or a different color. Like we did with Hebron, we put a big H on there.

Can we test it with 30? It doesn't matter which beach they go to. Because how do we restrict it to Cummings without buying new permits?

Because if they get caught with an A on Avery, then they're.

But we're not filling them out. Alexander is filling them out. We can ask them to put the A.

Or can we.

I think they shouldn't be in an angry spot.

If they were a schoolhouse, any of the Bristol residents are going to go nuts.

So just off and on, since we're offering this as a service to them, I think two things are absolutely true. Number one, we know how much it costs to print permits. we first find out if they're interested. If they're interested, we say we're going to start you at 30 or 50, whatever number everybody thinks makes sense, right? Like I'm not arguing with them. Once they say yes, we then say, okay, your permit, you know, our beach permit is about five bucks?

Ten.

Okay, so then theirs is 15 to cover the cost of a special run permit that says Alexandria, Bristol, Cumming, whatever you guys want to have on it so that way it's distinct. And if they would like to do that, awesome. If they tell us no, we go, awesome, enjoy Wellington.

You know what I mean?

It's just an experiment. And then that way we figure out if it makes sense. And again, they may say,

Also on the agenda were some potential projects for the beaches. So it's Cummings Beach. We would like to get a panel box out there. mainly for fireworks and have electricity out there, which we don't have. We have it at Avery. And the posts out there that are currently holding our beach signs, the exit, the entrance, the one that says, welcome to Cummings Beach, are starting to rot and fall apart. So I'd like those replaced in the spring. And the only other thing is the erosion out there. that the highway has been working on the last couple of years. But whenever there's a heavy rain, it continues to erode. So the erosion work that needs to be done out there.

I'm just making me think of it. We have so much erosion at Covington Beach. Is it time for us to consider putting in an application to put sand in?

Can you bring the combs up?

I mean, the answer is yes. Yeah, I agree. If it's something we could actually do, yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

We addressed some of the erosion down in the south end. Is that still an issue?

It was mainly up by the sign. There was a netting, a metal netting that we had to have pulled up because it was coming up anyway. And that was eroding. Up by the road, it also erodes. but that is not ours to deal with. Yeah, so there's not much we can do about that. It's not terrible, but it should be addressed. The erosion, the road erosion on Avery Beach, where the pavement is actually crumbling on the edges, that needs to be addressed. The only other project at Avery Beach is we had a bench donated to the town, and we'd like to have that installed next summer, but it also needs to be installed and secured so nothing happens to it. The highway department will remove it every year and store it for us.

This makes it look like it's way more standing than it is.

You don't see any of that from driving by.

No, no, you don't.

Yeah, for years I was like, why would anyone go there? It's just all of this grass. The cove over here, this side has a pretty good beachy area. So erosion not by the swale, or is this by the swale?

Over in the middle.

yeah this is the down it's down in here right there right here yeah this is the swale yeah that's in front of the swale and that's where that uh metal netting was yeah i remember one day yeah the other thing since we've cleared we've got since we've cleared the bushes there's some over here now so yeah

I don't think it's a big issue, but I think Joe and Eric could probably take care of it for us. It just would need, depending on the weather, be watered a little bit more. The year that we tried to do it, it was very dry and the grass didn't take so well there. Clover? So it's just major, just small, minor projects that we want at any of the beaches next year. The big one would be the road erosion at Avery Beach that would cost some money, like bathing.

Well, they need to do something about that culvert that's collapsing. The culvert and then all the rocks. Yes.

I thought you said that was on this year, but I'm not sure.

The only problem with that is that we don't, the catch basin it goes into is in ours.

I'm aware, yeah.

And that's also collapsing.

Yeah. Excuse me, whose is it?

It's the property owner's, St. Cyr.

So we have a catch basin on somebody else's property.

We don't have a catch basin, they have a catch basin drainage.

So we're draining to their catch basin.

They're draining to ours.

To our color.

Which goes into the water.

Under the road that goes into the water.

And to make it even more complicated, it goes under the cabin. The culvert that feeds into it from their side goes under the cabin.

And made it more complicated, there's a whole network of drains the state put in and said they don't have the responsibility anymore.

So, Sean, maybe you know the answer to this. Why wouldn't we then basically put a catch basin even if it's side by side, like three feet away from the other one, where we have the ability to divert water to, and it goes, and maybe I'm not understanding where it is in relation to the lake and whatnot, but like...

Sorry.

Because if we learned anything from Holiday Hills and that whole scenario where we've got some pipe here we own and this isn't over here, we don't own that, like, if we have an opportunity to clarify... This is what we own. This is our stuff.

It's right here. It's on the salon right here.

And it probably looks like you can see a little bit of a... And they have a drain that goes under the cabin. There's a cover that goes under the cabin.

So all of the drainage from up here goes down through a bunch of these properties. and goes under their cabin probably, and then goes into the culvert across the road.

Okay, so now I'm going to split here, sorry. So that means the water coming off the state side is traversing into private property because of the way it drained, because of the way the grade is. And it's either going into that private pipe that we don't own, have to maintain, or any other bloody thing. to then there's a catch basin that's still on private property that we are currently utilizing, but it's collapsing. So what we own starts beyond that. Yeah, what we own starts pretty much at the road. At the road, yeah. So then why wouldn't we just put a catch basin right in front of it at the edge of the road within the right of way, and then that then segments whatever happens between the state and that entire property. That's a possibility. I'm not saying I love the idea of having two structures side by side, but the more we get into this back and forth.

The problem with that is if we don't tie into that, that water never makes it to the lake and it stays bonded.

Right now, there's a culvert that comes out of it. We let that culvert come through it.

So then, what I'm saying is... No, their culvert wouldn't... Wouldn't come through the catch basin unless we tie it in.

Right. I mean, if you were going to do that, I'm not saying this, suggesting this part, but if we were going to put in, it doesn't make sense to put in a catch basin next to it. It makes sense to take their catch basin over. Right. And fix it, if you're going to do that, fix the catch basin... tie the wire into it and extend it across instead of creating a new one.

However, so I fundamentally agree with what you just said, like in a perfect world. But the whole thing about Holiday Hills is then where does our responsibility actually end when we're on private property, right? Like so, like in my head, our responsibility ends. We'd have to get an easement. Yeah. At the end of the right, I'm just trying to give us a, I'm trying to figure out how do we get demarcation to go. The town of Bristol is responsible from here to there. The private homeowner is responsible from there to there, and if it's coming from the state, the private homeowner needs to deal with the state around that. Because we have way too many examples of stuff that was put in for great reasons at the time to resolve an issue, but we always seem to end up in the middle. So if we have an opportunity to get out of the middle and go, this is our demarcation, then that should be what our goal is.

No, we supply the culvert. If it collapses, that's on them. They have to take care of it.

But the problem is that undermines the road.

Right. And that pipe is collapsing. I mean, there's a bit of the road. Yeah.

Yeah, even our culvert at this point is collapsing because of the depression.

That's why we take care of our culvert. Anything that happens, then we go back on them. It's like you We need to take care of this stuff.

So then we should send them, get the attorney to send them a letter and say, hey, we've noticed your stuff is collapsing. We're already in some process.

I mean, we can start with the attorney. They came to us first, and when we looked up the easement information, we did talk to, I ended up having to speak to him because he was very angry, and we pointed out that we don't have an easement, we don't own this piece of it, and then he agreed, and then that was, that he was supposed to take care of it. But we never notified him in writing. This was a verbal conversation. So if we feel that it's affecting our road, then we should notify him in writing that it needs to be taken care of by a certain time frame, so.

Yeah.

But I will check with Victor because I don't want to order this guy to take care of it and we're not going to do anything. We're not ready to do anything. Right. Because that.

Go ahead, Scott. Did we ever have any further issues with the big cone that's in front of that, next to that culvert? We still are?

Yes. We still are. Every time that property owner backs out of the driveway, they, I'm told, deliberately hit it. They want that moved.

Maybe we need a steel baller.

We put them in the ground and they still either back in I'm sorry, can you guys just do that again?

We put in what?

Is it on our property? Which one? It's the barrel right there. It's always been there. Is it this driveway? Or this driveway? This driveway.

And they... Does that have a sign on it?

It does. It does. I think he backs it right there next to that red. He backs it there.

This is the one that owns the Cobra.

I know, but he backs it in that way. The barrel's in the way of him backing his trailer. Is it realistic, too? I mean, is it really in his way? Legit? I mean, would it be better?

Well, if a car was parked there, the car would be in his way. Because it's right on the edge, so.

But the majority of the time when he's backing in, it's probably not where his tires are. Correct, right.

So I guess all I'm saying is you were saying he's hitting it on purpose because he wants us to move it. That's what I heard. If he moves one spot in any direction, would that solve the problem? Right. So that's sort of like, is it imperative that it stay there? Because if it's imperative that it stays there, then we need to get that to be not the case.

I guess the question would be if we move it in another spot where it's going to go on another driveway potentially. So maybe we need to look at is there a spot further up where there's no driveways? Yeah. And can we lose that spot by moving it up or do we need to?

Yeah, listen, if there's another spot and it makes sense, I'm good with that too. I'm not good with just because somebody doesn't want it there and we need it there would end up with this.

Your highway superintendent feels strongly it needs to be there.

In that exact spot?

Yes.

Well, again, in that exact spot. I'm sure if you move one space here.

Yeah, I think we can go out and look at the driveway and see if there's a space that we could put it.

And I get where he's coming from. It's like, just because you don't like it.

It doesn't mean it's run over to the right. He does space them out as it goes down the beach.

I mean, here's the deal. When it comes to shore drive, it's never going to be perfect. We're trying to balance making sure that residents of Bristol have access to that beach and the folks on shore drive have access to it. And then at the same time, it's like, okay, we have to have signs, we've got to have notification, like there's a balancing act to be What is it, it's like a 2.1 acre partial, if I remember correctly, something like that, with all of the houses that are down there. Like, it's pretty dense. Yeah. So if there's no middle ground to be had, then we need to take issue with the fact that somebody's driving into something that the panel owns and is causing that person to not be able to do his job. If it's okay, if we can move it a little bit and make everybody's life easier, I'm good too.

There's also an issue at Cummings Beach, too, with the barrel right at the entrance. People just don't like it. They don't like our barrels. They don't like our signs. They don't want them there. And that's the one that they're constantly ripping out. They're constantly running over. They just don't.

And it gets expensive after a while, because those barrels, we're able, for the most part, to bang them out and put them back in if we need to. but eventually you can't replace them and you have to buy new ones and they're expensive.

There's one in the river done by the post office. We can pull that one out of there.

We could replace it. They've got the two-foot piece of jersey there. Hold on.

Listen, at the end of the day, we're all making a joke out of this, but seriously, either we need the barrels there or we don't need the barrels. We do.

And if we need the barrels there, we need the signage. Do we actually need a physical barrel in the road, or do we need signage for we need a permit to park in here? What's the actual purpose of the barrel?

The barrel is to hold the signs that say residents parking only and it's to keep them to that side so they're not at Cummings growing up on the grass at Avery so that they can't say they didn't see any of the signs which they often say we didn't see the signs we didn't know you needed a permit.

And the only thing about putting a permanent sign on the You can't put it on the road, but you can't even put it on the side because permit parking is only while the beach is open.

So then maybe we need a new ticket. That is, you're destroying town property. I don't know. All I'm saying is it's not sensible to me. I get it. If somebody doesn't like it, fine, but.

Again, this is also someone's perception that they're backing into it on purpose. True. Okay. Could it be? Yes. You might be mad over the cold.

There's no room for you to get it out.

At Cummings Beach, they'll destroy it at night. We'll find it in the morning.

Run over, smash. Obviously, we don't know what time they're doing it, and we haven't been able to.

Why can't we seasonally install permanent signs? We could. Yeah. We could.

So the question would be how many because if you drive past these or you drive on you see the sign saying parking by permit only and you drive past them and you see them but if they're on the side of the road behind a car Could your claim then be, I didn't see a parking sign. Would we have to put in that many, or are you?

When you go to the city of Concord, the signs of our way to park, the way you don't park, aren't in the middle of the street. That's true, but they're not cones. Right? There's a part of this that's like, I can feign ignorance all day long, but I, you know, ignorance of the law doesn't give me the right to go, I'm just going against it. I can be upset about it. We might, we maybe have the option to be lenient with somebody that is a first-time offender, but that doesn't make sense to me.

There you go.

And maybe just a sign at the beginning, a bigger sign at the beginning, and then a couple along the way, something like that.

We have to have one down by the big catch, because we're always writing tickets down there, and they're always saying they didn't know they couldn't park down there.

They got there by passing the signs.

That's correct.

And by the way, I know, like, so if we think about the, okay, so the exact issue you bring up, right? Maybe we address the dollar amount for the parking tickets and we ask the police to enforce up to 8 p.m. or something, because I know we stop writing at 5, and maybe we ask the police, because then they're going to ask you to drive all the way towards the catch.

Our tags typically are open until 11 p.m., so technically the

The last quick question, did you have any other projects that you were thinking of?

for the beaches because they know that we've addressed hopefully some of the hand-kept access at Ava Crouse. We've paved over the steps to make those an easier access. What else have we done?

We've removed a few of the boulders that we could without getting permits.

We've widened the non-motorized boat access lanes. We just want to make sure there wasn't anything else that

You were hearing from people about... Well, like the GeoVac, where the handicap parking is. So it's easier to get a wheelchair than to walk on the beach. What about the guy who wanted to do tree work and get moorings?

I'm working with the attorney still on that. I'm just not sure if it's possible yet.

Not from some of them, but I'm still working on it.

We can look at them again. We did price them out a couple of years ago, and it was mainly the price and the storage of those mats so that they weren't damaged or stolen or anything else.

They would require a piece of equipment to pick them up, so.

I'm talking about something that's like concrete that goes in the sand and you fill it with stone. It's more of a rigid.

And not the mats themselves.

Forest, right, permeable walkway. Permeable walkway.

Well, that is definitely going to require an EES.

Well, while we're at it. Yeah, while we're doing premises.

Oh, okay.

So you want, if we can look into that, what the permit is for the sand.

No, both sand and the stonework. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a way to get a wheelchair and not have to do that. Because if we're going to put money into paving, we need to fix the shoulder. The shoulder is crap.

That's what that note was about.

So my note said something about Geo.

I was like, what the hell does that mean?

Well, you've given us a lot to look into. We will do that.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys. You're doing a great job, by the way. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll see you tomorrow. Yes.

I'm a slave driver. Not my day off.

All right. Assessing managers updates.

Hot seat, Joanne. There's a bunch of stuff in your folder, in your files. We can start at the top. I'll let you know what it is. So under the first document, Joanne made some updates on Mandy's department and assessing, but her data summary is there under letter 4A.

and whatever else you wanted to report. I'm going to have to share my data summary for you. All right.

Because I can open it.

All right. Hello, everybody. Hi. This is something that I pull together every month to do year-to-date. I'm sorry?

I'm trying to make it bigger on that screen.

It's on the screen. For our team's information, just to see how we're trending compared to... the same time period year over year. So last year we implemented a change in the, we went from land use permits to certificates of zoning compliance and the criteria around those changed. And that went into effect in early 2025. So you'll see that our trending this year is very similar to last year. There's a few differences in just some of the activity around some of the type of certificates that we issue. One thing I'll pull out or call out is the energy permits. We've only issued one solar permit. So far this year and the planning board has been spending a lot of time around a solar ordinance But so that may That may come to fruition at some point, but again, it's not a high activity level area for the team. Mike does a really good job at staying on top. Each application he reviews. Obviously, every application that comes in, it's first reviewed to see if it needs to go before one of our boards, and sometimes it does, depending upon if it's gonna involve setbacks or height or whatever, the use. But this just gives you, I think, a really good picture of how we're doing from a certificate of zoning compliance perspective. Good question.

Mm-hmm. John's got one permit last year, one permit this year.

That the price was different, so. Great call out so I asked Mike about that. So, the cost for junkyard is 75 dollars, but 50 goes to the town and 25 goes to the state. Last year, they made 1 check out to the town for 75 and then we, in turn had to pay the 25 dollars to the state. So this year they wrote 2 checks. So that's why the difference.

Their state fee is for, they have to have background checks. So the state to do for a junkyard, so they have a base fee of tablets and then the rest of the fee is for background checks.

For legit junkyard, not right here.

Yeah, that's a whole other topic. So this is Steens. There are only permitted junkyard. So, which is a great lead in to my next thing about land use, um, updates, um, just to give the board an update on some of our junkie yards around town. Um, we have a couple of that, um, have come into compliance, um, which is a really good thing. There's one. in town that has been on our radar has been on the town's radar for several several years before any of us in land use even existed we worked closely with a property owner who doesn't live on site and the resident who did and we were able to get the property owner to The resident is actually a son, a family member. But we were able to work with both individuals and they actually hired the New Hampshire junk couple to come out after they also pulled a lot of stuff out themselves. But they hired an outfit to come in and help them get rid of all the stuff. And so they came into compliance, and this was ready to go to court. We were ready to file an inspection affidavit or warrant for inspection with the district court up in Plymouth, but we didn't have to. So where they are right now, they're in full compliance. Um, we will be visiting them in the spring. She understands that just because they're in compliance doesn't mean they're totally good. We'll come back in the spring and check just to make sure all this new found land doesn't acquire a lot of new yard art. So we'll be going back there in the spring. The other, um, junkyard that. We are actually working with will be Mike and I will be going there on Monday afternoon. We did actually have to file a request and affidavit for an inspection work with Plymouth court. We went up, I had to appear before the judge and he granted us that. So Mike and I, along with chief bean and another officer went out to the location. walked around, made note of everything, obviously left the affidavit with the property owner who was not on site, and then we followed up with a letter of what we found and determined to be all the violations, gave them a certain timeframe, that letter went unresponded to, a second letter went out, no response until what's today thursday she called on tuesday i guess and set up a time for for monday however this property is also one that when it has come time for us to go there gets canceled right at the end she always something always comes up so i've already notified the attorney that if Depending upon how Monday goes, we may be asking for the court to get involved. So we're working through a couple of those. And then I received a call from another person in the community earlier this week letting me know about another property in town that he's got concerns with. So we'll be addressing that one. too so so that's kind of it with the junkyards um we've we've made some progress some of the repeats are still we're still working with them we figure you know if we can get them to comply without the town having to pay anything is the better arrangement um so we'll continue to do what we're doing there And any questions on that stuff?

I have a ton, but I don't know if I can ask them.

You have a what?

I have a ton of questions, but I don't know that I can ask them in open.

Oh, okay. Okay.

You can if you try not to use names.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Or locations. Right. Or locations. It's difficult.

I'll just thank you for that work. It's a lot. I know, but it makes such a huge difference.

It's challenging, and I'll refer to something I've heard. One person's trash is another person's treasure. you know and we hear that a lot you know this this is a perfectly good engine if I only had some time to work on it or you know whatever and it's like well just move it so we can't see it move it inside your garage you know do something with it you know or these 60 tires they're perfectly great It's my home business. Well, you can't store stuff outside.

Did you want to talk about the basement?

The basement. Oh, yes. So we have another property in town that we've been working with the town's attorney on where we have a dangerous cellar hole. Yes. Oh, yeah.

I was wondering about that.

Yeah. So we've been working with one of the attorneys, and he has attempted to reach the property owner. We've obviously exhausted the multiple letters trying to reach him. She supposedly has reached out to a couple local contractors to get pricing, but there was no action done. We did finally hear from one individual who has been contracted to cap it, and it will be capped by the end of October.

Do we have that in writing?

We do have that in writing. And it falls, you know, if the contractor bails, it falls back on the property owner. I mean, the contractor's not on the... Are they incurring on taxes? They are. Yeah. Yeah.

yeah so we're hoping that that will be resolved before winter i mean so they've got until october 31st to cap it correct and if they don't cap it so we're waiting for november 1st

it doesn't happen we'll we'll take care of it and we'll lean it i'm just thinking about timing and winter and like right so so the direction of the attorney was the town has a right because it's a dangerous situation the town has a right to remedy the situation and whatever cost the town bears to remedy that situation we would apply a lien to the property owner And that's what we're ready.

There would be a tax lien.

And we're ready to do that if it doesn't happen. I mean, I'm a little less forgiving about the timeframe. I wanted it to be sooner, but Mike had made that arrangement and that's what we're good with.

Is there any way we can maybe, for our second October meeting, Or when's the first November meeting? I'd just be curious to see the status either at the end of October, you know, they will still have some runway, or, you know, our first meeting in Ohio, we're going to go, okay, where are we at?

The first meeting in November is November 5th. So we can put it on the agenda tomorrow. Just drink and just give me an update.

Yeah, yeah, that's my update. I'm just saying just as a target.

yep um so i'm just thinking so there were the three properties we've been working with the attorney on that was one of them the one that's come into compliance and then the one that we got the court order for there's another property in our neighborhood That needs to be cleaned up?

No, it has been getting cleaned up. It's sold. And now that it finally sold, two streets up from here. Two streets up. It was with an H. Oh, on the corner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, not on the corner. Am I like losing it? They're doing a lot line adjustment between that property. Oh, no, no.

The one in the middle of those two properties. Yes, you're right. Yes.

So that property sold. Yeah. Yeah. And they're doing, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we had, yeah. We had, I haven't talked to the new owner. The old, the... new old owner that acquired the property um you know we had had conversations with her about what needed to happen so all right all right um

Well, it's the MS1 document, which is located, there are two documents there, and under number 4B, this is the 4B, the MS1 summary inventory evaluation, and then Joanne did a comparison document for you as well.

If you have any questions in regards to probably the taxable land difference, we have obviously with the reval taking place, there were some properties that filed for abatement and values were adjusted. And utilities went up.

taxable land went down by about two million because of abatements a lot of it one was yeah i don't know what i can say yeah camp alignment um was adjusted was adjusted there was a substantial adjustment based on Crystal Shores.

Yeah, Blueberry Shores, Crystal Shores.

Yeah. And you guys saw that with the comment of why. So that was one of the biggest reasons.

Was the adjustment with the factor that's added or was it just in the value? is the land valuation and then there's the factor that they use.

I think it was the land value.

Do you remember how long before we did that?

We did it in August, beginning of August. I want to say August 12th or 13th. Probably the one that I have no video volume for.

So August 13th, let's look. Is when I think I...

There's a couple here.

So if I look at, these are Cheryl's, I think.

Sorry, I know you have the other one. No, I didn't write one for you, sorry. You're on your own. And this is just a nitpicky spreadsheet thing.

So when we did the abatement in August, this is what it referred to. So the set the basis for the appeal. I'm sorry. Highest and best use for the property was determined by the appraiser to be not the present use as it can, but rather for a subdivision. You reviewed the appraisal and the adjustments. Single-family waterfront properties on newfound increased between 80% to mid-90%. Blueberry Shores property went up 70%. This parcel, Camp Alon, it went up 100%. So based upon that, that's why he recommended the adjustment. And you can see it's a $1.5 million difference.

Well, yes, but also, if you scroll up a little bit, it is, no, the other up. Oh, sorry. The other up. It is still a difference of, go back down.

Three, sorry. Oh, it went from 3.9.

3.9 to 4.5. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it went up, but it came down.

It is comparable to the other similar problem.

Because, yeah, because a year went by.

John?

So, yeah, this is just a, so like the difference column, when I look at exemptions applied, We've got a negative 580, so I'm assuming that's the total exceptions that were in 2025 and now a negative 750 in 2026, but then it says a negative 170 difference. So I was like, yeah. But what would probably be interesting is to understand the breakdown of the exceptions, like the types of exceptions

The exemptions. What's that? The exemptions. Oh, okay.

We do have a report. Charitable religious veterans. Disabled. Disabled.

But I'm just saying, because we went through a whole thing where, again, the consent agenda is over the past several weeks. They're kind of cleaning stuff up as we go through it. So just sort of seeing, like, okay, just using metrics for a second. In 25, it was X. In 26, it was Y.

We usually do run it when we set the tax rate, but we can certainly run it at any time.

I can provide that.

I just cannot share it via email.

Yes, I mean, I guess the point ends up being it's $190,000 to the plus on the difference because they're both technically negatives to be taken on. That's a lot.

Oops, I'm going to stop sharing. Sorry.

And then the other one is utility value. So that obviously is not significant. Is that from the utility audit for all of the poles?

PS&H, their values dramatically changed.

So Brian bought us our utility appraisal.

Are they taking us to court for this year?

He's buying it. Thank you.

Not that I'm aware of.

So it is still significantly lower since the settlement, but it did increase. And there's a formula set by the state on how to do those appraisals now. So it's specifically set and that's...

The state sets the formula, and then we send the bill basically to Eversource to go .

There's some other pieces of it that we have control over, but we have to follow that formula mainly.

And then, yes, we send the tax rate that way. I'm sorry.

I'm just looking at the numbers on the . Taxation, 1F residential land, when you do that math, that comes out to $121,000 per acre, which is quite high. But it also includes, if I'm not mistaken, that includes septic well foundation.

Well, the question I have is how much, so like.

Water. It includes your view. It includes your water. You're talking land value. So it includes your water access. It includes your... Right, so the factor comes in. It includes view positive. It includes water access. It includes waterfront. It includes all of that.

Right, so like the factor on the waterfront is what, $5.95?

I can't tell you that.

Yeah, so some of them are 250, some of them are . So that was sort of my question. So it's not easy to do sort of a straight line. Right. That number back to the per acre. We almost have to do it by zone in order to have the, right, so like lake versus rural, right, because they would be very different. And actually, that's a really good question. Do we have a break? So when we talk about the taxable land, is it, I don't remember, is it in the system where you can say the taxable land buy zone, whether it's village, commercial, lake, rural, should be able to imagine?

It's coded with a number. Yeah.

So that would be, honestly, what Sean just did sort of at the total level, we can't do because of some of those pieces. But it would be really interesting to see that number based on the different zones so that you'd see sort of where those pieces are.

If you're talking about 25 to 26, you want to see zone five, which is lake, a comparison that way.

Right, because then you can see, okay, the total tax per acre in the lake is this. The total tax in rural is that. Like that would be just really interesting.

We're just going to give you value.

Yeah. Just give you land values in each of the districts. I'm sorry.

I said tax. I meant value. Apologies.

Anything else with MS1? MS1. I will just tell you, it gives me heartburn all the time when I have to, I'm like so afraid I'm going to screw up.

So actually, here's your breakdown. By the way, sorry. And your exemptions. I forgot it was in here. So there's your breakdown of your veterans tax credits, your tax credit for service conducted. It's in there. It's part of the MS1. Yes, this one tells you age 65 to 74. There's that amount, 75 to 79. What page is it on?

Page 5.

It's 4B. I thought it was in there. So the veterans is kept separate because that's used differently when the tax rate gets set. But the, and then I think it does break down your charitable on, oh, exempt, so.

It doesn't have it there. No, no. Mr. Chair? Yes. I'd like to make a motion to approve the 2026 MS1 for the town of Bristol, New Hampshire as prepared. Second. Second by Don. Any further questions or comments on the MS1?

How often does the MS1 get submitted? Every year on September 1st. Every year from September 1st. And when's it due? September 1st. So we've already submitted it?

No, we put an extension in because we knew we weren't going to be able to get it before the board by September 1st. Okay. I used to have a meltdown when I used to do that. I mean, there's two systems.

You use our assessing software, and then I have to go out to DRA's sales portal and marry the two, and that's where I get heartburn.

It's such a simple form. I don't know.

The portal isn't straightforward. It's not.

You mean the New Hampshire online system isn't user-friendly? No. I find that hard to believe. All right. All those in favor of approving the 2026 MS1, please say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Abstentions? That's 5-0. The next document is under number 4C.

It is the SNHU pilot for Riverview Elderly Housing. Joanne has a memo in there and then the agreement is in there as well. We have to sign this over here.

Yeah, so you'll have the agreement. There's two originals that need to be signed. After they're signed, I send both of the originals along with an invoice to... Can we rename it Swamp View? It's actually not even Swamp View, which is... Swamp.

Oh, there's Swamp. Yeah, all the Swamp.

I stopped sharing. Sorry.

Right. And I will say that the pilot amount increased from last year. Last year I think was $24,500.

And where does that come from?

It comes from their rental incomes. Okay. So that's what they report to us. I knew it was into something. It's 10% of their rental income.

So we have a choice of either doing whichever is lower, the 10% of their rental income, or... the local and state, not state, local and county tax rate. You can't charge them the school rates. So you usually, well, the rental income is the least, and it's by statute. It's under charitable. So what is RSA 2072-23K?

That's the RSA that qualifies under.

it's a charitable statute and i remember talking is i'd have to pull it up and look at the actual title but it is a charitable statute which allows them to do a voluntary payment in the taxes which they do with the town okay so it's a voluntary payment that they are not subject to the school right tax well it's either 10 of rental income or or a combination of the county and local

in the downtowns, yeah. Interesting.

And usually we have to review it every year just to make sure which one's the least, but every year this is the least.

There are things that don't pay the school portion, like utilities don't pay the school.

Utilities don't pay the state.

The state education tax.

Right. So utilities don't pay the state. They only pay three portions of the tax rate. That's correct. Okay. And then these third person only pay two portions if you tax them for this option .

And when did this property go in? This is the one on the corner of Lake Street, right? Like down? Yeah. 15 years ago?

It's not real down. 12 years ago? No. It's up going to by a village.

Yeah.

Right next to Choice Physical Therapy. Okay. Not Choice anymore. Oh, yeah. It's Spear Rehab. Spear, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. You don't want to sit next to me anymore, do you? All right. Yeah, it's at least 15 years.

I remember when they came through.

Yeah.

When I started doing this, we only got like a $14,000 payment, so...

I mean the only thing that sprang to mind when I read the memo itself was, and I'm not suggesting we have to go marching through this, but the more we, tie back to things like this that are we did it for this reason it's in the master plan like whatever i think those are always good things to do right like how does it tie back now in this case it's already open that's why i asked when did it go in well the question would be it's statutory so i don't know if we can really tie it back to the master plan well i think we probably tie it back to the land use section because the land use section says we need to maintain so much from a housing perspective so anyways that was the first thing that popped into my head I'm not saying change it, I'm just saying that's the first thing.

I think we have a lot of business. Yeah. Okay. Just keep chugging forward. Make a motion to approve the agreement for payment in lieu of taxes for 2026 with Riverview Elderly Housing, SNHS. Second.

All right. It is a motion and a second. Any further discussion or comment? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Object. Abstentions. Abstentions. Thank you. 12-term rental residential rental license.

So under number 4B, there are three documents. We've got an attorney response again. And we've got... Two of the documents I will let Joanne explain. We actually took a different approach, again, based on the attorney feedback one more time. And when Joanne and I looked at it together, we looked at Meredith and Conway, who seem to be doing these type of, so Meredith does short-term rentals, but is really not vetted. They haven't been doing it that long. And then we have Conway that is doing Yeah, of compliance. Yeah, so we looked at the two.

Joanne is taking a slightly different approach, so we'll let you. Well, I'll tell you, this.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, I.

Did you share this? Okay.

Oh, I can put that up on the screen.

So anyways, as Christina mentioned, and obviously we've talked about this topic a lot, and we've had a lot of different suggestions, recommendations. things to consider. The attorney has really kind of steered us in the direction of licensing all rentals versus the Meredith approach of really singling out short-term rentals. Most recently in August, I know there was an article about Meredith. They recently adopted their short-term rental ordinance and they've already had to make some changes to it. So our attorney's recommendation is it would be much better for the town to look at this from a licensing perspective. So I created this metric with the use of AI to kind of show you where these two similar towns kind of align versus our approach. So right now in Bristol, If I want to run a short-term rental 30 days or less out of my home, I'm in Village Residential, I have to apply for a special exception to use my home that way. And that goes before.

But that's new. That's not existing.

No, that's existing.

I mean, grandfathered ones don't have to.

Right, grandfathered ones don't have to. But today, if I wanted to do that with my house, I would have to file a special exception and come before zoning. In the Lake District, it's grandfathered. Anybody can do what they're doing out there.

means we have an inventory, so we know where that is, right? Correct. Because you can't say, blanketly, in the Lake District, they can just go.

No, it's based on the uses that are allowed by the planning board.

Right. Correct.

OK. Not necessarily inventory, but the uses that the planning board permitted.

So I could, if I live in the Lake, if you wanted to Airbnb your place, you could without any involvement from us. So obviously what's been before the board is how do we want to manage that? Do we want to manage our inventory and know what our inventory is? So the Conway approach seems to more align with I'm thinking what we want to do, and that would be all rentals. We would be licensing or providing a certificate of compliance to all rentals, regardless of district. There are some variables and factors that we have to take into consideration. And so on this spreadsheet, I listed some things that I think really need to be considered if we're going to go down this route. One of the things, and I apologize, I know I'm bouncing around because in my head, this topic has been bounced around so many different times, so many different iterations and everything else, and I'm trying to keep it straight as to which direction we're really going. But again, the Conway licensing, it would obviously involve the fire department because based on the attorney's recommendation, we can only approach this from a life safety perspective. It cannot be based on land use regulations. So life safety, so Ben and his team would be very involved in this. And again, he'll have skin in the game and have to weigh this. And our fee structure has to be appropriate to what the cost to the town is. Conway has a very simplistic fee structure. which I kind of like. It's a $50 base fee and then it's $25 for every unit. Like if it's a two unit, it would be $50 and then a $25 fee on top of that. If it increases above that, it's just $25 for each additional unit. The permit term is for two years. for any units under 12, I think it was. Anything over 12, it would be an annual inspection where they would go out and make sure all the life safety features are there. yeah but the permit and permit review and inspection are completed by the fire department so i've got my back to ben you actually can yeah i did share it with them but we we've been

Yeah, it's been it's there's been so many iterations of this thing So I mean life safety we can say the building has XYZ capacity, right? Yes, okay, so And certain things can be a bedroom certain things can't be a bedroom I guess because part of there are two things that actually come to life ADUs, because that's the next thing that's coming, right? If I'm an investor and I buy a property and I can now put an ADU on the property as well, I now can create two units. It's good for the investor, but complicated for us as it relates to that. That's why I like the inventory of the pieces. But then the second question is septic capacity. If they're building a new ADU, And it's a three-bedroom unit. It's sized for three bedrooms. It's got three bedrooms. The reason why I was splitting hairs on the capacity, somebody listed as, it's a short-term rental. I got three bedrooms. Each bedroom's got three bunks. Each bunk has two people. I'm not trying to do harm to anybody, but it's like, how do we figure out the balance? And if there isn't, that's also good. I'm just trying to think about, I don't want to overwhelm septic systems, and maybe I'm worried about something I shouldn't. You guys can tell me about it.

One of the things when we were looking at it, two things, the single and two family would be a self-affidavit of those owners. Not necessarily an inspection because those don't quite fall, correct them, single and two family? If they're renting them, they absolutely do.

They do, okay. So the Conway did it, it was a self-affidavit.

They still had to pay the base fee, but it was a self-affidavit application process. The second part of it, I think, was it Conway, which one required them to provide a septic, but we have to be careful because that is a little bit outside of. Well, that's what I mean.

I don't know if that's considered clearly life and safety. To us, I think when it comes to short-term rentals, it's just about continuing to protect the life That's why I'm asking the question. I'm not looking to stretch it. I'm not looking, I'm just trying to understand the, these are the things that we can set and these are the things that we can't set. So, okay.

But I'm sure that Ben has some feedback.

Oh, I do, yeah.

All right, let's hear it.

Well, so there's a lot of me that whether it's short term, long term, right, some sort of program that gets us into these buildings more frequently, right? we are really only capable with the staffing that we have to do the required inspections that we have and then really a lot of the residential stuff comes down to either changing uses or some modifications right they're redoing an apartment it gets us into the building just changes or or welfare um the and then really complaints right you get the citizen that has the whatever apartment number three and they've addressed it with the landowner several times that their smoke detectors aren't working or the so you know the guy in apartment two is blocking the the emergency egress out the back whatever and we and we can deal with it that So when we first started looking at this from a short-term rental standpoint, it was one, we don't know what we don't know, right? We don't know what the number is. So we can only kind of, you know, we did the quick Airbnb and the Burbo, and then you assume that there's Facebook marketplaces that are probably about similar. And you say, okay, this is this, and if we really had to do it on it, whether it was a semi-annual or every three years or something, really annually with that supposed number, say in the middle of hundreds or something, it's not going to be feasible with the staff that we have. So that's a good number to start. You then go out and you look at the community profile page on the state of New Hampshire site, we're at about 540 units that would probably more qualify for the long term rental stuff. That's four plus times what we suppose we don't really have the ability to do today. That's my big thing. I think it's great. I think that regular routine life safety inspections through a permitting process or through a self-reporting process, however we get there is fantastic. But the only way we can truly get there is going to require some more people from us. So Meredith, just doing short term and obviously having a much bigger kind of different commercial presence, they have a full-time fire inspector. Franklin's Franklin, but Franklin, when you look at their commercial capacity, is certainly larger industrial, but their general commercial like we have is similar. And yes, they're about three times that number of units, but Franklin has a full-time fire inspection captain with a full-time fire inspector. It's a big lift to be in these, in that kind of, even in a two-year cycle. I just think it's important to bring it out. It's a great idea, it's a great idea for inventory reasons, even if we can only view it as tertiary benefits, right, some of the stuff that John's concerned about. But it just, there's an attachment to that, and quite frankly, I think, and we're looking at a bunch of stuff that we're doing permitting-wise, and kind of where is Where does the line between being in the fire department and what our actual task is to some of these businesses that have a cost of doing business? And some other towns that, whether it's short-term rental licenses or permits that are X number of dollars a year or other places that are doing, we don't charge for assembly permits right now. It's a pretty big lift and it's kind of, to me it's a cost to do a business thing. Just making sure that we're mindful that we could charge all these 25 bucks a piece but we could also be looking at $135,000 in payroll a year at some point to manage the process.

But that goes back to Joanne's first point of it has to be a reasonable cost. And if we reasonably say that we are now inspecting this many things, it's a math problem of these are the costs divided by this many things equals this much time. That means the permit is this many dollars. Because the fundamental problem that we have as a community, with short-term rentals in particular, my neighborhood's got a bunch of them. And sometimes people are totally willing to spend an extra $50,000 on a house because they know that they're getting $3,000 to $5,000 a week in order to rent them. I'm not trying to curtail that. At the same time, we can't be complaining that we don't like the fact that our housing costs so much, but yet we're developing a business environment in that manner and have no sort of understanding of which way we want to go as a community. Because, again, if we go back to the master plan, the master plan doesn't say that we want to be a retirement and vacation community only. We want that, but we want some of its others. to work the process where people say we want to be just a retirement and vacation community. And then that will give us better direction to not be spending money in a whole bunch of other ways. To me, it's simply a math problem. That we can't have, that it should be $50 for a permit. If we think those are the reasonable costs and we can back into it, then even if somebody doesn't like it and they take us to court, we go to court with, here's the spreadsheet, here's the thing, it's this many things, it takes us 8 minutes and 43 seconds to walk up the stage. I don't know, whatever the math tells us. then we can reasonably do it. But I just find us talking on both sides of our face at times where it's like, we want this as a community, but then these are the costs that we need to be able to articulate and pick.

So, anything else? Yeah.

I mean, so obviously we've been talking about different ideas and changing it over and over again, but I have a question about would the board consider Maybe we don't roll out official inspections immediately. We roll this out and see what it is in a year and then revisit it again. Or we do inspections only on the 12 plus units that was commented on. Because I don't know, Ben, what you're, I don't think there's that many 12 plus units.

No, but I guess from the standpoint that really the only, you know, maybe not the only, but like the legal interpretation is, well, the only real kind of teeth you have to do this is to enforce fire and life safety, but then we say, well, at some point, two or three years, we'll come up with an inspection.

No, listen, that's a straight up, totally fair point, right? All I'm saying is we just have to pick a direction and go, this is what we're trying to achieve. Because, honest to God, if we're okay just leaving it be, we can leave it be, but we need to then stop complaining that, hey, wait, we've got too many short-term rentals. We've got too much that's going in this direction. We have too many vacations, right? Because that's where we end up going. When we start to really examine the budget, we then go, we don't want all that. Well, we've got to sort of pick the lowest every month. The self-signed certification still has some value.

Yeah.

Yeah.

just know that it's there sorry um the other thing housing standards is mentioned as well in connery so i don't know if the list could shift slightly from the fire department completely to the health officer i don't know capacity joanne so i'm just saying um i don't know if there could be a shared capacity there where after certainly not minutes the housing standards are reviewed right And then over a certain money is the length of safety. And share the low sum in the first year, I don't know. I'm just making suggestions.

So on this, so there were just some questions that I had put on the back, too. But I We will do whatever the board wants us to do. It's just at this point, I think we just, I need to wrap, I mean, wrap my head around what direction we're going.

I think that we've gone back to the attorney multiple times with what we've talked about. And multiple times we're getting the same feedback. So this is why we've changed the direction again. And now we can all agree this is where we want to go with it.

framework around it and come up with something.

I think it's important to spend some time on it. And I would

I would welcome, you know, Mike being part of that conversation too. Yeah. Because he has a lot of great. Okay. Insight and input.

And here's my recommendation. We should probably have that conversation before budget will due because if we're impacting budget in any way, we need to have that ready before something needs to be submitted.

Yeah.

And I would put Ben in that conversation too.

I'm good with whatever you guys decide if you want to put somebody else from outside.

I don't know if you want to do that first or with you first. Okay. Mr. Chair. So Scott did make a suggestion when at past meetings about somebody who is a member of the public who deals with short-term rentals in Florida but lives in Bristol and would have some input. Do you want to start your work session with this group or add someone from the public to that group?

I think it would be valuable to have the information.

And then do you want me to, so do you want to do this at a regular meeting? No. Okay. Which means October 1st is your next meeting technically. So between now and October 1st, what do you guys have open? Because October 8th budgets are due.

This time next week? Yeah, I'm available.

But then, like, coffee? No, I am as long as it's later in the evening, probably this meeting time or something.

6.30 or 7?

Yeah, potentially even 6. All right, let's put 6.00.

Joanne, are you available? And as far as you know, my most likely will be. All right. Ready to pick it up? The 24th? Yeah. All right.

It's all good. I may not be able to be there. I've got to travel. But I can see if I can get out of it tomorrow.

All right. I'll send the mutations out. And I'll call the person that you just gave me a name for.

This one is pretty much done.

It's just more for your information. The next one on your agenda is the Board of Health meeting. By statute, we have to hold a Board of Health meeting once a year. We skipped last year by mistake, but in your full words, There is the, so under number or whatever, sorry, five, there's the chapter 128, town health officers. If you look at 128.3, that's where it says have to have a board of health meeting. But under number five, the 2026 board of health and readiness report, this is kind of what we're discussing or any other things that you feel should be discussed. The board of health, this is the selection and a lot of this probably stems from covid and the changes that they made after covid but but it's required of our health officers which are joanne and mike so so happy to have this every year

So Mike, Mike completed this report, um, and he identified, you know, the areas, um, the successes about, and we've already addressed the junkie yards that came into compliance. Uh, as I think you all were aware, we had several failed septic systems on shore drive. Um, those have all been remedied. installed and new. And as Mike mentioned, under the challenges, we continue to work with the residents who are in violation of the junkyard ordinance. And the aging buildings and rising costs certainly have caused some. I like how we spelled the word building. I just saw that. Yeah, that's an interesting. But with lead and asbestos and everything, that has posed another layer of complexity to what we do. So there are certain things that homeowners or property owners have to do. And again, the ongoing concern about septic systems, as John pointed out. We have several that have folding tanks. And we just work with them on the pumping and all of that. So this is just their form that we complete. And I don't think it requires signature or anything. It's just.

Just requires that we've talked about it. And if there's something else that you feel as the Board of Health that should be addressed as well, that we also talk about that.

This is our fourth helping right now. Yes. Yes. We're in session. We're in session.

I think when we heard the first meeting, I was obviously talking about, I think, COVID at one time. And then as COVID started to go and started to go away, we started talking about junkyards. We started talking about housing standards. We started talking about those kinds of things.

Nothing.

Okay, good. Consider this meeting closed? I think so. All right.

And Mike and I, as health officers, attend a health officer conference twice a year. We've got one coming up on the 30th of this month down in Manchester. every so many years. Every three years. So I think that concludes my portion of tonight's. I will just on the record also echo a thanks to each of you for your continued support of land use. Without mentioning names, I know something was recently brought to your attention about a comment that was made in the presence of one of my employees about me. And while I have concerns about that comment, I know the source. And I don't want to be that person to say, we never would have guessed that person to act on their words. But I do appreciate your support when it comes to that. Because it is often a thankless job. And I also appreciate, Christina did talk to me about some social media posts and so forth. So I will reign that in against my better personal self.

like my judgment well she did what she had to do so I respect that yes Joanne thank you for all the short term rental stuff right like for me especially coming from the planning board the more we tie in the master plan because if that if that thing whatever it says is not really what we're trying to build right

Right, what good is it?

A, what good is it? B, it doesn't help us. Right.

No.

Anyway, so just thank you for all that.

We're here to champion whatever you guys want us to do. All right. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Run, run, run away. I know my watch just said bedtime is approaching. All right.

I thought you were referring to Ben. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Ben has a few things in there. I don't know which one he's going to start with, so I'll let him.

I do, but Mr. Chair, if I can ask for one minute to put my BRAC hat on for a second.

Okay. BRAC, the community center.

So if you haven't seen it, there's a community retirement party for the 25th at Kelly Park from 1 to 4.

I have not seen this.

It was on Facebook. there'll be plenty of opportunity for anybody to speak with just on behalf of the bracket if you guys would be interested in doing some proclamation recognition something we'd be happy to have that and just let myself or rick alfers know is fine and then we'll make sure that you're on the list but all right so just so everybody hears it here who's listening uh and so that you have that information that's it i'll take my bracket off before you ask me questions all right fire engine yeah sure let's start there So I put together a PowerPoint just so there was kind of something to follow along with.

Which, by the way, thank you. I'll take your last slide and move it to the front. Thank you for doing that.

Thanks.

Actually, I'll put it up on screen. Sorry.

So I printed it off so I could follow along too. So of course, we've talked about it several times, but it's time to replace Engine 2. We're at that point where we have a price and because the lead times are down a little bit, it puts us a little bit ahead of schedule. But I'm gonna talk about that some. And I also would just point out that we're, as you five or whatever percent the increase is every year on a million dollars is pretty significant. We have set ourselves up in the position to financially be ready to take on that cost. And so we're in a good spot to move forward. So Engine 2's replacement, the next slide is just, that's actually like when Engine 2 was getting backed in when it first showed up here, obviously at the old building while Pat was driving. You didn't push it in? No, we didn't. Yeah, I guess it's a thing. So just currently, that truck is at... Down the bottom. To the left of the Zoom button. Thank you. So a little over 53,000 miles. It did some calls today, so I'm sure it has that. This is when I made it last week. And just shy of 4,000 hours on the engine. So it's getting older. It's right at 20 years old or 20 years and some months. So, oh yeah, there's a backside here. So I just, I do want to touch on the replacement schedule, because like I said, it's going to put us, and we've talked about we really need to move that truck up. The initial CIP plan put it at 25 years, because it's kind of a nice round number. That number is built off of the NFPA 24-year standard. But I do think it's important to discuss that that NFPA standard for 24-year lifespan roughly 15 years, you do a full NFPA, now 1900, because they combine the codes, but do a refurbishment on it. Those refurbishments are roughly like 40 to 60% of the cost of a new one. And then it never did get refurbished. So if you go to the next slide. so if you think back 15 years with the lifespan right here you're talking that covet time frame from 2020 2021 it would have been 15 years old at that time it was roughly 750 800 000 to replace a truck so right in the middle we would have spent 400 000 on a full refurb and then if we were trying to do that to maintain some sort of compliance with nfpa standards that we are not required to but they're certainly good guidelines um We would still be looking to buy a truck right now to replace it at 24 years and it would still be a million and I think if your maintenance program is good, that idea is maybe not the best use of funds. Plus a refurbishment is about a six to nine month process. So I just throw it in here back in roughly 2002, 2003 timeframe, the department took that engine three out of service. So we had three engines for a very long time in the town of Bristol. It was decided to take it out of service between maintenance and did we really need it? It's arguable probably from time to time. Certainly in 2005 when we were buying engine two, we could have So now you're down to really one engine. The latter has the ability to fight fire, but it's really not, that's not what it's designed for. You have two minutes max of water flow in that truck before you get connected to a hydrant. So taking it out of service for that long period of time, plus the financials just never made sense, hence it was never done.

Last year when we did the in that was so we could roll Engine 2 less behind the ambulance when we needed to. How do you think that's worked out?

So I would say fine, but I would just point out that we never traditionally ran Engine 2 behind. the ambulance, right? So that, a lot of fire departments do that, even are comparable, right? So, but the ability to have that, so like for a while, especially because we had that weird six months that for some reason it took to upfit my car, That was a big period where you were then maybe running the rescue that wasn't always running the best. You didn't have the ability to do it because Aaron was still using that pickup truck at the time, right? So now really since, when did I get that thing finally? February of this year. The car three is assigned to Aaron now. He runs that for his errands, his fire inspections, his safety meetings at the school, so on and so forth. The utility is always available. The only time it's not available is like if there's a medic running down to the hospital to exchange narcs or pick up an order or something. But even then, it's down in Franklin, so they're right back in 15 or 20 minutes. So yeah, that program is great. I would just, I would point out, you know, like I said, we never really ran it, so really not any of these miles are from doing it.

Well, that, no, I mean, listen, honestly, that makes me feel better, because that was my understanding when we talked about the pickup truck last year. we would make sure that engine two went. So engine two is 50,000 miles of really like, we need engine two to be in location.

Right. So how old is it? 20. 20. 20. So 5,000 miles a year.

No, 2,500 miles a year.

Yeah, the miles . Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always the hours. Yeah.

engine but yeah it's 200,000 miles running up and down crystal and state roads that are assaulted and sanded yeah so I guess moving on to kind of the process of replacing a fire truck so deputy he's like I said before he led the truck committee really for about the last two years that's really the amount of time it takes right because you're you're buying a truck for the next 20 to 25 years and you want to do it right and inevitably it'll show up and we'll go, oh, we should have done that. That's what happened with all of the other trucks. But it's usually like, man, we should have put a shelf there. Two years in, you've kind of done the due diligence. So they met with a ton of manufacturers. They saw representative trucks, whether it was going to departments that had received new deliveries or to a maintenance area or something to check one out. And kind of through the process, there'd be a bunch of changes when you get to, and it's just the drawings, it's not all that fancy, but you'll say, well, yeah, it looks kind of like engine two, but it's got a raised roof like engine four has. But there are a couple of the big changes that were needed where we needed to have larger water carrying capacity. That really comes from, you know, when we got this in 2000, when we ordered it in 2005, we were 20 plus call members that showed up to every single call. And they lived really close. You've got engine four right on the road. Now that takes a few more minutes to get out the door. And having an extra 250 gallons of water, an extra minute and a half of firefighting before that truck shows up is just huge. It doesn't require a bunch of big changes going to a tandem axle or something like that. 250 gallons of water is a lot of weight, but it can handle it on that truck. The other one was a lower hose bed, so really starting with Engine 2's purchase 20 years ago, and then moving through the latter to a lesser degree, and then Engine 4 was kind of standardizing the best hose loads that we could have for our unique area. They're really not unique. You're going to find similar ones on other fire trucks, but the trucks are set up to best work for what we find. residential building fire that's kind of out in the woods you need a little bit longer lay because you can't always get the engine right up to the house and that means storing a lot of hose on the back well if you look at engine two and engine four if you're my height you can just about get to the hole right otherwise you're climbing up and down the truck so ergonomically kind of safety How we deploy those hose, lowering the hose bed is a big one, and then increasing the torque. So it's a similar size engine to what Engine 2 has now, but a reprogramming to allow for like 1,600 foot pounds. 1,650. 1,650 of torque. It just makes a huge difference. I mean, that thing, I feel like the majority, my career here are up off of like the Pequot Hill or Hall Road area and you're just dogging up that road and just that little bit of extra as you kind of make that transition I think will make a huge difference or up Bristol Hill and then all of a sudden they're all downtown but either way we sit in a hole so.

And you have to wait for the extra water too.

Right, right. So the truck committee, basically from all the manufacturers they met with, solicited kind of their baseline specs based on what we're looking for, and proposals from seven manufacturers. That's just a list of the companies that responded. And their pricing. Some of it, certainly the last two, realistically they'd be higher now. Those are kind of older numbers. And some of the tweaks that got made along the way as you dealt with those lower numbers would have increased it probably exponentially. So, and there's a drawing just so that you kind of know what we're talking about. But again, it's, I mean, for all intents and purposes, it looks like Engine 2 with Engine 4's raised cab roof. That's just the chassis that makes the most sense for us. It does have wheels. Six of them. So, before I hit the replacement, the recommendation of the committee, I do want to address. I just sent it to Christina and I think she moved it into your folders. We have a letter from Eastern fire apparatus who is the dealer that we would be looking to purchase through. that says, thank you for the opportunity to submit a bid packet for a Spartan custom cab pumper. It's a statement, by the way. Yeah. As a bidder for your new fire truck, I'm writing to inform you that Aaron Heath has an employment relationship with Eastern Fire Apparatus. Further, that Aaron is not receiving any remuneration or other consideration from any sales agreement between Eastern Fire in the town of Bristol or Toyn in the town of Bristol. Please let me know if you have any questions. Best regards, Gerald McKay, and that's the owner of Eastern Fire Apparatus.

So a couple questions. What is, is Eastern Fire Apparatus a division of Toyn or? They're a vendor for. A vendor for Toyn, okay. And what's the nature of the employment?

I sell fire trucks from time to time.

other communities.

So to me, just full disclosure, I think however much you want to keep Aaron out of any conversations, but he's certainly the content expert for this process. That's the way it worked. I just want to make sure that everybody listening understands.

So I'm just going through it verbally. So we had an open bid Mm-hmm. A process where you went to several outfits.

And a committee.