Board of Selectmen - Regular Meeting

Father got some new folks here tonight. I think we can do a round of introductions first. Um we want to start with um chief over go around chief stock with the uh chief bart So now Jeff's been fired. Inspector Sarah

Ward temporary. Nice to meet y'all. Sarah, Katherine Felch, town administrator, news administrator.

Thank you. Um, so we the first one we have on here like to share we don't have a full for on that. Um, do we want to start with the update for the the recount? That's later on. um if you would like do you want to start with maybe she was just asking if you wanted to start with the update for the recount. Sure.

So um by statute Friday there was a deadline if anyone wanted to request a recount of any candidates race from the March 10th election and I did receive a letter. Um so on Wednesday we will be holding the recount um with the board of recount which is the board of selectmen moderator and myself. Um the office will be closed during the day because we'll need the whole day it's a recount and for the folks that the folks are doing count would be yourself Carol you want to go through because I think we did some changes with this evening and you've been on other candidates that you're not Yeah.

Right. So, um we'll have two teams of counters. Um Sarah Hamilton, uh myself, Carol Bre will be the moderator. Um Mr. Disclosure will be another counter and I believe um you no if Harold could add his details

process for the recount is one we followed in 2022 when we last did the recount. Um the participants are defined by statute. We have an unusual situation where one of the participants is one of the uh contest is a a participant in a contested race. Um in O'Reilly um as another of the candidates I'm going to ask for his recusal from the board of recount to uh be completely transparent. I I'm going to appoint the assistant moderator Russell Perry to stand in Ian O'Reillystead Mike Schwzer as the intro selectman will be the third member of that board. The board of three count is comprised of the select the town clerk and myself. So I would like to ask Ian Riley if he would be willing to recuse himself from that position.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So for on Wednesday morning I will be appointing brothel Perry again in the interest of transparency. We'll begin the recount at 9:00 here and um we're expecting it's going to take 4 to 6 hours with five of us involved. It might take longer than how mixed up the ballots are. We're going through 2600 ballots to pull out 868 ballots and then sorting through those in packs of 50. It's a very arduous task and very exact task. That's my update. Yes.

Um just to verify that the ballots we're looking for specifically the slackman's race that was had come back to people. Is that correct?

Yes. The the town ballot is comprised of three pages. Schools and the cooperative ballot form the fivepage packet that voters were given on voting day. of the three pages of town ballots, page one contains the office that's contested, the three-year race for selection. So, those are intermingled through both the ballot machine, mixing them, and the handc count process. Um, they're contained in two boxes, sealed. The complete process will be once the public is assembled. Nothing has been touched, efforts have been sealed under our watchful eye on the night of the election. So it would begin with the public opening of both boxes and end with the public announcement of the recount. Our last recount um did not change the results. I do not expect this one to change the results but anything happened but thank you context for the table today and why um so we can jump into the the uh department has done update

sure I've been talking with New Hampshire office of safety which we get our grants from for the PW and there we can allocate for more minds from them. Um so what they're looking for is we have the discussion of the select meeting and then what they would do is send me the what the difference would be which you guys would have to sign at some point when it gets back to us but they're looking for the minutes to accept that we're we're looking to get more money. Um, so what they would do is they would increase the our speed grants, $3,000, which would bring us to 6,500 a year for speed grants and then another $1,000 for distracted driver, which would bring us up to 4,500 a year for for those extra patrols. So they're they're more or less looking for your acceptance that we move forward with it and that we obtain, you know, the documentation from the state, which would be put in front of you, be signed to do anything with it. Well, one So, one is this. It's just called speed grant. It's looking for speedy. And the other one is distracted drivers.

Okay. That's the Yeah, that's the they're they're broken down. We also get DUI ones. Uh we didn't do the pedestrian uh bicycle one. You know, I don't think that's something we would really put too much effort into. And so, that's uh pretty much it. Um, so we just have a motion from Ross to accept the $3,000 for speed grant, that's not for the destructive recording. Correct. Yeah. Second. Uh, all in favor?

That's it for the police department. Um so fire department um we completed our SCBA training on our new SCBAs that we got in the grant fund. Um should be put in service this week or at latest next week. And the only other thing I have is that the new tanker truck um will be finished at the factory at the end of the month and it will be shipped up to the dealer in mass. Um we are hoping to take delivery I would say by the end of April at the latest and um so that's it and then um for EOC um the only thing I have is the next drill is June 3rd the Cbook drill put out more information once we get closer to that. That's all I got. Give me one nice

um everything's going fine as far as permits going. Uh but I've submitted application two new applications to for your review. uh we don't have plumbing or mechanical applications in town and if somebody comes in for a plumbing system just boil water plumbing job or mechanical like a heating system I have no application to issue a permit so most all towns do uh we don't so uh I'm not sure if I think it's

so basically I just kind of you know checked around different towns and see uh basically what they you know how they they do it. They they do their applications. I wanted something simple eating. I haven't come up with any fees yet. Uh are we going to do surrounding towns to try to keep it below surrounding towns like we did with the fees for the building uh building. Uh so um uh these are the both applications. Obviously they're the same layout just um worded differently at the top plumbing application or mechanical application. Uh and that's what I'd like to get those in place. Uh I do I have been getting calls for you know for they want to know they don't see it on the website there's a permit. So, I'm getting calls as to what they need to do. And I've actually gotten building permits and then they put the plumbing sort of a plumbing application into that form and I have to tell them I I can't give you a permit and so just do the job and if I if something else is in progress over there, then I can I can inspect it. But other than that, can't issue a permit to charge. And do we have good guidelines for residents on when they need one of those furnace?

Well, like anything else, you know, I mean, legally, and I'm not I don't want to push for something like that, but uh for instance, you want to put it in the dishwasher and some towns require you to get appointment permit just to change a dishwasher. I'm not looking to push anything like that. just, you know, basically, you know, a renovation, a kitchen renovation, you know, you're ripping things out, you're realigning things. You know, drainage is being moved, water is being moved, venting is being moved. So, you know, you really need to burn for that. Uh, same with mechanical.

What's the amount of money level that you start with to require a building permit? Uh, I think we're at um above 3,000. Okay. So the funding mechanics would probably be lower than that. Um I wouldn't even suggest different there. I mean if it was if somebody actually if somebody came to me and said we're just going to take the sink off we're going to cond I'm not going to ask for a program for that for instance for instance. So more like a replacing behind Yeah. Yeah. you're replacing with the the actual fixtures.

Well, again, it depends. Yeah. I mean, if somebody's coming in and replacing the fixtures, all fixtures in the whole bathroom in kind, like the whole bathroom, then I would say they'd be like a permanent for. But if it's a single item or something of that sort, no. Did you say you pulled this information from other towns? I've looked at other applications. Yeah. Um this one. Yeah, I forget where I pulled this one from, but you utilizing this on the town on the town website and kind of making this a public form. I'm sorry.

Uh, you'd be interested in utilizing this as a public forum and putting this online and having this be part of the application process. Um, for these types, right? Yeah, I think we did um I don't remember if we did when we changed the Well, that was in place already. The building permit was already in place. So we it was over we didn't have a public uh forum on that but we did for the fees the fees have to have a public hearing. So the fees have to correct and that would be the same fees right the temp the template would go on that's the yeah that would be

does anyone else need to review that or is that document it's not I don't think I'm attorney great okay so do you want a motion from us on just a permit from now You want to wait until there's fees associated with it at the same time? Yeah, it's your call. I mean, if you want to implement it now, I can Would you start using it before fees? Um, I guess I could. If somebody called me for something, I can say I can give you a permit. There's no fee at this time.

Can I ask you a question? on the plane lane. Um just curious if we don't have department in place do we have the means to perform an inspection every building.

So on the building I put uh plumbing plumbing inspection mechanical inspection as well. So if there was plumbing going on, mechanical work going on, I do that inspection when I do the whether it be a a whole house or renovation or an additional I don't give them a permit for the plumbing. I just tell them that they need to include in the fee the whole fee for the building permit that should be plumbing and mechanical should be included in that. Okay. I was under we have a separate electrical inspector because electrical Yeah, that's the only other application we have is electrical. Okay. But plumbing and mechanical as building inspector you have the qualification. I do that inspect sign off.

Yeah. Just making sure we didn't buy ourselves any other the need for another inspector. No. I've been doing make a motion that we um held or have the bill inspectors the applications for uh onto the website please to be determined at future.

Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Um, not really. I just want to thank the community for amazing um, turnout for the election. Um, since I've worked in the Tom Derk's office since 2018, it's the best voter turnout that I've ever seen. So, that's encouraging. Um, still lot of things relative to the election that I'm working on getting done with the exception of having to close the office during the day on Wednesday. Everything's good. Um, are there any other uh committees, chairs, and folks in the audience um that want to come up and introduce themselves? Um, thank you so chair of the energy committee. Uh, you said intended. Hi, Ian. Ian. Okay. All right. Mr. Congratulations. Um, I do have an update because things have been moving pretty well. The geothermal. So, if you guys notice, the road is back open. I think I haven't checked, but I think I put a temporary pouch on there. Is that right, Grand?

Yes.

Yeah. So, we're just waiting for the the temperature to get a little bit warmer to be able to catch it properly. Uh, but the outside piece went perfectly. We came a little under bucket because they hit that rock about 20 ft less than we expected, which is good because uh we are using the the amount offset to do the work to fix the road and remove some debris that was left over. um inside of the basement. Now we have the two pipes. So we're already lined up in a couple of weeks. We have the equipment. They will come in and install the heat pumps and it should be hopefully there's no issues. On Thursday we have the electrician coming to take a look. Um she came. We're going to go in to take a look at the uh lab room. It's a electric minimal. So we're hoping it's not it's just a couple um fires. And I think that was everything for the geo project. We're still on track for the credits. So we got a letter from the drillers. So 100% Americanmade steel and all materials. So we qualify there for the 10% the extra 10%. And the heat pumps letter. So you should be everything's pointing to 100% of the 40%. 40%. Uh you guys have any questions about that? how it's going. So, I've been talking mostly with gas. I mean, it's going well, but um and then the solar no agent. Um we were potentially going to add some snows, but it went well this winter. We think the worst winters and we didn't hear too much. So, we have to see it be closer to the winter. Maybe not well.

Yeah, it did fall. It did fall really long. Was it just there in the very front or the entire way? Okay. Yeah. So then we'd be able to add something with product. Um we got the quote. I think it was a couple thousand in the entire route, but we don't need to do the entire roof. So hopefully we'll do a little uh other than that, yeah, the the system is still producing on track the estimates. So that's good news. We have the website out for anyone. So take a look, the daily and the lifetime. Uh, and I think that was it per inch maybe. Yes. Can you do put a guard on it? Will it retain the snow on there longer and will let it cut down your Yes. generator?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, you trade off a little bit of well the safety of not having snow falling down and then the bottom maybe two rows would see lower production uh when when there's snow. But they still they they melted uh surprisingly fast. This group got it get so much sunlight that even with all the snow that we got this year there would barely maybe one or two days when snowfall came but they weren't producing anything. So we can run numbers to see how much the lower production would be. I'd rather see the safety.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. What would you look to be doing that? Probably sometime. Yeah, probably be one person like just for We can always do it whenever, but it's safer for the for the roofers to get there. You have an estimate on what the cost of that will be?

Yes. So, they put it for putting it on all 46 pounds over here. on every single one it was 2,000 something. Um very likely we don't need to do the entire room. I don't I don't think it scales linearly, but if we did have the,500 maybe um we need to Yeah, we'll talk to a little committee that wanted to introduce themselves. Um, did you open this up for public comment?

Yeah. Uh, we'll open this up now for public comment.

Good evening everyone. My name is Susan Felli. I am Rockingham, District 19, Kensington and Hampton Falls State Rep. I um am happy to join the board of selective meeting when we have some updates and I have a few updates for you this evening. So, first I forwarded instructions to apply for the congressionally directed spending request that came through Senator Shaheen's office to Kathy and Sarah. So, um, we should take a look at it and see if there's any opportunity for some of those grants. So, obviously larger towns, cities have large projects and they tend to get prioritized first, but I have been uh logging very hard to make sure that small towns are not ignored. So, if you have any ideas, please let me know. There have been many zoning bills going through both the House and the Senate. So I don't support statemandated zoning changes because every municipality is very different and we need to retain local decisionmaking rights for our zoning. Small towns are significantly different than large cities and we have different needs. So, uh, HP 1023 was going to establish accessory commercial units by rate. So, think commercial for ADUs with no zoning limitations. This came to my committee, which is the commerce committee, and it was voted inexpedient to legislate by a tally of 15 to zero. So this is uh this will not proceed further. The

other one HB1357 would have allowed placement of manufactured homes not modular homes in all residential zones regardless of any loaning zoning requirements. This bill was sent to interim study, which is a nicer way to say that it was killed. And again, these may be very good ideas. I'm not saying that these zoning laws may not be uh very positive for any municipality, but it's up to the individual municipality to decide which of these zoning laws are appropriate. and the state stepping in and override on that will cause many unintended consequences. And then finally, I'm on the SEO commission on drinking water. And this is a passion of mine because as we know, our communities are surrounded by applications for large groundwater withdrawals. So my issue with that particular process is we must have a regional impact assessment conducted to be attached to the application for a large groundwater withdrawal before the application is uh granted or reviewed. So, I've been trying to get this through the commission working with the Department of Environmental Services. However, they're very reluctant to make any changes to the format that they have, the current laws for the large brownwater withdrawal. So, this will probably require legislative action and I'm drafting up some of that right now,

but sometimes that's enough to convince the department that they could take action on their own without going through the legislative process. So, if there are any bills that the board or Kathy or Sarah that you see that you're interested in, please let me know and I'll be very happy to give an update. Great. Thank you.

You said there's um decent amount of grants that we should be looking into. Um what what scope those grants uh look into? Is it uh for small town like ours that would be applicable? Um are there areas that we could be looking into ourselves in infrastructure type grants? There's a a list that came through on the email. There's a video that is available through the Midur Municipal Association and if you would like I certainly send you that email with the instructions. Okay. Any updates? Great. Thanks.

Thank you. heard about the animal board. Um I'm here to um let you guys know that uh group citizens is looking to set up a volunteer um budget advisory committee under the opices of RSA 3214. The goal is to support the work of the select board in an advisory capacity. It's not a formal u committee expand responsibilities but we do hope to um provide a channel for input from members of the town to the select board and vice versa from the select board to other members of the community. Um, as I understand it, Slickboard has uh frequently sought that kind of input over the years, although it has not um ended up formalizing into a sustainable um citizen group and uh group of us is hoping to remedy that situation. So, um, tonight I wanted to introduce some of the initial members of the group and invite other members of the town. Anybody who's interested in numbers and priorities and budget deliberations who might u be willing to participate with us, that would be fantastic. Uh, we have five who have initially volunteered to participate. I think they're all here. Um, Stephen Greenland, Randy Barry, Monnique Martell, Julie Watkins, and Ash Kerry. uh Caitlyn Carrie uh is offered to serve uh in a role of uh overseeing communications for the group and uh I'll be operating uh strictly as a facilitator for the group. So we're

hoping to maybe get seven to nine individuals with a wide variety of perspectives who are interested in supporting the town budget process and deliberations to participate um in the group. Over the next few weeks, uh when we meet, we'll be uh establishing a point of reference for our work, um respective roles, participating in the group, um key priorities for our discussions, um and scheduled meetings, that kind of thing. But most important, what we would like to flesh out is how the select board would be interested in working with a citizens group. what is the most effective um type of dialogue over what frequency covering what issues when do those issues emerge? Uh I know obviously there's a elaborate budget process that uh occurs at the end of the year but what are the kinds of things that we could be doing research on or facilitating you know as we did today. So our plan is to return to the select board meeting on April 7th with information on how we are thinking about organizing herself. But in the meantime, of course, we would love to get um gender guidance as to how we can be a software and also find out what other members of the community are interested in participating. Um, I think that's that's all I really wanted to say about that except I do emphasize that uh diverse perspectives are certainly highly valued among our group and we plan to hold ourselves to a high standard of seriousness, transparency, collaboration and accountability. Any interested parties? Any questions? Um I mean I think you know when folks mentioned this at the previous board meeting you know we have a different select board in place but you know speaking for myself happy to have people involved in that process. Um I would

love to see that be more collaborative with the select board though it feels we feels a little like something being developed separate from us rather than collect people with us. So I don't say, you know, when you come back April 7th when we we've got a full board sworn in, we can have a true collaborative conversation and make sure we're following things correctly. I believe that there are some things we have we need to appoint people formally. I want to, you know, kind of take a look at those things. I'm on board for those conversations, but would really love to feel like it's a we're interested in want to work together rather than that this separate thing has been organized for us to now respond to. I feel like there's some good ways that we can definitely engage more people in this process.

Thank you. new business. We have quite a few. We have the KPS all together. We have two different permits, but they're freed. One for the road views and the other is for you at the town park or any last years we've had some sort of rough stuff on the ground for months and months. Um, does everybody recommend this to ensure that's part of the requirements?

They did. Um,

didn't we have a fee that went along with this? It was deposited and if they did use permanent marker on the road, that fee was voided and help pay for this. I think he want to reinstitute that because I too see a lot of things put on the road. Yeah, there was a $50 deposit that is supposed to be submitted, but the applications um some of the applications didn't come through with deposits yet and they were supposed to contact the police department to follow up with if they needed details or um if they were going to be stopping in town. The fire chief likes to know that as well. Um, but I don't have

all that. But this this one,

so the PTO one is PTO one's all squared away. I've done them. Um, the tri-state and the ALZ one, we're currently awaiting uh prepayment because we've had problems collecting our payments from past races. So Speedway Capital, we've been chasing some, we're still chasing some from last year. Um, and a lot of these foundations are just through emails and we can't get a hold of anybody. So, um, the tri-state in the ALC, we we've given them the how, you know, how many officers they're going to need, prepayment. So, we're currently waiting for that. The PTO, I'm not too worried about. I can find the PTO, so I've already worked that out with them. So, with those two, I I believe we're just waiting, they already have the numbers. Uh, we're just waiting for the the payment to come in before we sign off on that. uh have chased them and you know issues with these other uh companies or foundations that are coming with marking the roads. Uh we had promised money knows last year so I think they'll be back this year. Uh

you know the fee for $50 doesn't cover that. No. Yeah. It's not going to cover that. It's not the price to clean up one. Yeah. I just don't know. You know I don't know. You know that's up to the board of select what they want to set that number at. with the best that's some fee is the following.

Yeah. So therefore I think the board is talking to set a reasonable number as a deposit which is relation that it will cover or be used for recreations if they do not run by the rules. Additionally to me if they don't pay the deposit for the fees they should not be able to be run through the down. That's kind of the process we've been pushing this year. The police department's adopted that policy. Again, the PTO is a little bit different, but that's how we're addressing PTO in Washington. Yeah, we're still chasing a couple from last year. We can't find them. It seems reasonable to me to hold the permit signature until we buy.

We deal with them last week. So, it could be here this week. The next week, it should be all set, I would think, to move forward. If you won't put it on the next agenda when we are selected to change or potentially change the fees on $50 to take two that will get their attentions. I think obviously difficult. So yeah, we've told in the past use chalk. Yeah. Yeah. You can mark a chalk not sign on stick. Yeah. But those get left behind and we

Yeah. increasing the the deposit, right? That's at least covering a some upfront cost from the 911. And if they're great stewards, they get the money back, no problem. And if they don't, then at least be able to recover a little bit more money. That was a number. Well, right. Um, you know, people remember as well, right?

Um, although I think he's already pulling these out. Would you say we're saying amending already at this point here? Then I told you those two. I think we can make it one more meeting and we have June June. Okay. Yeah. I mean I know somebody's registering things in advance but June the 31st. Yeah. So they want to sign these good users. We can hold off on these maybe notification. Mhm.

Okay. I'll make a motion, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'll make a motion that we approve the applications for road races for the PO as presented. Motion. Uh all I also make a motion that the board consider changing the fee to something in $250 or considering uh raise these from any other any other

um can we make that a little more broad and say it's still a little more research I don't know if that number is too small too large I want to keep them from going throughout the course like view the B structure I'm sorry the the depraction on low road races to try to eliminate permanent mark on the streets motion

I the opening agenda. Yes. And the date um please.

Thank you. Okay. So, this is for next um it's a gravel tax. Um, when we have the gravel pits in town, if they excavate more than 1,000 cubic yards, then they get charged for the excavation. I think it's 2 cents per yard. Um, and then the bill gets generated and they have 30 days to pay it once it's signed by Um check waiting the collector is blue. Do you see any things?

Yeah. I make a motion to approve uh collective taxes for Kensington as mentioned below. All in favor? I Thank you. Canada or information at the local.com that we're going to hold off on. I haven't heard any more from the resident on that. We just have to set up another time for them to come in and talk to the board. Um zoning and planning board members are still needed. um the rental of the town property for the branch hall. Um I haven't heard any more about that. Um uh right away we bring you all just wanted to quickly thank everybody involved in helping to set up that candidates forum that never happened two weeks ago because nature intervened But I did want to correct any misperception that this was a partisan idea.