Town Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. We can't speak to it.

Right? Yeah. Okay. We stand up and sit down.

That communication, huh? Good business, right? All right. Make the most of it. Hi, ladies and gentlemen, 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.

Thank you.

Any announcements?

Just one quick one. I was at the planning board meeting last Tuesday about the Young Family Farm. It was very well attended. I gleaned a lot of information from the people that spoke. Five people are aware of it. I think I saw you there. Yes. I saw you leaving, I didn't see it until you're walking out the door.

Any other announcements? Not seeing any, thank you. Approval of minutes.

Motion to approve the minutes of the August 20th, 2026 meeting unless anybody wants to pull anything to compensate. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Department head reports?

Motion to place the department head reports on file unless anybody wants to pull anything. All in favor? All right. Mr. President, I'd like to pull New Business 3 in front of the agenda. It's about the Chicano Point Club. You know I like bouncing around, Gary.

I know you do. That's why I'm doing it. Any objection? No. Not seeing any. 3 contract the session 3 you don't be revised you have to do business 3 new business 3 excuse me provide a public known as renowned coastal resource management dated August 25th 2026 file number 20 25 with you on 3 3 points a common point club in proposal for saltwater intake discussion and action.

Yeah, do you want to say anything about this. This is you right in front of the agenda.

This is Jack here.

In the back, he'll keep me honest.

This is a revised proposal for a desalinization system that the Point Club's been working on for a couple of years. About a year ago, CRMC sent out the notice of this plan. It was a little unfortunate because it didn't give the Harbor Commission or the Town Council a normal period to comment on. So we... very well together from my perspective with Ben and the Harbor Commission and Rhode Island DEM. We made some revisions over the last year. We came up with a plan that I think BEM was very comfortable with, the Point Club was comfortable with. And we had a meeting here, I think, Gary, was June 11th, where we, you know, heard from everybody's concern. And at the end of that week, moved the outflow three feet to the west, and DEM said we wouldn't have to go through a tremendous amount of remodeling, you know, siting, which would have cost us a fair amount of money. So DEM, I think, is comfortable. I believe, I don't speak for the Harbor Commission, but I believe they are as well, and When you make these changes, which are changes to the outfall, you have to make sure it doesn't upset eelgrass. You have to alert everybody. that you've made changes. The three major players in it, the Town of Little Compton, the Point Club, and DEM are all in sync and I think supportive of this scenario. And I'd just like to thank Ben for helping to organize very positive discussions and he participated with D. So you just want from the Town Council just to say that

we're in favor of this, what would you want us to do?

Yeah, I would, the town council or the Harbor Commission has withdrawn their objection to it, which is not all the way to saying I really like working with the Sakana Point Club. So if you were to say you're in favor of this thing because it's positive, it's not according to DEM, that that you're in favor of it, that would be a very good result for us.

My recollection is correct. Heather, you can help me. When we voted for this, I think it was last meeting, the last sentence in what you had said, we were to write a letter to DMR to support it. Am I recollecting correctly? Yes. Have I wrote that? Okay. You wrote the letter.

Well, yes. The letter came from the clerk's office as it has in the past. Thank you for the council and that was sent both to see and D. M. I remember saying that's been already done.

Thank you very much.

I just make a motion that we, uh, uh, kind of low compton support the revised public notice from this kind of point club on the diesel unit. Second,

Thank you for the discussion. Did you want to speak on this, Ben?

Ben Gauthier, Chair of the Harbor Committee. So yes, Patrick, you're correct that at the last council meeting, at the last council meeting we did, is this on? There we go. All right. At the last council meeting, you're correct that we did move, we did move to have a letter written to withdraw our objection. Back a year ago when we were given plans with no performance data, I wrote a letter of objection for Carol who sent it forward on behalf of the town. We just, again, following the same model, I drawing that objection for Heather to send that on behalf of the town. I think the action for now is done, but because the public notice has come from CRMC, and the solicitor can probably help us process-wise on this, because the public notice has now come from CRMC after we've already responded, I would just like to you know, make note that a public comment period is now reopened on the new design. A lot of us have put a lot of work into understanding that design. So if someone does have public input from it, continue the same, you know, collaborative look at this come together for you know, send individual letters off to CRMC because it is, in our opinion, you know, especially considering all of the constraints that they were faced in coming up with the design, it's extremely well considered and that's why we withdrew the objection. So I'd like to just make sure that we continue to work together if there is any more concern from anyone in the town regarding the public notice that just came out. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further discussion? We have a motion on the table. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Back to old business. Contract review, discussion and action of each of the following. These are all being under the town administrators purview. It's A, B, and C. We'll start with A, Activitas, extension for tennis court design and engineering. Anya, how are you tonight?

Good, thank you. Yeah, it's contract night.

Bear with me.

The Activitas is a contract that you've seen several times, and I had Heather include in your packet the history of votes you've taken on this starting in 2023. so that you could see how many times you've revisited this as a result of sort of starting and stopping the work on the tennis slash pickleball courts. We are now at the point where we have the recreation committee is ready to move forward. The finance director has approved moving forward with the activitas contract. with the funds that the supporters of this project have raised. And there were some minor changes to the contract due to the passage of time. A couple of the, there were some, a couple, minor increases in cost, but otherwise the contract remains as it was. And so I'm doing a contract extension amendment to update the figures in it. This has been reviewed by the solicitor and I would ask for your approval.

I'll make a motion to accept the activities extension contract with tennis court design and engineering. Second. For the discussion.

I just like to thank you, Anya, and also Heather for doing the research on it, but it's super helpful to have this history, the travel of the contract here for us to review. And for those here in the room or at home or who can look it up in our packet online, it's nice to see the history of it and be able to understand that clearly. So thank you.

Welcome.

And you'll see that later in your agenda, there's a report from the rec committee.

They once again endorse moving forward with us. So we've got belt and suspenders and belt and suspenders. Thank you.

I have a motion on the floor. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Okay. Up again. Anya, all state contract for painting the garage?

This is another contract that you've seen at your last meeting. I asked for approval of this. I think Councillor Matarones asked whether the solicitor had seen it. And so we referred it, you referred it to the solicitor. He has now reviewed it and approved it. Moving forward. So this is a contract for $35,000. I want to thank Sal for facilitating getting people to come in and bid on this. And this is, we did not, as my memo says, we did not get competitive bids in the right form during the bidding process. But I did go back to contractors who had previously showed interest, including Allstate, and came to agreement with Allstate about this contract.

Motion to approve. Any further discussion? All in favor?

All right. I want to see them tomorrow. I want to see them over there tomorrow.

Maybe at your house tonight.

Okay, that's all right. Give them some lobster sandwiches. Get them going, all right? Thank you all. Lobster rolls.

There you go. Well, this is three data extension for paving program on you.

So this one, you have not seen the contract previously, but you have discussed it. We talked about what to do with the paving program for this year. There's some state money that's available to us, essentially a third of the cost of the paving program. The last time I talked about this with you, we discussed the concept of having rather than doing a bunch of paving this year, having beta update the paving management plan and doing just a tiny bit of paving. And so I'm bringing the paving management plan contract extension with beta for your consideration. The total cost is stated in the cover memo, 120, almost 121,000, a third of which will be covered by the state. solicitor has reviewed and approved this amendment as well.

I'll make a motion to accept the beta extension on the road paving. Do I have a second? I have a second.

Discussion?

Discussion.

Anya, are these the funds that need to be used by October in order to get the one-third back from the state? October of this year, yes.

One of the things I needed to clarify before we entered into this contract is that we get those funds, even if it's just engineering and design of the type that we're asking beta to do. And I did confirm that with the state. Thank you.

This contract is for Clerk at Works of PM and Design. I just want to bring up that the last time they were involved in paving, me personally, I was not happy with the type of clerk they had on the project. So I just want to caution everybody that we have somebody that is truly qualified to look at this work and as it's being done, please. Noted, thank you.

I can carry that message back to Kevin Aguiar, who's our lead.

Thank you. And I also had discussion with the previous gentleman that does our roadside mowing. And he said that there was a lot of debris left next to where the road was that had taken the debris. They left it by the sides of the road. His equipment got damaged several times. So if they're going to do this, they should make sure they do it for the benefit of the town, not for the benefit of themselves. Is there any negotiation possible with this? I did report that incident. And there was no movement on it. Is there any negotiation? $121,000 is a lot of money for a preliminary investigation. Didn't they already do that? The last contract we had in road design and construction documents. I mean, I don't know what road design, when they repave the roads, they only take the top layer off and then put another layer on top of it. And I guess construction services is putting a man there for $46,000, which This road paving doesn't last that long. These numbers kind of jumped out at me. Anya, is there any way we can negotiate with them on this?

I can try. I think what I'm told by Kevin at Beta is that enough time has passed that the roads have degraded. quite a bit since the last time they assessed them all for us. So they're essentially going to go around town and do a full assessment. And some of that will include drilling core samples each road so that we can find out whether the just milling the top layer is adequate. And I suspect that some roads, I mean, like we know that Old Stone Church, for example, has degraded to the point where just doing the top layer isn't gonna cut it. And so we're gonna have some decisions to make in the future about how we prioritize. And that's really what this is about is getting a new assessment of for the absolute worst roads in town at this point in time and how should we prioritize the paving because everything's a little out of date.

That's well said. I think that when we did it, it was 2019. That was even on the council.

They originally did it and then they updated in 2023. But for example, if you go up in downtown Long Highway, a whole lot of degradation that happened just in the last year. And we'll talk about Swamp Road. That's obviously in very bad shape. Yeah.

Yeah, I knew that it wasn't that long ago that they went and did all this preliminary investigation. I know there's a time factor on this, but can you at least try to negotiate this? Tell them some of the council people felt this was, since they've already done this, and I know they're going to come back, oh, but it's got to be done every two years. It's a tired road. I'll be doing every five or six years. So I don't want to see him come back in two years and say, oh, well, I got to go all over all the roads again for another hundred. Well, then there'll be 150 next time, probably so.

Anya, am I right in thinking and understanding, I think the last time I was in a meeting that Kevin was in, that when they reviewed it more recently in 2023, that there was no boring done at that time. Is that correct?

And that's what he's promoting, saying that we- Yeah, Old Stone Church may be an exception to that because it was in such bad shape. They may have done some boring there, but they've been on most of the roads and most of the mill and overlay. That's the term I'm looking for. I'm trying to sound like I- know my paving terms.

Further discussion. What exactly is construction service? What does that mean in English?

It means that they prepare all the documents. They oversee the actual construction. So they get us to the point where we can do an RFP for the actual work, and then they oversee the work and carry through, for example, last year we had John Sisson Road done. And there's a little bit of the side of the road that has collapsed since it was done. And Beta is responsible for getting the contractor back here to fix that. So they have an oversight role that continues, that starts before the actual paving work and continues after. It's essentially they do everything involved in the process except actually bringing the asphalt and installing it.

Just for the record, there's 120,000. I'm just doing this on my own identification. It doesn't include one piece of asphalt.

No, it's for updating all of our knowledge about what needs to be done.

This is just like construction management, all of it.

Yeah, they included a piece of, and you'll see that there are some example pieces of road that they put in here that they would oversee, but we can trade those out if we come up with higher priorities.

I think what is good is we're getting a third back, so that's $39,600, so it's going to be $80,400. from the town.

And I think on the construction services note, it's just really important. That's the oversight to make sure, to Sal's point, that the job gets done well and that we have people making sure there's not debris left on the side of the roads and that they're doing a quality job. So I'm a fan and supporter of having construction services, professional services in there.

They have also, the way I read that is they're defining the spec on the project in different locations as they apply after they do their survey of the whole road.

So that was one of the questions, well, not the question, it's one of the numbers that jumped out at me. It's, plan on this is gonna be six weeks and there's gonna be a gentleman there, I'm assuming, and one full-time resident engineer for six weeks at 40 hours a week. And it's, what's $47,000. That's a lot of money for six weeks work. I know you, I know you, but About 40,000. Anya, can you try if you can negotiate with them? Is it going to be too much of a time crunch for you to negotiate with them, bring it back to the next meeting, we'll approve it?

It's getting late in the season, so we're at risk of losing the state dollars. I don't want to say I can't do it, but I will try. And, you know, the sooner we get this underway, the more likely we are to be able to actually get the work done in this season.

Any further discussion? It seems like beta understands we're getting a third reimburse, so the numbers seem to be a little inflated. I don't know about that. I can speak on.

My motion about that we have a motion and a second already do all any further discussion. All in favor.

Well, I had the motion again please.

The motion. Well, I'm sorry on second by Andrew is to approve the. As written the beta what proposed plan.

So I guess I'll be known no negotiation.

Well, may make a suggestion. This motion has been voted on. You can have a subsequent motion requesting that the town administrator attempt to renegotiate the contract for a right. So do that in a 2nd motion. Sure. So this 1st motion all there.

I post no. I have three yeses, a no, and think about it a bit more.

Paul?

No, I'm going to go no.

You're going to no. So I got three to two that passes.

Do I hear a second motion? Second motion would be to, since it's passed already, to have the Todd Administrator try to negotiate a lower price on this Town Week peanut bill You know, this was just done in 2023. I feel it's a little bit high. Let's see if you get that contract down a little bit.

All right. I will second the motion of trying to negotiate the beta extension to a lower amount. I second that. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Not seeing any. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Anya Stillo? To all business to receive bids for proposals for fire safety upgrades and 32 comments discussion and action.

This is actually you have the right what Heather has a book.

We have one big pressing alarms. 32 cons fire alarm coach. For a total amount of 13 5.41. Thank you make a 50% deposit required the beginning of the job remaining to power.

Make the motion to accept the rest along the second for the wiring that 32 comes back in. Any further discussion. Whether you'll get back to them right to which that what you do I'll give it on yeah, yeah, thank you. Well, yeah, it's your app. We go. Three, back to the roads. Contract for a contract dissension with the Tucket Hop next to Pave Swamp Road at the intersection of the west of intersection with Main Road. Discussion and action.

So I think you've all seen the intersection of Swamp and West Main, it's bad shape. So as one priority matter, I've been trying to get a contract so that we could get just the section that's right there at the intersection done this year. Obviously, there's other parts of Swamp Road that need attention as well, but that's the worst part and is becoming hazardous. So I don't have an actual contract amendment in front of you tonight, but I did have Heather give you the existing Pawtucket Hot Mix contract. What I'm asking for tonight is authorization to work with the solicitor to come up with a contract extension. Pawtucket Hot Mix has told us that it will cost $35,000 to do that stretch of road. I, I do know that beta would expect to have a little additional payment associated with overseeing this construction as well. And that may be one place where I can get beta to give us a little bit of a break. But what I'm asking for at this point is that you authorize Tony and I to to do a contract amendment to get I'll make that motion.

Second. Just for clarification is 35,000 third reimburses of fourth grade. That's 11,550 total of 23,450. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed?

That road is in such tough shape. That road's been like that since Bill Moore was the highway superintendent, which was a while ago. It just keeps buckling up. The guys put hot mix on it or a cold mix, I guess it is. And it lasts for about six months, that's it. So this needs to be done. I think the vote was made, right?

Yeah. Yeah, we're good. Thank you. New business one, a request from Sergeant Kate from Silvera and firefighter Jason DeSilva for approval of their sixth annual trunk retreat event held at Sakana Vineyards. Absolutely.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. What a nice event. New business two, request from Fire Chief Patrick to hire former employee Brittany C. Cunha to the Little Compton Fire Department, filling a recent vacancy discussion. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. I need to back up. I hope you caught your breath. New Business 4. Request from Recreation Committee recommending the following. A. Recommend in town. Extend the contract of Activita operation of the Tennis Pickball Corps project.

You done?

Already done. Okay. B recommends that the working group prescribed by prescribing in the proposal for design services contract consists of three members representing three principal stakeholders. Town administrator, of course, the recreation committee and a private citizen fundraiser. The following recommended prospective members to represent the three stakeholders are respectively Ed Mayato, David McGregor, and Lavinia Gadsden or her designated. We need a vote on that.

Yeah, let's vote on it. I'll make a motion. Do I have a second?

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. New Business 5, a request from Little Compton Prevention Coalition to host their 12th Annual Family Dinner Night in Veterans Field on September 28, 2026 at 530. I'll make a motion. It's easy getting that on the agenda. Do I have a second? Second. Another great event. All in favor? Aye. Aye. New Business Six, explanation of search process for town administrator. That would be you, Anya.

I'll find a new question. Thank you again. And I want to thank Carolyn Sedgwick, who helped a whole lot with putting together the materials that are in front of you. So you have two documents related to this. One is a proposed recruitment and hiring process. One is a draft job description document. And Carolyn, as our new part-time human resources director, is already making a great impact and a lot. So this is a good example. What I put in front of you is essentially a process that we would do internally where we'd have a committee. We would post the position in all the places listed. We would do an initial review of applications, narrow them down, and then bring a short list of candidates to town council and we'd aim for November. So that's the proposed process. Councilor McHugh did ask me to look into what it would take to get a recruiting firm involved in the process on the assumption that that both offloads some work for us and also improves our candidate pool because they would have a greater reach and this is their business. So I reached out to three firms. I've only talked with one so far, but I think they all tend to have kind of the same drill. Essentially, what they would do is the whole front end of the process. So the development of a candidate pool and the initial vetting of that candidate pool. So it wouldn't be just final candidates they bring to us, but a smaller pool based on a much broader casting of the net. The firm I talked with works on a fee basis that's a percentage of the salary for the position, which I think is kind of, sounds a little weird, but it's kind of ordinary in this field. So they charge 25% of whatever the salary is for the position. Um, so, uh, just wanted to throw that information into the mix as you consider how to go forward with this and then in terms of the job description, this is a draft and we're seeking input. We've. We've asked, um. all of the department heads to give input on this and and are also asking you to let us know if you think there's anything missing or anything inaccurate that we should change in the job description.

Thank you. I think they should have if we want to take this out to a farm and increase our pool. Um, you know, because we're all volunteers here, we're not experts. Um, so I wanted to put that on the table for the. The councils, uh, they could look at that. Um, what do you feel about it? Um.

I've been involved in a lot of search processes where we use professional firms, and it certainly helps. I think it gets you a better quality of candidates in general, gets you a larger pool of candidates in general, but they're not cheap.

I know our surrounding neighbors all do it. Of course, it's different in Westport. Do I have a hand? I have a hand. Okay.

I think the solicitor should have some input on this also.

Good evening. My name is Vincent Kennedy. I'm a resident of Big Drum Road. I have a comment and a question. My comment is that when Becky and I decided to build our forever home here in Little Compton, We hired a number of professionals, a real estate agent, an attorney, an architect, a professional engineer, a general contractor, and a whole host of trade professionals. And the result that they achieved was entirely satisfactory to us And that's largely because we were able to benefit from these professionals' experience, knowledge, skill, and talent. expertise. And I would think that counsel may want to consider whether you can capture that same level of expertise and knowledge by retaining a search firm. I know it's expensive or can appear that way. But this is exactly the type of expense that the incidental and emergency budget is designed for. And it was, is within the budget. I think we've got plenty of headroom for that. I think the benefits that the town would enjoy is a broader and deeper candidate pool that is, pre-qualified at a good degree. And the firm can assist the town in negotiating whatever contract emerges over time. So I would very much encourage the town to retain a search professional. I think generally speaking, the results that are achieved are superior. I know in our case of hiring professionals, the results they achieved were far superior to what I could have done. So that's my comment. The question is that the job description, I thought, was quite good. It was lacking, however, in my opinion, one important piece, and that is um what the salary range is in terms of both you know the minimum midpoint and high and where does that stand in terms of the competitive environment that we find ourselves in so thank you for your time and service to our community just to answer that question on the 27th budget for the finance structure it's a hundred thousand dollars and it's not competitive with other towns that's obvious

It's I want to hear from our our attorney. Be on this.

So one of the communities, I represent the. Keep administrative officer is elected. I'm excluding a little comment on this. The other community I represent has had hiring In my tenure there, they brought on about five or six town managers. I want to address what Mr. Kennedy had to say in a second. I also represented the community, as you know, to the immediate north view for a time. There was one year where they had to bring in, I think, three town administrators. I think the difficulty that you're going to run into in um getting someone to be the chief administrative officer here is what mr kennedy just cited to the fact that when you take a look at the salary here as compared to other communities you're lower now there's a reason for that your population is is not that great and towns that have bigger tax bases and higher populations can have more money. Other communities that do have a higher population that have some fiscal constraints that you don't, they're having a great amount of difficulty. As I take a look at what's happening with chief municipal administrators in the state. What you're taking a look at now is not what happened when I was on a town council. You'd get professional managers in. They'd stay for three or five years and then they'd move on to another community. Now, because there's less people that are dedicating themselves to municipal offices and municipal positions, you oftentimes find in this state, more and more you're getting non-traditional people to be your chief administrative officer. Right now, you have several that are retired police officers That, you know, they have that municipal experience. They've run a department. They have experience in law enforcement and they move on to that. I'm thinking of Chief Manny down in South Kingston, in Warren, former Chief Sullivan. There are, I know there's others. I just can't think of them off the top of my head. So when you take a look at who you're getting, the question becomes, how far of a search are you going to get? Is there going to be somebody coming from out of state who will want to come to Little Compton? And there will be some that would want to do that. It's a great community. You had some experience with that. You had an experienced fellow that wanted to come in here. He had some family here in the area. Compton's a great town to live in. uh but he couldn't make it work you'll get that's pool number one pool number two is you're going to get people with municipal experience perhaps not as administrators that would want to come in and take a look at being here. Again, there's almost a second career. What I find lacking over the, you know, above the 35 years I've been involved in municipal government, you used to get up and coming people that would like to get a position like this. This would be a great thing. You're down in Little Compton, you go from there. But whatever the reason in Rhode Island, I'm not seeing that happen with municipal executives. And they are skewing older. They're skewing second career. And I think that's what you're taking a look at. I'm not so sure that having a search committee is going to help you on that, unless it's somebody that's specific to municipal government that can assist you on that. There's some realities I think that you need to factor in on this thing. And that's the lack of a pool, a lack of people coming in from out of state. The fact that it is expensive to live here, that might be a bar. And the fact that you're probably going to have to look at somebody that has non-traditional experience, some municipal experience, but not as an executive. And I think that's, those are the factors you need to take a look at. I'm not so sure a search room is going to help.

Any further discussion? Thank you. Further discussion from the council? Do you have a motion here, Anya?

I'd love a motion to proceed with the process. And then as I said, I would take any edits, suggestions or other input on the job description.

Have you researched any search committees yet to see what the cost would be?

search firms. Yeah, yeah. I reached out to three firms. I've only talked with one. All three firms had some specialization in municipal government. The one that I talked with, as I said, they charged 25% of the salary as a fee. I presume that others will be somewhere in that range. I think Patrick had talked with some other towns that had paid fees in that range. So

So obviously, they're going to charge percentage of what this person is going to be paid. They're going to try to get this guy the most money as they can. So I'm not sure in that aspect, they'd be working for the benefit of the town financially. I mean, I think it's a good idea. But as always, I'm always looking at the cost of what this is and whatnot. So if a guy says, OK, $100,000, this guy gets only $25,000 for a fee. But if he says, oh, no, this is a good guy, it's $150,000, then he gets, I don't know, $35,000 or something.

I wonder if I know there's. you know some sense of urgency of moving this along and i think we should get the ball rolling for sure um i wonder if we could get the ball rolling with the proposal as as described here but with that sort of in our back pocket that if your search isn't yielding good candidates then we maybe come back and reconsider hiring a firm to broaden the pool and look a little further

I'll go by that motion. You want to make a motion on that?

I'll make that my motion. I'll try. That we approve Anya's proposal for the creation of the search committee to fill the role of the town administrator. And if that committee doesn't yield suitable candidates that the council reconsider hiring.

Reconsider.

Pardon me?

I'm sorry.

To consider hiring a search firm.

We'll second. Good motion. Save us from that. I have a motion and a second. And Mr. Kenney wants a second by the example. Come on.

While he's making his way up, I'll say that I can, in the meantime, I can continue to do due diligence with other firms. Thank you.

This is a point of clarification in terms of what are the objective criteria in terms of defining the pool being unsatisfactory? I mean, it's conditioned on some standard. Existing pool is not satisfactory. What are the objective standards of measurement?

Well, we haven't established those right here and now, but I would say that the committee felt that they had a candidate that they were comfortable and confident to bring forward to the council. If they didn't have a candidate, then I think we'd go back and reconsider. Do you does anybody disagree with that as the, as the standard or is there another standard that we should consider?

I think the worker, if the committee feels like they aren't going to meet the minimum qualifications, which are pretty. And for minimum qualifications, it's pretty comprehensive.

From my experience in this stance and Mr Kennedy, by the way. You're going to get a lot of people that will apply that clearly are not qualified and shouldn't even be interviewed. In one community, the guy was a used car salesman. They actually interviewed him, and they said, what are you doing? And he said, I can sell anything to anybody. I only bring that up because you're going to get a lot of that. So the question is, is those people that do have some municipal qualifications, I don't think it's going to be whether or not they're meeting the objective standards. The question is, is how big is the pool going to be? You have such a narrow pool that you have to have a wider net. That's something that you're going to take a look at.

Tony, you seem to have a lot of knowledge in this. Could you give... I knew some feelers where she could put advertisement out for

Actually, what Anya has, I think, is good for a start. And that's, by the way, this is what other communities have done, the same schedule that she has. And once that, I think that you have things like the League of Cities and Towns know that Little Compton job is open because we couldn't keep Anya here. But once that happens, the word is going to get out. And there will be people, I think, that will be interested that will come in and be a word of mouth thing.

I would just, you know, we've all experienced, you know, the town has a whole experienced the results of underperforming professionals. And I'll just leave it at that.

Thank you.

Do we vote on it? We have a motion and a second.

Yes.

It's just a question, but how many do you know how many candidates we got for the first town administrator position that we filled 8484 candidates? Okay. So there's a lot of screening that that committee is going to have to do. Thank you.

No present discussion. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Dr. Talbot.

new business seven tax assessor abatements to be approved. So I talked to the tax assessor on this. The first one's pretty self-explanatory. There was no loss on that, no abated tax amount. The second one, I questioned the difference between a modern and a contemporary house. She explained that to me. So, and they get improvements in 2019. So she, I said, well, it was, Net updated value was quite considerable, but she seems comfortable with it. So she's a tax assessor. So I make a motion to approve the abatement. Second.

For discussion. This is internal assembly communication for current exemption action.

So I asked the solicitor to come up with language that we could, If the Francis got Lighthouse little common historical society little conference scouting Association where I am boy scout. Red club in the Westport land trust give them we're giving them. Tax exemptions right now. But the tax assessor wants to get it codified by the General Assembly because that's the way it's supposed to be done that's why we did it with the housing trust in. So the solicitor was supposed to, how'd you make out on that?

It's a process.

Okay. I need to do two things. And by the way, this is what the General Assembly tells me. Not only don't I need to get the resolutions drafted, they also want to see the legislation attached to it. So I'm in the process of doing the resolution and the necessary amendments to 4454. Okay. That'll be done well in time for submission to your legislative delegation prior to the 2027 General Assembly session.

Okay.

So when would that be?

Anytime between now and Thanksgiving. Okay. That works. I mean, it's been like this for years and years and years, so another month isn't going to make any difference.

And if I may, they can't act on it until January anyway. I don't think Denise is wrong on this. might be a technicality, but it's a good thing to do. If there's a subsequent council that says we should be taxing these people, at least they'll have the statutory protection.

Well, I think we should be going by the law of the land is what we should do. So if it needs legislature approval to be doing what we're doing, then we should have it.

I believe it's my understanding anyway, that the housing trust did not get it through the General Assembly or through the what is it called the vote of cities or there's a there's language for that when you put it on the ballot in November and let the town vote on it. As Denise explained to me, there's two different ways to kind of legalize or codify. One is to go through the General Assembly and the other is to put it on the ballot. And the Housing Trust, that has not happened. They've been treated. They haven't been paying property taxes. They haven't been charged for them because Denise considered them an entity of the town. So I think that's still something that we need to figure out if we're going to treat them. the if we're going to do something different with the housing trust. And this all started from the Commons Foundation asking for the same treatment as the housing trust. So I know those two are not on our agenda. So I don't want to get too deep into it. But I think those are still two kind of like open open items for us to switch on that. Okay, thank you, Tony.

Yeah, they may have to be lumped into the rest of these exemptions. Your emotion. Motion to allow the solicitor to go forward with the exemptions of the entities I just listed.

Any further discussion? Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

The resignation with regret and thank Don McNaughton for his service to the town and post the position for Bakersfield.

I'll second and echo your sentiments. Any further discussion?

All in favor?

Aye. This is a letter from Peter Aldrich on behalf of the Aldrich Family Trust, dated August 15, 2026, to the Little Fountain Agricultural Servancy Trust, a verification regarding the Commons Foundation. So I'm happy to accept this with regret. Anyone that has met Peter Aldrich knows that he's trying his best to get housing for young people. He's, in my opinion, an outstanding individual for doing that. And I'm sorry this didn't work out for him. I'm going to make a motion to accept this letter and put it on file.

Okay.

Second. Second. We need it.

So he wanted some kind of for the Ag Trust to make a move one way or the other. Is that correct?

Yeah, there was some discussion about where you can believe it. To a pond or...

Right. I understand that. Yeah. But that he's asking the actress to make a move on one way or the other.

Yeah, they've got some answers from tm and their attorney. And from my understanding, they voted on it and they voted it down. Oh, okay. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Yeah, we have a second.

All right.

I am opposed. I'm saying anything. Good. Three, email received from A. Michael Stevens, dated July 31st, 2026, resigning as a planning board representative to the Lecompton Agricultural Conservancy Trust. For clarification, he's still on the planning board. He will not be on the act trust. I will accept this with regret also. Mike has been for many years on here and has done a lot of work for the town. I'll make that motion to accept the resignation second that second any further and then is it up to the just comment.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to build that position. And I think he doesn't even have to notice us to resign. You can just go to his own. Yeah, yeah, I'm not doing it.

It's a crazy thing. It's put his mic on with those. My God. Thank you. That should be all sorted out of the planning board, what they want to do.

I think if we keep going on, we'll see that there is something. Yeah.

I think I have a motion and a second for that. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Four. Resolution requesting the Rhode Island General Assembly and the Executive Office of Housing to recognize the unique challenges facing the town of Willamette. A little formal housing provides support to address these obstacles. The table is very instrumental in this. I was not nice to go with her to a meeting at the executive office of housing for a good discussion. So I just want to thank you for taking me there. Is there anything you want to say about the solution?

Nope. Thank you, Heather, for your work on it.

Noted. Do you want a motion for this?

Just to place on file.

Make a vote. Place on file. All in favor? Aye. Aye. I've received a letter of resignation report that we'll give to the Mountain Agricultural Conservancy Trust back to September 5th, 2026.

Well, an explanation on this is we appointed Cotter, the ag trust a little while ago. Now that Mike has stepped off, But we pointed Carter to the planning board. He is now going to assume Mike Steers designate on the Ag Trust. So that's why he's resigned from the Ag Trust. I'll go take care of that planning.

So I'll make a motion to accept Carter's resignation from the Ag Trust since he's now on the Ag Trust. Since he's in. And post the position.

With regret.

But yeah, not with regret.

Whatever that is.

Any further discussion?

I just, in the end, for those at home keeping score, I think we have two openings on the Ag Trust at the end of this meeting.

At large.

At large.

Two at large openings on the Ag Trust. And one on the planning board.

One on the planning board. And one on conservation. That has been open for quite a while, correct?

The 112.

Heather, do you know the How many years are left in orders term versus.

Right now I'm sorry and we're going to get a lot of that.

So anyway, he was really. Yeah, I have a motion and I have a second other people on task here. When they were.

Thank you.

Consent. Motion to place consent. Calendar on file unless anybody wants to pull anything for discussion. Second. All in favor?

Aye. And payment of bills. I'm going to pay the bill. Second. All in favor?

Aye.

And I will have a motion to adjourn. Second.