Town Council - Regular Meeting

This is the London Town Council meeting for Monday, April 6, 2026. Everyone, please rise for the pledgece 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. Up first, we have two pieces of town council business. First off, there was a complaint that I received uh regarding councelor Combmes and Mr. Mahaland. I asked you to look into it and you had some some

Yes. Complaint anonymous complaint received on March 23rd, 2026. alleged town charter violation, alleged that councelor Kums violated section 4.8 of the town charter regarding interference and that he tried to appoint a member of the fire department at the position of lender's emergency management director. Uh that statute actually specifically designates the governing body of the municipality to appoint the emergency management director, not the town manager. So that is within the authority of the council. Uh therefore, council did not violate section 4.8. In fact, he was acting within his lawful authority to take the action he proposed to take.

Thank you, sir. Up next, I wanted to address a lingering issue um with the council on the veterans tax credit. Um the town council attorney advised the council that the proposed legal avenues to pursue the veterans tax credit could be challenged in court and that we as a town would not be in good standing if this was challenged in a court of law. So basically she gave us a couple avenues to pursue and she told us that each avenue um could lead to us losing an illegal battle. Up next we have an update from the London Police Department. Chief Good. All right. Squeeze in there. All right. So, it's been a a couple minutes since I've been up here. I apologize. Here's some

You're okay.

All right. It's been a few minutes since I've had to come up here and give a rundown of where we're at with staffing. Um, currently, uh, we're at uh, with two backgrounds pending. will be at 65 positions of the 68. So, we're making progress. Like I have said since day one, I don't take this process lightly. I don't just hire anybody. As you will see in a few minutes, I'm going to introduce three new hires to your town. But first, I'd like to highlight some important milestones in these young men and women's professional careers. Um to my left right here, uh Detective Marvin Alaro is being promoted to the rank of sergeant. Marvin has worked with us since 2018. He was a patrolman. He was assigned to detectives. Uh as those of you who know when you go to compete in this profession for an advancement you have to compete against many co-workers and you have to study the written material. You have to pass a written exam. You have to pass an in an oral board or an interview with uh peers from other organizations that sit in for us. They are valued there. They meet with the command staff. We review their personnel files and then we make a decision on who we feel at that moment is the best representation of that position of need. And Marvin has um shown that uh throughout his career here. Marvin is welld deserving of this promotion to sergeant. So I wanted you to introduce you to the town council. Next in line we have officer Keley Mazergo who has recently been promoted to detective. She too along with Timone Akawa have been promoted to detective. Keely has been with us since 2021. Timone has been with us since 2018. Again, like Sergeant Al Farro, they too have to compete. Written exams, etc., oral boards, etc. The detective exam for

the police department is probably one of the hardest exams that any one of these employees have to study for. It is not easy and they put in countless hours away from their family to study, to prepare. It is nerve-wracking. We've all been there. Um, but it's it's well worth its weight and gold when you finally get promoted and you achieve that accomplishment. Um, Timone, the same thing with you. Since we've hired you when I was in recruiting many years ago, you have brought a great deal of laughter, uh, professionalism, and fun to the police department. Your work, too, has been greatly appreciated. Um, it's always hard when we have to select one out of five who who get selected or two out of five. We always realize the effects that it has on those that weren't promoted or not selected. It's very difficult when these men and women go home to their family and they're all excited about being promoted and they have to go home with some news that they didn't get it because you can't promote everybody. So, we take these promotions seriously with great pride and honor. We're happy to show you these three new promotions for the police department. Next in line right here, um we're going to start with Josh Lafla. I'll go down the line real quick. Josh, Sean, and Robert um are the three of the best 50 candidates that we had through our last processes. 50. Ironically, you know, you would think that we'd be able to fill right up having 50 applicants. It's not that easy. As I've said in this room many of times, uh these two these three men have gone through a rigorous testing process and a background that most people can't pass. So, first off, Josh Leaf. Josh holds a bachelor of science criminal justice from St. Anelen College. He currently serves as a second lieutenant in the Army National Guard as a military police officer. He resides in Marramac. He has

completed uh his internship at the Marrammac Police Department. He's demonstrated a strong commitment to becoming a Londereary Police Officer and has taken deliberate steps to prepare for this career. Shawn Quinland right here. Shawn currently resides in um Marmac with his fiance and their dog. Throughout the hiring process, Shawn has demonstrated a genuine desire to pursue a career in law enforcement. Inspired by family members and a profession and strong personal commitment to serving as a positive role model, he is motivated. He's personable and eager to begin his career in public service. In his free time, Shawn enjoys working out, golfing, and snowboarding. And then at the end, we have Robert Ortiz. Was raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He's a graduate of Lawrence High. honorably served for five years in the United States Navy as a corman from 2011 to 16. Robert later earned his bachelor in science from the u from UMass LOL and he's currently well he was until we stole him working for the city of Nasha public health department. He resides in Manchester with his wife and his two children. He's bilingual and Spanish and enjoy spending time outdoors with his family including hiking, camping, and fishing. I'm not one to brag, but this man at the end, he and I grew up in the same house. Ironically, perusing his background, I realized where I lived in Manchester as a young boy at the age of one to probably seven, is the house that he lives in with his family. Um, so we we realize that today and had quite the laugh of uh what I used to do in there. Um, I did tell him there's a folders can with some cash that I stash on my allowance out back along uh with other things. I'm going to have to do a field trip and show you where that is. Um, these three men will be attending the police academy in May, but today they started their in-house in-house field training or their in-house academy with us for the next four weeks in preparation uh to go to the academy for

the next 16 weeks of their lives. They're looking forward to it. They're excited about it and we're excited about that as well. So, if you guys don't mind, could you please go and make the rounds, please, and say hello? Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Welcome aboard. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. It's good to see you. Congratulations, sir. Welcome aboard. Thank you. Welcome aboard. Welcome aboard. Thank you.

Uh, real quick, too. Um, I I believe it was uh a month and a half ago, maybe. I couldn't remember if it was you or or Dan that had mentioned an update for people that depart the PD. Yes. Um, there you go. That's me. It was you. So, not just the PD, everybody in town. In town. All right. Oh,

anybody want to speak on that, by all means, come on down. Um, so we've had two resignations in the last month and a half here. Um, hence the reason why we just made a promotion to sergeant. Uh, Junior Garcia, who was with us for the last 13 years, has taken a different career field in general. Um, pretty much looking for a different um, how do I say this? Better life situation for all. Uh, being a police officer in today's world is not an easy job and it's tasking. It's daunting. uh long hours and u all all the assignments that come with it can be a lot for families and officers. So um he has chosen a different career. Um and he is he his last day with us was April 2nd and then sorry and then uh recently I've accepted the resignation of our IT director Tom Roy. Tom was hired by the town in 2010. Uh he has worked at the police department since 2019. Uh Tom has taken a a different job in the IT field um in a different state. So Tom's last day will be at the end of this month. While these men have not done 20 years or more for our police department or our community, their contributions don't go unnoticed. Uh these men like all employees when they retire, they help shape us and they make us the agency that we are today by all of them uh had worked for us. So uh with that, that's all I have. Anybody have any questions on any of these?

Any questions for the chief? I just have a question, Kim, please. So, um, you said you're up to 65 now. 65 of 68. Yeah. Okay. And that's counting the ones that just retired. Yes. So, we have two in the background right now. Those will be considered the 65. They passed the hard parts of the background. Gotcha. So, the hard parts are the psychological and and the polygraph and all that. So, they're in the home stretch. we have to do the minimal stuff like neighborhood checks and things like that. So, we're making progress and you know, as I've told you folks before, you know, it feels like we're playing that game where we get two or three and then some retire and y some people don't make the process. Thank you. Any other questions for Chief? No.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Up next, we have a special presentation from the Manchester Boston Regional Airport Director, Tom. Thank you, sir, for patiently waiting. Please, I may be a while, so I'll sit. Yeah, please sit. Ron, I also wanted to mention that please. Uh Jeffrey McGra, uh who's on the board of the airport authority is also here uh behind the airport director. Thank he's welcome to take any questions if need be. Absolutely.

All right. Well, good evening, Mr. Chair and council members. I appreciate the invite. Uh Councelor Combmes, who uh attends our airport authority meetings on a regular basis, invited me here. So, I appreciate the opportunity to uh provide an update from the airport. Uh so, first of all, since it's been a while since I've been in this room, uh my name is Tom Alifron. I'm the airport director at the airport. Uh closing in on one year in this position. Uh but this is position number eight in Manchester in year 37. So, I'm certainly not new to the airport. um seen lots of changes over the years and obviously our relationship with the town is is critical to what we do every day and the folks behind me, the relationship that we have with the fire department and the police department uh under our mutual aid agreements. We could not do what we do without them. So certainly appreciate uh everything that they do for us. With that, this presentation uh we just gave last week for our airport authority members and the conversation kind of changes every quarter and it's based on what's going on in the industry. So um I'm going to move through this fairly quickly, but I don't want to make this um a monologue. Um if you have questions about anything that I mentioned at all, please fire it out there. Happy to address it and I'll try to leave a few minutes for questions at the end as well. So, what I wanted to do today is provide a little bit of an update on what's going on in the US airline industry, kind of a a macro level, what's happening uh with US airlines, and then talk about on the micro level, how is that impacting us here in Manchester. So, as you can see, uh the partial government shutdown that lasted 45 days obviously had an impact on us. Fortunately, uh the executive order that the president signed got our TSA agents paid. A lot of those TSA agents are town of Londereary residents. Um, I al should also mention uh my uh COO and deputy director Lou Algazabo is here tonight as well and he also happens to be a London

Derrytown resident. U so we were glad to see them finally get paid. Um can't say enough about the way our agents responded. Um very few callouts, very minimal impact to our customers and the only airport in New England that didn't have a TSA agent quit their position. So it says a lot about relationships. uh says a lot about the uh federal security director Liz Seleki and how she treats her uh employees. So we we were glad to see that. Um obviously the war in Iran is having an an impact on fuel prices and and financials for the airlines. We'll talk a little bit about that. And then airline mitigation strategies, how how they're dealing with them in the short term and the long term. Then we're going to get into the MHT specific overview, our seat capacity year-over-year. Uh postcoid recovery which has slowed a little bit some headwinds that we're dealing with and this is not a surprise to anyone. Economic uncertainty and the cost of living is having an impact on our load factors which is the percentage of seats that we fill. But with all of that said, we have some tailwinds as well. BNA is the three-letter identifier for Nashville. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. Uh we have a lot of interest in airport properties which is a positive thing. uh councel Holmes and I and actually we have our one of our airport authority members Mark behind me as well. Uh we're just talking about some potential opportunities for airport properties talk about some federal funding opportunities that we have and then next steps and like I said I'll move through fairly quickly but feel free to shout out any questions if you have them. So first this is a quick snapshot of US airline industry profits over the years and their current operating profits being down 8% from last year. So if you just look left to right, you can see the strength of the US airline industry from 2015 until COVID hit. So profits of 25, 22, 20, 16, 20 billion. So the airline industry was performing well. Manchester Boston Regional Airport was performing well. And then 2020 came along and you can see

the airlines lost 38 billion dollars. So obviously that had a significant impact not only on the airlines but on us as a small hub airport. So you can see we've kind kind of taken some slow steps to climb out of CO profits in a little bit of profits in 21 22 but when you get to 24 and 25 you can see net profits are actually down and obviously demand has not rebounded to pre-COVID levels the latest annual airline financial results if you look at the way this I kind of look at this uh Southwest being almost the horizon in this in this chart profits were achieved by seven out of the 12 airlines, so the top seven. And overall, the industry only achieved a 4.9% profit margin for 2025. So when we look at this chart, it's great that Delta achieved a 9.2% profit margin, highest in the industry, but we don't currently have Delta Airlines. Sunountry, we have them uh on a limited basis. They do charter operations. United does a couple of trips a day to Dallas, but certainly not uh nearly the type of uh carry that near nearly the type of volume as a Southwest or American. So for us it's American Airlines which is 30% of our traffic, 2.7% profit margin. Southwest which is more than 50% of our traffic at a 1.5% profit margin. And all the others are below the horizon if you will. So Breeze relatively new airline 3.5% down. JetBlue 4% down. AL is currently on a pause from the airport. We hope to see them back at some point but they're trying to reinvent themselves. uh get rid of larger 737 aircraft and bring in regional jets so that they can operate more efficiently and of course Spirit which is uh just coming out of bankruptcy. So as we look at all of these airlines and their profit margins this is why we have to u budget as cautiously as we do. So financial strength for the airlines again the lefth hand column American, Delta and United by far the strongest. Southwest

you see in the middle there again Southwest at 52% of our traffic. It's important for us that they're profitable. And then the pack in the middle includes Avela which we had Spirit Sun Country and then over to the right Breeze and JetBlue. Um so obviously as a whole the industry is not making a lot of money and some of the carriers that we have are actually below that horizon. So we need to keep a close eye on them. Just to put in perspective the profitability for the US airlines last year their profit margin was 4.9%. If you look at the Hilton Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, the Marriott, 20, 16, 15%. Because those are predictable uh venues that people can book a trip and expect if their cruise line is going to operate or the hotel is going to be there. The airlines have been very cyclical obviously because of sluggish economy and now fuel prices. So, one of the largest uh costs for the airlines is obviously fuel. So if you look at what has happened not only from April of 2025 up until today, fuel prices have been very stable. So even though demand has been soft, um it has not been as strong as the pre-COVID days, most of the airlines, the top seven that you saw on that list that I showed you have been able to turn profits. And the reason for that is because they base their business model on fuel that is in in the $60 to $70 range. If fuel falls within that range, they can find a way to make money. But fast forward to February and then into early March, you can see that fuel prices have spiked and they're going to continue that way for a while. I checked oil prices this morning. They were $104 a barrel. So for airlines to build a business model on fuel that is in the 60 to 70 uh dollar per barrel range and have it go over 100 significantly impacts their business model. What does that mean to us? I I'll tell you that in just a second. So obviously if fuel prices go up,

somebody's got to pay for those additional fuel prices. So the airlines try to pass as much of of that as they can on to the consumer. So for the month of January and February, and this is US average, airfraes went up 4% in January, 7% in February. The war started in March. So we anticipate that that will continue. We can we expect airfares to go up in March, maybe even carry over into April, uh once we get the numbers in here. um could potentially even impact our our summer traffic. So, just something for us to watch. Manchester's domestic fairs have historically been in line with the national average. I know sometimes there is kind of a myth that our our airfraes are much more expensive than Boston. And really, if they're adjusted, you see the bottom left stage length adjusted for a thousand miles. So, you can compare apples to apples, our airfares are generally pretty competitive. The issue that we run into is that we have a limited number of seats to sell. So when you see a fair sale in Manchester and Boston and other airports, our cheap seats go fast. So if you don't book them fast and you get to the point where you're booking in the middle or towards the end of the booking curve, you're definitely going to pay more money. So what are the airlines going to do to mitigate some of these uh rising fuel costs? Number one, raise fairs and ancillary fees. We've already seen that. JetBlue just raised u their bag fees. United is raised some fees. They're actually cutting some summer capacity. Uh they're also going to cut or re reallocate capacity uh to markets with less profitable routes and focus on higher demand markets. So that's important for us because when we look at our load factors, our load factors aren't as high as we'd like to see them. And I'll talk about that in just a second. Uh they're working to improve fuel efficiency, control their o uh overall cost by renegotiating contracts, among other things. So, this comes at a time when we are probably six or seven meetings into a new airline operating agreement, which is a

five-year agreement that we have with all of the airlines. They sign on as signatory carriers, and if they do that, they get the advantage of lower rates. If they don't sign on as a signatory carrier, they pay 25% more. Uh, so 125% of the base rate. Uh, so we want to get all of those airlines signed on. And the plan is to get them signed on by July 1st. But with fuel spike, prices spiking the way they are, it's going to make our negotiations that much more difficult. And then obviously they'll adjust flight operations, route speeds. They've been doing that for quite a while to mitigate cost. So with all of that going on in in the national industry and with fuel prices, how does that impact Manchester specifically? So in 2025, our seats year-over-year, 2025 versus 2024, actually were up 12% and it was the highest in New England. So we had a really solid year last year in terms of capacity coming into the market. Some of that was brought in by JetBlue, uh, by Breeze, relatively new carriers to the airport, the other airlines adding some service. So we had a solid 2025 and we were hoping that 2026 would at least parallel 2025 and even potentially exceed it. And if you look in January we were up almost 11%. February was a little bit um up a half a percentage point. But in February we had 42 flight cancellations. So to be up even a half a percent is actually kind of a win for us. If all of those flights had operated we probably would have been in that 10 to 12% range. March we were down a little bit and then you can kind of see the the rest. We get to the month of June and then you see that dip right there. That dip represents All pausing in the market. So Aell flew to some seasonal markets. They've decided to pause as I said until they um restructure their fleet, bring in regional jets, park some less efficient 737s. So when we get to the month of June and you see that our our

capacity is down 6%. That's because we have 72 less flights that month on AL year-over-year than we had the year before. So, that's going to trend downward for a little bit and then we're hoping the other airlines are going to pick up the slack and we'll be back on a positive scale again. So, how does that compare with other airports in New England? Again, we're basically flat. This is for the month of June, our seat capacity. If I showed you this chart 6 months ago, we were up 12%. We were number one on the list. Feeling pretty good about it. But the airline industry is very dynamic. Airlines can go out of business as we just talked about. Fuel prices can spike. All of this is kind of subject to change depending on what's going on in the world and what's happening in terms of their profitability and business decisions that they have to make. So our current annual seat departure for Manchester is a is at a post-pandemic high but still 18% below 2019 levels. So if you look at this chart, this is just departure seats. So you can see 2016 1.2 1.2 to we were pretty steady. We get to 2019, the pre-COVID year, we had 1.1 million departure seats. That's pretty much where we would like to get back to as quickly as we can. Uh fast forward all all the way to 2026, you can see we're at 910,960. So that's just departures. So if you multiply that by two for arrivals, then we have 1.8 million seats. If you apply an 80% load factor, if we average about 80% of those seats filled, then we get to about 1.4 million passengers, which we'd be good with. Um, but if we were at the precoid number, that gets you closer to 1.7 million passengers. So, we have some work to do in terms of our recovery. And that recovery, unfortunately, we think, is going to be slowed because of fuel prices. This is just a snapshot of our load factors, which is the percentage of seats that we fill. Um, calendar year 25 is in green. Um, so

you can kind of see we're a little bit below the the US average here. We would like to be higher than the US average. You know, the green is the US average, the blue bars of Manchester. Um, so that gap basically represents demand that's lost or seats that haven't gotten filled. And part of that is because we live less than 50 miles away from a large hub airport. So, tailwinds, not not all bad news. The fuel prices is are a challenge. What's happening with the airline industry is a challenge. Having Boston to our south, obviously, is a plus and minus in lots of different ways. But one of the biggest tailwinds that that we're looking forward to, again, everything hinges on fuel prices and airline profitability, but we announced uh about a month ago that Southwest is going to add Nashville to to uh their mix of city cities that they serve out of Manchester. So BNA is a three-letter identifier for Nashville. Uh service will operate daily except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And that's a pretty common thing across the airline industry. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be low travel days. So um you know years ago if you asked me how many flights a day do you have and I could tell you it was 42 or 36 or 28. That's no longer the case. U now the answer is it depends. It depends on the week, the day, the season. Uh so airlines just focus on on demand and how passengers uh behave in any given market. Uh Nashville Southwest sixth largest station. Um and if you see the the spoke map there at the bottom, not only is Nashville a good destination for us, but there's 30 connecting markets that will take you points southwest, um Vegas, Phoenix, LA, all top 10 or 15 markets for us. So, it's critical that we have good connections to those markets. And then the reason why Nashville is so critical to us is more than 50% of our traffic flies to the southeast region in pink or Florida to or from those two

destinations. Obviously, we have a lot in the Northeast, 252,000, which would be the BW uh BWIS, DCA type flights, Philly. Um, but Nashville kind of hits the sweet spot right there, which is why we are looking forward to it. begins October 1st and hopefully uh it'll be successful and they'll add more frequency. MHC financials. This kind of gets into a couple of our departmental updates and I'm not going to go into this a lot into a lot of detail, but I'll just tell you that this is a snapshot of the airport's overall debt structure. So, these different colors that you see are for different series of bonds that we've taken out over the years to do terminal improvements, airfield improvements, roadway improvements, parking garages. Um the the issue that you see here is 2025 26. You can see the debt service that we have just under $10 million. That debt service gets spread across the airlines that we have. So the fewer the airlines the higher their cost obviously. Our debt service in 2027 and 2028 spike as you can see and that was just the result of the way that the bonds were structured. So if you think of a JetBlue or a breeze just as examples, the first year that you come to the airport, if any of of you want to start an airline someday, year one, you operate at the airport essentially for free. So you get terminal rental credits, you get landing fee credits, and we give you marketing dollars based on the frequency of flights that you operate and the size of the airplane. If you meet the criteria that we established for year one, then in year two, you get a 50% credit. So you come into the airport basically operating for free and we're helping you to market. Year two it's 50% and year three you're on your own. Now you've had two years to kind of get it figured out. So if you can imagine an airline like a JetBlue or a Breeze coming off of those incentives and hitting that financial wall that would not be a good situation. We would almost double their operating cost. So this is what we plan to do to

address that. The gray is our current outstanding debt uh from 2025 all the way out to 2043. The blue line is hopefully what's going to happen when the board of mayor and alderman meet tomorrow night and approve our debt service restructuring. So, we're going to restructure 17.5 million worth of debt. We're going to take the 16.7 and 13.9 that those airlines and the other airlines would have would have taken as a serious headwind obviously and we're going to just flatten that out and push it out farther. Now, we don't we don't necessarily like to extend debt, but if we don't get rid of those two spikes, then it's going to severely impact their ability to make money and to grow. So, we've already been before the special committee on airport activities, got a unanimous approval to do this. The full board will um at least see it, ask any questions, hopefully vote on it, and approve it tomorrow night. We'll put out an RFP. We'll restructure that debt, and then at least going forward, we have a stable debt environment that we can share with the airlines. And then when you get out to 2036 when Lou and I are playing golf somewhere, um the debt service at the airport is going to be $4.8 million. So in other words, most of the terminal, the parking garage, the airfield, a lot of the infrastructure that we built over the years will be paid for. The cost per plane passenger for the airlines is going to go down significantly. And the lower you can get that, the more they're going to invest. So this is kind of a mustdo scenario in my opinion. couple of airport improvement projects and this kind of falls into L's area. Um we have a $97 million airport capital improvement program uh that we coordinated with the FAA. Um of the 97 million, this right here is the 2026 cut, which is about uh probably six million about 10 million give or take. Uh there are a lot more projects and a lot more improvements that will done will will be done over the next five years. So these are just our 2026 projects. And I'm glad I'm here tonight

because the first one that I wanted to just mention briefly is the airport master plan update. So the airport master plan is a 20-year blueprint for the airport. Um and it basically looks at our land. It looks at at the terminal and runway and roadway infrastructure and all of our facilities. uh looks at u airline forecasts or what kind of traffic we're going to have for cargo and general aviation and airlines looks at all of those things and kind of establishes trigger points for growth and development and changes that you need to make to meet various levels of development as you go through the master plan. The reason that I wanted to mention that tonight is we will be probably reaching out to the town manager uh and looking for a representative from the town to sit on one of our committees to help us go through that plan. It's going to be a very transparent, very interactive process. I'm kind of excited about it because this this will be the third one that I've been through. Um the first one was in the late 90s and really focused well that if you look at that aerial photograph, the terminal building is obviously right in the middle of that picture. Town of Londereerry being to the south or the bottom and city Manchester the to the top or to the north. Um, the terminal building was built in 1994 and even though some people still refer to it as the quote new terminal building, it's 32 years old. So, the new terminal building has HVAC systems that need to be replaced, restrooms that need to be upgraded, escalators that need to be replaced. And if you look at the cost of those things, it's it's north of a hundred million. It's very expensive and not something that we could do and cost that we could pass on to the airlines on our own. So, the airport master plan will look at all of those things. 1994 when that terminal building was built, we had a brand new, beautiful, modern building which is still in really good shape, but we had very outdated um airfield infrastructure. Runways needed to be upgraded. Taxiways needed to be upgraded. Instrument landing systems uh weren't uh weren't updated. So in the

late 90s, 1997,998, that master plan focused on airside. So we have a brand new terminal building in the in 1994. We focused on airside in the 1990s. master plan update. We got two extended runways, a category 3 instrument landing system which you can land basically with no visibility which is how we got our cargo operators are a big part of why we got them. Um which carried us almost through to about 2011 and then we went from airside to roadside. We did roadway improvements, parking garage, um signage, wayfinding and things like that. So now you have a relatively new terminal with much improved airfield infrastructure, much improved roadway in infrastructure. So you fast forward to 2026. What do we need to do now? I tell you what we do not need to do is is uh expand uh capacity or add capacity. We have a 9,250 ft runway that will take you non-stop in a fully loaded 767 from here to Europe or from here to California. It doesn't need to be any longer. We've got thousand foot safety areas at the ends of all of our runways which we didn't always have except of the 24 end and we've got another system that that equates to a thousand foot safety area on that end. New taxiways, new nav aids. Um so for this master plan we're focusing on efficiencies, technology and terminal upgrades. So getting that terminal operating as efficiently as we can so we can pass on low cost to the airlines. Taxiway Golf and Delta project will begin actually pre-construction meeting is tomorrow. That project will begin um soon. Continental paving is going to be doing that. Taxiway Echo, which takes the cargo carriers to and from runway 1735, will be done next year. We're currently replacing the airfield electrical vault. Uh doing a drainage study and purchasing snow removal equipment. On the IT side, I won't get into a lot of detail in this other than to say I'm

sure your IT folks are looking at the same thing that our IT folks is are and that is uh we get daily briefings from our federal, state, and local partners. We are a country at war now. So, obviously, we have to be very careful. We've seen some sharp increases in fishing attempts and people potentially try trying to credential uh harvest our credentiing, our our information. Um there is a term here called living off the land. I'm sure you're probably familiar with. And one of the things now that in these cyber attacks that these uh folks are trying to do is infiltrate your infrastructure, your IT infrastructure, and basically live there. whether it's a flight information monitor, something that controls your building automation system, whatever the case might be, but infilt in infiltrate your IT system, sit in that system quietly until they decide to do something um whether it's um for ransom or or just to to take your system down. So, constantly watching that every day. Couple of properties to update you on real quick. Uh ProStar Aviation is the building on the right in the in the blue that you see. ProStar does high-end avionics work for companies like Falcon Jets, uh, Palatus, uh, and several others. So, they're looking to do a, uh, 40,000 square foot hanger expansion, which will mean more corporate jets, uh, more jobs. So, that's a good thing for the airport. Signature is also looking to expand. They're going to add a fifth hanger. They've got four now. Uh, that project will take place in 2027. So, again, you're going to see more corporate jets coming to the airport. not necessarily a lot of more operations, but just the type of operations. Um, again, more jobs, more economic activity, more fuel sales for the airport. Um, for anyone that operates in the GA, general aviation sector, meaning small single engine private pilots, uh, one of the things that we're going to look at in the airport master plan

update, is to consolidate general aviation operations into the northeast corner of the airfield. So right now GA's been kind of pushed around a little bit and squeezed and with the east ramp where Signature and Prostar are located getting fully developed with those new hangers, we need a new and permanent home for general aviation. So what we're proposing to do is locate a facility up in or several facilities in the northeast ramp. So the white hangers that you see there and this would be on the the Manchester side. Uh the white hangers that you see there are existing hangers. So there are about 20 up there right now, 20 airplanes in those three hangers. We have the ability in the purple hangers that you see to add up to 30 more. So we have plenty of room for expansion. We're not trying to squeeze general aviation out. We're actually trying to encourage them to come here um build a business in this community in the northeast section of the airfield where they can stay for many years to come. So what's next? I know I went through that fairly quickly. So for us at the airport, we need to focus on our three strategic goals for 2026, which are the complete negotiations and execute the new airline operating agreement that I just mentioned. So if we can get the airlines to sign on to a new 5-year agreement, we can sleep a little better knowing that if they invest in the airport and they sign on to that agreement, they've committed to stay. If they don't, they can still stay for five years. They're going to pay higher rates, but it just makes it that much easier for them to pack up their airplanes and go someplace else. So, it's critical that we get that right. And as I said, we've had seven or eight meetings. We probably have three or four to go. Uh, but the goal is to get everyone signed on. That's all of the airlines and all the cargo carriers by July July 1st. Uh, restructure our debt, which I just mentioned. If we don't do that, uh, we're going to have to s pass on significant cost to the airlines, which they won't like. It won't help their profitability. They won't grow. Um, we just don't want that. I mean, we want

to we want to pass on uh costs that are as low as we possibly can, which is why we're trying to focus on making the terminal building as efficiently as we as efficient as we can so they can operate as as inexpensively as they can and they can continue to to add flights. The master plan update, um we will be putting in for a grant for the master plan update u in the next month or so. Probably have a kickoff meeting in the next couple of months. And as I said, I'll be I'll be reaching out to have a representative or potentially a couple of representatives from the town in of Londereerry to kind of walk through that process with us because obviously your twothirds of the airport sits in London area. It's important that you're part of that process. Um positioning the airport for future success. We're going to complete those critical airport capital improvement pro projects that I just mentioned. And I only showed you 2026. We have similar programs for the next five years. Um, we hope to get about $97 million of those projects done. And again, we can't do that on just airport money. So 90% of those projects will be paid for with FAA funds, federal funds, 5% from the airport, 5% from the state. So to get a hund00 million worth of infrastructure improvements for $5 million, I think is a pretty good investment. The other thing that it does for us is the one thing that I always feel good about is we have really good infrastructure. Our runway infrastructure, roadway infrastructure, terminal infrastructure. You can't rebuild what we built over the last 30 years again for all of the environmental reasons and and and everything else. Um, so we're very fortunate to have strong infrastructure and as I mentioned in the beginning, the relationship that we have with the police department, the fire department, the the town, we consider that part of our infrastructure. It's not just a relationship. If we don't have that, we can't do these things. So the relationship with Chief Bernard, Captain Odonahue, the fire chief, who actually we just met, we hope to uh spend some

time with and develop a good rapport with as well. Uh, critical to everything we're doing. um budget based on new realities. Everything that I just mentioned to you, we submitted a flat budget a couple months ago and felt pretty good about it. We made some pretty dramatic cuts to be able to do that and say to the airlines, we're not going to increase your cost. But now cost just went up again because of fuel prices. So, we're going to have to go back to the table and figure out how we do that. Much like all of you are probably challenged in the same way. Staffing, we're not immune to staffing issues just like anyone else. We currently have 14 open positions at the airport. Um, we can get candidates. We can't always get the wrong ca the right. They're challenging positions. They take like the police department, as Chief Bernard said, uh, it takes a commitment and they're challenging and they're difficult. Uh, but if you're the right person and and you have a little passion for aviation in your blood, it's the best job you'll ever have in your life. So, we're actively looking for those people. Uh and then at the end of the day, we do everything we can to turn whatever headwinds we have, tail headwinds in that we have into tailwinds um and find some opportunities uh through all of this uh which I think we will find as we go through the airport master plan update. So with that said, I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Any questions?

Any questions for the board? Nope. Wow. Good. No, great presentation. Great job. I fly through that airport frequently, so I absolutely love it. So I want to see it just grow and prosper. It's great for our community. Appreciate. Well, we appreciate all the support and as councel Combmes knows, you can spend about a half an hour on each one of those sections. So that really is broad brush, but at least you kind of have a picture of what we're dealing with, the good and the bad, the challenges. Um, but we've got a great team and once we get out on the master plan and the town's involved in it, I think we have a really good story to tell. Appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thank you for your time today. It's great presentation. Thank you. All right, I will open public comment. Good evening.

Good evening, uh, Mr. Chairman. Uh, Jeffrey McGra, nine meeting house drive. Uh, just wanted to add one real quick, uh, addition to Tom's presentation, and I, this is from my experience at my career as a business consultant. I've been in hundreds of well over a hundred companies seeing people new to the CEO role and you know uh Tom's I've been in two or three meetings with Tom and he he really hit the ground running. It wasn't it wasn't I'm the new CEO or the new chairman. Uh I've got a couple ideas but I'm going to think about it. It was I'm the new chairman. I've got 17 ideas. I've got a lot of stuff going on. And it was, you know, we've got a really great, at least Tom got a really great guy, uh, with our, uh, managing the resource for us and it's, you know, we we should all be really h really thankful that we have him in place and and again, coming from a business consulting role position. Uh, there's a piece of data that he brought up to me one time that he didn't bring it up and I think it's for me, I think it's a phenomenal piece of information. And it's the ability to keep costs uh at no more not growing more than 3% over is it 10 years or

since 2012? Since 2012. So 14 years costs have gone up 3%. So anybody that manages a big organization Sean uh the chief you know keeping costs going up 3% over 14 years is exceptional. So you know he's talking about spending a lot of money $100 million here. uh you know, lots of uh infrastructure investments. Uh this is a team that really knows how to squeeze a penny and and get really good results. So, just my two cents. Thank you.

Good evening, sir. Glenn Douglas, six overlook a um I wasn't going to say anything tonight, but I think I need to. Um couple of things. Um last meeting you all said you're going to answer questions. Wasn't fair for people to come ask questions and not get answers. Um the veteran tax credit um question was asked. It was answered tonight. I asked um because it came up in conversation with some people. I sent an email to the chair and said, "Hey, uh Dennis Martin asked this question. Did you respond to him?" I got nothing. No response. I'm guessing that's why Mr. Martin was here tonight because he was going to ask again, but he answered. My question on this is you got a legal opinion. When did you get the legal opinion? um because you weren't able to answer my question last week, so I'm guessing maybe the legal opinion was last week. I don't know, but I would like to know when you got the legal opinion. Uh the other one is complaints. I know this is on the agenda later. Um first off, I'm not a fan of anonymous complaints. I've read most of the complaints that have come through and I think most of them are just people using it to take political shots at people. Half of them I think are unfounded. The issue I have is they're handled very very differently. Um for instance, there was a complaint filed against councelor Paul and against councelor Bousard. Those are brought up in public. Councelor Bousard's complaint was stated out loud that he was being investigated for X. I'm not going to say it out loud because what was stated out loud in the meeting was not what the complaint stated. It was said that it was going to the DOJ and the DOJ was investigating it.

Counselor Paul. It was just stated that there's a complaint against counselor Paul and the town manager is going to investigate it. Okay. It's already been complaints against councelor Paul. So now everyone's thinking, hm, I wonder what there must be another one. I wonder what it is. Interesting. So I filed a 91A to get all the complaints and I found out that there were more complaints than that. There have been complaints filed against councelor Faber. Several. There was one filed against a former budget committee member. There was one filed against a planning board member. So I published them on my website. And interestingly, one person contacted me and said, "I don't understand why you're publishing this. This has already been taken care of." It was dismissed. It was never brought up publicly. It was never asked to be investigated. It was dismissed by the town manager. It was the exact same complaint that was made against basically against Council Paul because someone used the Lord's name in vain. I think that was dismissed by Council Paul. It was asked to investigate one. I don't understand why that wasn't thrown out immediately because it's freedom of speech. Whether it's appropriate or not, you can argue that. I asked again a question. I asked the town council chair if the complaints that were not made public were being investigated. Town council chair refused to answer. For someone that is so approachable and answers questions, it's very, very interesting that you're not answering questions about why these other complaints are not being investigated. I'll also throw in that the complaints being investigated came right before an election. You chose not to investigate them and the complaints were against the person that publicly endorsed you running for town council. So, I don't know what you're going to figure out on how these complaints are. There needs to be something tightened up because the last meeting you all wanted to just get rid of. We're not going to talk about that anymore.

The complaints should have some meat to it instead of just this ridiculous someone said something bad. It's freedom of speech. I don't agree with people getting up here and dropping the sword or the fbomb or whatever, but there's been numerous Supreme Court cases that say you can do it. You can't stop them. But apparently we just some of the stuff just gets brushed under the rug. And some questions just don't get answered. And I don't really ask a lot of questions. I don't send a lot of emails. But I tell you, I don't get any answers from the chair. I get answers from other town counselors usually within 30 seconds.

I'm done. Thank you. Anybody else in public comment? Good evening. How are you?

Good. Marge Bedo, 189 Lichfield Road. I would really like to ask that when you start reviewing the PUD draft that you seriously consider the input from citizens of this town at the last planning board meeting, those that spoke, those that submitted written comments, they were good suggestions. They had valid concerns. And it doesn't appear that the planning board took action on any of that. And you have time from today for the official reading to when we have that public hearing to do the research and look at those comments. They're in the minutes from the planning board. They're in documents that have been submitted. I think we owe these people the respect to give those serious consideration. Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody else with public comment? Good evening, Christine.

Christine Perez, Five Wesley Drive. So, for months and months and months, I have been following the um agendas and future agendas and um that were put out, which was something new with this town manager. And um it appeared that y'all and the town manager were finally going to accomplish some things that had been neglected for years, for years. Okay. Um for an example, um the administrative code that had not been updated since 2008, the process for the use of legal counsel, how you can use legal counsel because of the bills. It's my understanding that the bills have been outrageous. I'd like to know what the last two bills last two months bills. There's a question. Uh municipal codes which provide the groundwork for our town and how it's governed. Then out of nowhere out of nowhere at the last meeting the things that we were you all were supposed to be addressing the three things were tabled by three members. And it appeared to me that the other two members had absolutely were blindsided by it and had no idea that that was going to happen. So why did this happen? What is the purpose of not accomplishing things? Why are we putting the brakes on the very vital codes and policies that we need for this town? Why? Why? And now I see that things are pushed out and out and out. things that were going to be done within a couple of months. Now, it appears that they are deliberate attempt to slow the process. And I want to know why. And Chairman Dunn, I reached out to you trying to address these issues and I saw you twice after

that and you totally ignored my ask for a a phone call, a meeting with you. So, I am one of your constituents. And like other constituents, you reach out and you don't get back. So I just don't understand why that's happening. and it all this stuff was going to get done. And as far as complaints, there are some very active complaints that have been re that have been issued recently and I'm sure you all know of it and it was not done anonymously and I would like that complaint to be published because it is a complaint against a federal law.

Thank you. Anybody else with public comment?

Good evening. How are you tonight?

Hi. Um, I just want to piggyback on the PU the meeting that the planning board had on the PUD the other night. Um the town the a lot of the people did a lot of really good research and I think the planning board had the opportunity to take that time go back and look at things and kind of shore things up because the two PUDs we have in town Woodmont hasn't hasn't finished in 13 years still hasn't come to fruition on the promises that they made the people the one up at um technology village. Sorry, that's that's the same thing. They were supposed to go with commercial first. They're building their 400 apartments first and because that's where they're going to make the most money. So, if you if we can't as a community or as you as a council be able to keep under control the PUDS we already have, then we really need to tighten up more than what we've already tightened up. And I do know that the planning board put a lot of work into it and they did tighten a lot of things up, but it's not tightened enough. And people brought some really good suggestions. And it's just kind of disappointing that nobody bothered to take the time and say, "Okay, let us go back to the to the board and and see what we can work out instead of just kicking it up to you all who I assume uh weren't on weren't in on the planning of the document that is being pushed up to you." I don't know. Um maybe Sean knows more because he was on sitting on both. But if we can't keep the two PUDs we have going, if we don't shore things up, how are we going

to ever control the ones that are going to come down the down the path? Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in public comment? Good evening. Good evening. Uh Dave Lewis, live at 168 Mammoth Road. Um I don't know if this is already agenda already an agenda item, so I just let me know if it is. I didn't see it on there, but a few of us are here in regards to the skate park. Um you know, really just have some questions about how it's going to be handled, timeline, things like that. If this is on there, I'll just stop now. It's the next meeting. It's on the next meeting. Just, you know, Yeah. if you come. Wonderful. Next week.

Yep. No problem. Thank you. Anybody else at public? Next meeting is the 20th. It is. Make sure. Third Monday. Yep. So 20th. 20th. Yeah. Correct. I'm going to get something off my chest anyway. Sure. Right. Absolutely. Welcome.

My name is Drew Uphold, 31 Mil Road. I'm a resident of Londereerry and have been my whole life. I'm an avid skateboarder who frequenced the London Derry skate park for many years, whole life growing up. U I'm concerned with the possible loss of the skate park as I know how impactful they can be on a community. Not only do they bring traffic through town, which is beneficial for local businesses and things alike, but they are extremely beneficial for the youth as it provides a safe haven for local kids to gather and express themselves through skateboarding and other action sports. It's great for physical and mental health and also produces strong determination and perseverance or perseverance in oneself. Myself along with countless others have used our free time to maintain and clean up the park as much as possible or when need be. The thought of losing this place is unimaginable as it was an iconic New England skate park. People from all over Connecticut, Rhode Island, they would always come to this park. It was one of the best until, you know, kind of falling apart now. Um, I know that funding can be an issue, but there's always a way around that. I know so many people who would be willing to donate their time and/or money to keep this place alive and thriving. Fundraising for the skatepark would be no problem. If worse come to worse, and building a new skatepark isn't foreseeable. At least make it a sanctioned DIY. Do it yourself. Everybody knows. Y

um the locals alone are capable of building a pretty awesome skatepark as myself and a few others uh work for a concrete company specializing in skatep parks. We would be more than willing to donate our time as much time as need be you know um we have built couple parks around the area from ones like Portsmith, Dover, Manchester, Lincoln, Nasha, many others in the New England area. we'd be more than willing to give us our time and money um to bring a new and safe skatepark to this community because it's very meaningful to the youth and you know it gives a good outlet for them. Uh skateboarding means so much to us and it would be unfair to take away the space altogether for future generations. Um, and yeah, I just think it's a really solid place for kids who don't like sports like basketball or soccer, football, whatever. You know, it's a an alternative and it, you know, really shaped a lot of awesome people and uh, yeah, thank you for your time and I hope we can make something special happen in the town of Londereerry and I'll be back on the 20th.

Absolutely. Thank you. Please do come back. Thank you. Nicely done. Anybody else in public comment? Yeah. Good evening, Martha. How are you? Martha Smith, 38 Chester Drive. Um, I just want to um reiterate some of the things that have been said before that the PUD I do think that that's really important. I went to that planning board meeting. There was a lot said by community members. I think that on all all the boards that serve this town, basically we're serving the community,

the people here. And um I think that it's important to listen to uh their feelings and and what they have to say, not necessarily your feelings, but they they had some very good thoughts that they put out there. One of the things that was said at the planning board, you know, I I asked what what's the benefit to Londereerry of the PUD? And uh the the answer that I think I got back was that that they like the PUDS because they can control it. Well, we did not control Woodmont. Woodmont, you know, basically, it looks to me, and I don't know enough about all of the details, but they buy the land. They know what they're buying, but then they need all these extras that now some of those extras have fallen upon the town uh to make them because we we now we we want the development, too. They knew that they didn't have the infrastructure when they bought the land. So, you know, why why' they make the purchase? Maybe I don't know. Maybe there were agreements ahead of time. I don't know. But if the idea is control, then we want things in that PUD ordinance that the town has the ability to control that that they can't just sell off everything the way they want to um do the development the way they want to. I know that I know that the PUD that was presented at that planning board meeting did have a lot of those things, but it could be even tighter. And I suggest that if we're going to have large parcels that are totally developed um right in the middle of some somewhere in the town, we ought to be able to say what the community wants in that. The

the second thing I wanted to bring up was the skate park. I didn't even know that it was closed. I think that we offer very little in this town for our youth. And if they enjoy that sport and and and they want to get better at it and I mean it's competitive sport now, I believe I think that that is a very serious thing that we should consider. We got a lot of youth in this town and we need to support them as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Martha. Anybody else in public comment? Ray, how are you tonight? Uh, I'm doing well.

Good. Ray Brson, 3G Gary Drive. Um I've heard a lot not necessarily this evening but uh prior to about transparency and uh we also hear about um people willing to be uh step up and volunteer their services um and um and and these folks here that just spoke about the skate park. uh here you got uh some people that are willing to step up and donate their own time and uh I I just feel that we hear about this transparency. We hear about including the general public in decisions and and then we got a problem with people not even showing up at a public meeting because they don't feel they're being heard. We need to hear the general public. We're here, you're here to serve the general public. Please don't lose track of that. I mean, you got a lot to do. You got a lot of development coming forward and and and if they're following the RSA's, sometimes you got to go along with it. That's true. But, uh, please um let's listen to the people. The people are willing to assist and help out, but they need to be heard. Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Thank you, Ray. Anybody else in public comment? Seeing none, I will close public comment. Up next, we have boards and appointments. Are you going to answer the questions that they asked at the next meeting? I thought we were doing answer the questions at the next meeting.

I got something I want to add. Okay. Mr. Chair, I know you asked that we limit any long speeches, so I'm going to be as quick as I can. After attending the 918 training session that was held on March 25th, I want to address some concerns about the March 16th town council meeting. It is very clear to anyone that watched the March 16th town council meeting that there were 91A violations where council members had discussed and made determinations on the outcome of the issues without the entire council being informed. The statement was made that we need to respect people's time. Mr. Chair, you stated if people come up at public comment and have a question, council Faber will write the questions down and after public comment, they would be answered. Mr. D. Francisco came up and asked about opening the charter and looking to see if the current form of government needs to be improved. This has been asked several times. His question went unanswered. Mr. Martin came up and asked again about the veterans tax credit. and that went unanswered. Again, I want to address the veterans tax credit. It was asked tonight, when did we get the legal opinion? On February 10th, 2026, we received a legal opinion from the attorney. They looked at several options and the bottom line is that there is nothing that can be done. it I it unlikely that the program would successfully withstand a challenge in court. When this was brought up, it was my understanding that when we approved the increase, it was for the following tax year as we were already halfway into the current tax year and could not make

effective make it effective immediately. When the assessor was here, I feel that should have he should have clarified that when we were looking to pass this. The attacks against the town manager were unwarranted. He was not at the meeting when this was brought up, discussed, and voted on. A mistake was made, and it was not addressed by the council in a timely fashion. We need to do better at addressing these concerns, Mr. Chair.

Okay. I'm going to follow up on one of your concerns. Mr. D. Francesco brought up a concern. I've addressed that with Mr. D. Francesco and we are looking into that and it's much deeper and I'm going to contact him and we're going to discuss it. It's a much deeper opinion. Well, now I got a problem. Okay. So, I think we need to we're going to address that at the next meeting. Okay. Wanted to give a chance to Ron. I'd like to speak now.

Please go ahead. Um, I've brought up a couple times and um, I know you don't like this feeling. I don't like this feeling. I feel like there are things going on that I have no idea of what are going on. People are sending in emails. You see them. I don't necessarily see them. Dan or Sean, I don't know who sees what. I just know that I can speak for myself. Okay.

But it would be nice to know that you did address that so I don't look like an idiot going, "Oh, Tony, I'm really sorry. I didn't know if if they got back to you or not. That makes me look stupid. I don't appreciate it. I don't appreciate not knowing what's going on. And that's not a violation of 91A to give information to people. This is individuals acting as one board with all the same power, all the same privileges, and you can't make good decisions by yourself or not knowing

everything. And so I I really hope that after tonight I don't have to say this little thing again and I hope that you share the information. I I asked you before the last after the last meeting and obviously it didn't happen. Okay. Mr. Chair, if I may.

Sure. So on the veterans tax credit, um, yeah, we had the legal opinion. I think the desire to try to get something done with the veterans is very important. So I called DRRA and I wanted to see what happened with the veterans tax credit. And so I asked just to make sure because I mean I don't want this to get messed up next year, too. Um, I asked DRRA, we took a vote, we set a date, we set it effective August 1st. And I talked to the chairman. I didn't just talk to somebody at there. I talked to the guy in charge. And he said that as long as we specified a date, it would be effective. And DRA would not have had a problem with that. Um, any one of you can call DRA if you want to try to say that's not true. Um, it's so I asked, "Okay, well, what would go wrong?" We approved it. We did a motion. I went back and checked the motion, made sure we had an effective date included, and it was August 1st. And he said there there could be sometimes an error where someone might think it doesn't take effect in the tax year, but we're not a select board. We're in SB2 town where we're the governing body of it. So, if the governing body says it takes effect, because when I looked up the RSA, it said July 13th, 2025 is when this regulation takes effect. So, if it takes effect and we're able to implement it, I wanted to make sure we didn't screw up on this. And we've taken a vote twice. and he said it's possible that when it got implemented in the town, maybe somebody else was confused by that, but as as a as a town council, we had did everything we could to make that take effect within this year and that it was possible. This is from DRRA. I'm just providing what they told me.

Can you just clarify who that was you spoke to at DR? Um, if my phone will load, I can tell you exactly actually who I talked to. And if I it doesn't load this page, I can pull it up for you and I'll give it to you. If you could, that'd be great because DRA's put out two TIS on this. NHMA's opin attorneys opined on this issue. So, this is completely contrary to what the position of DRRA, NHMA, and our own attorney. So, I just want to make sure I Yeah, clarify that. I'll see if I can pull it up on here. All right, we're good to move on. All right. Up next, we have board appointments and reappointments. We have the resignation. I'll accept the motion to accept the resignation of Patrick Elzam from the budget committee. So move. A motion from Ted. Second. Second from Sean. All those in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? Chair votes in the affirmative. Uh thank you Patrick for all your help. You were very instrumental in this budget year that we just concluded. And I thank you for all your help, Mr. Chair. Yeah. While we're at this board appointments and reappointments, I have one more to do, though. Oh, okay. I, you know, we talked last last time about retirements and resations, and I was just wondering cuz since our um deliberative session Mhm. we've had some people leave, and I was wondering at some point if we can have them put on here so we can recognize those people. Yes. Thank you. I think that's just uh a thing we're working on. Yep.

Yes, we plan on doing that. So, uh, also, you went so fast with the vote. I didn't vote. So, I'm voting yes, but you said everybody vote yes, but I didn't even get a chance to say yes. Okay. Okay. Um, and then we have one addition. Um, Miss Holden, you had a something we had to address tonight to make sure we're stay effective.

So, we are at the point with old home day that we have an one more open seat on the board of directors. that's posted and had a couple of people interested, but nobody has actually submitted that last application yet. At this point, we need five directors to move forward with the uh New Hampshire Charitable Trust, and it really is kind of time to get that paperwork done. So in order to do that, my suggestion is as Doug is not a resident and therefore does not um meet the criteria for the board, I volunteer as tribute as an interim director so we can get that paperwork underway and I will immediately step down upon the appointment of or the interest or an appointment of somebody else. But I think it's important that we get that paperwork in um in order to finalize the char the status as a charitable trust. So

I appreciate you doing that. Is what that's my offer to you. The No problem with that. No problem. Thank you for doing that. We appreciate that. That's very kind. I just wanted to answer. Um so Sean, that was Adam Dener. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'll accept I'll accept the motion to tempor appoint director to appoint Kirstston to the uh position of interim interim director director board of directors for Oklahoma day. So moved motion from Dan I second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair the affirmative

5. We don't have any public hearings tonight. Up next, we have new business. Discuss and approve the request for funds from the winter maintenance fund. Mr. Wallley. Uh, good evening. Thank you, Dave Wallally, director of public works. Um, before you, I have a request for a fourth and what I hope will be a final request for funding for winter maintenance. You never know. It did snow on April 16th one time. Um, until I shave my beard off. All bets are off.

So, once we see your beard gone, we then it's safe. We're in the clear. Um, so, um, this one though, I did basically just a little bit over of what I have. um uh left uh for bills to be paid just in case we do get something else. But so the request is for $10,000 and that'll pay up all the bills that I have and leave I think about $2,300 left in case if we have a salt operation or something to that to that extent. Any questions, Mr. Wall?

And just um while we're thinking of snow or putting it in our rearview mirror, this was in in my record books that I have for 31 years. This is our 10th snowiest winter for 83 ines of snow. We had 24 winter weather events, 17 plow operations and about I think it was 65 uh you know treatment operations would go around either salt or sand. So it was as we all know and experienced together a fairly busy winter for for our staff and everybody in town. We appreciate you. Thank you very much to do this. Yeah. Thank you. Sure. Um, so I move that the London Area Town Council hereby approves order 2026-05 and directs the trustees of the trust fund to disperse $10,000 from the expendable maintenance trust fund for winter maintenance of town facilities. Have a motion from Michon.

Second. Second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair post the affirmative. 5-0. Thank you. You're up next, so don't go far. Yeah. Not so up next. um discuss and approve the request of withdrawal funds for replacement of a hot water heater at fire station depart uh fire station number two.

Um thank you. Um so um this request is for while I was away there in um early March um we had an incident over at South Fire Station where one of the two there you know it's it's boils it down to a hot water heater but these are actually heat store water tanks that um that they have two of them um and one of them was was leaking. It's original to the building, installed in 2007 and um was discovered, like I said, when we're doing providing a maintenance stuff and um so a decision was made to go ahead and order that and and get that in because this type of um hot water heater is um hard to get and um so they could secure a price for 15 days. So the procedure of moving forward was approved um to order it and get the uh get the repairs going.

Any questions for Mr. Wall? Dave, just for clarification for everyone here, station two is the north station, correct? No, I'm I apologize. This is the south station. South station. South is station one. Did I get it wrong? No, this is station two. Yeah, station two. This is the south station. So, station one. Uh we did replace both of those actually uh in 2024, a couple years ago. Both of those had gone. Um so, we had replaced those two and they were a little older than this one. Any other questions? Go ahead, Doug. Um, so the new ones, are we going to have a warranty on it or some sort of guarantee? Is it the same person, the same company?

Yep. Warranty, the warranty, the labor and whatnot is guaranteed uh for one year of installation from our per our contract with them. The in the warranty on the tank itself, I apologize if you didn't get the specs. That's okay. Um, I do I'd like to put it out there for the general public. Yeah. No, I understand. I know it's a little You're getting old. You got to use glasses. I know. It's terrible, isn't it? To the club. Um uh 8year uh limited, right? Did you say eight? Eight on the on the tank. Yep. Parts and warranty on the tank. Yeah. Cuz the other one was that eight years old. How old is it?

Well, it was installed in 2007, so we got our lifespan out of that. Good. Yeah. Yeah. It was actually pretty good. These are These aren't kind of your standard home water heaters either. These are much larger. their independent fired, gas gas fired um type of systems that they have. So, okay. It's like a guaranteed hot water and it there's two of them because they use a lot of that water too when they're doing doing their turnout gear and whatnot too. So, no. No, I just wanted people to understand. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Any other questions? No. Thank you,

Mr. Chair. I move that the London Town Council hereby approves order 2026-07 and directs the trustees of the trust fund to disperse $7,885 from the expendable maintenance trust fund to pay the ENE invoice for the replacement of the hot water heater at the fire department station 2. Have a motion from Dan. Second. Second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair votes in the affirmative. 50. Thank you, sir. Thank you. And see you next winter. I hope that beard comes off soon.

All right. Up next, discuss and approve withdrawal for blue recycling carts. Mr. Troier.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, members of the board, good evening. I'm here uh to discuss order 2026-07 uh regarding the release of monies from the expend expend expenditure of the reclamation trust funds. Uh again requesting the town council to approve the release of $15,71 uh to be used for the repurchase of 210 95gallon recycling carts. Um, these additional carts are to replace some of the uh existing ones as well as to provide new carts for new homes in town. Some of these carts, again, they're pushing 10 years in in age. They date back to 2016. So, that's it in a nutshell.

Any questions, Mr. TR? I just have a question on the reclamation trust fund. Where's the money come from on that? That is the the $3 that is paid when you register your vehicle. Thank you. Any other questions? I will say uh putting out there for anyone who uh creates more recycle at home than what you may normally do. Uh the town has a good program. You can buy one more bucket for your home if you wish to do so uh for a one-time price. If you want two trash cans, it's a more of a increased yearly price on that one. But certainly for if you're creating quite a bit more recycle or getting a lot more boxes delivered than usual, having that one more bucket at home makes a bit of a difference.

Any other questions? All right, I will accept the motion. I'll move that the town council hereby approves order 2026-06 and directs the trustees of the trust fund to disperse 15,71 from the reclamation trust fund for the purchase of 210 blue 95gallon recyclable carts. Recycle carts. I have a motion from Dan. Second. Second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair affirmative. Thank you. Thank you. 50. Up next, discuss and approve welfare guidelines for 2026. Mr. Mahal.

Kirsten, you want to go over that with them? Sure.

So, there are two different things on this one agenda item. One is to do another annual adjustment on the dollar amounts in appendix A to the welfare guidelines. You all did that last year. They hadn't been updated in a while, but what we're trying to do is stay a breast of the actual suggested amounts from HUD and from USDA so that we're keeping in line with the suggested costs and the other neighboring communities. The other thing you have here are actual revisions to the general welfare guidelines that are in line with our current policies in the way that we are actually conducting our um community welfare activities through CHS and Derry. Prior to this, our welfare guidelines were we made use of the um a pretty direct copy of the New Hampshire Municipal Association model welfare guidelines. Um our executive assistant and risk manager Tanya Pinter has done a great job taking the actual practice and comparing it to that and building out a set of guidelines that reflects what we what we actually do. Any questions?

I I

I'm glad we're updating it, but I really think that this needs a deeper dig into it. Um, I I think um we have to look at the people that are doing this program, how much we're paying for it, um, who else is available to do it, how well they promote themselves in our town. I can tell you that I've talked to people who have needed assistance and I've sent them there and it was not a pleasant or helpful experience when they were told to go call 211 211 I think. I don't know. They were told to call a number and um that's not what I think we should be paying for that. There there needs to be compassion. There needs to be understanding people. It's bad enough that you're humiliated and and you're going there in a humbled state. You should be treated with respect and dignity. Um I I really think that we need to look at this and how we handle um our residents who are in having trouble, whatever the trouble is. Um, at that moment in time, we used to do it in house. I'm not saying we should do it in house. I'm just saying we should look at all of our options again and get clarification of how much we're paying, um, how many people they actually get, how they're getting the words out to, you know, what are we actually paying for? I mean, I we know what we're paying for, but we don't know the real numbers. Um, and then this my just opinion and I know this is kind of a little off topic of what this is, but maybe in the summer or at another point we really need to to look at how this all works because it it I don't know if we're paying $27,000 just say for example, and we're only dealing with five people for Londereerry, that's an awful lot of money just to give paperwork or tell them to call 211.

That's all. I don't know how we should do it, Mr. Mhalland. Do you know? I'm sorry to put you on the spot. Obviously, you're going to be talking about strategic plans. If that's something you wanted to take a look at, uh you can certainly submit an agenda request item if you'd like. Uh there's different options that the council has to do that. Um you could try an RFP out there, but I don't know of anybody else who provides this service. I will tell you that more most of the towns and cities have to do this themselves and it costs more to do it that way. Yeah. Uh the model you have with CHS is one I would suggest that uh we should um more people would like to replicate.

Uh and there are a number of municipalities that do business with them to provide this level of service. Um so again there's some ranges of options for you to consider but I would think long and hard before we uh depart. I don't want to take it in house, but either way, I just wanted to know if there's something else out there or maybe we can encourage some more input in our town, flyers, brochures, pamphlets, services we offer. Um, getting the information out there, the people you're looking for may not be the people on, you know, we looking for it. They might not know where to go or even that it's available.

Yeah. Yeah, I just uh what I've seen in lender in the in the short period of time I've been here, you've got some a pretty good range of services. You have church groups and others that provide that that um minimize the impact on taxpayers to do it that way. Um Uhhuh. I I would suggest you got a model that other people would like to emulate what we have here. And I I don't disagree with you, but I do feel that there's people falling through the cracks and that there needs to be a safety net for these people in need. That's all. So, I guess I would like to hear more on this because I think you've got a good point. Um, do you think because you you've obviously reached out to some people who've had some bad experiences. Do you think you could gather some info and just get it back to us so we can kind of take a look at this?

I mean, it was it was like this this woman I know whose um mother passed away and they didn't have a lot of money and the the woman didn't have she was in the state nursing home. She had nothing and she couldn't get the 750 to to bury the woman. It was like, oh, it's like you're putting her through all of this stress in a stressful time when she's already on state assistance, the woman that passed away, which clearly states if she's on state assistant, she qualifies for the relief of the seven to go towards the cremation. And it was just things like that that I had heard that just really it's a very uncomforting spot. And so it it's it's hard to talk about.

Yeah. And I I just think it has to be talked about and it can't be swept under a rug. It has to be looked at. If you have a problem, you have to look at it and fix it. You can't just put a nice white picket fence around it. Um and yeah, we have great people who help, but and and I fully agree with what you're saying, and that's why I just I' I'd love to hear more, hear about options, hear about some things. So if you want to get some stuff and bring it back to us, I'd love to hear more. Okay. and I'll put it on the agenda and and we can maybe hear from the people who run this program what they do to get the word out and how they help people.

I can tell you Sean that I I used to run the uh baskets for Christmas in town and there's a lot of organizations in this community, a lot of churches and different organizations that help out including the schools and everything else. There is a lot of resources out there um from my experience but there is Dan but sometimes people don't want all say don't want to ask I don't they don't want to ask but they also don't want to be known right

they don't want to be known it's embarrassing it's embarrassed to say oh I need a food basket for Christmas because I don't have any money this year that's embarrassing you you you don't want to do that you don't want people you know knowing you're doing it and I know the organizations go out of their way to try to be but it's even that initial ask because it's and that's why the third party is nice but what are we doing to get it out there and and help that's all I'm sorry Mr. Sure. Good. Kirsten, do you know what the uh housing numbers were for last year or prior years? We only have what it's being updated to for 2026.

Um they ranged for different size apartment for different size apartments. They were on a they were ranged from about $150 to $400 a month less than we have in there now. food stamps um are not just sorry not food stamps we don't provide food stamps that's the federal government the difference between food stamps and weekly allowance is relatively similar if not exactly the same as last year and most of the other ones the big difference is in those housing numbers that went up 150 to 400 depending on the

I was surprised to see uh the Netflix one and a Hulu that is only $13 a month I think they're certainly increasing their pricing on people and that might be tough on some but And certainly the the basic cables or basic internets. I don't know how you can get basic internet for $40. I think they may need to upgrade some of their other numbers. Those are the ones that were Comcast has a program have an actual program on that and CHS works with them. These are the numbers that came directly from them and puts us exactly in line with dairy for these other kind of the the incidentals. And well, you know, we don't need to necessarily be in in line with the on everything, but on this one, a lot of the population does move back and forth between the two. Gotcha.

So, thank you. Any other questions? Uh, one thing I just wanted to point out is that Western Rockingham County HUD, which we fall into, uh, we are the second highest on the list, and the highest is Boston, Cambridge, Quincy, Mass. So if you're looking at a threebedroom, it's 3526 there. We are 3069. We are the next highest. So it's just interesting to see for property values and and rental uh values that our part of the state is seeing the highest um out of anywhere.

So it's just an interesting piece to take into effect. Anything else? The council. Mr. Mr. Chair, I'll move that the Londoner Town Council be hereby approves resolution 2026-03, the revision of the general assistance guidelines and appendix A, allowable levels of assistance payments for 2026 as presented. Have a motion from Dan. Second, second from Ted. All those in favor say I. Any opposed? Chair votes in the affirmative. 5 Z. Thank you. Up next, we have a first reading of the PUD. Miss Karen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, just as a reminder, this is the first reading for the planned unit development ordinance. That's uh Lunderez zoning ordinance section 5.2. So, back in July, you'll recall that the direction of the council was to amend uh this portion of our zoning ordinance. So staff along with the planning board took a comprehensive review of the existing ordinance also used um guidance from the American Planning Association uh applicable state laws uh and then comparable ordinances from our peer communities. We've incorporated that into the draft that's before you. Uh the planning board held three work sessions along with a public hearing. Um, so I I think it's fair to say that a lot of time and effort was spent by staff and the board on this to get it to you where it uh where it is today. Uh, and that vote from the planning board to move it to you was done on March 23rd. And the intent behind that was to get it in front of you, get your feedback, and then hopefully schedule a public hearing. Just a note, I I have not scheduled a hearing for this yet. Um, I'm not sure if you have additional feedback that may or may not need to be incorporated. Um, so we would need time to do that if you do, but that would be the next step.

Councelor Faber, wanted to give you some feedback.

Yeah, I do have one thing. Um, after pouring over this, and I know we poured over it for months on the planning board, and I think we really vetted it, but I do see one thing that I think we should change in here. So, it's on page six under under uh part C ownership. So it says uh PUD shall be unified ownership at the time of application where multiple ownership exists subject to binding agreement. I think we should take out the part where it says shall be under unified ownership at the time where multiple ownerships ex exists because I think this should be subject to everybody multiple owners or not. We should have a development agreement paired with a PUD just because you're a single owner I don't think you should get out of having a development agreement. So that would be my suggested change. So, just so I got you straight. So, you you would like to change the part where it states that if they're not under um one ownership, irregardless of ownership, you

regardless of ownership, they are subject to a development agreement. Got it. So, this the way it reads right now, if you're a single owner, you do not have to have a development agreement. And I think we shouldn't be doing that. That's not restrictive enough. Okay. Anybody else want to add? That'd be great. I have four pages minimal. I didn't get into the details. These are the 11 fixes with um I I don't know if you want to go through all of this tonight. Um do I want to get it out there so that Miss Karen who's worked very hard on this, she can take all of our feedback and I I did give it to the planning board. I went to that meeting website too. Yeah. Just could I just just so I I

sent the council and it's on the website for those who may not know the summary document that was given to the planning board that outlines the changes. The draft meeting minutes from the 23rd which have what I believe councelor Paul's referring to for her comments as well as comments that were received from other members of the public at that hearing appended to those minutes. Um and then obviously our the current ordinance that we're amending. So what what you're gonna present she's already seen is Yeah, it would I brought it to the the planning board.

I brought it up. I sent it to all of them. Um Kelly, I had it put into the to the minutes. Um I thought you guys would have read it. Um I don't know if you want to go through it. There is a lot and I'm not exactly sure how to address these changes or at least a discussion on them each one. Why don't you go through the the ones you feel are important and well they I they're all important to me. Um that's why I I brought them here. Um so it says one um I to to to close um a couple of the loops that I found uh under the draft language. It says partials separated by a road. Where are you talking about? Just so I can follow you.

This is the problem. Okay, just so I can hold on. That's why I had hoped that you guys would have looked at it. Um, I've read through it. Number one. I should have brought I read through I just want the public to understand. Yeah, it's all I I just wanted Yeah. So, you didn't think any of these were worthwhile corrections? I I think and and we we talked about it when I was on the planning board and we talked about it with the planning board because we discussed th those changes then and we decided not to make them. I think we've we've heavily vetted this document all the way throughout. Um and so I didn't think that we

at this point in time it any further.

I really disagree um especially on the establishment of the open space should be at least um you know 40%. Um I also disagree with um the density stuff. I disagree with water and groundwater protection. Um I I wanted to change on like on traffic mitigation. Um it says not optional. Transfer uh transportation improvements may be required. That's 5.2.9. Um I wanted it to fix to say shall be required not may. It should be shall they should have to do a traffic mediation. Um should be mandatory. Um and and and you know I think that the uh the building requirements things here's one here strengthen uh phrasing requirements the draft says a substantial portion of the commercial must be built first.

That should be changed. Um, it should, Mr. Chair, no more than 25% of the rental unit at a public hearing. Okay. I was just giving her the leeway to uh open it up. Says I I I just think that if all of you don't mind, I mean, I'll email it to all of you. Do not respond to the email. You can look at it. Okay.

It's a lot easier to do it on your own. But I really think that like you know no more than 25% of the rental units um should be done before you know at least 40% of the commercial is built so that we have a better balance on these things um and and and what were the the teeth to it you know failure to meet the ph the ph um phasing requirements what what is going to happen what would we do and I think that could be tighter I think there's a lot of loopholes And I know they wanted to keep it loosey goosey, but in my mind, if this document document is very tight and solid, not so tight that it's going to open us up to lawsuits, but tight so that the developer can look at it and say, "Okay, I can build a chair. These are the requirements around the chair,

and there's so many different ways to build a chair, three feet high, 20 feet wide." So, they don't have to keep going back and forth to their engineers. that costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. If they have a better understanding of what we're looking for in this PUD and how we want it to function, being more specific and more clear, then that shortens the whole building time. There's less going back, less cost to them. Okay?

And we're happy, they're happy, and it's moving through quicker. That was my my thought about this. I know everybody says we don't want to be too tight and too But you have to, you know, you can't just say you can build this or that. No. And I know there are a lot of regs, but this is a very specific thing and we're giving a lot of lenience because they're doing such high density. It really should be at the benefit of both the taxpayer and the builder and I think they would appreciate it as well. I talked to a couple Deville. So I read what you sent if you want to send it to the entire council. We can look it over and then we can discuss the next meeting. And Dan, you had a quick question, too.

Oh, I was just asking if we could get a copy of this redlinined as far as what the changes. So, my understanding was this document was completely rewritten. Okay. And that's why it's not a redline document, but I don't want to speak for you. Yeah, this question's come up quite a bit. So, there is no red line. I literally started from a blank page because as I tried to do that, it was extremely confusing even for me as the person, okay, writing it because it was quite the overhaul. Um, but that summary document that's dated from October, I believe, goes section by section as to what um was changed in each of those sections. Thank you, Kelly. John,

you had a quick question. Um, so no, I just wanted to state so, um, I'd also recommend that besides looking through these, you look through the planning board because we did discuss some of these things here. And I think Deb, some of those things can be addressed within the development agreement too as well. So that's not that's not prohibiting some of these things from being I'm not sure on that. All right. So we do not um see we do not need to make Mr. Chair if I please go ahead. So if you're done discussing just what I need from you is confirmation of a public hearing. Absolutely. And the next available would be May 4th.

Okay. So I'll notice that accordingly. That would be great. Okay. So we're going to address her concerns. Yep. She's going to email it out to us and then we'll email it next meeting. One more point. We have the public comment. We make changes or not. Yep. Then do we vote on it or does it have to go back to planning? They look at what we did and they vote on it. Where is the final vote? If we vote to adopt it, then that's the final vote. It final. It only goes back to planning if we send it back to planning.

Just two, if I may, just two things on that. So you have the final vote. if it is a significant substantial change to what was legally noticed because in the in the instance where we have a zoning amendment a zoning change it has to be noticed a very a particular way. So if it's substantive then we should renotice it updated with the changes and then have another hearing so there's opportunity to for the public to review it and then come to that. Okay. Thank you.

And Kelly, I just want to make sure if there's changes that people may want to see or not, they may need to go back to your staff and with legal to make sure that they're actually legal changes that can be done. Correct. Yeah. Again, just to the point about how significant the changes are. That may be needed um if it's, you know, kind of little bit of word smithing, we can do that um in real time, but yeah. So, we'd be looking at moving this to the May 4th meeting. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Perfect. Just to be clear, so we were we're making one change under the definition of ownership. So, that change is going to be put in the draft that goes before the public hearing. That's the only change. Correct. All right. Is everyone fine with that change?

But then we still get an opportunity. Oh, yeah. We get Yeah. All right. You have something else there. Are you good? I'm just confused because if you're going to make changes and you've already noticed it now, how does that affect everything? So, I haven't I didn't I didn't notice it for a hearing for this exact reason because I I wasn't sure if you were going to have changes this evening that would require that. But if we're meeting next the next meeting, Mr. Chair, if we're meeting at the next meeting and we're going to discuss councelor Paul's changes that she wants to do, is that going to impact your notice? Yes. Not it will. Yes. Not I mean if you go

if you formally accept her changes and frankly we should be I will have to discussing those changes at the public hearing. We shouldn't be discussing them in the first hearing. There's a process.

If you want to make changes, now is the time to do it. the draft that goes before the people out there who are going to make comment know what it is they're going to comment on. So if you want to make changes, you should do that now. That doesn't preclude you at the public hearing. Once you hear public comment to make more changes, go back out again, rehear it, and then people will be able to make comment on those written changes. That is how the process goes. Because as Kelly indicated, if you go and you go to public hearing, you make substantial changes, people should be have the opportunity to come back and comment on it. and that'll avoid legal issues later on in the process.

Mr. Chair, can I suggest that um we hold off on posting the notice for public hearing until after we have our next meeting to see if we make any changes. So that way there when they notice the hearing, we have the correct information. If we did that, Miss Karen, would we push it off to the TW to the 18th meeting or could we still do it on the 4th?

So, you're you would be looking to have another discussion on April 20th. Uh, I would still Yeah, I would still wait. It would have to push to the 18th based on the timing of when I'd have to get legal out and of course depending on what you do for changes if any. So yes, next discussion April 20 and then the hearing tenative for May 18th cuz Sean suggested a change, but we didn't vote on a change or all agree on it. So is there anyone that disagrees with it?

I No, I'm not saying I disagree with it, Sean. I'm just saying there could be other changes, too, you know. Yeah, I just thought that was quick and simple. That's the reason I brought that up. Oh, I agree with it. I'm not saying it's it's not a good thing. I had brought that up at the planning board meeting about the agreements. Okay. So, the direction we're going to give, I'm looking at the board here. We want to have her wait to post the public hearing. I would until see Let's see what happens next week. Next meeting. Doesn't hurt. All right. One more.

We fine with that as a board. So, just to be super clear, I'm making the change to councelor Favor's. Yes. Yes. You consent on that? Yes. And then we're So, I'm not going to notice as a hearing. April 20 will be another discussion and I'll wait to see what you all decide from there. Tenative public hearing on May 18th. Sounds good. Yes. And you do all have what councelor Paul's referring to for her comments and and I can provide a red line if you guys all want it. I'm good. I read it. I'm all set. But I I red line. Okay. Do you want the red line?

Yeah. Okay. All right. Up next, we have discussion regarding the addressing of complaints conducting investigations of town counselors. Does anybody have any comments on the current procedure? I sent it my Yeah.

to you. Um, I will start off by saying that I I think when it relates to counselors and elected officials, the anonymous process has I think not gone well. It's been um it's cost the town money and prior to this we didn't have this policy and we all got along just fine without it. So, I don't know how you guys feel about when it comes to counselors, elected officials. Um, it's it doesn't seem like the process is working. It's it seems like it's causing it's being used as a political weapon. It seems like in my opinion,

I you're you're right. It is being used as a political weapon. And to me, I think like we discussed last time, you can't put your name to it. you can't provide, you know, documentations and backup on it. Um, I think it's pretty clear. Thank you. We got the, uh, complaint and move on. But, uh, I think that I don't know if you looked at what I sent you.

Um, and you shared it. I didn't want to take that parallel away from you. Um, make sure that you had it to disseminate. Um, there is one spot in here that I was wrong on. Um, but I think it kind of puts parameters on things by saying, you know, what Dan just said, if you can post anonymous and you have documentation, which you can provide, and that the do that the complaint is actually a violation of the ethics andor charter, then that moves to another level. If it's just like we heard earlier, if it's just because I said the Lord's name in vain, um, which doesn't violate our code of ethics, may not people might not like it, but it it's not anything that would be moved forward or warrant an investigation. So, it would at least the people who put in the complaints would get an acknowledgement. I I think I put in here we acknowledge their complaint and say that it is uh invalid. and provide a reason. It's really short and sweet. It's just a standard response and but if there is something that was significant and needed to be taken to another level, then you move it on to the next levels. I think the reason this doesn't work is because it doesn't because of the polit political atmosphere and because we have no process and no parameters around it saying this is what it is. um is why um but we do want to keep the documents and everything as transparent as possible. Um so I I don't Dan, you didn't get the but here you go. If you want it, you can pass it down to Sean and Ted.

Did you guys get it? I just sent it to Ron because he's the chair and we were supposed to send in our little paragraphs and so I did my homework teacher and um it wasn't perfect though. There's one section in there that that is incorrect. Um but it's a starting point I think and if you want you can put it out with the do whatever you want with it.

I'll just speak for myself. I think that prior to this program being in isiti initiated, if people had an issue with an elected person, they would bring it up and discuss it. And I think it's I think it's become a weapon. And I don't know if I don't know if it's the right thing to do for us um moving forward. It's it just seems like it's costing us a lot of legal money. And it's costing us legal money because we have no rules around it. Mhm. Now, we only talking council. We're talking about We're only talking about council. Council Holland controls the administrative side. We're talking about elected officials.

How about people on boards? Because we had a complaint against somebody on the uh planning board. I would say the boards would also be included. I guess I'm talking Yeah. Yes. Oh, you guys would think so. The boards would the boards would be included in what we're discussing for Yes. I think so because we would have you know if we would be appointing them so I think yeah yeah elected appointed council

I don't my personal feeling is that we've had complaints made against people and people have been eager to investigate it against certain people then not against other people I guess I'm torn between I I think it's a good thing to have if it was used right if it was used correctly.

All right. It it I look at the recent one against council kums. I mean to me that that's ridiculous you know to say that you know it's an ethics issue or whatever it was. Um, but I think you need something in place but not anonymous where people can ruin people's reputations and then it goes, you know, I think if something's going to be submitted, there also has to be evidence and documentation of what it actually was and

more substantive and more background and especially you know the complaints against councelor Faber that were you know at as they were on the surface looked like hearsay and or where was the substance I don't know you know if you're going to provide something as potentially damning against councelor favor and there is no real evidence I don't know how we can act on that when It's an anonymous complaint and you chose not to be reached back out to. So, we don't know anything further than that situation.

I think we also So, it's not like when this all suddenly popped up last year, we had a brand new way of addressing things. We didn't. We We have had the ability under the charter as a council to open up investigations into things or if things came up, people had ways to submit them. Part of the problem is this gets chocked into a thing and you know it, you know what? If somebody submitted to the anonymous line, you know, some some citizen Joe Smith in the public did some horrific thing. Is that going to be part of the permanent record to 91A forever and then Mr. Joe Smith and the public all of a sudden bring suit against the town because we've gathered and and kept a record of that and it it's turned into if it's dealing with the people in town hall, I don't think it matters because I mean that's that's his purview that's that's not for us to decide. But I think when it has to anyone outside of that which is you know elected appointed officials, if there's someone who's not even related to the the town hall at all, we shouldn't be collecting documents on that. Um, I just this has been used as a weapon and I think we've had a process before that worked and in this last year nothing sub substantive has surfaced. We've just spent a lot of money.

I can tell you Sean, my process has always been when I wasn't on the board, I was out there, I'd come up and I'd address the board and I'd say, you know, absolutely. And I remember asking, you know, counselors to step down or whatever if I had to. Yeah. Um, but that was that's the way I did it. Not everybody wants to stand up there and and say something like that. Some people are afraid of, you know, retribution. So, yeah. I I don't know. I I'm I'm I still think they have the ability to contact us, let us know stuff. We can we can look into things if we so choose as a council. But it the way it is now, it's a weapon. But I think again I'm going to be the Oh,

please the voice of the other side. I'm the pro and con. So I understand exactly what you guys are saying and as someone who's had probably the most complaints here um that were nothing. Um that's beside the point. Um I think that we have no way really to hold people accountable and that the answer would be take us to court. That's what they used to say to people at the council when I would tell somebody they were in violation and they were in violation.

The answer was then take us to court. Now at least that person who stands up there and is angried um maybe once they learn that anonymous and non cases are going to go nowhere and won't cost us a dime. But if they do say something that is actually and they do have documents, it does hold us to a higher standard. It holds us to more transparency. It holds us to a better ethical um path which I think is very very important. I'm a person with very very strong principles. um sad to say. Um and that puts me in a in in a place where you want to constantly do the right thing and the right thing is the people should be able to do something. We don't when I remember when councelor Farber and councelor O'Keeffe and me and Albaro all put together the ethics code. We didn't have an ethics code. We got push back from the council. It's going to be a witch hunt. It's going to be this. It's going to be that. And it was nothing. I wanted to take it a step further like other towns and actually have an an ethics board that would review all of these things, you know, that were appointed or elected, however you wanted to do it, that actually were able to look at these things and hold people accountable. Because if you're going to sit here and represent people, you want to be held to a a good standard and and and you want to be transparent and you want to say, you know what, if I'm making a mistake, I want to know. That's me. But you guys do what you want. I gave my two cents.

I just want to add something on my my issue. Okay. When my issue came up, somebody came up to me and said, "Oh, gez, I wasn't aware of that." Somebody else said, "Oh, I already knew about that." It's like, so now it's political. You know, it was a political political weapon that was used against me. um where another complaint came in which wasn't uh divulged but I'm going to divulge it that I shouldn't participate in uh any budget hearing or vote on anything on the budget because of my investigation. So I I look at that and I go to me that was very political. I I you know somebody knew about it. It was all stage for certain reasons. So, and yet I I understand. I mean, I sit up here and I go, I got nothing to hide. You can throw all the dots you want at me all you want. All right? I was on, you know, a cop for 28 years and people threw darts at me back then. So, you know, bring it on. I mean, you can go on your email and, you know, um your Facebook and attack me. I could care less. Um, I know what I stand for and I believe what I am doing is right. So, um, anonymous complaints. I don't know where to go with this. I I I'm torn because I, you know, I know it's been used as a weapon. It's very clear that that going on, but yet I don't want to discourage if something is legit out there cuz somebody did something wrong.

There's other avenues to make your complaint like like what though Sean I mean Ron sorry whatever you can address it directly with the town manager. You can address it directly with the chair whoever you feel comfortable addressing it to. But you have to understand the political environment in this community is so toxic that if you come out and you say, you know, counselor, whatever, you know, uh, and there's people out there, they're going to go on Facebook and start slamming you or whatever. So, I guess that's my concern also. But I I also

I understand Sean what you're saying. All right. But if if for some reason somebody files a complaint and we ignore it and it comes down the road that yeah, this was legit, you know, we didn't look into it. Shame on us for not doing something, you know. I mean,

and that still can happen and it it did it could have happened before all of this. Then I will say like I agree with you and I mean let's be transparent with the public. We've all attacked each other. We're not fooling anybody if we think we're all all getting along. Um I have never up until this point even mentioned the complaint against you ever up here. Glenn mentioned it tonight because I think honestly we all up here got to hold ourselves to a better standard than that to dre that up. I think it would be wrong to drag that up. I absolutely and I I never never mention it because I don't think it's it's a good thing to throw out there. It bothers me that that's out there on a a public record that someone can get at.

Sure. Because we shouldn't do that. Anybody else who wants to run for office, this is what they have to see. This is what you have to go through. This is what you just constant. Anyone can just barrage that. I think we all can be better than that. But I' I'd hope we all can. But I look at the complaint against, you know, council Kums and the town manager addressed that. Came in, he looked at it, goes, "Yeah, there's nothing there. Be done with it." Okay. And uh that's it. You know, and maybe gave clarification to some people that were thinking it, right?

And now they know that that's incorrect way to think, right? He didn't violate the charter. He didn't vi do anything wrong. I mean, he brought up something. We all bring up things and we don't all agree on it. So,

so Dan, no matter what we decide tonight, one side is going to take it the wrong way and they're going to if if you vote in favor of this tonight, they're going to say, "Oh, you're hiding stuff." If we vote against it tonight, you're this. So, we're really like I'm just saying before we had this program, we didn't have this weapon that people are using against the council. Okay. And we got along okay. When people had issues, they brought it up and we fixed it and we we addressed it. If we keep this policy going, it's gonna I think it's going to further the weapon is going to be used more and more and more and it's just going to enhance people to to bring up things.

Can we put some parameters, some guidelines on what to follow? Complaint comes in, town manager looks at it like he did with Council Combmes. Looks at it, says, "Yep, he didn't violate it." da da da addresses it right here in public and says you know complaint came in he did not violate it the charter and and that so to me I think that's being pretty transparent with the public and you know to be honest the number that and when you think about 27,000 28,000 people in this town that could possibly put in a complaint

to have what two three for me whatever two for you you know that's nothing. And and and I wouldn't doubt if half of them are all the same person. And no, I'm serious. I have no idea. But when you think about it in the grand scheme of things, you're talking about a less of a that's Ted's good at the number of things. It's less of a percent of a percent of a percent thing.

It really is. And I mean, I could see if we were getting like a hundred complaints a day, you know, each one of us, then I'd say, you got a real problem. Shut this baby down because it's ridiculous. This is one person, maybe two or three that are just like you said, weaponizing it. And I think if they get nothing, it's like a child. If they get nothing, their tantrums over and they move on because it's not even going to be worth their energy. And then as we fix the policy, one last thing as we as you tabled those things, but they're coming back

and we got a schedule for all of them. One of them was ethics. is we tighten our ethics policies, we put it out there. And I think if the community sees us moving in a positive direction, all of that stuff goes away in my mind. And I think that's about in this political environment that we're in, Deb, I don't think it's going to go away. I think that people are going to like like I just said with this issue tonight, no matter how you vote on this, someone is going to say you're wrong. Okay. So, so there's many people that have contacted me and said, "Hey, this is this is people are weaponizing this. We didn't have this prior. we should we shouldn't continue this policy and other people said like you're saying like hey we should have this policy should be in place no matter what we vote tonight someone's going to be upset with us

so it's just a matter of do we want to continue a policy that I guess is in my opinion is being weaponized we want that to continue um so I can tell you that probably I'll speak I'll let you guys speak

I guess we're talking about how many people might be involved in this and I could probably say I can count them all. The amount of people that probably filing these complaints, I can count on one hand. No, I'll use this hand because it's probably less. All right, just to lighten up the the room a little bit. But um I my recommendation, this is what I'd like to see, is that we set the guidelines on how these are going to be done. And revisit this in six months, six months or four months, whatever, and say maybe this was maybe this isn't working.

And then you get rid of it. At least you then you satisfy both. You tried it with parameters. Yeah. It worked. It didn't work. Okay. Then nobody can come back to you, Ron, because you did the right thing. You know what I mean? You tried it. Just a suggestion. No, it's you tried to fix it. Put all the parameters around it. It doesn't work. Six months. You just say, "We tried to fix it. We tried to be transparent. Obviously, the abusers are still there. Shut it down." That's not a lot to ask. I just don't see the advantage in what versus what we had before because we didn't really Do you have anything Ted to add or you could

No, I mean I think unless there's going to be anything substantial to a complaint with real evidence, it's kind of hard to take a anonymous complaint serious. And at that point, if not, it's just a uh I as I view it, a Facebook complaint that's unsubstantiated uh conspiracy theory. I've made my opinion clear. What do we want to do? I guess I'll What we want to do is do I'd like to see us put a policy together. We have a policy now. It doesn't work. That's the problem we have. I think

I'll make a motion to go back to the way it was before this last year before January. We we can go things things can come in via regular email. Everything else we go, you know, we can take it to the chair. We can as a council decide to investigate not to investigate. Those are all provisions within our charter. I think we ended up with a lot of duplication. So, I guess I will say that we go back to how we how we were, you know, March of last year. We we go back to the go back to that and that policy on on how things were working because you know you can say we can try it for 6 months more. We tried it for a year and it's been an absolute disaster that resulted in nothing but wasted money and so that that's my motion.

Wait a minute. Go ahead.

So t Sean just to what you were just saying. So what if we run into the situation that I verbalized right after public comment where one person gets the information doesn't share it with anyone. Then what happens now? Somebody put in a complaint that the complaint fell on deaf ears and maybe it was a legitimate complaint. We'd never know. Now what happens? You've totally protected people. If you're in my click, I'm not going to tell on you, but I'll protect you and I'll put yours out there and you have no way of controlling any of this on the public. Do you know what I'm saying? So, all right, just somebody doesn't like Ron, right? I'm the chair of the council. I get it. I say, h, you know, I like Ron. I'm not going to put that complaint out there, even though it's a legitimate complaint. Or I can say, h, here's a complaint against Dan. Dan's been nasty to me the last couple of meetings.

I'm going to put that one out there. And see, who's going to control it? How is it going to work? There was no Yeah, there was a mechanism, but it wasn't transparent and it wasn't out there and fair and balanced. It was one-sided and it was controlled by the masses. So, that that happened. And yeah, we did put this out for a year, Sean. And at the very beginning, what did I say? It needed parameters around it. It needed rules and restrictions on how it was going to work. And we all said, "Eh, we don't need it. We'll just put it out there." And yeah, we did waste a lot of money. But if we had taken the time the first time it came out, talked it through like a board like we're doing right now, we would have come up with the ideas, we would have put it in place and guaranteed you we wouldn't have spent this money, this wouldn't have happened, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think if I remember correctly, at that first meeting, you were against it. I don't I said I don't like anonymous without rules around it because it's just a weapon and I knew that from the getgo. I mean, Mr. Chair, please. Even at frustrating even when we started last year, you know, we had a citizen come forward and make make complaints against, you know, councelor Paul and Tom spent a lot of money to investigate that and we looked at it. I said it at the time there's nothing there.

We can but you know we decide you know people decided to yep let's investigate it. So I went along with it came back they were all unfounded and it cost the town a lot of money and that was before. So I I think I think we need to really take a look at it and say is it really legitimate or isn't it? If it's not, you know, town manager can address these things and just say, "We looked into it. There's nothing there." But that's my opinion. Your opinion has changed. What? You started off being a No, I I think that

we have to have we have to do it. We have to do it for everybody and do it fairly. Okay. So, if a complaint comes in, regardless of who it is, it has to be addressed, okay? And say, "We got anonymous complaint, it was looked into, nothing there, you know, and that doesn't cost anything." And if that person that filed that complaint is not happy with that those results, please come forward and speak to the town manager and um you know if you have anything substantial evidence to support your

All right, we have a motion on the floor from uh Sean. Is there a second to move back to what we were doing before? Is that what that was? Yep. The motion on the floor was to go back to what we were doing prior to this being initiated for elected officials and appointed officials. I'll second that notion. All right. I have a motion from Sean and a second from Ted. All those in favor say I. Before you do that, you're going back to what policy because you don't have one. We're going back to the the charter. So, so the way the way it was before was if there was a complaint, it was given to the town manager. It was given to the chair

as outlined in the charter. That's not actually in the charter that says that. So, that's why that's why I'm asking if you're going to vote on something, I need to know what everybody else needs to know what we're actually doing because we don't have a previous policy. We don't have an existing policy. We have no policy. So, it's it just this creates a circle that goes nowhere. We we have a a system that takes complaints that is on the website that we can remove. Say that again. We have a system that is on the website that takes complaints that can be for town for the people under your Absolutely. We don't we don't touch whatever you want to do. You do. It just doesn't affect elected officials, appointed officials

or member like no one nodding your employee just like members.

So I get that. So the thing is if a complaint comes in people should know what the complaint process is for a counselor or one of those appointed officials. We don't have a policy that talks about that anywhere other than if I get them. I forward from the council. So if we're going to continue to do that then things will stay the same because right now all I'm doing is I'm getting those and I'm sending them to you and then you're telling me what to do or not. So I just need to understand what we're voting on here because we need to know how we're going to implement that. So maybe we alter the motion and just, you know, we just take away the website piece because I think before before the website came into place and these anonymous complaints happened, we had a process where complaints were they they had an avenue to go to and now and they weren't weaponized like they are now.

No, I I get it. I believe I can see that's that's my issue is so maybe if the motion is just to take away the box on the check mark on the website for now. Yeah. And then we move on from there with the strategic plan. And maybe that part of the part of your strategic plan that's clear direction is what we're going to do. Maybe part of your strategic plan is that we develop a future plan for this and we just take away the weaponization of it currently. No, that that's good because then if we take that off, then there's no means by which to do that. So that's fine. That's clear direction. And and then we can work out a a future policy with the strategic plan to make it correct so that it's not weaponized. And in the interim, if I get a a named complaint and I'm just going to forward to the council, which would be the normal practice, even though it's not written in a policy any place, I'm good with that. I'll just forward that to the whole council.

Yep. I want to make sure this is we get this clear in the recording. I'm going to send it to the whole council and then you folks will act on as you deem appropriate as you've done in the past. Do you want to alter your motion? Yeah, I'll alter it so we remove it from the website. And Teddy, you still good with that second? I will I'll be good with that second. Okay. Um, I have a motion from Sean and a second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Opposed. Chair the affirmative. Let the record show that Dan and Deb voted no. We'll take care of that tomorrow actually. Thank you.

Thank you Elsa for the suggestion and clarification. Uh up next under old business we have discussed and schedule a public hearing for adopting of the town council rules of order. Yes. So Mr. Chair, if the council would like to continue with the same rules of order that you approved last year, all we need is a motion to adopt and a second. If you would like to make changes to the rules of order, you we would need a motion to schedule a public hearing. Um, preferably for the next one. Yeah. Want to hand that down to Ron? We did that last week.

You didn't actually adopt them last week, unfortunately. We took a vote, didn't you? No, you did not. There was you you adopted the public comment rules but not the rules of order which are part of the municipal code and the charter requires that you adopt every year. Okay. So Deb, what you need this? Oh, you just just hand it to me. I just want to see what what specifically would you like to change? I thought I made it pretty simple. I don't know. Okay. Do you need me to show you?

Yeah. You want to just show for the public? You want to just here you want to just say it out loud for public so everyone can hear you here.

It's kind of confusing even for them. I I just thought that we should add that um all counselors shall use the um official town accounts for town business. They should all use their emails because sometimes I get emails and they're too like for the paper and they come through the town council one should not be used for that. I also get things from the paper email that's supposed to be for the town council. And I think that all of it, all emails that are generated by us for town business should go through the town email. And a it's simpler for 91A. They don't have to ask for anything else. Thought that was already happening.

Yeah, I already do that. Well, you do it, but it's not it's not on here. We don't just to avoid a hearing. I guess I'll just make a motion to adopt the rules of order. I thought we did it last meeting. So, Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak on order.

Uh I want to address the rules of order because uh the rules of order were clearly violated on March 16th at the council meeting. Uh page one B3 committees. The council will meet at the organizational meeting and select the committees they serve on. This was not done. Council Faber said to you, you have to make the committee assignments we agreed to. Page two, C5, town manager. Annually, the town council is responsible for evaluating the job performance of the town manager. It is the chair's responsibility to coordinate the evaluation, including obtaining input from other members of the council. The council shall complete the evaluation document during the budgetary process. So when are we going to do this?

So to answer your question, okay. Yeah. Hold on. The town we voted to put a process in place that the town manager is going to do a 360 evaluation. Am I speaking correctly? We're trying to So we are we are trying to do that. That is something we are doing. Okay. Uh the role of the chair page five number six conduct of meetings motions all matters duly seconded will be subject to debate and discussion. I would ask that after there is a second on all items you ask if there is any discussion because we have had things voted on without any discussion.

You always have the ability to discuss it. Sometimes it's motion made, second vote. All right. And you can say and you have said I do have some I have some that's why I'm bringing that up. Since you're specifically mentioning the March 16th meeting, I just want to read from section six conduct of meetings section B motion to table. The motion to table is not debatable. Okay. So,

so number 11, request for information. Any information provided to any individual counselor shall be provided to the rest of the council. We don't we don't all get it. Uh page eight, appointments to boards and commissions. The chair shall request from members their choices of committees, councils and commissions they wish to serve on as a council layers on. So that wasn't done. It was just here you go, here's your appointments. uh councelor Paul got removed from planning board alternate had no clue. So my other issue is when I I hear a councelor state we and I know that I have not been part of the discussion and knowing nothing about it. I would ask the people of state who those individuals are and not make it sound like everyone on the council is aware or has knowledge of something. So, those are my issues with the uh rules of order. If we're going to have rules of order, we need to follow them. We didn't follow them at the last on March 16th with the appointments of committee members or anything like that. Um I served my first year, you know, last year and I picked certain committees and I think it'd be interesting to serve on different committees, not be on the same committee for three years. Um, I mean, I know we have Council Faber on the planning board. This is going to be his third year. I remember when the it was always the newer guy. The new guy got thrown on the planning board because it's long meetings and it was like time to, you know, it's kind of a initiation for you.

Regardless of the policy, per the charter, the chair picks the appointments. Um, wow. Charter supersedes disposal. And Dan, just because I know I know you What was that in the charter? What? What section? Oh, I'm gonna pull it up. I don't have it. Memorize the top of my head. I do know what's in appointment of boards and commissions. You didn't read this part. It says the chair shall distribute to the council all choices and set a meeting date when the appointments will be made. Yeah. So, so I just decided that everyone seemed happy with their appointments. We're going to keep them the same. I was decided to change the the appointment for councelor Paul because it seemed like it wasn't working in the best interest of the council. Okay. Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Dan, go ahead.

Go ahead. Are you saying that it was not working in the best interest of the council that I wasn't an alternate member on the planning board? Please specify what you are saying. I take that as a rude insult. Deb is not offensive. I just think it is offensive. What did I do in the council? That would be You didn't do anything. You just said I did. No, I did not. Deb, I I said hello. I said I think that the the relationship that the two of you have is we don't interact on the planning board. Sean, stop huffing and puffing. Please, Ron. You offensive to me. This is It is offensive. That's I think we're going off into the weeds again.

Sean, you don't run the board. Stop whispering and telling Ron what to do. And I was not too offensive to you. Stop it. Be a big boy. Just both of you. No, stop. It was It was the way you said it. So Sean and I don't get along. That's fine. Well, Deb, I apologize to him on a if you took it offensively. It was not to be offensive. It was not my intention. It was deeply offensive. You're saying I was inadequate. I did not say that. You put those words in my mouth. I did not say that. You did by saying what you said. Deb, I I'm serious, Ron. What you said was totally inappropriate. apologize to Sean was there all the time. What was it twice that I had to show up? Please. I apologize.

You took it away from me because you wanted to show your power towards me and then give it to Ted. Definitely like Mr. Chair, I just want to respond to your comment to me that um you never reached out to me and said, "Dan, are you okay with your appointments uh your committees? Do you want anything different? any interest in doing something different. I never got that. It was just here you go. I would have liked to go on something different. You never spoke any interest. You never you never spoke up. You never Well, I thought we were going to discuss it and we never discussed it. So, never asked. Never discussed. All right.

Under two officials additional shield should you should read these. Um the the chair shall apply all rules consistently and shall not selectively enforce rules of procedure. Um I believe that I'm not changing but adding rules that should be applied. Um forget it. You know what? I'm done. I'm leaving. You know what? Because I don't need to be disrespected. I don't need your attitude, Ron. That I'm sorry. I I ran for office. I'm doing. Deb, would you please sit? I didn't offend you in any way. Please sit. I'm getting offended right there. All right, Deb, please. Please, what?

Please sit. We're all one. We all have the same power. And yet, we are being treated worse than children. Okay. You don't have the ultimate power. You are not the god. You are not the king. You should remove your crown. I do not want to be king. You are acting like it, Dan. You do this. You do this. You do that. I'm leaving. If I'm not going to be heard AND RESPECTED, I DON'T NEED to be here. No. Okay. All right. Okay. Deb, if I in any way offended you, I apologize. It was not my intention. So, I just want you to know that on the record. So, it it is on the record that you were insulting and crude. Okay.

Shame on you. I thought you were a better man than that. Better man. Okay. I I'm sorry. All right, I'll make a motion to approve the rules. I have a motion from Sean. I'll second the I'll second from Ted. All those in favor of keeping the rules the same say I. I. Any opposed? Opposed. Chair votes the affirmative recommen.

Okay. Three, two, uh, Dan and De voted no. Up next, approval of consent items. There's a couple issues that we wanted to address in the consent items. Um, the the Who's the Wii? The audience would like to know who the Wii is. Ron

the we would be me I guess me is that I would like to address I guess I trying to use it in being selected I'll use the correct pronoun the that I would like to address is the assistance petitions that passed on the warrant article are part of the consent items the voters voted to approve these items however each of us on here may have a different opinion so I just want you to know that this is being approved by the voters on the warrant article and that we up here may have a difference of opinion but it is going um as one unit as one body Mr. Chair on that. I have a question. Right.

Because it asked for five signatures. Are we required to sign it if we don't agree with it? That is a question that do you know sir if we Yes. You can't make somebody sign something if they choose not to do so. Uh it'll go through whether you sign it or not. I will send it for per the direction of the voters to our elected officials as was indicated by the Warren article. Okay. Thank you. So with that, I will accept them. I have something on the consent agenda. Please go ahead. On the consent agenda in the council meeting minutes. Yep.

If you go to line 145 when we're discussing the contract for the town, the tax collector. Yep. Uh it says the motion was carried 50. Uh, I don't believe Council Paul voted on this and I don't I I know I didn't vote for the first one. So So are you amending your vote or Councelor Paul's vote?

I don't think she voted on it. It says 5-0. You You did state after the vote. I do remember you said that this was 50-0 and no one spoke up to correct that statement. Can I suggest that in the future because this is very confusing when we don't know who's voting what that we do a roll call vote exactly according to the charter which we should have been doing all along. You read the charter, right? You guys both know it. tell me how to do it. I did uh complaint. Anyway, I I just think that we should do a roll call vote. That way there doesn't complicate anything.

We should do a roll call vote. I think it just takes extra time. I think we can we can all be, you know, adults here and actually vote. And if you if you you announce the vote afterwards, if you you listen and you disagree with you don't think your vote was corrected accurately, correct it for the record. So tonight I I made it clear each vote was very clear who voted no. Well, I'm trying to make it easier for the girl the lady who does our minutes. Apparently it's been a problem. So that's why he's clear. That's why I was trying tonight. I tried to make sure every vote was accounted for. Okay. I'm just telling you it's an issue. But when are the 33 uh the March 30th minutes coming out? Cuz these are not in here. I would say the next meeting.

Okay. They'll likely be at the next meeting. Yes. Thank you. All right. Uh motion to approve the consent items. I have a motion from Sean. Second. Second from 10. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Opposed. Okay. Because not changed. Okay. Chair votes the affirmative. Uh let the record show that Dan voted no and councelor Paul is absent. liaison reports. Anyone have leazison reports tonight?

Uh yes, went to the airport uh board authority meeting last Wednesday. Uh had basically the same exact presentation that we had tonight. It was uh great to see all the progress that the airport's been making. Um but certainly uh feel their concerns as well with the fuel pricing and how well it'll be affecting flights going forward but looking forward to all the new progress that they're making. Excellent. I thought he gave a good presentation tonight. So yes, thank you for inviting him. Any other lesson on reports tonight? No, just a lot of work going on at the library. Okay. Time manage report.

Uh the first would be the library. Ashley Island colleagues up to speak about the project status and also talk about some funding concerns. Excellent. And um Nancy the the chair um sends her regrets on being a able to be here. She had a conflict u but she's very confident that they'll do a fine job in herstead and if we have any questions we can reach out to her. Did forward some information to you today by email. I don't know if you've had a chance to review that material. You guys can teach your It's late.

Um, Donna Plant, acting library director here with Beth Morocco, vice chair of the board of trustees. Um, tonight we I can give you a full update of the library if you'd like. Um, I've been trying to make sure you all at least Dan gets um the weekly or bi-weekly reports that are available to us through Rearch. Um, but our main reason for being here tonight is to talk about carpeting for the library. Um, at the last meeting for the board of trustees on April 2nd, um, I presented some options to the board in terms of what they would like to do, um, for incorporating a a carpeting project in phase one, um, which is what we're currently in, um, as well as, uh, painting to go along with that. the insurance is um covering a like replacement for what we already have in the main area of the library. So basically the addition um minus all the small rooms off of the addition. Um and so we're we're considering that the base bid. So insurance will be covering that at a like replacement. we are or what I'm what I went to the board to ask was to consider an upgrade to what we have already um in the consideration of being able to take care of it longterm um better maintenance and that we know it's going to have to last probably another 30 years. Um, we know that this product um has actually been used in town already, specifically at the school in one of the schools um and has lasted that 30-year time period and um they were able to with the maintenance they were already doing. Um so that product is a um target power bond. The other um benefit or two benefits of using it are that when it's installed, it forms a seal um so that if there is any future water damage, flooding incident um that that carpet

can be um cleaned and would not have to be replaced in that instance. Um which is a positive for us where we've seen so much water damage. Um it also has a better sound rating. So in our area it's very wide open. Um, sound is something that is a constant concern. Um, and I think that this would really help um, muffle the noise a little bit, especially in that huge area. So, the um, the cost that the board agreed to bring forward to the council um, in that case was an upgrade from the insurance cost to um, pay for the power bond carpet and that was an additional cost of $36,162. I also brought forth two other alternate options. Um, and this was to cover areas beyond just that one big open area in the library. So, the alternate one included the areas like the study rooms, the historical room, staff offices, staff break room, and then alternate 2 covered the children's room and children's office space. Um, so both of those have different prices. the board ultimately went with um instead of paying the extra for the power bond, they looked instead at carpet tiles. Um they don't have the sound rating that power power bond does. Doesn't do the same like ceiling when it's installed. Um but they are easy to maintain since you can just swap them out. So I do have um prices for each of those. Alternate one is $48,856. Alternate 2 is $58,198. Um, the reason why these costs are so high is because we need to hire a professional moving company to be able to move all the contents in the library, which is a huge project. Um, a cost savings is the fact that they're are already needing to do it for that one area. So, they're already going to be on

site. So, there's some cost savings in terms of um it all happening at the same time, being able to phase it. Um, I believe REIC is planning five phases of moving so that we don't have to hire um any kind of storage containers to be placed outside the building or moved off site. Um, you forgetting anything, Beth, that I mentioned, Donna, what was the cost to do the carpeting of that target power bond in that alternate one and alternate 2 compared to the carpet tiles? Did you have a pricing on that? I do. just to see what they they were comparing it to.

Um, so alternate one in power bond was 53,814. Um, I can do the quick math two for difference if you'd like. And alternate 2 was for power bond was 64,566. So it's only $3,000 more and $4,000 more. Right. But the insurance company will cover uh the 36,000 in base bid. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

No, the um insurance company is covering as if so what we have right now is like a very large rolled good. So insurance company is covering as if we were replacing the large rolled good. Um whereas we're asking for the for the longevity of it considering that we're probably going to need it to last another 30 years. um and for ma better maintenance um to do that like upgraded one. Want to make sure I was hearing you correctly. Yep. So it's kind of the 36,000 is that difference between insurance and the better product.

Yep. One of the the library needs that um Donna identified in uh rolling kind of writing out that CIP form was the need to um explore sound dampening options for the main room. Um if we are investing some of the you know if we're if we're thinking long-term goals um the carpeting selection that she um suggested for alternate one um would help address some of the sound deadening that needs to happen because the the space is very echoey um and the the lesser tile carpet um won't absorb the sound in the same way.

Okay. Um, another thing I can note is that the the mold report that we received for the testing did recommend carpet replacement. Uh, specifically they actually recommended all um flooring go to a solid like hardwood or um vinyl or tile or something like that. Um, however, we know that doing that in the main space would be a huge problem for sound because we were already having problems. Um, so that's why we're we're looking at these instead of what their what their ultimate recommendation was. Um, the other thing I can add is that, um, we this project, whether you do it all at once or split it up into pieces, it's going to require closing the library. So, while the library is closed now, um, our preference is to

get everything done. I think personally it's great for the public optic side of things because doing new carpet is going to make the space like brand new. It's going to look a lot different. Um so people are going to come back in after we've been closed for several months. Um and really be able to see the difference in what we did during those during that time. Um so that's another thing I'm taking into consideration. I think the other part of this is logistics. Yes. Doing this now while they're closed is a lot easier to do it now compared to reopening and trying to peacemail it either overnight or at different time periods where it's not really convenient for the library or the public. Yes.

And right now your staff has work to do if you were to close um for you know phases that might look different if we didn't have a satellite option that kind of thing to work out of. Yes, very true. And the carpet tile option allows you to replace just one tile if something someone spills something or something gets damaged. Right. You can just replace one tile and it's much cheaper in the long run. Right. Because you can just Correct. So we would make sure we order like extra stock to keep on hand so that when those things happen cuz they will um we have them to replace right away. Yeah. And the the insurance carpet is not tiled. So that's if you have to replace you have to replace the entire That's correct. And as well, I bet the current carpet is not very soundproof.

Oh, no. Or sound dampening. It's 30 years old, so it's seen some things. And it's just the single roll. So when there's a damaged section, you just look at the damaged section even if it's 20 more years. Yeah.

Yeah. Um obviously we do know that this is a big ask for um a time when we've already asked for money for the project. Um, and none of it was really budgeted since it's all been, you know, kind of thrust upon us at the last minute. Um, so but we we bring it to you in hopes that you you you see the um logistical reasons why it ideally could happen all at once. Um, but if it needs to happen separately, we understand that too. I think with mold mitigation, we're looking to um follow the sequence that they recommend. And if you leave, you know, affected materials in the building and you do like a full clean out, um you've sort of left some of the problem to continue to

to be an issue, especially with books. Um the materials can, you know, hold mold spores. So really cleaning it out seems to be the recommendation. So when they do the mold remediation, they're moving. Do they move everything out there? I'm just wondering because with the carpeting, we have to move everything out and with the mold remediation, do we move everything out to Not everything. Um it's only the areas that have been identified by the testing. Okay. So there are some areas that already have like the some of the children's contents of the room already need to be moved um to be able to complete remediation. Um but it's not the whole building. It's just the areas they've identified. Okay.

Any other go then? Uh, so I'm looking at this whole project. What funds does the library have in their budget to try to help with this project? So, I don't have a solid number. However, I do know that there is money. Um, there's some salary money because the board never filled the part-time children's librarian position,

right? Um, I know we've been sticking really tight to the book budget. So, we would normally have like an over spending there, but I don't think that's going to be the case this year. Um, there's spending right now in several of the supply lines. Um I do think that the board's already identified that m the maintenance line is going to be over spent largely because of um this issue plus some other maintenance things that have come up um unrelated. Um so I I do think there's there's money. It's just a matter of how much when all said and done

and our board has just reorganized so we need to just um have a little bit of time to kind of look into the the overall you know right because you have the library director's salary that's still yeah is is vacant but our treasurer has changed over so we've got to kind of go through and figure out I understand that and I understand that it's a bottom line budget so and I know money can be shifted around

so as one council I'd like to know how much money do you have that you anticipate um that you're going to have at the end of the year to help for this project before I vote to allocate more money cuz that the la the last thing I want to do is strap our departments on the town side and all of a sudden the library has a $400,000 surplus and it's like what we definitely won't have that. So, I can I will say that all the all the all the project funds are going through the library budget.

Um, so it won't we won't really be able to show you at the end of the year how much was left um because it's going to be overspent um because of the this project. Um, so I do think that the that the board could come up with an estimate of probably what they expect to have left um in our just operating without considering the building project. Um, the problem is going to be anything that comes up the next couple months that they weren't expecting.

Correct. I understand that. And you know, I if I go to the town manager and I say to him, you know, how are we looking at on our budget? and he can have he has some idea. It's like buyer is looking at this and you know um PD's looking there, highway's looking there. Well, highway is not going to have much of a surplus because we went over on salt or whatever. Um so I'd like to know from the library if you could look at that and say we're projecting that we're going to have, you know, x amount of funds, so that might help on these projects. So we're not we're not taking more from the town side because we have projects as well that we need to address that we're not addressing. Um, I want to note too that in terms of the timeline, so RIC did share that the that a carpet project could add about 3 months to our pro not add as of today add three months to the project and we know that the carpet in terms of ordering and getting it on hand would take somewhere between 3 and 5 weeks. Um, so I do just want to share that us going back for more information would delay us some more just for your information.

So we we approved $2 what is it Mr. Tom? 273,874 thus far because remember we added 16 to the 257, right? Yeah. Wow. So where do we stand on on expenditures out of that amount? $35,418 is what we've spent. Yes. That's because um the contract with Rearch has not been finalized in terms of like legal um should be very soon is what I've been told. But as soon as the the contract goes through is when they're going to be billing everything that's happened so far.

Do do we have the second FA FA because this was a phased approach, correct? A phase one and phase two. Do we have the second approach numbers on what those are going to look like? And if we don't, do we know when we're going to get those?

We don't. Donna, I know is working on that. And and that's the concern here is we have I would suggest a big unknown because we're looking at all the HVAC units. There's a problem with the existing boiler downstairs. I know Donna's been trying to keep that thing pieced together and working, but that's at the end of its life as well. And plus, we got the uh report from the outside of the building insulation issues and other things that need to be addressed. We don't know what the cost of those are either. Um, so I I I have to urge caution here. I think the base bit amount of the 36 I don't have that one in front of me for putting the carpet tiles down in the areas that were damaged by water make sense to do. You're going to be in there doing it. It does make sense to do all this because it'll be cheaper to do it now. But those things don't have to be done. Those alternate one and two. Uh even though it would be best to do it now, but you don't know what these other costs are going to be. Um, I've got a fire station or I got rotted wood as you know and that building is on the verge of being in the crisis mode that they're in which we want to try to avoid. Um, so it's it's about making obviously the tough decisions that you people are quite familiar with uh that you have in front of you. So my recommendation is you approve that base bid so we can do the t yeah the carpet squares in the areas where that were damaged by water and I would suggest you hold off on the other alternate areas until we know what phase two looks like and we don't know when we're going to get that because they have to go up and price it. HVAC units are probably going to need a little bit of engineering because they need to be lifted up from where they are right now. So that that'll require structures to put those on top of those. Um, so that's my guidance to you.

I just want to clarify one thing that the um the power bonds that um the board is requesting to be um like an upgrade to the base bid. Those are not actually carpet tiles. They are 6 foot rolls. Um and that's what's when it's installed creates the seal that I was talking about. Um there is another price for carpet tiles um for the adding to the base that's more like 14,000 range. Sorry, could you? So there's which one? 14,000.

Yeah. So there's two different types of carpet and um I also want to say that we've been working with Liz Leank who's a who's a local um interior designer who's volunteered her time with us, which has been amazing. We appreciate that. Um, so she brought forth these two suggestions, both the same brand. One is Power Bond, which is a six-foot roll. Um, so much smaller role than what we have installed at the library right now. That's the more expensive cost for the differential. Um, because of the better sound rating and the the seal that it creates when it's installed. The carpet tile is the one. It doesn't add anything for sound necessarily. Um, it doesn't do the seal, but it would be better for maintenance because you could just swap them out.

Yeah. So, um, I can give you both prices if you want. Well, I I was just because I was differential when you said 14,000 all that blurred together. So, I was trying to cuz I'm trying to write down number and then what the number is. So, I had the number, but I didn't have the So, um, the power bond, which is the the what we're saying is the ultimate like products here, um, is the 36,162. Okay. And that's just to um do that area that the insurance is covering but make it a better product. And same area um but when carpet tile would be an increase of 14,772. Okay. From the 36162. So it's a $22,000 savings, right? It's Oh, okay.

It's like level one level two. Okay. 14,000. What was the end number? 14,772. Thank you. And you would prefer the carpet tiles, right? Is that what you're saying? No. No. Select spaces. Okay. Okay. Yeah. The board and I will meet as well are asking for the power bond. So the more expensive one to upgrade the area that the insurance is covering. So for the 36,162 Yep. what has to be moved? uh in terms of what in the library has to be moved. Yeah. Um it would be basically the entire adult section except a collection except for the historical room.

So do you know what the cost of just moving that area? Um I do. Is that not in the moving? So if this is actually included in the insurance estimate because the insurance would be covering the insurance is covering that part. Yes. Okay. Never mind. So, what are you thinking?

What I'm thinking? I'm thinking that um they can order the stuff they need. I mean, they don't we don't need to expend any more money. uh have a hard time believing they're not going to be able to find $36,162 in that budget, you know, on the bottom line at the end of the year. Our budget is pretty small. I know. Well, I know your budget is small, but you know, we talked about the library director's salary. Uh

well, some of that is being used to compensate the staff that are taking extra responsibilities. So, um we have to factor that into. Then you have a part-timer that's not hired. So, there you're saving money there. Um that's my position on it. I mean, I just there will be some money. I just can't bring you a figure right now.

Right. And I think it would help me to understand if you go back and you look and say, you know what, we're projecting that we're going to have x amount of dollars at the end of the year, provided we don't have any major catastrophes, you know, major issues. So that would be my my suggestion that they go ahead and order it, but find the money in their budget to do it. Well, they don't have any money in their budget because everything is on now way over budget. So, we need an appropriate we need the authorization to spend another 36,162 to be able to order the materials, install the materials, and get that done on schedule because they got to order otherwise it's 5 weeks away and we're delaying the reopening of the library. So,

I don't want to delay the opening. I I just think you don't think at the end of the year they're going to have an extra 40 grand. We're we're spending legal expenses that we don't we're not even budgeted for the library, remember? And they got contract negotiations. All that just adds up and adds up and adds up that is not even contemplated for that we're carrying over on the legal side amongst our own legal expenses. So again, my recommendation is you authorize an additional $36,162 to allow us to get the uh the the carpet that's needed in the areas that are damaged. I can go along with that and not the other projects.

I think we need to wait because again I don't know we're going to have at the end of the year where right we have areas that were overextended as you indicated on uh DPW for snow removal. Our legal line is going to be definitely be over. Um and there are other odds and ends here and there that are going to be over and we got to be careful about what we're doing. We're on track now now to have a surplus, but how big that's going to be. And then we have the phase two items we have to deal with too, which we don't are unknowns. I I think they're going to be expensive.

So, this is a process thing. Um, if because I think this was discussed at the last library trustee meeting and either like I don't know if you you were there or you weren't there, but if you weren't there, maybe we get some communication from the chair to you so we can get it to the council because the only the hard part I have with this is I'm trying to process this right now in real time and we got an email probably this afternoon. I didn't get that email. So, okay. Well, then then you're even having a harder time, right? But yeah, I I just want to like if if we've got some of these expense items coming up, getting that back to the council so we have a lot more time to process this would be really helpful in the future.

So what we're looking for tonight is the 36,136 162 and then we can come back and talk about the rest of it at a future date. That would make sense. That way we're not saying no to you. We're just approving this tonight. We can do our research. Dan can look into it and then that way at least they can move forward. Exactly. I will motion to approve the spending of the 36,162. Second additional for the record. An additional an additional 36,162 for the new carpet. I'll second it. I have a motion from Ted and a second from Sean. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair the affirmative. Record show that it's 40. Councelor Paul is absent.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. You had some more on the agenda, sir?

Yes, I do. Um, Reson Morren Morrison Meeting House, I've met with several different uh groups of people uh on this and received some really good feedback on this. We are scheduling a public engagement session for the 27th of April to allow folks to you've done this before before my time and you had a process by which you did that. sounded like it worked pretty well from the feedback that I had received and that will allow other folks to be able to give me feedback to make sure I include that in my memo to you that I really would like to get to you by the end of May if possible so that you can make decisions you need to make in terms of what the next steps are going to be. Um so that's really the plan for that. Um, I've I've I've got a draft of the memo and I've got five different options and we basically we talked about those the last meeting uh when you directed me to move forward on that. Uh, so nothing's really changed there. But I have had some good feedback from PO folks which is actually very helpful. My plan is to incorporate all those documents those folks gave me and that feedback I want to attach that to my memo so that you have all of that. So there's that. Um, one of the things I would suggest, um, as you know, we've been dealing with a procopia project and infrastructure in term in terms of strategy. Um, most of that I've been working on with the staff, not a whole lot of council guidance. That's not the council's fault. Um, you know, obviously I I that project was already in works before I got here. So, I think it we have another one of these larger projects coming up. Uh it would be helpful whoever the planning board uh whoever the counselor is assigned to the planning board. It might be helpful if that person is involved in some of the meetings that we have during the daytime. If they're available, they could do that remotely or in person. Um particularly again the one who's assigned the planning board that would help to allow some more connectivity because we're talking about public policy decisions that have to be made when it comes to spending money in infrastructure, especially these large

ones. and we have a big one coming up and we can start that one at the ground floor. So I would like to you know again to further modify the model that we're operating on to make it a little bit more efficient more effective and also uh having um regular meetings with the council status updates on those project projects as we move along so that the council's more in the loop. I mean I've been sort of talking to you about it but I really until we had a meeting with legal counsel to go over it in detail you really were not heavily involved. council Faber was because he's on the planning board so we've seen more of it but the rest of you have not been and I think it's probably a good way to do this a good model moving that forward and that also brings the council work the council members are working closely more closely with staff uh so that's a suggestion that I would have and if uh if you're amendable to that um I can certainly make that happen

I have no objection to that anyone else good with it sounds good

okay um strategic plan workshops just as a reminder there's There's two of them there. It's next Monday, the 13th is the first one, and the second one is on the 22nd, which is actually a Wednesday, and that's followed by a public hearing on the 18th of uh May. The way this works is you would set up here as you normally do, and it would be a workshop. staff, members of boards and committees would be here and we would present to you at least a draft uh strategic plan at least with the objectives and hopefully some of the action items with KPIs built up but perhaps not all of them. Um and we would go over those with you and we would take all of the public feedback. You would have all of it be able to see what that is and then what you this is usually a back and forth discussion. uh I think you need to add this or uh make changes to that. It's it's a workshop. We literally work through uh finalizing not finalizing but at least finalizing the draft of the strategic plan. We would do half on the first night assuming we could get through half and then the other half would be on the second night. Usually you can do it in two meetings, but this is our first one. It may take longer, but at least we schedule those two. And then what we would do is we'd have a a draft that the public could view and they would be able to provide feedback at a public hearing on the 18th as to what that should be. And then if you're ready, you would make a decision on the 18th of what the strategic plan is going to be for the fir at least our first one and send it out. That meeting on the 18th also would be usually the way this flows is that's the the cycle for the budget process. we have our strategic objectives and then you issue the guidance to me as to what the uh 20 FY2028 budget should contain, what parameters you'd like me to consider when you do that, whether you want multiple versions of the budget produced uh that would be something that I would ask you to start thinking about now. So when you get to the 18th and

obviously those who are watching this, they can provide feedback to their councils which is how the process is supposed to work anyway. And then on the 18th, you would issue that guidance and I would turn around and I would issue guidance to the departments to start developing the budget. And then we we're working on a budget um uh schedule for next year. Well, for this year for FY28 and we want to start some of those items earlier like the CIP the council start discussing that earlier in the process. Some of the items we don't get the information till late October or November. So the big picture things like insurance is going to be a huge one. It's several million dollars like $6 million. We won't have that till the end. But there are other things we might be able to start getting done and that way it's less uh crammed into the holiday season as we all experienced when we're here at 1:00 in the morning I think one night.

Uh so if we perhaps could avoid that, not only would you appreciate that as volunteers yourself, but also the budget committee and members of the public too. Um so that was the sort of the thought process if that makes sense.

It does. I agree. And then I'd like to go over the next two council meetings. All right. So the tw obviously the 13th is a strategic plan workshop and then on April 20th we have a public hearing on u a grant for $30,000. Um it says the PUD, but obviously that's going to get pushed out a little bit to uh May. Uh and then another public hearing on the council rules of water. We already passed those, so we don't need to do that. That makes that a little bit easier. Um I do anticipate on April 20th we will have discussion about Brocopia agreement. Um they were not able to be ready for that for tonight's meeting, which it was originally scheduled for. Uh I do believe they're still going in front of the planning board on Wednesday. Uh so we would have that presumably on the 20th, but that that's what we're looking at tenatively there. And then there's a discussion regarding resident requests for skate park renovations uh uh sponsored by councelor Paul quarterly budget status review which is obviously timely in light of what we just talked about. Um and then we um discussed and scheduled a public hearing for May 4th regarding the proposed revision in the municipal code uh and tried uh regarding chapter 20 of the ethics provision that we've been working on for many months now. And then provide the direction to the town manager regarding goals and objectives. Some of that's going to be dealt with right through the strategic plan anyway. So that may be of less importance as we move through that process. again, April 22nd, which is a Wednesday night, strategic plan workshop. May 4th, uh public hearing regarding the ethics code, another public hearing. We've had a couple of them already. Uh discuss uh presentation from Londereary

Arts Council on the 2026 Conscience on the Common. Uh discuss a set public hearing for May 18th regarding the strategic plan as I just talked about. discussion scheduled public hearing for May 18th to adopt TC 105 use of legal council policy. As you know, we have developed a um a timeline for a number of policies that goes right through August. And the way it basically works is we'd have a first hearing on one night and then there'd be a public hearing on on another matter that same night. So, you'd be dealing with two public policy issues each night. Uh that's obviously still a pretty ambitious schedule to get us through through August anyway. And then there's there's plenty more backing it up behind that excavation ordinance, roadway excavation and driveway permit ordinance. We've identified some well some pretty serious problems there um that they'll have to wait till the fall to be able to deal with and then we're going to be in the budget season anyway after that. And that is all I have for you unless there's any questions for me this evening.

Any questions? And just Ted, can you give us an update on old home day since we're in April? I know you said you had meetings coming up. Yeah, we haven't had a meeting uh since uh February. Wasn't able to make it to our last one. He wasn't available that day. Okay. Yeah, we've you can go right ahead. Fill it in. Yeah. So, um the next meeting we're looking to schedule either the end of this week or the beginning of next week. um waiting for the decision today and on you know who's number five and we're going to make some significant decisions at that point in time. Elect officers

um put out the fireworks bid, do bylaws, do rule do procedure, all of those things, all those required documents. Sorry, I could have said this better at a little earlier. Um but yeah, so that's the next thing is now that we've moved forward with a group of five tonight, we'll send out a poll tomorrow to get the time. Thank you. So that's where we're at. Thank you. And I promise we're still not we're not that behind. Any questions? Tell you what I started last year. Say again. Any questions for the town manager? No. Okay. All right. All right. Up next, we have public comment.

I'd like to say something. Absolutely. Go ahead. Um to Councelor Kums, Councelor Bashard, Mr. Malhalland, Kirsten, and the public, I owe you an apology for losing my temper, and I apologize for that. It was uh not pretty, but I do not apologize for my actions to you, Mr. Dunn, or you, Mr. Farber. Um, and that is all I really wanted to say. Thank you.

Go ahead. Hi, I'm going to try just three things I had to write down real quick. Um, the PUD, can I say this to you, Sean? You were at that meeting. Um, so you know how many people came up and the amount of of research people had done for the PUD and when I saw what you guys did tonight, I I appreciate you having an agreement for everyone because that's really necessary, but that was the only thing that was like there's no presentation of all the things that people brought forth that night. There's no was the first reading just so you know. So typical that means typically on the first reading we don't even discuss it at all. Don't know the first reading that reading is waved. So,

well, how will you know everything? Because since you guys weren't there, it seems like the people should have brought all their stuff to the reading that matters to you guys if you're making the decision because there was a lot of stuff. Correct.

It's within It's within our packet. So, we have all of it. We got it beforehand to review. And I also like tonight suggested they actually watch that meeting so they can see you actually presenting it because it's different if you present it than words on paper. That would be good because there there things like the water. We have so many problems with the water in this town and there it needs to be shored up because people just want to build on the buffers now. Everybody wants to infringe on them. That's really important since we have so many problems and those things aren't being addressed. Um the other thing the ethics the ethics anonymous complaints. Um, I'm not sure why we didn't wait until the new ethics policy comes out to see that what everybody's dealing with because I I get what everybody's saying because there was a lot of ridiculous things I'm sure. But also the anonymity of complaints happens in in almost all public life whether it's um police department or the FBI whatever everybody because it's the way of keeping corruption under. So I really think that you all need to think about that a little bit more. And statistically I don't see I've been coming here for a year and a half and statistically I just don't see how you guys can right down the middle you three versus you two always disagree. And that just tells me that you're not looking at the issues. You're just looking at this is what we're all going to say and this is what we're all going to say and that's the end of that. And that leads me to the question, who's looking after London? Because you can't vote because we all we're all Republicans or Democrats or whatever. I have no idea what any of you are, but all that we're one party or that we all have beer together on Friday nights. That's not

the reason to vote for things. Things aren't being addressed for us. And that's what you're all supposed to be here for. So the question I think everybody should ask every time you come into these meetings is what do the residents want and what can I do best to serve the residents of this community because that's what we voted you in for. So thank you. Thank you. Anybody else have a comment? Welcome back.

Thank you. Just quickly um acting library director Donna Plant. Um I just wanted to loop back to your conversation about the welfare guidelines. Um, I invited CHS to present to the library staff at staff development day this week. Um, and I would really love it on behalf of the library if we could be part of the conversation of how to connect residents to those services because I I do think the library is a great um tool for connecting resources to the right people. So that's all I want to say. Great idea. I think it's a great idea too. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a great idea. Thank you for your patience, sir. Right. Uh, good evening, town council. Um, I think I heard it right. Uh,

name address, please.

Yes. I'm sorry. Paul Scalar, 21wood bind drive. Uh, the warrant articles, uh, the, uh, the citizens petition specifically. I think I heard it was Dan. You had said or would asked the question, are you obligated to sign the petitions or maybe Ron, I'm not sure which one had asked the question. Um, you guys had an opportunity to vote on the actual citizens petition prior to the election. You you you waved that right. You said you weren't going to vote on them. I don't think you now get a right to not sign this this letter. All this letter does is pushes it to Kelly Ayat's office and to the various state representatives as well as Sharon Carson. I think as representatives of this town, you have an obligation to all sign it as a body, not to now take a vote on it on your personal opinion as to whether the petition is uh, you know, furthers your particular agenda. That's not what this is about. This is simply moving it to the next, you know, body that should be getting it as as a petition lays out. That's what this is. So, if anyone if if there are no no signatures on this letter or one signature or two signatures, I'm going to be very disappointed. It's not the way it should be going. I understand Mr. Mahaland uh suggests that you don't have you don't have to sign anything. I get it. You don't have to sign it, but as a body, you have petitions here that were voted in by 72% and above. These are mandates. These aren't just they squeak past. These are people that voted. that came out in large numbers, record numbers in the town on a citizen petition. And to get a citizen petition uh voted on and approved at a 70% or above level, uh that's a mandate in my opinion. I I don't think we've ever seen anything like it in town.

Oh yeah, we have. And they did nothing. Happened three times since petitions four times. Let him finish. So I would just say again, I I would urge you all to sign it as a body. I think you represent the full community. This isn't a time for you again to press your personal, you know, opinions on the particular petition. All you're doing is moving it forward. So, I'd ask you to do that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Juan, just a clarification. I thought it moved forward anyway, whether we signed it or not. It does. It moves forward no matter what. That's what I thought. Yes, it does. Did you hear that, Paul? What's that?

Um, we were told that it moves forward whether we sign it or not. I get that, but it's a letter that's got each of your names on it. I think as a body, you need to sign the letter and move it forward. That's what the obligation is. Go ahead, sir. Good evening. Next time, someone should stand up and make it advisory so you can just ignore it. Exactly. That's what they did to me.

Um, whatever. PUD, um, I I agree with everything that the other resident stated. um when the motion to move this forward first came up, the motion started and I can't remember his name, Mr. Ooulette. He was very concerned that there was so much stuff brought up that it should go back to the planning board before coming to the council and it went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and eventually they decided to move it to to here and they were going to explain what happened. And the issue I had at the planning board meeting one, no one ever publicly said, "What's changed?" There was no document. It was on a website somewhere. Um, but in addition to the comments that councelor Paul made, there were also a number of comments made by another gentleman who submitted a written document which I heard no one discuss. And it's clear by listening to the conversation, I doubt all of you have read all of the documents. Haven't seen the meeting. Um, whatever. Um, and as far as the meeting, there was people here. It was not publicly broadcast live, but going back to the anonymous and how everyone is against anonymous, um, someone on the board gave a whole bunch of information to a website in town so they could crucify the residents who showed up, which is great cuz we're going to get rid of the anonymous, whatever. Um the library, there was absolutely no discussion that I heard about how much would the library contribute. Um it was stated that the library costs a lot more than it's been costing and people are going to need to see how much it really costs. So I'm guessing you're going to see a lot

higher costs. This $51,000 that the trustee account has, I don't understand how that works, but there was no discussion as far as contributing. In fact, some of the things that they had voted on, it was brought up after, well, where are we going to take this out of the budget? So, you show up and you want $36,000 or whatever phase one, phase two is, who gets to pay for it? No one's talking about budgets. I mean, Dan said and and Mr. Malone said, "Hey, I'm kind of concerned we might run out of money here." This is just ridiculous. And and as far as the show that went on here tonight, I mean, I can't even comment on that one.

I'm sorry.

It's not you. It's not you. I understand where you got the the the I'm not even going to say the games that are being played that is becoming more and more apparent and the fact that the rules we completely ignore the charter. We we stand up and say charter, charter, charter. But when we talk about a roll call vote, well, our policy says this, so we that's okay. We'll just go with the policy. The policy, the charter specifically stays roll call vote. I brought it up probably four years ago to counselor France. That's why you started posting. He said, "Well, I'm not going to ask for roll call." And I asked because the charter specifically says roll call. You said, you know, can't table a motion because that's the way it is. What does roll call vote mean in conquered? Does it mean take everyone's opinion and then write it down later? No. It means go around the room because half the time you can't tell who said yes and who said no. So it was a three-2. So councelor chairman Fron started putting it in as the roll call. He says, "Well, I'm not going to ask for roll call even though I need to. I'm just going to put it in the minutes." And clearly that didn't work because you guys got them wrong. The rules are not enforced equally. It all depends in who you are. And people see that. That's why people don't come here because they will be crucified publicly by several people that support being anonymously crucified publicly yet are opposed to a complaint being filed. And the policy is different. The complaints were handled differently based on the person. 32 10 seconds. Thank you.

I'm waiting for my nine. I got 10 10 seconds. I don't know. It's time. Thank you, sir. Good evening, Christine. Thank you for your patience.

Christine Perez, by Drive. I don't know who you are. Councilman Done. I commuted three years to the state house with you. That was the person I know. I have no idea who you are now. But what you did to counselor Paul by taking without even discussing with her, taking away a position that she was in without even discussing it with her and giving it to someone else who's part of the three was unbelievable. And you say that that wasn't a direct knife at her? It was one of the crudest things and there's been a lot of them that I've seen you do. You should be absolutely ashamed. Now, you should have a you owe her more than an apology. You should give her that position back. And every year I've come here, when it was the first time, it went through the counselors what they wanted. Okay? And one of the counselors up here tonight said we should stand to a higher standard. Councelor Faber, we were a higher standard when you publicly called the town manager a liar. Publicly publicly called him a liar and put lies on Facebook pages. When you publicly called me names about a bill that I put in and what it was, you didn't even know what the bill was about. That was a blatant lie. And talk about being political.

You worked really well to make sure that lies went out about me. You should be ashamed. You should actually there should be a no confidence vote on this town council. You should be removed from chair and you should be removed permanently. Thank you Christine. Anybody else in public comment? Seeing that I will close public comment. I will accept the motion to adjurnn. So moved. Motion from Sean. Second from Ted. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Chair was the affirmative 50. Thank you everyone for your