Town Council - Regular Meeting

Field Town Council meeting January 20th, 2026. Madam Clerk, can you start us in the prayer and pledge, please? Thank you for bringing us together today in a spirit of generosity. May we honor one another by keeping an open mind. May we voice our truth and listen with an open heart. May we discern your will to unite in a fruitful outcome. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please

Mr. Bureagod here. Mr. Christopharo let a note please that she is not here tonight. Mrs. O'Hara yes Mr. Punchack here. Miss Alves here. Open forum pursuant to 42-46- C I'm sorry 6D maximum three minutes per person. Does anyone want to sign up for open forum? Anyone else?

Thank you, Mike. Yep.

Mike Clifford, 489 Black Plane Road. I've spoken before about the clarity that's required in the agendas that are published and it's supposed to be that the average citizen would know what was being discussed at tonight's meeting. So I bring your attention to six old business item B discussion by vote or by discussion by council vote or rather action on status report status progress report items and then it's ECC. It took me 10 minutes to fi figure out and remember what that could possibly relate to and I come to a lot of the meetings or watch most of them. The average person isn't going to have a clue on that. I'd like you to ask the opinion of the solicitor as to whether or not he thinks that meets the muster because I don't think it does. It's really just a placeholder for that's ECC for the police station just so we could make mention that there is a public meeting on Thursday because we we do have two meetings this week and wanted to make sure that when we get to that that we could explain that Thursday night is a special meeting for the police station. That's all it really pertains to. Usually there's an update monthly from ECC, which is the police station that's been on every every um month

and that's all it is. So both of those items are going to be scheduled for the 20 the 3. No, just old business A. Yeah. Because of the election is being moved to the 17th. Yeah. And then ECC is a normal old business item that's usually on the agenda for monthly updates. I'm not quite sure I'm following you and I'd still like to hear from the solicitor because it doesn't indicate to me that B so B isn't going to be discussed tonight. Nobody's here for it. He's not here tonight. Okay, great. Thanks. Stan.

Hi guys. uh Stan Zuba 910 Iron Mine Hill Road. Uh I can't be here Thursday night uh to for the police station discussion. So I just wanted to speak today tonight about it and give you a little different perspective on it. I'm a former town employee as a firefighter. My brother was, my wife was, a lot of my friends were. Um, and the town has a constant problem with firefighters and police officers come being hired by the town, getting our training here, doing a little bit of time, and then moving on to other cities and towns. Um, if you guys build a better police station, build better support, build a better culture for the police officers, you should be doing everything you can to keep people in this town as employees. Um, it's not only police and fire. We lose mutter employees, too. Um, and like I said, it When you want to make a career out of something, you want to be somewhere where you feel appreciated, somewhere where you feel professional. Um, if you're on an old rotting, crumbling building, I mean, Bushley School was pretty nice when I was there in 1970. Um, you know, you're 50 years later, more than that now. Uh, so I just think you should take that into consideration. There's a a human resources element to this, too. I mean, I ended up leaving after 5 years in town. and I went to the Warwick Fire Department. Uh in on my shift in my two trucks, there were three people from North Smithfield. Two of us had been firefighters in town. One had been in Cumberland. Um Waka Fire Department is mostly staffed by people that started here in this town. Uh I'm sure the chief has very similar stories about the police department. I'm hearing we lost the whole second shift last year. Correct.

Um so, you know, it's it's a building, but it's part of the culture. So, I would just urge you to support it and um I think it's a good thing. It's time the town invest a little bit in public safety. We've been doing it on a shoestring for a long, long time. The experience you gain by keeping employees um it's a hard thing to measure until it really matters in the moment that it matters, it becomes very very apparent. So, I would encourage you to support it and consider that as just one small part of why we should do this.

Thank you. Thanks J. Discussion by council vote other action on consent agenda. All items listed in this section are considered in one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless the councelor requests in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda. A town council minutes of November 17th, December 1st, 9th, 15th of 2025, and January 5th of 2026. And communications um a animal control monthly report for November and December 2025. Nosmfield Fire and Rescue monthly report for November December of 2025. Nosmfield Municipal Court monthly report for November and December of 2025. And Nosmfield Police Department monthly report for November and December of 2025. Does anyone want to remove anything from the consent agenda?

As usual, I do have a couple of comments, but I will email them to you because they are grammatical. The the one of substance, and it's not even that much substance, was the conversation about the street lights. You gave me credit for the street light conversation, and it was Councilwoman D. Christophara who drove around noticing the street lights were off. But there were a couple other things, but I'll email you about them.

Um I would just um Joanne, is it easier if we email them or do you need them in the record? Fine to email if it's um Yeah, you can email it. Okay. AI doesn't always recognize the voice. So sometimes we do have a little mix up with the names and if I don't catch it. But solicit, wouldn't we have to um vote on these with amended changes? So shouldn't we put them in You would. So can we just maybe just Are they in every single um every single meeting? Uh I think I had two to be honest with you.

Which ones do you have? I have a couple too. Um, if you know yours off the top, I Okay. Go [clears throat] first and then. All right. Um, so first of all, I'd like to remove the minutes of November 17th, um, December 1st, um, December 15th and January 5th. I guess all of them pretty much few same ones probably.

All right. And then also I'd like to just um and then also remove the minutes of the Nosmail Municipal Court monthly reports of November and December and also the Nosmfield Police Department monthly reports from November and December. Does anyone have anything else? Anyone want to make a motion to accept the others or can we make it in one motion after we amend them all? Okay.

All right. All right. So, um November 17th, um it's just really kind of making all the minutes kind of uniform because when we do the um open the meeting prayer and pledge, they're just every me every um minutes doesn't have the same opening. They're kind of some talk about who opened the meeting and then others just say that you led the pledge of allegiance. So, can we kind of make them all uniform?

So, that was um the 17th and then on December 1st um and it's also in a couple of the other ones, but whenever Mr. Col is here, his name is spelled numerous ways on every meeting minute. So could we um get that um uniform and then um December 15th

under open forum Marilyn Donatelli it's her spelling of her first name is M A R I L Y N. And then also that meeting didn't have any time noted for when we adjourn. Okay. And And then um some of the meeting minutes, we do all our votes on roll call. So some of the meeting minutes say voted unanimously and some of them give us a an outlined uh roll call. So if we can continue in doing the outlined roll call on who voted what on all the minutes because they all vary.

Okay. All right. That's all I have for minutes. How about you? So the only December 1st was what I was referring to discussion by discussion by council vote or other action on payment of bills. Uh the prism lights um Rebecca is the one who brought that up and then um excuse me for one minute. What minute? So you're December 1st. Okay. The discussion uh payment of bills discussion page three and Okay.

Um I think that was it. Can I jump back to December 1st also? Um on the last page it says a motion was made by council member Punchac and seconded by President Alice to reappoint Robert Nagarian, Andre Gil, and Joey Signney to the zoning board. if you could relisten to those because I don't believe I supported Joey Civney's nomination. Thank you.

All right. Yeah, I know what the last one was. So it was in it was about the discussion on January 5th the junkyard and I so after extensive it is which time limited abatement of violations only I feel like we're sitting here waiting for the auto the uh junkyard to come back and defenses required to be complete around the whole property. That's definitely not addressed in these minutes is to talk about Mr. Igliozi saying that we can only make a decision based on the the violations. One of the violations was the fence. So we said when you come back the fence needs to be done and that's definitely not reflected here and I think that that should be reflected accurately.

Okay. That's all I have.

Okay, that's [snorts] it on the meeting minutes. Um, so my um question on the municipal court um minutes or the report that we receive. So I I know we've talked about this in the past. Can we instead of just getting this single page and we just get the number of traffic citations and then it says um town ordinance violations and how many and fines paid. Can we somewhat get like an agenda or some sort of followup attached to this so we know what cases were put before the municipal court and what was what was done or can we have that so that way we are kind of updated on who's going to municipal court for what reason and we know what the outcome was.

Is that mainly just on the ordinances? Do we I don't really think we need to see who's getting speeding tickets. No, no, not the speeding tickets. Just the zoning issues. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then chief, I just had a question on the fire I mean the police department report. So um when we have total citations and it has Oh,

did we just Oh, there we go. Um, and it's broken out like citation, verbal warnings, and voids. What would can be a void? Like for um December it's two and I'm sorry, November it's two, December it's one.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, we're just going to reset.