Town Council - Regular Meeting

rise for the pledge, please. The line the pledge, sir. Yes, sir. 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. Moment of silence for the men and women in the armed forces, our first responders, our veterans, those fighting the good fight in Ukraine, those suffering from the military conflict in the middle Middle East and worldwide. Thank you. All right. So, Brian, do we have anybody for public participation this evening?

Okay. Anybody on the phone? Yes. Ellen, Ellen, Diane, and

Oh, yeah. Sorry, Michelle. Before Walter, can you reconvene? I forgot. Reconvene board of finance back in order. All in favor? Reconvene the town council for decision. Thank you. All those in favor. Thank you everyone. Michelle. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Michelle Lori. Um I live at two Tita Court. Um I think you need that for the record somewhere. Um I spoke last week. Some of you may remember me. Um, for those who don't, I am an elder law and estate planning attorney here in New Milford. Um, I'm also on the commission on aging and I came to talk about the uh budget for the senior center and the commission on aging. Um, first I want to start off by saying I am not a senior. Um, no one in my family is a senior in New Milford or in the state of Connecticut. So I don't have any benefit here. Um, my clients do. Uh more than half of my clients are seniors, but I just have a passion for um helping the seniors of New Milfords. It's a town where I grew up and they helped raise me, so I'm giving back. Um I want to also start by saying that um last week I did speak um about the social services budget. Um I do want to say that it's nothing personal. Um I applaud Avana and the work that she does there. Her plate is very full. I don't think she really needs two more people to supervise, but um you know I nothing personal. I love the work that she does. I've worked with her before. She's great. Um and her staff. Um the Commission on Aging, however, was uh put in place to study the needs of the aging population of New Milford. That's what we do. Um we weren't consulted about this move, putting the two municipal agents um from the senior center under the guise of social services. So, um, that's important that the one body that is meant to review that was not consulted. We do know what is best. That's our job. Um, we've had seniors come to our meetings to speak about their concerns. Um, we're aware of what they want, what they need. Um, we've asked why. Why the move? Why is this happening? We have not gotten an answer. We've never heard because. We've never heard that. All we've heard is that there's no change except to the budget.

Um, is that the first step in a long line of changes? We don't know. We've heard no change, but there is a change. We heard about synergy, cohesiveness, collaboration. We have that. Uh, all of our departments in town work together whenever needed. Um, last week we heard about the synergy with the youth agency, Officer Jake, the health department, but none of them are moving under social services too. So, why the municipal agents from the senior center? Um, we were also told that it would be great to be able to talk to someone who has already done this. Guess who's already done this? Our municipal agents. They work with the people who are 60 and over. Social services works with those 59 and under. So, who's done it? Our municipal agents. The commissioner of aging, the commission on the aging is required in each town. We're not going away. We were told last week that uh the mayor is the CEO and his boss is the almost 29,000 residents. So, we will make sure their voices are heard when it's time to vote on this budget. And lastly, what we heard last week was from our mayor, you can tell a community by how it helps those most in need. I think that's great about New Milford because we do all reach out and help those in need, but at this point, we need to help our seniors. We need to give them what they need and what they have asked for. So, we need to keep the municipal agents under the senior center.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else? Brian. Okay. Jasmine, can you come on up and talk about the senior center? Page 156. All right. Shall I begin? Hello.

Hi. All right, good evening everyone. Honorable honorable mayor, town council, board of finance, and the Milford community. For those of you that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, my name is Jasmine Marie Dusenhara, director of senior services at the New Milford Senior Center. And I thank you for the opportunity to present the 2026 2027 budget on behalf of the New Milford Senior Center and the Commission on Aging. Uh with me today, I also have our new program coordinator, Deborah Rose. Our two uh senior center bus operators, Aaron Baldwick and Tom Williams, our two municipal agents, uh Janette Ireland and R.J. Yarish, and Lori McNamera, our part-time office coordinator for the municipal agents, and also members of our commission on aging, Gretchen O'Shea Reynolds, who's the chair, as well as um attorney Michelle Lori. Um, in addition to the PowerPoint, I wanted to pass along to you a printed copy of our March newsletter as long a program packet so that you're able to give you a little bit of a snapshot of our town senior center. And for those of you tuning in from home or within this room, these newsletters as well as the programs are available on the nilford.org website. Thank you Deborah for doing that. Um, so as you are may be aware, the senior population is one of the fastest growing populations in New Milford and we are honored that we have been able to serve more than half of this population through the services and resources that the senior center offers. This slide begins with our expenditures, the bulk of which covers personnel. Our staff uh consists of myself, Deborah, our program coordinator, Kim our office coordinator, 13B clerical personnel, Tom and Aarin our two uh senior center bus operators, and Rufus, Sue, Anne, and and Bob are per DM substitute bus operators. Now noted under social services are the municipal agents, R.J. and Janette, which are Connecticut state statutemandated positions to ensure that every town have advocates for the

elderly to provide information and referrals in federal, state, and local benefits and entitlements, and our part-time seasonal office coordinator to assist our municipal agents during the busiest seasons as when as well as when needed. Uh we appreciate the diverse walks of life our municipal agents have led in arriving here. R.J. majoring in linguistic psychology and and cultural deaf studies with a minor in American Sign Language, bringing her through early childhood parent education and child abuse prevention to community health care and finally finding home providing assistance to her hometown senior population. and Janette Ireland who boldly set aside her successful small business to pursue her associates degree in science and linguistics of American Sign Language and a second degree um of sign language and a bachelor's of science and sociology and uh psychology becoming a prescertified American Sign Language interpreter and then a beloved part of the senior center as first the program coordinator then uh smoothly moving upstairs to continue helping our people. We are truly fortunate to have a team of well educated and varied background individuals at our center and we appreciate that we have been given the opportunity to voice our questions and concerns in regards to this recommended move. Uh the senior center has always worked in tandem with our social services department and we look to continued collaboration and partnership and with that the senior center and the commission on aging stand ready to work collaboratively and with open dialogue to iron out logistical and operational processes and that the new mil and that new milford continues to meet the needs of its aging populations with care, dignity and effectiveness. So, also on this slide is our request for capital for furniture replacement due to high volume use and furniture that is more uh cleaning friendly. And I would also I would also like to note that though we have a small staff, we're um able to provide the caliber of quality services through the help of our many volunteers ranging from our commission on aging and our senior center helping hands

volunteers and our tour service uh volunteers. Our tour services provides the services needed to ensure the safety and security of our seniors to age in place and in their homes and of course our many programbased volunteers and facilitators that provide enrichment and inspiration. Uh continuing with our expenditures is the breakdown of the following accounts. Uh our contractual account which encompasses the web services and supports support needs of our senior center database entitled my senior center. allocations toward our health, wellness, and enrichment programming and a service repair and support contract with the a for the AV system that we use daily. So, my senior center is software that provides management and reporting systems for senior centers. And um at the Nilford Senior Center, we use this every single day. This manages our, you know, our registrations, our activities. were able to pull statistics and one of the things that we are looking to upgrade with our annual service package is to include a new feature entitled rides premium that allows us to update our transportation transportation scheduling capabilities with automated routing and predictive traffic features and includes cell enabled iPads for both our full-time buses with an interactive d interactive driving app uh driver communications um and other some other neat features. It will also allow us to provide the ability to report and provide real-time changes to the drivers for scheduling and real-time alerts to passengers. So, for example, um it will send out an alert to know that the bus is like 5 minutes away. So, if it's cold outside on a day like today or something like that, you know, to head out or if there's been a delay, it'll also kind of update our folks and really kind of update our scheduling system up until uh we're beta testing our new system as of this month. uh and we've been doing everything by pen and paper. So, it's um neat to be able to

offer this new opportunity. We're also looking forward to be able to integrate this device with our DPW's team system, their whipound system that allows them to keep track of our regular bus maintenance. Um, you may also know if you're looking at the budget books that there is no longer a request for the town contribution towards meals on wheels and that is simply because there's been some changes in service providers and the service provider assigned to the town of New Milford does not request town contributions. Uh we also have a line item for materials and supplies for all our educational, social and recreation programs as well as general office supplies and equipment and professional development on our materials self-sustaining um self materials and supplies self-sustaining account which is for our feebased programs and activities such as our special interest or exercise classes and also under that line is for miscellaneous repairs and maintenance of our senior center buses under the 13B transportation grant. And last but not least, our congregate lunches. We serve Monday lunch Monday through f Monday through Thursday, which is a fast which is a fantastic lunch, might I add. Thanks to our friends at CNC Deli, we are actually celebrating our almost two-year anniversary of having them as our food providers. And it has really been such a blessing and a wonderful local partnership. um these lunches which under title three of the older Americans act serves to provide congregate meal services that are typically covered in expenses onetoone. I welcome you all to join us for lunch sometime. It's really been a wonderful program that we have here. And now looking to our revenue uh we're very fortunate to have grants that help to offset some of the expenditures of our senior center. Uh primarily our COA revenue allows payroll offset for our bus operators as well as for um additional for bus repairs and maintenance. All of this are from Connecticut's DOT DOT's 13B transportation grant. Uh our senior center currently has two regularly

operating buses and one spare that provide seniors and individuals with disabilities transportation within the N Milford town boundaries by reservation requests and scheduling. Um we are excited to have welcomed a new bus to our fleet this past September and are slated to welcome in our new bus to replace our 2019 hopefully in the next few months. Um so when we update these buses um which typically have like a 5-year lifespan uh the bus that's being replaced becomes our spare and maintained by DPW which shout out to them and all the teams that have helped us especially during these storms. um all of these uh that are provided um you know uh in addition we also have uh WCAA the Western Connecticut Area Agency on Aging Grant that helps to offset our payroll for our part-time uh chore services coordinator and just to note that position is currently vacant and we are actively seeking out that role to be filled very soon. So fingers crossed or if you have anyone that would like to apply, here's a little uh push for that. And of course um the remaining of our revenue is from the anticipated contributions from our feebased programs and activities and senior center buses and of course the congregate lunch revenue with the elderly nutrition program which again is typically covered onetoone from our cong uh congregate lunch expenditure line. All right. So simply put, the New Milford Senior Center is a happening place and we are seeing growth in our membership usage and inquiries every single day. Believe it or not, in the past calendar year, we welcomed over 260 new seniors. And it's only been about two months into the new year. And even with all the crazy weather we've been having, we've already welcomed in over 30 new faces, which contribute to our which we contribute to our evolving community outreach efforts. We really pride ourselves in being able to offer a wide array of programs, activities, and services that provide opportunities socially, recreationally, educationally, and to enhance uh health and wellness. We've continued to pursue the initiatives of being a senior center

beyond beyond four walls by examples of expanding programming offsite, such as our movers and shakers club with ventures to local hiking places, day trips, and excursions. And we're actually slated to for a senior kayaking trip when the weather gets a little bit warmer. And of course heading on various day trips. So uh of course first one up for the year is a trip to the casino. And um we even had our first overnight excursion over to Amish country this past fall which was very wellreceived and um folks are looking you know for what's our next adventure. We also have had the opportunity to be welcomed and connected and uh connect with other local area senior centers. Um, our senior center has a traveling wee bowly team. Um, and a cornhole team. Um, we even have a open to the community cornhole tournament that we've got scheduled in May. So, keep a lookout for that. And, um, as you may be wondering about the cover of our March newsletter, um, it's a picture of our building, but in the middle of the night. So, we're excited to announce that we are actually looking to offer extended hours at least once a month at our senior center to both appeal and accommodate to those that um to those that are looking uh um to those that you know would be a need to be able to uh reach us dur. So during these extended hours, we'll be offering programs such uh programs, activities, and services past our 4pm business time closing uh such as a Zumba Gold exercise class on Monday afternoons, um early evening education seminars, special weekend programming in which we will be offering transportation, and notably opportunities to meet with our municipal agents. So, we're looking to by staying open these few extra hours, we'll ensure our seniors to have the opportunity to access programs, resources, and appointments at times that works for them. We, you know, we really just don't want our seniors to miss out on essential programs just because of scheduling conflicts. And so during these hours, our municipal agents will be available to offer alternative

appointment times to receive personalized assistance and guidance on accessing vital benefits and community resources. And we're also excited to note that we are continuing to broaden our never stop learning initiative uh with weekly talks, special interest seminars and um that that offer really a variety of topics, science, nature, history, health, music, finance, uh and really many others to provide enrichment and resources. You know, we've also um been happy to start up a new program initiative at the senior center. It's called Good Morning New Milford. Uh so this program started right before the holidays in November. Uh it's a program that we've offered as a volunteer opportunity for folks within our community to have an optin service of a weekday daily phone call in the morning by one of our a friendly volunteer to greet them good morning to check in on them. We've done this as a partnership with uh also with the police department because you know as someone checking in on these folks every single day during the week. Um we're able to connect them with services, make sure that everything's okay and if need be we can connect them to the right resources if something seems to be a miss but um offering that as a volunteer opportunity and also just to further connect with our community. Uh we're also, you know, very very excited that we have so many um interprogram and interdep departmental uh connections. We have a lot of intergenerational programs. We work with our local schools offering um different programs with them. The children come over from the children's center and play with us. We have um folks from uh you know students from the different area schools that come in to volunteer and just provide that that different level of communication and interaction. And of course, you know, the library, another big collaborator collaborator with us, uh book they do book discussions with us, exchanges, um and excited to announce that we've been uh in partner with them with a homebound services program and we have our first uh individual who is receiving books

from the library and one of our volunteers brings that over to them. So, you know, in some our mission is to foster longevity and quality of life by providing programs and services to individuals aged 60 and up that encourage independence, lifelong learning, social interaction, community involvement, and physical and emotional well-being. We are truly proud to be able to offer our senior community excellence and service between all the resources we provide at the Neilford Senior Center. We're also so appreciative of the town and Milford support of our senior community and honored to be able to offer this level of quality. Amazingly, we easily can say that we welcome at least 125 people through our doors each day and with each each week welcoming more and more new members and getting them connected to with all that the senior center has to offer. Uh so from all of us at the senior center and the commission on aging, we thank you for your time and for the opportunity to present our 2026 to 2027 budget.

Great. We can accept questions. Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you. So, uh, Katie, before I'll turn it over to you, just a couple things. Can you explain to the, uh, council members, board of finance members, those that are watching the audience in there, uh, you talked about, um, good morning to Milford, and that's something that we came up with during one of the huddles. Could you kind of give a breakdown how many people you are talking to now? Yeah, absolutely. The reason why we decided to do that, which was tried to get more seniors that had been to the senior center that hasn't come in the last six months and seeing if we could entice them back and find out why they haven't come to the senior center because could you kind of break out the data how many we call Yeah, absolutely.

per week and what's the success rate on that?

Absolutely. So, um to answer the mayor's question, we have uh our good morning Milford also not only does it reach out to folks that we might not have been in contact with over, you know, over some period of time, but it also helps to reach out those that might not be able to physically come into the senior center. So right now we have um eight caller or eight recipients rather on the other end of the phone line that we've been reaching out to. Um it's been a great way for one of the folks we have some success stories in the short amount of time that we've offered them. One of our folks that we had been calling is now back at the senior center and attending regularly and we've also had some bittersweet moments. We have um we actually just this past week we have lost one of our uh call recipients. Um, and but it was noted that the family member reached back out to us to thank us because, uh, while their while their mother was going through their, you know, their health concerns, uh, she would let her listen to all of the voicemails that every single day received a little good morning note. And it was just a, you know, a wonderful thing that kind of made her feel, you know, make her feel remembered even up until, you know, at the very end. So, um, it's been a great program. Uh we hope to let it grow and let the word be out there. Like I said, this is very brand new. We only just started this with calling three people back in November and we had this going through throughout the holidays. But of course, even with the winter, it's been um you know, one of our phone calls from today, our one of our uh individuals said, "We need help. I need help uh plowing our you know, getting connected with uh plowing services." And so we're able to kind of get connected and figure out where you know get her connected with some resources to get that done.

I guess some of the things that we look at is as you said uh being outside of the four walls and the goal was we took the data that you have from your CRM tool and I preface this I am a senior. I'm a member of the senior center swiping and everything. Exactly. Um, and the reason why I say that is we were looking at we take the what is the average age. We all talked about this at our huddle. What is the average age of a senior that uses the senior center?

Absolutely. So, at one point our average person that came into the senior center was a Caucasian 75year-old female. And through our data points, we are actually seeing that starting to trend down a little bit. So, not to say that we still don't have uh those folks coming in, but with being able to offer kind of be going beyond our four walls. So, not only going beyond our senior center within our know our 40 main street, but going outside of our hours, being uh out on the green, being out in the, you know, out in the community. uh we're starting to be able to welcome in folks that might not have been able to access us because of whether it be restrictions from work or a lot of times we also hear that they're not old enough to be a senior but we're you know part of that is a stigma and we're are a very active senior center. Um and so if anything a lot of our folks sometimes even just start off as volunteers and we're able to welcome them in and they see a program that they liked and they're hooked. So please join us. talk a little bit more about because it's all the programming uh is kind of we kind of laser pinpoint on some needs that we have in the community. One that we found when we have what's called a CRT team, a community resources team.

Senior center is part of that. We also have our ambulance. We also have our police. We also have our youth agency, social services, new vance hospital is part of this. Plus, we have other nonprofits that come in and we work with them. But one of the things that we found out from the ambulance was which is important as we're talking about budget as we heard from Donna which is the cost of us slip and falls. So uh that's our number one call for our ambulance. And when it goes to the house more likely than not they don't want to go to the hospital. They just want to be picked up but back into their uh chair or their bed. And just statistically, that's an $800 cost for the ambulance to go and leave. And it's an $800 loss because you can't do that. So, we all sat down and said, "Well, what could we do uh for those younger seniors?" Because there's some that are already unfortunately too old uh to do any kind of exercising for your core to help mitigate that. So, you're strong enough to hold yourself and if you fall, you can pick yourself up. So, I know we had our huddles. What could we do? What are some of the programs? And Jasmine, can you talk a little bit about what the senior center is doing and who you're partnering with to kind of help with that?

Absolutely. So, one of the things that uh we look to do in our senior center is helping people to, you know, age gracefully, age with dignity. Um but and with that uh being able to offer a wide variety of different health and wellness type programs especially to help you know yes it's for your good health and yes it's for activity levels but uh a good component of it is to help prevent you know something as detrimental and as dangerous as a fall. So we have a wide variety of different exercise classes that we offer on all different ability levels. you know, everything from a seated yoga, gentle yoga to the next level up, I would say, would be our strength and balance classes. Um, we have as far as uh a tai chichi class and even all the way up to our dance exercise classes that really kind of help promote promote activity and balance, you know, um with that too, those are paid programs, but we are fortunate to be able to partner with different local uh local groups to be able to offer um different exercise classes that are complimentary. So, one we have um one of our classes right now is uh entitled integrated fitness. They have different focuses. So, um one of them that we have up and coming that we're excited about is entitled Head and Shoulder, Knees and Toes. And also, um another group that uh we're looking that you'll see in our newsletter that's a focus is within our community. So not necessarily at the senior center but um Palab the group Palabolis is going to be uh presenting a class um about the art of falling. So you know kind of the kind of the background that you know good god forbid that you do have uh suffer a fall. It's one of those things though a big difference if you fall and you stay down there or if you're able to uh have the right tools or the ability level or the you know the things that you need the skill to be able to get yourself back up. Um, with that too, mayor, I'd like to mention that the ambulance is one who does connect with us regularly and if there is anybody that um kind of come sort of like a red flag in their in

their routes and everything, uh, they have connected with us so that maybe there's something more that these individuals need. Um, you know, we've been out to this individual's house for a couple of times now just for, uh, like a a lift assist. Um, so we're able to kind of jump right in and, you know, offer our services if maybe there's some more, maybe there's some more services that are needed, maybe something else is going on. So, it really becomes a whole um, you know, a holistic type view of helping out our seniors. And when they're ready to truly get back on their feet, come join us for an exercise class. Let's build you back up again and be able to offer a enriching environment in which to do so. Jasmine, we all went through 2020.

Yes. co and I'm proud to say our senior center, we weren't some of the other seniors that just closed up shop and that's it. Uh we partnered with park and wreck.

We had uh seg segmented uh places where seniors could go as a cohort and be feel protected that they were uh could network themselves at a safe distance, but they had those opportunities. Uh, and I know you continue to work with our health district to continue to provide uh, health options for them. One of them is to make sure that uh, they can get a flu shot, they can get all those. Can you talk a little bit about that for the public so they know kind of how we continue to sustain, you know, as we're talking about wellness uh, with our seniors? We could talk a little bit about that.

Absolutely. I know our 2020 um, senior center was really pivoted. uh you know, our buses, for example, were out every day doing meal delivery. So, uh so that lunch was provided for our folks um as well as delivering from the food pantry, but uh and with that too, you know, in partnering with uh the health department, we're able to provide access to vaccine clinics. We run an annual flu shot clinic with them. Um still to this uh ongoing throughout all of this, we still um even offer weekly blood pressure screenings uh as well as you know bringing in different local medical professionals or folks to kind of speak on the different health topics. But you know that being the health and wellness aspect of our senior center being really one of the first the front and foremost in addition to everything else that just you know ties it all in together as being a place of enrichment.

And you also once a year we do the drug takeback. Yes, we do. So, seniors that may have uh a lot of uh pills that they don't use anymore, that can sometime leads to friends or family going in and taking those uh pills. So, we've been quite successful working with the police department to have that drug takeback day.

Yep. Absolutely. We have one of our initiatives is our triad for senior safety and that really encompasses all different safety measures that uh we try to offer available to our seniors um and really the community. So having a day where uh you know people are able to bring in their expired unused medications. Everyone knows it is accessible at the police department 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But um sometimes having that come here today, grab a cup of coffee while you're here type of thing. Um with that also with that uh triad for senior safety, we also offer different opportunities like um an annual shredding day for example uh for uh for our seniors to be able to protect those um those documents and really just being a having that be a another piece of another piece of the puzzle if you will that um we're trying to push that out there preventing scams, preventing um you know fraud and uh and our and our seniors are essentially being victims of the the bad stuff that's out Katie, I'll turn over to you just one last thing.

Hang on. Diane, hang on one second. Uh Katie and then whoever else and then Diane just lastly uh as far as exciting things outside of the walls. You know, you talked about the movies at Bank Street Theater, uh, opportunities to go to Lind Damming, all those, but also talk about other things that have just kind of new like the seniors being involved in our trunk or treat. Yes. And also Memorial Day. Absolutely.

Uh where we have the option through the uh bus drivers that do a great job bringing our seniors uh to say the parade. Can you talk a little about how that's been a net positive to seniors for those events?

Absolutely. You know, one of the things that um we've really tried to do at the senior center among the team and everything like that is to really be visible out in the community. Um so in addition to the um the different events that mayor has mentioned uh also you know we have uh we're we're very involved in being part of the Apple festival. We start the Apple festival with a king and queen every year uh which has been a fun tradition that we've been able to uh to have for our seniors to kind of you know welcome one of their own but also just to be able to connect with our community. um all of these opportunities and all of these different endeavors of being outside of our walls really just allows us to to garner and further connect with um all of you folks that are out there within our community beyond just our seniors even.

Great Katie and then then Mary Jane Katie. Hi Jasmine. Hi Katie. Good job. Um couple questions. Sure. So the good morning phone calls. Yes. There's another several names for organizations and towns that do that. I want I know you you said you had eight people. Have you called people who used to come that don't now? So that is one of the things that we're looking uh to do with this Good Morning New Milford. So we've had that's what I was talking about. Have you tried it yet? That was the charge. Uh that was the charge. Yes. Oh okay good. So you will Okay. And then the other thing is since you know you're you're doing some things in the evening, you know, seniors, there are seniors who still work.

Yes, I'm one. Uh would you consider since you're going to have the building lit and people there having some of the programs like the Reiki or the yoga or the taichi or even the painting uh you know from like 5:00 on I don't mean to have it at 9:00. Are you considering that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. That is exactly what our um what this is this you know open late kind of endeavor is uh you know we we understand that not we're open 8 to 4 and I know that that is not a convenient hour for for some folks especially I'm sorry especially for um for seniors that are still in the workforce you know that really limits um limits them to what they're avail what's available so what we you know allowing also to have appointments available for them as well as just general programming

seniors who can drive is really what I'm thinking of because obviously you know you can't have the bus going out 24 hours a day and we have things such as we had the tsentennial I remember that there were a bunch of seniors came to that we have new Milford 250 which we'll be doing you know hoopla um and things such as the duck race now not that the bus now this is on a memorial day it's a holiday um but have you ever you know asked around would there be enough seniors there to do something like that on a Monday holiday to take them down to see the parade and drive them down to watch the duck race or something. I mean, you know, to get them out. Just saying. Not that you should, just saying. Have you or would you consider something like that? Memorial Day. We are in the Memorial Day parade actually. We're very excited.

I expect them to come down and watch the ducks go through. Absolutely. That would be that would be great. Great. So Katie, keep an eye out us for us because uh we are, you know, we we are very concerned and very uh you know, cognizant of the safety, but we do have both a walking and a riding unit that we have from the senior center. So our senior folks that are walking in the parade walk in front of our bus. That's good.

And we do that really because, you know, we do that so that we're all together, but also we do have some seniors that say, "All right, I'm done with this little hill here." So and on onto the bus they jump onto. And then one one question that goes back to the material line. So you have $22,000 in there. That's $2,000 a month. I mean, I'll just like, you know, round it out. TW whatever. $2,000 a month. Um, what are some of the things that you're spending that on? That's I mean that's a significant amount of money. I know you're not doing it on a monthly basis, but could you just give us an example of some of the things that you purchase and what program they're for?

Yep, absolutely. So um a lot of our you know one of the one of the reasons why I think our senior center is so successful is the um you know the dedication from the town and um from this budget. So with that with those funds we're able to bring in for example speakers uh presenters different educational opportunities um and things that we're able to offer our folks that have either minimal or complimentary of charge. So, and we're able to offer a whole wide variety of different, you know, programs of that. Um, so even a material supplies, we have, for example, um, one of our seniors is actually a cartoonist. Uh, he volunteers his time, but we utilize our budget to be able to buy, you know, the pads of paper and the the materials so that our folks who might want to, you know, dabble into this second, you know, second level of learning or second, what is it? Second round of learning type of thing are able to do so. Um, and we're able to kind of be able to maximize what we have uh through those fundings.

Thank you very much. And I would I look forward to seeing evening things. Absolutely. So are we. And we're excited for the time change because then we could really have more things happen at night safely. Can't wait. Thank you. Thank you.

You guys do an amazing job. Like the amount of programs that you have, they're so valuable to our seniors and to the community. I mean, I think it's just great that you're going to have some evening hours and that you have this good morning program. Um, it's just you just keep expanding and I'm always amazed with the amount of staff people that you do have that you can do all these things. It's just incredible. Um, and I've I said this at social services, too. I think the one piece, and I've told you this in the puzzle, I'm going to say it again, is that I think you need a social worker, an LCSW on your staff. And I think that would probably solve the whole problem with the municipal agents having to interact and be part of social services at this point. But I really think that's a critical factor that's missing on their staff at this point.

No, thank you for the compliment. Any other Diana's on the phone. She I'm sorry. You had a question. Jasmine, I was unable to make it there to hear your wonderful presentation. Thank you. We miss you. a great job. Um, I have a couple of things to say. One, I I I I just I commend you guys so much for the work that you do to make I'm getting a little weak here to make the senior center like a second home. Yes.

It's it's unbelievable. And I mean it's just so great that you bring in like the paper shredding and the you know if you're want to throw out your drugs properly you bring that to them rather than you know a lot of these people and myself included I'm a senior um who complain around and um you know it's it's just a wonderful thing to do. So I'm hoping to be your 251st new member. Oh, yay. Good job. Let's get you registered. Run out of spots.

Looking forward to I'm going to embrace the fact that I am a senior. Um, and I'm really looking forward to a number of things. Your chair yoga cannot wait. You've got some sort of a balance program that I need desperately. I have horrible balance and I go to PT twice a week and it's just I need to do more. Um, I I understand you play bridge and you teach bridge on Wednesdays. I'm a huge bridge player. Oh, wonderful. And I also am a teacher. I have taught bridge.

So if and I'm Yeah. So if you if you need another person, if you need some, you know, assistance, if someone calls in sick or whatever, um if if some of your uh some of your members, you know, need a partner, I'm there. Sounds like you're signing up to be a senior center volunteer, Miss D. We welcome that. If you'd like to take advantage of that, I will absolutely um provide it. Let's get you registered. I can't wait to have I can't wait to have some of Orlando Pastor's lunch. The lunches have been have been really fantastic. It's been a very welcomed and great partnership that we've had. Our lunch program. I think

I look at that I look at that menu in your in your bulletin and I just like I I can't wait to go have some food. We'll save a seat for you at the table. Come join us. Thank you. Looking forward to a wonderful pres. Thank you. Hello. Yes. Hey, good evening. We have Rolando and then we'll go to you.

Uh first of all, I want to piggy back on everybody, you know, congratulating you the great work that you do in your staff. You know, I see them uh on a daily basis and they just do great work uh with this move. Um, might the worry be a little miscommunication? Maybe like for example, Michelle uh in her notes and and and what's been talked about maybe it's just a worry about the change like what what is really going to change? Like are you guys worry that who's going to be able to use what material? What budget is that going to come out of? They're going to be in the same offices. Is is it more that or or is there something else to it?

Well, you know, change is always something that's uh that's that's never

it's never always comfortable. But one of the things that you know, I know that both my team and also the commission on aging is we are open to the continued collaboration. We're looking to have this open dialogue. I know that um when if you know if and when this change does come a bar uh to be come into play it is going to be something that we're going to have to work through and figure out what's the d new dynamic um because you know in the end my role here is the director of senior services my I overseeing the what is happening with our seniors that's my responsibility that's my role that's my goal um so with that also I'm you know looking to be respectful to different departments that uh you know things are you know the way that things are going to be happening we just want to make sure that that that dynamic and that that flow makes sense. So with that, you know, our open dialogue, the collaboration, the communication, that's really what's going to be able to make this, however this, uh, transition happens, that's really what's going to be key here.

Ari, thank you.

Thank you. Um, uh, first of all, thank you, uh, Jasmine. Uh, New Milford Senior Center is the best of the best and, uh, working with seniors is your area of expertise. Uh there's no one better equipped to serve New Milford seniors than the team under your supervision. Uh technically speaking, the mayor is the CEO of this town. Uh whatever that means. Uh I just have to ask, what kind of CEO makes unilateral decisions without consulting the providers and the constituents, the shareholders? Our social services department is also the best of the best. But why overburden them when they're already strapped to do so much? Um I it took Ivana over an hour to talk about all the services that they're already providing and it would be difficult I think for them to absorb this as well. Uh if the CEO of New Milford wants to make this radical unilateral change, why not establish a committee to investigate the costbenefit analysis as a CEO would do? uh this committee could be charged to consult with the providers, the constituents in due time over the course of a year. Um I think that would be a winwin winwin so to speak. Uh so in the meantime, why railroad this through? What's the rush?

Is that a question or a statement or what is it? I think I feel like mayor

well I guess it's a question for the mayor through why not take the time to do if this is actually in the best interest of the town and in the best interest of our aging population here especially considering the fact that the senior center is doing such an awesome job right now. So Ari, um, now that you mentioned that as a question, uh, you didn't pose the question, you posed it as you already knew something. And letting you know a couple of things. One, this is something that wasn't done in the middle of like a week of thinking. We've had huddles well over a year. Did you know that?

No. where we meet with the senior center where we meet with the senior center and we talk about goals as I do with all of the department heads. We talked about what we could do, how we could continue to move programs forward as you heard Jasmine, a lot of that came from our huddles. We also talked about how as uh you had said that Jasmine and Avon are the best of the best. when you listen to their reports, right? You talk about the complexities, the growing of the seniors in this uh this area and you just have to take a look at the com study which you can go online absolutely and look at it Ari you can go to www.mmillford.org go to the community page, click the com study, and you'll see the growth trajectory of seniors is probably going to be one of our most uh uh higher growth populations. And what do we need to do? And with those and with the complexity of society, we need to make sure that we can handle all those and use the expertise in a way that helps everyone. So, you may have heard before that the municipal agents would be housed in Petty Bone. That's complete false. They would be housed in the senior center. They would have the ability and the resources to continue the same thing they're doing at the senior center to help seniors, but then also use the experience of the social workers and Avana who is there. You've also heard and we've also given all the accolades to Jasmine, to Deborah, to the staff of all of the new programs that we're putting into the senior center. Now, I

know Ari, you run ARC, am I correct, down in Danbury. So, you would know as a CEO or as a leader, there's a certain bandwidth that each and every one of us has when it comes to time. So if we are looking at asking Jasmine, asking the senior center to continue this trajectory of which the goal I had asked and set was a 25% lift. If we're able to provide great service and continue to uh move it forward with additional programming, there's going to be time that's going to be needed to do that. and we've asked Jasmine. So to be able to help and have someone that does this business every single day help the municipal agents who will still be there. You just said yourself Avana is world class and I 100% agree with that. Jasmine programming and everything else world class. So if you can focus on that as well, it is a win winin for the entire community. Nothing has changed. the services will continue. We'll continue to add more services to our seniors and make it world class as we want for everyone. And that's how you do it.

Well, that might be a goal, but why do it so swiftly? Why not take the time to be I'd be happy to I would be happy. So again, Ari again again Ari maybe maybe a year is something that you consider fast. I do not. I consider it thought out. I considered talking to our senior center team members looking at how we can grow this. And a matter of fact, another thing that we all talked about and it came from the huddle was how do we conotate the senior center as a community center for seniors that came from the senior center huddle. So when you look at that, how do we unpeel that onion? How do we move forward? What is a senior center community center look like? It's not just municipal agents. It's a whole holistic look at seniors. It's just one part. and how do we do it so it benefits our seniors in a better light and it's an opportunity for success and like I said before the municipal agents still stay at the senior center they still work and help our seniors with resources and the same with Jasmine and her staff continuing the trajectory as you've heard of new people coming and we're looking to try and get seniors that are younger trying to get that demographic down even more. As you can see with all the programming,

one of the things that we talked about before at our huddle was exactly what Jasmine's talking about. Maybe one night a week or a month where you could have it to where working seniors can come and enjoy the benefits and the programs. And I'm extremely happy that they've thought about that and figuring out a way to make that work. Another question. Absolutely. On that now that you said that about resources. So now that they're going to be under the uh social service where with Lena, are there any type of funding or any type of resources that they weren't able to tap into as uh under the senior center that they will be able I think you're talking more of as complexities go.

Yeah. Right. So for instance, as Jasmine had said before, when they're doing the welcome to New Milford, right? you're going to unpeel things that may be on the scope of a municipal agent. So the municipal agent, right, then has to uh figure out where does that go? Where is it benefit? What resources do we need? What resources do we use? If you're engaging with those people, what are the complexities of that and how all that works, which is they can catch and earn.

Absolutely. One thing we have found out whether it is I know R.J.'s is here and she can tell you whether it's homelessness, whether it is drug addiction, whether it is um somebody having uh an issue uh with a partner, if you can address it as quickly as you possibly can either with a solution or hearing them, the positive outcome is a factor, am I correct, RJ, of about a 10x.

It is. And one of the wonderful things that happened in the last year or so was out of the joint commission and out of the mayor and out of Chief Ceruto, we work closely with um community resource officer Jay Schneider who we could have three more of him, but um he's wonderful. And between him, other officers going out getting CRT, criminal response training trained, a lot of confusion on who do you call in this situation was genuinely alleviated and it made it much more streamlined because we do someone just this week someone has come back. They've reached out to uh 211. they've been working. Not a lot of housing in the area. The good and the bad is people don't want to leave New Milford even if they're being priced out of a housing situation, but we we work closely with a lot of the town and it's very lucky to do so. And if we have strange requests, I we do DMV. We've done uh immigration forms. We've done replacement green cards. We've done a lot of work getting people hooked up to mental health services. What does your insurance cover? Um you didn't do this at the right time. What are the actual We do

We have not been stumped yet. Thank you. And part of that is because we are able to reach out. We call Ivana. We call uh the Department of Public Health. We call facilities. Mike Foucher went out and I'm using the term correctly, broke open a few people's driveways in the last storm. And uh Mr. Christopher Blair, he went out and plowed out our a couple of our seniors got to their uh utility hookups so that they could get their energy assistance so that they could get there, you know, ahead of the time. It's great. Wonderful to be able to reach out in the town. Good.

Thank you, R.J. I want to say the last thing, Jasmine, and I know you know this. Seniors are not like they used to be. They are not. And you that's absolutely right and you know it. So you are adapting and will continue. I know you will continue to adapt because every senior in this room right now is thinking I'm not a senior. I want to do stuff. I want to drive and go someplace at night. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And so before I leave this podium, I do have one last thing I wanted to um to note and to uh invite you all. We are actually hosting a senior center open house on Saturday, May 16. So, we're opening up the senior center and with that we have also invited many of our local uh program local businesses, local agencies um and individuals that help provide services to seniors. So, everything from uh you know the local nursing homes to even uh the local theater companies here that offer senior days. Um we welcome you to join us on this Saturday uh at the senior center. Um, I hear there might be some samplings of the lunches that are provided as well out of our kitchen, but to be also be able to come into our senior centers open to the community. So, not only for seniors that are looking to see what we're all about, but maybe if any community members have any seniors in their lives or even volunteer opportunities, check out our building. Um, we welcome you to be a part of it. Uh, so I'll pass out these flyers. Saturday, May 16, public hours are 10:30 to 1:30. And I can imagine that there's so many other things going on in the town that day to be able to, you know, stop by, have a snack with us, get some garb, uh, get some, you know, some fun swag from everyone and then enjoy the weekend.

Thank you, Jasmine. Any other questions for Jasmine? Will the snow, will the snow melt by then? I think you have to ask DBW. Sure. I had the opportunity to go into the senior center and she grabbed me right away and signed me up and then she walked me into uh the lunchroom and uh I had five young ladies sitting over in the corner wondering who you were. Uh oh. That was our welcome. I did come we we did come back for lunch and we're uh and we're going to come back again for sure. But I want to say that this isn't something that we're uh jumping out of the box on. We're looking at the future and we're all getting older. I know I'm re getting really old and uh

I don't want to go to the senior center yet, but you're you're gonna find me. You're going to find me there. Uh it is something we're going to go into the future with. We're all getting older and let's try it out. I mean, you can always go backwards, but it's tough going forwards and that's something you're just going to have to kind of understand. Uh the mayor's, you know, is going out on a limb on this to try this system out of the box and uh I don't see anything wrong with it. Um I'm in planning. I we did the POC. We saw aging was going to be a problem in this town right up until 2030, 2040. So where's my God bless you.

Thank you. You got a you got a hell of a job to do and so do social services. And both of you are going to work together on this. Thank you. Absolutely. So, thank you very much everyone. Enjoy the evening. You too. Thank you all. Great presentation. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Okay. Land use. All right. Land use 106. Jim Laura. Thank you.

You got it. I have no idea where things are. 107. 107.

All right. Okay. Um, so I'm Laura Regan, zoning enforcement officer, here tonight with James Furlow, the wetlands enforcement officer, to present the 2026 2027 land use budget. The land use department staff, which consists of Jim and myself, as well as an assistant land use enforcement officer and a land use administrator and a part-time compliance officer, runs the offices for the aquifer protection agency, inland wetlands commission, planning commission, zoning board of appeals, and the zoning commission. Um last year a total of 60 public meetings were held by these five land use boards and commissions with the following applications being processed, reviewed, publicly discussed and acted on. 72 zoning applications, 60 wetlands applications, 26 variance applications, one appeal of a ZEO decision, two subdivision applications, eight planning referrals, and two aquifer registration applications. Um, and outside of those meetings, staff reviewed and processed an additional 253 zoning permits, 58 administrative zoning reviews, and 15 duly authorized wetland agent applications, investigated over 85 complaints, and responded to an everinccreasing number of information requests. Um, so next year's goals are to continue to run successful offices and meetings for the five land use boards, continue to provide highquality services for the commissions and applicants, continue to provide and improve customer service engagement and accessibility of information. Continue to enforce the various state and local land use regs. improve the

online permitting process and experience and implement the new zoning mandates, public act 251, also known as housing bill or house bill 80002 and act concerning housing growth and hire and train a qualified successor trainee for the assistant land use enforcement officer who is expecting to retire. Um, oh there. And then before we turn it over to Jim, um, I was just going to kind of segue into a little bit um, of our increase. So to meet those goals, an overall budget increase of $65,453 over last year's budget is proposed. The consolidation of multiple offices into the land use department has been efficient and costeffective, but New Milford continues to experience growth and development. Regulatory requirements are changing and becoming increasingly complex and customer service demands are increasing both in number and turnaround time expected. The assistant land use enforcement officer which is Jim and my number two with over 20 years of experience has announced that she is expecting to retire during the next fiscal year. So at this time additional staffing resource resources are needed. Um, another consequence of the consolidation has been the creation of critical employees. Critical employees and positions are those that are essential for the work an organi are essential for the organization to successfully function and achieve the necessary work results. Small organizations like ours are particularly vulnerable and challenged when a critical employee departs because of the major service disruptions that it can cause. For local land use boards that regulate private property and are subject to deadlines, the vulnerabil vulnerability and consequences may be even greater. So with this consolidation, the assistant land use enforcement officer kind of has gradually become the sole

incumbent of a host of duties and responsibilities across multiple agencies. Um, and she was able to, and with that consolidation happening gradually over several years when things were slower, she had time to develop the skills, gain experience, and adapt to new roles. A new hire is not going to be able to do that. In fact, with our current workloads, I don't know how long we could adequately provide coverage before backup begins, mistakes start happening, and people just get frustrated. Um, so that's basically so basically it's not realistic for the invest I think if we wait to till our current employee um retires to hire new. Um, so once I get past I think the fear and panic of losing an employee, I thought we kind of had an opportunity here to bring on a temporary trainee. Um, this will allow that needed training to happen. the current employees 20 years of experience to be passed on and also for this coming year to provide an extra set of much needed hands and then next year we can re-evaluate what our staffing needs are. Um and then so Jim's going to get into the details of the budget

more detail. As Laura pointed out, we are we put together a budget uh request to the town uh for looking forward to meet our goals and to keep up with the workload that we're currently having. With that, we're looking at our personnel, uh, the town CEO, town planner, the wetlands enforcement officer that we have, assistant land use enforcement officer, the land use administrator, and a part-time land use compliance officer who also works for the department of public works as well, which gives us a really good segue between the two departments, and it helps us work better together. Um, and then we're looking at a proposed assistant land use enforcement officer trainee as well. With that, that comes out to 400,447,479 um in personnel. The nutmeg overtime, which is an overtime necessary for our staff to cover some of the meetings, similar to what you're doing right now, but a lot of our different meetings, we need some staff coverage, $1,000. That has not changed. um our consultants as you heard about House Bill uh the new uh uh it's it's the new yeah the new public act I have to now change out of house bill the public act uh doing that we're going to need consultants to help us work our way through that uh that is a very changing um you landscape changing activity associated with zoning um and planning uh so we're looking at that but Again, that consultant line has not changed. We're just going to have to make sure that we rework that into how we deal with our daily basises.

You heard last night, economic development,

some of the contractual line will be for the consultants because it's going to go over 25,000 for sure. And not to interrupt you, Jim, and I apologize for kind of doing it, but for those that uh are new to the board of finance and town council, uh forward thinking, Laura and Jim are talking about when you have the employee that has been here for over 20 years, they know the guidelines uh in and out and as we have say a complexity of a book like this, this would be a regulation ations for zoning. You're now going to have another set of regulations similar to this for inland wetlands. Then you're going to have one that's similar Paul knows for planning. And so as you have uh people coming in, whether they be businesses looking to expand or grow here or you have the person that says, you know what, I want to put that shed over here, but I know there's some wetlands over there.

Oh no, you can't. How do I go about doing all that? Now, add the complexity of the state of Connecticut, adding that we talked a little bit about last night, we're going to talk more about on town council on Monday night, the complexity of all the new housing requirements and all the new things that come with that. And then we're asking for our customer service levels for everyone from someone putting in a shed to someone putting in a new business. As we just talked about before with Jasmine, there's only a certain amount of time that you can do something per day. So, the most efficient thing you can do is have someone shadow this person uh for 6 to 8 to nine months so they're ready to go when that person decides to retire within that year. You have somebody already up to speed so that we're not backing up a process. we could still provide, you know, the goal, as Laura said, great service to everyone and it just makes really good business sense to do this. Now, is there a cost to do this? Absolutely. But think of the cost it would be in lost revenue, the cost it would be in um people that may decide that you know what, this experience isn't one I may not go through. So I may not want to do my new deck or I may want to do my due deck, but I'm not going to tell you guys over here. And then when that happens, you know, somebody goes to sell their house and uh oh, by the way, you know, I never pulled that permit and now my whole closing is going to get delayed because I've got to now talk to becomes a whole big onion to unpeel. So to me, why not nip it in the bud, bring in the new person to shadow, and then we have the opportunity to continue that trajectory. Sorry, Jim.

Not a problem at all. All right, continue along. Legal notices are a requirement pursuant to state statute. Uh we put an 8,000 for that. And my statement always to you is if we lose the spectrum for legal notices, legal notices are going to double uh for everybody for so all different agencies that do that, those things become very expensive very quickly. I know for years now they've been trying at the state level to make sure that we could put those into our town um website. However, that has not come to fruition yet. So, we're currently stuck with the system that we have pursuant to state statute. That's why that is still there and it is still at the same level as it has been in the past. And finally, our materials and supplies. Um those are for office map copier supplies. We have a big map machine downstairs for people, etc. um professional publications required trainings. Um that is now a new big thing that's coming in is these commission members all have to go to trainings. Um I know that a lot of our commission members are very forthcoming with going to the trainings. They learn a lot at khakiwick and cause and all the different organizations uh that help out the wetlands and uh Kazio which helps out the zoning group. Um, so these are all requirements that we need to maintain our licenses as well as our commission members need to go to these to maintain their certifications as well. That gives a total grand total of $526,479 is the request that we're asking for in terms of the breakdown of the the finances. Next slide, please.

Question before we get too far into the permit system. So, I like the idea of being proactive about having someone to replace someone who's going to retire. Um, so at this salary though, this will be somebody who has a background. Correct. So, right now this is a union position and it's a stepped grade up. So, the trainee would come in at that bottom grade 10 and then they are able to move up to I think it's a 12. So, if I'm reading this right, the 68,400 bucks, that's what you have in here for That's correct. Okay. Yeah. So that person in order to get that salary or whatever um they would have some background.

Oh, we're hoping that they would have some land use background. They might not be experienced as Pete said with New Milford's specific local regulations, right? I understand. But they'd have at least know the rules of the game, so to speak. So then because you'll have two people and of course this person will need some training on what we do here in New Milford, but they will get a chance to be totally immersed. So that at the end of the six months or whatever time it is before she retires, that person will be out the shoot and know what to do independent. Yes. Is that correct?

Okay. And we'll go to the trainings just like you would do or she would do or whatever. Okay. Um I think that's just what I wanted to say. And I guess my other question or my thought was are you confident as you can be that you'll find somebody for that rate with I'm hopeful and by having a trainy it gives us the time we're not under pressure whereas you know we need to just quick fill fill a vacancy. So okay you may be selective at first. Well, right. I know. And no, just concerned that it if you don't find somebody like that, right? But I hope you do. And they're they're hard to come by that.

Okay. But new Milford's a good draw. Thank you. The one thing I do want to point out is like she said, this is a pre-existing position. She's not a filled position. This is where the person that's proposing to retire started. So, it is a percept position. I remember. Yep. I started in that position. But I think it's I think it's helpful for all the other members. Oh yeah, I know you've been through this before, but for the other members understand that this is not a new position. We're not going to be creating a new the it's already set in writing of of what this is required, what their experience requirements are as well. All right, getting into revenues now. Jim, before you go into revenues, does anybody else have any questions for Laura Jim concerning expenditures? Okay. All right, Jim.

Okay, we're now getting into our revenues. We're looking at zoning permit and application fees. It's about $75,000. It is u similar to what we've been collecting over the last couple years. So, we're keeping with that. Um if you're looking at revenues, I believe it's page 16. Um if I can remember correctly. Um we have ZBA application fees. Um again, we look at our fees not to try and completely cover the cost of office because when we do this, we are supporting not only the people of New Milford, we're also supporting the tax base as well. And it's helpful to get people in coming in with lesser fees. Make sure they're going forward with that because in the long run we we are better off having people involved in this town, businesses involved in this town. Um and you know going forward from that particular direction. Um our zoning engineering fees $25,000. The asterisk is theirs because that is a self- sustaining account. That is if they come in and they are hitting something that is beyond our capabilities to review. So that's an a peer engineering review requirement for zoning. So that's the zoning engineering view fees. Then we have our subdivision application fees of approximately $5,000 because we are starting finally to see subdivisions come back in other than one lot splits. Uh we've got a few subdivisions on the horizon that are coming in for that. Um and then we got the wetland significant activity fee which is similar to the zoning uh engineering fees. They're just have different names because they come from different statutes um for peer review of applications that come to the wetlands commission particularly regarding um engineering uh drainage things like that that come in and that is the self- sustaining as well. Um the wellness permanent application fees is up because we're seem to be running more and more as land becomes a little bit more scarce. The decent land is now is has been developed. So people are

getting closer to wetlands and water courses, which means we're getting more applications. We're getting more work. Um, and we're trying to make sure these applications meet the codes for storm water management, for protection of wetlands and water courses, um, and those requirements that we have. And finally, each year we come before you. We present our annual budget. We explained how our biggest expenditure and our biggest investment is our personnel. If you go back to that first slide, our personnel is our largest investment that we have here. It's not our equipment or facilities. It's not our computers and technology. It that deliver the services. It's the people that are down there. So, it's very important to have the right people in the right place at the right time to help the individuals of the town of New Milford. Any additional questions?

Any questions for Jim or Laura? Thank you. All right. Well, thank you. Keep doing it. Jim, got to put your next hat on. Yeah, I'm switching hats now. So, which is the emergency local emergency planning budget? Okay. 137. It's a pretty good budget.

All right. Local emergency planning commission. Again, my name is James Furlow. I'm the emergency management director for the town of Demilford. This is one of the requirements that came with being the emergency management is to help oversee the local emergency planning committee. In May 1987, state statute brought in a requirement for these to take a look primarily at um chemical resources and chemical problems, hazmat materials and things. Um they've now flushed out a little bit more to dealing with traffic patterns um and training programs for fire departments and police departments and relating those things um and to integrate the local emergency planning commission group with the rest of the state of Connecticut region five de region five state of Connecticut response teams hazardous materials response teams etc. Um we also house in this particular budget our uh monetary contributions towards C which is community environ uh the community emergency response team and NAR which is the um Northville amateur radio association which helps cover us in case we lose our communications. Um, so these are two very important aspects and you will see people these people out and about during a lot of our different events. We keep them active. Um, and they help us out tremendously. Uh, the amount of hours they have put in since 2020 with COVID and now they're being used for just about every event we have in town. Um, they are trained to deal with traffic control and and various other things. So, they are very helpful to the community. All right. Our LAPC will require some new membership upgrades. Uh some of the participants have retired and uh from their jobs and private sectors have changed over time. So we're we're getting those back in place again. Uh

the first directive since COVID has ended is coming up now. It's updating our local emergency operations plan um which is due in January of 2027. This is you know like I said this is also emergency management as well as LAPC. LAPC uh was very instrumental in dealing with the traffic flow patterns associated when Route 7 was widened. So those bigger events that come out is where they really get involved in a lot of these activities. Um LAPC we received the tier 2 application forms which is our chemical uh resource requirement applications that come in. they get put into the emergency directives so that all of our emergency management services and our emergency services can uh take a look at those. If we're going to a Home Depot or if we're going to Kimberly Clark, we know what's what is in those buildings and how to deal with those. So, those are very important activities that we take a look at. And finally, with the budget that we're looking at is $4,000. Has not changed uh in a couple of years. We've been running with that. uh we've been using up most of it uh for our uses and things like that. Um Cert has been g going out and getting their own um small grants and things like that to do some of the projects they want to do that benefit the town of Milford. Uh they put together some emergency backpacks for people. Um they've gone out and done CPR classes and and and and you know gone out into the community and start helping people in those particular requirements. And that's what we want to, you know, promote. It helps everybody the more that people know about this in terms of emergency management response.

Jim, I know the budget is small and we're keeping it no increase, which is uh good. Uh but for those that may be watching tonight or those that are new here, they may be saying, you know, Jim, he was just talking land use and now you've got Jim here. He's talking about local emergency planning. So for those that may not know you, Jim, you're the emergency director here.

Yeah, I am the emergency management director for the town. And that stems from my 40 plus years of service in the fire service, first starting in uh Stanford, Connecticut, and then being a volunteer for over 25 years, as well as going through all the different levels of being an officer and chief twice. So, you know, that's where I came from for multiple years as chief. That's correct. Multiple years as chief and I was chief for two different terms. So, um once that occurred and I got out of being chief, the mayor had asked me to help run the emergency management. Um and with that, I have Kevin Reynolds who's the fire marshal and also a past chief of water which I remember.

Kevin is same thing. Quite a few years experience in there. Probably close to 40 now, right? 36 36 years experience at that particular location um as my backup and he was phenomenal during co nobody ever heard what I was dealing with but when you talk about all the supplies and everything else like that he was the guy getting there

and so when you talk about emergency management which I will get to in a minute when you talk about emergency management emergency management about getting the right people in the right place at the right time and that's what we were able to accomplish that kept our town rolling with uh testing with um the vaccinations and everything else like that. And I know a lot of people complained the first time I put out when I said I want a situational represent a sit rep from each and every department and they were like, well, what's that? Because they're not military organizations and things like that. I said, we need to know where you are, what your needs are, what your unmet needs are so we could try and deal with that. But by asking for that on a Thursday and getting that out to the the group and then meeting on a Friday, everybody knew where social services stood, where the problems in uh youth agency were, park and wreck, um health department, police, fire, everybody knew what their situation was and whether they were short staffed, not short staff, where they were. It was an incredible way of running that. And that's because you put the right people in the right locations.

And we're very very very lucky that we had you to have Jim and have Kevin. Yeah. A lot of towns don't have anywhere near the experience level that we have uh when it comes to emergency management. And I can tell you firsthand whether it's through COVID, whether it was through, you know, events that we've seen here in town, micro bursts, uh, calamities, uh, it paid off tremendously to have this type of experience. Uh, so big thank you to both of you guys. I hope we never have to do it again, Jim.

I agree with you. and sir sir every day in the parking lot during the vaccinations and you know I never want to do it again but thank goodness that you were all here really everybody in this town should thank you all right anything additional forc before I switch you to the next one

oh going forward next right Walter here we No, Walter, as Jim's doing that, that's what I'm going to say. Opening day of the Mets. Here we go. All right. Once again, James Furlow for emergency management. Um, our emergency management bus budget consists of the stipens for the emergency management director and the dep emergency management director, communication tools including radio, cell phones, hotspots for that we need for emergency responses and general equipment and supplies that we have there. Uh, we keep on hand water. uh have entire pallet of water just in case we have an emergency so we don't have to we have at least some base supplies to be able to go out and help people um during emergency situations. So that's the what we have generally associated with that. And and Jim, real quick, could you talk just to the council, you know, we do see times where we have high winds and we post out, you know, that you could have power outages and I know one of the things that we have now been able to do is get these small generators for people that need oxygen that we can help loan out. Correct.

Yes. Several years ago, we found out, I think it was a minute the power went out, we got three calls into the fire department about I have less than an hour worth of oxygen because everybody has switched over from oxygen tanks to oxygen generation machines, which is a really good thing. They're a lot easier to deal with, but they do not have any longevity. the minute the power goes out, if you cannot recharge those machines, you have one hour to two hours worth of oxygen if you're a heavy oxygen user, if you're using 15 liters per minute. Um, so with that, we took some of the emergency management budget that we were getting towards the end of the year. We bought eight generators. Now, these are not huge generators, not house generators. These are single use, single function generators. They're basically to get out to uh people that need med, you know, medical equipment or something like that. It will give them 11 hours to come up with another way of dealing with this um or getting, you know, a family member there to maybe take them over to their house or something like that. So, we got 11 generators that the fire department can deliver or the emergency or sir can deliver with 100 foot extension cord so they know they're outside. They have an 11-hour runtime and we have backup if we backup um fuel if we need to do that as well. But at least we were now not overloading a hospital immediately when certain people can say, "Well, I only need three hours to have my family member come pick me up and and take me to this location or something like that." Um so these are very um that's one thing we've integrated into our our um response requirements. Three of them are now sitting down at the firehouse right now. uh because of the storms that we've been recently having. So, they're ready to go if if they find out that they do need them. Um we're doing bottled water. I mean, we used to carry

um MREs, meals ready to eat out of the uh um National Guard. Uh they will deliver those if it becomes a national emergency. They do not keep very well at Petty Bone. It's not a climate controlled building and our supplies are at Petty Bone right now. Um so you know they have a limited life shelf anyhow. Um so you know we're we're currently working through what we can do with that but we do have some availability for food or something like that if cert becomes a requirement to get things out to people.

And Jim I know forward thinking right it's kind of been what we've talked about with budget and department heads because our task is really looking at new Milford. I know through Kevin's department now we have and I'm sure he'll come and talk about it but now we have a system in place and we've asked residents that may have a loved one or themselves that have a medical need or issue they can now put that in or plug that in. It's now housed so that we and that it's opted in. It's not we're making you an optin. So now if there is a major issue uh cat one coming up here we can contact those people see what their needs are see if we can be able to help them either get out of our area or help them with supply and know them and that's the technology that we've now uh been able to get through Kevin's office to really help with that

right

that can get it get implemented into the address database up at the um dispatch center and then when they bring up that address, they'll know particulars about that. There are certain things associated with the police department that that are on that. There are certain things now going to be associated with medical requirements as well. So, we're working our way towards that. And again, it's an optin if people want to do that. And you probably have seen those at a couple of different the village fair days or something like that. Um, we sent them out with our taxes a couple of years ago to get them out to everybody. Um, and it's been helpful. Um the the the one issue we're currently having is tracking all of that. People change addresses, people move, people unfortunately with these type medical problems pass away, etc. Um or they go into assisted living facilities. Uh we're having a little bit of trouble tracking some of that, but that's less of the problem than knowing about it in the first in the first place. So

any questions for Jim? Right. Thank you. You all have a great night. Thank you, Jim. Outstanding. Next, uh Kevin, fire marshall 26. We're going to We've got uh Kevin has revenues and expenditures. Yep. Revenues are 22. I'm sorry. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Thanks for having me. 20 20 page 20. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Laura. So,

the um I'm Kevin Reynolds, Fire Marshall, Town of the Mford. Um would you guys like me to talk about what our office does now or towards the end? Okay. So, our office is um in charge of doing all the inspections of three family homes or more and all commercial buildings blasting. Um any complaints that come in, we have to follow up on. Um I have myself, Deputy Fire Marshal Ed Pagan, and half the time I have Merchant who uh keeps the office running smooth. Uh, he makes all the phone calls, takes all the phone calls in, sets up our calendars. Um, Ed and I both have to do 30 hours a year of continuing ed to keep our certification. Um, and I'll go through some of the numbers here, then we'll hit the not the

So, Kevin, before you get into the numbers, we do I know I'm sounding redundant and I apologize, but we do have me new members on Yep. the town council and new members on the board of finance and those that are watching. So, why is it important that the fire marshall would go into a 3 to four unit residential home and why would you need to check on that? Why is that important?

Um, I guess it's a different living environments, different living situations in the the rental units. Um, and it's important to make sure that everybody's safety is in compliance with CO detection, with smoke detectors. Um, we did receive a grant for smoke and CO detectors and we've handed uh we've actually installed 47 smoke alarms this past year and 17 CO detectors. Now, that means somebody calls up and they don't have them or we're doing an inspection and we see they don't have them. We install them right then and there. Um,

I know Kevin too is uh education. So, if you could talk a little bit to everyone, I mean you do both if you could talk a little bit about the schools that you go to and then if you could talk about for instance the businesses because you guys uh host some demonstrations uh and you guys uh had talked to me allowed me to go to one of your presentations at Kimberly Clark. Yep. You kind of talk about that because education is very important.

Yep. So, we hit the schools every year. Uh we go to different um we go to the auditorium. We teach about fire safety to the different levels. And this uh May, June, we're going to be hitting all the high school kids including Canterbury about college safety when they go off to live in their dorms. Uh the program is just about finished up, but it's going to be implemented this May or June right before they take off for college. Um we go to businesses, we do fire extinguisher training. We did all the employees at Kimberly Clark, I think it was three over 300

300 and change people that we make them do the fire extinguisher. Uh we show them how to use it and the importance of it, the different types of extinguishers. Um, we go to the senior center, do a a program about senior fire safety. Um, I know you do one for the public there. Yeah. Yeah, we Yeah, we do it. We do the fire extinguisher training down at Petty Bone. That's we we just open that up to anybody that wants to come and learn. You know, a lot of people are afraid of a fire extinguisher. There's nothing to be afraid of, but a lot of people are hesitant. It's heavy. It makes a lot of noise, but it'll put the fire out. I know Kevin, you have a social media presence. So,

Yep. I know it was great. You talked about, you know, we've had a very long winter, but in the very beginning, you talked about safety of whether it be a wood stove, a pellet stove, what you need to do Christmas lights on a natural tree. Yep. All that kind of helping the public. Absolutely. We get those out. Um, we've even had Grant do videos for us. Some are funny videos, but it gets the point across. Um, we try to use all the resources we can to get the message out. And I know Kevin, you like to do surprise fire alarms. Yep.

Uh, for our town buildings to make sure we're all we all know what we need to do, god forbid, in case something happens, right? Because a fire is never planned. That's that's my how I look at things, how how I feel about it. I know it upsets some people in the town buildings, but I kind of just chuckle to myself and keep moving. So, Yep. It's all about the safety. Plus, people need to understand that when the alarm goes off, you evacuate and they get used to what it sounds like. So,

I think it's important. Um so we did uh the only increase is to our um union employees by contracts. Uh like I said we split margin at 27 228. Um Ed's salary is going to go up a little bit for this coming year. My salary goes up a little bit also for that. Um overtime staying the same at 5,500. Uh professional development's going down right around $2,000. Professional development is the training that we need to keep our certifications. Um the public education is staying everything's staying the same except for the professional development that got knocked down. Um our revenues uh for were 70,000 but we brought in Did you have that on here merchant? 79,000 I believe

as of last year.

As of last year. Yeah. So it was up a little bit with that. Uh materials and supplies stayed the same. That's, you know, office supplies, special supplies is, uh, sometimes the equipment that goes out of date or expires, we'll use that money for that. And then the computer software, there's a whole bunch of computer connect. I'll just touch on that a little bit. It's, you guys already talked about it. It's where anybody can sign up that wants to. We're not forcing anybody to do it. gives all the information of the house, who's in it, any medical conditions, dogs, cats, anything. When the fire department, fire truck leaves the firehouse, it pops up on their computer if the address is in there and it tells them, "Look for the dogs. Look for someone that has a problem in the upstairs. They're confined to the upstairs room. The firemen are going right to that location."

Second sc.

Yep. All the time. Um, so that's some of the software. The um, up codes is the codes we use. It's computerized now. We don't have to thumb through the the books and the pages. You just type in the first couple of letters of the word and it pops exactly what we're looking for. It saves us a lot of the time to do our um, code review. And then I just want to go over um, some numbers. Last year we did 2,186 residential inspections. We're at uh 86% compliant for all the residential inspections, which I personally think is great. My goal is 100%, but we're going to need more help to get that done. And we did 675 commercial inspections. Commercial meaning businesses, uh, factories, everything that falls under commercial. um since we implemented the hot work. But this past year, I think as a total asset, we've done 13 hotwork permits for the town. Um we had 31 complaint inspections. Building plan reviews have picked up quite a bit. We're at 225 this past year. Those are time consuming. um violation, uh follow-ups, inspections. Someone calls in or we go out to a business, there's a violation, we have to go back to make sure that they correct them. And we work with everybody. We we want to make sure that we're working together. Uh we did 49 of those. I talked about this installation of smoke and seal alarms. Um we had eight structure fires last year in town. Those numbers are down from previous years. Uh, a lot of open

burning. We've going through a lot of those. We had 38 of those last year. These aren't all the numbers. I can email them to you guys if you guys like looking at numbers. Um, let's see what else we got here.

Kevin, I remind you of something that I think people ought to know. Uh, you Ed actually came to the uh meeting. We have a training. We're having another one starting next week of community messengers uh to go into communities uh they work with parents uh in school that you know maybe they don't speak English and they wanted to learn about the resources in town so they knew what to tell people and so Ed came he brought all kinds of things uh talked about the smoke detectors and because we had several different um Portuguese, Spanish and something else but he knew came back the next week and brought all the stuff in that I don't know that that you had all that all in that language that would go for these people to use and uh he did a great job talked about the free how you would put in the smoke detectors

and that is there's no way to put a value on that if somebody who can't speak English and needs to do that to call or find out somebody told them how they could do it. So I I think it's a wonderful thing that you do supplying those, you know. So we get all that information that you just talked about from National Fire Academy. They send us up a box. Anytime we get low on it, they send us up another box. So Oh, they he was great. I I you know, I don't know where you were. You would have been great, too. But he was there and uh everybody thought it was a fantastic thing that they would give a distinguisher or an alarm. So, I thank you very much for that. Our community needs that.

Yeah, we love doing it. Um, we want to make sure everybody's safe, especially the elderly. We go out to their homes. Um Oh, that's right. And we make, you know, if they want help going through, we do a walk through their anybody's house. We'll go do a walk through to show them how to get out or what to look for. Um, but yeah, and as far as the PD, the ambulance, the fire departments, we all work great with those guys. They're they're an asset to us. We're an asset to them at times. Um, but if you guys have any questions, anything you need to go over, please let me know.

It's first I've ever heard of it. What how do we do that? Uh if you give me I have a we'll send you the community connect thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I in two seconds we'll give you a little paperwork. I think a lot of people don't know those so maybe we should. So yeah and we always we're going to get pushing it. We go to community events. We go to the Apple Fest. We you know we go to trunk or treat. We went to an event up at the library. We have all those. We're pushing it too because it's a tool for the fire departments on our way there. Yeah. There's medical conditions in my family and it's great that you can know that ahead of time. Awesome. It's all private. It's all contained within the fire department. So, it's not like

is that shared with the ambulance service? Yeah. Yeah. So, everybody will know as they're coming. So, thanks. Um, both Kevin and Ed are out all the time inspecting food trucks. Yep. and and also you're uh into uh Riverfest and uh goat days. Yep. We do all that tents. We have to do the standby. I'm sure you're doing some of the carnival stuff. Yep. Um and I know it takes a long time to do fire inspections and fire reports. Yep. The eight or 10 or whatever you've had last year. That takes a long time to do that.

It does. We got to get all the information together. Uh the tools that the town gave us or the body cams, it helps us do when we do an interview with people. We can refer back to those and make sure we didn't miss anything. So, and also I want to thank you because some of the events like Riverfest where it's a spur-of the- moment thing where we brought in another food truck. We called you down on a Saturday to check it out. I know you weren't happy. Yeah. I I usually cover, you know, they got to get done. I'm not going to let him sit there without getting inspected. I go down the elephant's trunk the first Sunday they open. I walk through there, do it all. So, I just want to make sure everybody's safe.

So, I'm just beautiful. No, it's it's definitely a tool that uh it'll help everybody. Uh thank you for everything that you guys do. As far as like uh the inspections, residential, commercial, are are we finding that it's it's hard to uh get to all these inspections? Like you mentioned an 86% um effective rate as far as getting those inspections done, right? Um how could we boost those numbers? Like how could we get it to the 100%? Need another inspector. So that's about that's going to be the bottom line. Clear. So,

and I'm going to be asking for that down the road because I want 100% inspection. Yeah, absolutely. That's the goal. So, yes, absolutely not. Go ahead. I see this often and often everything is computer and they forget people who don't have computers. No phones. So our office and I' I'd be happy to. My name is Martin Sten. I'm the office coordinator for the fire. You tell people who don't

who to call. Oh yeah. So one, you could call the fire marshall's office and either myself, Ed, or Kevin will be able to help you. Does it say that here? I could absolutely update that. I understand the point. Um, but one thing that we have done previously a couple times is we've gone to the senior center and work directly with the seniors to create their community connect account. I've gone myself I've sat down with seniors to create their uh safety goen and I worry about uh yes, this is also available in Spanish. Um, if you scan the link, you'll be able to go right to it.

I want to say this for people who might be watching or watching this tomorrow. you I know there are people who are a little fanatic about giving information right because this is going to be where you live what you want what door to break down and all that this is right here how secure is my data and how is it used and you get the explanation definitely if you could get this in Spanish and course yeah all data that is put into it is obviously very personal for people it is encrypted and uh the only people who do have access to it initially are myself uh Ed and Kevin if you trust us I Yes. Um and then the first responders upon going to a scene gain access to that data, but they only have access to that data in the event of an emergency.

So now where's the encryption? You have to explain. So encryption essentially you're the IT expert, but encryption essentially scrambles uh the the information uh so it can't be intercepted. Any other questions? What do you got? I just I want to mention too that Ed and I are both members of the fire department, right? And when we have free time, which isn't often, we help out in the community at different stuff. So, help whatever, but and March and any questions are good. Thank you, Kevin. You guys appreciate it very much. Thank you.

And uh next we're going to do Sullivan Farms real quick because Mark Mark is not here. here.

And for those that don't know, the town uh has a farm, Sullivan Farm. Uh years ago, the family uh um signed a deed over to the town to make sure that it was a farm that was educational. Uh the town obligated to take care of this farm. So, when you first look at the um revenues, we're seeing the revenue stay the same at 111,838. And that's revenue numbers from the retail and wholesale sales. So, they have a uh retail outlet in Sullivan Farm. You can go there, buy vegetables, maple syrup, all sorts of great stuff. And they also go to different um uh uh farmers markets.

They get them in New York. They go down down county. Uh so that's 111. So when you go to page 166, the breakout, the first thing you'll see is Sullivan Farm self- sustaining. So you say, "What does that $111,888 do?" That's programming that they run. Programming for the schools, programming for the Mayflower in that people come and they experience uh what a farm does other organizations.

Uh and within that uh two part of that uh programming is some of the young people that uh Mark and those guys hire uh actually run some of some of those programs. They do. materials and supplies you can see is the same at 5,000. And then again, you're seeing the payroll at 61,651. That's for the high school and college interns that work on the farm. They've been doing that since we've had the farm and when Mark had the youth agency. And that's uh young people learn uh farming, they learn a job, they learn all sorts of life lessons there. And I know and Jason, our youth agency director, he was one, I believe, one of the kids.

Yes, he was. That went through the farm. Does anybody have any questions on Sullivan Farm? Do I just mention uh is the $61,651 is the $1 for Mark? I'm going to say yes. That's it. He does it for a dollar. He does it for a dollar. Exactly. Sorry you're not here, Mark. Okay. All right. Next is public works. All right. And public works 141. We'll let uh Jack, thank you, Jack, for coming tonight. And uh overviewing it first before we start. I know uh just on behalf of myself and I'm sure the rest of the council will say the same thing.

Can't thank the team enough, especially with this. I don't know why Chris is here.

Chris. Chris, stand up. uh for all of the all of the plowing, all of the, you know, putting the material down on the roadways, helping out with the sidewalks, helping, you know, as I talked about a little before, people might not know, when the ambulance gets called in, and they stop and they go to dispatch and say, "I can't get up that driveway." Chris and the team got to pivot and figure out how they can get a truck up there to plow. today. You guys also helped the Connecticut Department of Transportation on 109 when we had five cars had spun out 67 when that truck spun out and you guys pivoted and helped out so that our residents could safely go.

I think this past um I think we're maybe seven or eight medical calls. Uh not only will we have no fire calls this particular storm, previous storms, it's been both. It's been medical calls, fire calls. It's a huge thank you to the crew and I know still more work has to get done because the intersection sight lines and culde-sacs and we try and alert the public that there's a methodology that you guys have and uh we're getting to all that work. So, a big huge thank you to you and the guys. Absolutely. Jack.

All right. Yeah. Hey, I'm Jack Healey. I'm the public works director. Uh you've had some great presentations tonight, so they're hard acts for us to follow. Um I did um we would have more of our staff here tonight. Unfortunately, three of them are homesick. Um some retired and doing other things. So we have Chris, you've already met Chris. We have Holly Mer who's our admin our operations assistant. Jason Hyde, our AutoCAD technician. A lot of you get prints and things. Jason's one doesn't. And then we have uh Dave Martin back here. And just so that you know, he's facility supervisor. He was on the roof today at JPCC shoveling snow. Um we, you know, I still have memories of uh 1978 watching that piece of iron sticking out of the civic center. And I was doing a little reading on that because I also remember 78 blizzard. This the storm for the uh civic center was 10 days before the blizzard of 78. So they had backtoback storms then too. So uh and then I know this last storm they compared the blizzard to 78. So anyway, uh the first page, this is this is what we we pledge to do for the town. Um we we strive to provide top quality, professional, effective, and timely services to residents, businesses, and customers. We do this by focusing on relationships with ourselves and our customers, and on customer service and satisfaction, thus improving our image and maintaining the community trust. We support and enhance high quality of life for the town residents, businesses, and visitors by providing wellplanned, environmentally sensitive, cost-effective infrastructure and services to promote public health, personal safety, transportation, economic growth, and civ civic vitality. And I know that in my I think now seven years here, believe it or not, um I meet with the mayor uh every Friday. And one

thing that he and I have always agreed on is that it is our responsibility to have to provide good service to our customers. And I know uh the mayor is always saying he's got 29 bosses or 29,000 bosses. So um my boss tells me that those bosses want us to do certain things. So we we strive to do that. Um thank you. I'm not going to go through the exact uh everybody on that org chart, but this is our org chart. We have 55 people who are employed in various parts of uh public works. That's the office staff, that's the highway crew, it's our mechanics, it's our facility staff. Um and we work to to provide that services to the town. My background is environmental health and safety. And I do tell everybody, and if you've ever interviewed or met me during an interview, I will tell you my number one responsibility is safety for all those people. I make sure those people come to work with 10 fingers and 10 toes. They go home with the same 10 fingers and 10 toes. Well, there's a little joke about that. I used to say one guy uh worked for me, he had nine and a half. And I said except for Bobby, he only has nine and a half. So, um and I've known Bobby since we were kids, so we could do that. Um one of the things we do, and I've talked recently several times with the mayor about this, is is our prof is our development of our employees. We, as you know, it's difficult to get employees to go into these types of jobs. Um, and we've been working very hard since we've been here. We've expanded the number of labor grades we had so that we can bring in other type other employees who may not have CDL, the training that we need. So, to that end, we send all of our employees to Yukon T2. And the mayor has been very supportive of what I'm doing. Um, every employee. So, and some of our employees like Chris um, and Hollyanne and Jason have gotten certifications. I think I don't know how many. Chris has got he's in fact he's got his jacket on.

Currently have three. Jason's got what, three or four.

Hianne's working at hers and I think Dave and his crew have taken some of the training also. Um we have been able to stay staff by bringing in employees who may not have a CDL. And unfortunately Mike Boucher is not here. He's one of the people are sick um right now. But we we've been able to expand um our staff and and keep ourselves fully staffed throughout this winter and last year. We've brought in eight new employees in the last year for some for 55 employees. That that's quite a turnover and we're putting those employees out in trucks in a storm like this. Uh Mike and the staff at the highway group do the CDL training. We if we bring somebody in without a CDL, we will train you and help you get that CDL. Now, there is you need to stay working for us for several years. There's something in our offer letter about that, but we will do that. And to us, that's been a selling point in being able to bring in uh good good high quality help. Um we also promote from within. Um we've had 13 employees receive in promotions uh over the last several years. That means they're in. So Chris is an example. Um Chuck Ballard is one, Jim Gran, uh Chris is one, James Sheridan, Mike is actually one, um Joey Bane is one, Nia. So we all these people have been worked somewhere in the town and have been promoted up and going through the training and work for us and they want to stay working for us. So I feel that that's a a plus for for what we're doing. Now, I know that you we've talked about what we do is is is roads and and bridges and trees and things, and we'll go into that, but I also just wanted to quickly note some of the other um services or support that we provide to other parts of the of the town. We we support the traffic authority. We uh zoning commission, I write engineering reports for the zoning commission. We

support planning, Inland's wetlands, the riverfront committee, the blightboard. We issue all the 911 addresses. We do that. Nia does that out of our office. We serve on the DST. We handle road rightaway permits, inspect um outside contractors. When aquarium does work, we go out and we inspect them. Um we work with the WPCA. We work in cooperation. We do MS4 compliance, storm water sampling, accreditation. We're working on accreditation. Uh we support the road committee and the municipal building committee. Um some of us actually help the area too. We work we serve on Westcog. We we we feel it's beneficial to the town for us to serve on WCOG because that helps when the mayor's on he's on the planning on on the on the board there that hey our comm our our our staff is helping you with your programs. Um and we do we have we also serve on T2. Um we are pro we are on April 29th we are we are putting on the first bridge inspec assessment program training system for the the state of Connecticut at Yukon. Uh we're doing that here in New Milford. So so that that's another and we also um little kudos to us. We also got referenced by DOT to Norwalk to help them with a couple of their bridges to help them guide them through the the um the permitting process. So we've developed this rapport with the state that the numbers there are this year's per uh that we're actually in this year. And what we're proposing is if uh this year we're at 5,639,659. We are proposing an increase to 5,731,851. The difference there is primarily in salaries. Most of that is is is driven by salary increases. The other thing we do is we talked to the mayor. We we've been holding steady on our budgets on

materials and and I think anybody knows the prices are going up. So, we have we have some increases for guard rail. We got to, you know, we need we did a survey of all our guardrails. We have to upgrade them. So, we're we put a little extra money for guardrails. Uh street paint. We got to paint more streets. Um training, we put $2,000 in for training. Uh vehicle maintenance. We every year we're doing more and more with our vehicles and our maintenance. Our our fleet. I I I tell you, you've been very good in supporting us with new new vehicles, but even with new vehicles, it's there's more training, there's more equipment. Uh just because you have a new computer in it, it makes it sometimes more complicated. Um and then a few more dollars for signs. Um DPW Capital, we went up 5,000 from number there, we actually went up 5,000 and that's for software. Um the facilities operating uh went up to $1,25,223. That's for salaries and some safety equipment. And then on the facilities capital, we went up uh to $245,000. And that's on a couple places. One is um we picked up $10,000 with the new Lanesville Fire Department. We spoke with the mayor and the fire departments. We um Dave Martin's crew is going to support them um and make sure that the facilities keeps clean and keeps it up to par with how you see the rest of our buildings. Um Dave also asked for $20,000 for plumbing at the JPCC. The pipes underneath there. Um

yes,

he he can tell you he took some pictures this year. We need to we need to put some money into the plumbing and then a PD air conditioning. The air conditioning at the uh PD needs to be upgraded. Next slide. I just this is just uh an accounting of what our infrastructure is. You know, we have 186 miles of paved roads, 27 miles of gravel roads. We have 60 bridges. Actually, it's over 60 bridges. Um we have drainage systems under all these roads. Uh and even off these roads, we have drainage systems that need to be constantly reviewed. We we actually camera them, inspect them, and and when we need to, we uh repair them. We have sidewalks. Jack, uh, also on not I don't think is on the slide deck, but also one of the things that you guys took on Endeavor is like two things. One, we do have generators.

Yes. Here in town, and before you put them on a maintenance plan, no one ever really even looked at these things. So, if no one was operating them for years, we'd have no idea if we went to kick them on, do they work? Do they not work? And uh also if you could tell the council, the town also has towers. Yep. And no one ever was looking at the towers. And again, I want to give you put that you put that on a plan as well.

Yeah. And I want I was going to just mention that when we talked about facilities, but yeah, those and again I want to give kudos to Dave and his crew. They took on the response during COVID. We found that the as the mayor said, the generators were not being maintained. So Dave set up a checklist and a and a schedule. They are all What? How often are they maintained now, Dave?

Well, now we check them once a month. They were never being checked. So, at least now all portables and everything are being actually ran the way they should be. They exercise once a week. Um, all our generators at our buildings, but the portables that we have for whatever we need for emergencies were supposed to be serviced, but they never were. So, we took them under our wing. Now we maintain them, make sure they run and we are responsible for radio towers. And you know, Jack, a big huge thank you to Dave Martin and his facilities team. Absolutely.

You know, one of the things uh we have uh called RSP, Mary Jane, is that what they call the the the respiratory diseases RSV? RSVP. So that's going around. And what Dave and his team's been able to do that's been very helpful. We found this out uh when we were battling other things, CO being one, we found a cluster and we asked Dave and facilities to come in to do a deep clean in that whole area to make sure uh so they come down. Uh they're there pretty quickly. they wipe it down and make sure it's sick just so we can try and uh make it so that it's not so communicable

um with people touching door knobs that may be somebody that comes out sick. So, and Dave, you guys have been doing this since co times, right? And uh a big huge thank you to you uh and the entire staff. Uh you guys are extremely accommodating uh when we need things uh making sure these facilities continue. You know, these are older buildings to make sure they still uh are very uh usable and can't thank you guys enough for your continued maintenance on these.

And you talk about the towers. Um and I was just I was going to talk about later, but I'll talk about it now. Um several years ago we we started having trouble with some of the towers, the generators, and there was nothing in anybody's budget to maintain it. Um so we went to the mayor, we asked them for some money, and so every year we put money in the budget. And Dave and the crew go up and they maintain these towers. They make sure that the generators are working, they're clean, they're that you can access them. And so they've been doing that. And I think they've been doing a very good job with that over the last several years. You're just so everybody knows, you're talking about radio towers.

Yes. And and Jack too, kind of the theme that's been through here is the proactivity that our department heads are thinking. I one of the things that with Chris and Mike and you and Chuck, uh, a lot of our road systems without proper drainage, which includes not only the pipe that you see either along the side of the road or underneath the road, but there's also the swelles. There's many, I'm going to say miles of swale. So, first Jack, for those that may not know what a swale is, what is a swale? It's that ditch along the side of the of the of the road that you see water running through. Ditch or it could be going between neighbors. Yeah.

And people never knew what that was and it's a town easement, meaning we have the property. And without that cleaning out of that swale, you now are impacting the roadway itself because it could burst. You could have issues. And I know you guys now have a plan where you guys go out and do. If you could talk a little bit about that proactivity.

Yeah, there's a later on there's a little mention slide about resiliency and you've probably heard that term and I'm out of manufacturing so resiliency doesn't mean much. I just call it good maintenance and um so anyway, we we have this plan and we've talked to them. We've we've talked on our Friday meetings and all everybody here's been involved with it. we've identified and that part-time employee that we share with with zoning he Paul has been working on going out first of all he's he surveyed he's got a list of all of the private brid bridges now you say why is that important well these swailes and brooks and streams they have if you notice they have brush they have logs in them things like that so this year we are making a concerted effort to go and clean those out we don't want to have happen what happened to Southbury and Oxford and things over the last few years so we we're going to be pulling clean these out. We're going to be cleaning them so that the water flows freely and we don't have the logs um and brush and materials backing up on our bridges and including the private bridges. Um I recently was on a uh training program um all the public works directors nationwide you get these training programs and I was on one and the whole thing was about just training people about um cleaning their swailes and their streams and things to and they're showing the damage and I know when we do the training program in in April we've got a several slides including a video from Massachusetts that shows it's so it shows just the water starting going over a road and then it shows a tree and materials coming down backing up and then within In two minutes, you see the road is gone. And that's exactly what we don't want to have happen. And if you look at the bridges that we're building now, I know they're little, they're bigger. Let's let's just get to the cut to the chase. But those are meeting Army Corps of Engineers and D requirements and they're being built that way to help prevent uh future problems like that. Another thing since we're talking about pre preventive maintenance, the tree the tree management a couple years ago we uh

we asked that we asked for a bucket truck we train the people. I think since we've been out there being aggressively trimming trees and cutting back you have seen a reduction in in loss of power. In big storms, you're still going to get a little bit, but I think you've seen a reduction in that because we are now maintaining those u guardrail. Um you'll you'll be seeing us putting up more and more uh new guardrail in certain areas. Uh we did a survey. We are in some places deficient in our guardrails. Um but we are working on catching that up. We uh townwide pave pavement markings. You saw we went up a little bit in paint. We're trying to make sure that our pavement markings stay current. Um, well, they're important.

They're important. They are. People aren't accustomed to driving in the town. And with the mayor, we we went back and forth on some for Grove Street and a few other places. And we've been kidding about is it, you know, bridge ahead or a head bridge? And we we kid about which way you're supposed to paint that. Um, what is it? According to Chuck, it's supposed to be bridge ahead. And see, when I see it, I see a head bridge. But, you know, anyway, Chuck says no. So, he's not here, so I could say that. He can't defend himself. Um, winter maintenance and snow removal. Well, I, you know, I don't think we need to say anymore. I think you've been seeing what we're doing. Absolutely.

Um, I give the guys fruit. Uh, you know, they're out there. And this last storm, I think Chris started work on Saturday night, give or take 5:00 p.m. Saturday. Yeah. And he and he clocked out uh on US in UKG at 12:30. Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning. And and that's the crew, too. And the one thing I know Chris would tell you is I'm constantly on the phone with them saying one thing, make sure you get some rest. Yeah. So, um it's important. We don't we don't want to have anybody. And I'm proud of our drivers. We have we we are not have we're no one's been hurt. We don't have any damaged equipment. We've been we've been doing well with that.

Anytime.

Uh yeah. Well, I I would like to I would like to uh believe me, I'm I'm not of all things to be a public works director and hate snow as much as I do. So, I I don't know. I should be in Florida or something. Uh vehicle equipment management, we are doing more and more proactive. Um I give Mickey and his crew down there a lot of credit. They have been more and more proactive. We put in we got a new lift in there. We are helping the senior center. They're doing they're staying up on their training. We're doing we're having to do more advanced work. Um they use the whip around system now so that people log in, tell us what's wrong with their vehicle and we have a constant record how quick we're getting those turned around. And during the storm, as far as I know, we they kept the trucks going. Um

I guess so. And and that's important.

It was very minimal. Down time was very minimal this past storm. Um, and to just add to what Jack said, especially for the newer members of town council, the maintenance garage that public works houses covers all municipal vehicles for all departments except for the police department. So any of the vehicles at the town hall basically sponsors and or owns the fire marshall's office the buses at the senior center Sullivan farm petty bone building maintenance all those vehicles you know it's why Jack's asking for a little bit extra in the budget Mickey those five mechanics maintain all of those vehicles year round so the senior center I know has been working with grants for new buses to do replacements there you know we make our shifts Jack and I and the crew Um, we've come up with what we find ideal for the large plow trucks to kind of have like a 15-year lifespan. That way, we're not dumping thousands of dollars into repairs. We can kind of turn around even though, yes, the trucks are costly. Um, and elsewhere between used police department vehicles, we work with the garage to kind of shuttle vehicles around within the town. So if there's a department that could use a vehicle as a replacement or a spare vehicle, we kind of use and utilize the used vehicles before we expend full-time prices um on the expense, you know, on those vehicles. So

good practice. The mayor has challenged us to cut the time shorter on when you order a truck to when you take delivery. And I can tell you the average in the state of Connecticut is like almost two years, believe it or not. Um, to that end, I'm I'm used to in another town, we used to build our trucks there. So, in our recent hire, our most recent hire in the into the public works, he is a he is a fabric. We had an opening. He is a mechanic, but he's also a fabricator. He comes out of a job where he's a fabricator. So, we're going to start looking more and more at how we can start to fabricate. I've talked what you do is you buy the bed, you buy the body, and you put it together. And I've already talked to the public works director in other town and uh he will send his people down to give us some training and show us what they do. So

So you make it up the way you want it. Yeah. And it comes it's quicker. I know one of the mayor we have I think we have some great meetings, but I know he gets frustrated sometimes with us because we're sitting there telling him, "Well, I know you gave me the money a year and a half ago. The truck's not quite here yet." So and he he says, "Well, then go to North Dakota and buy one." So anyway, we have some good discussions. That's good. Um, hey, we do smile. We do. Uh, these are the two bridges we did this year. Uh, now we're glad to say Sand Road finally opened. Um,

but, uh, what I want to point out is these are bridges that the town of Milford's not paying for. These are 8020. These are 100% funded. 80% by the federal, 20% by the state. And I'm trying to get applications in and the mayor just signed a commitment to fund for choir Squire Hill. That one will be another 100%. So, we've got Wheaten Road. will be 100%. Squire Hill will be another 100%. That's the one when you first turn on to Squire Hill. Yep. What's that going to run? Actually, they because it's probably so far we looked at about $2.5 million, we think. It's so small. Yeah. But again, to the town of Milford, it's there's there's no cost. Well, that's good. There'll be a new So, we're trying to uh be very proactive in our bridge program.

Next one, please. Good. Um this year we're planning on uh doing Cherneski and you can see on the left that's not what it looks like today. There's a temporary bridge there. That's what it looked like before we closed it. Um and you can see what it will look like um on the right hand side. And there's a there is a scenic road committee which I know Mary Jane's on and we were going to talk about meeting tonight but we couldn't we'll meet next Monday night first time. Yeah, we got another council meeting. Nothing is working out. Council meeting. I know we have a ours got cancelled Monday. Oh, we'll have to move it around. Meeting up to six o'clock instead. We can't. I'll I'll send an email out tonight. All right. Try that. Okay. At least give me

We've got a 35day schedule. I mean, deadline, so we're trying to fit it in. Is that, you know, cut in stone or what? Well, I think this town council maybe'll extend it. That's up to you. I mean, they're the problem. That's why we can't get together. What? Brooks Brookside Bridge. Uh, we're going to do a deck replacement on Brookside. That one's been out there before I got here and uh we finally got all of the permits in place. So, that one went out the bid. We're just waiting now if we get the bids in and that one will be done this year. This is the eye chart. Um when I was in Ingresol Rand, the VP of Ingresol Rand used to accuse me of doing eye charts, I guess. So,

well, one time just just a joke, I put one in for font four, put it up there for him. Um I I think he almost sent me home. Anyway, that's just I wanted to give you a perspective of how many roads we do on any one year. On the left hand side, those are the roads we did the physical year 2526 and that's pavement and um and drainage. Yep.

Um and I give now Jason's been on that. Jason does a lot of the design work. When I first got here, we were the town of Milford was spending about $250 to $300,000 on engineering companies coming in designing and inspecting the roads. We we have now taken it out of the budget. We do the design between Chuck and uh Jason and James Sheridan and Jim Grant and then M Mike and Chris get involved. They as a team do all do all of that. So we take that money now and we can do another road every year just by taking that money and we change some of the the technology we're using. And I'm going to I wasn't going to say it but I'm going to say it. Our roads here we started I started seven years ago. We do the reclaim and all that type of work. And if you go on the roads we did seven years ago, for the most part there's very little to no cracking on. And this and when I first got here told the mayor about seven or eight years, we'll have to do like a chip seal or something just to seal it. There's another town that I drive through every day who did a road last year. It took him a year to do the road which should only take him three months and that's got a crack that big already in it. And we we are very particular about how we when we do the reg grind. And James Sheridan is out here. Uh he and Jim Gronn are out there every day inspecting and working with the contractors to make sure um and Juliana our our uh our intern goes out with our compaction tester and that's where we go out and we see you know we may have some minor cracking I think on Second Hill around a couple of the catch basins and that was the first year I was here but we're we're we're we are reg grinding and putting that material back in and making more road base to support these roads to make them 20-year roads. That's our goal. So anyway, that's the eye chart. This year we're planning on doing the roads on the right. That's our preliminary schedule. And the good point is Mariel, we have a million dollar grant for that. So we already have a million dollars toward that one. Um and then chip seal roads. We do chip

seal every year. Um last year we did six and about $103,000. If you go around and you'll make if you any of your constituents or residents talk, you said, "Hey, the chip seal came up. We've already addressed it with the contractor. He's going to come back out and they're going to clean clean up the roads. They're going to clean up the lawns and they will reapply the material um because for some reason it happens once in a while. The oil either the temperature is not right, a little moisture, it didn't it just didn't take. So, we'll fix that this year.

Jack, you know, you're talking about your infrastructure projects. Uh we're doing the 8020 bridges, which is 100%. uh Mariel we used I believe it was a steep grant for that to be 100%. Then there are other grants that we've used and they're called lots grants. Those logic grants are about 100%. You have to pay a little bit of engineering costs in those. We have lots of grants for projects. The downside of that is you have to go through federal and state regulations which makes it a much longer process. But Jack, the four big ones that we have is Wellsville. Yep.

Which will be a full redo of the road, a reclaim, plus all new sidewalks. The Elm Street, which is by the hospital, so everybody knows it goes through there during rush hour. You're coming from GR Gro Street North. You got the one car that wants to make the left and it blocks everything back. Actually, you're going to be able to have lefthand lanes there. That should ease that traffic. We've got approval for that. that's going through the approval process. Everybody remember we're going to have the first smart new Milford traffic light that's going to be on Hine and Grove. That should be end of end of summer probably for that. We expect we heard back we expect to get the approval from DOT within the next two weeks

which would put it on the schedule you're talking about mayor. And then the last one is, and this was uh approved actually before I was mayor, I think under mayor, I think it was Mayor Murphy first and mayor Groundback and then here, which is the um Still River and Pumpkin Hill where they're going to expand the Pumpkin Hill piece, but Jack took took a look at it and you kind of expanded that piece. uh if you could just kind of talk about those projects just real quick so the people uh can see that we're working on those but when you deal with grants we're kind of the beholdiness of the state and federal government.

Well yeah you you are and um so there's you know it's a dual-edged sword. Um the the Grove Street it seems to be moving along pretty well for for the light and that's that's a safety one and I know we've been pushing that through as a lot of grant we've got that last year. Um Chuck sent me an email today saying he's expecting approval within the next couple of weeks, which would put it on schedule to be installed by this late this fall. Uh the pumpkin hill uh that one um we are waiting we're waiting for easements from DP because there's property there the state of Connecticut and the department of econ uh environmental and energy h own. So we have and there's two pieces and we have to get what's it Jason? Two two independent easements for those.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're waiting for those easements and then we'll get that one going. I saw um today we got an email back for uh the one over on East uh East Street and that seems to be moving along. Shipo, I think we have our Shipo uh letter now and our environmental assessment. So I think that one uh has jumped the next hurdle which still means it has to go back to D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do D do DOT and then Wellsville we're working on the easements because when we do the sidewalks we have to the sidewalk the this the retaining wall actually in some cases on people's property so we need to get easements construction easements from them

know Jack not a working road or working bridge but I know something near and dear to some people on the council is the board old boardman bridge we've applied for lots of grant was denied, but they made recommendations to put into the grant is we're going to uh resubmit that, which then would be uh redoing the old Borman bridge, which we all want economically. How many bridges are like that? I think there's only two left or three. Yeah, there's only two lenticular bridge. And when I was a town manager in Berlin, I used to do work with Berlin Steel. That's where they're located. I went back to them was hoping that they would either give us some support or have the drawings and they don't because I would have loved to got the drawings for that for that person.

And uh part of this whole lynch piece right of not only a riverw walk but economic vitality for that corner piece as the old good eats now has been uh redone. There's going to be a new restaurant that's going to be there. But once that gets redone that'll be a a true destination point where people can walk over the bridge go into Sega Meadows. Uh so that'll help uh keep uh not only the butcher shop going, but the new the the newer restaurant that just came create that uh vitality, get more people to ride the trail.

Believe it or not, the bridge actually the steel was is structurally in good shape. If you look at it, it's the northwest corner. The abutman has shifted down and the bearing is gone. I'm sure everybody wants to get down there and look at that abutment jacket. You should ride with me in my car with my wife. We stop all the time. Yeah. No, it it's going to happen, isn't it? Yeah, it's going to happen. If Chuck is watching, Chuck, it's going to happen, isn't it? Yep. We're we we've already we've already got the comments back. We've already addressed the comments. We're ready to submit again. That's good.

We're stubborn. Um anyway, next slide. Um facilities maintenance. Um Dave is here. I give Dave and his crew kudos for the staff they got. I think you should be proud of your bu I I actually was in one of the other city halls and toward the city. I won't name the town, but I walked through and I'm like looking at that and I'm saying their buildings are way newer than ours. And I tell you, these guys do a tremendous job. Um this room itself, nicest, nicest one. All of them, Dave. You know they are. They're all so pleasant no matter what they're doing. Smile. Hello.

This room the last couple years we painted it. They did the floors. you you they they completely upgraded his room. It's, you know, it's a nice clean looking room. The buildings are that way. This last year, they did the senior center chimney renovation. They've worked on the library uh flagpole installation. They did two sections of the JPCC roof. We're doing it in sections. They got two more done. They uh they did the Max stage renovation. They did the roof projects on the Max and the senior center. Uh upcoming, they've got roof projects at JPCC. the senior center floor project, which is you're ready to word that, aren't you, Dave?

Well, it's a lot of work, you know, but job security. There you go. And just, you know, just a couple I mean, what happens with with facilities is they do a lot of stuff. And maybe it's not big projects, but they're they're constantly going they're constantly uh doing things. Um, right now they're working with the fire with the excuse me, police department on their fire fire panel. And what we found is the fire panel is out of date and in fact we found that probably some of the inspections weren't being done. So they've already been up there and put new decking in the attic in the uh in the police department so that there's no reason not to go up and do the inspections. We hire companies, right?

Uh Dave's been putting together a nice consistent uh bid package and he's got those quotes. I think we're just about ready to to go on that which will give them a new fire panel.

One of the things I charge Jack in facilities and Dave could talk a little bit more about it. Uh years ago, the department heads was very scattered. They would be the ones that would be ordering the inspections would be calling the actual uh vendor. Uh and what we said was that's just really not the proper way to do business. Your job should be really running and managing the operation itself. You don't have the experience, you know, who's to say if you need uh uh you know uh a different kind of air conditioner, you don't have the expertise, call facilities. So now we've globalized it all. So now the department heads know, but if there's an issue with the buildings, they call Dave and his team and we keep everything uh inhouse and run that more efficiently.

Just to give you some idea of what A day a day with Dave is like, you know, yesterday he's on or today he's on the roof shoveling stone. Yesterday I called him at 4:32 and in the half in the afternoon and because I got a call from the Lanesville Fire Department that there was something wrong. They had lost a leg on a on a power coming in. So instead of having three phase, they were down to two. I called Dave and it's like he and immediately gets on the phone. He he knows he calls Eversource. He knows the person to call. He gets a hold of them, gets a hold of Shock. We get a hold of John Rosa who's working on the project down there and within like 30 minutes it the the generator's running. There was a little problem with the generator but they got that going. The generator's running. The building's on power. They've determined that ever source will come out today and they've already been there. A brand new service has been put in

at at the Lanesville Fire Department. So between Dave and the people at Lanesville Fire Department and John Rosa, they made that happen. And then, you know, after that he's in my office and I'm trying to tell him, you know, we got to do this, this, and this. And uh so you know that's his that's that's the day with Dave. Um they do maintain the uh they also maintain the street lights. All those special street lights you have. That's that's that's Dave and his crew. Um excuse me. 200 plus. Yes. So that's you'll see those guys out washing, cleaning them, changing the bulbs. You replaced what? The ones up on uh 67 this year.

Right by the firehouse on the top. replace those two this year. We're just not not on here. They maintain the town hall, the police department, senior center, the max, the library. That was another one. We got the new library. And I know we talked we gave Chris and his crew a lot of kudos. During that cold snap, Dave was on the phone with me because Dave was in here because they had water freezing and behind behind certain walls and things like that and they were in here making sure the buildings weren't getting damaged. You know, we don't have you're not hearing about our buildings being extensively damaged by ice and things. These guys were keeping them clean and checking them and making sure that that they were in good condition that entire time. So, I mean, I do talk to Dave frequently on the weekends and it's not just to say hi and have a hot dog. Um, even though we'd like to. Uh he takes care of the DPW complex, the JPCC building, the probate court, East Street with the you know we we don't do we watch it and we make sure that the building's secure and that it needs to be done. Uh he also does the US registration and he's working on a project right now where he's you have an underground storage tank at the library. We're going to remove that tank and consistent with one of my philosophies um about underground storage tanks. It's going away. And Dave's already Dave's already laid out the project where they're going to put two above ground tanks in the basement for oil in the basement of the library. We've got a spot perfect spot for it. We've already talked to the contractor um talked to the fire marshal and everybody. That tank that's there will come out. We're working with the contractor about taking that tank out. And uh

were you here when we uh how hard it was to get the prior tank out? That's why we may not. What? We may not. We got a company called UH HRP who is environmental consultant, right? They're working with Dave. They're going to be out once the snow is gone because the mayor was asking me. We're going to do we're going to do GPR, ground penetrating radar. We're going to see where that tank is and we're going to check all the other things. There's two options. One is you close it in place, which means you cut the top off. Oh, I understand. I'm talking about the one that was in the cellar. Oh, well, he's you're going to put these inside. You just said tanks. Dave's already laid it out. So, hey Dave, I'm counting on you. We'll take pictures. You You remember that, Mayor? I remember.

That was a disaster. So, we're actually going to do it well ahead of time. We're already planning on getting the tanks in before we have to make that transition. Um, they do the fire alarm inspections, fire extinguisher inspections, the elevators, they support the ambulance, and Lville Fire Department. So, that's that's what they do,

and they're everywhere. Okay, this was the sidewalk that they put at the JPC la last year. Um, and we will be extending that down toward the playground this year. We have grant money. That's money we that's project we did with grant money. Next, I think it um another project we're working on the reservoir 4 dam is determined has been deemed um in poor condition. Um, and we started uh a while ago on this and I know we have ARPA funds that we're working off of right now. We've already changed we're in the process of of changing the valve stem on the on on the uh pipe for lead to draining the uh the dam. That's the first thing we have to do. We also closed off the old water supply lines that used to feed out of the dam. Those have been closed out. Um the next thing they will do and you'll see it happen this summer. We will on the back side of the dam, the downhill side, that is too steep according to deep. We have to extend that out. So, we will be taking material extending and flattening that out. We'll probably just plant wildfl flowers on it for B city. Um, and the last thing we'll do is we're going to replace the overflow and the swale that the swale that exits the water and we putting rip wrap in there and that will probably we've got a permit with DP that gave us 5 years. I know the mayor and I were talking about cash flow and we've been able to work with them because of our due diligence. They've given us a fiveyear permit with a one-year extension. So that allows us the cash flow to put that out over that time frame. Um drainage projects, uh these are ones that happen. We do them with the roads. We also do them sometimes when we just get called by a resident and they have a hole in the backyard, one of our pipes goes and we go and the pipes failed and we go out and we fix it. Next, we are working on hidden treasures, the maintenance there. We have a grant um

that we've been working with uh for the hidden treasures. We've been cleaning up. We're doing environmental assessments there. Um and we'll be doing just some uh minor repair on the dam, the slleway, the lots of grants. That's one the mayor talked about. Elm Street, Gro Street, Wellsville, Pumpkin Hill. We also have other bridges that uh Wheaten Road, that one's 100%. We have two at uh we have the Squire Hill one which we just signed uh the other day. That's 100%. We have two on Walker Brook. Those are both 50/50 bridges. Um and uh and but we have now we also just applied yesterday for a build grant for doing giving us uh money to do renovation work on the Grove Street and and Still River Road bridges. They both have uh if you if you've noticed, we had to lower the rating on them because of some of the web loss and the in and the bridge. It's it's the bridges are safe. Just had to lower rating. Um those are that's going to be expensive. We put in for build grant to fund those repairs. And then the last not quite the last one. Uh we talked about resilience. This is where we're going to work on the streams. Native Meadows. We working on maintenance to make that so that it's accessible. People can walk and and hike through there. Um we work on the intersection gardens, the one in the triangle plus the one at the roundabout. Um we're working on sidewalk upgrades. We're doing you'll see some upgrades on the sidewalks uh around the main street um shortly. Roadside mowing. This is a a topic of our conversations uh starting probably very shortly once the snow is gone u and throughout the summer to make sure we do the roadside mowing tree maintenance and we also working and Mike's doing a lot of this work uh getting rid of the invasive species and then this is just we talked about some of the equipment u this is just a list of some of the equipment that they maintain

and then the last one question that sidewalk out by petty bone where it slopes. Did you put in a handrail or something? I somebody sent us an email asking about that. It It wasn't called for as part of the plan. That one that's on this comes down Office of 7 that was designed by um in conjunction with DOT and the federal government. They didn't call for it. No. Okay.

Um and then lastly, Cardigraph is our way of track. We wanted to show you how we track our cost. Um, and these are the ongoing costs that we do every day. And the task is a number of tasks that we had. Let's say gravel road maintenance. There's 194 tasks last year in ground in in gravel road maintenance. And it cost 300 it cost the town 328,3207 for just gravel road maintenance the last last year. And we can go down and tell you and that's then then there's the yard materials that we buy. So, those are uh if you see townwide sweeping, 465 task, $26,000, but you can that way you can look and see how we're spending the money that's in our maintenance budget.

How many miles of gravel road do we have? 27. And it cost that much. Yeah. Gravel roads. I've been on the towns. There's the two top towns in the state of Connecticut for gravel roads, I believe, are Lichfield and New Milford. I've been public works director of both. And if you asked me, I would argue in both towns it'd be better to pay them. It's much less expensive. But I said that in Litzfield and I got threatened to be sued. So I just Are they scenic though that they were Oh, some of them are. Some of them aren't.

So Oh, and then the last thing the question may come up. How much have you spent this year winter overtime? As of Sunday, right, Chris? It's three. We've spent $310,000 on overtime this year. That that number includes the last What about supplies? Supplies. Um, right now supplies specifically. Excuse me. The winter supplies. Yeah, winter supplies. Hold on. I got to What' I do with it? I had it here. It's We're We're okay on it. I had the slide. Hm.

You get the numbers and we'll send it to the council and finance. I literally have it printed and brought it with me. He has enough supply if we have another storm. We have salt and sand and all that. Oh, here you go. Um, as of right now, we have 283 tons of treated salt, 250 tons of straight salt, 300 tons of sand salt, and 200 tons of sand. That's enough for about what, maybe two storms, about storm and a half,

give or take. Somewhere in the ballpark of what today's storms, it's two, maybe three. Um we have spent thus far um about we have a total budget of 700 well not a budget but what what we have um funded is $720,000. We have $45,000 left out of that. So is that so far this year or is that over the last year? That's over last year. over the last took us about 90,000 a storm and if you well this year we've been really lucky we've been getting them on holidays

if lucky well you know if you look at a storm on a holiday we Crystal we we actually have a system now where we input this every storm and we're looking at like just the one the other day was 37 almost $40,000 in just overtime. So is that 1.4 million include overtime? Yeah, that's Yeah. Does anybody have any questions for Jake as far as the budget? Great job. Thank you. Very good job. Thanks, guys. Thanks. And you was winning by 30 when I lost look. So, there we go. Nice. Thank you, Jason. Thanks, everybody. And Dave,

thank you. All right. Yeah. Well, Walter Singh is there is no I don't think there's any public. Would you like to uh board of finance motion to recess until tomorrow evening at 7 p.m.? All in favor? And town council motion to recess till tomorrow 7 p.m. All in favor? Thank you everybody. Thank you. Take care now. Thank you. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.