Town Council - Regular Meeting

What's that?

Ready. All right. No male town council meeting April 20th, 2026. Madame clerk, can you start us with prayer and pledge? And before the pledge, can we please have a moment of silence for formal council member Dan O'Brien, who passed away on April 7th? Thank you. Thank you for bringing us together today in the spirit of generosity. May we honor one another by keeping an open mind. May we voice our truth and listen with an open heart. May we discern your will to unite in a fruitful outcome. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll, please.

Mr. Burgon here. Mr. Christopharo here. Mrs. O'Hara here. Mr. Punchack here. Miss here. Would anyone like to sign up for open forum? Um, second open forum. I'd like to sign up for please. You want to You want to speak, Claire? End of the night. Yes. At the end of the night. Oh, at the end. Anyone want to sign up for this open forum?

Okay. Discussion by council vote other action on consent agenda. All items listed in this section are considered in one motion. There'll be no separate discussion of these items unless a council request in which event the item will be removed from the consent agenda. A town council minutes of March 16th and April 6, 2026. Animal control monthly report, the Northfield Fire and Rescue monthly report, Nosfield Municipal Court monthly report, and Nosfield Police Department monthly report for March 2026. Would anyone like to remove any of these items? Surprisingly not.

Okay. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve these items or approve the consent agenda? I will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items for April 20th. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Verigod. Yes. Mr. Christopharo. Yes. Mrs. O'Hara. Yes, Mr. Punchek. Yes, Miss Elves. Yes.

Discussion by council vote to other action on payment of bills. Anyone have any questions on the packet? Tony, I just wanted clarification. So, on um the items in the negatives like um ice and snow removal and some of the pay payroll items. So, is that everything caught up now from the storms and Yeah, that's reflective of all the storms. Yeah, I think um we just processed payroll today. At most were maybe one payroll behind, but everything in terms of the storms are already all put in the system, the RP.

All right. Thank you. Um I don't mean to pick on Prism, but I don't see that they're on this payment of bills because we pay them once a month. We paid them last last time we met. Last time. I had nothing. Okay. Any questions? Nope. Okay. Anyone like to make a motion to approve the payment of bills? I will make a motion to approve the payment of bills in the amount of 5,256,628.34 cents for the month of April dated April 20th, 2026. Second.

We have a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Beer, yes. Mr. Christopharo, yes. Mrs. O'Hara, yes. Mr. Punchek, yes. Miss Alves. Yes. Old business. Discussion by council vote to other action on statusprogress report items. Uh Nelson Field Police Station renovation update. Anyone coming? No. Okay. Because we have the meeting next week. Yeah.

Which is going to be focused on the police station. So go into detail. The only things I wanted to bring up there is one that we have received from a construction standpoint the guaranteed maximum price and like I'm pleased to say it's consistent with what was previously submitted. So I'm putting together an overview uh for presentation the council next week. Also there were some previous comments made regarding the elevator and disability. We had requested a complete review of the project by the state commission and they came back and there are no issues really. The couple minor things like the height of a a toilet paper dispenser and a bathroom things like that but very very minor things. The elevator was clearly eliminated. It's not required and there were no other material things that were raised by the state. So that's all positive but we'll have a comprehensive presentation next Monday. Can I just um so next week's meeting in the 27th, is that going to be here or is it going to be at the police station?

It's going to be here. We cannot have it at the police station because of fire code issues. Okay, Madam President. Uh Mr. Gibbs, uh the fire code issues were if we have 40 people or more, but there's never going to get 40 people at a meeting. I think it just I just see the benefits of having a meeting at the police station of of it's just a huge benefit that we'd be able to maybe even take a tour without having to convene a meeting. We could take people that were at the meeting if they wanted to take a quick tour of the police station and see I just think the benefits of having it at the police station uh far outweigh the possibility that there would be more than 40 people there.

I I don't necessarily disagree. I'm just echoing concerns raised by the fire marshal. I'll circle back with the fire marshall tomorrow just to get sort of a bottom line on that. Obviously, um, you know, if he says if we're all comfortable with that, we're not going to get 40 people there. Um, then, you know, I don't see as long as the fire marshall is okay with it, you know, I'll get back to you, council president, on that. If you want us to stay in that direction, then then we'll I mean, could we I mean, I'm just suggesting if we did it and then we just had a a post ready or some sort of note ready for the door in case we do get 40 people that we have to reconvene back here, would that be a problem?

I I'll just double check with fire marshall just to make sure other than fact he immediately called me and said, "Hey, I got a concern about this."

Okay. I don't know if I should save this for the next meeting, but about the elevator, I've been giving this some thought and I understand that based on state ADA requirements that it's not necessary, but in the in the event that this building were ever in the future used for another purpose or maybe if it was sold, I mean, an elevator at that point, if if we were to use this building for something else for the town and it wasn't a police station, an elevator may come in handy in the future or meet regulations in the future based on whatever that need is then.

Yeah, the regulations don't really relate to the use of the property. It relates to the fact that it's a two-story property with handicap accessibility to both floors and therefore the elevator's not required. That's a $900,000 plus change order. If there was going to be someone to buy that property from the town and they wanted to retrofit it and they felt that there would be nice to be an elevator there, they can put one in. You can put an external elevator, I might add, too. It doesn't have to be internal, but I think that that kind of price, that's 10% of project cost that when it's not necessary, that's not really a very prudent investment by the town when it's clearly not required.

Yeah. Okay. But I understand where you're coming from on that. Any other questions on this topic?

So, next one is uh notice that mediation process regarding the filing matters B1, B2, and C1 is currently in progress, but has not yet been completed. The town administrator will request that the filing matters B1, B2, and C1 be continued to a new date of May 4th, 2026 due to the ongoing mediation. B. Discussion by council voter other action on petition/ application for an amendment to the zoning ordinance pursuant to Rhode Island general laws 45-24-50 and 45-24-51 45-24-53 as follows. One petition/lication for amendment to zoning ordinance filed by Poundhill Realy LLC 618 Greenville Road, Nmville Red Island 02896. The owner of the past of land situated off Old Oxford Road, Pound Hill Road, and Pineh Hill Road in the town of Nosmfail. more particularly described as town of Nusfield tax assessors plat 7 lot 38 consisting of 8 89.44 44 acres subject property two text amendment and a zoning map amendment to the zoning ordinance of the town of Nusfield. The zoning ordinance the proposed zoning amendment will create a new zoning district industrial special management district one overlay. The intent of the district is to allow mining quarrying sand and gravel extraction loom stripping stone cutting operations crushing washing and or processing of materials. The zoning map amendment purposes proposes to amend the zoning designation of the parcel of land located at 14 Pineh Hill Road in the town of Nusfield. More specifically described as Zester's lat. The property from rural agriculture RA and rural estate agriculture REA to industrial special management district overlay. A continuation of public hearing. B discussion by council vote other action. C discussion by council vot other action on mediation pending. and D discussion by council vote other action on ground oh sorry this is a new one so that will all be moved to um May 4th and then we're going to take up discussion by council vote other action

on groundwater water protection committee first quarter update Beth Newberry and Rebecca de Christopher could you just take a vote on on those items vote to move it to you may if I can before you take the vote make it very clear although the administration has been frustrated with a lack of speed here. We will definitely have an MLOU presented to the council on May 4th. Okay.

One way or the other. I'm I'm going on record then that if we don't have something on May 4th, I'm going to put a motion forth that we end mediation and uh as Councilman Bureagard said it, we call the vote on these items because this is and we have clearly communicated through our council to theirs that our patience is running out. Okay. So, do we need to a motion to continue the public hearing and the meeting or just one motion?

You can make one motion to continue. It's just been stated to the record, read into the record by the president. You can make a motion to continue items B1, B2, and C1 to a date certain May 4th, 2026. So, I will make a motion. The only Let me just ask is the council going to have the meeting here? It's here, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, just continue it to that date. So, I I would like to make a motion to continue agenda items B1, B2, and C1 to a date certain of May 4th, 2026. That's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Bear,

yes. Mr. Christopharo, recuse. Mrs. O'Hara? Yes. Mr. Mr. Punchek. Yes. Miss House. Yes. Uh before we proceed, uh CJ, um I'm getting texts from my wife that there's a horrible echo on the transmission.

And for the life of me, I do not know why my wife watches. So cute. I just don't get it. She misses you that much. No, she doesn't. She just wants to know where you are. She wants to know if I really foul up somewhere. There you go. I don't even know if my wife knows I'm on the town council. Oh my god. Where does he go every other Monday? I just received a text that there's no echo on their end. So, I wonder if it's just Lizz's laptop. You tell her that. Lizzy, she's watching it on She's watching it on her. Yeah,

Lizzy, I think it's you. You might want to do a hard reset on your laptop over there. I'm just going to listen to her outside. Okay. So, keep going, CJ. Yeah, keep going. All right. Again, discussion by council voter other action groundwater protection committee first quarter update. Beth Newberry and Rebecca to Christopher. Beth, I'll defer to both you and Sarah. Hey everyone, Beth Newberry, 53 Falllet Street, Sar Levake, 66 Highview.

Um, so when we set up our strategic plan that we presented to you all, one of the things that we um put in the strategic plan is that we kind of want to report out to you what we are doing um quarterly. And so it's about that time. So, we came in to to give a little update on what we've been up to. Um, before we get going into our update, I really want to thank Cynthia Roberts for all of her amazing work on this committee. She has been such an amazing asset to the town and to this committee and she will be missed quite a bit on the committee. Um, I have been really impressed by the way that she did the did the work on the committee in terms of pushing us to create a strategic plan and really thinking long term about where this committee should be moving and I definitely would love to see us doing that more as a town and I know that's something that Rebecca has been sort of championing. So, I hope that moves forward and you all give that some thought. Um, so as you know, Cynthia obtained a miniig grant to create a logo for the committee. Uh, we worked very hard on words smmithing postcards and creating posters uh for the town to help educate on groundwater. Um, we also engaged in meaningful meetings where we developed a strategic plan that included uh several meetings where we had members of the public present to talk about what issues were important to them both to learn about and also um to sort of advocate on. And so that those were really great meetings um where we had a lot of public input. Uh we had a booth at pumpkin festival with children's activities and we spoke to adults about concerns. We'll be repeating that this year. Sarah is an environmental scientist and she was able

to get a really cool um sort of if you can just tell it was a well. It was sort of what a well does and explained that um to to the people. So we we sort of taught about how wells work. Um, and we'll be repeating a children's activity and um, sort of adult education at Pumpkin Festival again this year. Um, we were at the registration area last year for Clean and Green Day. We're going to repeat that again this year. We have created social media channels to keep people informed of our meeting dates and special events that are going on. Um we have not really gotten our portion of the town website up and running as much as we'd like to, but we have um done a lot of work at um sort of talking about what that's going to look like and keeping people informed. Um, we've also come to town council meetings when we and advocated for groundwater protection when we feel that that's uh an important thing for us to be talking about in terms of how what you all are deciding on might affect the aquifer. Um, I've heard back from the EPA. We're partnering in late summer, early fall with the EPA to do an update on the super fund sites. Um, and we also will be partnering with Chief Tardier to discuss PAS at the fire station because that was something that a lot of people were confirmed were were concerned about when um we had both the strategic planning session and at Pumpkin Festival. Um, we're also looking to do a movie screening with a documentary uh about water contamination. So, those are some of the things that the committee has been working on and we appreciate um you all supporting these efforts and um listening and um any questions we're happy to answer.

So, when are some of these um functions or activities when do you start planning to roll these out? Yeah. So, we kind of wanted to wait until we heard back from the EPA on their timeline because that's obviously the most important issue. So they we've been back and forth with them a lot. Um finally heard from them that they could do something late summer, early fall. Now we're going to plan everything else around them. So um Chief Tardier was very gracious in saying that he was uh readily available for us to plan something pretty quickly. So I think that's coming up first. And then um we wanted to do the uh we we'll do the movie screening probably in the fall after that.

Sounds great. Thank you. Yeah. And Sarah, I know that we wanted to piggyback on a green day and maybe set up a booth here. Did we hear back on whether or not that was feasible? Yeah. So, we're going to end up just having one table here. Um, and then I was going to reach out to the committee just to ask people if they wanted to, you know, come and for a couple hours um just talk to people who are interested. Okay. Yeah, it's last year it was really like the first hour or so that people were really coming in and grabbing stuff for so we'll probably set up something for the first hour or so. Nice. During registration. Yeah. And that's how we got Sarah on the committee. So it clearly worked. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Is that it for that? Sorry, my child's not going to sleep for my husband. Is that it? Um, did you want to add anything or

I think I would maybe I'll add two things. Um, to Beth's point, Dr. Cynthia Roberts will be very much missed not just on the groundwater protection committee, but also on the planning board as well. Um, she's been really instrumental in shephering a lot of the initiatives on groundwater protection and she's also just been incredibly impressive um on the planning board. So, I've she's been a role model for me. Um, and she will be very much missed, but I know she'll still continue to support the town in an informal capacity. Um, and then secondly, I would like to say that the groundwater protection committee, we actually have a lot of fun and it's a really nice group. Um, I'm always excited to go to that meeting and it's really been amazing to see just uh the interest that we've been able to really generate. Um, the public, we at least always have one to two folks from the public come and join us. Um, so it's been really nice that we've been able to garner public interest in that committee as well.

So, um, Cynthia Rabbit's position, is that the only one that you have open on the committee? We we have eight We have eight slots and then um I believe put in an application. So, that leaves a couple more slots. Two, I think. So, you still have two slots open that people could apply for. Okay. When do you hold your meetings? Uh, they've kind of varied, but we're we're we're we've settled on the third Monday of every month unless it's a holiday and then we'll move it to the Tuesday. That's it. That it. All right. Thank you very much.

All right. New business, discussion by council vot action on abatements. Miss St. George.

Hi. Hi. Um, I just have abatements tonight. Um, in the amount of $69,68384.

Can Can you explain a little bit more? I looked at the, you know, the addresses and what the businesses are there and all those businesses have been around for quite a while. So, how can we have such significant discrepancies year over year?

So, the ones on this abatement are board of appeal. So, they appealed during the reval last year for this for 2024. They did a reval for 2025 billing. So, this is just the end of the appeals for they appeal to me. I either approve it or deny it. And then they still have the right to go to the board of assessors. So, this is the board of assessors making a decision on these one, two, three, five, five uh properties.

So, how does that process work? Is that just like, you know, do they get an appraiser in like $32,000 difference? It's pretty significant for one business that's been there since God, I don't even know how long. I remember going there when I was, you know, in high school. So, it's been around for a while. So, how can one business have a $32,000 difference from one year to another? So, each one is different. So, if you're talking about the first one, the ice rink.

Yeah. So what happened was they was it was purchased in 2014 13 no 2023 and they purchased this one and then the one in Pucket and on the sale it was like 5 million on the deed but according to the owner that 5 million included both of them. So they went to me, I denied it cuz based on the sale. Um, and then when they went to the board, they presented the board all this paperwork about how it was included both. And then for ice rinks, we don't have we might have a handful in Rhode Island. Um, he had several that were in Mass. So, the board looked at the one in Pucket, um the Smithfield one, even though that's private. Um, and they came to a decision at the board of review. So, pretty much it was over assessed during the rebal based on the sale. It wasn't a valid sale because it included both. So the sale is based on the five million price when it was only a portion of that.

Yeah. Okay. How about the last one? Walmart. So warm Walmart is priced per square foot by a big box store. So in my system there's categories price per square feet. Um, for some reason that one and Lowe's, for some reason, they were priced at a ridiculously high um price per square foot and the depreciation based on the year built wasn't calculating in. So, that was actually a KMA our northeast reval system issue.

What does KMA stand for? Just so you know. So, that's it's the it's an appraisal system that we use basically and all my tables are in there and I would have never found that if nobody ever came up or

and we only have so since then I've checked all of them and they're all calculating the depreciation correctly and then I also did it on not just big box stores price I did on all of them. So, say a retail store or even the hockey rank. So, I did it on all of them. I had to go back and check all of them to make sure they're all calculating the depreciation correctly. So, the 19 is that the Lowe's 14 is Lowe's. So, it's ice rink, Kohl's, Lowe's, Stop and Shop, Walmart.

Yeah, the 14K is is Lowe's, right? There's Lowe's. Yeah. But only

Lowe's 19 Village and Walmart 7 Dalling Village were the ones not calculating the depreciation. Do you have a question on either stop and shop or Kohl's?

If you have an answer on stop and share, I'm sure there's a question to be asked. Did it Did it Wasn't that store redone a couple years ago? Um, so according to the board, they looked at it, they updated, they changed the grade, so the overall condition of Stop and Shop, and that reduced it down by the $4,000.

So they reduced the building value down because of the condition. Is that what you're saying? Because of the condition of the building. Yeah, when I say condition, the condition is a grade. So, every even house business gets a grade. So, A, B, C, D. So it all retail stores are capped into this B minus or C minus depending on the year built, the condition of the building, how many bathrooms they have, how much retail space they have. It all comes into basically a condition of the total building. Okay.

So So they got dropped down. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So the board reduced them down from a B to a B minus. And I can write up something if you would like about condition and grade and how it comes into effect to an assessment, but it's all different based on real estate, commercial.

So again, does like I don't know who the board is. Um, but do they have like an appraiser or do they have a professional? Do they have somebody that they can consult and say, "Hey, you know, like do they have even a a commercial real estate broker who could say, you know, yeah, that makes sense." Or, "No, it doesn't make sense because they did just renovate the building or inside the building, three years ago. I don't even know."

So, currently the board has two members. It's a three member board. Um, one member just resigned last year. Um, it's two real estate appraisers that are on the board right now. Anyone have any other questions? I would like to make a motion. Guess it's out of our hands, right? So we can't we can't send it somewhere else for a review, right? Because that's our board.

Yeah. So basically, if you deny it, then I have to deny their appeal and then they have the right to go to superior court and one is is just because of that camel. Well, the two big ones are because of that camel system basically. But now that that's corrected,

yeah, it's basically next rebal which will happen in next year for the following year billing for 2028. Um, I'll just double check all the pricing, which things like this come up and it's hard to run like I run so many reports to check the values as it is. So, this was kind of a system error because it wasn't calculating correctly and I would have never known that unless they come and say we have five stores that are like this. But the only two that were affected were Walmart and um Lowe's.

And when did you say the ice rink was um purchased? Was that in 23? you said I believe it was 2023.

So So were they built correctly in 24? Yes, because the reval didn't happen until 24 for 25 billing and they purchased March of 2023 and that included the Pucket rink and this rink. So basically the board of review went over the square foot, how many square feet Smithfield had, how many square feet Warick has in Pucket and divided that by the assessment and they got a square foot price roughly around Smithfield was $80 a square foot, War was $77, Pucket was 79. So now once we corrected everything, they're at I want to say $80 a square foot. $81 a square foot. So I I understand everything you're saying. I'm just trying to think of it in how how I'm looking at it. So now if their value was $5 million for the purchase, right, and then they had a reval, but wouldn't their value in 24 still have been $5 million for the two of them or no? Or was that done correctly in 24? I guess I'm not following that piece of it.

So the 5 million where the reval was taking that 5 million price was from the sale price. So the deed. Yeah. So the assessed value back in 2023 was 1 million. Oh, okay. And so when I run a report, it comes up where things jump that much. And if it's over a certain percent, I look into it. And then when I looked into it, I saw the sale price of 5 million. And they appealed to me. I denied it. When they went to the board, they said they presented documentation from the

lawyer's office stating that that sale price was including Pucket. Okay. And there weren't two addresses on the deed? No. Interest. Was there like a total square footage or like for the value? Yeah. No. So, it's helpful to understand the background, but at the end of the day, we can't deny it. We're going to end up spending as much in legal fees if we try to deny it, right? So, it's a hard pill to swallow, but

kind of is what it is. So, I I'm assuming, which really shouldn't, but So, I'm assuming that the documentation they gave the board was Maybe that listed out two addresses, but that might have given a total square footage and they would be able to tell how big the Pucket one is versus the one we have in town. Well, they got the square feet from our database and then Pucket they we you can go on online and you can get the square feet of Pucket. So, that's accurate. Okay.

That normally isn't in a deed. Usually if it's usually like the dimensions of the property and from this oak tree to that stone wall. So that part was accurate. It was just the the value that they picked up that was originally combined for two. Yeah. So when they do the reval, they're picking up sales. So okay, they saw a valid sale. But how do we know that it's for both? They don't determine that on the deed. Thank you.

I have one more question not related to those on the bottom of the page. Fiscal year 2026 used equals 105. So when you say used, used out of what? So every year um the finance director and I put aside money for estimated abatements during a reval year. I believe it's 100,0005 75 um and then a full reval

1575. So a statistical reval a non-reval year is 50,000 we estimate in abatements and then on a full reval year it's 75 but out of that number some of that was court um for a court case that was settled earlier this year. So, we're still over budget basically.

And supplementals were under what? We as Iought for Yeah. Well, the number at the bottom I already took out the supplementals for this year. So we're still over. Do you budget supplementals? Is that revenue that you budget? Yeah. It's calculated the le by

taking you know expenses minus revenues operational revenues uh collection and then within that we add the 50 or 75 that you know based on what year we're doing. for the abatements for Yeah. For abatements. Okay. So, with the latest reval, it was we budgeted $75,000 in prospective abatements. Yes. Okay. How many appeals did we have as a successful appeals did we have as a result of the last rebell? So, how many were approved?

Right. Um, I want to say probably got maybe 50 appeals and I want to say 20 were adjusted. Is that normal? Yeah. For a rebal. Yeah, I can go and check and give you an exact number. Um, I mean, if that's just standard roughly it was like 20 a baby cuz I was going to say if it was higher than usual and we're well over budget then do we have to determine one to either increase budget next time or is there a gap with the re-evaluations? Um, so yeah. No. So if

or an opportunity rather with the re-evaluations in the future? Well, me and Tony will look at that going forward to see if I need to say we need 95,000 on a rebell year. So, this coming year won't be a rebell year. So, that would be the 50,000 that we anticipate in abatements. Um, I can go through and see roughly how many years we never even hit the 50 or 75 on a reval year. Um, but it's been like that for I want to say the past two revals I've been here. So,

how how long have we been contracted with this company? This reval reval company. When did we go out to bid with these with the um Northeast? So, for this one, it's been from the last reval, but they did the first statistical one, the full rebal, and then this statistical one. Okay. Yeah. So remember this this abatement number is abnormally high because of the court case we had um not too long ago. So it's a bit of a outlier compared to our previous which again we can always provide a historical if the council requested it but I I mean only because I heard a lot of noise with this last reval.

A lot of people had issue with how much their taxes increased as a result of the revaluation. So, I'm just wondering if this is abnormal, right? I know that there's a court case, but that that in in contributed to the um cost here, but if maybe there's an opportunity in the future to determine if we could look into another competition. If I could add in on that, you know, the increases in values from Reval were consistent with other communities. We actually monitor it. We're the same. Okay. whether it's Burville, Lincoln, we're all falling into the same category. So, it was a year that we saw significant increases in residential values, but it wasn't because of evaluation process in this town.

Okay. It was market driven. Okay. Yeah. It happens everywhere. I hear it all the time whenever I'm at the assessment meetings or the finance director meetings. It's the same. There's every time there's a full reval, there's a lot of noise. Happens everywhere. And it's really just unfortunate that these all hit at the same time because we were right in line until this Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyone have any other questions? Anyone want to make a motion? I think Rebecca does. I mean, I don't really think we have a choice. So, I'll make a motion to approve um abatements in the amount of $69,683.84. 84 cents.

I'll second. So that's a motion and a second. Any discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Burgod, yes. Mr. Christopharo? Yes. Mrs. O'Hara? Yes. Mr. Punch? Yes. Miss Alves? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Discussion by council vote other action on resolution for small business week. Mr. Gibbs. Yes. Um May 3rd through May 9th is small business week in in the US. um include in your package as a resolution recognizing that. Um I'm not sure council president if you wanted me to read this or want me to read it. Okay.

Um town of North Spiffle Rhode Island resolution national small business week May 3rd to May 9th 2026. Whereas small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and the foundation of our local community, creating jobs, driving innovation, and providing essential goods and services to residents of North Smithfield. And whereas small businesses enhance the character of North Smithfield by contributing to the town's unique identity, fostering community pride in supporting local causes, schools, and civic organizations. And whereas entrepreneurs and small business owners demonstrate resilience, creativity, and determination in overcoming challenges and adapting to changing economic conditions. And whereas according to the US Small Business Administration, small businesses represent a significant portion of job creation and economic growth nationwide. And and whereas the town of North Smith recognizes the critical importance of supporting and promoting small businesses to ensure a strong and vibrant local economy. And whereas National Small Business Week celebrated May 3rd through May 9th, 2026 provides an opportunity to recognize the contributions of small businesses and to encourage residents to shop local and support businesses within our community. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the town council in the town of North Smithfield hereby proclaims May 3rd through 9th, 2026 as the National Small Business Week in the town of North Smithfield. can be it further resolved that all residents are encouraged to recognize the vital contributions of small businesses and to support them not only during this week but throughout the year. In witness thereof which we are here under set our hands and cause the seal of the town spiff to be fixed this 20th day of April 2026.

So do we have to we don't have to vote on this do we solicitor? No, but you should we should vote on it. Yeah. To accept anyone have any questions? Yeah. So, are you going to try to do like any promotional things, you know, that coincide with this? Like, you know, maybe get businesses to come together and, you know, offer

Yeah. We have nothing planned. Um, I'm not sure if the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce has anything planned and I could check with him tomorrow. Um, this resolution actually is different than the resolution that was sent to me to uh, present to you. Resolution that was presented to me is highly political and I was uncomfortable with it. So, we rewrote it or I should say Tammy rewrote it. um that's a little bit more politically neutral um but still speaks to the the essence of why we do this. But I will check with the Chamber of Commerce tomorrow to see if they're doing anything and I'll also circle back with the um Rhode Island Commerce Corporation to see if they have anything planned as well. Will this continue to be uh National Small Business Week?

It's a week. It's an annual event. Okay. Yeah. Maybe next year we consider hosting something in town to support small businesses, whether it's some sort of like small business fair. Um also, do do we support any of our small businesses with like grant writing or um anything of that nature? No, I mean they're all pretty much for-profit entities and typically aren't eligible for the grants that we go after. Um Well, maybe not the grants that we go after, but I I mean I'm think even if like new business is in town. Um

Yeah. No, we we don't do that. Typically that kind of business support services falls within the purview of whatever is the Chamber of Commerce that oversees our sector. Um I don't hear a lot from them. So I really don't care. I wonder if it's something that the economic development committee could also support. Actually, the the economic development commission did reach out to the small business community. They did a survey

um asking what's important. Um but they got a a very very poor response rate on that survey, which I'm not surprised. We actually posted it in the newsletter and everything else trying to promote it, but it just didn't get a lot of traction. But they they did try. I think there's just opportunity to maybe do something a bit bigger next year given that this is going thing. So maybe the economic development committee could include this in their strategic plan or maybe you could orchestrate it. I would be happy to do that. Okay. I'm going to write that down. You write it down. All right. Someone like to make a motion to um accept the resolution.

I will make a motion to accept the resolution for Small Business Week. That's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Burgon. Yes. Mr. Christopharo? Yes. Mrs. O'Hara? Yes. Mr. Punchek? Yes. Miss Alves? Yes. Discussion by council vote other action on debrief of emergency food drive November 2025. Ann Lily and Beth Newberry. Sure.

Um, we had wanted to uh catch the town council up and the town and the town administrator and everyone involved in town about the emergency food drive which we had um run last November. I I really thank you for taking the time for allowing us to do this. Um, and so I'm going to give a brief rundown on the circumstances and how the food drive was organized and run. And then Beth will give you what we think are some really important lessons that we learned and any thoughts on how we as a town can better plan and respond and meet the needs of our community in the future. I found and I think everyone that worked with me found that this was a real learning curve. We went into this really fast, great intentions, and we learned a lot of things that we did not know when we started. So, as you remember last fall, we were faced with the withholding of SNAP benefits, and that's a program that provides our most food insecure community members with a much counted on support. And after I reached out to the North Smithfield Food Pantry and learned that they were maintaining their standard schedule of just opening on the last two Tuesdays and Saturdays of the month. Several of us felt that we needed to address the immediate need of our neighbors. So I reached out to several active and accomplished members of our town which were Beth Newberry, Cheryl Cheryl Marendola, Cynthia Roberts and Rebecca de Christopher. We met on a Monday evening and we got the ball started so that we could disperse food within seven days. So meeting on that we made a list of tasks that and we divided up those tasks into jobs amongst us. We set up collection bins. We madeformational flyers. We posted information on social media and we set up a GoFundMe account. That was within one day. We also decided

that we would disperse the food in bags. So each bag would have a certain number of items in it, the same in every bag. We also decided that we would accompany each bag with a grocery gift store card so that the people could purchase perishable items. We didn't want to have to carry milk or eggs or anything perishable in in the food dispersement. And we set a lofty goal. We thought we were really going out on a limb here. We set a goal of 75 bags. And this was based on the numbers that the food pantry was telling me with that they usually work with about 65 to 85 families. Okay. So we started the social media campaign very quickly and we had an ex amazing response to our GoFundMe account. The donations to the physical bins were a little bit slower, but they were also phenomenal. And that would make sense. It takes only a click or two to do a GoFundMe. whereas you might have to run out to the grocery store to buy groceries to drop off into a bank. By Wednesday, this decision was made to set up the drive-thru on a Sunday on the following Sunday at 1 p.m. at Town Hall. So, we kind of didn't make all our decisions up front. We were kind of rolling along along making decisions as we went. Um the social media and the flyers were updated with the dispersement information, the location, the time, and the day. Uh we uh we made arrangements for traffic control. We arranged for popup tents in case there was rain. We made arrangements for DPW to bring tables over so that when we were dispersed, we had everything that we needed to do it. The town council chambers were turned into a staging commissary. Incoming package food was divided into heaps and into categories. So John Board, your section was the vegetables. Clero hair, your section was the pasta

sauce. So, we had clumps of stuff and we kept a running inventory so we know when, oh, we need more more of this or we have too much of that. We We knew what we had. We spent a lot of time using GoFundMe money to purchase groceries and gift cards. It that was huge. What the first time we went out was we oh, should we get this kind of peanut butter? I don't know. By the end, we were just like throwing in cases into our carts and just running out the store. We cleaned out what Aldi's in in Johnston. Yeah. Cleaned them out.

Um we got donations of paper bags from Stop and Shop. That Sat That Saturday, an enthusiastic and hardworking group of volunteers descended into this town hall and they bagged up over 200 bags of groceries. So, we started as 75, we went well over 200. And on Sunday, we were well prepared. Beth and I showed up early to make sure there would be no traffic problems. I took the opportunity to run a flyer over to Colonial Village only to find out that the residents there had no idea that this food dispersement was going on and that many of the people over at Colonial Village had no car to get here. And unfortunately, as Scott will because he was helping hand out food, there was no traffic problem. Only about 30 cars showed up. So we quickly pivoted. We packed volunteer cars with bags and we sent them to Colonial Village, Deerfield Common, Marshfield Commons, and Gatewood. At each location, we found that the residents were totally unaware of the food distribution and that they were all extremely grateful to get these groceries. During the course of the food drive, we learned that each of our town schools runs a food pantry for the families of their children. I called my neighbor, North Smithville Elementary School vice pre principal, and she sent her husband over to our food drive and we packed his van full of groceries so he could take it to North Smithfield Elementary School for their food pantry. All the remaining bags were delivered to the North Smithfield food pantry, the one at at the church. Uh DPW gratefully did all that hard work of bringing all that over there. The outstanding cash from the GoFundMe was delivered as a paycheck to the North Smithfield Food Pantry. That check was for 1,26048.

The remaining unused gift store grocery gift cards were equally divided between North Smithville Elementary, the middle school, and the high school. The elementary school got $545 in gift cards. The middle school got $535 in gift cards. And the high school got $520. Our GoFundMe account had reached $7,995. There were transaction fees, so we wind up with $7,718.90. All of that went for food and gift cards, and all of it got dispersed. So Beth is going to recap what we learned and what we could do better in an upcoming situation. Thank you.

So um before I recap and and talk about lessons learned, I just want to thank Ann for really believing that this needed to be done and pulling it together so quickly um and and being our guiding star for the whole thing and and making sure that this got done. Um, I think we were all really nervous and upset about the fact that there were would be people in our town who were not able to eat. Um, and so we were happy to pull this together and work the way we did for that week. Um, one of the disappointing things for us was finding out that the food pantry was not ready for this kind of situation. So, um I think one of the lessons learned is that there needs to be a sort support support structure in in place for the town should something like this happen that is more immediate. Um and the second thing that um we really were sort of floored by was the lack of people who came to collect bags that day because we knew that there was a need. Um and so we we feel that um you know we got this incredible response from neighbors who wanted to donate and wanted to help and wanted to be there for their neighbors. Um but we were mostly putting it out because it was such a rushed thing on social media and using the channels that we would put it out. So, we want the town to really give some thought to communication channels and how people are getting their um messaging because um we were we were pretty shocked to find out that there wasn't really a good way to communicate with the people who needed these services. Um the other thing that um we we think could be valuable to the town in sort of emergency response is is really looking at how well the schools know a lot of

this information, but also um how we're looking at our more vulnerable populations um and just identifying those families that could really use this help. Um there were a lot of seniors who did not have this information and who we couldn't really get the information to the way that we wanted to. So, um, we just want to make sure that the town is aware and kind of looking and I know that, uh, Mr. Gibbs has been working on resiliency planning and so that's probably part of that, but just sort of thinking in terms of how to help our most vulnerable population should something like this arise. Any questions?

Yes. Uh, at any time if I can help. 37 years we did it in the schools. And the teachers it was well organized. People came at night. It was total privacy. No one wants if you pick something up because uh the year I stopped people were coming in with his children were still there. You don't do that, right? You know, self-esteem is means a lot. And then we had every class give a certain thing. So you didn't end up with 87 can of green beans. no names.

So, every class had something. We had runners in the morning. Uh the stage was set up so everything could be organized. Um the children decorated boxes that were picked up. No names. They had we did it any type of whether it be paints, crayons, and everyone came when school was out. Yeah. the teachers the teachers in the school system know they know who needs the help.

Um so that's a really valuable resource. Um and a lot of what we raised went to the schools once we didn't have people come and pick up here. But we also um dropped off at some of the the elderly complexes where people may not have cars. And so that I think that was a big lesson for us too was that there just was not a way quickly to communicate with people in the way that we all communicate because getting things was not a problem. We got overwhelmed with donations both food and money but um getting it distributed to the right people was tough. Do you know if the food bank has any type of system that they use to communicate with their the reg you know the the frequent visitors that they can reach out to them and say hey we have

this popup event so we may not be open on on this week but there's this event going on that you can um go to is there do you know if they have any way of commun communicating with I I don't know. I have to say it wasn't it wasn't um it wasn't helpful. I mean I didn't get much helpful feedback from them. Okay.

Um so um I you know I know some of the people that volunteer there and I ask them questions. So that kind of gives me an idea about what things that they need which never show up on their list of things that they're looking for. Did you have any runners bringing if they said I really need it? I don't have any way of getting it that volunteered and would bring it. Well, see that would be under the food pantry. The food pantry is a totally separate entity, a separate um we get in the school for holidays and all. People really don't mind it and it's like uh a lot of times they say where's the back door? You're at work. Right. So you don't raise

We weren't getting to the people who needed it and that's what we're what we're sharing with you all. Is it just from this community? Is it just from this community? Yeah.

Right. So I think one of the things and I have to say many many years ago I got a business degree and a large part of it was in advertising and as an advertiser is where you look at where you spend your advertising dollar dollars which is just a form of communication is if you're selling help me I fell down little gizmos then then you you you're advertising at in certain markets you're advertising in well quite frankly the TV shows I now watch but uh so you're targeting and you have different channels of communication so back you know it used to be the people would would read their newspapers but people don't read newspapers anymore but when you're trying to reach say older uh residents they may not be on Facebook they may not be in the same Facebook pages that you're in they may be you know watching cat I don't know but

you have to pay attention to the channels that you're using to communicate communicate and when we're do when we were doing all our communicating on social media because we were so trying to do this so fast and we were using you know the North Smithfield Facebook page and so forth these people are not on that right they don't see it so when we think about how we communicate you know when you when Scott was talking about a poor response from this from the the business owners I was thinking I remember the day when if you were selling ad space in Breeze or what are the Providence Journal, you went out and you knocked on doors and you dealt with people face to face

and that's how you built relationships and communicated. So I think we have to I'm just saying be aware of the fact that if you're depending on social media you are missing a lot of people a lot of people are not going to be seeing that or responding to it. Right. There's a couple things I'd like to add to this too. Um, as as someone who was shuttling some of the food to the uh housing projects, I was very surprised by the lack of onboard property managers. When you hit the weekend, there's nobody there. There's nothing.

Literally nobody. And we've found that frequently when we get complaints from a resident in one of those complexes. and we don't like to get in the middle of those, but we will actually try to reach out and talk to somebody. It's almost impossible talking to anybody. I think that's part that's part of the problem. Um the other one is and we've I've talked a little bit about this with Chief Shottier. Um we really need to have a very robust um database of names in this town. uh people who are elderly, people who have some form of physical uh restrictions that are in need because from an EMA standpoint, we need to know that

um in the event of a crisis, but beyond that, just knowing who is our so-called user base, our customers that we need to really reach out to. We don't have that data, the most vulnerable, most vulner we really need to develop that database. and Chief Shardier agrees the matter of putting that together.

I think and we've talked a little bit about this at the charter review committee. Um, I think if we could think about this also a bit more holistically and how are we engaging our community? Um, and being able to identify quote unquote our customers, our our people in town, how do how do they best receive information and how do we ensure that we're organizing our communications to get to the people the way that they read it. Um, I really see it as being a part of a larger community engagement strategy. Um, we've talked a little bit about this. It went from kind of, well, we need somebody to do marketing. I think it's more than just marketing. I I really think it's somebody who has an understanding of the residents in town, what their needs are, that might be recreational, that might be our most vulnerable. Um, and ensuring that we have the means to communicate with them most effectively. Um, our small businesses, they weren't aware of the survey. How are we communicating with them? Um, so I really see it being like part and parcel of a larger holistic strategy. Um, I I I don't want to take any more responsibilities on, but I think that there's a significant opportunity there.

Significant opportunity. I think that's what we really wanted to Yeah. talk to everybody here about is this. This is a discussion that, you know, no, nothing's going to get solved overnight or by us just reporting back to you all, but it's a discussion that needs to sort of be happening and and recognize that there's people out there who are falling through the cracks and we don't even realize it. Um, I think this town is incredibly caring and giving and when something's going on with a particular family in town, the the town comes out in full force, but I think we're missing a lot of people and not realizing it,

right? Like how are we engaging new residents? What the new residents have an understanding of what our programs are like our boards, our committees, our town council, our amenities? Like we we need a better mechanism for engaging our people. Um, and I think that that really falls under some sort of community engagement strategy. Couple fives. Welcome. What? Welcome wagon. A welcome wagon. I'm old. They used to do that. Yes. The welcome wagon. Thank you. Which tells you when your trash pickup is. Thank you very much for everything. Thank you. And thank you for the town for so much support. Absolutely. You do good work.

It was a really proud moment. It was a really proud uh event. So, thank you.

Discussion by council vote other action on appointments to town board committees. One appointment to the groundwater protection committee for a 2-year term from 1212024 to 112026. You have an application in your packet. My real swing. Can I make a motion? Yeah.

I'd like to make a motion to appoint Ann Lily to the groundwater protection committee for the two term for 2026 through 2028. Is that the term I believe? No. 24 to 26. 2024 to 2026. Okay. Renew again in November. Okay. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Burgon. Yes. Mr. Christopharo. Yes. Mrs. O'Hara. Yes. Mr. Punchek. Yes. Miss Alves. Yes. Congrats. Thank you. Congratulations.

Happy to have you on another committee. Council President, I'm not sure if you accidentally skipped over de. No, I didn't accidentally. Okay. I'm going to go back. Okay. Just want to make sure right here. You just want them to go home. Okay. No, she wants to go watch her her shows. Yeah.

Thank you very much. discussion by council vote other action on award of bid for audit of financial statements for the town and school Mr. Stage. So, as discussed at the uh last meeting with our auditors, we have to go out to bid um for new auditors. Um the only company to bid was CLA Connect. Um as you can see their proposals here, the fiscal year 26, the next audit that we'll be auditing will be that fiscal year 26 hitting us in 20 FY27. So, the increase to that for FY27 compared to what we had originally budgeted was $7,300 74. Do you have any other questions?

That was our only bid. Yeah, it was our only bid. And normally we would, you know, I would consider going back out, but in this situation, you know, when you do something like that, the original bidder will come in higher and then you run the chance of not even getting any. Okay. You run the chance of them not even bidding again. Again, yeah. And quite frankly, the lack of robust response to these for all cities and towns in Rhode Island are not unusual. the the the universe of auditors doing this kind of work is shrinking and quite frankly I really thought in talking to Tony before we got the proposal I thought we were going to get hit much harder on the price

as I as did I yeah um I also reached out to so originally there were only six uh auditing firms in Rhode Island doing municipal work now there's only five and I reached out to them each individually about the bid um We two of them uh you know responded back to me and the third one CLA connect was the one that did um it's just the the nature of municipal accounting unfortunately. So you said how many are out there now? Five.

Five for Rhode Island. Yeah. I went through I went through the uh my old department's page and went through every single every single audit to see if I could find more, but it's there's only five. And even even within those f firms, the number of people within those firms qualified to do this work is small. As we found in the firm that we just lost, the person who's responsible for that is retiring. Usually have a small division.

So they're not doing it anymore. So if you only have five firms then then these same firms are auditing over and over again the same municipalities which is really not something you would suggest they do. So it's really kind of going against like Slim Pickings, right?

Yeah. And the auditor general oversees this whole as you can see they uh auditor general David he um they overview this whole process um along with the school they're involved as well there's a whole grading system we have to go through um and as we had faced last time they they know the how how it is they they know that municipalities have to rebook the same auditors again and again and again that's crazy so Now, I mean, I know the others didn't um didn't quote, but do we assume they're all around the same?

No. So, I I don't I got in trouble last time. I was talking about other biders. Um but I know that there's one company that usually bids a lot higher. We had seen that last time. Um it was almost double what Bacon had bid. Um in comparison, this year, this company's year one is still a little bit under their year three, year one, sorry. Still, yeah, still under their year three. Okay. So, you know, the the prices definitely do range. Um there there is definitely a margin to be to have a spotlight on for sure.

And when these guys put in that bid, they didn't know they were going to be the only bid, right?

They don't know. I mean, I can't say whether they there's discussions behind closed doors, but they they know they know that at at the very least that Bacon's, you know, is giving up all their clients. They at least know that, but whether they don't know who else is bidding, that's all part of it. I had put this up on Bidnet electronically and then again, I had reached out individually to the existing auditors in our in our city or in uh Rhode Island. So they're saying they actually have six representatives to our Is that what they're saying? To our

Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, we only have we we usually just like normal municipalities. There'll be like a junior auditor, the the auditor, and then the partner who reviews the a you know, their work at the end. So you usually only have three points of contact. Yeah. But I guess I mean we haven't really there's no there's no actual interview process with auditors. Um I don't know if that's really even allowed based on the auditor general standards, but we'll we'll know more. We'll learn more once we you know award it and have more conversations. Okay.

All right. So anyone any other questions? Anyone make a motion? I'll make a motion to award the uh contract for accounting services to CLA Connect for um fiscal years 26 27 28 and authorize the town administrator to sign if there's something to be signed. I don't see an agreement. They'll send us a separate agreement. It'll be separate. Yeah. Okay. So, we have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Beerod. Yes. Mr. Christopharo?

Yes. Mrs. O'Hara? Yes. Mr. Punchek? Yes. Miss Alves? Yes. Discussion by council vote other action on actual actual aerial bid award of bid. Mr. Sage. So, this kind of goes in conjunction with the audit. Um we're required by uh the Gazsby which sets the accounting standards for all governmental entities um to do an actuarial um analysis on our OPED. OPE is um the retiree benefits that we have.

Um they have to value them and see how fun how what percentage of funded we are. Um there's a whole I can always share with you guys the actual actuarial report if you if you wanted some nighttime reading. You have a hard time sleeping.

Yeah, it'll put you to sleep. But um these are based on a full year because they do a a full uh analysis and then they do um a small one. They don't go as in depth and then they do it again two times one twice in a row. Um, as you can see there based on their pricing as well, but um, there were only two biders in this as well. This was submitted electronically just like any of my other bids are u, which usually hits a lot more. There's a lot more attention there. Um, because we get auditor or uh, biders from all over the United States. These guys are from out of New York, I'm pretty sure. So anyone can do it remotely.

Anyone have any other questions? No question, just a comment. I thought it was interesting that they pointed out clients who left them during the last I thought that that was interesting as well. Yeah. Like if you I guess maybe if you wanted to call them and say, "Hey, how come you you don't use them anymore?" I just thought that was Yeah, I I found that odd, too. I wasn't sure if that was a typo to be honest. Strange. All right. Anyone like to make a motion?

Sure. I will make a motion to accept the um recommendation to award actu actuarial services to Danzinger and Marov LLP for two full valuations and authorize the administrator to sign any uh supplemental agreements. Two two full valuations and two interim valuations. two full valuations and two interim valuations ending in fiscal year 30. Second. We have a motion to second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Bear, yes. Mr. Christopher, yes. Mrs. O'Hara, yes. Mr. Punchek, yes.

Miss, yes. Discussion by council vote to other action on crack ceiling bid extension. Mr. Pentag.

Good evening. Ray Pentagast, director of public works. Um, the town of Westerly awarded a change order to their original uh bid/contract for crack sealing to Seal Coding Inc. DBA Indis out of Brainree, Mass. Um, I've reviewed this agreement and recommend that the town piggyback on the town of Wesley's bid extension and enter into this agreement. The funds for the crack ceiling come out of my operation operating budget and highway be a one-year contract.

Anyone have any questions? Do you have any idea um you know comparisonwise Westerly to North Smithfield like how many miles of road they own are responsible for versus what North Smithfield's responsible for? The only reason I'm asking is you're saying it's not going to be over 100,000. They gave a $92,000 change order to the company. So, just curious if actually the uh the price per uh unit didn't change at all from 1653 per gallon. No, no, I get that. But what I'm saying is you're asking you're saying it's not going to be over 100,000.

They went I didn't even uh I'm I'm taking that right out of my uh right out of my that's why I didn't even mention that in my uh little dissertation here.

Um that's where we had um we used to do just up to 100,000. Uh what we're finding now is we're probably crack sealing twice a year. So, right now I'm positioning myself to probably use up about 175,000 in the new budget that's been presented to finance. Um, we put in for 150,000. Um, but I'm sitting after this winter, we're sitting at where we would probably wait until September, October, we're now probably going to be doing it twice a year. Um, if the funds are there. So, I have funds right now to at least keep some of these better roads together. So, I mean, we have 66 miles in town, local roads, not not we don't do the state roads.

It's not really you can't really base it on miles of the road, right? Because it's it is what it is. If the road's in bad shape, you got to fill the cracks,

right? I mean, we the roads are in tough shape. Um, so fortunately the paving that we've done for the last several years, we stay on top of those with the uh the crack ceiling. Um, but we're getting uh as I I've explained to the administrator, we're getting we're we've uh have Crossman Engineering doing a study for us right now. We've given them X amount of streets. Uh we're getting ready to have the bid project go out and get bidded to whoever the contractor is. Um, we certainly have a good number of streets that we're doing drainage work on and to to uh reconstruct them. In some cases, some of the roads have to be reconstructed. So, no crack seal those.

No crack seal on those. Anyone have any other questions? Anyone like to make a motion? I will make a motion to approve this bid contract. Is it a bid contract? It's a it's a an extension to the uh the original bid contract from the town of Wesley. Okay. An extension to the bid contract for the town of Westerly um for Seal Coding Inc. DBA Indis as recommended by Ray Pendergast. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Mr. Burgod, yes. Mr. Christopharo, yes. Mrs. O'Hara, yes. Mr. Punchek, yes. Miss Alves, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Discussion by council vote, other action on communications from town administrator, asset management program status, the grants update, and the senior citizens update.

Real real quick. Um on the asset management program, the asset management commission uh has engaged uh part engineering and they're now starting that process. So we're going to start getting some feedback on that. On the grants update, I did a fairly comprehensive assessment last meeting. The only change between there then and now is that we did a very quick application to the state. I think it's for around $15,000 for a kitchen fire suppression and ventilation system that we would use in conjunction with the um senior center. And uh then the senior cent's update in your package is uh something was put together by Linda Thbo. Uh bottom line is in the nine months they've had over 4,500 people. They've gone through their programs. Uh she is doing an absolutely phenomenal job. Uh we have bylaws and articles of incorporation that are fi that are finalized and are being recorded as we speak and they're going to begin application for 501c3 designation which they can then use to start raising money. So things are going well.

Did we ever enable the data collector? No, we have not. You mean that when they come in? Yes. No, we have not. And I think part of the problem and Ray, I know you've talked to Linda about this. I think it's a matter of where it goes and how do we protect it from being damaged. So, it's there. We can use it, but we haven't really figured out where to put it yet. What did we spend on that last year? Oh, I don't remember. Tony, you remember? No, I think it was more than that. Yeah. Was it like 2500? No, I think it was more than that. No, it was more than that. Yeah, it was both the software and the hardware. The hardware was like 11,000 or something.

Yeah, we'll get back to you on that. I mean, we're clearly going to use it. The problem is is it's it's got to be put in a location that is appropriate for its purpose and we're concerned about whether or not that's going to be damaged. So, whether we can put it into a case where it's actually closed and protected. Can't you have a case that just locks? Okay. Just put it away. Like a lock box. So, so presently right now at Scouters, um there's a small office that um the municipal court uses.

So, I worked out an agreement with Chief Laughy uh that we can use that also. So, we're thinking of getting a um a lock case to put into there because they have their records that they store there. Um that office is not accessible to anyone. No scouts, no no one else other than the municipal court and the police. So, I'm only I only have one person in my my group that has a key to that office. So, I'm trying to work the the logistics out with Linda right now on I'm not there when she has her programs. So, we'll work that out, but I I think uh the short of it is that can be worked out.

Yeah. No, I I'm sure it can be worked out, but I just feel like I ask about it every time and we still haven't come up with a solution. So, let's get a solution in place because we spent the money on it and it's just kind of sitting and collect collecting dust at the moment. I'll talk to I'll try and get in touch with Linda tomorrow and see if we can move on that just to get it going. Thank you. And then one other question. Um, so the grants and stuff, can we um can we have the grant writer come like Yes. the fact that the last meeting I said I was going to have her uh be here the first week in May. Okay. And then we can have that continue quarterly to get updates and stuff. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Is that it for your updates? Yes, it is. Okay. All right. Uh open forum pursuant to 42-46-6D maximum three minutes per person. Would anyone like to speak? Absolutely. Do you mind if I sit here instead of standing? I'll sit this way. All right. You know, my name is Claire O'Hara. Can you just speak in your mic? Claire.

I'm Claire O'Hara. I'm speaking to you as a taxpayer. Uh, recently since this whole street tree thing started, uh, you tried to tell the people that we had to, they were angry. They didn't want that. Who wanted that? I couldn't walk anyway. So, I really didn't care where they put them. So, uh they were very angry. More so the people that lived on White Parkway. Ask me why. I don't know. They usually walked in the street anyway with their dogs and baby carriages. But when you get letters and they go, I got about eight of these. No return address, a stamp. God bless America, right? They try to disguise Nove they're trying to disguise things. They have I had a wonderful uh stock broker that stole me blind. They looked up the case, sent it to me. Poor guys losing everything, right? Um and then there were other instances because of of Fenar etc which I'm associated with because of that duplicating it send it to me sending all this photographing stuff. Um and did I cut a tree? You couldn't afford to cut the tree. I paid thousands of dollars to have trees cut because all my utilities are there. Last time it cost me what? 15,000. Now I have no trees, thank God, for about 12, 15 years. And then they only put a tree right in front of the utilities again. What would you do once it's in my

yard? It's my dime. my my uh gas, my my water, all this is right there. And it said gas. The only one that they put a tree was right there. So I I said, "I'll pay for it." And I did pay for it. They said they couldn't do it because they couldn't pay for it. Well, I said, "I've got to pay because it's going to cost me thousands if I don't." I did it. Put me in jail. whichever is cheaper, you'd still have to feed me at that point.

Cla, so tell me tell us more about that letter, though. That's that's that's concerning that you're getting harass chapter in the ongoing saga regarding sidewalks on Summit Avenue unfolded this week when officials noticed that a tree quite literally at the root of the problem had been taken down. It's not the root of the problem. It's one that was put there that I never had a tree in front of my house before except for my property. Okay. The tree in front of Council Cla Harris's house at Summon Avenue is not just a stump, a change that could turn her out to be a problem for the elected official because it was considered town owned property. Uh they looked up my stock broker sold all my annuities. They printed everything. I I don't know. It might remind me of that, too. I've had um other things like this with just cutouts.

How many letters have you gotten? Oh, God. I got about eight. David, have you are you aware of this? It sounds like it could be a potential harassment of a council member, don't you think? No. And they said I walk everywhere. Plus, she's a senior citizen. I mean, who who would do this? I don't the same people that probably sent out the ones I got in my house. I can't I'm like poor. I mean they say I got them mailed all over the town. I went Parkway. You're lucky I can get into my car. This is ongoing and they go late at night because uh I have a wood porch, you know, it's huge and open.

Claire, can you speak in your mic? Uh they it's to the point where listen I am going to protect me if no one else is. They come up on the I have an open porch. Uh I say hello when people I don't I love the kids in the morning Christmas all my little kids get get books and everything else. Cle can I just I don't I just want to protect you. So, I'm going to intervene a minute, but I I just don't want you to go on file saying you're you're kind of getting threatening. So, I think you need to go to the police instead of I was with the last letter, but I said, "What am I starting?" And you told me to I said, "What am I starting?"

No, you got to go to the police because this has to be officially documented.

I've lived there for 50 years. White Parkway was White Parkway. I never went walking up and down except when the boys were young. The garage had a pool. I fed everybody. Everybody was a certain age. Now the little ones are there. They're so cute with their dogs and everything. And and if I have anything, the parents let me give them like books that you know teacher has a million books. Go out have my coffee. 4:00 in the morning I felt safe. I no longer feel safe. And I never thought in all my in all of my lifetime and to spread that I was responsible for those cones

and that's the two f persons at the end.

If if I could add to that though there has been an issue about the cone. Um, we've put together a mailing list of everybody on Summit A and White Parkway and the public works director is going to send a letter to all those people informing them that the reason why the town and the town's the one that did it, put the cone up is because our insurance company advised us to do that because the public had acknowledged that there was a problem with the sidewalks and the Rhode Island in a local trust says the minute that happens, you're liable. So, put up cones to protect yourself. And so, we're going to let them know that's why those cones are there because our insurance companies requiring us to do that. And then Ray is going to provide some um some sort of a summary of the things that they're looking to do to manage the sidewalks in that neighborhood so that they're not a hazard. So, we kind of try to take the issue and depersonalize it and and let them know it's the town, the administration that's doing this. Um, and it's not because we are vindictive. It's because that's what the interlocal trust is telling us we have to do.

Well, my advice to CLA from my experience would be if it if it's not documented, it didn't happen. So, you got to get those letters to the police. Even if they can't do anything, it'll all be officially documented in a in a report. When we last spoke about this, we've spoken about the sidewalks a few times, and it's not just the sidewalks in Claire's neighborhood. I I've seen that other people have expressed concerns about just sidewalks in town in general. I think we determined that we were going to complete some sort of assessment to understand where to prioritize repairing of sidewalks in town. Is that going to take place, especially as we approach budget season, and is it going to be factored into the budget? So we can ensure that we're again holistically addressing.

We do not we do not have a specific line item in the capital budget under public works or sidewalks. I think everybody has to understand how big and expensive this is and we're just trying to keep our head above the water on our roads right now. That doesn't mean that we aren't trying to get a handle on the extent of the problem. and try to get and and I know that public works has had conversations with some engineers to explore there's a milling option for example that you can possibly do to help level the the sidewalk. So, we are looking at that, but no, we do not have a specific budget category within um the the capital uh request for public works, unless of course they're doing a road, proposing to do a road in an area that has sidewalks and we could possibly do that. Well, if we don't have a budget item this year, can we complete an assessment over the course of 2027 2028 to determine if we need to include a bud a line item for 2028 so we can budget for it and it could be rectified appropriately?

We can, but please understand that we have not just been sitting on our hands not doing this. We actually went to the state uh and asked the state to provide us a grant under their uh transportation improvement program for sidewalks. They rejected us. No, I'm not accusing the administration of sitting on their hands and not addressing this. But I just think we need to think a bit more proactively. If we haven't historically had a line item and we don't have a line item for this budget season, then let's plan on it for next budget season. We would love to find the room in the budget to do that. Yes. Um, this isn't about sidewalks. Oh, that's separate. Yeah, you're right.

There was um there was other issues that CLA had mentioned that were brought up about her personal finances as well. Uh I just think that this is a bigger issue. Well, it's not that it's bigger, but it's not really what this is about. She's uh she has a pretty serious issue going on right now, and I think uh the police should be involved. And I know walking up and down Summit Avenue, you're lucky I get to my car. The father say go approach.

No, I think the police should be aware of it. I recently worked with the police on a somewhat related issue, not related, but an issue in town that councilman you know about and had them investigate whether or not there were any actions that crossed the line and they've discovered no, there was not. But you know being able to reach out to the police and say here's a concern take a look at it and they will look at it and they did it fairly quick for us and all the people are relatively new that this is

50 years and I grew up before that all my buddies Very nice. But then you have people going to your mailbox and being out. Let's talk about this. No, they have to have fun. If they want me there so long it's not going to happen on my will not put me in jail. It's the point where I'm not taking it. We lived in these for so long and in the last three years you have a few that feel now they're at least it feels great only about one it's a neighborhood but you have some it's always been like that when there are more boys together that there is not to me. See, the mail is my best friend. He always knows me to die.

Anyone deliver it? You make it nice. If they're going to threaten me. So, town town administrator, it's over. Can you support Clare in ensuring that this is addressed with Chief Laferdy? O, of course. But I, you know, provide me the provide me the documentation and I will bring it to the chief's attention. Okay. Thank you. Like I said, I don't know if there's anything criminal there. Probably not. But nevertheless, it should be documented. Yeah. Although a um a mailbox is actually federal property. Good point. And you're not allowed in it. But it's going through the mail. No, it is not. Not one of those. Let it

So they're putting a stamp on it. It's not going through the mail. No, you have to have they stamp it. So they stamp it the stamp off it. It would have a postark over the stamping. Oh

right. Um so you gonna Yes, I will. All right. All right. U there's no one else in the audience. So at that point I'd like to make a motion to adjurnn. All in favor say I. I. I. Meeting adjourned.