Selectboard - Regular Meeting

The chairs are low. You can raise it.

There's a lever right there. And then you kind of take a little bit. Yeah.

But he's been sitting in this.

Right.

OK. Public, please hold your comments until I open the agenda items for public comment. When addressing the board, state your full name, both in person and on Zoom. It is suggested that you enter your full name as your ID on Zoom. All right. Minutes, I will take a motion to approve the minutes of July 20, 2026.

Move approval on favor.

No appointments, no resignations, no consent agenda, any select board reports. No, unfinished business, new business, consider accepting a conditional monetary gift. From Gilbert and butler family. Foundation Inc. to the Mount Desert Fire Department in the amount of $250 in support of general operations.

Move acceptance with thanks. Second.

All in favor? Thank you. Consider declaring the fire department's 2007 GMC 4500 TC box truck surplus equipment and authorizing the fire chief to advertise for sale by competitive bid.

Move consideration?

Second. All in favor? Consider authorizing the release of $45,475.09 from account 4040300-24471 fire equipment engine reserved to be used towards the purchase of a Stryker Power Pro 2 ambulance cot. Yeah, he shared your memo with me.

Move authorization.

Second.

Any discussion? I got a question.

Yeah. Mike, $45,000 for a car? I'm assuming it's not a canvas army car. It says power. I mean, it does motorize. Yeah.

yeah you get quotes for those or is it pretty much the same place you have to get it from all right the striker quote because we've dealt with it before and we get that we feel we get a pretty reasonable deal with that well that's a typical amount for a cot for this what you want yes yeah because we're purchasing extra batteries and and add-ons to that too which makes sense in the long run base price is 37 around 37 000 yeah that's that's the same price a lot of retail outlets like stretchers r us yeah we came up with that

that's a real company is this powered actually powered like like uh on top of up and down is actually powered across the ground like to help help get it you know from one place to the other no no no no it up and down and in yeah but once it's basically it's it's you can't it's still yeah it's not a good idea yeah

big motor on india okay i have another question yes what what's the history of the agreement with the northeast harbor ambulance association why are we selling them back the ambulance and are we and is this is this cut included in the consideration that we're selling it back to them if they say oh we want that too just what's the history there what's the expectation

So when we started providing EMS for the town, ambulance service crisisly sold during less than a dollar. So you can get an ambulance in service. With the agreement that they had to have first refusal when we were done with it, we do have our new ambulance coming in hopefully this month. So I went, reached out to the Northeast Harbor Ambulance Service to see what they wanted to do with the ambulance. And they said that they would like it back. So, we're going to have to give it back to them for a dollar. Gotcha.

What what is it?

Why do they want it? That's a service question. I don't tell them. They've indicated way to wait for their meeting. I think it was last month when they met and. They indicated that they would, they do want it back. With a car, I will purchase a new car.

Whatever, whatever it is. Okay, any more discussion? All in favor? Review and approve contract with Enterprise Electric Inc. in an amount not to exceed $38,142 for directional boring in Jordan Pond Road.

Approval.

Second. Any discussion?

Let us know when it's happening so I can be there.

Yes, I will. when when this occurs and this is one of the major reasons for this is we're preserving that stone bridge yes we're going to go under it yes well we're going to go kind of under the game this is the least invasive yeah yeah which is currently the line that we're replacing rubs through the footings and under the character of that bridge so that's why we have to go down and around okay We don't want to try and go through, because we're going to have to bore through on big footing.

Just out of curiosity, how many feet will $38,000 bore?

Well, it ain't that far. It's just one side of the carriage road to the other. I don't know the exact footage. They'll start a little ways down slope of the bridge crest on Jordan Palm Road. The contractor, which is up for digging a pit put the boring machine in yeah they'll bore down under the carrot road and then it's going to curve up and back towards the center line of jordan pond roads we're looking at like 20 20 30 feet anyway it's no it's probably it's over i mean total linear distance just straight line distance from point to point yeah is at least Got to be over 100 feet.

Oh, yeah. So it's plenty then.

190 feet is what they had in their quote for. Yeah.

Yeah. And that must be the curved. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's really, I'm surprised they do it to 38,000.

They're just coming, setting the machine in, doing it, picking the machine up and leaving. Yeah.

Not your average Roomba. So how confident are you that there's no ledge there and no

done geophysical yeah okay what that old plans were as confident as we can be until we start dating sounds it's not boring okay all in favor great

Review and approve contract with Ranger Construction in an amount not to exceed $1,922,613 for the Jordan Pond Road sewer replacement.

Then this is the remainder of the contract. I guess one thing I'd like to point out on this is some information that we got from the contractor who is the low bidder on this, which is, I've come to you many times and I've said, we'll take advantage of this contractor or that contractor. some sort of a better price on. And we didn't do that in this case. We went out for a true bid. We got three bids. They came to us afterwards and said, well, we're in the area because we're doing work in Bar Harbor. And that's why our bid came as low as it did. So it's sort of supporting data. And we didn't ask anything in particular.

That's a substantial.

Big savings.

Yeah. they're here next door doing work so that that has helped them with this bid and it helps us and this is a whole length of John Pond Road right starting at Confucian Corner and then down to wetlands way out is that downstream I'm not positive about that location but there's parallel line that runs on the down slope end of Jordan pond down slope of where the carriage road bridge is. Yeah. Because the houses that are connected there are up in a normal height of the road because it came from under the bridge. It's lower. And then it, as the grade drops, they meet all the way to where they meet the other one, the upper one is just going to be abandoned. We're just going to tie everybody up.

Yeah. When does the work happen?

They're looking for this winter. They'd like to work in the winter. So we may see that relatively soon since they're kind of around. I think it depends on their other project schedule.

Does the neighborhood know that this is coming?

I've had some conversations with some folks on the road, but not any kind of extensive outreach as of yet.

Interesting. Okay. Any, anything else.

All in favor made it.

Oh, yeah, I did. I read it. I read it and we had a motion.

It wasn't no to Brian with his explanation. Okay. Yep. So motion. 2nd. 2nd. Yeah.

All in favor. Review and approve contract with range of construction in an amount not to exceed. We already did that, see? Authorize public works director to negotiate a scope of work and contract for engineering services for design bidding and construction observation of a salt sand storage shed.

I would move approval.

Second.

Or authorization, I should say.

What is this going to do, Brian? Is this going to figure out what you're actually going to use? Have they already decided what they want?

We have an idea of what we need and what we want, but this design firm will help us sort of fine-tune that, look at the site, determine where we can and can't put things. But this was a request for qualifications, a request for proposals. The contract will come back to you after we've negotiated that contract. You're going to see this again in one or two meetings, the actual contract to do the work.

So this has nothing to do with whether it's metal or canvas or cement?

No, and that's to be determined still with working with the designer that we're proposing here. I got you. And then we'd work with them to figure out what does our site allow? What do we really want? They've done a bunch of work, which is part of the reason. a firm that we're going with yeah we also want to check with other facilities that have put them in recently and and 15 years previous right and understand like what components work what doesn't work right what would you change that that's what these guys yeah i get you but you said they've they've done a lot of work for other towns of similar nature yeah they had an extensive list of towns they've worked for that have done exactly this okay okay all in favor

Consideration of the organization plan and request for November 3. 2026 referendum election. Okay, this is just to get it. Although we don't really have any choice. You get it on the end of the referendum.

We can say, no, we can't we can say no.

I think we could have said no before the state authorized. Really?

Yeah.

We put it on the ballot and let the voters decide.

We move consideration with this.

Okay, you moved.

You second, Rodney?

Yeah, I'll be moving. Okay.

Okay. All in favor? Aye.

Okay. Yeah. So, can someone chat process-wise what happens between now and November in terms of our role or informing the public?

Yeah, I'm going to be looking to Claire out of the corner of my eye to see if I get this all right. There's 2 things 1 thing that seems pretty clear is that there will be a need for a public hearing for this. So the best time to do that would probably be. In that window, roughly a month beforehand by sort of that sweet spot. Not too early. Not too late. So that'd be sometime in early on. What form the public hearing takes is pretty open-ended. There's another question that's sort of out there that I think we're gonna have to have somebody weigh in on, which is, while this does change dollars that go towards it, does this count as an appropriation vote or not. And that question doesn't seem to be crystal clear as of yet. So if it's an appropriations vote, there would need to be an actual recommendation by the select board on it. But it doesn't fit neatly into the parameters of you know, put in funding to buy this or don't put in funding to buy this because the actual impacts are a little less certain. So that's a question that between now and then we got to get answered as to whether there is a obligation from the select board to make a recommendation or not. And that's something I think all the towns have to sort of get worked out as they go on it.

Is it our responsibility to have a public forum, I mean a public

Or there's unclear, however, according to our charter, if the select board have a referendum question, we do have to have a public hearing at least. With it 10 days prior to the election. So I would say. you're putting a referendum out there even though you don't really have much of a choice, that according to the charter, we still have to have a public hearing. I would also say that I think having the school or the planning committee or something come and do a public discussion, maybe even outside of that public hearing, would be a bad idea.

I actually, they could also do that if they want, but I think that we need to drive that bus. All right. And set up our own public hearing because otherwise we're going to get the same stuff we got at neighborhood house. All right.

But is it up to us to put our opinion out there or just like go through what they have already presented? I think that some representatives would attend.

Yeah. I would hope so. I would think so. Yeah. Yeah. Did anybody attend tonight?

I'm on there.

I do believe that this step right here is really a formality. It's what we do with it next that's the really important piece. And certainly I've been chatting with at least one of the other communities on the question of whether this counts as appropriations or not. And I may have to get a legal opinion on that really. figure that one out because certainly there are some numbers that are relatively easy to suss out based purely off of the funding formula, but there's also a lot of much less concrete numbers because we don't know the actual impacts that this may have, right? It's not a fixed dollar in time. It's a formula that will cause changes, but the actual dollars aren't. And so that's, that's where to me, this, We're going to need somebody else to chime in on this one, because to me, it's unclear.

Yeah, so I think that first and foremost, we need to know exactly what either the equation or at least the algorithm is they use. Because I can't hear 6733 again without having my head explode. So I really want to know what the mathematical relationship is there.

And that part's pretty open and transparent and easy to get at, actually. I haven't seen it anywhere. It's sort of embedded in their spreadsheets, but yes, we can get to that. Okay.

All right. informational letter from resident brian silverman regarding proposed elimination of public dumpsters at public works garage fairly informational no need to act on it thank you for his comments yep any public uh comment on anything okay traders warrants approval and signature town invoice at 2709 in the amount of $1,410,834.86. Move approval and signature. Second. All in favor. Approval and signatures, state fees and payroll benefits AP2707, AP2708, town payroll PR2704 in the amount of $363,609.66. Move approval.

Second.

All in favor.

One abstention.

OK. Acknowledgement. School invoice, MDES AP02. School payroll, MDES PRO3. And there are no voided disbursements for a total of $256,388.71. Move acknowledgement. Second. All in favor. All right. Motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

All in favor?