Town Council - Regular Meeting

we go good evening everybody thank you for coming to tonight's regularly scheduled town council meeting we are here tonight in the assembly room the community room is being utilized for the early voting required by the state of connecticut so we are in the smaller room this evening just a reminder without microphones we'll do our best to enunciate and keep things clear for the folks at home as well as the people in the room Quick roll call. Disha, Joe Green, Sue Boyard. To Jason Gursky, absent this evening is Ray Angle. He is in Florida, and where it's even warmer than here, that's possible. Fire exit notifications, to my right, directly out the door, through another door, and out the door that looks for you outside, and down the stairs. To my left, you exit, go to your right, and then to your right again, and that will take you on the main exit of the building, the main entrance. Next item is the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

As our indication, we'd like God to bless the town of Plymouth and the United States of America. Item six is accepting meeting minutes from July 20, 2026. This was the special meeting that was held. Is there a motion to accept the minutes? So moved. Second. On motion, Mr. Zagorski. Second, Mr. Green. Any discussion on the minutes from July 20? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Are there any abstentions? Motion carries, thank you very much. Item seven is public comment on agenda items. If anyone would like to address anything on the agenda prior to the conversation, I'll recognize you now. Give it a minute. Short agenda this evening. If necessary, you can bring your comments out in the agenda section as well. Any comments on agenda items? Seeing none, we're going to move to item number eight. I would like to welcome Lana Harrison from Valley Cog, which they'd be a part of. Lena and her team are leading the plan of conservation and development for the town of Plymouth. And we'd like to get some information, some update. Lena's going to share with us what's going on with that effort. Take a moment to make sure we're technically connected. I'll just give a little background while that's happening. There is a steering committee that participates in this effort that is made up of staff and citizens, a variety of citizens and staff. We commissioned, we meaning the town of Plymouth, commissioned this to be done by the Nocturne Family College back in, I guess, fall of 2017. Five is when we entered into the agreement with the Valley Talk. For anyone who does not know, the plan of conservation development is required by the state of Connecticut for each town to perform it. It's required to be done every 10 years. We're actually a little bit behind.

You're taking some of my slides.

Okay, well, I'm speaking from experience, but anyway, I will turn it over to Linda. Welcome, Barry, and thank you for coming this evening. It's all yours.

Great, thank you so much. Happy to be here. I believe the last time this group may have heard from us, it would have been from my former colleague, Savannah Nicole, who has gone. I believe she presented too well last fall. But I'm Lani Meyerson, my colleague Emily Ritchie also works with me on the plan of conservation and development. She is not able to make it tonight, so it's just me. Okay, so what we're gonna talk about today We'll share the project team. We'll go a little bit into what a POCD is. I know they were somewhat familiar, so I'm not gonna spend too much time on that, but it will be a review. We'll explain where we are in the planning phases. We'll talk about what we've been doing with the steering committee. We'll share a little bit about the takeaways that we've gotten so far from the stakeholder work that we've been doing with the steering committee and with our community, and then share what's next. So, or perhaps new for some of you. So I'm Laina Harrison, supervising community planner at NPCOG. This is Emily Ritchie. We are the primary project team, but we are well supported by additional staff from NPCOG, our mapping data and technology team, our communications folks, and then we also have people who work on the environmental transportation and ground fields and things. And we have folks from all of those divisions who are participating in this process behind the scenes, but Emily and I are the ones that the steering committee will see first. So as Mayor Scorsese mentioned, the plan of conservation and development is required by law. It must be adopted or amended at least once every 10 years. It is housed underneath the Planning and Zoning Commission of Plymouth. Plymouth's POCD update was due in 2025, so we are behind, but that's not uncommon. And there's a letter that you can submit, many have already been submitted, to the state indicating that you're in contract with it because you're working on the POCD itself. But more importantly, a POCD is an opportunity for the town of Plymouth to think about where you've been, where you are, and where you want to go for the next 10 years, and to essentially create a policy document that you can reference for a lot of your other plans and programs as you're making decisions about land use and really what will benefit the community in the past. So some of the topics that we're going to be looking at are affordable housing and design choices, protecting existing and potential public surface and ground drinking water, preservation of agriculture, different mobility needs and transit accessibility, and just in general, what is the most desirable land use in the town of Plymouth for a variety of uses. All right, so where are we? So we have divided up this planning process into four phases. Phase one is the community assessment. This is looking at a lot of demographic data. This is getting a sense of what is important, what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, what do we need to understand about existing land use and open space. Phase two, we move into taking all of that data and then actually going through planning exercises and drafting. Phase three is when we do review, formatting, and design. And phase four is when we bring it back to the council for approval, to the planning and zoning for approval and review and then ultimately adoption. So we are here, we are sort of at the end of the community assessment phase. And you may be like, why, how are we only in phase one? But it's really phase one and phase two are the biggest phases of this process. Phase three and phase four are gonna go a little bit faster, so the bulk of the work is happening in phase one and phase two. All right, so what have we been up to? We've been meeting monthly with the steering committee since March. So in March, we had an introduction, we did a process overview, In April, we put together a list of potential stakeholders to interview, and we ran that by the steering committee. We also put together a digital engagement plan, ran that by the steering committee. And then we also did an activity called Who is in Plymouth, where we gave the steering committee a very high-level overview of demographics of Plymouth. And then also ask them, who do you know in Plymouth and what are some of the characteristics that describe the folks who live here? And based on those characteristics, what do those people need in order to have a good quality of life in this town? In May, we presented a list of targeted engagement opportunities. So this means we are planning to go out into existing groups in the community and piggyback on meetings that they may already have to be able to talk about the POCD with them. So we put together a list of those potential folks, gave that to the steering committee and asked them to help us prioritize who we should reach out to. So they've identified the Terryville Lions Club, the early childhood council, and potentially talking to a faith community as groups that we could go talk to at various points in the process. And then in May and June, we also did what's called a steeple analysis. You may have heard of something called a SWAT, which is like strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats. This is kind of similar to that. We were looking at sociological, technological, economic, I honestly cannot remember all of the letters in the acronym, environmental, but we were able to look at all of these different factors that may be impacting the town and think about what are the challenges and what are the opportunities according to those factors. So we did that in both May and June. And then July, our last meeting, we presented MBCOG's open space inventory, and we curated a handful of maps based on that inventory, and so this was our opportunity to look at what is open space like in the town of Plymouth, and really just starting the conversation about open space. A lot of these things are, a lot of these topics right now in the community assessment portion are just to get the conversation going, to get an initial understanding of what folks think about Plymouth, And then that will give us a foundation to ask deeper questions and to do deeper research and revisit these conversations again. All right, so a few takeaways from the steering committee. And the map on the right here, that is one of our open space maps. I believe blue is protected open space, red is unprotected open space, and purple is undetermined. So a few takeaways from the steering committee. So they identified that we'd like to establish a goal for percentage of open space in the town in alignment with the state goals and policies and also best practices. We talked a lot about the need for sidewalk improvements and transportation connectivity throughout the town and to neighboring towns. There's been some comments about creating fluidity between Kerryville and Plymouth Main Streets on Route 6. We've identified that a lack of housing options in Plymouth may prevent families and other people from either moving here or folks who do live here from staying here. And then lots of talk about revitalization. All right. stakeholder interviews and stakeholder survey. You're getting a treat. This has not even been shown to the steering committee yet. We did a preliminary analysis from the survey and the interviews that we conducted so that we could give you all a sense of what we're hearing from people, but there's gonna be much more for us to look at. So we did, we held 11 stakeholder interviews. We had reached out to 17 people. We heard back from 11. We've heard from people that there's a good social network in Plymouth, but a lack of a cohesive town identity. We've heard that there is actually more sewer capacity than what is currently being utilized, so that will be interesting for determining development. We've heard that there's a lack of employment in Plymouth, that people tend to go elsewhere to work. We've heard that there's a need to attract younger families and young adults, The town of Plymouth is aging in population, and that's pretty true across most of the city of Connecticut. And we've also heard that there's a need for additional community and recreational space. From the stakeholder survey, when we asked about top infrastructure improvements specifically for the downtown area, they were identified as road quality and maintenance, parking, sidewalk improvements, we're hearing a lot about sidewalks, and connections to neighboring towns. 53% of respondents agree that Flemeth does have enough open space. 35% of respondents agree that Flemeth should expand the type of housing that is available. And 41% disagree that the needs of youth were being met. So we're somewhere in the front. Okay, looking ahead. So ultimately, what we're working towards, other than the final plan, is a framework that we, we separate out into what's called action principles. So typically in the past, plans of conservation and development tended to look at planning topics really discreetly. So you have the transportation section, you have the environment section, you have the housing section, But planning in general is moving towards having a much more holistic and integrated way of thinking about all of these topics because they impact and influence each other. So instead we'll identify maybe three to four of what we're calling action principles and underneath those we'll identify the recommendations and strategies that we want to employ moving forward. So I pulled some examples from the regional plan conservation development that we're working on right now. So action principle number two for the RPOCD is the Nagantarik Valley region facilitates resilient environmental, economic, and social systems. So that incorporates obviously the environment, the economy, and sociological factors all into one theme or strategy. The third one is it prioritizes connectivity across transportation modes to encourage the movement of goods and people and access to services. And again, this one is mostly mobility-centered, but it does incorporate the economy, it does incorporate other quality of life considerations as well. So again, these are not for Plymouth, this is for the Regional Plan of Conservation and Development, but this is to give you an idea of the types of buckets that we're gonna be looking at and then housing strategies underneath. All right, so future planning activities that we will be undertaking. We'll be doing a land use analysis with the steering committee. We will be reviewing the community and stakeholder engagement with the steering committee in order to pull out some more data points for us to consider. We will be reaching out to those groups that I talked about earlier for targeted engagement. We'll be putting together a vision statement with the steering committee, identifying those action principles, and we'll also be doing a youth summit as well. And I just breezed through that. But that's where we're at. That's what we've been up to. That's where we're going. I know that was a lot, so I'll take any questions or comments.

I guess it's a question or a comment, I'm not sure which. You were talking about the open space and what they're looking at as usable open space. And there's a committee in town that that was their goal for the month to collect all that information to find out what buildings were available and I think it was like over 10 acres of land. Clubs, I guess you could call, were being looked at to see what we have in the town. So it's like you're kind of doing what they're doing. Can we get copies of that to give to them as to what's open?

Yeah, definitely. And we also, that open space inventory is on MVCon's website. So you can also go around and play around with the different layers on there. But yes, I can definitely follow up with those maps that we put together and I would also love to hear more from that group about what they're finding as well. That would be very nice. That's the facility and planning committee.

I was wondering what this is for. And what timeline are they on? uh it's kind of open they just started they've only had a couple of meetings so they're focused on inventory i'll actually talk about that a little bit tonight but uh just getting started like several of the activities that you know that we have in place we have the brownfields evaluation and some of those other things that are going on just so the council knows today uh also we met with um a lot of comments were made today about how do we intertwine all the various activities that we're looking at and combining them and working them into better leverage the plan of conservation and development in efforts to make that a more effective tool not only for planning but also for the split data conversation with grants and helping build the case for Plymouth on you know so I think it's important although you're I mean, it reads through it pretty quick, but under the covers there's a lot of other details that folks are looking at to help us identify where we want to go in the future. So it's a very important tool for that. We're moving it along. I did have a question about the participation of the steering committee. Are we getting pretty good participation on the steering committee? I mean, I know staff has been there, other representatives from the various boards, but I know we have some members of the public. How are we doing? Are people showing up for meetings? Are we doing okay?

We usually have about five to six committee members. members to show up, which is smaller than I think was the original assembled list, but I mean, it is pretty good that we have five specific people that we're showing up on a regular basis.

Yeah. Questions? I got a quick question.

I guess sort of with Margus too, there was a time where there was projects that were losing talent and that we could not ultimately approve those projects because we could not extend sewers to those projects. Do you get into that or no?

Have we gotten into it? Yes. We haven't, but that's something that we can look at. It hasn't come up in our particular conversations.

This goes back probably maybe 15-20 years ago where we had developments where they were ultimately approved but they could not be built because those areas of town were the preservation, if you want to call them preservation areas, where they were only supposed to have on-site septic as opposed to sewers. Yeah. So I'm just curious if you can get into that. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, so it is interesting that in one of the stakeholder interviews that we learned that yes, there is, I think right now, like one million tons of sewage is being processed, but you have capacity for

it was 1.75 but it depends on on the pumps so like some of the pumps are at capacity and some of them are not and so it just depends on what development is happening there you're also spending a lot of money on sending the sludge out to get burned and the expected increase in cost there so a lot of things to consider about how to make

that system more efficient and cost-effective and also if you have you know goals for expansion and growth and also it's not just capacity it's the ability for the infrastructure to sustain the flow and the pumps and everything else and then other potential cost increase that are coming our way yes not just the matter of fact they came up with a developer's proposal they ran a bunch of numbers and they're like oh you you can do it So yes, capacity is there, but it's getting the support structure. There's a lot of aging infrastructure too, especially downtown. So a lot of black goes into it. It's not just about the amount. It's about getting it there too. Ron, did you have something?

No? Has your organization considered getting together with Plymouth to go and discuss with the City Council the project in our town where the solar panel was approved and it's a fee, it's an average. Would your organization consider going into discussion with City Council as a group?

I guess the signing council, yeah. I think that that might be a little bit beyond our purview if it has already been approved. Is it already under development?

It has been approved, but you added on your list. Or, you know... farmland.

Yeah, I think it's more of, you know, if there's other farmlands that you either want to consider for solar or that you want to specifically think about how to prevent solar from going there, that's something that we would look at. Probably not at this point a project that has already been approved by the site council. So you have no powers?

No.

I mean, we could talk to them, but I don't know how much it would really influence or give us direction for the plan of conservation at the moment.

They don't seem to have one. They are recruiting a lot of farmland for solar projects, and I would think that as your group, you would be concerned about that.

Yeah, so what we would look at is helping identify, working with the steering committee and the stakeholders to identify what are the areas that we would like for that to happen, what are the areas that we would not like for that to happen, and what do we need to look at in terms of zoning. I mean, zoning is our primary mechanism for either facilitating or preventing.

The Senate Council overrides our zoning regulations. Yeah. Once a project is approved. Sure. Yeah. So it's a little late.

Right.

For that one, that's there. Even Valley Cog, we reached out to Valley Cog when we first got notification, Connie, of what was happening. And it's not something that's in their jurisdiction. The Valley Cog does not have experts in... that type of stuff. I mean, it has expertise in long term planning at the latest point, identifying lands. Now, they could help us craft regulations or, but the Valley County is not a lobbying group either. Going forward, we're gonna try to engage something like the CCM, Connected Conference of Municipalities and those other lobbying agencies. Right, the Council of Small Towns, those types of organizations is what we need to help work with all the communities to try to legislate corrections to the Citing Council. But as that process currently exists, as we've discovered, very little town in and of itself can do. to be with the second council. I understand that. Yeah, so we're kind of in a tough place, but hopefully we'll, going forward, we'll be able to get more legislative changes. I know there's some in the wings, but that's not really an area, and that's reached out to the Valley College where it wasn't an area that they're fit to deal with. They don't have legal counsel to work with, counsel to have guards, stuff like that. or the planning agency. Any other questions from the public?

Are you guys going to sit down with the sewer commission, because you were talking about the sewer capacity, and actually find out what the capacities are, not just go off the survey, because you're getting ready to propose like a $60 million upgrade, because there isn't enough capacity to do different things.

So that information about the sewer that I had, I sat down with, his name is . But from the WPCA. Yeah, we didn't talk to the commission. but we can talk to him.

Anything else?

There was a comment that you made back earlier about the drafting of our plan of our town, and I used the phrase something like inconformity with state statutes or something like that. Do we have to conform to state statutes in our town, or do we have no control? Or is that just completely out the window because we're a public college?

Yeah, so you do all town plans and also the regional plans, they do have to reference the state plans. So if there's an existing state plan for something, we do need to look at it and we do need to make sure that, in general, that what the town and the regional plans are also in alignment with the state as well. But that can sometimes be very general. There are many instances where they're not prescribing very strict percentages or numbers, it's just that they're general ideas and we do need to demonstrate that and review those, and that we're moving in that direction as well. But like for example, the state of Connecticut has a, I think it's, 21% open space goal for the entire state of Connecticut, that doesn't mean that the town of Plymouth has to have 21% of the town be open space. That's just, that's a state goal, that's not something that the town of Plymouth has to do, but they may have other best practices as it relates to open space and conservation that we do, we will have to review and .

Other questions? Please.

Bristol is targeted as a 15-minute city, correct? I think that sounds right, but I don't know. What's the plan for Plymouth?

No, that's not an identified, that's not something that we've identified as specifically a planned program. I mean in general it is best practice that we can locate services and basic amenities as close to residents as possible. There's a number of benefits that come from that, but the 15 minute city, no, that's not any sort of legal requirement or particular framework that we're operating under.

Thank you. Anything else? Any other questions? I appreciate everybody's participation. Hopefully this is going to be a good guidebook for us. I'm impressed with the leadership and the support that we're getting from all the members of Alicante. Like you said, you're the face of this, but there's certainly a whole lot of work that's going on behind it. And also that I want to recognize all the folks that have been participating. It's very helpful to get the different aspects of it. One more thing.

Yes, I attended an economic development commission and Craig Stevenson was talking, and he said that there is grant money out there for something like upgrading our WPCA. Do you know anything about that?

No, I don't. I'm sure he's correct, I just don't know what the particular grant opportunity is.

Okay. Thank you very much for coming tonight. Send our best to Emily. I'm sure she'll get an opportunity for that. Yes, I'm sure she will.

She does a lot of work. If you've received any emails, you probably received them.

Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, number nine. We do not have any resignations this evening. However, we have two reappointments. These are all three appointments. And I'm pretty sure we got the information right for the applicant. One is for the Historic Properties, the other one is Housing Board of Appeals. They're both the same individual. Steven Madera, who's served on both these committees. These appointments are renewables. So I would entertain a motion for appointing Steve Madera to the Historic Properties Commission with the term ending August 1st of 2029. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. Motion run. Any discussion? Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the appointment say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries, thank you. Okay, the second appointment is also for Steven Madera from the Housing Board of Appeals with the term ending September 1st, 2028. Is there a motion to reappoint Steven Madera? So moved. And that would be Joe Green against that one. Second. And the second would be from Sue. Thank you. Any discussion? Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Any abstentions? The motion carries. Thank you everyone. Item 10 is the mayor's report. Not too long tonight, but let's get through it anyway. Okay, this evening's mayor's report will cover four topics. Town hall renovations, facility planning, finance department activity, and some road repair updates. Regarding the renovations of the The former senior lounge should be utilized by the police department. The facilities crew, the town employees, have removed all the shelving and furniture from the main area. They also cleared the attached storage room of the various materials used by Park and Recreation and other items that were being stored there. The funding for the renovation was encumbered from the 2026 budget, specifically from facilities maintenance. Police equipment and supplies lines, as well as the 2027 building facility budget. The public works director and his team are doing the bulk of this work. We are utilizing one of the town's current vendors to deep clean and paint the new space. We are also using this opportunity to declutter, clean, and paint the patrol officer's area as part of this overall effort. This project has enabled us to do some much needed storage, reorganization, cleaning and renovation of many existing workspaces and offices throughout the police department. While this is underway, we'll also be performing the security camera upgrades that were planned and budgeted for in the information technology budget. I'm working with the public works directors and the superintendent of schools to find space to replace the senior lounge. I recognize that this change is causing some inconvenience for our park and recreation and the organizations who utilized this space previously. The police department and I want to thank and extend our sincere gratitude to our citizens and park and recreation director for their cooperation and understanding. The existing work conditions for our police officers and support personnel were simply unsustainable and it needed to be addressed. Our new facility and planning committee has been twice and will be conducting an inventory assessment of the condition and utilization of all town buildings including our schools. The mayor's office is committed to support this effort in any way possible. In order to form a comprehensive plan and strategy for the use of existing facilities and or the construction of new facilities, particularly for the needs of the police department, this is an important first step. I'd like to inform the council and the public that we are in the final phase of completing the 2025 audit. Unfortunately, we are a couple of months behind from our original plan completion date. I've met with our finance department, our finance department staff, and the audit firm to discuss the status of the audit and what steps will be needed to complete the 2025 audit, and also complete the 2026 audit by the end of this year. These steps may include bringing additional consulting assistance and having members from the audit firm on site beginning late August or September. All necessary filings for extensions have been made to the State Office of Policy and Management. Along with working the day-to-day tasks and the audit, and working on the audit, the finance team participated in a week-long training with the Board of Education office staff on our financial recording system and software. We believe we are under utilizing the current system and are hoping to increase our operational efficiency by doing this. We also plan to use the current system for payroll processing, and that would enable us to stop using ADP, which will reduce expenses. Finally, I'd like to provide some updates on the road maintenance program and the work included in the bonding package. There have been several inquiries regarding the road work underway. The plan is to provide maintenance to roads before they become worse by using chip sealing techniques while also performing major road repair and or replacement as the budgets allow. With respect to bond work, The farms area up in the northern part of the section of town and the north street repairs are well underway. And planning for the Todd Street Bridge replacement is on schedule. I actually was just informed today that the last piece of that would be completed and we will be able to get the approvals. All the approvals for the Todd Street Bridge will be completed. I'm happy to report that all the openings in the highway department have been filled. We are fully staffed. This is the first time I believe it's been fully staffed in well over five years. So kudos to the highway superintendent and our public works director for getting us back to full staff. The Route 6 project continues to move forward, and we expect to get a schedule update this week. There's actually a meeting held with DOT, their monthly update meeting, which the public works director will attend. And then hopefully we get an update on the schedule for Route 6, or get that published. Right now we do not have the full comprehensive schedule on the work that's planned. However, as soon as we have the schedule for the major replacement of the roadway between Prospect Street and Park Street, we will get that information to the public. Just a reminder, that entire section of Route 6 is going to be removed all the way up down to the base. And that does include the removal of the trolley tracks that are underneath there and have been there for some time. So it's a full restoration of that section of Route 6. A reminder, this work will be done nightly, and the detours for through traffic will be set up each night. It is our plan to set up detours to bypass through traffic to quickly avoid the center of town overnight. Local traffic obviously will be permitted, but as you can imagine, there's a lot of details involved with setting up those detours. And then the regular traffic flow will be restored daily. The initial estimates that we had was this was going to be six to eight weeks. Based on what I'm personally seeing and the time that it's taking them to complete it, I would think it's probably going to be longer than that. So I will continue to provide updates to the council and the community as soon as we get them. We're going to have to exercise some patience as we go through this final phase. I am confident, though, that this major restoration work will be completed before the snow flies, at least a section of it. There's also been a lot of inquiries about what you're doing, why is it taking so long, what's going on. I'll just remind everybody that. It's really almost $2.4 million of additional in-kind work that the state is doing as kind of a thank you or a maybe thanks for putting up with us on this. But that work does include all of the sidewalk restoration and the curving that you see going in, which is very extensive, all the way up from the library, all the way down to Park Street, and including that main section around South Main Street. All those sidewalks are going to have the same pattern and the same layout as what we have currently on Main Street. And I believe that also includes lighting, although I haven't seen the final plans. So there's still a lot going on, and again, if we get comprehensive dates, I will share that with the council and the public. As always, with respect to any of these projects, please contact the mayor's office with any questions you might have. Any questions on the mayor's report?

Well, you have a question? Sure. About the South Main Street. South Main, Walker Road, Greystone Road.

Oh, the bridge down there. Okay. That is part of the bonding package. Initial preliminary work was conducted and review work by WMC. That will probably, that planning I'm hoping will be done before the snow flies also, but that actual construction won't be until next year. WE'RE ALSO, AS A REMINDER, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GO OUT NEXT SPRING FOR THE SECOND HALF OF THAT, THE $6 MILLION. BUT WE'RE IN REAL GOOD SHAPE WITH THE $3 MILLION WE'VE GOT SO FAR. OTHER QUESTIONS? THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'LL MOVE TO ITEM 11, WHICH IS COUNCIL AISON REPORTS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO START?

SURE, T.J. WE'VE HAD A COUPLE OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, WE'VE HAD A COUPLE OF COLLECT WORKS MEETINGS. Road construction is at full tilt, and they are working on multiple projects all at the same time, utilizing the crew and local contractors. Paving, hopefully, within the next week, two weeks. They're going after North Street and South Eagle first, and then they're going to move their way into the farms after that. Chip ceiling stuff should be getting swept up here within the next week, and final preparations on that will be done. Water pollution control was canceled this month along with zoning board of appeals. Park and Recs has the summer camp still going on and they're starting to plan out the October lanterns on the green. So should be a date coming up here very quickly on that and they're planning another one close to that. That is it.

Thank you, DJ. Sue? Okay.

The Human Services Commission, I was not able to make it, and they were pretty quick. By the time I got back, they were in executive session, so I looked at the minutes. There wasn't anything new that really needed to be reported on. The Fire Commission, as always, they're doing a great job, and they're still looking for applications for firefighters throughout the town. There is a protocol to decide who is a good fit with the fire service. I'm sure TJ can explain that. And if you're chosen, you have to go through Fire Fire One school, but if you want, just contact somebody or if you know somebody, it's a really great way to serve your town. The police commission, I'm sure everybody knows that the, well Nash on the hill, that place is causing a lot of trouble with parking and angry people and all kinds of fun stuff up there. They did come up with a plan, I don't know how well it has worked the last few days, but I do know that you have to be careful going through there because we don't want anybody to get hurt. There's a lot of people walking up and down the street and all kinds of stuff. And as far as the police working on the main street, please be careful. They say slow down for work zones and they mean it. We don't want anybody to not make it home at night. Being married to a firefighter, I liked it when he came home at night and everybody was being careful. And the new committee, you've already talked about the Municipal Facilities Planning Committee and they have had their second meeting and they're getting land, we discussed before, getting information on land that's available. Anybody who has any ideas, comments, please don't hesitate to tell me or show up at a meeting. I always like to have it. That's it.

I went to the EDC meeting briefly. They had a work commitment, but they were getting a presentation from SLR about the downtown transformational plan. It wasn't really much said, but they needed a presentation from them. And then code enforcement is actually meeting Thursday morning.

Thank you, Joe. Ron, anything? I really don't have much. I was away on vacation. Poor details. I missed my planning and zoning meeting. I heard there was a lot of talk about roosters or something. We've got roosters and peacocks. The board of ed was off.

The hand library was off. Long days of summer.

GET YOU ON VACATION HERE AND THERE. THANK YOU. OKAY. ITEM 12, PUBLIC COMMENT ON AGENDA OR NOT AGENDA ITEMS. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO STEP UP, YOU CAN. WE HAVE A SMALL ROOM TONIGHT.

I HAVE A NICE, STRONG VOICE.

THERE WE GO. THANK YOU.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THE MAYOR AND THE TOWN COUNCILOR RECONSIDER THE REDUCTION OF HOURS OF OUR TOWN PLANNING. I KNOW I SPOKE OF THIS A few weeks ago, I'd like to expand on my comments. It may not be known to you the many duties that the town planner has. He attends economic development, planning and zoning meetings, inland and wetlands meeting, code enforcement meetings, along with running a full-time office alone. He's responsible for posting legal notices in the newspaper and at the town clerk's office. Also, he overlooks many applications that must be reviewed to check on the compliance to planning and zoning regulations. Every time the rules may be violated and there is no accountability, It opens the door for both large and small potential problems. As a member of Planning and Zoning Commission, we receive numerous emails for the upcoming meetings. It's often noted that they are sent over after evening hours and many times from weekends here. I totally understand the fiscal responsibility this town has. and in any other town space. We cannot let our guard down at any time. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you.

Open comment.

Patty DeHoff. Mayor Skorsky, I just want to say thank you for allowing members of the public to ask questions of Lana from the Naugatuck pod. And I think that's very helpful to the town council when the public can respond. Now, before, back in the day of, you all remember, I'm forgetting, Mayor Festa. Under Mayor Festa, the public, in our charter was able to have input throughout the meeting, exactly as what happened when we were addressing the topic of the COP. And that allowed people who had expertise on a particular matter to be able to offer their input so that you guys who may not have had expertise on the topic at hand could make a well-informed decision. So while our charter took that out of the merchant administration. You guys can do whatever council rules and procedures to allow the public to attend and to ask questions throughout the meeting. The other thing I wanted to suggest is that public comment for non-agenda items be moved right after, in the agenda, up in the agenda too, right after public comment for agenda items. only for the sake of people who, that people know when the town council meeting starts. They don't know when it's going to end. Do they come at whatever time it's now, 10 of eight, if you call it common for non-regenda items, or do they, they can pretty much anticipate, they'll be able to speak. If they arrive at seven, they'll be able to say something by 7.30, and then they'll be able to go somewhere they can't. So those are the only comments that I have, but thank you so much, Mayor, for letting the public speak.

Thank you for your comments. Any additional public comment?

Melanie Church, 328 Main Street. A number of things. The charter is not being followed. If you go and you read, it's not the mayor to make the decision, it's the council. The council is our legislative body. If you want to change, bring forward the charter. Have it reviewed. But that is not what it says. And it also says the council cannot diminish the responsibility of the mayor, nor can the mayor diminish the responsibility of the council. And that is not happening. There's last-minute letters that go out and say, here, you know, we're taking this. And it's all long spiel on why they took it without one moment of following the charter. It is not a one-person group here. It is a number. And the consul has the right The consul is the boss of the mayor. And the consul directs the mayor. The mayor wants extra money, he needs to go to the consul and the consul approves and it goes to the board of finance. And if the board of finance says no, what happens is the majority, it has to be a super majority in order to pass. These, this is right in your charter. How many of you have a charter? Two people. So the other people should have one.

It's also online.

Huh? It's also online. I realize that, but you should have it. It should be sitting right here with you right now. You know, this is what you refer to when you have questions. This is the law of the land. This is what Derryville and Plymouth was built on. And, you know, there was going to be transparency. There is no transparency. It's after the facts. And that I have a problem with. And a lot of other people do, too. I think that this needs to be rectified and brought forward. And we can't keep waiting. What it says, October 15th. is when our audit is supposed to be completed into your office. And it has not been done since Vinny Festov died. And that's 12 years. And what's happening is we don't know where our finances are and money is being spent. And I'll give you one example of that. Under the Extra Duty Fund, The town's departments are not supposed to be paid. And they're paid. And they pay. And they pay big money. When you look at the sewer department, ask them how much they put out. That is not in their budget. Look at their budgets. You people vote on the budgets. Those are the things that are important. They're important to the taxpayers. And I realize a lot of people, a lot of officials feel taxpayers don't count. Well, to me, we put in most of the money. And, you know, you worry about everybody else and what they get. And hell with the taxpayer. And the taxpayer has been ignored over these years. And a lot of people are in agreement. They talk about roads. This didn't happen in one year or two years, this happened in 12 years. And now we gotta make it up and everybody's upset because they want their vote done. And I think that's an important issue. I think everybody, I think there should be a meeting and go through the complete charter and for the public to have the knowledge and also for the officials and the electors. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Any other comments from the public? Any other comments? Seeing none, we'll move to item 13, which is town council comment. We'll go the other way around.

Ross, anything? Joe? Yeah, I just want to comment that I've had quite a few conversations. with our public works director. And I have to say, he's doing a wonderful job of addressing concerns, my concerns, the public concerns, and some of the concerns are safety issues. So I am quite pleased with the job that he's doing.

I will pass that along. Thank you very much. Sue, any general comments? No, I'm good. Thank you.

Did we have any update on the negotiation that property next door that we talked about last meeting?

The selling price is still under conversation. They have asked for a deposit to hold that property. And I'm working with the finance department to determine whether or not we can do that. It's kind of an interesting situation. We used to have a revolving fund for property investment. Apparently that practice is no longer participated in. So we're trying to kind of get more information on what we can do. When we were talking about the various properties that we have that could be sold, there was conversation about whether or not we could use some of those revenues. to purchase or we have other we have other properties that we're considering or that the real estate commission is considering um i was informed by the board of ed for example that they um and we toured that house that's up on the border up on the high school property that we think we can maybe utilize that for something but we can't so that might be something that we can split off but we're going to probably have to come before this the board and the development ordinance, making just a little bit more flexibility from property type of thing. Because right now, it's inconsistent at best, which kind of ties your hands a little bit. But to the point made earlier, the selling price would certainly be over the threshold of $50,000. That we know for sure. So if we can come to an agreement, then we'll have to come to it before.

So that's where we're at with that.

I know we're off the target a little bit, but that's what's going on. Second, can you send us a price layout of what's going on with the renovations downstairs? Sure. Just so we have an idea of what we're spending money on and what's being done. Sure. So you guys have a ballpark. Yep, absolutely. And then the third thing. I did ask the public works director to prepare that, so they should have that. Joe said he's, Joe's doing everything, so he has a lot going on.

He's enjoying a lot of that.

I don't think he got to that spreadsheet. So I'm sure he'll get it, but if you guys want to post that, you can. And then just the other thing is, I know I've said every time I go down from downtown, when you have the meeting with the state of Connecticut, can you see if they could put some sort of pressure on the contractor to try to pick one project and stay with it instead of jumping from one spot to the other spot to the other. I think a lot of frustration with the townspeople is you see everything ripped apart and nothing ever accomplished. And I think if you finish one thing at a time, like if you finish Agony Avenue and South Main Street, it'd be like a whole new thing. But they're on South Main Street one day, Agony another day, Park Street another day, and it's very limited. I think when they pulled everything out of there to go do another job somewhere, that kind of really screw things up.

I will pass that to Joe, because he'll be at the meeting tomorrow at the month of June.

There's probably not much we can do, but just a recommendation. Hey, can we do something to kind of keep them on task and moving forward? Because I think that's going to be the biggest holdup. Winter's vastly approaching. Pardon me, but that's correct. With the weather now, you never know. It's snowing next week, so...

You certainly can rate three inches in one hour. Exactly. We know that can happen. That's all I have. Sure. No, that's fine. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Again, I want to thank everybody for coming tonight. Next item is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion is agreed.

Second. Second. Thank you very much. Discussion? All those in favor of adjournment say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, IT, for supporting the meeting tonight. Have a good rest of your summer. Stay cool. Stay dry.