Select Board - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. It's 4 p.m. on the 29th of July. This is a select board work session, and the purpose of this work session tonight is to have a discussion about water rules and regulations, capital projects update, draft of the 10-year public works plan. Following this work session, there will be an opportunity for the public, not at this meeting but a subsequent one, for some input on on a few items, then we'll go from there. Mr. Muccio, do we have a need for a non-public tonight?

Yes, there is under Chapter 91A, Section 3, Paragraph 2B, Hiring and C, Reputation.

Okay, thank you. Before we begin the meeting, I'd like to make an announcement. And this announcement has to do with the interim town manager. It's dated today, the 29th. The select board has requested that Mr. Muscio extend his service as interim town manager until October 2nd, 2026. He has agreed subject to the terms below. This requested extension will ensure continuity with our audit and will also ensure that the CIP in 2027 budget planning process stays on track. The permanent town manager recruitment effort is ongoing. The interim town manager pay will be increased from $40 per hour to $46.04 per hour for 35 hours per week from August 1st until October 2nd, 2026. Mr. Muccio's additional rate of pay for municipal electric director will remain the same at $80.77 for a total compensation of $126.81 per hour. Tomorrow, we'll be making an additional announcement concerning the audit, and it's not meant to tease anybody, but the board needs to take a look at what we're going to put out, and we'll get that out first thing in the morning, or as soon as we possibly can. So, and this, by the way, this announcement that I just read will be put up on the town website either tonight before 5, if Amy is customarily here until 5, or first thing in the morning. Okay, with that, Barry, I'm going to turn the meeting over to you, and off you go.

All right, so here we are, continuation, water rules and regulations, public works. Hang on a second.

John?

Are we going to do the Pledge of Allegiance?

Oh, please, I'm sorry. Join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. John, go ahead.

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.

Thank you.

Thank you, John. OK. Gary.

So with that, we have Public Works Director Steve Randall, along with water treatment operator Josh and Assistant Steve Pesci to discuss water regulations continued. With that, I can turn it over to Steve.

Good afternoon. Steve Randall, Director of Public Works, Water and Sewing Utilities. We are here going, I believe this is our third.

Pull it a little closer, Steve, because I'm having trouble. And I'm sure if I am, others are as well. Thank you.

Better? Yep. So I believe this is our third pass at the water regulations. We took all of your input from our last meeting. Excuse me. From your last meeting, we put those into this. We think this covers everything that you guys had requested. So I guess at this point, it's any last questions that you may have, concerns, any of that stuff. If we're good, then we would ask to move it to the next phase.

Thanks for being here, Steve. If somebody went on to the town's website to look up the agenda and they saw discussion water rules and regulations, how would they come to a narrative on what we were actually going to discuss today?

Well, I guess it would be we were discussing the rules and regulations for the Water Department. I mean, I think that's...

So that's a good answer, but I think we've talked about communication a lot, and what I'm thinking about is a little narrative that will kind of engage the public a little bit so that it would give them a little synopsis of we've taken three runs at this, we're going to finalize this, and maybe... this will be our last approach at this, that type of thing. That's to get the public knowledge out there so that they really understand instead of just looking at water rules and regulations.

Something that... You could also say discussion, water rules and regulations, call town hall for more information. Linda? Linda? or call Highway Department for more information, call Water Department for more information.

Linda? My understanding, and I didn't check this one out, our agenda and the full packet is loaded up onto our town website. So if somebody wants the document, it is there. And it says, and I've looked at the other ones, I didn't have time to do this one, but that's where it goes. So we need to make sure the public knows that they can access it on our town website.

So here comes the old business side of me. I kind of agree with the idea that if you're going to put something out, it's not meant to say back up, stop, rewire. Sometimes when you get a blizzard of information, the first question I want to answer or get answered for me is, so what? Who cares? So what? What's important? I like the idea of a brief narrative. You guys have to use your own judgment, town manager. about how that works. So the so what, who cares is really important. Now, yes, the stuff is on the website. And yes, if people want to know more about it. But my view, personally, would be if somebody wants to know more, they should read the so what, who cares and say, I need to know more. That's all. All right. Thanks for that. Anything else, John?

No.

No? OK. All right, Steve.

So for our next phase of, so when this goes to the public input section, I can write, I will write a brief memo that goes with it that will explain some of that. And then for the next round, we have two more rounds of this. I'll do the same thing for this phase of it as well, in case somebody does want to come. But if I'm not mistaken, there's no public input here today. So it's more just for them if they want to sit. Just so we're all on the same page, I understand.

Mr. Deshaies? Can you give a brief explanation? We've done it before, but it's good at every meeting. Where the rules and regulations came from?

Sure. So basically what we did is we took the ones that we've had in place since, I believe 1981 is what we had. We took, we updated it verbiage-wise. We've updated it pricing-wise and dates-wise. Made it, just try to make it more current. There's not a whole lot of changes to this as it was to the one in 1981. The basis of it is always still the same. A few changes we put in there. Linda had asked about it earlier this week. There's a line in there for Buy American products. That was never in there before. But anything that we do that is, let's use the water main out here, South Main for example. That's federal money designed. All of those, anything with federal money comes with the Buy American tag. We're spending a lot of time and grant money trying to make sure that we don't have any lead in our system. I'm not going to tell you 100% that the fittings from China have lead in them, but I'm pretty sure that they have lead in them. So to make sure that what we are buying for ourselves is buy American, because the quality of it is bad. So that is probably one of the bigger changes, I guess. And it's not really a change, it's just spelled out.

Can I ask a question? So I saw the question, and You know, the Buy American is, sure. But is there a certification on these parts?

Yes, there's stamps.

So the certification that it is made in America is certified by somebody else. And that somebody else is EPA or whomever. Because when I looked at it, my first reaction was, geez, I remember standing in El Paso and looking across the river at all those sneakers that were made in America that was in another country. So as long as that certification is coming through, I'm okay. The only other thing I'd ask you, and when you do more of these, which I appreciate you doing, is if there's an errata sheet that says, here's what I changed and here's what we changed it from and to, that way we're not doing hunting and pecking.

Okay. Just to be a little more clarified, the second half of this question, this doesn't mean you can't buy a Mowen faucet or anything like that. These, again, the majority of these regulations have absolutely nothing to do with the general homeowner. This is for us, for infrastructure.

This is core infrastructure.

This is core infrastructure regulations. It's not what you do in your home, what you want to buy for a faucet or any of those things. Those are plumbing code things. That has nothing to do with what it is we're talking about. Okay.

Anybody else?

Proceed. So I guess if we don't have any questions with it, we can move it to the next phase.

I do have a question. On 4, at the top of page 5, and I shaded areas, it says department is not responsible for maintenance or repair of water mains, hydrants, valves, or services on private road or association. I know I brought this up last time, and I don't see any disclaimer that we talked about to say that if you provide documentation to the contrary, that it was

installed by the town and the town owned that at one point in time so we i guess we could add that in there john um we never got legal clarification on that either so i just want to make sure i understand john you're saying that it's possible that somewhere in the past the town did an installation of some facilities mains hydrants whatever It's possible that, and I'm just saying this because I don't know, it's possible that these are on private property, private roads.

Well, I have documentation that the, the Bernie Osgood installed.

Yeah.

ductal line down my road, and he was working for the town.

My question to that would be, John, did the board vote to take it? That's the key. Whether the town put it in or not does not necessarily mean it was adopted. The board has to adopt the water system in order for it to become... I'm not going to mention the name of the roads, but we have a couple of those in town that we've been going back and forth with for the last couple of years, and that's what that comes down to. Somewhere it has to show that the board accepted it, just like they would have accepted the town road or something else. So they would have had to accept it regardless of if I put it in tomorrow, it doesn't matter if I put it in on his road. If the board doesn't accept it, then it's not a town line.

Well, I think what's happening here is this, pardon me for interrupting, I think what's happening here is you're getting the yeah, what about question.

Correct.

Okay. That statement generates a yeah, but what about? And I think a little more clarity on that one is probably important.

So I guess we could put a line in there of something along the lines of a case-by-case evaluation based off of paperwork or history if somebody brought something forward.

So I'm going to throw a little curveball into that concept that you just threw at me. Along with my private line, your private line goes through my road that

The sewer one, you mean?

The water. So basically what you're saying is our road is responsible for repair and water mains and hydrants and valves of services. So that main that goes up through to the high school, we're responsible for that.

Well, no, because if it's a main and if it's our main, then there should be an easement up through there for that. That's different. I'm saying there should be.

There's the yell whatabouts, though. So presumably, if you're transiting service, nothing's getting dropped off into a house. You're just providing a transit. There should be something in the record that says he's been granted or taken, one or the other, to do that.

I would like to think so, but that being said, historically...

But this again, a yeah, what about, and I think you need to be a little more...

So I do believe that the main and the ductile was put in at the same time when they went up the street.

All right, Linda? I think we can check the records to see if the board accepted it, and I'm kind of with John. I think we do have some mains that may not have all the easements... for them being where they are. I think that's been typical of some of our older pipes around town.

So what if we just put a clause in that says well you work the words yep let me work the words for that and we put that in there and then would that be acceptable so then case by case basis comes through if somebody can show us that it's because if somebody can show us that that somewhere along the way that your predecessors accepted it we have no problem we just don't want to get caught doing something that we're not supposed to do either so if if in the town's rapport a superintendent of the water department installs something Still technically doesn't count unless the board accepts it.

So you are saying all through town, wherever there's a water line in, the town has accepted that all throughout the town?

To the best of our knowledge, yes. Mr. Mucciu?

Just along that same path, on the electric end, over the years we have found many, many, many electrical lines that were done 50, 60 years ago. Let's say perhaps nights and weekends by staff members and perhaps general foremen that have worked over the electric department. So a very similar circumstance, situation could very likely exist. would not shock me. And then we find them. I'm sorry. That's private. And then we either rebuilt them or and accepted them or not.

So somebody has plotted this issue before us. There's got to be some other town, municipality that's dealt with this. There's got to be. I mean, we're not unique in having Saturday afternoon construction projects or what John is saying, legitimate construction projects that may or may not have caused the town to accept something.

I am basing my comments off of what I've been dealing with the last couple of years with a certain water system in town. So that is where my mindset is coming from because things were promised, things were said, things were put in, but at the end of the day, it got to the board level and they said no. So, and it was, if the board didn't accept it, then we don't own it.

Mr. Deshaies?

There, I know of tarred roads in town that were never platted. So, I know of a water line in our association that was installed and... Nobody knew where it came from or how it came from. So we understand that this happens.

I think the easiest thing to do is to put terminology in the regs. And then as a side piece, if that's something that you want to get together, we can look at and look up regulations. And if it is, then it is. If it's not, it's not.

So to respond to Brian, what you're saying may be true, but I actually have a document that says Freddie Osgood in the superintendent's report for the town of Wolfboro said that they put these in, and at that point in time, those were... Legit. Legit. That was the process at the time. And when you say you're going to repeal all previous regulations, policies, and ordinances, that's where I get a little concerned. No, I agree with that.

More words here. And, again, the concept of hydrants. I mean, I've had a couple of inquiries. I personally, I mean, I've got a hydrant in my private association. We didn't put it in. So we need to have some clarity around that. And hydrant flushing. I mean, who flushes hydrants if you're on a private road? Does that introduce a safety issue?

And those were all the things that we've been working through for the last year and a half with the previous town manager and how we were dealing with those in legal. And to... As far as we are concerned, we have not gotten anything other than what we have been doing, which is we don't touch anything on the privates. We don't touch the hydrants. We don't flush the hydrants. We don't touch the mains. We don't do anything with them.

So more words. And Barry, are you okay with that? More words?

No, certainly clarify. There always needs to be a circumstance.

So I just want to clarify. We put a clause in there to open it up to...

Documentation.

Yeah, documentation.

So what happens to a hydrant in a private association? It's private. So who flushes it? Anybody?

So right now, because we got in trouble for flushing last summer? It was two years ago for flushing like we normally do. And then something happened after the fact, nothing to do with us. That's what has triggered all of this.

That's right. There was an allegation that after the flushing, something happened to the water supply. How does a private association have a hydrant flushed?

By rights, they should hire somebody to come in and maintain that. In the private associations, as it is right now, Zoddy doesn't use those hydrants. They're not using them. They're off limits to the fire department as well.

They're there for nothing? So if there was a house that was burning down and they had no water source, they would... They're going to have a water source, Brian. I wouldn't put that out there.

They're going to have a water source. There's plenty of other... If we have town water in a neighborhood, there's a town on Main in a hydrant far enough away. The safety part of that has all been looked into. We're all on the same page as far as that goes. So I don't want...

I would just assume that and not get out there that people think that the house... Well, not to crawl too deep into this one, but hydrants... And proximity to residences has an effect on insurance.

Yes, it does.

And that's an important issue, especially if your house goes on fire.

It does.

So a little more clarity here as to what's going on here, because it could be implications to the citizens upon insurance.

And that has already been discussed with those neighborhoods. A little more with Linda.

Yeah, I mean, they also do it by distance from a fire station, and I live at the end of a dirt road. It's going to take them forever to get there. But I get a discount because I'm within that mileage. You know, it doesn't make sense.

It depends on your insurance company. I get a discount, too, because of proximity to this. But I also demonstrated to the insurance company that I could look out the window and, you know, shoot a paperclip at the hydrant. John?

So when the town pays for hydrant flushing costs, how do you determine that one?

Well, that's based off of that percentage that was dictated by you.

We don't set that.

Okay, so I've got a two-parter. So to Brian's point, if a private development or association flushes the hydrant, is that cost incorporated into...

initial cost of the town that's a really good question and i don't know how that is being handled because we are literally our our mandate was hands off we have nothing to do with that linda has some history it isn't the american water work association has a percentage that you are to take off for your hydrant system

The Board of Selectmen and the Budget Committee came to an agreement that we would take 17.5% of the costs of the expenses of the water company. So there's a set formula. It's based on documentation. And I am sure we can get you a copy of that.

So you take all the hydrants... Divide that up between the formula.

It's a formula. It's a formula. Nothing to do. If we had one hydrant or a thousand hydrants, they're just taking 17 and a half percent of the total number of dollars.

I understand that, but that's for the town's hydrants. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to quantify a private association's cost. So if you took all the hydrants and you took all of the cost and you divided all the hydrants into that all cost, that would give you an individual divided number for what that hydrant costs per hydrant?

Yes, I don't, except for I don't really think it's a... I don't think it's a... It's not a representative number. Yes. It's a number, and I know where you're going with this, and I...

I don't. I don't know where you're... I want a little more... I want you to lay out the equation.

So if the total number is $100 to flush all the hydrants in town... No, $100 total. I'm just using the easy math number. And then you have 10 hydrants in town, but one of them is on a private association. That private association would pay $10, one-tenth of the total cost.

In theory, correct. That's just not how that's... It's not how it works. It's just not how it's set up.

You don't understand that, Paul?

Yeah, no, I got it, but it's not how it works. So I think it gets you the policy. No, I got it. It's just not how it works. You may disagree with it, but it's not how it works. Take a look at the policy, and then let's come back and figure out what the rubric needs to be. Because here's the question I have is we used to flush them all. Now we don't. So what happened to that extra cost? If that's your question, I'm with you. What happened to the extra cost? Where did that go? Did it get put on the existing inventory of hydrant users? Where did it go?

Linda and then me. Huh? Linda and then me.

I think we need the American Water Works section. that talks about how they calculate the hydrants, and then we need to look at what we're doing, and then we can really talk based on information.

So where I'm going is if a group of homes that has a hydrant in their association could sign a waiver to allow the town to flush the hydrant instead of the hands-off.

And we tried that path, and that was rejected.

Okay. Okay. Rejected by who?

I believe the associations. I was never. I'm specifically not being specific. Specifically not being specific.

Okay. John?

All set. Just wanted to get it out there.

Okay. What else? Anybody else? Any other comments?

Okay.

I have one more. So I will add that verbiage. I'm sorry? I will add the verbiage for what John was speaking of. Do we want to do this one more time before you have your public input on it? Or do you want us to fix that verbiage on that? I think the hydrants and those things are a different conversation than the regulations. But if we have the clause in there of documentation, that stuff.

So the bid here is I fix it up. We come back for one more conversation. Then we go to a public input session. So that's two. Or we fix it up and present it to the public. That's a one extra meeting. Linda?

I would do the one extra meeting. I would too. Based on some public input, we might change something also. So it seems ridiculous to come back for one. After we get the public input, we should re-look at it at that particular point in time.

Anybody disagree with that? No. We don't need any motion. John?

No, I don't disagree with it, but I think what would complement that would be the narrative that we talked about initially to go along with it.

100%. I will do that when this comes to full meeting, you know, 6 o'clock full meeting. On that agenda, there will be a memo attached to it that says, this is what we're doing.

And that might encourage the associations to allow their hydrants to be flushed because it's only to their benefit.

Linda I think we should add that wordage to the public notice because that people are going to see the public notice we need to be more specific in the public notice also

Right, because that's not just an agenda item. That's a public hearing. Correct. Do you do this as a public hearing? Because I wasn't here for that. Or do you just do it as public comment? Public input.

But at some point, don't we have to do a public hearing on this?

You don't have to do a public hearing.

Well, in the public notice.

Then let's have it.

It's a policy. But the public should get an opportunity to weigh in. And for as long as I've been around here, even when I was a little kid, This whole conversation about hydrants has been very confusing to me. And I'm easily confused. Because I have a selfish interest living in a private room. I have a selfish interest. They used to flush the hydrant. I was happy in all bejesus that they did it.

And we have a selfish interest as well of water quality. We have to provide water quality. We would prefer to flush the hydrants. What we would prefer is that there is a waiver that just said, we will come in and we will flush the hydrants, we will maintain the hydrants, and then the rest of it is not.

Yeah, because we end up with a whole catch-22 here. the town can require an association to maintain all their hydrants and then the town can say if those aren't maintained we're not going to use them but then if the fire department comes and they don't use the closest hydrant there can be a huge liability issue on the town fire department.

I'm not worried about the fire department as well. Tom and Nate and all those guys are well aware of all of this. So they're spot on with it.

I would like to see a draft of a waiver for us as a board to look at. I think that would make sense.

We'll do that. We'll work with Nathan. And then once we have that signed off by Nathan...

I just got to believe that, you know, we're... We're better off with the waiver. Is there a way that... I got to believe we're not the only... We're not alone in this issue. Yeah, we're not. You know, there's got to be some precedence out here. There is. Okay, so go ahead, Brian.

Can there be a... Can the town charge associations a maintenance fee per hydrant?

We could.

That would be an option to homeowners associations and stuff to...

But again, the problem comes back to it's not the hydrants, it's the rest of the infrastructure. And when we put our hands on it, how much of that do we start to have to be responsible for? That's where the issue is.

But that's what a waiver tells you to do. A waiver says, I'm going to do this and if there's any... I'm I'm kind of short-handing it. If there are any consequential issues that arrive, my hands are clean. I'm going to do this. That's what the basis of a waiver is all about.

If I open it...

If you try to cover every possibility, you're going to blow your brains out.

If I open it and it breaks, it's not our fault. You as an association are going to have to pay to get it fixed. That's understood. That should be something that works.

Draft it up. Anybody object to that? No? Okay, what else you got?

Okay, do you want to move on to the capital?

And the decision here is one more time and the public comment simultaneously.

Correct. Okay. We will smurf this up, get it to you folks. Good. And we'll get it on the agenda for when we can.

What else you got?

Okay, we wanted to do a quick capital projects update. Please.

I apologize, I do have a cold, so.

Got it.

Okay, we'll start with everybody's favorite, mine and yours, Mill Street. Our Mill Street pump station is now cruising along to a middle to end of October start. We have already started stockpiling pieces and parts at Filterbed Road. If anybody's been down there, you'll see a couple of context boxes with pieces and parts in it from Teabuck. The wet wells have already been cast and built. So we are hoping once Teabuck hits the ground, they'll hit the ground running. And the construction period of this is roughly around 400 days.

Yeah, the $3.1 million, is that all under a state loan? Except for those that we have grants for?

We have rolled all of that into and redone it into the original loan with the loan values.

So that interest rate is around two-something?

I believe so.

So people understand that it's a low interest.

When we added the extra money in, we have redone that loan to encompass everything that we're spending.

Green Street.

Green Street. I'm just going to sign a couple documents. That project is done. That plan set is done for Crescent Lake Ave and that tie-in area. That plan set is done. So that will come off. By the time we do this again, that will come off of here. So we just need to actually put that project forward and get it done.

Point. So you did the tie-in across the street.

On Crescent Lake Ave? Yeah.

Yeah, on that corner.

Mm-hmm.

Contacted you last year about the pothole there. It was opened up. You went and put a bunch of gravel in it.

Yeah.

It's eating back out again. Any chance you can... We can't pave it.

We can continue to gravel it because the entrance of the road is too wide. That's why we couldn't pave it before. Why is it eating out?

Huh? Why is it eating out? Because people take the corner too short.

As they're coming from the hospital and they make a right-hand turn, they turn the corner too short.

I... Honestly, I mean, I have a truck, and I have to slow to like zero. To make the turn. To make the turn.

So just so that I'm clear, I mean, it's eating out because of compaction, because of turning. It's not eating out because we have a leak under there.

No, no, no.

It's traffic. It's traffic.

I'm just trying to remember.

I really don't understand why we can't take the gravel back out. We had an open hole there before, and we just filled it with gravel. It would have been terrible. in my mind, a little bit better if we had just taken the tire.

So we can't, because it is, we're coming to a state road, so the state governs that, and the problem is that was paved at once upon a time, and the statement is take that out, because the more you pave, what was happening is the people were turning so tight and they were driving on the edge of the sidewalk. That all came out when they did the handicap plates on that, because if you look at the tire marks, people are driving over the edge of the sidewalk and they're breaking the sidewalk. They turn so much. The more we widen that, the wider they're going to turn. It's almost a traffic deterrent. Unfortunately, we just have to keep filling the hole in.

Essentially, we're going to allow a pothole to create a hazard for drivers and we're not going to fill it with tire.

Because if it was coming onto a town road, John, we would have more control over that. The apron, we're only allowed so far on the apron. So if we pave that, I could go to DOT and say, look, can I get a waiver for this? Then people are actually going to start driving on the sidewalk, which is what they do now. And if we pave that, it's going to be even worse. They just keep cutting the corner even more and more than they already do. If you look at the, you can see the tire marks on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, people don't slow down when they make the corner. To me, that's a driver issue, not a road issue.

I don't think it's a good answer, honestly. I think, again, you're putting the public at risk. Again, if it's tarred, then cars don't risk blowing their tires out, but then the rims, it's like it's just, I mean, I would ask you to go to the state and ask them if you can pave that It's about a three and a half foot circle right there.

That's up to you folks. If you would like me to petition the state to widen that, I can do that.

I wouldn't mind if you asked the question.

Sure.

That's not a problem at all.

Anybody not think it's a good idea?

I just don't know if I have all the information. I would like more information before we have to take any kind of action on it.

How about I'll make an informal talk with DOT. We'll see what they have to say about it. Again, I did it once before, but I'll do it again.

So you can make a copy of the picture that I sent you last year?

Yeah, and again, we've filled it in a half a dozen times since, so we can do that.

So just to that point, If you keep having to refill it, refill it, refill it, I mean, you just keep wasting more money, wasting more money and manpower to fill it. It doesn't really make any sense.

But, again, my counter to that is going to be, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, what I'm saying is the wider we pave that, the wider they're going to turn. And all we're doing is just going to keep pushing that. We're just going to keep pushing them out.

So there's a couple here. A couple of bids. One that says... Can you do something about it? Your answer is, if I do something about it, it makes the road wider. That's one answer. Another question is, I need more information. And another is, could you pick up the phone and dial the area code and just say, look, here's a problem. Can we solve this thing? Can you get back to us and let us know?

Yep, absolutely.

And you provided some images and I haven't blown out my tire yet, but if I have bad tires, should I drive it up there and give it a whirl?

Yeah, and then call DOT.

Thanks a lot for that. But, hey, look, that's one of three possibilities, right? More information, and then we make a decision. You informally ask, or we just simply say no. And I think the consensus is get some more information from the state.

Sure.

Not a problem at all.

So I have a question. The paved part, would it be on town or state? State. So I would, my conversation would be to the state, state, we have a pothole, come fix this. And let them take care of it.

That could be an answer.

I will contact my counterpart, and he and I can have a conversation at our level and see what we can get, and we can go from there.

That could be an answer, but it gets back to the question that says, leaving it alone, I think for at least at least from what I'm hearing, because I haven't gone down there and looked at it, leaving it alone is probably not the right solution.

No, but we'll continue to fill it in until I can get it. Subject to Linda getting more information.

That's why we need, when I say more information, I have to go, look, this came out of nowheres. And, you know, if you have a picture, I'd love to see it, but I don't want to make a decision when I don't have the documentation.

I'll take care of it. So I do believe it's outside the white line, and we were in the premise before that the state was white line to white line and we were on the outside of the white line because at the DOT meeting the other night, I made the comment to the lady that was doing the presentation where now they actually said they would be responsible for the area outside the white line now.

From your lips to God's ears.

but it's still the state right away up through there and how the road comes up to it. That's a little different than that.

Isn't the white line to white line, they're drawing a line where that starts? My understanding is part of the project theory, do not believe in the white line to white line, and then down below is what I've heard.

Big picture-wise, they would prefer to do away with that white line to white line, and they take that. Now, we're still going to have the sidewalks, we're still going to have that stuff, but they were going to take the drainage and the maintenance of the drainage part. i'm taking all that with a grain of salt at this point i'm doing something in writing i'll i'll go with you i will talk with them i will make that phone call tomorrow and get some more information come come fix our pothole please that's what i would say come fix our pothole well they have a ton of them just like all right the next uh low energy uh capital project is the south main street sewer engineering

Low energy.

So that plan is in environmental review right now. It's been drawn. It's sitting in environmental review. You will see when we get to my draft of the 10-year that I am going to request that that project goes on to 2027 warrant. And this plan is the one that's going to tell us what it is we've got to do with it.

So when I'm not... Just as this meeting was about to commence, I got a phone call from... Senator McConkey, who has the 2026 New Hampshire DES Clean Water SRF Priority List draft. And he forwarded that to me. I've given it to Barry. We'll all get it tonight. You'll get it. And I'm not going to comment on where we are in the list, but this will inform us. OK?

So it's going to be my, at this point, it's my, I'm going to just, I'm going to put it forward because I think we need to do it regardless of how the funding goes.

I'm with Steve. I think this is one that has to go forward regardless.

I'm with you.

John? Do we think it has leaks?

Well, we know it has I&I problems. Whether leaking in or leaking out, I mean... If it leaks in, there's certainly portions of it can leak out. I'm not going to say that it doesn't.

A water line leaking in?

Water? No, we're talking about sewer. This is sewer. Sewer. No, this will take that sewer main that starts up here at the church and runs down. And this will encompass, just so we're all, I was going to get to it when we get to the other part, but this will encompass from where it starts out here at the church, because the hospital, none of that is connected to any of that. That starts out here. That runs down through. picks up railroad aft, comes across, goes under the bridge, and then it goes into the Mill Street pump station. That's what the line is that we're talking about replacing.

And we're going all the way into the Mill Street?

All the way into the station.

Okay, thank you.

So this is the sewer engineering document. Correct.

It does say sewer, doesn't it?

Yes. Next one, Steve.

River Street that is going to start the last update we had was they're looking at probably the second half of August to be in that's not a very big project Lyman has it they'll be in there probably eight weeks ish and that will take care of that that sewer main was inspected and is in good shape so that will go from where it makes the connection on Center Street to Just crosses underneath the rail trail. And that's where that new section picked up and went into Crescent Lake Avenue. Not Crescent Lake Avenue. Restorative Street.

Questions? Problems? Difficulties? John?

Is that leaking?

What? That water main? Yeah. We can't pinpoint that it's leaking. So that's an old vintage line. You can't what? So more than likely it has some leaks in it, but that's an old vintage water main. That's why it was on the list to replace.

So I think what we're hunting on, at least I think I hear us hunting on, is the statement that N number of gallons is leaving the pond and Y number of gallons isn't getting to the meter.

Exactly.

And I think we're trying to, you know, rather than have you go around with a divining rod trying to find it, we're trying to say where are the problems and will we see you come forward with here's my plan to fix in a substantial way.

What we're doing is it's our belief that these older mains have a lot of small leaks in them, whether they're stress cracks, whether they're joint leaking. It's not enough to necessarily see in one place, but every time that we have replaced one, we find seals that are bad, we find cracks, and we find that stuff. How we have put together the replacement plan is based off of age, known lead joints and historic leak leaks in general. And that's how we based this replacement plan for the next ten years off of.

So go ahead, John. So that's what that's what I'm going to hit on your ten year plan. Yeah. I wasn't here in 2023. So I see this email that you sent out to us. We created the 10-year plan in 2023 based upon our inventory and asset management materials. We just need to follow it. How are we going to follow it?

So I'm going to tell you what it's going to cost based off of everything information that we have over the next 10 years. This is what we believe this will cost. And then we have to fund it. So I view my job is to say this is what's wrong, this is what I need for money, and then you folks have to tell me whether or not you're going to give it to me or not.

I think we all should get a copy of that plan again so we know. I think that's one of the things.

Well, you have the updated one.

I think that John's saying he doesn't.

You don't have the one that was just emailed to you? Well, it was an email. Well, you should have one. No, you should have one printed off, the 10-year CIP, the one I just submitted it.

But isn't there a written document that you came to that?

Yes, we have the road one. We have all the water. Yes, you have the road ones. Go back to 2019. You want all that asset management stuff.

I think that's what I'm asking for, yes. So we could go back and look and kind of refresh our minds.

What were it? I agree with this. What we don't want is the cliff notes version. If this is going to be a big nut, which it's going to be a big nut, there's no threats, it's a promise, it's going to be a big nut, I would think, we don't want to come to this conversation kind of not read, well read. put the stuff out. If we don't do our homework, shame on us, but put the stuff out, because he wants it.

We can give you... We'll give you the full water main inventory, which has roads, lengths of roads, lengths of the main, size of the main, type of main, and the vintage of it. That's a big one. That's the one that says, well, we know that this one is put in in 1910.

And the question, at least for me, when you come forward with this, is what I'm going to look at, personally, is are we... Are we fixing the leaks? What's the theory of the case here? And the theory of the case to me would be if I do these things over a period of time, you can reasonably expect, reasonably, reasonably, because we can't predict with 100-degree certainty. That doesn't work. But you can reasonably expect that that big number we're worried about gets smaller.

Correct.

Okay? If you can't demonstrate that this closure on the big number of, you know, then we're just having a good time spending money.

So there's a couple of the factors. We have a road inventory and we have roads that we know are bad. So what we've done is we've taken the roads that we know that need to be replaced that says, you need to fix this road in this year.

You have a multifactorial problem.

Correct. And we've taken all of that data, we put that together, and we said, these are the ones we're going to do next, and this is the reasons why. You're not going to see North Main on there. North Main, we all know North Main needs to be done, but North Main is a 10-year project that's going to cost a lot of money.

And we're talking hypothetically, but I understand your point about there's tradeoffs. You want me to fix this road... and the water system that's underneath it? Or do you want me to fix the water system? I understand the tradeoffs, but they should be clear. But the basis of this is where we're asking ourselves is, ground us with the documents, and then we can build from there.

We have a very aggressive leak detection program. We are out doing it multiple times a week, trying to identify leaks. And it's easy when, you know, if John has a leak in his house and his water's bubbling up out of his driveway, or he has low pressure, or Josh can isolate it to sections, we can do that. We can go out and we can listen. But if you've got a main that, you know, you've got a six-inch main that's 1,000 feet long that is all microcracked, and it's been that way for God knows how long, you know you're losing water out of it, but it's hard to quantify that until you replace it. You can't just pinpoint and say, that's broken right there. You've got a bunch of small stuff.

Yeah, but you've got to be better at quantifying. I'm not saying you're not better, but you can't go, you know, this is a little too... No, I understand. John?

So if anybody is sitting watching this... This conversation revolves around a memo that Steve sent to us on July 14th where he talks about concern about water levels in the reservoir and what the effects are and will be. Past data shows that the town has been at these levels before and with the help of Mother Nature leak detection and the water users adhering to restrictions, the reservoir has fully recovered several times. Sometimes it does take a couple of years to reach its full level as shown in the data. Below are some of the instances where the levels were very low, and then it goes on to say there has been a talk of these ways to fix this issue. Build a bigger dam, deep level wells, add another plant on Clark Road. All of these items can be on the table for discussion, but the easiest, most cost-effective way to save water is to address our unaccounted water loss. We have a very aggressive leak detection program and fix multiple leaks each month, but we are still showing a loss of 6 million gallons a month. Our proposed infrastructure upgrade plan would address the vintage water mains that are the biggest contributor to these losses. None of this is a quick fix. We created this 10-year plan in 2023 based upon our inventory and asset management materials We just need to follow it. Now I'll just give you a little insight here. Do we draft about 500,000 gallons a day on our water? It's almost 700,000 right now. Okay. So that's actually a bigger number than what I was thinking about. But 6 million gallons of loss a month is like if somebody had an oil barrel in their basement, and at the end of the month they knew they only used over a third of it, but the rest was gone, then they would have to ask the question, what's going on?

So that's about 22% loss. So industry standards, they say it's 15. We are striving for better than that. It used to be 50, I believe. That is correct. When I came on board. It was 50 20 years ago.

And that's why they put a moratorium on the town for water hookups.

So three years ago, when Josh and I started doing this together, we were at 30%. We're now down to 22. So we're gaining.

It's just, you know. Not being disrespectful, but this can be construed as making me feel good with statistics. Six million is a big number, so statistically I'm alarmed by that. 30 to 15 or 30 to whatever you've improved, that makes me feel good. But that doesn't, that's all good information. The question is, what are you going to do? Where do you want to do it? How much is it going to cost? And are we going to put a little dent or a big dent in the number? Because all this, and I'm not being disrespectful to your memo or John reading it from your phone and all. I'm not being disrespectful to that. But all that to me is like background. It's all good. But I want to know, what are you going to do? When are you going to do it? How much is it going to cost? And what are we going to get for a benefit?

I'm not being mean, okay? No, and I'm going to try not to be disrespectful in return. The bigger the number of return that you want is going to depend on the size of the number of investment you want to put in. Give us some options. You have them, yeah.

No, for going out, give us some options. How do you want to fund it? How do you want to tranche it? How do you want to build it out?

So if you've looked at the CIP, I have it all in there. I have the roads. I have what I think we can manage, what it's going to be estimated cost to do it, and how we're going to get there.

So if you're telling us that the 2023 theory you had still holds firm and there's no more information, then we'll go for it.

I've rebuilt it based off of a conversation that you guys had. I think we're going back three or four meetings now. I sat in the back and one of your... I think it was one of your work plans was you wanted to put money into infrastructure. Right. You pointed at me and said, we're going to ride you like a horse. We need you to update that.

I don't think I said a horse. Actually, it's exactly what you said. Did I say that? Yes, you did. Oh, my God. That's probably an HR violation.

Probably is. And that's exactly what I did. I looked at it and I tried to make it reasonable. That maybe we can sell it and still make progress at the same time. The other part of that is we can't rip the whole town up at the same time. We have to do it strategically. And we have to work in different sections. We're going to have a massive project going here. We're going to have a massive project going here. We can't rip up this road. We can't rip up every road at the same time. So we have to do it strategically. Brian? So...

This is where we have to be careful, because there was statements at another meeting that said 6 million gallons, that's 300,000 gallons a day when it was 200,000, and that we're only producing 500,000. So the difference between 300,000 and 500,000 looks like you're way over 50% loss. When you change it to the real numbers and it's 200 of 700, then it becomes 22%, which is a lot different than 60%. And this is information that the board has to be careful when we put out information that we are portraying as factual and make sure that we have all of our numbers. Because when we round from 450 to 500,000, that's not good. And we also have to realize that we do have a budget. We could fix everything in town if we wanted to. All we have to do is double taxes. But that's not what people want, and that's not what people can afford. So the plan that Steve has put in front of us since 2023, we should be looking at. We should be determining how it fits in the budget, because we're part of creating the budget. And we should make sure that he has the funds he needs to keep the progress and the trend. We're trending in the right direction. he is making sure that his goal is to continue to trend in that direction. We need to work together. We don't need to be contrarian or finger pointing or anything like that. We need to just work to get the 22 down to 15 to be the industry standard. And if we can get below that to 12, fantastic.

mary yes you know bring us home well if you look at where we were fifty percent we've bought equipment and we have consistently over the years worked at it and we're bringing it down and bringing it down and i hope some of the projects we have will bring it down further but i think this has been on our forefront Since I've been on the board and the state said you can't allow that to happen, we and the voters have approved us moving in this direction. And I think that with some of the information that Steve has given us today that we'll talk about later is it looks like we're coming to a path to move forward and keep on working on it.

Can I ask one last question? Steve, have we given you enough information to tell you that this is important? Yes. Okay.

So was it irresponsible for me to ask if we were losing 500,000 gallons a day?

No, I just think you were, I took it as you were clarifying. It was a question. I don't, I don't, I didn't.

I was just trying, I was, I was trying to ask how much we were losing and he, I didn't make a statement. I asked the question if we were losing that much and you said we were losing 700,000.

I misunderstood the question. We are producing 700,000 a day.

I thought you asked, are we producing 500,000?

Yes, I did.

Okay, no.

We're producing 700 and something. You got the message this is important? You got the message there's a lot of knobs on this thing?

We spent quite some time redoing that after the meeting when I sat in the back and you... I pointed yes you did we can watch the minutes back you you did your your point so and we took it and we took it to heart because you know the back in you know we've had we've also had conversations um prior manager of updating our road surface manual. It was done in 2019. I looked at that. It's 100 grand. I don't see the point to spend $100,000 to update something that we can use. The roads haven't gotten any better. So I would rather take that 100,000 and put it towards roads right now. You know, it's very specific in there what roads to fix and how much money we should be putting into it. We have underfunded that. And then none of that is even based off of inflation. We've underfunded it, so.

Okay. Keep going. We have to remember, and when we point one finger at thee, we point three fingers back to me.

Do you want to go after him?

Okay.

Keep going.

We are now at the evaluations from the pump station. That's from 2025. That's actually closed out now. We spent all that.

I need to get a glass of water.

Josh and I are actually meeting with Wood and Kern tomorrow to go over that report. It's done. We're meeting with them on a bunch of things. That is one of them. That full, that eval is done. We can touch base on that a little bit more when we get to the 10-year plan because those numbers are reflective of what their estimates are. But once that, once we meet with them and get that finalized, we'll get that presented to you folks as well somewhere down the line. Now we move to the pressure relief valve. That contract is awarded as well. T-Buck is doing that, and they are going to be doing that this fall as well as Mill Street. Water treatment upgrades from 2025. I believe, Josh, you spent that money. Did you not get to check that note? I apologize, folks, for some of... The finances on your sheet are not all filled in. We've had some MuniSmart and some other issues in the meantime since you guys got your stuff. We're so surprised. Josh has gone through and actually counted POs and done it the hard way to try to update us a little bit. So that 2025 money is all spent as well. He did his... continue upgrading stuff at the plant, pumps, capacity, we went over that. That draft study, the draft that you guys saw is now being, we are reworking that between Underwood and Wooden and Kern. We have found some

I'm just holding my hand up.

Okay. We found some operational adjustments that they think they can make to adjust that number a little bit.

So we have the two of them working a little closer together on that number.

Yeah, but when? When it is complete, and it's really complete, we will bring it forward again. Yeah, but when? We are meeting with Wooden Kern tomorrow. I will have more information after that. I'm hoping it's forthcoming. Well, no.

Yeah, I just think the reason we are a little impatient, and we've been asking for it for two years. Not your fault, but that's where you get us, and it started over in planning, and I think that's our impatience.

I don't like the fact that we issued it originally when you guys saw it, because it wasn't... You know, it's like being told, it's really going to be great when you get it.

I'm going to go, when am I going to get it? I don't know.

So... So do you think it was a mistake to put that document in front of us?

I wish we had waited, but it was not necessarily my call.

You're suggesting he was compelled to disclose? He spilled the beans too soon?

Well, I just am trying to understand the chain of action.

Yeah. Yeah, I wish that had been held a little bit longer until we had all of the I's dotted and T's crossed and didn't say draft across the front of it.

Yeah, okay, well, you did it.

That toothpaste is out, so we're going to... You did it.

We did it.

You're out there. We're going to present it with a solution. I would prefer to going forward when we have conversations about problems that we actually can discuss a problem and then we can present you with a solution instead of just problems.

Chucking it on the wall? Yeah.

And it's okay for us to do things and if it doesn't go as planned or like this document gets out before, to just say, hey, it's what happened. We're going forward. You're getting the right information.

Well, I think to some point, people haven't heard that. People haven't heard me say that. I really wish we hadn't brought that out yet. So I've had that conversations with other people. So we here are trying to do this a little bit different.

Good for you.

The right question was asked, in my view, the right question was, you know, Did you go public too soon? And I think your answer was I did. Okay. Okay. Lessons learned.

Yep. And we're not going to do it again. So when it's ready.

Management and all that kind of stuff, you know, notwithstanding, go, you know, get that fixed.

When it's ready.

Because you created an expectation amongst ourselves and the public and people are kind of rolling their fingers. Yep. Saying there must be something goofy there. Got it. All right. Next.

Okay. Tree removal. We spent all that. We took down more trees. Dead, dying ones, as you know. We've replanted quite a few.

Now, this has nothing to do, just so the public knows, this has nothing to do with the MED. budget of taking trees down?

No, this is just that separate. I put that on here because it's capital money in the capital reserve fund. So I always include it in when I do these reports.

And you guys are doing the, is there a balance of, not aspens, of, what's the one with the bugs in it, ash? Yes. You got all the ashes out of here on property? No.

God, no.

Why not? Because the number that we got. There's not enough money on the planet. There's not enough money on the planet.

Because I'll tell you why, Paul. We're at the wrong elevation where the ash trees are growing.

Really?

That's right.

It's going to be a problem.

Not to digress, but I'm getting a little freaked out about now the next big villain is going to be the conifers. So anyway, okay.

The next one we've got is the annual sewer treatment plant, and Wood and Kern, they're working on their maintenance plan. I'm waiting for some more actual details on their stuff. They're a little late spending each year, so I don't have much of an update in July. That's usually towards fall when they do their spending. Oh, this is my favorite. The 2026 town road upgrades. So we reclaimed Beach Pond. All paving is on hold right now, probably till fall.

Is the reclaiming of the beach pond done? Oh, yeah, we reclaimed it. It's done. It's done. It's all done. And there was noise around that, right? It was wrong gravel, flowing stuff.

What that was was a misunderstanding of exactly what it was we were doing and disagreements between different people that have different ideas. Why we reclaimed a section that looked OK when we could have paved over it, what they didn't understand was we were actually raising the profile of the road before and afterwards, and we weren't going to pave a road

come down but you know what i mean and i'm not i don't want to revisit it but you know what this is a uh this is another thing that we're getting dinged on not ding dong but dinged on is um get the stakeholders in a room tell them what you're going to do tell them how you're going to do it do you feel you did a good enough job with that well i would have said yes because there was only one or two people

You know, we've been up there working, and we get on a daily basis probably a dozen people stop and say thank you. They ask what the status is, you know, all that stuff. And they understand what we're doing. So I think by and large, yes. I think you're always going to have the outliers. So what I'm going to try to do, again, what we are going to try to do as a department is try to touch on the outliers a little bit more and not paint the broader strokes. So if we get a zone in on a few people, then that's what we're going to try to do.

This is just me personally. I look forward to the day when people say they're communicating too much. Keep dreaming. They're talking to them. Communicate. My personal opinion. That's between you and the town manager. You'll never get hurt by communicating, as long as you don't publish a study too early.

So we have pretty much all but $100,000 of that is spent or it's encumbered with Allstate. Right now, I've pushed it off till fall. I really don't want to pay two mobilizations. We have a project that's on hold right now that we're not sure where that's at. I don't want to pave Sewell Road in July and August. So we're going to wait till fall and we'll try to get all of those done. Good idea. Hopefully we have some answers on some other things and we can get it all done at once.

And this is something that people should understand, and hopefully they do. We're a resort town. We can't do in June, July, August, even the beginning of September, what they can do in non-resort towns.

Well, and that's how we base our whole work plan off of in the spring. We'll get the phone calls of, hey, you know, can you come out here and work on this road, work on that road? Well, we need to work out here. We need to work on Sewell Road. We need to work downtown. That's why we did the sidewalks when we did. That's why we do the way that we structure that. Because come the 1st of July, we want nothing to do with downtown. It's too chaotic to do anything. Same thing with Sewell Road. You have a lot of people there. You have the landscapers. You have, you know, the boats. I mean, it's a very, very busy road. So we try to get... You know, in the spring, so depending on how spring hits, if it's a wet spring or late spring, we try to get all of our downtown busy areas done before the 4th of July, and then we go out of town. And that's where the Beach Ponds or the Pleasant Valley Roads or the Middleton Roads or the North Wolf Boroughs try to get warm back.

Yes.

And it's worth mentioning, too, because people don't understand sometimes 109A, 109, and 28 are state roads. The state takes care of those roads, not our DPW. It's not their responsibility, and they're not, I don't know, allowed to, are you? You can't just rip up and pave a section of that road. God, no.

No. Yeah, the answer is you don't. Brian's right. But I've seen the highway department step in and fill the breach when you had Whatever you want to call it, one of those things where the road just kind of crashes out.

We helped them quite a bit. You stepped in. Emergency is a different situation. It's kind of one of those things. There was a sinkhole up before Wambach a couple years back.

Before Wambach. Yeah, right before Wambach.

We were able to respond to that before DOT could. So we called them up. We let them know. They came out, but we had it taken care of. We've had trucks that will pop tailgates up here at Pickering Corner. Right, the tree on Center Street just a month and a half ago, you know, right by River Street, that came down, you know, Wolfboro Highway cleaned that up because they could respond to it faster. You know, MED called. They needed help. We were out there. We were able to respond faster than DOT can because we're right down the street. We will do what we need to do to make sure that emergency services are taken care of. But picking up some potholes, no.

When I hear Brian observe that, you know, hey, these certain things are out of certain things longer, It just brings me back to, and I'm not asking you to do this. This is you guys. But it just brings me back to, where's the data visualization of the infrastructure? Where is it? What can I see? And I'm not asking you this. How can I visualize our infrastructure? And someday in the future, I'd love to be able to look out and say, there it is. I can see it. And you can see what's going on. Almost like a market mover, you'd see how it's happening. Because I think the more you publish, the less you get questions about. I'm not asking you to do anything. You've got to figure out how to do that. But I've got to believe in your quiver here. You've got data visualization tools that you should either get somebody to help you with or not.

The next one we have is... That wasn't a task.

Don't take it as a task.

I didn't. I took it as a... Yeah. finger point yeah that's the one uh sidewalk upgrades so we spent our money we redid the sidewalk from mill street that way that way and we did about 450 feet of concrete downtown pretty sure i said this in one meeting already update on why we didn't do the bridge. We were planning on doing the ones on the bridge. I will just recap it for some folks. All the plans we had for the bridge showed that those sidewalks were poured after the fact and were not actually part of the bridge and come to find out they actually are structurally part of the bridge.

So like when you stuck the shovel in the ground or the da-da-da in the ground, you actually could see the water underneath?

Correct.

That would tell you there was no deck and then pave?

Correct, yes, which is what the plan said it did have. Oh, well. What we will do on the next round is I was able to, I couldn't do it at this time, but I was able to find a mill machine that we can actually mill that down a couple inches and recap them. But that'll be a different time because we don't want to get into the bridge deck, obviously. So.

Paul. Ryan. No.

Dave.

Dave, I'm sorry.

You want to explain why some of the sidewalks have not been done? properties adjacent to the sidewalks actually own the sidewalk? So we're not responsible for the repairs?

There's some sidewalks. For instance, the one in front of Bradley's, we don't own that. Bradley's owns that. If you notice in front of like Seven Suns in that stretch, we didn't take it all the way to the buildings. We took it to where we owned. I got a lot of questions about that. I had folks doing the other way. The ones that pay attention to lot of the things in town, which was why or you're not going to take that all the way to the building, right? Because, you know, they own that. We don't. We found the measurements. We snapped the line. We cut it. That's why we did what we did where we did.

So is it possible if, say, Bradley's, they own the building, they own the sidewalk, and we're doing sidewalks, do they have an option to say, Can you build our sidewalks into your plan and they pay for that? Would it save them money?

I would rather not get involved in any of that because if it's private, it's private. Again, this goes back to water mains, it goes back to roads, it goes back to everything. If we don't own it, I don't want to touch it. So if it's their sidewalks, they need to maintain them. If they want to hire the contractor that's doing the flat work and do it outside, that's fine. But we pulled all the concrete. DPW pulled the concrete. I mean, all the old stuff out. We graded it. We babysat them. Because unfortunately, we have to sit there and babysit. Because if we don't, someone walks in through it. Even they walk through the cones, they walk through the tape, they walk through everything.

So they could ask you who the contractor is that you're using. You can pass that name to them, and they can make their own agreement. Absolutely.

John? So on the contrary, when we have a business that takes our sidewalk and builds their facility out over our sidewalk.

Like, can you explain?

The Lackshaw building on the corner. That footprint of that of the corner of the parking lot is on our property. I remember when we were doing the

We did a boundary line adjustment.

You're talking about down here?

Wicked Loon, where that corner is.

We did a boundary line adjustment. They built it on our property. So we gave it to them.

Yes, we did a boundary line adjustment at that place.

That's a you guys thing. But I'm trying to think of other places that You know, it's public safety. Do we want our sidewalks to fall apart?

So I think that comes down to, this is how I would look at that, is if we don't own it and it's a public safety hazard, then I would think that would be a code enforcement thing that should put like any other building that would be condemned or if it was a restaurant that had a bad deck on it or a bad railing, they would get some sort of a notice. I would think the sidewalk would be the same concept, my opinion. I have no legal basis on that or authority, but that's how I would look at it.

So the answer to your question, John, is yes. If there's something that is observed on private land that is, you know, prospectively a public safety or hazard, that's a code enforcement issue.

Yeah, and I would think that they would have to issue some sort of citation to make them fix it.

Like a rickety, to your point, a rickety guardrail going up into a building.

Now, I could see some sort of a matrix or some sort of a path whereas they would... they would issue something, right, with X amount of time. We do this with a water service or something else. And if it's not fixed, then the town has to fix it to make sure it's public safety. Then we turn around and have to find some way to build them.

Okay. So about two weeks ago, I went to Barry's office because I had a conversation with Mary DeVries. She says, geez, you know, you sound passionate about these cracks that are on the sidewalk in front of the bridge. And in front of the Avery Insurance off to the side over there, these circles. And you guys were down there this spring, cut these areas open. I could see the cement was half poured and the guys went off and do another job. So are you guys liable at that point? You see what I'm saying? It seems like there's a kind of a double standard.

Well, if it's a town sidewalk, right, then the town is liable, 100%. And we've had people trip and fall on sidewalks, and they've filed claims and those things, which is why we work on them. We work on them about one day a week, right? Because then we have other public safety issues somewhere else, so we try to do that. So to try to spread ourselves out, because we are thin for what we have, so we try to bite off a little bit of everything all the time, right? So as much as I would love to just say, okay, we're gonna work downtown and we're gonna get all these sidewalks done, it's not feasible because then we get something else that's a problem. So by taking these bites off of things as we can, and that's why Bruce is down there, Bruce and a guy are down there at least once a week doing these crack filling on these other ones that belong to us. The ones that don't belong to us, again, we, Public Works, and I as director don't have any say over what is on private property.

So in a related question, When the water line work was being done, there was a lot of knocking on the doors by Stantec DOT, their representative. So when the sidewalks were being done, was there knocking on the doors?

Absolutely. We meant to every business.

I'm just trying to lead the witness here. There was knocking on the doors that said, we're going to be improving that sidewalk. And for people who own some of that property, at that point, were they given an option of, you know, you probably want to think of We can't tell them what to do, but they knew that we were improving the sidewalk.

And I will say every business that we dealt with down there, that the work we did affected them. were fantastic to work with. Every one of them was great. They would come out.

It's in their best interest to make their front of their business.

But not even that. Just in general, they're just great people. Their businesses were great. They were great to the guys. We were disrupting everything they were doing. We were disrupting parking, everything. And they did it all with a smile and a thank you, and they were fantastic.

But John's question remains on the table and unanswered, that if there is a piece of private land that has you know, spalling or whatever in the infrastructure, what do we do about that? We tell them that that's probably unsafe and they have to fix it.

That would be my suggestion.

The only reason that I ask that question is because I remember Bruce fixing that spot in front of Bradley's a couple years ago when he talked about his epoxy cement that he had. So one of those spots is the spot that opened up, and that's why I asked that question.

And I think... Right, wrong, or indifferent, John? Some of the attitude in town has changed. So we have people that... Well, public safety, let's fix it. We have the, don't touch that, that's not yours. I don't want my tax money to fix it. And then you have us in the middle, right? So the only way we can do, the only way that I will do it is by looking at it straight at the thing and say, we don't own it, we don't touch it. That's the fairest way to do that unless... You folks want to say, hey, look, we've got a problem with public safety on this. You need to look at it and send them a bill. Right.

We have sometimes I hear citizens that say, that building in town looks shabby. It needs paint. Well, that's the building and the building owner's problem, it's not ours. Now if the building has boards falling off it that are landing on our sidewalks, now that becomes our problem. So we can't force a private company or private owner to make his sidewalk perfect if it's dangerous, I agree. And the code enforcement usually happens by someone bringing that issue to our code officer. So it would have to be someone walking. It would have to be a neighbor. It would have to be somebody who says, that is a mess, and goes to the code officer. That's the way code things usually happen. The other thing I noticed, and I talked to business owners downtown, was that wooden boards were put in place so that all businesses were still accessible. And the sidewalks were not only painted with arrows that said, we're going from here to here, but it actually said the day that they were doing it. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I mean, it was very, very apparent. One business owner came up to me as I was walking in their business and said, when are they doing my sidewalks? And I said, you know what, I just saw something, come here. And walked her out and she looked and she goes, oh, Tuesday, they're gonna go right here. And I said, yes, and I've been told They will make sure that your door is accessible. And she was like, great, thank you.

All the business owners were fantastic. So just a quick little shout out to them.

Good. OK, so anything else? If not, let's move to small sewer pump station repairs.

Yep. So again, we're meeting with Wood and Current tomorrow to go over that final proposal.

And these would be like Clark Road and other places right there? Correct. Some back history on this.

We started this last year to get us to start to do an eval and to also keep them running. So we've paid the eval, or most of it, we still have some money due. We have bought a couple pumps to keep going. We've identified which one is next, which is a mushroom. And... So some of this money will now start to go towards planning and permitting as we go. My goal is to pay for plan sets and permitting out of all of these monies as we do this each year. Then when we get to the point of construction, some of these are 1,000,002. Some of them are 300. So as we go, we'll sit down and we'll look at that and start to put that in. Now, I have them already into that 10-year plan, so you'll see when they come through. That's how I envision this. This 100,000 each year, I'm going to put it in. This will allow us to keep all of those little ones running and still start to permitting and planning so that we're ahead of the game.

Brian?

What is the life expectancy of our new sewer pump stations? I'm just curious as if this is going to be a recurring, we're going to have to do one every two years, every three years, every five years.

No. Well, we're going to have to do them all for a bit, and then we'll have a big space. These should outlive me.

And that big space is when we should still be... Putting a little away. Yes, for a rainy day.

For when you start again. Because the downside of doing these all in a span of 10 years is the fact that when it comes due again, we're going to have to do them all in 10 years.

30 years after that, or 25 years after that, we're going to have to do all of them again.

Technology is better. Things are better. Hopefully life expectancy is better. We'll get more longevity out of them. Okay.

So I think, you know, this is a funded appreciation question. If this thing has a useful life of 10 years and you spent $100 to keep it at $100, I think it's $10 a year. Right. You should be salting away $10. Correct. Right? As a funding for your depreciation. Same, same with your buildings.

Yes.

It's funding depreciation. Yes. That way there's no big surprise when it's all done. Linda.

But that's getting the plant done. That's setting up the capital reserve funds and funding them in with all the other projects we need to do. So we need a big picture of where we need to be with all those.

Correct.

To get a handle on how much of this can we really save now.

Correct.

You know, that's the question. I mean, you could drive personal opinion. You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how to fund depreciation on a $100,000 item. Or you could drive yourself crazy saying, we have a $5 million right and we need to fund that depreciation. You could do both, but pick the ones that are really important so that you get the funding and the taxpayer gets a break so that at the end of it, it's not a big hit.

So in my opinion, I think we fund the $100,000 to keep the ball rolling, and then we fund each station as they come up. And once they are all done, then you can have the depreciation question.

John? So doesn't it also come down to usage? So when we have properties that build out, then we are actually using the pumps up faster?

To some extent, yes. Yeah, capacity. It all comes back to capacity. And that all comes back to the other bigger question of capacity in general of the town. The easier part of... The easier part of these smaller stations is those areas are pretty well built out, so they're not really going to expand. The one that I would have concerned of would be Lehner and Mill, because those are the ones that take everything. Mill takes everything, or 99% of it.

So the answer to John's question is the sunk cost for the asset is X.

Right.

one asset may get used a lot, ergo its useful life is shorter than somebody who doesn't get a lot. So you fund it based upon the useful life of the asset. Just for a quick example.

A quick example is we have some pump stations in town now that we're actually, when we replace them, we're going to replace them with an E1 because we can do that now. When those were put in, that wasn't an option. So they're going to save us a ton of money now. The maintenance on them are much easier and much less. The replacement cost is much less. So as technology changes, that changes the whole board anyway. And hopefully in 30 years, it'll be your guys' stuff.

So I'm thinking about Clark Road. So does Brewster Academy's dorms, does that come down Clark Road?

That comes down from Clark. Everything in that whole complex goes to the Clark Road. So there's one that we call the Mushroom, which is out on Greenleaf. That pumps into that. Then that Clark Road pumps up, and then gravity feeds down over the hill down into Lehner.

Okay. Treatment plant upgrades.

So Josh is... Just one more quick one. When a large pump station is moving effluent, is it under pressure?

Yes, those are pumps.

How much pressure is in the line? Depends on the... They're all different.

They're all different. For instance, Mill Street, those pumps are rated at 790 a minute. How does that compare to water? Well, so this town is interesting because most everything we have is gravity. We have gravity from the plant all the way down. The only place we have a booster station is at Barry's Complex that goes up Middleton Road.

So most of it is gravity. And what's the pressure in a water line, a water main compared?

So that depends as well. Over town, we have anywhere from 120 down to 90. Well, we're 30 up on Hemlock, right? 30 pounds up on Hemlock. Okay. Just interesting, fun facts.

Coming down the road from the transfer station, you've got a lot of pressure. By the way, that's the color code of your hydrants, right? Your hydrants will tell you what the pressure is.

At the corner of Beach Pond Road at the cemetery, it's the PRV, which is where the pressure reducing valves are. We actually have to lower the pressure because it gains so much coming down.

Now, doesn't it come down to the location like this sewer line that goes down through here and then And then you have peak so that everybody's using their showers at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning and the flow is maxing out at that point. Right.

So what we do, what we base everything off of is average, right? Average for the day. So we know what the average gallons per minute are that come through Mill Street. Mill Street handles 99.9% of the town, right? And then we know what, like this run out here, for example, is probably... 10%, maybe 15% of the town on this main line. Because you only start up here at the church, just above the church. Runs down, like I said, and then you have... You have very little bit behind us. Hunters comes out, but then the back half of Hunters goes to School Street, and School Street runs back down Glendon and around the loop and hits the siphons that go underneath. And then Lehner Street pumps up and goes through the siphons that go underneath Back Bay into that. So this just runs down through here. So it all depends on where it is. This is a 10-inch line.

So a guess... This line coming down here, during peak use, would the pipe be filled all the way top to bottom? Does it run half, third?

The most we've ever seen it is probably half.

And that's with scopes?

Yeah, and just pulling the covers. They're in there a lot because we have grease buildup and we have other issues.

So this line is about that, but there are lines where it's got a lot more.

That's if they're under pressure. You're never going to find... If you have a gravity line that's full-full, that's a problem. It means undersized. So the pump lines, the force mains, they're full. So there's one on Clark Road, right? That's a force main. And even the houses down from the pump station all the way down to the park, those are individual pumps that pump up on a force main. Your gravity from the hospital and the public safety building and the high school, all that stuff is all gravity. It runs down that other line, like I said, runs down.

Remember, I'm a closet, septic, and sewer enthusiast. Good for you. That's great.

That's a bad visual. Wastewater treatment plant upgrades, please.

Ah. Same thing, like I said before, Wooden Kern's working on their stuff. They have some pumps and some other things that are teed up for them to purchase. I'll have a better list of that probably in October. Next one is a water treatment plant.

Thank you.

So far, Josh has just bought a couple chemical pumps. We have some money encumbered to help offset the cost of the valve pit because that $100,000 is not going to cut it. So we have money into that. And we should finish out that with some other items he has on his wish list. We have a problem possibly with the solar B. And Josh can talk to that a little bit more if you want some more information on the solar B. With the what?

Solar B. OK. So the 500,000-gallon tank at the high school, there's a mixer in that tank, and that keeps everything uniform, like the chlorine residual, the temperature, and pressure. So that mixer has failed, and we're trying to get quotes on what it takes to repair that. It is 18 years old, so I'm trying to work on a quote. You know, it's rated for 20. So it's pretty much, you know, it's useful life. I'm looking at what it's going to cost to fix it and or just replace the whole thing.

Yeah, so here's the killer question to me. Did we salt away money to feed the kitty for that replacement?

No. So what we have is we have our replacement plan of $100,000 a year to fix things such as this. That's what that money is for. We have the asset management plan for the plant. That is well outdated.

So you've shared with us that we need to be accruing, my word, for these things.

Well, we are.

Because we're learning that if you don't, you're going to get a big surprise.

It is. And as long as we... When Josh and I put together this $100,000 ask that we started with last year, what we did is we looked at the replacement plan, the asset management plan for the plan. It says $5,000 for this and $10,000 for this. But we looked at it and said, well, that should have been replaced 10 years ago. This should have been done 15 years ago. We took it and we said, let's do it. hundred thousand dollars and then we'll start replacing the things that are broken in that break and then we'll start to get on to the proactive things that need to be done like for instance that generator according to the point according to the replacement plan the generator at the plant should be replaced there's nothing wrong with that generator so we're not going to spend the money to replace that just because the thing says that we should when we know we have things that are broken that take priority we're playing catch-up 100% but we're doing it in a smart way

John. So you said it's broken right now, the Solarbee. So how long has it been broken?

A couple months.

So does it degrade the water quality? Because you don't do a test after that. We do. You do?

Yeah, we test the quality at the Middleton Road booster station.

So if it was on the plan, would you normally fix it before it breaks?

Yeah.

But it wasn't part of the 2017 asset management plan.

So what did you have it? I mean, how much did it... What was the time frame where it broke sooner than you thought?

Two years.

So next time you would be replacing it after 15 years, so it didn't go 18 years?

So that's one of those things of...

You fix, right? When it comes to things like that, we want those replaced before they're broken, obviously. But where do you draw that line with how many things? Because we could argue a ton of things we should be replacing before they're broken, but that is certainly one of them, which is why he's been trying to get that squared away here for the last two months.

John, this is the whiteboard.

This is the whiteboard, Paul.

This is the whiteboard. All right. Where do you want to go next, Steve?

I believe that is all of the updates. Unless anybody has any questions, we can move on to the other stuff.

Any questions? Let's move on.

All right. So for CIP, after our meeting a month or so back, whenever it was, we sat down and we said, okay, they're telling us we need to focus on our infrastructure and we need to put money into it. How much money do we put into it? How much can we get done? Where do we go and how do we do it? So we started simple with, okay, what do we spend every year? Or what do we want every year? Not a dollar amount, but project-wise, right? So that's how we started. Town road upgrades. We think we should put money into our sidewalks every year. We think we should put money for tree work every year. I have a solid waste roll off. I've been trying to do that for the last few years. And we have our vehicle capital reserves and trying to get that. That's been decimated and been kind of discarded over the last couple years and it's showing. So I put all those on a list and I said, okay, well, let's start with this. How much money do we think we can do on sidewalk improvements each year? I plugged that in. Plugged in tree work. I looked at the roll off, and I looked at the vehicle capital reserve. I'll get the rolls after. I went through our vehicle capital reserve plan, our replacement plan. I redid the whole thing again. I've downsized the fleet again based off of what I think we can actually get away with and do. Put a number to it, and that's where I came up with 400. And I have that pretty flat over the years. Then they went up to the town road upgrades, because that's where the big money is, right? We did 900,000 this year. We did 900,000 last year. Our replacement plan says we should be at 1.4 to 1.5 by now without inflation. So I looked at that and I said, OK, what would be a reasonable jump? to try to get us some progress without huge sticker shock, right? Because, I mean, at the end of the day, we have to be able to, the voters have to buy into this. So we started looking at the, and if you click on your project list tab or sheet, you see what I did and see how I broke it down. I broke it down to shim and overlays, reclaim and rebuilds that we would do. And what I mean by that is, like what we're doing in Beach Pond Road, which is basically reclaim it, replace the culverts, some gravel down, refave it. Chip seal and preservation, and then a full rebuild from an outside company, which is anything that would be what I would deem to be too big for us, and where I would prefer us to get to at some point soon. And those are the categories I broke it up to. And then I assigned roads to it based on where we're at.

And you'll see...

I put some color codes in there if it had a water main project to it.

Hang on, Steve. I'll just sit with you.

Was that really lazy? But I couldn't read it the way we got it.

This is a... I have a question. A squint chart was produced.

Oh, I'm sorry. I don't print. I just email.

Yeah, I... Brian?

So I got a question. Sure. We're $900,000 a year and plus warrant articles for total road expenses.

No, that was the warrant article was $900,000 for roads.

It was $900,000. Okay, and then how much do we have in maintenance?

Maintenance is a whole different item. So if you want to break down to what the highway maintenance budget is, and that's entirely different work than this, but the highway maintenance budget is $1.6 million, of which $1 million of that is to turn the lights on. I always want to throw that out there. All right. That leaves $600,000. Yep. Sand, salt, and everything else is about $300,000. Right? And then repairs are pushing $200,000. It doesn't leave us with a whole lot of money to do much of anything.

Okay.

So... It allows us to fill some potholes, buy diesel fuel. My plow edge, we just placed an order for one round of carbides. One round of carbides for the trucks is $14,000. And we go through four to five of those.

I'm wondering if we just take and we build into the budget 1.2, 1.3 million. Build it into the budget, still give an itemization of the work that you're going to do, but build it into the budget instead of...

in a warrant article. I personally like the warrant article better because it keeps the money separate and I think that's important.

Yeah, we got into this a while ago and what happened when it was in the budget They're short money. It's big money. It gets used somewhere else.

Correct. And that's why I don't want to do that. It's very easy and very transparent the way it is right now. This money goes to this. This money goes to this.

And this was based on a taxpayer association who made it very clear to us that they wanted this out in a Warren article. We can change it, but that was put out there because of the citizens requesting us to do that.

Anybody else? John? So... Putting it in individual warrant articles or a bulk warrant article that just basically, again, you're saying you're going to spend this much money on this road, guaranteed to spend that much money on that road. And then if they all fail, then all the roads failed.

So my concern on that would be is if you did it on a road-by-road basis, you take a road that some people might not live on, people are going to start to pick and choose the roads that they want paved.

No, I'm saying put them all in one, but list them all and say... If they all go down, they all go down, or they all pass, they all pass.

Well, that's how we do it now. Yeah. So when I present my now, I do a list of the roads that are on it. These are the roads we're going to pave. They voted on it. They pass it. Yes, they don't. We don't do any. It's pass or fail.

So you have to bump those up then.

What, the numbers? Yeah. Oh, 100%. Well, that's why now it's $1.8 million. That's when I went to $1.8 million for next year. I doubled it.

See, I got a, these are gross, I don't mean gross like I want to throw up, but these are gross numbers, okay? And that's good because you've priced out what you think you need to do. And I think that we want to move, try to move, start to move, move towards the gross numbers compared to what? Cost per mile paved? Cost per whatever? So that people can look. I can look. You can look. We discriminate every day. And I don't mean that in a sexual or racial way. But we discriminate. We say, is it worth my time and money because the cost per to do that is competitive? That's what people are asking us to explain to them. And I don't mean competitive. compared to what yeah i don't know what's the cost what's the right metric that we would share with the public that says i want you to approve n number of dollars and by doing that my cost per road mile paved my cost per whatever the right metric is goes from here to here that's that's how people can find out my view whether we're getting better over time or just spending more money over time

Well, I think the proof is in the fact that you have a road that, well, let's use Wombeck Road.

Oh, no, I'll cry.

No, but over the last two years, how many times have you asked about fixing one? In jest, you're not doing anything.

Obviously, you've answered the question by not fixing it, but that's a different issue.

But do you see what I'm saying? People want the roads fixed. Our greatest financial asset in this town is our infrastructure and our roads. So it behooves the town to upgrade them because it makes everything worth more, too.

I'm asking you to think about an efficiency metric.

Well, I can give you the PCI value on the roads.

I'm asking you to think about efficiency metrics. It says if I'm asking for a dollar of capital or a dollar of expense, you're going to see at the corresponding in an efficiency metric. So that people can look at that and say, they're getting more efficient over time. Or their efficiencies are competitive, in a business term. They're consistent with, they look like how other organizations, cities, towns get it done. In our work plan, I call that best practice.

So I understand what you're asking. I'm not sure how I can translate that.

I'm not asking you to do it now.

Because it's a quality. The quality is going to be the key metric in that. It's not a, well, my maintenance cost to maintain a mile will go less because I'm using less plow edges because the road's not all beat up. It's the fact that you're going to drive over the road and you're not going to need new fillings. Brian? I don't know how you quantify that.

Yeah, so I think that's a hard question. thing to quantify because depending on the road, the year, the condition of the road, he's going to have to do a lot more on one project and a lot less on another project. All that is done.

We already have all that figured out. We have a nice little three-ring book that says that has all of that done. That part is done. I think what he's trying to say is how am I supposed to say, okay, now that we've paved this road, I don't have to spend as much money on it. Is that...

I'm going to make a decision when I go pull lever. It's always a question for me is, for my tax dollar, am I getting a benefit? And if someone says to me, you get more benefit over here, and I can't figure out what the benefit is over there, you know where I'm going.

So what he was saying, I believe, tell me if I'm wrong, is he's saying that if we pave 15 miles of road this year, how much per mile was it when we spent X? If we pave 17 miles or 18 or 20 miles of road next year, was it the same per mile or less per mile? But that's hard because your expenses are going to go up.

In general, I can tell you if we had done this work in 2019, we could have done it for 50% less. Correct. It costs 50% more to do it now than it did then. Correct. That's what I'm saying.

And it's going to fluctuate from year to year. It's never going to get any cheaper. Well, when oil is $4.25 a gallon, asphalt is going to be more money.

I'm just trying to figure out how to give you what you're asking for.

I think it's very difficult or impossible.

My esteemed colleague, student body right, just leaned over and said, you're not explaining it well enough, so I'll park it for the moment.

Ducks and bunnies, Paul.

I'll park it for the moment.