Select Board - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the August 11th Select Board Special Meeting into order. It's 4.30 in the evening. Before we begin, I'd like to invite anyone who'd like to join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to do so.

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 very much, everyone. Before I begin, I'd like to introduce Suzanne Murdaugh. She's a student body right. Suzanne is our new recording person. Welcome to the select board. We appreciate it. Mr. Muccio, do we have a need for non-public this evening?

We do. Under 91A, section C3, paragraph 2, line item B, hiring.

91A3, colon 3, 2B. Thank you very much. So we only have one item on the agenda tonight in this public session, and the item is to discuss the chiller. the Pop Whalen chiller. Just for the benefit of the public, we've had a failure of the system, and we are in the process of figuring out how to replace it. So with that, I'll turn it over to the interim town manager, Mr. Muccio.

Thank you. So what was it, a week and a half ago, we had our company come through in preparation of firing up the rink, the ice, going through the various systems to ensure everything was working properly. At that time, one of the compressors, one of the two main compressors that really is used to make ice, had a failure. It was the eight-cylinder one. Typically, especially at this time of year, we're going to need both of them running at 100% capacity. to make ice. We had a failure. It was a catastrophic failure in the point that there's a crack internally in the block. It's not something we can just repair. So it's non-repairable at this juncture. Obviously, the price of a new compressor is absorbent. We did, or we were able to find a used unit that's been rebuilt. It's out in Oregon. We looked at, Jess looked at two or three different options. Obviously, a new unit is not available based on the age of what that unit is in order to just plug and play. We would have to do some major renovations to the building. the cooling, really an absorbent project, something that we didn't feel was even obtainable this year with our budget. So this was the most economical approach. We're going to need somewhere in the range of $60,000 to $70,000 for this used, rebuilt unit that basically can bolt in $60,000 to $70,000 is not a budget number that we can easily absorb in the Pop Whalen budget. I don't think that should be any big surprise. We went through and yeah, we may be able to find at the very best 10, but 60 to 70 is just not happening. I reached out to the folks at DRA, Revenue Administration, asking them about options of how we could potentially fund this replacement compressor um with that we discovered linda actually remembered six years ago i'll give you credit there that there was a warren article in 2021 and for those of you who don't have it i think i sent it to everybody but i can give you a copy of it the 2021 warren article actually allowed for monies from taxation to be used at the Popwell and Enterprise Fund for large capital projects, repairs, replacement capital, the building, the machinery inside. So with that, we actually have the ability, the mechanism is in place by which we could fund from taxation, the rebuilt new compressor. Now, there are a couple different ways we could do that. One of them is we could try to find the monies elsewhere in the general fund in the current budget from all the general fund taxation accounts. Secondly, we could choose to to use monies from the unrestricted fund balance versus I know some years you've used that to reimburse taxpayers, et cetera. You could use those monies because of this Warren article was passed in 2021, raised from taxation to fund this replacement. So you could go one of two ways. One of the recommendations I spent the day um spent some time today with brenda vittner who is our contract finance director she in turn talked to dra as well today as well as the our auditors who were here today they looked over this warren article and they felt that either either option was a viable uh and legal would not raise any concerns on them doing the audit. Both of them are viable options. I would recommend, and this is based on what Brenda Vitner told me, of a method that would be less complicating down the road as far as where monies went, where they came from, is to set up a line item in the general fund budget strictly for this compressor replacement. And by doing that, we're not actually transferring any monies from any other accounts. We're simply overexpending the machinery and equipment account from Pop Whalen. At the end of the year, we would then appropriate monies if there's monies left let's hope i hope there is from our regular bottom line and then fund that special account that she sets up so that would be the preferred method that way we're not physically transferring monies from let's say let's say public works has monies available in an account for whatever, road maintenance. We're not taking monies out of that and then down the road saying, hey, it doesn't look like you used all that appropriation. So it doesn't really represent what the expenditure was if you do it in that manner. But if you do it like this, you can easily track it down the road of how it was funded, how it was tracked and whatnot years from now. So those are our two options. The motor is in route because the compressor is in route. We have a rink. We have to run it. So we're obligated to fund this one way or another.

OK. Thank you for that, Barry. So the total number appears right now to be 60.

I'm saying 60 to 70. We know we had the machine coming. I think it's like 58 and change. There are some things we need to do to get it in the building, and I think I'd be good if I said 70 at the most.

The total number right now appears to be plus or minus at the 70,000 level.

Yeah, I feel comfortable with that.

And you said there's 10 somewhere. Was that 10 before your...

That's 10 in the best case scenario when we have no other issues happen for the year, so I hate to rely on it.

All right, so board members, Barry's laid out two options. Let's get a conversation about what we do here. Anybody? Linda?

I think Brian was up first. Well, my issue is I'm fine if we do this, but at what point, if we take the $70,000 out, will we know whether we're going to make the bottom line of the budget? Because if we're going to overspend the bottom line, let's say in November, we're going to have to get approval from DRA before we do it. So that's the only I'm concerned about saying, oh, we'll just take it out of it and hopefully we'll have enough money at the end. If we do it that way, I want a target date. And when we will reevaluate the budget, and decide whether we need to overspend the bottom line.

Linda, for clarity, are you saying the bottom line of the entire town?

No. Well, we've already been through this before. It's the operating budget. The Warren articles are separate. So the bottom line of that operating budget, I look at that, and if we're taking $70,000 and do it through the operating budget in the manner they... they have laid out, Barry's laid out. There's gonna come a point where we're gonna have to make the decision if we overspend that much, and there are other overspendatures in that 2026 operating budget, at what point are we need to know so we know whether to pull the trigger that we're going to need to overspend the bottom line.

I was just trying to make sure I understood. The denominator is the operating budget.

Correct. Correct, because that drives taxation. The operating budget raised from taxation.

Mr. Deshaies? So I had a question that I already know the answer to, but I have to ask it. No way we can claim this on insurance. You can get insurance on mechanicals, For certain things, this is not anything that's covered underneath primates.

I highly doubt it, Brian. We could certainly reach out, but I highly doubt it in this case.

Okay, so that was one.

It wouldn't have been from any negligence that you could say or...

We have contracts where it's always been serviced and this and that and the other. I don't know. I don't know if you can. You can do that for your home appliances and your cars and your whole house in general.

We can certainly ask the question.

The second one is... years of usage, how long, and I know we're only, we're hoping at least for one good year, how long can a rebuilt, this rebuilt compressor last? Five years, 10 years? Can it give us time to get a compressor capital reserve account and start squirreling money away for a... That's a fair question.

So that's a CIP project that has been added. Okay. that's a that's a that's not a cheap project yeah you know so and obviously unfortunately because of the year of this unit it's not like we can just say okay that one's only 10 years old at that time we can put that into the they're just not really compatible based on age so there will need to be a large-scale cip coming down the pipeline that addresses the whole

So is this compressor going to be a year-to-year thing, meaning we're going to make it through this year, we're hoping that it will operate this used compressor next year or next year?

What I would tell you is I think this one that's in there now is probably 20-plus years old, the whole refrigeration system in there is. Yeah.

I think Brian's asking the question, if I heard it correctly, is what's the useful life estimate of the new compressor? The new used compressor. The new used compressor.

Ours was rebuilt at one time, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. And how long did it last after its reboot?

Yeah, it wasn't good because I think that the issue with it was this terminal crack that we have in there, we've changed companies that maintain it. This terminal crack was found by this new vendor.

All right. The unanswered question is, is there an insurance bid, or what's the useful life of the new compressor? Those are fair questions.

Anybody else? John? Let's go back to the reasons for failure. What do we know about the reason for the failure?

So right now it's only pumping air on three of the eight cylinders?

That's a symptom.

So do we know what the reason is? So right now what it is is there's a catastrophic crack, if you were here earlier, in either the block or the head system.

And forgive me if I don't know exactly.

Just me.

Did it overheat? Did it lose water? What caused it? Did it break down? The bearings break down? Shoot themselves up or what's the story?

I don't think it was necessarily a barren issue.

I think the public wants to know what the story was. We're not done yet.

I was just going to say, we know that there was the storage tank that wasn't there. If that's where you're going to get that list of that stuff that we knew that we had at one time that wasn't there when we started having problems last year.

No, I'm just trying to put all the pieces together because I think the public should know what the big picture is of the whole system comprehensively and whether or not these things that are working up there or not working up there have a lifespan, what's going to make them live on, what's going to make them fail, what's going to happen if we don't take care of them. What are the reasons if we lose water? I mean, all of this stuff.

So there are some things that they've recommended to improve the running conditions up there. One of them is ventilation and cooling in that motor room. It doesn't have a ventilation system to cool that. As we know, heat can be a number one contributor and failure of any kind of odor but i'm saying that's exactly what the issue was but that's one of the things they've identified that going forward maybe even next year there'll be a capital outlay project to put a cooling an air cooling system in there one of the other things we've known i think it's been on the table before i'm kind of new to it but as far as the water up there i don't think the water's of the best quality there was a recommendation made to put in basically like a storage tank tower so that we could get some of the sediment out of that system. It has, similar to what we had at the power plant, it has cooling tubes, heat exchangers in essence. And when they heat up, sediment forms, minerals form inside that thing, you don't get the flow like you should. So that cooling tower, I think, has been in the pipeline. Is that correct? I may not have the answer to that because that was prior to my time, but obviously it couldn't have been done this year with the monies. I think monies were cut out of that budget in the amount of $40,000.

So we've got a couple different things. We've got a compressor. We've got a room that heats up. And we've got a cooling tank. Water cooling and filtering tower. So we would replace or add a cooling station. We would ventilate and cool the room. And then we would put a new rebuilt compressor in so that we could make

compressor last longer so my concern with that is john those other two items it's going to add a tremendous amount of it's not 60 000 you're going to be able to do all three of those right maybe 300 000 and my recommendation is that those items be put in as a capital outlay for 2027 to accomplish right because it's just it's not going to be feasible to have it for the rink this winter

Okay, so I hear speculation, speculation, speculation, speculation, speculation. What I would rather hear is do we have a report from the company that services the unit as to why they thought there was a failure and what they would recommend going forward to not have failures and recommendations for upgrades? Do we have all that?

Yeah, we do. It's part of that report. Am I speaking on the term? I think I read that in one of the emails. Yeah, I mean, that's what the whole idea of the recommended cooling in the water filtration tower. I think one of the problems we've discovered up there to the water The well or wells that are up there are none of the best quality as far as the rate at which they recharge.

Okay, so we can rouse up the public and get them all yelling and screaming and everything, or we can make the report public document for the public so they understand exactly where we are. and we can solve what we can underneath the constraints of our budget. That, to me, sounds like the prudent way to do it. Or we could see if we can get the citizens all confused, upset, and whatnot over a situation that we're working on and we can solve. Linda?

Yeah. I'd just like to, I think we're here today basically to bring it to your folks' attention. Linda?

Yeah, I understand that what we're really here to do is to get that eight, no, yes, it's the eight-cylinder compressor. What I have for, if we were going to deal with everything, if you dealt with a compressor, a charging installation, a storage tank, and an air exchanger, we're looking at about $104,072. That's an estimate that Friends of Pop got. So it's an estimate. Nothing else.

I think it's going to be more than that. So somebody was actually doing the homework. It wasn't speculation then.

So I can go on from there. They also looked at the chiller on a trailer, which was another option you would bring in. That was $292,000, and there was a way, and I didn't bring that. I think it was like $48,000 up front and $28,000 a month. And then the last option is to put a whole new comparison system, and an ammonia system is $1.7 million, and a Freon system is $1.3. So those three, they looked at it, trying to come down, to decide what we could afford.

And honestly, thank you, Linda, for doing that. Because when I got the emails this last time, I got the email of 1.3, 1.7. You talked about the 260. I had no idea how they all integrated together. We weren't given a really good synopsis of what the trail was. So I do appreciate that. Thank you.

I will email this over to you. All right.

So you You had two questions, actually. I think you had a question as, how did we get here, and what do we do to make sure that we don't let this thing get busted sooner than we want it to get broken?

That was, and then I was going to go to where Linda was, at what point do we overspend? And Barry, you made the comment of... taking the money out of the road maintenance. Oh, no, no, no. That was an example. I'm just telling you that was an example. Geez, don't start that rumor. Well, so back to what Linda said. At what point do we overspend?

I don't know.

I think it would be a fair...

If I hear clearly, I mean, this... You could take all of the... You could take a chunk of this out of general operations, just everybody gets a proverbial haircut. And we could debate whether we want to do that or not. I think what I heard Linda say is if we're going to go in an overspending mode, in other words, let everybody else do what they have to do, but authorize this as an overspend, that we need to have a date certain when we know that that's all we're going to be overspending in the budget, which means we need to start having some very specific conversations with the departments to make sure that there isn't going to be a last-minute oops. We have not had that in the past. I don't hear that we could have it in the present. But we did make sure that we don't allow it to happen, not because of people not paying attention, but I think Linda's saying, I want to know a date when, if it's 70, it's 70 and nothing else.

that one did i misspeak for you yeah i mean my understanding yes my understanding it is going to be taken another line will be put in the uh 2026 operating budget as we come down in the end of november at some point we should know whether we're in trouble or not whether we're going to do it and when we see because he says we may have 70 we may not And I'm not real comfortable that I have a good handle on all the other budgets. So my feeling is, what date does this board want to have a sit down to make sure that we're going to be able to stay within that bottom line? If not, we better start getting into the process of going to the budget committee and DRA in order to overspend the bottom line, because you have to ask before you overspend.

Brian?

So, yeah, so the issue that could happen is even in November or in October or any time between now and then, we could have two huge storms like we had a couple years ago that wash out and we could end up in a much different situation.

That's why I'm looking for a date. And we're going to have to, if we say the middle of December, we're going to have to allocate enough cushion to make sure we can handle it. But at some point, and it kind of goes back to what John is saying, we kind of need to take a closer, in-depth look of the budget and get that from the staff so we know really where we are.

We need to have a roadmap to where we are, where we're going, and know when we will be able to safely determine if and how much we have to overspend the budget. It might not be until the last minute, but if we're ready at the last minute to make the steps, we just have to be prepared along the way.

I kind of see it a little differently. We're going to ask the departments to come visit soon. to tell us what they want to do next year. Kind of a standard right now, and I know they'll all come up and say, we're going to make our budget. A standard ask would be, tell us where you are on a spend rate, and tell us, and we should look at and probe whether they will finish their budgets on budget or not, or under budget. I don't think anybody's going to come in and tell they can't do it, but we should be looking on a spend rate, on a burn rate basis, where they're spending so we avoid last-minute, you know, accelerations of spending. If that happens and we do, are able to, you know, hoover up some unspent funds and put it into that open line, then the 70 becomes a smaller number. That's kind of where I come out on it. John?

If you want to continue with that thought, you can continue that thought, but I want to come back to the well study. So the what study? The well study.

Yeah, so let me finish, and then I'll recognize you for that. So I'm not supporting the notion of everybody gets a haircut. I just don't. Initially I was saying, you know, everybody gets a little haircut. That creates strange behaviors the next time you do budgeting. You kind of pack it because you know you're going to get tagged. But I do support having more inspection by the town manager on the run rate of the existing budget. And in the event that there are some things that, hey, we just didn't get to spend that money, well, it just becomes property of the town. Or we just didn't fill that headcount. Hey, it becomes property of us. And then that 70 gets to be a smaller number. I'd say by no later than 15 October, we should know definitively where we're going to finish. Because we're in the middle of budgets by then. We're deep in the sauce. So I'd say by no later than 15, maybe the end of October, we should know definitively where we are. John, I'll recognize you for your well study. You went well? Was it well?

The well. The well study. We had a Guilford well that had made a recommendation when Victor passed out the book. about all the work that was done on the pop. And at the end, there was a well study recommendation. And we knew that one of the wells only got three gallons a minute. They fracked another well. And what we're talking about is a contributing factor to the compressor because of the water that is required and the holding tank that was taken out of the building that was there before. So again, we can go forward here with this new compressor, but we're still incomplete on these other details that are integral to the function of the entire system. So where are we with the well study?

So if you recall, there was $40,000 taken out of the budget on the floor of the deliberative session. speak up a little more oh i'm sorry it was forty thousand dollars taken out on the floor at the deliberative session you know it was taken out the money was gone to do any more with that well add the holding tank to do that project so obviously if it wasn't there we can't do it so so do we have a again we're going to be replacing something so if if we have a bad well

That's going to put sediment back in the system. We're kind of going to be right back here. So they're not entirely, I mean, the compressor and compressor. I know Dave talked about getting the holding tank back in there. And is that not correct, Dave?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's all money, John. If it didn't get taken out of the budget, you know, you have the option. You could say we're not going to have the rink run this winter.

Brian, that's not what I'm saying.

Well, I mean.

Brian's up.

I'll defer to Dave first.

You remember part of that problem with the well was the filters. The filters hadn't been changed or cleaned periodically. That was part of the problem that came up in that well studied as well. The thing that I was upset about was that that 10,000 gallon storage tank was removed and that was used to collect sediment and stuff before the filters. So I think now we need to look at the filters more that go into that building and replace them or clean them more often than it was in the past. That's what I read in there. And I think that's what you're referring to that we discussed at one of our meetings was that. It hadn't been done.

So now I've heard all sorts of different information, and that's why I won't speak on this like I'm an expert, because I don't think any of us here are experts on chillers, wells, and any of that. I was told that the storage tank was used to keep the zamboni having enough water. I was also told that the chiller system is a closed system, that water does evaporate and comes from losses in there, but you don't need tens of dozens of gallons of water to refill it on a regular basis. I don't know if any of this is true. And if somebody here has an engineering degree in how to operate a rink and a chiller system, then put it out on the table and show me. But I don't see that. I also wanted to understand this. We don't have to overspend the budget at $70,000. at the end of the, and I want it to be clear, at the end of the year, if there is some money left in the general fund, we could use some money from the general fund and then go to money from the unassigned fund balance. So it could be a blend. It could be 35 and 35. It could be 50, and 20, however we hit the 70. So it doesn't necessarily, we can track it, map it, watch it, get to the end of the year, and if we tell the departments, be prudent with your funds because we do have a chiller issue, we can take and accumulate what they have and then hit the balance of it with the unassigned fund balance, and it's a mix, it's a blend. We can do that. Linda?

That's exactly what they're recommending. They're saying putting in a line in the general operating budget and that we will, if we need to take money, we will put it in that line and then spend down the bottom line of the operating budget. Our concern is if that amount is larger than the surplus we have in all the other accounts is when we'd have to overspend the bottom line. So we're saying the same things, just we look at it very differently. I do have here the storage tank from Guilford Well would be $10,950. It was recommended that that be done along with the air exchange.

um so that's the price tag for that i can't tell you whether it's for the zamboni or for the chiller i know it's for the system the best i can do for you i didn't ask those specific questions so our job is to ask the questions so that the people out there know that we're asking the questions that relate to the system and if we don't ask the questions we're we're not we're not being uh prudent for the people that we serve. And I don't think that asking the questions is a bad thing. No, we're probably not all professionals, but if you read it in a book where it's a recommended item and the select lady just brings up the information that says it's pertinent, then it probably is pertinent to the system. So I think we should probably consider it.

Go ahead, Brian.

The difference is asking a question and asking loaded questions as if this is the truth. There's different ways of asking questions. There's ways to ask questions where you're like, I'm not sure exactly what's going on, or there's gotcha questions that portray something very, very poorly to the public. Let's try this.

Is there anybody sitting across this table that thinks we should tell that truck that's heading in from Oregon to turn around and go home?

No. So we're kind of saying we should do that.

So I think what I'm hearing in this discussion is how do we make sure that we don't have to go find another truck in Oregon to get another one of these things three, four years from now? What are the in parallel investments that we need to make to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure that the maintenance and the ability to keep this thing cool and whatever the right engineering terms are. That's kind of the essence of your question, isn't it? So that can either be on a current number, that 70 could go to 90, or that 70 could stay all by itself and could get bigger in the, uh... in the capital outlay world of doing budgets one of the other

So my suggestion, if it were my house, what would I do? Get the compressor, bring it to the house, have a good contractor that we have a contract with, install the unit, and tell me simple questions. How long is this one gonna last, do you think? Give us a guess. What else do we need to do to this system to make sure that that compressor is in as healthy an environment as possible, and rely on the contractor who is doing the work, who understands the units, to give us recommendations and follow those recommendations. And, Linda, go ahead.

Barry, what do you need as a motion from this board if you add that line to the 2026 operating budget? Do you need a vote from us?

You know, I just, I think at this point, you're not actually authorizing it. You're just basically giving me the okay that, you approve me to go forward. We will need to authorize it once we determine are we going to be okay or not.

Can I speak? I would like to ask the town manager, unless you folks object, to Barry, you've given us a number 70. I would like to get from you what I would call the surround strategy. How do we surround this asset with the right systems and technology, whatever we got to do, to make sure that that thing keeps humming along? And that may make that 70 get bigger. And we may have to say, can't do it in the operating side. It's definitely going over on the warrant side or capital outlay. But I'd like to know how we surround this thing in such a way that we don't look back and say, well, you know, we didn't put in a cooling tower. Well, we didn't drain the pipes. I don't want to do that. I want to know what we got to do. Linda.

I'm curious. Are you talking about for this operating, for this season? Yeah. Right now?

Yeah. That's where I was going. Yeah. Okay. I think there's one thing that's to get us from here to March. Then I think we have bigger questions for the 2027 budget and what our philosophy is going to be with that brink, whether we're going to open it in October and close it in March or whether we're going to have it in September or in August. I think there's a huge discussion about that. What I see this 70 is... it makes us get through this year and that in the 2027 budget. I agree.

Go ahead, John.

So I support the 70, but I also support the 10 for the cooling tank also. I want to see the cooling tank in there.

I think that 10 is not all the monies that would need to be expended to pull that off operational.

Well, get a price.

I don't think that's the only thing involved in making that.

I support knowing what we got to do to make sure that we don't have a deja vu, how did we get here conversation. And Linda's right, you may have to stage this, but 70 is going to get the chiller in the door. What's going to keep it so it doesn't have to go out the door? How do you surround this with the right amount of stuff? And if it has to go into current operations, then we're going to have to authorize a bigger hole that we're going to have to go into the unrestricted fund balance. So if we think, based upon the experts, and I don't know who they are, that this thing can last until the March vote, and then after March we put more gear in there, I'm all in. But I would really like to know more about what we got to do to keep this thing running. Dave or Brian or somebody, did you raise your hands? No? So you don't need a vote from us.

I don't think we necessarily need a vote at this time. I just like your blessing. If I could add to that, though, Paul, I don't think we're looking for this unit to be a long-term solution. It's basically obsolete as it sits there now. This compressor we're bringing in from Oregon is already a unit that you can't buy new. You can't buy rebuilt unless you find an old shell of one that's there now. And we had to go to Oregon to find one.

Let's just play that out. I can see a piece of paper that says you want a cooling tower, you want this, you want this, you want this. Do you need one of those for this unit, or do you need one of those for the long-term solution? If the answer is yes, then you start the purchasing activities.

I'll give you my perspective on this one. $70,000 gets us a season versus the $300,000 that it would take to bring in a trailer rental unit to sit in the parking lot. The intent of that $70,000... not going to be a long-term solution there's going to need to be a larger scale long-term solution coming down the pike and that's going to have to be not just a compressor but the whole chiller package we're talking about the chiller tubes the whole the whole unit that's in there not just this one compressor motor so okay Linda, then Brian.

Yeah, I'm with Paul. I want to know the pluses and minuses of all the options and everything that we might need to get the rate from today to tomorrow and five years out. Some of it may be a longer term solution. My understanding is the chiller that we have was for an unheated building that opened in October and closed in March. The reality is that in order to make that pop wheel in make the money it needs, I think we have to extend the season. I think there's a huge conversation this board needs to have, and we need the list of all the material in order to have it.

Brian, then John. So, I think we need to find out who the engineering company was who designed the rink. Because they knew the pieces that were going in. They, if they didn't, should have told us Where we were, we were told that we had half the life of the chiller was still left. If we can't rely on that company, we could go to the one I know in Exeter, where I used to live in that area, McLaughlin Management and Design, that designs rinks, chillers, and the whole systems. and find somebody that would look at our system and make sure that our system is healthy and what we need to do going forward. But I would first fall back on our original rink engineer or whoever designed the building and made sure that that chiller system would work in the building. If they don't have the proper credentials, then that was a mistake and we need to find somebody who can do this going forward for us because we shouldn't be doing it on our own.

John? So we know we had a tank in there with the old system. We took the tank out, but we still have the old system. And then the old system failed. Now we're going to get a new, rebuilt old system that's like the old system that we had that failed. So to me, I would...

Your logic is almost unimpeachable.

I would say, look, folks, $10,000 to put a tank in there, whether or not it's a... It's a supporting piece of equipment for the whole asset. Why should we short ourselves?

I think you've got at least you've got three people over here that are saying fill out the bill of materials and make sure we don't... And I agree with that, but...

Unless somebody tells me there's a direct correlation between a tank and water in the tank and making a compressor last longer, to me it's just speculation. Is it the heat in the building? Is it opening up too early in the season and working the compressor too much in swing seasons? I don't know. You don't know, John? None of us know. So until we know, does the, so if the tank helps the Zamboni, great, we need it anyways. I understand that. But I don't want people to think that magically we put a tank in and our compressor is going to last forever. Because that's speculation. Linda?

I thought what Paul and I, and I think maybe John, I'm on a written document. Here are all the things we need. That's what we're doing. I think the other thing you have to realize, when that building was redone, We were only looking at a certain season, and we've pushed that season. So I think that the original, and we knew that they told us that the compressor was halfway through its life. They told us the Zamboni could last six, ten years. It lasted six. The Friends of Pop just purchased a free one for us. So, you know, I think that we... We made some decisions along the way on what we were going to upgrade and what we were not.

So, Barry, I think you're hearing from us there's no objection to, we're not saying turn the truck around, or I think what you're hearing from us is we want a little more of a kind of a bill of materials of what we need to surround this thing with to make sure that even albeit temporary, if we have to take $10,000 and put up a tank, it's going to get replaced in two years or three years, but that thing's going to stay alive for three years, I'd spend the $10,000. Because if you don't spend the $10,000, it could be likely, possible, who knows, speculation that it could only last 18 months. So I would like to suggest that we get a bigger bill of material or a bill of material on that. And secondly, I think no matter what we do, I think you're hearing from us that unless you guys disagree, somewhere in the October timeframe, we are trying to find the number on the runway to put the plane on it and know exactly where we think we're going to finish. By then, highways should have been spent. Public works, water and sewer should have been spent. the rec department should have been spent. Fire department and ambulance, probably not. But we're pretty much spent on a run rate basis on or around October. I'd say we do that. Brian?

I agree with you. I want to know if this board is going to go on suppositions and opinions of what's wrong with the rink or if we're going to get somebody who has expertise to tell us exactly what needs to be done. Well, the latter is appropriate.

Yes, and I've got a mechanic report. There are some of them. I just don't think we ask for all the documents that we have. And so those documents that you have, you hear us saying, we want them all.

So the last piece to that is, the person doing this work, are they a contractor who just... maintains and rebuilds mechanicals, or do they understand how that chiller and that compressor operate in that rink? That's the important question.

I think we have some very competent people, allegedly. I don't mean, I meant that tongue in cheek. We have some very competent people that should ask that question. I can't, because I don't know. But I think we have some people that we can rely upon, and I think Barry gets the job of pulling those people together and answering the questions. Last, before we go, John, please.

Linda just provided us the document. She works with a group that cares deeply about the pop, who have always been thinking about the pop in the best interest. She provided the numbers. I'm not going to question the numbers that she put in front of us because... They've always put the numbers in front of us with the best interest. They've been very generous with their donations. I have no reason to doubt any of it.

Okay. Linda?

They have been working with the town staff on it. The communication has been together. So it isn't like this one's doing this and this one's doing this. I'm sure you have some of the same figures because you were in the same meetings. I just happened to get it in the email. So let's realize that we've got a team working at this, and I support that team working. This was a scramble.

And I'm not questioning the numbers. That was a misstatement. I'm not questioning the numbers. I'm questioning do we have the right people in place, the right engineering company, the right person to look at our system and make sure that our system is operating in an environment it needs to. And I think we rely on our head of our rink, and our town manager to make sure that that is happening. However they need to do it, if they need to find an engineering company or whatever, they can do it. They get the schlitz.

The schlitz. Mr. Senegal, any last word from you?

No.

Okay. I think our business is done. I made an error at the beginning. I said this is a one and only one. I think we have an update on a meeting that...

And Brian was part of it. When we met with the troll group, we filled them in on what they might need to have in a license agreement. And then we talked about the issues around the parking lot at the wastewater treatment plant. And all of a sudden, we started to talk about other locations. And I think it was sent to you. We went to the Bridge Falls Path. And there is an outcropping in the pictures you should have received as a possible place. Barry has pulled the quick claim deed. And I just wanted to see if the board... liked the Bridge Falls Path place better than the parking lot, the wastewater treatment plant.

Okay, so the only additional part to that was during that meeting we had a conversation. I wish I could remember Louise's last name. She is the head of economic development for the southern counties of Rhode Island. She was instrumental. Her funding comes from getting money from hotels in the state of rhode island and they use the money to install five trolls in rhode island and uh... they spent a hundred and twenty five thousand for the first two and then two hundred twenty five thousand additional for the last three uh... they didn't use any state funding they used a little bit of grants they didn't use any private donations so that's different than what we're doing cuz i just don't gonna be on a percent private funding by donations. But she gave us a long speech of the ins and the outs of having trolls, of what kind of visitors you'll have, what kind of infrastructure you need, because she ran into these problems in her five different locations. And I think she gave us a very valuable piece of information, vision of what to expect and what we need to do so that we can avoid her pitfalls.

I haven't seen anything, Linda. Then again, I haven't checked my messages, but I I thought it was.

I sent it yesterday. That was the picture. That's the spot.

I didn't get it either.

You didn't? Okay. It's in the club. Yeah. It is a far better spot in my mind than the... Where is the spot? It's down the Bridge Falls Path. Just as you come out of, away from, or you pass Falls Field, you're heading down towards 28. There's a rock. cropping off to your left, which is between the trail and the lake, and it's a big one that kind of goes up like there, and to use that as the rock for the troll.

It's where you start to lose sight of Back Bay. You know, when you're walking down the path, you can always see Back Bay, and then you lose sight of it because you're going into where they cut for the train to come in.

Oh, that's where I grew up, on that rock. Yeah, so that rock.

You know which rock. That was the rock. And it just seemed to us, as a group, you had parking all over the place. You could get to that from many different locations. It put it into the downtown. and thought that a lot of the visitors who we have would go to it. So I'm just bringing it up for you people to think about it. And I don't want them to start moving on a new site. I wanted to get the deed. There is a question we're going to ask in the deed to the thing, but just want to get people to start thinking of maybe another spot is better.

Any comments, questions, Jonathan?

So that's part of the Russell Chase Bridge Falls path. Do we have to have an agreement, or do we own that? The town owns that? Deed work underway.

Deed work underway. I did a deed search on it years ago because I didn't know who owned it. The town bought it, and I believe the only thing I saw on the deed at that time was that we couldn't put structures on the path itself.

It says no permanent structure will be erected on the parcel.

Yeah, and so this is not a permanent structure. This only lasts a period of time, and it's considered artwork. It's not a structure which would be a building or something that has some kind of purpose.

It would seem to me that this is, John, at least for me, this is what I would call the good idea stage. We have to figure out whether the theory of permanent structures and other things takes it in a different direction.

Yeah, and I suggested that we ask that of Nathan. Is an art, a piece of art, a permanent structure? And that should be a Nathan decision.

And we're reporting back to the board a meeting that Brian and I had that moved a location. And I wanted the board to know it. And that's why I sent the picture.

And I'll make sure you get it. So do you have a computerized generated image? Not yet. Not yet?

We close our eyes and we imagine it.

I don't think the artist's vision... I don't think the artist's vision what the actual thing is. No, he has not.

Because the rock is kind of narrow.

But you know what? You think about it. It's a chip shot from the Fossfield parking area. It's a chip shot from the bridge in the park of the municipal across the street. It's good access both ways. It could be a good place, but it's in the good idea stage.

It has the Linda's Flower. Yeah, the municipal parking lot. That's what I mentioned. Wright Museum visitors might walk down the path to see it. Sure. Okay. Anything else?

I have one.

Yes.

So the criminal trespass charges brought by the town of Wolfboro against me have been arraigned and will not be tomorrow, and so if the people that are watching, the court date will not be tomorrow.

It was not for this meeting, but that's okay. We'll let it go. Thank you. Anything else? Can I get a motion to adjourn, please? Actually, a motion to go into non-public.

I'll make a motion that we go into non-public.

I have a second. I have a motion and a second to go into non-public. All those in favor, aye. We're going to adjourn into non-public downstairs in the town manager's conference room. Thank you very much. Good night.