[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:03] Any
[0:08] one here for public comment?
[0:14] I'm Rashad Colcom for the record. Just a couple of things.
[0:19] The last meeting that I was here, I had put in a few requests, one for the audit to go online,
[0:28] one for the financials and stuff. And I didn't know, it's not on the agenda, so I didn't know
[0:32] that was something that you guys were going to discuss or if it was just
[0:36] something that I shared that I'd like to see and we're just couldn't move on
[0:41] from that. The other thing I didn't think to mention last week had to do with
[0:46] the owl and the fact that the meetings for quite some time now have been
[0:52] interrupted either the owl's not working for the sound or it doesn't record in
[0:56] play during meetings such as the last meeting it wasn't running for the first I don't
[1:02] So I'm just wondering, I know we've had somebody who has experienced Larry Baker from the zoning board has offered to help in everything.
[1:09] So I'm just wondering if we're going to have maybe a policy or a manual or something on how we can get this owl working consistently for the public to see remotely.
[1:22] So that's pretty much what I wanted to follow up on.
[1:25] I
[1:31] have something to say, and I'm a resident on Jones Road whose property value, at the
[1:41] most recent value, doesn't look good, according to another Jones Road resident who happens
[1:46] to be a state rep, not to mention any names, of course, without actually accusing me
[1:51] of being unethical, she did.
[1:53] A state rep insinuating in an open-hubble meeting, a Minnesota employee of doing something not
[1:58] Not quite ethical is not a good look for said state rep.
[2:02] Her words, not mine.
[2:03] For the racket, the et cetera value on my property has gone up a substantial amount
[2:08] since I purchased it in 2015.
[2:10] Incidentuating I did something unethical and compromised my integrity in an open public meeting
[2:15] and spreading untrue at the very least is hopefully unfair and at most slanderous.
[2:22] This is not the first time that said resident has questioned my work ethic in integrity in
[2:27] in an open public meeting without my presence.
[2:29] Is that ethical?
[2:31] In my past life, it was required of my position
[2:34] and to attend ethic classes, not because I was an ethical,
[2:37] but because it teaches one to recognize
[2:39] when someone or something is not ethical.
[2:42] You cannot teach ethics when either has it or one doesn't.
[2:45] I have it.
[2:46] I have a code of ethics I live by.
[2:48] I am not the only employee of this town
[2:50] who has had to endure the wrath of this resident.
[2:52] The reason behind such bifsy is
[2:54] bitterness and malicious behavior is unclear to me. What is the main goal of this resident?
[3:00] Please do share. So the goal can get achieved quickly and the end, the nonsense and the
[3:04] grandstanding and the wasted time chasing down, sorry I have to write it. Something that is not
[3:11] there, like corruption, fraud, and out of control spending. Never really quite set out loud but
[3:16] definitely implied. The phrase, it's not what I meant, it came out wrong, it's old and frankly
[3:22] words with no meaning. One should either choose their inferences and innuendos more carefully
[3:27] or choose not to say anything at all until complete truth and background is available
[3:32] unless you're seeking plausible denial of ability. This is my statement, my perspective,
[3:37] and I will not engage in out-of-control conversation. I am not here to spend my position as I have not
[3:42] been deceitful or just reputable. I do expect, however, as in serenpology, both written and verbal
[3:48] in an open public meeting. I would also expect that trying to disparage an employee without
[3:53] due cause and a public meeting never happened again.
[4:04] It's still public comments.
[4:10] No, I am going to say. So did you say yes, I can. So I did last
[4:19] meeting, come in and talk about the assessed values. I did not ever accuse an employee of
[4:25] anyone doing. In fact, what I did say there is that I did not accuse her of anything. I
[4:30] I don't believe that she did anything the various.
[4:32] I said it's not a good look for the town
[4:35] when the employee of the town is the only one
[4:38] who had a substantial tax decrease at that meeting.
[4:43] So I did not say, I was not slanderous,
[4:46] I did not accuse her of wrongdoing or anything else.
[4:49] So I have the ability through public comment
[4:52] to be able to respond.
[4:54] And I want that on the record that's not what I did.
[4:57] I have the ability to respond to excuse me. I'm not going to do that. I'm not. We're all set. I would like to
[5:06] to talk with you privately about it.
[5:08] I would not.
[5:09] Okay.
[5:12] Anybody else?
[5:14] All right.
[5:15] Public comments are closed.
[5:18] E.A.
[5:19] We've already held the check in the ward.
[5:22] I'm not sure.
[5:23] Then I'll air you up.
[5:25] They're out.
[5:25] I'm pressing the press.
[5:27] 15 seconds.
[5:27] You ready?
[5:28] Yep.
[5:29] All right.
[5:29] Thank you.
[5:30] Oh, and since Katie is here, he is meeting
[5:33] like a school live Tuesday for water.
[5:37] Because for the switching of the YouTube and the annual.
[5:39] Okay.
[5:40] So
[5:43] last meeting, we talked about me going to look for Vance, so I did find a van at
[5:50] a merchant's auto and we brought it in. Mike took a look at it. He said it looks pretty
[5:56] fantastic. I think you guys would agree. So this one is the actual van that we're looking
[6:02] at. These are two other options. Basically, it's a 2016. It was used to transport people from
[6:11] a Marriott hotel to the Chicago airport. So it's got 2,500 miles, that's 2,500 miles. So for
[6:22] 31,000 everything else that that mileage or anything like that is closer to 60. So I was
[6:30] coming here looking for the Ford's approval to purchase said van.
[6:34] How
[6:51] much does it have on it?
[6:52] 2500.
[6:54] This one?
[6:55] Yep.
[6:56] I didn't believe it either.
[6:57] 2500.
[6:59] I didn't believe it either.
[7:00] I thought he said 250,000.
[7:02] No, no, no, no.
[7:06] Yeah.
[7:07] 2016 is only 200.
[7:10] The only thing it has is outdated electronically,
[7:13] but it is in pretty perceived condition.
[7:30] Just to remind everyone,
[7:31] the funds would be coming out of the revolving fund,
[7:34] which is where we've taken them.
[7:40] Is there a proof to tell me I believe capital assets have to be approved by the town.
[7:47] Excuse me public comments are done.
[7:52] So much for transparency.
[7:57] I'll make a motion to purchase the van for the recreation department for the 31.
[8:08] 31 809.
[8:10] 31 809.
[8:14] Martian soil.
[8:15] So, it's right that the funding in the White says in the motion,
[8:23] put the funding in motion.
[8:25] And the funding will come out about the Parks and Recreas are revolving.
[8:30] You know how they count and the, and the YS special projects.
[8:33] And the YS special projects account.
[8:36] And
[8:39] vote second.
[8:41] Seconded.
[8:48] I know it in my past life whenever we bought a vehicle, it was always done like Mr.
[9:00] Buses said that to me that we always saw the approval at the town meeting.
[9:09] How was this different?
[9:12] Because we're not asking the taxpayers for time because we're taking the money out of that.
[9:18] One of the others in taxpayer dollars, we're using dollars that they raise.
[9:22] Right.
[9:24] The same with the fair truck.
[9:25] The same with the fair truck.
[9:26] Why your truck is funded.
[9:31] You have to take out that.
[9:32] Employees?
[9:33] Yeah.
[9:34] That's what I'm saying dollars.
[9:35] That was just the first payment of the net coming out of the test.
[9:42] It's a capital asset that has to be approved at town meeting.
[9:48] We have a motion on a second.
[9:50] One vote.
[9:52] All in favor.
[9:54] All right.
[10:00] Thank you.
[10:01] The pledge in
[10:06] thousands.
[10:07] Yeah.
[10:07] Thank you.
[10:10] Thank you.
[10:10] Thank you.
[10:11] Regarding the housing campaign award.
[10:16] Introduce your previous group.
[10:18] So all I should do is micro.
[10:20] Thank you.
[10:21] The name is Andrew Dorsen.
[10:22] Sorry.
[10:23] My name is Andrew Dorsen.
[10:24] I'm with the BDA, the answer is, as you can compare,
[10:28] to the red bar and the director of the office of housing,
[10:32] the construction and all.
[10:33] Underneath our office is a couple of our few housing programs,
[10:38] the best new hamster, which was $100 million
[10:39] dollar effort to help create some solutions to the housing crisis that was put into effect
[10:46] back in 2022 and we were able to team up with municipalities and do a number of different
[10:54] programs. One was the municipal per unit program which we think did about $12.9 million in
[11:00] grants to municipalities that permitted affordable housing projects quickly. We also did a
[11:07] that helps communities clear-blight connect community create green spaces or
[11:12] other aspects that would help support affordable housing. We're just housing in
[11:17] general in their town so if you create parking lots, partner with developers to
[11:22] do environmental mitigation of mills and that we're going to be turned into a
[11:27] affordable housing and make use programs. We also did a capital program that
[11:31] worked directly with developers to help provide gap financing for affordable
[11:37] housing projects throughout New Hampshire. Now what was interesting, our largest projects
[11:43] was, I think it was 500 units, smalls was four, so we've really did the whole gamut helping
[11:48] season developers write down to first-time developers, a emergency room doctor, for example,
[11:55] him and his wife were talking and he was saying how his babysitter and the guy that cuts
[12:02] his hair and the kid's teacher all were saying they couldn't find housing up in Little
[12:06] to New Hampshire and so they took their credit card and took down a loan and they passed
[12:11] out everything and started building 12 units in their community and tried to solve the
[12:15] problem themselves until they ran out of money and so we came in and just gave a little
[12:20] bit for them to be able to finish and you know 12 people and you know 12 families that
[12:24] are of the homes there on that small project but overall that program was able to create
[12:28] about, or assist in the creation of about 4,700 units over the past three years and one
[12:36] other component of the program was the housing opportunity program which helped communities
[12:42] to think about development and housing and start to have a community dialogue to think
[12:48] about what kind of housing and development that was right for that community because our program
[12:53] we didn't want one size fits all you know a hammer to come down and tell you what to think
[12:57] can do. So during that process a lot of communities are just stepping up looking at their ordinances,
[13:02] making different changes in their infrastructure and how they could get ready for the type of
[13:06] housing development that they would like to see. And so out of that program came the housing
[13:12] champions program. And so Leanne, Monica, and she's our housing champion. We like to pretend she's
[13:19] got some kind of a wrestling award on her shoulder, but she's been out working with communities.
[13:24] I think you guys are a great example of a community that's been working with us and
[13:29] we can't take it from here.
[13:31] Thank you.
[13:32] So I just want to say, stop by saying congratulations to Hillsboro for being one of 10 housing
[13:38] champion communities in our second round.
[13:41] We have a total of 28 communities in the state that are housing champions.
[13:45] 18 was in the first round and 10 in the second round, again, which Hillsboro was one.
[13:50] I'm going to just very briefly tell you what housing champion is.
[13:53] It was a partnership between the state and municipalities to reach out to communities
[13:59] of the willing that recognized the need for housing throughout the state and in the community
[14:05] and take a look at their ordinances and be open and housing-friendly by having ordinances
[14:11] that didn't exclude affordable housing, but looked at their housing, there was nothing like
[14:18] Like Andrew said, it wasn't my directing.
[14:21] You have to have these ordinances.
[14:22] There was kind of an oligarch.
[14:24] You could look at your ordinances
[14:25] and pick and choose what fit in your community
[14:28] that would help alleviate some of the housing crisis.
[14:32] They also wanted communities to look at their planning
[14:35] and zoning boards and make sure they were trained
[14:38] and understood the value of housing
[14:40] and how their ordinances should be crafted.
[14:43] Maybe take a look at their master plan
[14:45] through the help of the hop brand,
[14:46] which he said those funds came out of the ARPA funds that helped communities get this
[14:52] application in. And lastly, to look at your infrastructure and see where you might need
[14:56] water, soar, or transportation.
[15:02] And those communities that did step up in the first round anyway, and became housing champions, then there was grant funding available. We had $5 million that was available from the state that was directly to communities, not to developers, different than the program that Andrew spoke about. They went right to different communities to help with infrastructure. So in the first round is 24, we did spend or award.
[15:29] $5 million to seven communities in New Hampshire.
[15:35] Now, the 10 communities that came in 2025,
[15:39] they did not approve more funding for this program
[15:42] in the last budget.
[15:44] But we are hopeful that in the future now
[15:46] that you are housing champion,
[15:47] you'll be online that if there are future funds available
[15:50] for infrastructure that you'll be allowed to apply
[15:54] for those funds.
[15:56] But in the meantime, we have looked at other ways
[15:58] that housing champion communities like yourself can benefit from being a
[16:02] housing champion. And we've partnered with agencies like DOT, like DES, and they
[16:10] have made a part of their grant process for the clean water, state-loving,
[16:17] loan fund, that it's actually part of that grant fund. If you're a housing
[16:21] champion, you get 10 extra points on their program. DOT is looking at exorbitant
[16:26] permitting for communities that are housing champions. DNCR as well is looking at adding
[16:34] it to their grant programs. So that's a way of partnering with agencies to help communities
[16:40] that are looking to address housing. And so we're very proud and happy to be partnering
[16:47] with Hillsboro as one of our smaller communities to be willing to be a champion. So congratulations.
[16:55] I do, I do, how do we have any of our, um, cushions, any of the rest here?
[17:02] Thank you.
[17:02] Yeah.
[17:03] Three of us.
[17:03] Yeah.
[17:04] I'm sorry.
[17:06] I can't say.
[17:07] I'm so worried.
[17:08] They would like to speak it.
[17:09] Thank you.
[17:10] Oh no.
[17:11] I'm just congratulations.
[17:13] It was all I wanted to say.
[17:14] Great job.
[17:16] Thank you.
[17:17] Yep.
[17:17] My green.
[17:19] And we also have Margaret Anne from New Hampshire.
[17:22] I'm Margaret Barnes, municipal hamster, municipal association.
[17:28] You got it.
[17:29] Well, thank you.
[17:31] I'm Margaret Barnes, I'm the executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association.
[17:34] And I wanted to come here this evening to congratulate you on achieving housing champion status.
[17:41] The housing champion's program is a beautiful partnership between the state and local government
[17:46] to address a statewide issue to address housing.
[17:48] and it does it through incentivizing municipalities
[17:51] to make choices locally that work best for them.
[17:54] And really what the town of Hillsboro
[17:56] and all the housing champions has done
[17:58] have done is exemplify that local options
[18:01] and local government can get things done
[18:03] when it comes to housing development
[18:05] and other issues statewide.
[18:07] So congratulations.
[18:08] Thank you for being a stellar municipality
[18:11] and for going for this housing champions designation.
[18:13] It's not easy to achieve.
[18:15] and this was one of the programs that NHMA advocated very hard for,
[18:20] including continued funding for the program. And so, while the program wasn't
[18:25] funded in the current biennial budget, I really applaud the VEA for finding
[18:29] other creative ways to reward communities who have achieved this status and
[18:35] NHMA will continue to advocate for funding for issues like housing and
[18:39] others. So, thank you for having me. Thank you for listening and congratulations.
[18:43] We
[18:50] would like to, if we have a plaque, we'd like to get a photo with the board if we can just take a minute to do that, with
[18:56] Is that okay? Can we take a minute?
[18:59] Yeah.
[19:01] And a whole lot of this stuff, chair.
[19:03] The whole group?
[19:04] I mean, I have this island.
[19:05] I don't know if you chair your planning board is here.
[19:07] I mean, now our plan is here.
[19:10] Where are you right here?
[19:12] I mean, how are we, how are we, yeah?
[19:14] Mark it.
[19:16] Come here.
[19:17] Yeah.
[19:17] Back here.
[19:19] Come here.
[19:19] We could get a phone.
[19:20] Yeah.
[19:24] No, no, no.
[19:24] Take it all over.
[19:25] Yeah.
[19:26] Thanks for coming.
[19:27] I'm Robert the boss.
[19:29] Oh, I agree.
[19:29] Yeah, thank you.
[19:30] Good to see you.
[19:31] You're welcome.
[19:32] You're welcome.
[19:34] It's awesome.
[19:35] It's awesome.
[19:35] I think it's awesome.
[19:36] And I think it's awesome.
[19:38] Yeah.
[19:39] Thank you.
[19:45] Thank you.
[19:48] Thank you.
[19:50] Hello!
[19:53] I'm gonna bite you over here.
[19:57] You're gonna get close.
[20:00] If you can't see the camera what you can't see you.
[20:06] You may have a j've at 1.
[20:08] Yeah, j've at 1.
[20:10] Are we on set?
[20:16] OK.
[20:17] Sorry about my shirt.
[20:18] That's OK.
[20:20] Beautiful.
[20:21] OK.
[20:23] I'm with B.E.A. too.
[20:27] There we go.
[20:29] We do have one with the front of it.
[20:33] Turn around.
[20:34] Oh, there we go.
[20:39] Beautiful.
[20:40] Thank you.
[20:41] Congratulations.
[20:42] Thank you for having us.
[20:44] Thank you.
[20:53] Thank you.
[20:54] Thank you.
[21:02] Thank you.
[21:02] Thank you.
[21:02] Thank you.
[21:03] Thank you.
[21:06] Thank you.
[21:43] Thank you so much.
[21:45] So
[21:53] I money and gender is definitely my pleasure.
[21:58] James and Laura.
[22:00] Here to meet you.
[22:02] Thank you.
[22:03] It's a pleasure.
[22:05] Recommended.
[22:09] Excuse me.
[22:11] You need to...
[22:19] So this is James.
[22:20] I sent the board an email regarding the processing
[22:25] which is for the deputy and there were three individuals
[22:30] who were interested in it and in speaking
[22:35] with Gail Cremens, who is the treasurer
[22:37] about the three.
[22:39] One of them took themselves out of it
[22:41] because his schedule wasn't going to judge
[22:43] what we needed.
[22:46] And Mr. Ainsworth, not the victor.
[22:50] So this is the board, Iris Campbell is the chair, Rich Palatir, and James Bayley.
[22:59] Nice to meet you.
[23:01] Relative newcomer, Comer II, the town of Hillsborough, we moved in in May of 2022.
[23:10] We escaped the Wiles of Connecticut, the Lyft Free, and maybe die a lot later.
[23:15] I just really enjoyed the time we spent here as vacationers, but I always
[23:22] pine for the opportunity to be a full-time player in the land of good nature
[23:31] and really wonderful people. We've enjoyed our stay in the town of Hillsboro.
[23:37] I was looking for a way to provide a little bit of my expertise, whatever might
[23:44] that we needed to assist in this capacity
[23:46] is deputy treasurer.
[23:48] So look forward to the opportunity to serve,
[23:51] whenever do you call.
[23:53] And further my education in the town's operation
[23:57] and it's my hands.
[23:58] So thank you.
[24:09] We're going to approve the appointment.
[24:12] I make a motion to approve the appointment
[24:14] of James Ainsworth as deputy treasurer.
[24:17] Well, a second.
[24:18] Certainly.
[24:19] All this is for one year, two or one year term.
[24:21] All the favor?
[24:23] All right.
[24:31] I'm going to go with delegation of authority for the listening, group sidewalk project.
[24:36] Yes, there's some paperwork.
[24:39] Robin has been the LPA person for the sidewalk project and there is some paperwork that's coming
[24:47] forward that requires certificate of authority, which the board is well versed in it because
[24:54] as most of our grants have to have.
[24:57] So I'm expressing that the board make this motion
[25:03] which I'll ask you to read and pass it
[25:07] and then have the chairman sign
[25:08] the certificate authority to go to the board.
[25:13] Make a motion to grant the authority
[25:15] to planning directly to sign and execute any
[25:18] on all documentation and to implement that activity
[25:21] on behalf of the townholdsboro business
[25:23] in the transportation alternatives program and highway safety improvement funding for
[25:28] the purpose of the West Main Street sidewalk project. Do I have a second?
[25:33] Second. All in favor? Aye.
[25:35] I'm
[25:39] still cold.
[26:01] Make a motion to approve the minutes of April 8th. Do I have a second?
[26:06] Second. All in favor? Aye.
[26:26] I make a motion to approve the consent agenda for April 22nd. Do I have a second?
[26:32] That's what I can do.
[26:33] All in favor?
[26:34] All right.
[26:35] Hi.
[31:11] Motion to accept the manifest. April 22nd, second. All in favor?
[33:19] It is listed on the consent agenda, but there's been a change in the bank. We're not sure if they want it to be a separate motion in the minutes. So I'm asking that you do that to sign the paperwork. I make a motion to sign the paperwork in anticipation. No.
[33:40] They tax anticipation note why the second sure all in favor
[33:46] We can
[36:50] check me see if I get it wrong. I'm gonna make you say
[36:53] I
[37:30] just want to explain a little of what I gave you in your
[37:39] packets
[37:40] Rich at the last meeting you wanted to see a listing of taxes by year correct so that is this
[37:51] paper, the Florence numbers that are on the left of the paper, anything with the
[37:58] cell, those that are in the mean,
[38:03] and in the years are right there. I just want
[38:07] to make sure that's what you were looking for. Yeah, that was what I was looking for.
[38:19] So the bottom line is that we have to make up all these gas cells at the end of the year,
[38:26] right?
[38:27] Because we're interested in getting the whole amount in, if we don't, then that might
[38:32] have come from somewhere, correct?
[38:35] It comes from there eventually when we collect it.
[38:38] That's true, but I mean we can't go out in.
[38:41] No, no, no.
[38:42] But what I mean is, when we set out the tax bills,
[38:47] we'll say nice even numbers.
[38:50] We'll say between the school and the town,
[38:53] we need $2 million, okay?
[38:55] And most of that comes from this, I would say.
[39:00] Kind of some tax.
[39:01] Could you?
[39:02] Yeah.
[39:03] And if we only collect, instead of collecting
[39:06] 2 million we only collect 1,900,000 that other 100,000 would have to come from somewhere
[39:15] because our bills and we're going to have to give the school their money and our bills
[39:19] and that comes out to 2 million dollars so we would need that 100,000 come up from somewhere
[39:25] that would be the money that we have in our capital reserve is that we don't want to come
[39:31] from.
[39:35] So it really it comes from the taxes when they pay and we can't so we have good
[39:42] I know that's why we have tax intensification of if we need it if not we
[39:51] So our finance director is very good at especially when it's time to send the
[40:01] school, sometimes the school will take a partial payment.
[40:06] Sometimes you can hold bills
[40:07] aside, but it's kind of a roaming number because it all our bills were due at once.
[40:15] Correct.
[40:15] And we got all our bills in, but we didn't get all the money in, then we would take out
[40:20] the tax interest.
[40:21] Okay.
[40:22] But at the end of our fiscal year, we have to pay all of the bills for that year. And if
[40:29] We don't have, again, the example that I gave
[40:34] that $2 million that we needed to pay the bills
[40:39] between the school and the town.
[40:43] And if we only get $1,900,000, that other $100,000
[40:47] would come from a tax anticipation now.
[40:51] If we didn't have any funds to pay it, yes.
[40:55] but now you have to remember we have we have a fund balance that's it's not a
[41:04] hundred percent but so that we don't pull from the fund balance and put it
[41:10] towards something that hasn't been approved at that meeting but if you have
[41:16] money in your account that you can't spend still in your account and it's a
[41:20] rolling number, you know, in a perfect world, if we got all the revenues in, get all our
[41:28] expenses in, and we paid everything, that some of money would be there. But to say that,
[41:36] you know, we don't have $2 million that just sits there because of this. No, no, no, no, I mean,
[41:46] but if you don't have the money, then you have to take them and then the taxes started to pay,
[41:54] But
[42:01] that tax anticipation, I remember a couple of years ago, we were really, really shown
[42:09] on money.
[42:10] That's when we had that tax anticipation now.
[42:16] And that wasn't because, that wasn't because we didn't get the tax right but it was because
[42:24] it was before the date that the new because I tax revenue is based on basically two
[42:33] days, December and June. During the rest of the year we had to get any money yet I
[42:41] would imagine. We get a little bit but most of it is still. But if our expenses
[42:48] exceed that amount that comes in in June that's when we use the tax
[42:53] and we have to pay it back.
[43:04] I have all these questions.
[43:06] Some of them, some of them we've probably asked before,
[43:08] but we have other money.
[43:12] We have like a million or two million dollars
[43:15] sitting in the money bar accounts.
[43:20] No, no, we have the first year at the specified money
[43:23] accounts you're talking about because I don't know
[43:26] what you mean by it.
[43:27] OK, we have,
[43:31] remember when we were doing a budget,
[43:33] we
[43:37] were talking about buying the first year payment on the fire truck and I
[43:42] said we could take that $140,000 out of capital reserve fund. That capital reserve
[43:51] fund is used for what?
[43:58] That's the they have a capital reserve fund just for fire
[44:04] equipment but don't we have a cap or reserve fund for the town as well like a
[44:09] large. No, no, no, we have, I thought we had. You mean our un-designated fund?
[44:12] I'm just a non-design. That's when I was just talking to them. Yes. Yes.
[44:16] What do we use that for? We can only use that for whatever we request the
[44:22] builders approved to use it for. So we don't make it, we don't use that for a
[44:28] shortfall and not. If there's,
[44:34] we don't use,
[44:39] you know, you can't take from it and not
[44:42] replace it. Let's just say. So it's not that we physically take from it. If, if we've collected
[44:49] more money than we need it in a year, which we can't bill more than we need. So you know, it's just a
[44:56] matter of, it's been a good year, people have been.
[45:00] If there's taxes on time, we've gotten all the money we need, but we're really not using that. But if there's, if part of that money is in our account, it floats us in a way. But I want to be careful in the wording I use because as we see a town meeting, it's called the rainy day fund, or you didn't do that because that's not really what happened. But so in other words, an example that I use, where we need $2,000,000 to run the town in the school.
[45:29] for the year and we only collect $1.9 million. That other $100,000 would not be taken from
[45:38] the undesignated fund balance who would not borrow from that or use that money.
[45:47] We can't borrow from it, but if it's sitting in our account, it's just a rolling number because
[45:53] every day we're putting money in the bank. So it's not in the bank saying, okay, this much
[46:00] of what's in your bank is from the undisclined fund balance.
[46:03] There's, that's how it's labeled when it's out in money.
[46:07] And we know that this is the amount that we can't spend.
[46:10] If we had everything in a perfect world, we would have this extra $2 million right there
[46:18] and we can't spend that on having, we can't go out and purchase a bill.
[46:24] No, I understand that, I understand that it's, it's undesignated, but we can, and we can, we don't have the authority to spend it, the only people who have authority to spend it would be the task providers have to meet it.
[46:37] Right.
[46:38] Or get the board chose to put some of it toward the user's property task.
[46:46] And that does not mean that I
[46:51] shouldn't get it.
[46:55] So getting back to that, the question that I had.
[46:58] If we needed that $100,000, we would have come from.
[47:04] If we didn't have money in the bank, that's how we would know we would need it.
[47:10] Then it would come from the tax education.
[47:20] I also gave you a preliminary schedule for the West Main Street side rock projects.
[47:29] I think that pre-construction meeting is probably going to be some time next week.
[47:35] We don't have the date and time yet once we have that, if there's anyone who wants to
[47:39] send that out to the board, if there's two, at least two of you that want to attend
[47:44] any post that, so it's going to be, it's going to be, I take that back that next week.
[47:51] Next week's not me for the board, so we can wait for, it's going to be that week.
[47:58] But I just highlighted preliminary, so there wouldn't be any misunderstanding on that.
[48:07] I also gave you a copy of the expenses and revenues.
[48:14] Something was mentioned at the last meeting, and it hadn't brought to me previously by her
[48:19] residents who thought I should know what was being said in public, but the board
[48:26] looks at expenses every meeting. You sign off on all the expenses that we're
[48:31] meeting. I did give you through March. I did give you the revenues. What was
[48:39] mentioned at the last meeting, it had somebody wanted to see that you we
[48:49] and the board hadn't said that at the time, which I understand why, but those
[49:00] are all payments
[49:01] that the board has approved.
[49:07] I sent you an update via email with regard to the pay property, the barn is gone.
[49:16] It's been a lot of drama, but we're still dealing with that, but they did an excellent job, very professional.
[49:24] The property, it was wet because of the rain we had had, and the property owner called
[49:34] DES, three different individuals at DES, called EPA.
[49:40] The recent one I dealt with was elderly services, but
[49:54] it's down.
[49:57] Lone has put down to repair where the truck's damaged the lawn and some crushed gravel was
[50:08] put down where the partially where the barn was so that he could put his cars that had been
[50:14] in the barn on that crushed gravel. So it was very nicely done, very quick. By the time they started,
[50:22] demolition was Monday, it's done now,
[50:27] so we assured everyone that we that
[50:33] were called on us, we gave them the inspection reports on the structure, we
[50:37] gave them court order, we gave them everything we had, so we'll continue to to
[50:45] do that.
[50:49] And we have been, Mr. Pepper's company, has generously donated, they had some extra
[51:00] office furniture, so asked if we would like it. So we are going to be picking up a couple
[51:08] desks, a couple of file cabinets, a couple of accessories, tables, that we have some old furniture here that we'd like to replace.
[51:20] And we are not, it's being donated to us. We thank you. There's a crew heading there on Friday to the to Manchester.
[51:32] And it also had anticipation we're waiting for a German to get the pricing for the board to take a look at.
[51:37] And we had discussed with this room in changing the town office so that we can provide more safety
[51:47] between the staff and residents, especially after the altercation that took place.
[51:53] And we've been talking about for years over, I don't think it was even the summer, it was in the fall.
[52:03] So, but that will definitely come in handy if that's what we could use it now.
[52:19] Well,
[52:21] I also gave you a Woods Wall-A-Mill Progress report.
[52:24] I've sat Woods Wall-A-Mill today, so from Department of Labor,
[52:30] which we're carrying to Woods Wall-A-Mill for the first day.
[52:34] And they thought that was a good day to bring that environmental service commissioner down.
[52:39] And we had explained the project to him and he looked around, but it was a great project.
[52:49] And he does this progress report and then outlines the funding, which is really critical to see.
[53:00] And that project is going to be set to be completed by the end of this year by fall.
[53:08] So that's pretty exciting.
[53:11] And there will be an opportunity if anybody wants to help out with plantings again.
[53:18] It was down there.
[53:20] Rich, were you down there?
[53:21] And we did plantings before?
[53:23] No.
[53:24] No.
[53:25] I was out of this.
[53:25] Yeah.
[53:26] So I'll keep you updated on that.
[53:37] And the last thing is I've gotten a request from the police union to start negotiations.
[53:46] So I would ask for a left or a representative, if you don't have to do that right now,
[53:52] we haven't set a date, but if there's, between the three of you, any
[54:00] of you who were just
[54:01] done, I don't think I was suspended on negotiations in the end,
[54:06] but Jim has for a couple of them
[54:09] Richard was on last year or last month.
[54:19] I'm just suggesting that you may want to
[54:22] remember Jim or Rich, my friend.
[54:27] She can't believe it's been three years since last year.
[54:30] Did you miss yesterday?
[54:32] Yeah, I know.
[54:33] Yeah, and one of the things I spoke to the chief about
[54:36] is the police union has not had the rep from Boston
[54:42] the last couple of times.
[54:44] And I'd like to try.
[54:48] And I ran this by the chief to find out what his opinion was.
[54:52] I'm not sure that we need to have our attorney there.
[54:55] And this should be, you know, if we run into any questions or something.
[54:59] I don't know how the board feels, but it's a costly venture.
[55:05] And there really hasn't been a lot of
[55:11] items that were stick,
[55:14] but I think I was the one holding out for one of them in the last time.
[55:17] and the other rich and the chief and the attorney were like,
[55:21] Laura, that's what you're going to battle on.
[55:25] I like that.
[55:28] So I don't know how you feel about that.
[55:34] If there's anything that we question the legalities of,
[55:39] or we could still refer to the attorney,
[55:45] but do we need to have them at the table for,
[55:51] because sometimes it's just set the ground rules,
[55:54] it's the initial one, and then do the dates.
[55:58] Then the ground rules are the same every time you meet.
[56:05] And then to initially see what they're looking for,
[56:11] do we need the attorney to pay the attorney to drive here,
[56:15] to sit there in that or what do you mean. I went through two of them. The first one was with
[56:24] the rep from Massachusetts and we definitely needed one there. Yeah. And then after that, I felt
[56:32] the next one was because they didn't have that rep. They needed themselves the whoever was very
[56:42] reasonable, and I think it was in our best interest, everything went smoothly. And then
[56:49] when you did the next one, the rep wasn't there either, that rep wasn't there, but the
[56:54] police have come, they don't ask outrageous demands. And I think, I mean, if they come
[57:02] in with something that we don't understand, of course, we should talk to our lawyer, but
[57:06] But other than that, I don't know if we need it at this point, you know.
[57:12] The only thing is,
[57:16] they're trained at these meetings, well, they talk, they know how
[57:24] to present our point of view because they're trained to do that.
[57:29] We don't have that training.
[57:31] That's the only thing that I would say that it's good to have them because if you remember
[57:37] When we meet with them, it's usually our attorney that speaks, but we come up with our
[57:44] position and the attorney is the one who presents it.
[57:48] And they
[57:53] presented in such a way that they
[58:01] have a presence that I don't, I'm not sure
[58:05] we would.
[58:08] And I can see that with the employee union because, and it's not the employee's
[58:17] surveillance agency, she worked in there there, it's the representative of that union who's
[58:23] always there.
[58:24] She's retired now, but she had a privilege at the last time, and so I'm not sure what to
[58:29] accept from that person.
[58:31] I would, I would get, but if they had one as, then we just want to bring our, I don't
[58:37] have, yeah.
[58:38] if they don't we try it you know yes we're giving up a little bit but it costs a lot
[58:45] and maybe
[58:47] to start it and see where it goes from there yeah something different but with the employee union
[58:52] because they always had a rent there it would say definitely
[59:00] I know last time we didn't do this
[59:03] but should we talk as a group to come up with what except
[59:12] for
[59:17] instance if they're looking for
[59:20] eight percent, I'm just throwing a number out, and we agree that we're not willing to go above four.
[59:27] Then our representative knows that we have a number that we're looking for to go either two or lower.
[59:35] Because that's what we used to do at the school.
[59:38] We were caucus beforehand and come up with this is a map that we're willing to go.
[59:44] So that when you're going to negotiations, you know what that is, should we do that?
[59:53] I mean, it doesn't hurt when it comes to like possible living all the other things.
[59:58] You don't know.
[59:58] Yeah, you won't know.
[1:00:00] So we reach an agreement and then it gets brought to the board. Correct. But at least cost of living. What if there's anything else that we're looking for? Concessions on and I don't know what those are. If anything, but you would. Would it be helpful for us to do that? I think it's always helpful, especially for the board rat. Right now, or how it's going to be? I'm quite angry.
[1:00:25] To the board reps. She would probably appreciate that. Definitely.
[1:00:30] Yeah, and then we have, we try to make some changes that we find that's difficult to work with, you know, in the whole scheme of everyday life with payroll and changes to the contracts on those types of things.
[1:00:53] And that they don't always go through because sometimes the little things are just sticking points.
[1:00:57] Yeah, but
[1:01:05] if we do decide to meet maybe we should maybe the chief should be at the meeting as well.
[1:01:10] Did you do that in a non-public?
[1:01:13] Well, that's a non-meeting.
[1:01:15] It's not even a non-public, it's just a non.
[1:01:17] How is it a non-meeting?
[1:01:20] Well, only if you have an attorney.
[1:01:22] If you meet with the attorney.
[1:01:24] But if you're doing negotiations, you're talking about negotiations, I thought it was a...
[1:01:32] There could be a non-public.
[1:01:34] Okay, it could be not.
[1:01:36] Yeah, every time we did it with the schools,
[1:01:38] with the attorney.
[1:01:40] And then we came to know, you didn't.
[1:01:42] If the attorney has to be there, then we can't.
[1:01:45] Well, you can still have, I mean,
[1:01:47] you can have the attorney there for that meeting.
[1:01:50] And then.
[1:01:50] Well, why, we're not going to have them
[1:01:53] for the negotiation.
[1:01:55] Why have them for that?
[1:01:56] True.
[1:02:02] But when we want, you can raise your number
[1:02:04] on a piece of paper sliding down.
[1:02:07] But
[1:02:11] I spot about this is that we're not dealing with huge numbers and with the school you
[1:02:17] had to teach as a union and there's a lot of people and a lot of high salaries so the
[1:02:22] numbers are big here.
[1:02:23] We don't have that money.
[1:02:24] We're only getting 18?
[1:02:27] Yeah.
[1:02:27] So salaries are huge.
[1:02:34] And there's only so many things to negotiate in that way now we have the benefits and
[1:02:43] I was holding out for that dispatched cell phone, it's a problem number, but it is the principle.
[1:02:57] We could schedule that as a work session, couldn't we?
[1:03:01] I don't know, or it's not in public work session.
[1:03:06] I don't know if that's the right question.
[1:03:06] Yeah.
[1:03:07] Yeah.
[1:03:08] You just open a public meeting.
[1:03:10] Yeah.
[1:03:13] Do other than missionaries.
[1:03:14] I know.
[1:03:15] Are there other than the night that we've done other than a day that we have a meeting?
[1:03:21] Or if you do whatever you want.
[1:03:24] Okay.
[1:03:24] If it's not going to be.
[1:03:26] We can
[1:03:30] do it at the end of the meeting.
[1:03:39] I don't care.
[1:03:40] My whole day is free and retirement.
[1:03:41] So I'm just done.
[1:03:43] I'm so, I'm feeling like talking about it.
[1:03:45] I'm probably being able to make it.
[1:03:48] So
[1:03:51] when does that start?
[1:03:53] I just got the request, so I don't have one there.
[1:03:57] So when it gets closed, we'll schedule it.
[1:03:59] We need to deal with this.
[1:04:02] No, I can schedule that meeting normally.
[1:04:05] So that's normally I meet with the taxpayer ahead of time.
[1:04:10] Good.
[1:04:11] But I could certainly set up that request for non-complets with the board
[1:04:25] What do you need, Laura?
[1:04:26] I was going to go get the submission.
[1:04:28] I think they went outside.
[1:04:30] Thank you.
[1:05:00] Is this the new divisor?
[1:05:02] It is.
[1:05:03] Does it work great?
[1:05:04] It's got you on it right now.
[1:05:06] But I don't like it.
[1:05:08] Things are moving up and down.
[1:05:09] The light is going up and down.
[1:05:11] I'm going to have to extend this a little bit.
[1:05:15] So we're here to talk about a few different items.
[1:05:20] I think this
[1:05:33] is going to
[1:05:44] be a two more.
[1:05:57] Okay.
[1:06:01] So, the first sheet you see is a screenshot from the cover of our
[1:06:05] suer asset management plan. And it shows the thing that we're looking at next. And
[1:06:12] the red indicates it's the worst of the worst on the suer portion. So, you can see it
[1:06:17] comes down church and then takes an easterly bend towards school street.
[1:06:25] I'm
[1:06:25] smaller blocks are in yellow and they're nothing great either.
[1:06:30] As far as sewer goes.
[1:06:34] Well a lot of these are cracked bit-fry clay pipe.
[1:06:38] So they have a joint every three feet or so.
[1:06:41] And they're leaking a lot of ground water into our system.
[1:06:44] And that's what our goal is to try to get rid of that.
[1:06:48] And sort of conveying that and treating it down on your plant.
[1:06:53] So, the following sheet shows
[1:07:01] two scenarios.
[1:07:02] We've got, if you look on the top row, it's a scenario A and B in the right.
[1:07:07] And, scenario A and B only includes for church street down the moral.
[1:07:14] And then a brief leg over to the stream there from a strong water perspective
[1:07:23] because we expect that the stormwater will probably need to be treated in the discharge of that.
[1:07:27] What's the name of that?
[1:07:28] Maud Ashbrook.
[1:07:29] How does that work?
[1:07:30] Which is on Merle Street extension.
[1:07:34] As you get down the hill to a highway barn.
[1:07:37] That's where probably the stormwater would have to be, at least.
[1:07:43] So now looking at scenario A, that's only those two streets.
[1:07:46] There's other side streets there.
[1:07:48] But this evaluation does not consider the 3,750 linear feet.
[1:07:53] only to 2,000 feet required for first rate mortal.
[1:08:03] So now when you flip to the third sheet,
[1:08:11] it's the next health spreadsheet.
[1:08:15] And on the left hand side of the sheet
[1:08:17] is the town's projected cost and contribution.
[1:08:20] And on the right is Hillsboro Water and Surrogations Cost and Contribution.
[1:08:25] On the far left hand column, you'll see dates extending from 2025 to 2030.
[1:08:35] and I included an inflation factor 4% per year and then you can see it can compound it every year.
[1:08:43] You just keep adding on to it because inflation will eat away at a project that's the nature of these projects.
[1:08:53] So you'll see a blue-colored column under the town category. This is annual capital reserve fund.
[1:09:02] So I started off with $370,000 and then increased it to
[1:09:15] arrive at, if you look in the yellow column, this is the cost to replace the drainage and roadway elements that are owned by the town.
[1:09:29] Now, on the left, you'll also see a box, so I tried to match up that accumulated contribution
[1:09:38] with the projected cost, so the more or less equal they're off by like $3,000 you can
[1:09:44] see.
[1:09:47] Lightwise, I did it the same for the Water and Sour commission for the Water and Sour
[1:09:53] elements, and you can see it's a little bit less.
[1:09:59] Going up to the cost per, if you look
[1:10:02] going to far left hand column you'll see a cost per linear foot. This was obtained from the cost
[1:10:07] from the the Woodmore Park project. It's not quite yet completed but substantially completed.
[1:10:13] And you can see the unit cost for the construction portion of it. And that's $307.54 for drain
[1:10:22] roadways 363 even, water's 310, 45, and sewer's 315, 85.
[1:10:34] And I use those and that's
[1:10:35] how I kind of rolled into developing this table.
[1:10:44] I've got notes on the bottom here.
[1:10:45] So the park construction bid in 2025 was used to establish its cost.
[1:10:52] The accumulative capital
[1:10:53] reserve does not assume any interest. So when you say that I'm sure you're going to get some
[1:10:57] and interest from whoever you bank with.
[1:11:01] And then third, it doesn't include
[1:11:04] any sort of strong water asset management plan.
[1:11:09] Right now, I think, Laura, I think I sent you something
[1:11:12] recently maybe a month ago.
[1:11:15] Right now, there's a plan if you let me back up.
[1:11:18] There's a funding source from the state.
[1:11:21] It actually uses APA funds, but it's called the Clean Water SRF.
[1:11:26] And it uses, it takes EPA funds, and you can use them for stormwater or sewer, but right
[1:11:34] now there's come a grant program whereby you can have your sewer asset management plan
[1:11:39] done, but DES picture consultant, so you just get assigned a consultant, but you need to
[1:11:44] file a pre-application by, I think the end of May, and in our experience for the sewer
[1:11:50] portion that we've done previously, it's not that intensive.
[1:11:58] So right now, to what would
[1:12:00] be the benefit of having their stormwater asset management done, what would that provide?
[1:12:05] It would help, at least for this next project, to know the capacity of the downstream stormwater
[1:12:13] components and future projects. Yeah, right? Yeah, sure. As the consultant looks at what's
[1:12:20] You're working on, they have an analysis of what's there or what's not there as far as stormwater is concerned.
[1:12:27] Because right now, I don't think anybody really knows what you have or the conditions.
[1:12:37] So we need to do this for the end of that tomorrow.
[1:12:40] Can you apply for it?
[1:12:41] Yes.
[1:12:42] Okay.
[1:12:50] It's called a pre-application.
[1:12:52] Right, right.
[1:12:53] Well, that out there.
[1:12:57] Management plan is a lot less intensive than the one that we have prepared for the sewer system.
[1:13:05] It costs significantly more than what we would even anticipate.
[1:13:10] You would have to consider for just one line.
[1:13:13] It is much less intensive, just by the nature of the water with the cattle on it.
[1:13:20] Do we have the cattle on their farm already?
[1:13:24] Do you have any health experience?
[1:13:27] Well, first of all, you want new years would have to move
[1:13:29] because there's no way we could put money in the 2026.
[1:13:33] That's right.
[1:13:34] I developed this in the town.
[1:13:35] That's before we all have a patient.
[1:13:37] And test the patient before we have a contract.
[1:13:40] That's okay.
[1:13:42] So any question on the end of the year?
[1:13:44] Oh yeah.
[1:13:45] Over on the, for each category, the town and the Hillsboro
[1:13:49] Water's Recommission on the respective right hand columns,
[1:13:53] you'll see two rows of $44,125.
[1:13:59] So what that represents, we're going to split it half and half.
[1:14:04] But for the first year, they'd be roughly $88,000.
[1:14:08] dollars and that would get us a concept going.
[1:14:12] We've phoned when for the
[1:14:14] wood in more park. Once you have an actual plan going, DDS is really interested in
[1:14:21] helping you along. But until you get something on paper to show them, they're
[1:14:27] not. Every year we've been applying for the SRF programs and one of the
[1:14:34] criteria is well have you started the design work so that's why we thought we
[1:14:40] put that up but because it has to be done sooner later in the hill so
[1:14:50] we're
[1:14:50] going to continue to the money away and I guess the timing of the next project is
[1:14:58] going to be dependent upon
[1:15:00] You're funding schedule. Yes, that's because typically they take what in three years to. From design, design, design through the instruction. In permitting.
[1:15:16] Actually, we got all the permitting for a couple months, maybe three, four months.
[1:15:25] And that was actually the stormwater aspect.
[1:15:29] So we're going to do the same thing with this project as we did with the one project is we're going to offer the people that are living there. The opportunity.
[1:15:38] Can you connect there's some pumps to this pipe that's going to be well well we're
[1:15:44] going to we're going to install the same you know a stormwater system that
[1:15:48] will provide them with a place to put that water which is what we did on
[1:15:54] Whittamore Street and but we're still waiting for you folks to come up with
[1:16:02] the funding plan or whoever you were going to help the folks to make that
[1:16:07] connection where it was going to be paid off in their tax bill over time or how
[1:16:12] that was going to work. I think that was that was one of the things you folks were
[1:16:15] going to develop was how you wanted to do that. We want to make an effort now
[1:16:24] that all the infrastructures in place to get those folks who do have some
[1:16:29] pumps to connect to that system. It's right now they are connected.
[1:16:35] It's run to the
[1:16:36] edge of their edge of the road and they need to make that connection. So if their
[1:16:40] sound pump was going in the sewer before the project it may still be going in
[1:16:44] the sewer.
[1:16:46] You know that's something that you folks would have to figure out how
[1:16:51] you want to, how you want to address that. It would be done similar to a better
[1:16:56] minute sex plan.
[1:17:02] What is that?
[1:17:06] What we need to find out make who's going to, I'm
[1:17:10] assuming some of them are going to want to make payments.
[1:17:18] Well I mean at this
[1:17:19] point all we can really do is tell them that they need to do this and they need to talk to you folks
[1:17:28] on how it's going to be done and whether they hire their own people or you get someone to come in and do them all at once
[1:17:38] which would seem to make more sense.
[1:17:49] He spoke to Jim about this, he had done similar approaches but different approaches for
[1:18:01] various municipalities, primarily out towards the seatbelts, and he offered some methods,
[1:18:07] It's, I guess, of how to implement this.
[1:18:11] So you might want to go and bug in.
[1:18:15] Yeah, I don't know if you could put it on out there.
[1:18:18] Are you the water and soil department
[1:18:20] going to monitor or monitor what the right word is?
[1:18:30] If they're still using their sump pump
[1:18:32] and so put in the source system,
[1:18:34] are you going to monitor that to push pressure on them
[1:18:38] Do, yes, but we want to make sure that when we drive into the town, you folks have a program
[1:18:46] if that's what you want to do.
[1:18:49] So we wanted to make sure that you have something in place before we start taking action
[1:18:57] to get them to connect.
[1:18:59] Those
[1:19:03] homes were inventory as part of the original design brass
[1:19:07] service. And to our knowledge, there were no strong water or
[1:19:15] flood rain systems being injected into the sewer, but pipes have
[1:19:21] a way of moving. And they can be removed and they can be replaced
[1:19:26] after the inspection is done. So we'd have to be careful.
[1:19:30] You'd have to at any point in time, when you're interested, you need to investigate, okay,
[1:19:37] is there an illegal connection or not that is operating?
[1:19:42] I mean, to our knowledge, those have been terminated at some point, but we don't know what
[1:19:50] the actual condition is today.
[1:19:56] And we do know there are many sound pumps that are just pumping outside the house,
[1:19:59] and it goes back in the basement.
[1:20:07] So those are the two points that we wanted to discuss
[1:20:11] as far as, you know, the Wittemore Street Project follow-up on making those connections
[1:20:16] and then when, you know, we would be able to start thinking about the next project. Because
[1:20:25] you really don't want to start design or anything until you know you've got funding to make
[1:20:31] you way through. There's another stuff too, I think. I've mentioned it before. In order
[1:20:38] to gain funding for some of the sources, at least for the sewer, we need to go through
[1:20:43] qualifications based selection systems to pick a consultant. So we can't just say, our
[1:20:48] engineers underwent. We need to go through that. I think you folks went through something
[1:20:52] with the sidewalk project. It would be similar to that.
[1:21:02] It's a process we're getting ready
[1:21:03] done. Okay. Not until we kept some commitment.
[1:21:13] So, we're only doing potter
[1:21:16] street,
[1:21:19] most of Murdle Street. Yes. Is the idea to finish it the next time?
[1:21:29] Well, the next project could entail the upstream streets, if you will, like
[1:21:37] Newman and Pleasant, central, upper central, they could,
[1:21:48] but you start looking at the
[1:21:50] dollars and when we step, when you look at the linear fee, it just gets, it's almost
[1:21:57] double. So that's why I said, what, let's just look at these two streets and see how much
[1:22:01] it's going to pay. And that's where, what's reflected on the third Excel sheet here.
[1:22:05] Is that some of what we did for Winnemore, as far as many of you feet?
[1:22:11] It's a good question. I don't recall often. I looked at this because this was our next hot spot, if you will.
[1:22:19] Yeah, you've been here, you've educated me for that. Myrtle Street was the next one on your project.
[1:22:24] And we, at the time, postponed topping Myrtle Street with payment.
[1:22:30] Yeah, we didn't know well, you know, we discussed that with the other department, so we were
[1:22:37] aware of that, you know.
[1:22:40] I think it was pay.
[1:22:41] It's just the only one who did most of the storm water system.
[1:22:46] And so we recommended, yeah, hold off on placing the storm water until we saw how much capacity it
[1:22:52] would require if we brought the storm water down.
[1:22:55] in the church street in Murtle or whoever that was going to work.
[1:22:58] Yeah, there was a hold-off on the stormwater out there.
[1:23:05] Is the blue on this first page meaning this is a good connection or a call
[1:23:11] with a conflict that this is something that doesn't have to be replaced?
[1:23:15] If it wasn't as bad as the red and the yellow.
[1:23:22] So a pot of merino is blue, so that means that really doesn't have to be done.
[1:23:28] This was based on our consultant's review of primarily.
[1:23:33] We had a consultant named Ted Berry and they did all our line-in and they got swallowed
[1:23:38] up by coming in by the name of vortex, but they kept very good records for the most part.
[1:23:44] And so we've got historical video of all these sewers and how they performed over probably
[1:23:51] a 10-year window that we've retained
[1:23:54] Tidebury and vortex.
[1:23:56] So, back got handed over to Underwood
[1:23:58] when they did conduct a dis-evaluation.
[1:24:02] I personally didn't look at this, these videos.
[1:24:05] Okay, I just wonder.
[1:24:08] I don't think you can get to the red part without doing some of the blue part.
[1:24:12] Well, no, I know that.
[1:24:12] Yeah, that's right.
[1:24:13] It's the reason why I asked her because
[1:24:15] there's not, you can look at church street, for instance,
[1:24:20] After Walnut, there's not a lot of street left.
[1:24:24] I just wonder whether we should just sue everything
[1:24:28] from the school up to Mertle, you know,
[1:24:31] because that small section, if we plan to do it,
[1:24:34] we'll say three, four, five, six years from now,
[1:24:37] it doesn't make, well, I guess you do it
[1:24:40] with Brown and Walnut, but I don't know.
[1:24:43] Yeah, there's a break in the sewer,
[1:24:44] it doesn't extend down that area.
[1:24:46] Fix it up farther down the street,
[1:24:48] just a not even half a block.
[1:24:49] He's talking about it in the one hand. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about this. The Southwest.
[1:24:54] No, I'm talking about heading to a school. Oh, yeah.
[1:24:57] There's not a lot of street left.
[1:25:01] No.
[1:25:03] So I would think it would make sense for us if we were going to repay the church street
[1:25:11] to do all the way down the brown street and do that one more.
[1:25:15] But I, again, I speak to myself and I speak to the board.
[1:25:19] But then again, if it's blue, it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be done.
[1:25:23] Well, that's kind of why you hire a consultant to help you through these.
[1:25:27] Yeah, well, that's screened, it's good.
[1:25:32] I forgot what the color of me.
[1:25:33] Oh.
[1:25:34] Next up,
[1:25:40] to copy that and put it on here somehow.
[1:25:43] Good question.
[1:25:44] We all know red is.
[1:25:45] Red, that's the worst.
[1:25:51] We're under the impression that if it's red, blue, green or yellow, it's 100 years old.
[1:25:58] Oh yeah, more.
[1:25:58] And more than 100 years old.
[1:26:01] And eventually, it's going to be easy to be done.
[1:26:06] And initially, you gave us the indication of the worst.
[1:26:12] And that's why we picked way more.
[1:26:14] And part to do first.
[1:26:15] Right.
[1:26:15] And the second in line was Viral Street, and I guess Church Street, but you had indicated
[1:26:22] to that before, so I mean, I remember it, I don't, it's not a surprise to me, but I understand
[1:26:29] how you want to do it.
[1:26:31] Well we, I think we provided you with copies of that asset management, the sewer asset
[1:26:35] management.
[1:26:36] And the engineers evaluated them in different ways.
[1:26:39] One was condition, one was if it fails, what's the impact going to be, you know, and so
[1:26:44] So there's several different charts in there to address that.
[1:26:52] Any other questions on would-and-war or this information?
[1:27:04] I know you guys don't have an appetite or would like to do a big project like we talked
[1:27:10] about earlier, but it wouldn't make sense to expand the scope of this project.
[1:27:21] to do Neumann, and the other, you know, out of central, but I think it's central pleasant
[1:27:27] while that.
[1:27:28] Press the church on the ground and take a small note, yeah maybe it would double a cost
[1:27:33] maybe and just spread it, you know, we come up with extra amount of dollars over three or
[1:27:38] four years, whatever is left, we finance it for a period of time, that way that whole chunk
[1:27:44] is done.
[1:27:46] Well, I guess, again, we're going to continue to try to gather the funds that we need to
[1:27:54] do these projects.
[1:27:57] You folks have got to go to town meeting to finance this sort of thing.
[1:28:02] So I guess, however you think,
[1:28:07] it's easier to put $130,000 a year, or it's easier to get
[1:28:12] a bond pass, I don't know how that works when you don't really have a design.
[1:28:18] So you don't really know a scope.
[1:28:21] Well, we have to do a design.
[1:28:23] I mean, first we'd have to agree on the scope.
[1:28:25] Then we have to go to design.
[1:28:27] And a cost estimate, then we move forward.
[1:28:29] I would think.
[1:28:32] But if you look at expanding the scope,
[1:28:34] if you don't know what number you're expanding to.
[1:28:36] Well, no.
[1:28:37] Or you can go and say, this is the number
[1:28:40] we need to get the voters to approve.
[1:28:42] And then the scope is automatically set
[1:28:44] by the ultimate design and construction.
[1:28:55] I just try to think down the line, and if we're going to do half of this section now
[1:29:04] and then three or four years from now we're going to do the other half because that makes sense to do it all.
[1:29:09] because economy is a scale, you know, it would be a little bit significantly cheaper if we did
[1:29:15] this whole block at one point. You're going to have the construction material there,
[1:29:19] you're going to have the people there, you're going to have everything there rather than
[1:29:23] doing twice. Absolutely more efficient. But again, we don't know until we figure it out.
[1:29:34] And I guess my question is, how difficult would it be to increase, to do this and do the
[1:29:42] rest of this section, how much work was it to do this and how much work would it be to
[1:29:48] do the whole thing?
[1:29:49] Work mean in design work or construction work?
[1:29:52] No.
[1:29:52] For both.
[1:29:52] Well, what you did, I've experienced these two sheets to include Newman plus
[1:30:00] You can probably do it right now. You just take 350 over 2000. What is that? And you just multiply
[1:30:13] that times each.
[1:30:17] We don't have the length of these three. Here we do.
[1:30:24] So it's not quite
[1:30:28] double, but it's going to be so good for you.
[1:30:33] What's not, what I had to go and do is if you'll see on the second sheet with the
[1:30:39] street links, you've got features here. And it's kind of hard to, we don't have a design
[1:30:45] sit in front of us. So I looked at, you know, how many curves do we have? I mean,
[1:30:50] sidewalks do we have? And that kind of factors into how much the roadway costs are
[1:30:53] going to be. Yeah. The water and the sewer, they don't care. You know, our costs are kind
[1:30:59] of not fixed, but we need to replace the whole need. Because the next intersection and
[1:31:07] tie in there.
[1:31:13] I mean, I guess my answer to your question depends
[1:31:21] on your confidence in
[1:31:22] being able to get the voters to approve a larger bond or whether you're better off, you know,
[1:31:28] putting aside a certain amount of money every year and doing it, you know, on a
[1:31:34] little smaller scale. And I really can't speak to whether that's going to be
[1:31:37] successful or not. It's up to, you know, I'm not against it. But if you get a bond,
[1:31:45] you're going to have to pay off the bond before you can do another project. So you
[1:31:50] might end up doing this project and not doing another one for six years rather
[1:31:56] rather than doing what every tree is.
[1:31:58] But if you do double work, you take the 60s
[1:32:02] and get it done anyway.
[1:32:04] But again, I'm not saying that we would take a bond
[1:32:07] for the whole amount of money.
[1:32:08] I'm saying that we would start accumulating money
[1:32:12] like we are when we started.
[1:32:16] We would, instead of having what was this 15,
[1:32:22] would be the $1.5 billion, we need a lot of
[1:32:26] million dollars would have 1.5 and we would finance 1.5. So when I'm talking to
[1:32:33] a huge amount of money, I mean, compared to 20 to 30 million dollars to do a
[1:32:40] lot, I mean, we're talking relatively small amount. But I don't know, I mean.
[1:32:50] There's one, I guess, funding mechanism we haven't really talked about, but the
[1:32:54] The Clean Water SRF funding from DES, the Drinky Water SRF Project funding source from DES.
[1:33:07] Typically you have some percentage of forgiveness, which is kind of like a grant, but you can't
[1:33:13] really depend on that until you have a design set in front of you, and you can solve
[1:33:17] them and approach this DES and say, how are we looking at this fiscal year, or two years
[1:33:22] up from now.
[1:33:25] But you can't have those conversations until you have at least a concept plan and
[1:33:28] a consultant help you with this.
[1:33:32] Yeah.
[1:33:34] So maybe I have the answer to your question is that come up with some of the some portion
[1:33:41] of these engineering funds that yet the concept initiated for the overall project that you're
[1:33:48] talking about. Come up with the engineering funds so that we have something to start with
[1:33:53] in terms of application for grant money or loan money or decision making just on our part.
[1:34:02] As to okay, we have the beginnings of a design and based on the preliminary cost estimates,
[1:34:08] we can't afford it.
[1:34:09] So we're going to scale back the scope of our work.
[1:34:12] So maybe it starts with putting together some of these energy and hearing funds
[1:34:18] They were estimated here, expanded by basically doubling the project, but to give us a starting
[1:34:28] point without yet having to start collecting funds and keep the capital started to
[1:34:38] think
[1:34:39] about bonding, start with the engineering or the beginnings of the engineering, which
[1:34:46] I don't know if it's a concept.
[1:34:49] Oh, right.
[1:34:50] Nothing is, I'm convinced on it.
[1:34:52] But if you start and put money away for three years and then you take out a bond and
[1:34:59] you make payments on a bond, that means you're not putting money away for another project.
[1:35:04] So until that bond is paid off and then you go back to collecting money for three years
[1:35:11] to start and up, you're talking six years between projects.
[1:35:18] I know what you're going to have a larger area of done, but then it's going to take you
[1:35:23] six years to get over to another area that needs to get done.
[1:35:28] It's going to take you six years anyway.
[1:35:30] I mean, assuming that they do, assuming we go into a regional plan, and assuming that the
[1:35:38] next area would be to finish the section, well, it's going to take another three years.
[1:35:43] of 60 years this would be done.
[1:35:45] And if we wanted 60 years it would be,
[1:35:47] I mean, it's, it's, it, you work,
[1:35:49] time wise it would work above our budget.
[1:35:50] So I guess,
[1:35:53] again, my response is
[1:35:56] sewer water is going to continue to put money away.
[1:35:59] Okay.
[1:36:02] If you folks want to try to address this problem,
[1:36:08] then you folks need to decide how you want to fund it.
[1:36:12] I don't think, you know, asking us,
[1:36:14] Do you want to join you with a bond? Do you want to do this and that?
[1:36:17] We're kind of putting the money away and we're trying to move forward.
[1:36:22] If you folks want to fund it a different way,
[1:36:23] I think that's the decision that the selectmen need to make.
[1:36:27] Because you're the ones who are going to move forward.
[1:36:30] What's going to happen is you're going to have put a money away for three years to do a project
[1:36:34] and we're going to be putting money into a bond, which means we can't help you with that project
[1:36:39] until that bond's made off.
[1:36:41] So, you're going to just keep accumulating money.
[1:36:44] Well, it's fine.
[1:36:45] We're going to.
[1:36:46] Well, I mean, it's okay.
[1:36:48] Let's assume that we decide to do what I suggested.
[1:36:53] Okay.
[1:36:54] And we put money away for three years.
[1:36:56] You guys put money away for three years.
[1:36:59] And you have enough to do our portion.
[1:37:03] You have portion of this marital street and church street.
[1:37:08] How would you find the rest of it?
[1:37:10] You wouldn't you come in with the bond with us?
[1:37:12] Well, I guess we can't think about it, I don't know.
[1:37:15] No, we take the bond out.
[1:37:17] You take that, we pay half.
[1:37:19] No, but if we've already saved our money in the meantime,
[1:37:21] you don't need to.
[1:37:22] But you're only going to say half.
[1:37:25] What you're telling me is that in three years,
[1:37:28] you're going to say almost one and a half million dollars.
[1:37:32] OK, but if we go with the whole section,
[1:37:34] it's going to cost almost three million dollars.
[1:37:37] Oh, I see.
[1:37:37] We're not going to have the other one and a half million dollars.
[1:37:40] So you're going to have to get money somewhere from that for that.
[1:37:45] Just like we're going to have to get that one and a half million dollars somewhere for
[1:37:48] that too.
[1:37:50] So I mean hypothetically, yeah, you've got a great idea, let's do it your way, okay.
[1:37:55] Does the rest of the board agree?
[1:37:57] That's what I need to hear, yeah.
[1:38:00] That's what I think.
[1:38:01] How much burden are we putting on the test there?
[1:38:04] Yeah.
[1:38:04] And in the same turn, how much burden are we looking on the users?
[1:38:09] And can they absorb, I mean, I don't know, you know, how much you can put away every year with your current fee structure?
[1:38:17] And I know they've been going up, but, you know, the same thing, how much can we put away,
[1:38:23] to hit the tax payer every year or for six years or a bond payment, you know, once you take
[1:38:32] a bond payment, you're kind of stuck, you're going to have to pay it back, you know.
[1:38:38] So the number of years at the bond, you wouldn't be putting money away, you'd be paying half
[1:38:43] the bond.
[1:38:45] So everything stops. Nothing gets done until that bond gets paid off. I don't
[1:38:53] I don't know.
[1:38:54] We've highlighted the worst segments of the villageria that's the signal we're talking
[1:39:02] about.
[1:39:02] We've done parking when more.
[1:39:04] Now we're talking about the remaining worst section.
[1:39:08] So, you know, the fact that we wouldn't do another project for six years.
[1:39:12] I'm just asking a question.
[1:39:14] I don't know whether it's good or bad, but I just...
[1:39:18] Right, I don't think I can answer your question.
[1:39:20] Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's a style.
[1:39:23] Can I make a comment on how somebody is not involved?
[1:39:31] One of the things that my concern is,
[1:39:34] I don't have a concern, I feel that my concern is the money
[1:39:41] part, you know, as we sit here and talk about it,
[1:39:48] there's a whole nother budget that goes into the same day
[1:39:51] I'm voting for this money and I think a bond is going to is very difficult to pass no
[1:39:58] matter what the project you need to do a lot of outreach to the public. I think even
[1:40:06] putting money away is going to be could be difficult as well. So your reserves are included
[1:40:18] in your budget work. So their money is going to come in because if the users don't pay
[1:40:28] we pay off the means. So they don't have the same dilemma that we have. It's not being
[1:40:44] critical, but just the structure of the funding.
[1:40:49] I think that this question can't be answered
[1:40:55] right now even by the board. You may want to do it one way, but I think you need to get
[1:41:01] a feel from the public. And if that means right now, we have some public hearings on this because
[1:41:08] you need to know which way they're going to, you get a feel of which way it's going to go
[1:41:13] at a meeting whether it's setting up a capital reserve fund with substantial amounts
[1:41:18] going in every year versus a bond.
[1:41:22] I think in my opinion, from whatever it's worth, I think it would be easier to do a capital
[1:41:30] reserve fund because, again, you're earning the interest as they had mentioned versus paying
[1:41:36] the interest.
[1:41:38] It doesn't accomplish what you're looking for, Rich, but I think it's an easier swallow for
[1:41:44] the taxpayers to say, well, you know,
[1:41:50] maybe we'll do it because this I think that's a hurdle
[1:41:55] in itself because there are some taxpayers that feel it's I'm not on water and sewer, I
[1:42:02] shouldn't have to help pay for this in my tax. I think it gets better, it's easier to spread
[1:42:10] across like that across and this is road work. So then you have to kind of push that
[1:42:17] maybe it's getting increased in the road work budget versus, you know, because the town
[1:42:26] is the town taxpayers who are not on water, who are not paying for the water and sewer
[1:42:32] infrastructure, or sewer infrastructure, to say.
[1:42:35] It's the road work and the drainage where we're doing that road.
[1:42:40] So I think that there's a way to explain it to the public to understand that these roadways
[1:42:51] need to be done anyway, we're finding that with the sewer project.
[1:42:57] Now all the discussions are that we're going to, we're going to go in on the sewer project.
[1:43:03] But our portion is really the roads and drainage.
[1:43:07] We just, it's just more financially feasible to do it to get efficient and without the storm
[1:43:19] water, we cannot eliminate the infiltration without a place for people to put their water
[1:43:27] unless you want to pump it in the street, which some people do and on the winter time you
[1:43:30] You can see it's running down the street.
[1:43:32] There's all different problems.
[1:43:33] Right.
[1:43:34] They're
[1:43:39] almost saying that because this is road work,
[1:43:47] we could take that $1,500,000 that we have for road work
[1:43:52] every year.
[1:43:53] And we could designate these streets of the streets
[1:43:56] that we're going to work on while we do this project,
[1:44:01] so that we wouldn't have to raise an extra $1.5 million we could take some of it
[1:44:13] out of our road.
[1:44:17] Is that what I'm hearing? I think it's the same. Yes I think it would
[1:44:27] there would be value in sitting down with a road age and to start talking about this
[1:44:32] but I think that it's one and the same.
[1:44:34] I don't think that going before a couple of things saying,
[1:44:38] we want to take out a $3 million or $1.5 million bond
[1:44:42] to help out with sewer projects.
[1:44:45] Because that's not what we're doing.
[1:44:47] We're combining hard roads by the sewer projects.
[1:44:51] And because then if you presented that work,
[1:44:57] for us to help in them.
[1:45:07] We have to do road projects anyway, and it just makes more sense to do it together while they're doing their sewer project. So whether or not it's, you know, if we raise $550,000 a year for the road project, maybe it's time to put that in a capital reserve fund each year in the year.
[1:45:29] sit down with the road agent and say, okay, we want to ear mark $300,000 for this project,
[1:45:36] you get the other $200,000.
[1:45:39] And it's tight, I don't know, but you want to sit down with the road agent first so
[1:45:43] okay, give me your list as far as these are the worst, you know, and then
[1:45:49] do it like that versus, I think it gets too complicated to talk about
[1:45:57] the bonds before as they're saying the engineering work and then if you spend
[1:46:02] money on the whole plan find out that you can't get a bond or you can't get
[1:46:06] fine in from the public because their focus on the sewer aspect that when our
[1:46:12] portion is the road and stormwater which we would have to do anyway. I think it's
[1:46:19] going to be a hard sell anyway to get $370,000 dollars the sack of
[1:46:25] on top of everything else, I would agree, and I'm not
[1:46:29] suggesting that we go for a bond next year or anything like that.
[1:46:34] I'm just suggesting a long term.
[1:46:36] Again, just because I thought it may be in that sense.
[1:46:41] But, okay.
[1:46:43] The other factor to look at is, as far as voters, no criticism
[1:46:49] of the highway department, but I think when you do a project this way,
[1:46:53] you're getting an engineered street with curbing and the sidewalk and I think
[1:47:01] you're getting the infrastructure is a lot better in terms of the material
[1:47:07] underneath the road you know typically what they do is they're basically
[1:47:13] resurfacing you know they grind it up and then pay over it so I think you're
[1:47:20] getting, you know, you're getting a better product for your money. I think we'll see
[1:47:25] catch basins up in the lower end more.
[1:47:37] It seems you, I think you all agree you have to do something. If you don't, the whole system
[1:47:45] collapses and costs you a bucket more.
[1:47:49] Rich has got a good idea that it's more efficient
[1:47:53] to add and double the work. The bond, forget about the bond, you never pass a bond. And
[1:48:00] it's not economical. The virus is right to pay all the interest. Your decision is pretty
[1:48:06] simple. You want to go with the proposal they're making and ask the taxpayers for a $1.5
[1:48:13] million over five years. Or do you want to ask them for $3 million over five years? Either
[1:48:19] There is a tough bill to swallow, but look at the last 10 meetings.
[1:48:25] Inconsistent people come in bitching about their taxes and then pass them a $1 million
[1:48:29] budget.
[1:48:30] Fire trucks, everything, not a comment.
[1:48:35] If they heard this discussion tonight, they would pass $300,000 a year for five years to
[1:48:42] do this because it makes common sense, and it saves taxpayers money in the long run.
[1:48:48] Obviously,
[1:48:53] the voter outreach is the key thing because they are getting not just a resurfaced
[1:48:59] role.
[1:48:59] You're getting a reconstructed engineered road, new sidewalks curbing, there's a public
[1:49:05] benefit that could be expanded on and disassociated and post-sleeved from the water and sewer
[1:49:14] work.
[1:49:14] This is incidental.
[1:49:15] So we care about what we're trying to accomplish.
[1:49:17] But it's incidental to the discussion that you need to have to get those funds authorized
[1:49:23] to be put aside in another capital to serve on.
[1:49:27] But in the other aspect that you don't want to overlook in terms of the sewer is that the
[1:49:32] sewers that we fix creates capacity and we were told that we need more capacity and we are
[1:49:40] not going to be building a new plan anytime soon.
[1:49:43] So the only way to generate capacity is to fix the system, and it's clear, you know, when we get rainfall, the flow's
[1:49:52] Trouble, that's the treatment plan.
[1:49:57] You're creating capacity at the same time. Maybe not immediately.
[1:50:03] It's got to be fixed.
[1:50:12] Yeah, worse and worse. And like I said before, this should have been done 50 years, but here we are. We're in the situation we're in
[1:50:23] We committed to the We're More Project and made that commitment and at the time
[1:50:36] As the four we should have put money away for the next project. Yeah, and we had it done
[1:50:42] We had awful money
[1:50:47] Before that it really didn't hit the taxpayers hard
[1:50:51] That project
[1:50:54] but in this scenario
[1:50:56] You're gonna say, you know, you want $350,000 from the first year to put in the capital reserve, you know, to be used three years down the road.
[1:51:07] And that's, to me, that's going to hit the taxpayers pretty hard.
[1:51:11] You know, and all that's going to happen, and as far as using the road work, you got a lot of roads in town that are in bad shape.
[1:51:21] And as long as I've been involved with the board, the highway department has been taking
[1:51:27] the worst of the worst, doing what they can on a basis, you know, this road this year,
[1:51:34] this road next year, and keeping up with it, and it's worked out pretty well.
[1:51:39] Not to say, you know, these, yes, you get a better road, but these roads are not a district
[1:51:47] care. So as a tax payer or you know we're trying to put this out there we say why you fix
[1:51:55] in this road there's nothing really wrong with it and my road is you know falling apart.
[1:52:01] So that part of it I mean it's hard to convince him that yeah you're going to get a better
[1:52:06] road but those roads downtown are not hard. You're going on some of the other ones and they're
[1:52:14] rough shape and you know we hear you know all the time you know we're gonna do
[1:52:18] all of it you know beard road to start with you know it's gonna get done this
[1:52:22] year you know so it's a you know long-term you know commitment but to try to
[1:52:32] sell it and to get that money out of the taxpayers you know it's gonna be
[1:52:39] the same thing we do is get the money out of your you're you know because you're
[1:52:44] You're going to have to come up with that money also, so, you know, and, you know, it's
[1:52:50] a user fee, but they still got to pay their taxes.
[1:52:54] You know, I don't have to pay you, technically, I'm not on the system.
[1:52:59] So I've got my taxes,
[1:53:03] you're on the system, you've got your taxes, plus you have your
[1:53:07] users fee.
[1:53:08] So, you know, that's something I think you need to take into consideration.
[1:53:11] Yeah, but if we took our road, the road article increased it so that they could still have
[1:53:21] the money to do repairs or in some of these roads and put away this for a pay.
[1:53:28] I mean, they dug up my road, remember when 15, maybe 50, the thing is like, I mean, it doesn't
[1:53:38] do any good if you don't get those big rocks or anything else I mean I've got a big crack behind
[1:53:43] my water runs down the street and goes in the crack. Where's it going? It's it's washing out the
[1:53:51] road at the other end so if you could put in more money because if you put it in a capital reserve
[1:53:57] when the highway department be able to use some of that for that specific for that year. Yeah I mean
[1:54:03] and as long as it's for that purpose.
[1:54:06] Right, but rather than having two articles,
[1:54:09] it's what I'm asking.
[1:54:12] Yes, you could.
[1:54:13] Well, you'd have to start,
[1:54:14] right, and put it into a capsule reserve plan.
[1:54:17] Right.
[1:54:18] I mean, instead of having an article that says $250,000
[1:54:24] to fix Jones Road this year,
[1:54:26] and $300,000 to put in for Mertle Street,
[1:54:29] you could combine them into one
[1:54:31] and put it all in the capital reserve,
[1:54:33] but then let them out there, 250, right?
[1:54:36] Okay.
[1:54:37] Well, all right, this is saying you got $500,000 for
[1:54:41] road repair.
[1:54:41] Right.
[1:54:43] $250,000 is going to go in and
[1:54:45] can't put it reserved for the project.
[1:54:49] So when you keep up with your road repair,
[1:54:51] because that's going to, you know,
[1:54:53] whatever, I don't know what it is,
[1:54:55] or is it $400,000 or $450,000 that you asked for
[1:54:58] this year for road repair, it's not
[1:55:00] cost just going to keep going up.
[1:55:02] So, you know, not only we're already put 500,000 for the road repair, we're going to have to put
[1:55:12] 800,000 to put money away in the capital service, just a matter of how you're feeling.
[1:55:18] We're just waiting for it to start.
[1:55:22] I was just trying to figure out if we could do it all in one article rather than just
[1:55:25] But why don't you just have one capital reserve fund?
[1:55:30] For example, the road work, right.
[1:55:32] But Jim was just saying half-and-half.
[1:55:34] But half-and-half capital reserve fund.
[1:55:35] I think that, if you've got, I mean, we should have a...
[1:55:40] And the private department probably
[1:55:41] has a list of the roads, the women,
[1:55:44] and the people who are going to be down.
[1:55:47] And we should have that, because then it makes it easier
[1:55:51] to talk about these projects, say, OK, you're.
[1:55:54] right now it's day spot.
[1:55:56] Is that making it this much?
[1:55:58] You know, it's going to need to be done.
[1:56:06] So this year, I think we've reported that,
[1:56:09] I think we've reported that.
[1:56:10] I thought we have reported it.
[1:56:12] Yeah, we have reported that.
[1:56:13] No, we have reported that.
[1:56:14] We have reported that.
[1:56:15] No, no, we're reported that.
[1:56:17] We've reported it.
[1:56:18] No, we've reported it.
[1:56:19] We brought it up to 600.
[1:56:24] And this is part of that explanation.
[1:56:26] But now we want to have it kept reserved by
[1:56:28] Well, we do a close two year period because we've done all that number one year right now.
[1:56:37] So meanwhile, it's sitting there, it could be earning interest.
[1:56:44] So all that interest adds to what we aren't going to need to have the tax pay for.
[1:56:51] but the only use is 4.25 instead of 4.50 then we get 25.
[1:57:00] But didn't leave it in there.
[1:57:01] But that's up to the board to sit down with the road data and say,
[1:57:05] we are going to allow you to spend this much this year because these projects.
[1:57:10] And however, you know, I don't think it should be well,
[1:57:16] No, I just meant for the article this year, it's 4.50, but what happens if this cost
[1:57:23] actually come in at only 4.25, then there's 25 that would be remaining in, that would
[1:57:29] stay in the capital, right?
[1:57:32] Right.
[1:57:32] But, yeah.
[1:57:33] Right, right.
[1:57:34] Capital, I don't think there's going to be any left over here.
[1:57:36] No, I, the way prices are going now, and I'm hoping it stays, they can do what they want
[1:57:43] to do with the 450,000. If the increase is in material, now, you know, changes, you know,
[1:57:54] bad plan to do, that's a matter of miles. And if the price is increased, well, we can't
[1:58:01] do that far. We have to scale back. And this is the news that, you know. But if you want
[1:58:08] I ask, if you start with 450 and say, okay, we're going to ask for 600, that's a third
[1:58:14] of the additional money that you need.
[1:58:16] Right.
[1:58:17] It's not enough.
[1:58:18] Right.
[1:58:18] You're going to have to make a pretty good size ask each year in order to accomplish this
[1:58:23] just based on what we've looked at for the middle street price.
[1:58:28] But my thought was, if they have to, to 600 let's say, and say, okay, but how's that 600
[1:58:36] It doesn't necessarily mean 450 will go for the rights and then just the remainder.
[1:58:41] You know, that's a determination that the world will have to make, but it's, you know,
[1:58:50] because if not, then you play with, you can only have it last for two years and work.
[1:58:57] It's got to be putting something that can only be lowered to cheer.
[1:59:03] Because you can reallocate it because if you don't use it within those two years, it goes into the general fund.
[1:59:11] They can reallocate it out of the general fund.
[1:59:18] So the bottom line is for our next budget, it should be about 20, 20, 20, 26 budget.
[1:59:34] We would have to come up with, we'd like us to come up with plenty for $1.25 for the
[1:59:41] engineering and $3.70, we've just got the scrolling money away for the project, is that correct?
[1:59:51] Well, there would be a start because the equations are anymore hit us.
[1:59:55] Not that would, that's those are the two numbers we should.
[1:59:57] Well, last December it was.
[2:00:00] Last December. Well, I think they want you to come up with it. They're saying, okay, this is what the town's portion would be. Right. Right. Right. So it's up to us to figure out how to get that. How to get there by that time. Yeah. Right. But I think you want to do the engineering sooner rather than lay out. You need to. So that would mean at least that money would have to be in on that budget. Yeah.
[2:00:28] And if we're smart, we'd probably be putting some money away for this project.
[2:00:35] Well, yeah.
[2:00:36] And they get the engineering done so you can, when grants come up, you have that to apply the grant.
[2:00:44] That's what I did get that from tonight.
[2:00:48] When we got this housing champion, you guys weren't here.
[2:00:52] They said there's money right now.
[2:00:56] this year the state didn't have any more money to put towards the house but he
[2:01:01] talked about infrastructure money and everything else and it all comes out
[2:01:05] what is available to get grants for and if you don't have the engineering and
[2:01:11] the plan it's gonna be hard to apply for grants. I mean I think it's a small
[2:01:17] portion but it was a light at the end of the tunnel there's gonna be grant
[2:01:23] money out there and being designated as a housing champion, it gives us a
[2:01:30] put up on other communities that aren't that way. So it seems to make positive
[2:01:36] effects for us. You know, it's being, you know, I mean, I knew this was happening.
[2:01:43] I mean, I played the board. I knew it. I just hated for Robin to run out so quick
[2:01:48] because she did most of the work in obtaining this thing.
[2:01:55] The planning board's done a heck of a job going forward with all this housing and changing
[2:02:04] the regulations.
[2:02:05] And looking at it all made a concerted effort to do all this, and what I learned tonight
[2:02:10] like that. It gives us, it gives us more than a feather or a dot. It's, it's, uh, you,
[2:02:19] you've got a little bit of push on the list when you start asking for my grants and stuff
[2:02:23] down the road, but you need that engineering. You definitely have to have that to, to apply
[2:02:28] for the grants, you know.
[2:02:32] You have more grants on their site than our site. No, I'm not
[2:02:40] in time, obtained the grants because of the competition.
[2:02:45] You know, we've always seen the end of the bond, all the state money, for water that
[2:02:51] comes to Hillsboro, has been going down a little late,
[2:02:55] is there more problems than we do.
[2:02:58] We have two other aspects to talk about.
[2:03:00] Yes. The first one is the associated electric property. So the building is
[2:03:11] down.
[2:03:14] What we typically require when someone takes the building down is that
[2:03:21] they sever the sewer connection and cap it so that we don't have any water
[2:03:30] are coming from somewhere else, whether they were floor drains in that building or whatever.
[2:03:37] So what needs to happen is ideally, I guess, the town has a backhoe. We could schedule
[2:03:45] a time when our personnel could meet your personnel, show them where to dig. They dig down.
[2:03:52] We cut the pipe and cap it and take measurements to it. And then it's disconnected. And that
[2:03:59] way when someone wants to do something with that property we would be able to show them
[2:04:03] okay this is where you need to start digging to get tied back in.
[2:04:08] Now if the town is the one that does something with that property are we going to have to
[2:04:12] pay to have that reconnected?
[2:04:16] Well you're going to you're going to chances are if you do something with that property it's
[2:04:23] not going to be I don't know where the building is going to be in the same spot as that building
[2:04:26] No, it wouldn't but so you'd probably be replacing a lot but you're not hooking into the main yeah, okay
[2:04:33] So it's dug on your property, right? So you're gonna have to dig to that anyway. So no, would you pay a fee? No?
[2:04:41] The connection would still be there. I don't know. I just wanted that in a minute
[2:04:50] I don't know if the connection would be sufficient for whatever your project needs are that's outside
[2:04:58] right?
[2:05:01] What do you mean that I am on the pipe? Yeah, they might need, they might need fire
[2:05:05] protection, might need all kinds of things, you know, beyond what the existing connection
[2:05:10] could do.
[2:05:13] No, it wouldn't be a fee. Well, there would be a fee to have an increase, right?
[2:05:19] No, that's your cost. Right. But then there wouldn't be a fee on top of that. I would think
[2:05:24] so because we already have a connection there, right? Right. So, but that's so as far as
[2:05:29] like they've caused to increase the capacity of anything.
[2:05:34] I just,
[2:05:37] even if I'm not here with the building,
[2:05:43] go with that.
[2:05:45] Remember in fact, in 2026, what that question was asked?
[2:05:50] We just have no idea how much piping is in the ground,
[2:05:53] and how much we want it could be coming through that piping.
[2:05:56] You might need to do so-and-so system.
[2:05:59] You just want to be accommodated so that whatever's there
[2:06:02] is not an issue for our system.
[2:06:05] problem. Right. Right. You might actually have a bigger problem trying to deal with the
[2:06:09] stormwater. Yeah.
[2:06:13] I already deal with that whole stormwater thing on the other side of
[2:06:15] the road with that sack. Well, see, there's not too many culverts across and underneath that
[2:06:21] portion of Westminster really. There is one right from the property. Yeah, right, right
[2:06:26] by the cemetery. There's a catch-based name there and it goes across. The D&K is going to
[2:06:30] I think it's curb water down into it.
[2:06:35] So that's one thing.
[2:06:38] You want to talk about the office?
[2:06:47] Second party office?
[2:06:48] Yeah, our office.
[2:06:50] Yeah, we have an office now apparently.
[2:06:52] Yay!
[2:06:53] Finally, I'm going to put that panic again.
[2:06:56] I'll move back in.
[2:06:58] And so there was two concerns.
[2:07:00] The principal being securing that side door
[2:07:04] so that we don't have an event such as the one that precipitated the damage that was incurred
[2:07:12] where the door being left, not quite secured or partially a jar or whatever.
[2:07:19] And we want to make sure there is an entrance through the front door to the second floor.
[2:07:25] So it's not that we want to exclude access but we want to make sure that
[2:07:30] And that side door can be primarily secured.
[2:07:36] And the other related to that is the condition of that fire escape.
[2:07:41] I think that's a huge liability, potential liability, and that it should be blocked.
[2:07:48] It's not being used.
[2:07:49] It's not there's no habitable space on the second floor that would require that second entrance.
[2:07:58] I don't believe.
[2:08:00] Um, they have access to the second floor from the front to what?
[2:08:05] Yeah, right up the right.
[2:08:07] Right up the right.
[2:08:08] Yeah, right.
[2:08:09] Yeah, I'm telling you, I realize, yeah, that's how she was going.
[2:08:14] That's a hazard that, I mean, it's just a living problem.
[2:08:18] It seems to me it should be.
[2:08:20] At least, you know, minimal people parked with a chain, the sign says,
[2:08:24] you know, stay away or something.
[2:08:26] So there's a tiny breath in the first floor, a tiny breath, a third back,
[2:08:35] eagerness, yeah.
[2:08:36] It's a bulk hit in the back.
[2:08:38] The down in the right direction.
[2:08:40] It wouldn't even eat that.
[2:08:41] It wouldn't even eat that.
[2:08:44] Because, like you said, it's not being moved.
[2:08:48] Well, we just want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
[2:08:51] Yeah, I agree.
[2:08:54] Yeah, and being down there.
[2:08:56] When I sort of throw this idea out of draining the heating system, just, why does it need
[2:09:03] to even be heated?
[2:09:04] Why are you paying for heating?
[2:09:06] And being down in the basement, I noticed that there were, I think, four, either four
[2:09:12] or five circulated pumps, which means there's four or five zones, which means that that could
[2:09:18] be isolated, drained and, you know, you're not paying town as a pay unnecessarily to
[2:09:25] eat it and a building that, you know, knows what condition and the insulation might be
[2:09:31] preventing.
[2:09:33] But that's sorry very, the safety as element of security in the door and I think I recommend
[2:09:42] or I can, that the fire escape access, probably makes you good deal with that.
[2:09:48] It was, it's a metal fire escape, and the folks were in concrete, but I think one of the
[2:09:54] corner, you can just, you know, it's not a test, it's in the air, it's in the air, it's in the air.
[2:10:00] Well, I think if you put weight on it, I get, I mean, if it's in the air.
[2:10:04] As you fall down through the floor.
[2:10:06] Yeah.
[2:10:06] Yeah, it's more secure in that door.
[2:10:11] So, they can use the front door and get to the upstairs.
[2:10:18] Yeah.
[2:10:19] When I'm making it, it's an accessor.
[2:10:20] Have us get in.
[2:10:23] No, we did.
[2:10:24] This is a bit.
[2:10:25] What do you think?
[2:10:32] Just assume it not be.
[2:10:34] Especially if we're going to take it out there in a fire state.
[2:10:39] Or I'll find out how much they've used in it.
[2:10:42] I mean, the friend of the fire state could be repaired.
[2:10:45] Well, it could be.
[2:10:46] That's the message of this thing.
[2:10:47] Good, right?
[2:10:48] But if we're not happening, I would guess the footing,
[2:10:51] that it's just a footing.
[2:10:53] Yeah, but the structure itself is there.
[2:10:55] But without being supported on something,
[2:10:59] or, you know, part of the fire chiefs in the recess,
[2:11:05] could it put on me and why you have it?
[2:11:06] Yeah, because I think it was up there because they were using,
[2:11:10] you know.
[2:11:10] Oh, yeah, no.
[2:11:11] It's an assessment.
[2:11:12] It was occupied by the kids who are up there and right.
[2:11:16] Well, I think it was there long-forth town to build it.
[2:11:19] Yeah.
[2:11:21] And it's salvageable, but that means spending some time
[2:11:24] to mount it to an excavator.
[2:11:26] And I'll put it out here 40 under that leg.
[2:11:28] Oh, thanks a lot.
[2:11:29] How did the concrete erode so quickly?
[2:11:33] I mean, it's better while, but I don't think it was there when we took over the building.
[2:11:39] Oh, we took over the building?
[2:11:40] Yeah, was it there?
[2:11:41] Oh, I think it's been there.
[2:11:43] Yeah, it was there for years.
[2:11:47] Yeah, but I think Project Lift was in that building at the one time when it first started.
[2:11:54] I think Project Lift was over there.
[2:11:57] Yeah, but anyway, I'm not sure.
[2:12:00] We kind of, we can't say that now that we use it for an office as a commercial building,
[2:12:06] and I'm not sure I have to check with Mike that you should have a second egress out of the commercial building.
[2:12:12] Well, we're not using the second floor.
[2:12:15] No, not the second floor.
[2:12:17] Even the first floor.
[2:12:18] Well, we are, we are, we are.
[2:12:19] There's two of you.
[2:12:20] You want to secure that.
[2:12:22] No, no, no, no.
[2:12:23] You have the one on the side.
[2:12:24] Right, no, we want to secure it.
[2:12:26] And the first one.
[2:12:27] There's a ball.
[2:12:27] Oh, that's the one that opened and it froze.
[2:12:31] And that's why the office got flooded.
[2:12:33] Oh, that one up there.
[2:12:34] That's why they were using it to access
[2:12:36] the store stuff up there.
[2:12:38] Oh, somehow it didn't happen.
[2:12:44] Now we're not eliminating ground floor access, it's just that access to the fire escape, and now we don't want to eliminate, we just want to, you know, shut.
[2:12:59] It's not a good shot, you know, whatever, something so it's a good one.
[2:13:03] Yeah, well, from the inside, no access available outside.
[2:13:09] And if you did that, you don't need the stairs.
[2:13:12] Yeah, I mean, I'm just securing the door.
[2:13:14] That's optional.
[2:13:15] If you want to spend a little bit to put another post, you know, the concrete post under there
[2:13:20] is an excavation.
[2:13:23] There's nothing wrong with this up fire, it's the gate, except it's not attached to the
[2:13:28] I mean, we're very happy, very
[2:13:34] grateful to have a place to offer.
[2:13:41] So I guess that's it.
[2:13:43] I think we're from a referendum.
[2:13:46] So, should we go ahead and coordinate with Ernie?
[2:13:50] Yes.
[2:13:51] That would be great.
[2:13:53] As far as disconnecting the sewer to the associated electric.
[2:13:55] Yes, definitely.
[2:13:56] All right.
[2:13:57] It makes sense.
[2:13:59] I mean, we can hire somebody.
[2:14:04] We're always going to save money.
[2:14:06] But when they tore down the bill, I guess they kept the end of it somehow.
[2:14:10] They didn't do anything there at all over the place.
[2:14:13] And let's want to raise it. Who knows what's in the ground.
[2:14:16] We just want to make sure this is still open.
[2:14:19] We don't know.
[2:14:22] The foundation is still there.
[2:14:25] We're trying to work on getting that.
[2:14:28] Yeah, so we have a brownfields for your application, but that doesn't mean that the
[2:14:36] pipes that went to those drains, they cleared it off and they smoothed it out, and I've
[2:14:41] been doing anything for the pipes.
[2:14:42] Right.
[2:14:42] Well, you're saying we've cut it off here, all this, whatever was there, because you don't
[2:14:48] have to worry about it.
[2:14:49] That's right.
[2:14:50] It's all going to go away.
[2:14:51] Yeah, it's sort of building there.
[2:14:52] So, yeah.
[2:14:53] Nothing to do with it.
[2:14:54] That's all right, we're on parking lot.
[2:14:55] And you cut it away right before it gets to the street?
[2:14:58] That's the right way.
[2:15:00] Yeah, beyond, you know, inside your property. So you have to dig it up and cut the pipe and put a calf in there, is that what you do? Yeah. It's not a complicated thing. It's easy, easy. It's just when we need permission to do it. Number one, we'd like to have a good time to assist. What about water? Is that shut off too? What is that a problem? I don't believe it's shut off. Typically, you know, you have a shut off at the edge of the road or somewhere between the main and the building. And I'm pretty sure
[2:15:29] that's shut off because they needed water to do the demolition and hook up to a hydrant.
[2:15:37] Nearby's the water will shut off now because you guys will shut off the water yeah well they
[2:15:43] couldn't access the water in the building while they took it down you know right yeah
[2:15:47] yeah outside source
[2:15:53] assumption is yes we showed it off prior to all the demolition all
[2:16:04] right
[2:16:04] next time. Thank you.
[2:16:14] Thank you.
[2:16:15] Thank you.
[2:16:17] What are you going to do?
[2:16:27] I'm going to go ahead.
[2:16:31] You can do it.
[2:16:33] I can
[2:16:37] make a motion to adjourn.
[2:16:38] I can do all in favour.
[2:16:41] All right.
[2:16:41] As adjourned at 817.
[2:16:48] Yes.
[2:16:49] Yeah.
[2:16:50] Thank you.