great the meeting is open and I'm assuming we're being recorded yes all right okay uh we do not have any meeting minutes fantastic um audience participation or public comment what do
you got George george is on the agenda george you're on the agenda another issue oh he's on the agenda all right you got three minutes George for our seriously because we don't have time wait she's on the agenda he says it's a different issue i know
sorry um just a quick question it's been almost a month now that there's been no flags on the green is there a problem with reestablishing the hanging of the uh our flags on the green in front of the highway department green in front of the highway department i know we just
received some new flags in that were ordered are they going to be put up i I'm sure that they will there's a certain time frame mary was telling me Mary you had mentioned the time frame for which flags are flying when isn't there like a schedule i had been
informed that all of the small flags fly throughout the year except for Memorial Day when the bigger flag goes off so that it it doesn't get weather okay okay so I already have a
request into highway so when we're on it when are they going to be put up we have a request into highway and we will talk to Ray when he comes up next okay great my other question was I don't think it was ever resolved last time I was here whether this financial policies manual
is in effect or not it was not resolved okay thank you for your Is it in is it in place is it being followed or not don't have an answer for you right now George okay i'll be back next week to raise that issue look forward to it all
right um can I ask you a question yes do you deliberately look for things that we are not paying attention to yes yes you do no things hit me between the eyes that aren't being taken care of and uh when I ask simple questions you get no answer oh none of your questions are
simple my friend raise questions because this is a simple bookkeeping thing it's not a complex thing it's something that should be happening we were We were good to go thank you George thank you see you later see you next week ray come on down
he's right there he's here i thought you said you were leaving what you told me we were going home sorry Ray hi Ray how you doing what do you got for us this week Ray uh oh first of all can we talk about the flags yeah what do we got going on um so
flags before Memorial Day is that what we were saying i have them all you know that okay they're ready to be put up when I didn't know if there's any new news they're ready to be put up it's a time thing that's all okay so we got to get the uh the poles themselves
all set with like the lanyards to lock down the ropes then we'll pretty much all Sounds good all right sorry go ahead when would you like me to start on that as soon as possible yeah when you can when you have time to i'm sure you have okay you can
do that uh I ended up reaching out to Nicole from Springfield Water and introducing myself and she's right there oh nice how you doing nice to meet you so we spoke about uh an issue on Cobble
Mountain uh about the water rising up uh by Hayden the intersection of Hayden and Cobble Mountain and I was lucky enough to be working out there today and I ran into Joe joanne yeah Joanne i ran into Joanne out there so you got someone out
there very promptly and having someone watching that that was actually good i was happy to see that uh so that was one thing that I ended up having done um we have a meeting coming up with Tim Durant of Palmer Paving okay for a
project that we're trying to put together at the moment i had the crew on Hayden Road today to repair the road from a wash out that was happening right about in the middle of the intersection and Bert
Chill was pretty good size and ended up having everybody in piece of equipment running everything cleaning out the ditches and had Matt run the grater and cleaned everything up and we raked it all out so we don't have a roller at the moment but
it was nice we have the damp soil so packed and nice we drove over a bunch of times so at least there's not a crater in the road okay so that's taken care of uh last week we took some time and focused on repairing equipment that has
been neglected in the past especially for repairs of dirt roads we pulled the York brake apart on the back of the tractor pulled all the pins out of it that were worn and replaced and uh changed out some that needed repair
um it's pretty much the tractor as as of right now with the orc rake is ready to go okay and itself instead of purchasing brand new stuff which cost thousands we work to what we had and we have it in operating condition so when we end up
hitting next projected roads would be uh Buand and uh George Mard so that's coming up just trying to get everything in order for that right um I ended up calling around for some roller prices for right now because I know we're going to be needing it for numerous roads and
relying on another town's roller and they need to use it themselves would be difficult to share back and forth especially with the logistics of moving it so be best if we end up utilizing our rental uh money that we have so calling
around to find the best rate that we can end up utilizing that for and uh do that um ended up making contact with uh Jean Derby he's the beaver trapper in this area i had no idea who he was we ended
up speaking so that was good that's the guy that runs Beaver Deceiver uh does he do the deceivers i just know he he does the traffic okay so I'm not going to say he does if it doesn't is he going to be doing something no I just starting to get a rapport with these people so that
they have my contact info i have theirs thank you just trying to do that yeah last week we had the tractor out blown roads some residents might have seen us throughout town and some of the problem areas made sure the ditches were cleaned out had a lot of shovels in the
grounds and rakes pulling a lot of debris away from inlets and outlets making sure that there was no issues especially knowing that we're having the rain this weekend so that was uh good that we got a head start on that there wasn't that much issues when we came in this morning
one thing that I am going to end up presenting to the select board tonight is on the 28th through the 30th of April uh I am going to be shutting down a section of Hayden Road to Cabbell Mountain intersection off of
Hayden to number nine on Hayden there's no residents or any homes in between but we're going to end up shutting that section of road down there's a couple culvert pipes that in desperate need need to be replaced we have the pipes we
have the manpower right now and it would be good the guys home gone they're going to be working on that road and getting everything prepped so when I come back we can end up running the machines in there and getting everything just changed out so I'm just saying three days but most likely all we'll be
needing is one or two okay so that's one thing um okay that's pretty much about it right now then we got the leaves when we get some time this week we'll end up getting over there and get these leaves out here that's what you guys would like us to do
it's just there's a lot of stuff that would get put on the pile just put them back there um they just can't be put back yes with this with how ground how wet the ground is right now if I put any type of equipment on it we're going to
have wheel staff and me and Joan talk so when it dries out the only dry day we're looking at is Wednesday this week so hopefully uh it's dry enough but if it's not I'm not going to drive on that you're on the grass at least now
now how low is the temperature supposed to get tonight are we gonna have to salt some of the roads for the school buses tomorrow or I'll go out and check them throughout the night but if there's an issue we'll definitely be on top of it like we have them okay good thank you
you're welcome all right is that it that's it okay perfect thanks R thank you christina what do you have for us i don't really have anything in particular i know that there's a few things on the agenda that further down that I will address okay i don't know if
you wanted to go to the new business a No I didn't know if you wanted to address the acceptance um so you said we need a motion to accept it right you know you don't need a motion you just need to announce it okay um so we received a letter today
Christina received a letter today um from Mr allen that he is resigning for from um position as Lford Select Board effective today um I regret having to resign but the time has come i feel that I am not able to effectively serve the town of Blford or towns people i
appreciate the support from the voters i'm not a person who steps away from a position however I'm unable to continue performing the job effectively um so unfortunately um yeah so Jeff will be not here with us for the next two months until the election um and it'll be TJ
and I will work as a board of two which is fine because we're so close to the election i think less than 100 days before the election so yes but you have to sort of a plan in place for what you're voting on and things of that nature because if there's a Yeah if there's a tie we got to just duke it out
i think that works oh boy should be noted that because he resigned um after the deadline he will still appear on the ballot um but he does not wish to run for reelection all
right okay um so then I can Jennifer you said that you did not want to no okay so we can skip right down to new business i know a lot of people are here for new business A which is the battery energy storage system so folks want to come to
the table um conservation we have some reps here springfield and water planning board zoning board of health there assessor seats all around [Music] yeah you do yeah come on up and Nicole
you can feel free to pull a chair up over here there's a seat here seat here you sure you want to sit next to her or follow which one are you talking about i don't think I can answer that yeah well no um so we've been talking
about these battery energy storage systems um that Dick brought up a few weeks ago some concerns about the size of a facility that um is looking to go in on Northford Road correct
um so is there any updates with that anything any more progress that No I mean what what the conservation commission uh knows so far is it's basically not changed much since we talked last but it's it's two facilities
one on each side of North Bford Road yep one is like sort of behind the current uh substation the Eversource substation and one is on the other side of North Bford Road um one of them it as proposed is a 200
megawatt facility and the other one is a 50 megawatt facility um both of them look to be in areas that are fully wooded currently both of them have wetland resource areas
on them so at some point it depending on timing and what happens with what's going on with state regulatory reform um the if everything stayed the same they would have both of them would come to the conservation commission file
what's called a notice of intent or permit application and we would issue an order of conditions or permit to do the work um I'm not sure at this point what other permits they would need to get from the state but I think there's probably some
other sort of higher level permits they would have to get above and beyond the conservation commission um the other thing that has happened it's not it's related is the conservation commissioner re received notice from
Eversource that they were doing soil borings in and around the substation which means they're to me uh they're doing geotechnical work probably looking to expand that facility usually
when they uh enemies do that kind of work that's that's what that means that they're they're looking for bedrock and uh lower bearing characteristics of the soil and whatnot so I think that's probably uh what they're what they're
doing so um again we just to go back we we re we we we received this presentation from the hidden energy people or mission clean energy which is the 200 megawatt facility
um which they presented to us by Zoom in December was it and um the the other one which is Bford Storage LLC um came to us with what's called a request for determination which is
something in the Wildlands Protection Act where they were looking for us to approve some sort of preliminary work that they had proposed and we basically uh denied that because they were basically looking for us to approve them
to uh violate the Wellland Protection Act is for lack of better words so we disapproved it they they've gone back to the drawing boards and told us they're going to be submitting the next level of permit on the notice of intent for that work and again that's just
upfront work for them to get to the back of that property behind the substation to do test pitting which again is another way to to qualify the soils that are there whether there's bedrock or what the current characteristics of those soils are um and to get there they
have to go through a wetland um so that that was the issue we had with the preliminary uh paperwork they filed with us um so that's what we know so far and you talked about when you first came to us um that this was a major concern as a
fire hazard especially considering uh we are a volunteer um small fire department yeah I mean there there's a a ton of information out there about you know thermal meltdowns of these facilities and what that looks like and what happens and and um uh you know there
there's been a lot of concern with other communities in Massachusetts about that um and I mean from my I've spent a fair amount of time reading about this and I don't think anybody fully really understands it yeah what to do when that
happens other than wait for it to burn itself out yeah and what how many were they talking about putting units on each of these did you give us an estimate well the way it's envisioned I mean I have photos there's photos of existing
facilities in this this presentation that we have but if I understand it right the 200 megawatt facility would have on the order of 200 containers that are like the size of a a
tractor trailer shipping container all arranged and each one of those containers would contain some sort of batteries probably lithium ion batteries there's there's different batteries that they use and some of them are are worse in other words in terms of thermal
destruction and and fire um there's there's quite a bit of information out there about that so we we don't know what type of batteries they're these if if these came to pass what what type of batteries these facilities would use
um but um I have uh read and I circulated um on by email um some other towns uh zoning bylaws uh that they put together that uh address in more detail
than our current zoning bylaw about how to deal with um when how to deal with issues when when they occur with fire or thermal incidents and uh the different standards that they have to meet both the state fire code standards and the National
Fire Protection Association standards uh which sort of overlap but um so that's sort of what we know um at the moment um and again uh just for other people's knowledge the state of Massachusetts had
passed a bill earlier this year that would that they're putting under the umbrella of regulatory reform which uh tells this a new entity within the state to put together new regulations
for the permitting of these facilities which would um more or less take us towns like us out of the loop um but we're not there yet we're not there yet i mean the the bill is passed but they're right they're currently writing
the regulations now they're supposed to come out uh later this year I think and and the way that would work is depending on the size of the facility and so forth um the applicant or the the developer would have to petition the state uh to
sort of circumvent the town's zoning bylaws and and the the state would have I think it's 15 months to fully approve the project then and they would get one
permit from the Okay but as it's written up there's there's steps along the way where the town gets to give input and so forth about locations and concerns and whatnot but at the end of the day it's the state that that issues the permit so that's
out there we I don't think anybody fully understands what the timing of all that is yet yeah and whether these developers are looking to to try to permit these facilities before that happens or if they're going to wait and deal with the
state rather than the town of planting so so I think that um we had we had gathered everyone together because there's definitely some pretty major concerns coming out of this and we wanted to touch base with all these different departments on
um what things can we do to protect the county um going forward in this situation i don't know if there's a way to get it altogether stopped from coming in um if that's what we want i it doesn't um there's no like plus side to blame is my
understanding correct it's not I don't I don't believe there's a way to stop it there there's not a way to stop it there's ways to um mitigate mitate moratorum and on on things for a while even with the wetlands it's just going
to no can't stop it um I mean there's a lot of uh steps they'd have to go through I believe with the conservation commission to get to a point where we could approve the project in terms of if they're actually destroying wetlands
where they'd have to do mitigation and create new wetlands in different places and and if they're they're stream crossings and so forth they're putting new collards over streams um that would uh trigger a higher level review with the state what's called a
401 water quality certification that we we don't get involved with that that comes from Mass D out of Boston and those permits can take like six months to get usually but um I mean the other thing Nicole Sanford is here from
Springfield Water and Sewer both of these projects are within the footprint of their watershed uh in all of that the streams in that area is known as an outstanding water resource yeah yeah what I mean
what are what sprinkled waters I mean I I have more questions than I have answers i mean I I can tell you it's um it's about 2 and a half miles 2.4 four miles from the reservoir itself and it's located these sites are located directly
in between two main tributaries Peeles and Beam Brook which discharge directly into Cobbler so it's you know it's just more questions you know like followup questions to some of the stuff that that Dick was just saying too in terms of the
regulatory reform is that just specifically related to these these storage facilities no it it encompasses anything there's some definitions that could circulate but it it encompasses solar projects transmission lines so
energy related anything that has to do with green energy green energy projects of a certain size in nature okay and that takes away both zoning and even conservation so they so they Wow
okay okay as I understand it i'm I'm not fully an expert on it but I've been reading quite a bit about it but it's it's sort of an interesting new twist and things now you you mentioned they're going to put a road in across wetlands
to get behind that uh power station that's what they came to us earlier yeah with a proposal to just put to cut down trees and vegetation through a wetland and put in a rope for testing but then that go dig test pits and we said you
can't do that no so uh we we denied it and and supposedly they're going to come back to us with another type of permit to request the same thing but probably with some mitigation involved and you know some more details on it now now across from you when they were putting
in the new uh poles for the power line that goes by you and they put those uh timber mats timber mats down and some of them going through that wetland were three and four sections deep that that
actually is done uh Eversource has uh an what's called an administrative consent order with mass D wetlands that lays out how they can do that and where it's sort of like they carve that out as sort of like a special project or a special way
that Eversource can do that so they every time they're in a different city or town doing that work they don't have to come to the conservation commission and spend time in resources to get a permit they they just work off of that one administrative consultant that they
have to do power line work can they do that on North Bford Road as a temporary no no this this wouldn't fit under that umbrella because this this is beautiful i just wanted to go back to Nicole you had more questions oh yeah i imagine
there are probably some of the same questions you all have um it's just I'm a little ignorant in terms of these facilities particularly in an area um like Bford from uh fire protection um yeah so it's just you know when I think
about if there was ever a fire at one of these facilities well one are are there fire suppression systems or cooling mechanisms engineered into these facilities and if so where does that water come from if there were a fire
where would the fire department get water how is you know this how how do you control the runoff after you put you know if you're putting black um water on not necessarily the catches on players so so stuff like that yeah
there go ahead well I was going to try and answer a number of questions that seem to be coming up and I'm not an expert but I've done fair bit of looking into this as well okay and uh talking to the 200
megawatt facility representatives and I think first I I should say I'm not sure if you're aware that they've already taken it out of the hands of Westfield and put it into the state and they running it completely
now if I were Westfield I'd be a little nervous because I've only lived in the state for about 44 years and I've never seen the state really look after the interests of Western Massachusetts in in
always the best ways i mean they're not perfect but they look to themselves first um the second thing is when I heard about when I heard someone mention it do we want it what do we get out of it i don't know if you noticed in in Westfield that facility which is a
little bit bigger than the 200 megawatt up here i think it's 20 218 um it was mentioned there that that facility they estimated at 170 million the town or the city would get a million dollars a year for 15 years guaranteed
now don't jump on that because the mill rate in Westfield because we used to have a business there is a lot higher than here and the mill rate for businesses in Westfield is about 40 or in my day which was back in 2008 before
that was about 40 to 50% higher so if we're looking at our situation um using that 170 million roughly I don't know what that means and equipment and all that and and you would base a
pilot fee or whatever it's based on the mill rate that's traditionally the way so it wouldn't be a million but perhaps it's 400,000 perhaps it's 500,000 the other thing would be the building permit cost now our building permit fee right
now is 1% for a solar facility and I believe that when they we did the one on Chester Road the building uh department got something like $80,000 roughly that's the building here i don't know would it be a hundred
million would it be a million dollar building fee i don't know well the the presentation that we we received from Kinetic Energy says property taxes generate millions of dollars in tax revenues for local communities that's
that's an umbrella that's not what does that mean i mean that and that's part and I believe that that's true the owner of that property is also the owner of the property of the solar company on North Lford Road we actually No that's the other one the one that they want to do right next to Evers that this is the
presentation of the big one i haven't dealt with people that are right next to the substation i've only dealt with the people for clean energy right and they're the only ones that came to us for the presentation and they've asked numbers numerous questions um going back
so in my mind there's a substantial amount of revenue that for the town me that's a lot of money so so revenue somebody does somebody can somebody h how does that work with the town like is it a negotiation is it is it like a
calculation if you do nothing else if you don't do I'm sort of I wish I could get through everything and then we go back and ask these questions okay go ahead is that all right go ahead makes it easier for me instead of jumping back I'm old and slow
um the other thing that I've been advised by PVP piece Piner Valley Planning Commission is that July the 1st of 2026 any facility that's over 100 megawatts automatically go to the state
so we can do whatever we want to delay install them but this one would become the state just like that and again I'm concerned about that because that was the whole purpose of getting a best bylaw in was to protect the community
okay now as far as the concerns on uh the waterways and and that I asked the uh rep from Mission Clean Energy to give me lots of data on their facilities and what they're planning to do and what
happened in California because the the information is kind of sketchy of what you read in the paper um that was the MOSS landing in California that happened on January the 16th 2025 since then there's been constant
air monitoring detected and they detected no hazardous contaminants in the air during or after the fire there were heavy contaminants in the waterways from heavy metals
directly related to battery chemistry they used outdated battery technology i'm reading all this because our computer broke and I don't have anything printed out nice um they used outdated battery technology
in a retrofitted 1950 power plant using more unstable nickel manganese cobalt NMC cells in close proximity in an enclosed space there in lies the problem these
these batteries they use are the ones that were initially used in cars and they were supplied by Korea and they were using EVs and they're they're good they're powerful
but they're more susceptible to failure um now what we're proposing or not what we're proposing what they're proposing are cabinets that are tested frequently and highly
regulated largecale burn tests are standard for deaths monitoring claims monitoring alarms go off earlier than older technology risk of a fire
related incidents very rare with the new technology there there have been no health risk to nearby communities and monitoring prevents next incidents before fire they say a volunteer fire
department is fully able to respond to a fire after some training a sightsp specific emergency response plan is developed and reviewed with fire department to ensure reality safety since the
California 300 megawatt facility was built in 2020 safety standards have been updated multiple times um and that's where this what Dick was talking about international fire codes and national fire protection association
have st safety standards they're updated every three years so they're watching this very closely everybody when this plant in California was approved for construction it's it all started in 2018
so then they knew a hell of a lot less than even we know now many years later um so the long and short of it is within that cabinet they have uh ventilation they have water suppression
um they already advised and I know we ran into it when we had the facility on Chester Road there's a four um megawatt battery storage system there and you see it and I was there with Edna Wanderer Rick
Barnard the then police chief and then uh fire chief and I don't remember who the fire chief was that was back uh like five years ago or more and that's the same kind of battery exactly the same battery as far as I know it's the same
thing everybody's been using this it's lithium ion batteries so there's some sort of special training that our fire department would need it's general training but but basically what they tell you is with these
batteries there isn't going to be this runoff to the streams or anything it's going to be bad it's going to be water um these containers are designed so that the fire can't spread from one to the other and
if there's water required I believe I was I don't know who the expert is on the water lines on but there is water lines on North Blandford Road i assume they go up that far they do and I don't know on what side of the street they're on are they Are the fire hydrants that
location i think they're on the opposite they switch they alternate and I It's like every four hydrants opposite in any event we could make it as a condition or we could try and make it as a condition if it gets in there and we are
controlling it to have a fire put right in front of that place so that if we needed excess water uh rather than the tanker truck if it's required because that'll run out pretty quickly we'd be able to connect into that fire hydrant
um so everything is basically designed now that you can't have that um you know I can never look anybody in the eye and say we will never have a fire in that site but if we do the instructions at that Chester Road was you control the
area you keep everybody away from it you make sure if there is a fire that comes out it doesn't spread to the trees or anything because that's a very small one if you've been there and you you've seen it in DJ you know there's what is it there's two of those big containers and
then there's a couple of transformers I guess so they just say keep that there it just burns out yeah well the thing is is and fighting uh lithium batteries uh you can't use water water will not put it
out because there's magnesium in in those batteries also and that creates it own oxygen so even foam won't put it out it's got to be left to be burned out and I don't care what they're saying if it's burning
it's polluting and it's getting in the air and it's getting in the water well no hazmat forces on that that's basic truth john did you So Adam's not
here right uh I to my knowledge we don't if if the facilities on fire we don't put water on them uh the you can never turn a solar panel off so these batteries the power's in the that unit
you put water on that electricity will come right back the water the down the water and kill the guy on the hose so our job is to make sure the fire doesn't get out of theime just so that it doesn't get into the
forest yes or the containers next to you if there are you can try to uh keep them cool again we just had the pictures hard to tell it's from very high up they
look like they're 5 to 8 feet apart i don't know what the a house can get to 2 to 3,000 degrees i don't know what one of those battery containers will get up to i would think it would be in the thousands
that can jump to the it just so hot the next container is going to burst well the thing is too is they're in these containers and even though they're vented you know after uh attending a house fire the pressure that the fire can build in a small area now you're
talking explosion i I don't know that they couldn't explode uh and if they're magnesium you could if you can get a like an engine block on fire which is several hundred degrees yeah uh and throw it in the water it'll just keep
burning you can't put it out with water and then we don't have I don't know what the chemicals would be to put on them but we're not going to have that much chemicals and if you're talking about hazmat it's like call the state we are
not big enough to handle that fire it would be tough just to get enough guys and hoses around the perimeter to stop it from getting into the woods i feel like one of the things that we definitely have to think about to protect ourselves is what can we do in
the fire department to prepare for something that if we need to have hazmat come in i mean but what what can we be doing within the fire department and can we be getting any help from these companies we wish they should provide us with
monies or something to update our I mean to you know just to put something in there and they okay it's in your garden you got to take care of it so what we're talking about here is
exactly what goes on everywhere where these projects yeah are proposed i think I think the bottom line is there there's I mean the the developers and the proponents of these facilities obviously will say they're safe safe but the
reality is there's a lot of um mixed information out there about how safe these facilities are and I don't think anybody in this room is is qualified to say that they're safe or or whatever but I mean and and this is the issue this is
what Westfield's wrestling with visit what other cities and towns there's lawsuits with the state about some towns have denied these things based on the concerns we're talking about so I don't I mean we could talk about you know the
fire threat from these probably all night long and not know where we stand but what I would add is that the uh I I sent around uh this uh zoning bylaw from the town of Hoverston and it's got a very detailed
section in it about emergency operations plans and uh what who does what and you know having very close contact with the owners of these facilities so if there's a problem you can get somebody with pretty quickly okay who who knows So are
you thinking that's something we should be looking at getting on our um warrant for meeting actually the the kind of details you're getting into and what their bylaw got into is the sort of things we deal with in the special permit requirements
you've seen our special permit requirements for the So they usually are about that thick and there's a lot covered in there that protects and deals with those kinds of issues so I I wasn't concerned about that but um and then the other thing I want to mention you keep
saying magnesium it's maganese magnes and this is a lithium iron iron phosphate that's the batteries they're using are you saying that the lithium iron phosphate has make it has magnesium
in it so I have a question yeah for the special permit now if it goes through the state if it's taken out of locals that special permit that you're talking about wouldn't apply i can't deal yeah we're out of it they just come in and
say "This is what's going to happen." So does putting any a new zoning bylaw even protect us from anything i mean because that would be more about how the fire is handled I think and not necessarily about the facility itself okay so it wouldn't be like a permitting
thing but it would be an after the fact this is how it has to be handled I believe right correct i believe so yeah just the thing with the fire hydrants uh it's quite a ways where you enter and then go
down it wouldn't m So it's right across the old trolley line the power lines that's not any good behind there wouldn't be any help no uh you'd have to get a line down close enough to access
the fire far enough away that you don't catch the fire truck on fire uh well then the other thing would be we you could say um putting the fire hydrant closer to the field just like you're saying and have them make it part
of their cost right but that's the sort of information that would be required to be fed to us when when the special permit arrives arrives if it does arise to us well I don't know if it's safe if it goes to the state we we can add order
of conditions right we can't do any of that so that's correct well I I wasn't this way if it was so safe why do they put it out here and not in Boston the conditions they they need to be in certain areas they're largely in rural
areas because of ideal conditions for it really some of the properties that they've selected are not ideal as far as I can hear some of the areas that they've selected the two proposals that we've seen high content of wetlands we Oh I
didn't mean that i meant for them it's it's ideal for them but but the the property you know we strongly feel this is going to be taken out of our hands so So the only way to you know that's great that you put a lot of special conditions we do the same thing but if it's being taken out of our hands how can we
protect ourselves and the way we can protect ourselves is by by beefing up the bylaws and and just so we can't say no if the state says yes but okay here you go these are our rules and regulations so we already have them in place then we're not relying on Yeah you
know I don't think you can do that to the state and tell them okay it's not we're not telling the state we're telling the company the company and the company that's been so gracious to share all their wonderful information about how safe their product is to be completely honest with you we would need
a third party to really assess assess the safety and the one that was put in five years ago that had all the problems because they retrofitted a 1950s substation five years ago the technology was totally different than it is now five years from now it's going to be totally different again so what all
we're saying is we're seeing this happening we feel like it's going to be taken out of our hands what can we do as a town to to protect us as much as possible that's all i'd imagine that our attorneys have been dealing with this
with other towns too um so I'd be interested what their input was as far i I said I'd imagine that our attorneys have been dealing with this with other towns um so I'd be interested to see what their input would be as far as what we put in protection um but has did you
forward that to zoning the um example from Hubard yeah okay yes I did but one thing I I mentioned to Christina earlier is you know I think a lot of us have generated a lot of information about this and maybe a good thing to do would
be on the town website make like a a repository or something where we could park all this information and accumulated and if whoever wants to see it it's there and they can read it at their leisure okay but some of it's rather technical but we can reach out to
um Wendy Wendy and ask her to you can also ask for it guys because you have 365 licensing which allows you to have a SharePoint so you can keep all that in SharePoint and anyone that has a Microsoft 365 license could be mapped to that SharePoint and you can control who
has access to what but they can it takes nothing like one hour to build that going back to the uh property that's across the street from the substation you said that's heavy wetlands area and very trees i I thought when we had the
little presentation and that's Tony i think I was talking about the one that's next to the substation where they came to us and wanted us to agree for them to cut down 300 trees but they wouldn't tell us which 300 and they wanted to cross wetlands and make a road that was
temporary but that is exactly the spot the permanent road was going to be in i mean it was just Yeah again I I know nothing about what's going on at that one no one's presented but they came and presented about the property with Tony Tony's property and I don't recall a big
disc there was a little concern about a small area wetlands they might have to some wetland it's a small something about when I recall the meeting it was they said when you have the access road and we want to come across the street to the
substation we might run we'll run into some minor wetland problem and that's not the one I mean one thing that was interesting to us Paul when when we had the the meeting with them or their their
Zoom presentation with us I mean none of their materials reference the Massachusetts wetlands protection and all sort of federal stuff which are different standards but on the on the figure that they gave us I don't know if you can see it but all these brighter
areas within the footprint are our wetlands so um and you know we experienced quite a bit quite a bit of this with the solar projects where two of them ended up being taken out of our hands because the
violations of the permit that we wrote were so bad that the state wetlands enforcement people stepped in and took over the EPA and the GPA um so you know I mean and you can see this from
this area it's all vegetated and tree the whole the whole area mhm so and and another interesting thing if you're into carbon sequestration at all which is kind of a a new thing where you know um trees and
vegetation um remove CO2 CO2 from the atmosphere and one thing that's come to light with solar projects if if you go in and clearcut mature forested areas with solar projects and you're not gaining
anything basically because what you're the whole idea with solar projects is you're getting clean energy and you're not putting CO2 into the atmosphere power plants or whatever so it's like it's kind of a wash that you know you're not gaining anything so I assume the
same sort of thing apply here with both of these sites that are fully treed in wetland areas but again the reason they're attracted to this location is because the substation is there they need access to that 115 KBA transmission
lines that crisscross right there and go into that substation that's why that's why they're picking these locations well they're not taking a big hunk of Tony's property and as I recall Tony said that they had been um they had already been in
there what was What did you say they did in there they they were cutting down you had tree cutting down it was log it was logged yeah you had I thought I was surprised maybe four years ago i was
struck unlike you it's our age proposal is to utilize approximately 15 acres 15 15 Yeah of land
and also they I mean I the last time I talked to them I said well what they showed on on the map they they want to move it around a little bit but get a better position relative to
any wetland issues we're cognizant of how many units are we parking you said about 200 one and 50 on another uh I'm not sure exactly TJ but um
picture the one the one on Tony's property is 200 200 yeah in that town in the neighborhood 200 parking 200 for trailers no
so what but the what I liked about Tonyy's property is with the the rise on the road um in the and the tree cover out in the street you wouldn't really see it and I like that anytime you can visually
protect it that's a good thing yes yeah you mentioned one one two one trailer one one container i don't know what the right answer is
but you somebody gave an example the situation [Music] on just road that's two containers you said that was four megawatt yes yeah so that's and those
are pretty small containers relatively small containers too many of us contain I'm reading what was on the uh pilot that's what it said on the pilot on the um yeah on the pilot agreement we signed with them it said 7 megawws direct
current and 4 megawws um battery i if you go down on the Chester Road one there they up up by the road they have two but down by Cooper's property on the other end I think there's another one or
two down there i don't think so no so what are our next steps here besides remember that on the diagram at all no um moving forward with taking a look at the zoning um talking to our attorneys see if there's any
advice there what I mean I I guess you know my personal thoughts about this when when we first started to to talk about this with these developers was you know it seemed like with the solar projects when
they came to Bford we all sort of were like pigeon holed to different boards and commissions and yeah and didn't really understand what it meant to the town of and personally I still don't understand what those projects what the town of Bford got out of those projects
other than maybe some tax revenue i mean a lot of people thought we were going to get low cost power yeah but that was all shipped that's part of contracts and stuff you know but it people still ask me that low cost um so you know I I mean
it just struck me that we have an opportunity now for us to put our heads together to try as best we can to get a a consensus or an understanding of what we think the these projects are going to meet the bland and what can we do and
with the regulator regulatory reform maybe there's not a lot we can do depending on the timing of the projects but at least kind of keep talking about it with the with the right people so we all sort of hear the same things at the same time yeah so I don't know if it's
like a working group or a committee committee or something that we meet as things start to materialize that we keep meeting and talking about with representatives or maybe just reconvene this sort of group over time do you think we need a public
informationational meeting i don't think we're there yet but I I don't uh because there's just not a lot of details yeah but at some point and Paul in your discussions with the mission people have they said anything about what they think
their timing is are they waiting for the They're hoping to present the data for a special permit request this year so they're not going to wait for the state to break it so why don't we plan to reconvene do you
think a month out is a good time i think that makes sense and then in the meantime Christina if you could check with the attorneys and see if they have any advice and then we'll see from zoning if there's any questions or interest in um getting that on the
warrant did you have a question Mary yes uh actually could we possibly include Paul and Yeah it definitely be nice to talk to yeah we don't want to blindside them and they need to know that this is going to
be a problem probably throughout rural western Massachusetts yeah I think that's a great idea so just um letting them know that we're having meetings and I think what would be good from them if if we could get them at some point when the time is right to come to us and let
them explain to us what their understanding of this regulatory would be very helpful and what what it means like a town of Lampbridge yeah so even just letting them know that we plan to meet in a month to further discuss this and would like to have a representative
attend the meeting to explain i think one of the things sorry sorry one of the things you have to keep in mind is whenever they hit us with a special permit like I just got special permit request like I just got hit with one on Wednesday for a solar shield with a
battery on Chester Road um we have to act quickly i got 65 days before and then I've got to make a final decision 90 days after that you know so I'm moving fast to get uh engineers architects
Ken Comey at PVPC to go over all this and the booklet was and I'm not exaggerating just over two inches thick and we've got to go through that yeah and so is that a large scale solar field a
four megawatt four megawatt and Lloyd Martin's property so it's not it's not the old one it's well what it this one is going to cause his problems not you us it's not that
proposed the other one on Martin next was the entity that proposed the previous project on Martin yeah they're the ones that own Otis Stage Road yeah i'm glad we're done with those they were also going to do George Road off the topic
um going back to the one on Chester Road the problem with that one's going to be is um this is through um Blue Wave and it's going to be this really high like they say under 25 feet and I'm
going "Oh my god." because um Lloyd wants to keep the property under chapter and you know he can still hay and all and oh this is something I've never dealt with before and the board's going to deal with so they can you hey hay underneath
yeah they do that last I've seen them that's unbelievable yeah well the problem with that is the visual impact on Chester Road you're not going to be able to screen that and I don't know how we're going to deal with that those tall bushes in what I haven't put those tall bushes all along the right property what
20 foot high bushes oh enough so that when you're in a car you're not looking at another junkyard all right okay okay so I guess we'll reconvene in a month and update whatever information we have and hopefully it's let me just also say if you don't know what we get out of the
solar fields as a rule of thumb the one on Otus Stage Road and the one on Chester Road is roughly with the pilot fee and the property tax on the land is roughly 100,000 each the one on North Bford Road that doesn't have a pilot
program i always forget what the U value that you charge them for the personal property but I think it's around 40,000 so roughly speaking it's just under a quarter of a million dollars for those solar fields the three that not until
they're actually when they're signed off their permits right so they have to be considered working because we had one solar company that for a year continued to generate money make money but they didn't have to pay the town because they didn't they were still in the testing
phase yeah that was that's why like next year out of this town I was they came all these solar guys and they told us when they came to us that they go to meetings and they swap out these properties they the people that you deal with they might be a different company
name but they like it up here because they think they can come to these you know hillbilly towns and nobody knows what they're doing and everybody's going to pass everything well that wasn't the case with the one on Chester Road no no not that but I'm just saying in general the So I think we should stay with So so
the pilot arrangement is a negotiation the select for does that yes and we actually outsourced that yeah solar we had a consultant who helped us so if there if there's a pilot then there's no
taxes coming from the equipment that's put in the field that's one of there's still the land tax so and that has to come out of chapter and you get the five-year recovery on that as well that's a one time thing and then you get the building permit fee
so they're a business that makes money and we don't right get our cut no you do we do because you either do a pilot program for them which is low taxes or you tax them on their their equipment their goal is to get a set rate for 20
years rather than have your tax rates change over time so generally it's better off in the first few years and worse off in the last few years because the tax rates vary tremendously and the pilot fee goes up what is it 2%
per year yeah for 20 years so So you are getting we are getting sun and as Paul said right now it's about a4 million dollars a year so from this different solar there's no requirement for them to engage in a pilot agreement
with us no we can just do what they did on North Bford Road and we'll charge them on their equipment and that's based on what our current mill rate which is what now 1171 so it's based on the equipment value
okay times $11.71 per thousand and that depreciates over time yes okay if the mill rate goes up their tax bill goes up yes joanne I just wanted to tell Dick that S carpa
does sell their electricity to residents my daughter did that so she gets a discounted rate she went right through Zinc Carpa instead of Eversource i'm not exactly sure how it works they do they do offer that yeah they they offered they had to make an arrangement with the state and they offered it to a limited
number and I think basically was it five or 10% but that they charge if you look at your electric bill it's not really the the it's the delivery that's so damn expensive now it's way more than the cost of your
electricity the amount of discount you get isn't that much you're better off if you've got a solar on your house right right i'm going to move us along thank you guys thank you can we Can you set the date for the big
May 5th Monday uh sure does that sound good and that'll work with the municipal schedule too okay so yeah sounds good all right uh Jackie calm down
oh that's right celebration i'm gonna make this Hold on i'm going to have to bang the gavar maybe I should let Joan do it gavine [Laughter] thank you Paul all right Jackie i know
you've been doing a lot of work on this well see you later you know a couple things i'm here just to say that we're moving along in the budget okay but this year um I've dug in a heck of a lot deeper than I did last year because last year we were kind of in crunch mode yeah
after losing the TA and Yeah so one thing that I I wanted to just really preface at this discussion and I gave you guys um sorry would you mind shutting that okay i gave you a document from DLS that
talks about enterprise um departments when I first started working with the team here it appeared to me like the enterprise departments were considered to be a separate group those guys you know they have their own P&L they manage
themselves basically when you look at the rules that is not the case the only thing that's different about that department any of the enterprise departments is that their financials are separate from the town's
financials just to demonstrate can they make enough money to pay for itself so you just kind of block all the financials over here and say do they make enough money to pay for the building everything like that but as
far as the overall rules they apply exactly the same as anybody else from the town okay any department if they want to buy something they have to come through the board like a truck or whatever some kind of vehicle really
imagine that yes okay if I'm bringing it to your attention just because after going through some of the financials um we need to get better controls in place and the controls are kind of weak right now in my opinion with making sure
that they're going through the process and that's the way it's always been and I'm not saying that they have done a bad job I'm just saying it's important to stick by what how this thing should be set and we do that by just looking clearly at what goes in front of us
understood right but whenever and that's one of the things I want to talk about here regardless if it if it's the enterprise or not if you're going to talk about big money and big money is you know $3,000 in this town right in
our little town you need to have the finance person and the accounting person on the on Zoom yeah on Zoom period so when you're asking do we have the money they can immediately tell you yes or no
and where we you know for example I'm just saying that in the case of let's just take water as an example if they want to have a loan of any sort there should be a financial review that says can we afford that loan
okay historically what happened and you know based on what my understanding is that any loans that they take out is pushed on the end consumer in this case the w the people that use water okay just like you just heard about
Eversource that's the way we do water right so the people that use the water paying the debt so it's incredibly important that we understand what that debt is so we know what's being pushed to the people in the
town okay if for any reason at the end of the year anyone and I'm not just talking water I'm talking any of the enterprise accounts that we created comes in with a deficit meaning they don't have enough money to pay their debt the town taxpayer must pay
okay all the more reason that you have to have the rigor around the oversight of the departments okay and I'm wanting to inform you guys that that's kind of your role you've got to have that rigor around each one of these
departments right or what you know just as an example last year I thought we were debtree now that I understand enterprise we're not debtree they owe over $4.2 million
right now water water so and that and those loans that we've approved the first loan isn't even going to get paid off for 17 more years now those are just to clarify those are old loans those were open in 2004
but you have to take that in account when you're giving more loans just recently we approved another loan right so forgive you know you could say water you could say any one of them yeah right
it's important to have a financial review yeah to say you know before it comes to you even when it comes to you you guys need to understand what the financials are on it so that I just wanted to bring that up and we really do need to have the accounting team or
somebody on the phone or at least have knowledge whether or not this is a good business decision okay okay i set a note Gordon and you know just take water as an example gordon myself and uh Brad and the rest of the finance committee met
and went through where we are today we're still not there for being able to say we're ready for FY2626 discussion however they were very you know they were very open they were you know they really did want to understand it better they're saying they're not getting the
information that they needed from accounting to really understand where they're at and I'm like okay well that should be over now we've got Kelly we'll get and I've been working with Kelly saying we got to get these guys exactly what they need so they know exactly where they are and they've been trained in radar so they can Yeah but that was
just recent you know i mean yes they have been trained but you know you're not going to be an expert overnight right and and I'm just going to say the concern I have with everybody going into is they don't know what they're doing they're not going to get all their reports correctly right so they need confirmation from accounting that this
is accurate right because you don't want to have people coming in giving you numbers that you can't say are good right um so I I just wanted to really really lay that out there i would prefer um you
know look if water has an emergency and they got to buy something man we need to get it because towns people need it but I would want to really understand the financials before we approve anything yeah including a grant yes okay because
you have to for example if you get a reimburseable grant you have to front the money well there's not enough money to front so they'd have to either go to the town for the money as an example or they'd have to do a bond borrowing kind of situation where you borrow the money
and and then pay it back so are are they paying anything on this for Oh sure oh yeah yeah they're they're making the the yearly payments yeah but my concern is all right we're looking
forward to doing something with the fire department and and that is this going to hamper our credibility i don't know we're going to have to talk to Sarah because it is an outstanding debt and at the end of the day the debt is the town's debt
you can't treat the enterprise as though they're their own little world because they're not they're just financially tracked that way right but they are paying the debt don't get me wrong they are paying the debt well thank you so don't worry about that they are paying
the debt um you know right now we're looking at what are they forecasting for this year and and so they're working with me and they're they're you know they're very right there wanting to understand how how are we going to make this work okay do we have an idea of
when I know we where the audit is we're doing a sort of extra audit of water when that starts uh Tony is Tony Rosselli is supposed to call me to schedule it he said he call me um the first of May and did we decide to wait on the recap or are we going to just move forward with doing recap from the
company recap sorry oh we have not made that decision yet so I think that's something you guys have to decide i mean I almost feel like we're gonna recaps free and we're going to need to be doing it anyways i I would like as much information
for that audience there's a there's a group that we met um I went with her to MMA and they have vendors there and people there that do things for western side of the state and there was a group called Recap and they do they have
experts that come out and they get paid via a grant we don't have to pay them they're paid via a grant and they'll go out and do a full review of any area could be broadband could be water um but they'll go soup to nuts and say and
they've gone to some towns and said "Hey you know you need to change the way you do X Y and Z." Right so if they're free I think we need to have that come out yeah absolutely i've already talked to them would you mind reaching out to know
that we're what what's our first recap yeah um they'll do a financial review an operational view a management view and then come back and say this is what we're seeing and um you know it'll
just give everybody a everything may be great i don't know what do I know about water nothing right so but from a financial standpoint I can tell you that um my concern is they can't take much
more debt right where they'll be in the red if they take any more debt from what I can see but when last time uh we had uh Gordon in here he was talking about
creating more debt by going down Russell Road with all pipe and all that and he's talking a million plus yeah i don't know if that was the scatter project or wasn't different but what I'm saying is that the reason why I wanted to talk
tonight was I'm telling you that they should not be doing that there's rules behind it we get audited you know we're not going to pass the audit and uh they should be coming through here now the accounting team already
knows this i mean it was not surprising to her that she needed to stop there wouldn't be any more Robin Paul and pay feeder coming sure okay um I already sent a note to Gordon and Brad about this and sent him a copy of this and you
know you need to hear by this and it's not that big of a deal just come in and go through the process the way that it's defined and we should be fine did they reply no okay but you know who knows yeah I can't say when people read their
emails and stuff like that um but more work to be done there so that's and when we do the water review I may um instead of doing it all at the same time we may may do water like completely separate the financial review because
there's a lot of input ins and outs on that one okay but I want people to understand it right um the other thing uh just to lay it out there as people get money this is kind of a broader thing broader financial uh
point of view we need to do more rigor around project management we have professional project managers on these teams they should be coming in here and telling us are they on budget budget and time we go
over budget very easily that's one of the things I've recognized since being involved okay go over budget too much we have project managers to do that management for us because we're obligated to do that right that includes water or broadband there should be a
review of we said we were going to do this is it done right i mean there's projects out there that are still not done that we paid for it so let's let's make sure that they come in here and I'm not saying like you know
certainly like like let's say the library right now um the team comes in no have the project manager come in and say "Where are we where's your project plan?" Yeah how much money are you spending are we on time are we on budget and move on okay that would be my
recommendation do we have project managers for certain project i don't think we do did they hire a project uh their engineering team would be would have a project manager i would assume I would assume but I believe that because the SCADA is under the threshold for
requiring an owner's project manager perhaps they don't i don't know i wasn't here yeah i don't when it all came to fruition but if they don't have a professional one they should have somebody anyway right yeah right somebody needs to be managing the project i don't think that's happening
okay that that rigor needs to be put in place yeah right so other than that I think you know we'll get through the water that's we'll get through the budget i just wanted to really make a point that we need to be more cognizant i appreciate Thank you for putting me on
that doris do you have a question just a question this is very fascinating have you looked at the Bford oh are we in compliance no that's okay are you using it as a guide i think I have that and I haven't gone through it in that detail but if I don't have it
give me a copy i'll take a look if you need a copy I'll make a copy but they're also available in the office okay watch out though they're going fast i mean it is so okay um thank you very much Jackie
thank you Jackie um next up we have Deb come on down we got to sit through all of that hi so um you are here to talk about the climate leader group discussion
actually I'm here to get answers to Okay questions that we had sure so I have your answers okay that's the main reason I'm here oh except I I would like to mention um before you start answering
all of our questions we there are no climate leader designations yet for the state of Massachusetts so this is new and um I guess the applications that went in at
the end of December of 2024 they're going to be acted upon in the next month or two so there may be some uh climate leader designations then but it is a new program and um so Paul and I were
wanting to get um like ahead of of time some idea of where we stand right now what we maybe should be looking into you know in case we in case the town does decide to go forward with this in June
um so that we're not just um wasting our time sitting around waiting so okay that's why we came up with this no that's fine so I have your questions here and you can take this with you too if you would like for reference so your first question was does the town have any current green uh community grants
pending we do not your second question was is energy efficiency such as LEED requirements and spe specialized stretch energy code being considered in current building plans and not to my knowledge it is not so but I wasn't really sure
are you asking like specifically the town or are individuals considering it when they're doing things to their own homes i I can't answer that oh we were thinking about the library project or maybe the the fire department where you know energy say you know we want to
there's funds available from the from the government to support that kind of engineering and also it makes the buildings less expensive to operate so just wondering if these things are being you know you were talking about the project manager uh before that you know
I mean maybe that's somebody that should be looking at those kind of things so I I can answer that question for the library and that for the library doesn't make sense to do lead program because state doesn't pay any more money because we're already at 75% reimbursement from the
state for the library project lead certification if you're in a town that gets less than that actually get you more money from the state but because we're already at the max you can't and in the last live year project that I heard about today that did lead
certification it's added about 25% product well I I mean that's fine but I think that has to be considered and looked at and somebody needs to examine that i mean what's what's the heating system going to be in the new library oh you're
way ahead of us i think we're just Well that's what I'm talking about do we want fossil fuels or do we want some geothermal or you know and is there state funding available for that and that's some of the questions that you know we'd like to dig into and see if we can't turn over a few rocks and slide
some money underneath them again the preliminary on the library is 75% reimbursement sounds pretty good and you're not going to get more money to do lease certification according to the state i can't answer to the fire department i don't know
I'm sorry did you She was just saying ongoing oh oh oh um you had asked for all of the town old buildings equipment inventory and vehicles um I have here the schedule of locations that are insured so I can
share that with you it's locations and equipment right uh does Blamford provide school buses yes Blamford has a contract with Lensky Brothers Transportation for students and I believe that at the moment there's an estimated 95 children from Bamford enrolled in the gateway
schools uh I'm not I can't I don't know a definite number on high schools right now i'm sorry but it's not I believe it's like 12 students you mean the V schools vo schools i'm sorry yes um and then you had asked me about the meeting with Chris Mason so I want to thank you
for the offer to attend the meeting and I appreciate the inclusion i have spoken with Mark when this first had come up mark is the town's attorney and he said that the charge needs to be with the group who wants to form this community
so moving forward that he had said that if this is voted on by the town it would ultimately fall fall within the purview of the committee and any responsibilities associated with achieving the designation so I can give you those okay
so I'm not sure um if it just falls with the committee to ensure that all the requirements are met um a lot what kind of
um you call it um what kind of uh power would we have to like to go to the library and say you know so first you would have to get the designation right right so that's when they're talking about making sure that these
requirements are met and it's the responsibility of the committee it's to get the designation right and then so once you have the designation that means the town's already adopted the specialized stretch energy code and the lead requirements the town has already adopted all of these requirements so you
wouldn't have to go to oversee a project to make sure that they're doing things in a certain way these would have already been adopted because we've already achieved the designation through the state okay so the library say the library
project or um the fire department so if we already had a specialized stretch energy code adopted they would have to abide by it even though we would be I mean the the best that we could hope for would be to get it uh designated by the
end of 2025 and that's not even that's probably not going to happen um so by the time we would if the town decides they want to go forward with the climate leader community um then it's going to be maybe
a year before um we would have that designation and then we would then it would be applicable going forward but we can't do anything right now to point u construction in in the right direction yeah
doesn't the um building sector inspector have to follow what the stretch code yeah we have this is a different stretch code that they want us to adopt in order to receive the designation it's a specialized we have adopted the green community stretch code so we do have
that in place this one is a different and this this is a different do what do we know what the parameters of this new code is i don't have the um No I don't have the specifics of it i mean we would have to look at that when we're voting
on it you know what people Yeah there'll be a lot of questions yeah I know there would be you need a lot of answers and Christina's already turned over some rocks for us yeah um and also I wanted
to know um when I talked to Chris Mason who's the green community um coordinator for Western Massachusetts um he said he'd be willing to talk to us the committee okay but um I don't know i was
trying to get in touch with him today and and I wasn't able to reach him but um I don't know if he'd be willing to come to an evening meeting i don't know if you would be interested in having him kind of present what this climate leader
thing is all about and um you know answer any questions that anybody might have um I think that that would be an opportunity for that might be um during anformational meeting before people are voting on it i think
um we usually do we do the Minitown meeting but that's just budget stuff right yeah um but I would say if if that was going to be on via warrant for special town meeting um and for people to vote on then having him come and do
some sort offormational meeting before that so people could make an more informed decision would be a good time it doesn't have to be during an evening it could be He could always zoom in too if he Yes yeah absolutely he could zoom in can Can I interject uh are there any
other communities that are doing what you're doing okay uh on your energy committee all right like it's Chester Huntington or any of the other communities doing that because uh when I was working on
the green communities act uh what we did was we got together with other communities and we had the coordinator come in and they had a meeting with all the leaders in the community that were working on the green communities act at
that time and that their way there they all had the latest information at that given time and then you have something more to work with that's how we got on the green communities thing is by
attending these things and finding out what you can and cannot uh present if you follow me i'm losing myself here but anyways uh makes sense you know that would be worthy and then
the coordinator like he would cuz their time is is stretched out as far as it can go so the more communities that they can relate to in a given area they have one meeting and then you know the other
communities come in and they can you can all learn together and I'm sure he'll bring plenty of literature that can help you all yeah that's a good idea to um find out i
mean I did look up this was a month or more ago um in a month I found one one town in the state that was um that was applying for climate leader you know and it
wasn't nearby unfortunately I don't remember the name but but there may be others now yeah reach out to the other communities and Chester and Huntington all them just reach out put a little bug in the SW and who knows what will come
okay yeah so then we can kind of get moving along in just in case um this does go through do you have questions any more questions for us um no actually I I was just going to mention that there that there is a grant
that we can apply for as a green community and it's a climate leader decarbonization roadmap grant which sounds like I mean I can't I haven't gotten um a lot of information on it but it sounds like it would help us
understand what we need to do no you you're not eligible for that until you have the community status okay yeah which is there's two grants available once you achieve community status designated community status of this climate change leader there are two
grants that are available one is um basically to have a company come up with a road map a decarbonization road map of how you can achieve these goals but again the only way to get these grants is to already have the designated climate change
leader status and then the second available grant that they offer is money towards um fulfilling that decarbonization roadmap right so so making those changes but you have to actually be designated um and that is
the only two those are right now the only two grants um yeah municipalities certified as climate leader communities are eligible to receive funding from two grants the first is the decarbonization technical support grant which is designed to provide communities money to
hire vendors to produce recommendations for clean energy projects at municipal facilities and then the second grant uh climate leader communities are also eligible eligible for decarbonization accelerator
grants elig eligible projects must align with the community's climate leader municipal decarbonization roadmap and prioritize reducing fossil fuel combustion energy use and costs potential funding areas include
renewable energy technologies like solar and heat pumps energy storage and other strategies to support decarbonization efforts so those are the two grants that are available once you become a climate leader designating community question
are those um state grants or federal grants they're state question mark because they they get their money from the federal being provided by the federal government and the state
distributes no okay it's been a long day oh right there you just heard me say it's been a long day right no no yes what i'm just kidding dirt coffee after seven i can't drink
caffeine anymore George too young terrible okay so last week I presented Oh hold on i'm going to wait information yes we're talking plumbing yeah on the plumbing so here's our problem
if we spend that money on plumbing we have $500 left in that account to pay for uh what we need electricity we need we haven't need oil we need What account are you talking about the town uh old town hall account
so so what are we looking at you you won't spend doesn't make sense to me not to spend this money and then have $10,000 go down the drain i'm just telling you it's it's a concern because we're going to be out of money in that account okay
then you're making a choice i didn't I haven't made a choice yet i'm just telling you that that's a concern i can appreciate that okay but I can also appreciate that you don't have accurate income statements i went to the town report and the latest town report that I could find now maybe
it's there but is June 30th 2023 in terms of what was in the Winterford arms account i don't think anybody could produce a report today about how much money is left in that account we're talking about Town Hall County i know that yeah i'm just looking
at alternatives to fund this if necessary we couldn't take that money out of Winterfood Arms because that's it's not attached i mean it's not part of bsentennial we're talking about the building if if the water is being put in for bsentennial maintenance no but it's
not I don't Yeah well I I'm just offering an opportunity what you're doing if you don't fund this is you're saying the $10,000 that we have invested in the park in terms of time and grant money is going to go to pot because the
pl the place clearly was told us that it needed to be watered on a regular basis yeah i I'm not considering what he Jeff Allen has clearly said that he's no longer making his water faucet available i know that okay so that's the choice you're making at this point okay either
use the Wonder Arms account you find the money in another account or you say there's no there's no money in the Winford Arms account and that I don't even think that's a possibility how do you know did you help me out we've been told that there's what like $1,000 or something what the like the number that
we had for Winford Arms was what we were working with when we were dealing with the tree maintenance when we were dealing with the that that was the previous fiscal year I believe because I don't I mean nobody can produce accurate numbers I mean we're this you know it's
like woo and you know if you had your quarterly reports as as this you guys agreed to you'd know how much money was available to use and to deal
with this problem because you don't you're in a situation where you're going to write off $10,000 worth of effort i didn't say I'm going to i just wanted you to be aware of I am aware of it i'm asking you folks to find it and make the decision either to go ahead with it or
not because it's beginning it's now midappril that ordering has to begin by the end of April okay okay i understand that now we can't if we can't do it we don't have the money to do it okay but
when we start our new uh physical year then we'll have the money and we can do it right and for the 3 months what are you going to do all the plants will be dead that's what you're saying we just have to turn off the electricity for the next three months there's no money well
that exact exactly the point so where where do you suggest we put money that's your job because I'm not the fiscal bank so you keep telling us with this problem okay we're telling you that we don't have the money do we have to find the
money yes we do right but we don't know how much is in the the epiphany account for that building so we have to find out what that figure is and you've had and become
I can't I can't I can't deal with this anymore i can't deal with We know We know we passed it we didn't follow it now we're trying to play catch up and you're beating us to death with it that's not Here's my thought sorry what
if we What if we I've got the gav hand um we move forward with the plumbing situation we will be below on the account but it will be at a point because come May 31st we can start to
move funding to um pay uh out of we can start to move line item money around no I'd like to speak because I'd like to remind everybody that I waited five months to get a new computer because it wasn't in the budget that's I turned my computer and called it Frankenstein and
I had to do certain things to get it to work because the money wasn't in the budget yep great um I don't think the other option is is can we do part of the project and not the entire thing so part of the project have those Jackie do you
have any recommendations well one of the things look and we didn't really talk about it tonight but one of the things that we need to do is have a capital project plan that that would never happen if we had a capital project plan which really basically
says we do we have one understood but when she we didn't believe she was spotting that theorist example but as far as this is concerned if you want to put it in I I understand what you're saying for three months we're going to be there in in a couple months
with what we need put it in the budget period or I mean the only other option would be to take it out of reserve period that's an option that's an option so um the to I don't have the the figs in front of me the total project I
believe is 1500 is that correct George i don't have the figures in front of me now there are three parts to there are two actually two parts one is the faucet and the other is the fixing of the drain and the sink but George what I what here would be my two cents from a old law how
should this really work people should be thinking budget season's coming up what do I need for next year this should have been brought up last year understood it was so it was in the budget but the money should have been
put in the budget at that time we're off cycle right yeah and this is something that I see I have seen in this last year where people will come in and say I need money for X Y and Z well you didn't meet the budget timeline right everybody in
the town knows we're doing budget so we really need to get on cycle so basically there's something else George that you need you need to say that but George And so here's the thing though george is not in charge of town hall understood that's not you know and
and perhaps we've mistakenly given George too much authority um I don't I was I've only done what I've been asked to do i know well I was asked on I came to the board over a year ago yes out of my concerns over by Centennial
Park by spring after my complaining enough yes that's the that's the question point there George is you drive us so crazy that's right you finally said you challenged me and said do something about it and I'll make you chairman of the committee okay i went
out and and got three grants and volunteer labor to revitalize that park it got revitalized okay i told you at the time as we got into it that there would be ongoing maintenance can I ask
you a question is this the 1350 copper tubing that's the one that's this is the thing for this is for the inside of that's for the can wait so this one needs to be
done let's just move forward with this one out of the town hall yeah so I would make a motion to approve the quote from Bill Clark uh for $1,350 uh for the work on the invoice to
be done at the old town hall second second any discussion all in favor i I Okay only question now is who's going to follow up with Bill Clark and ask him to do it ASAP well I would like to see if Bill Clark that would be
paying contingent upon Um certificate of insurance right add contingent upon his certificate of insurance into that motion that I made okay thank you Christina so Christina is going to find out if he's insured and
then move forward with it is that it do we have it i understand that somebody gets back to me to let me know what's going to get back attend a meeting and we'll get an update but I'm not going to get back to you you are not in charge of old town hall but thank you for all i just want to know and we love
you dearly but you also drive us crazy i love driving you crazy cuz that's part of my job all your citizens should be driving you crazy no they shouldn't they No because we amounting the amount of energy and time that would go into all those things when we have all important work to do
can I just one last thing from a budgetary standpoint yes budget's coming up we've done some stuff in the veterans area that we have been working on george has been organizing stuff who owns that stuff to get me a real number to man
maintain and manage which veterans memorial area should not be paid out of pocket by anybody with the to veterans memorial you're talking at the I could put some money in there that comes out of a separate account the maintenance for that it's uh called the
town common I believe and town it's called Town Common and the money comes out of that account well I just want to make sure for maintenance all I'm asking is that let's not have people come to the table asking for I need this I need that I need that you
mean like the fence that no one asking but see the thing of it is is that we know what's coming up but no one brings it up agenda i'm with it i'm with
it so what budget does Bsentennial Park fall into for next year we're going to have to determine that in the next fiscal year fiscal year I'm sorry so that won't be determined as part of this next year's budget
they can't be next year's budget because we we're well we haven't voted on it yet so but unless you want to sit down with the finance committee and uh try and make up a budget for Centennial Park well I just don't want the all the money that's been invested
go down and shoot because nobody has any well that's why that's why you know you should sit down with the finance committee and see if you can get it on the budget what does the finance committee mean okay there we go thanks Jackie thank you very much all right I'll follow the
disclosure all right um we I'm can't read my Oh here I'm going to steal yours all right um we are motion to go into executive session in accordance to GLC 38 session 21A2 to conduct strategy with respect to collective baring or litigation and open
meeting Joe body and the chair so declares non-union