good evening call the meeting to order this is a meeting of the Hampton Select Board and Board of Health being held in the townhouse a uh townhouse the selectman's sect board's office March 24th 2025 at 6 p.m please stand for the pledge of allegiance
i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you this meeting is being recorded by us is anyone else recording it
kristen is Kristen kristen Kristen Rivers of Wolverham Hammond Times okay thank you uh minutes first item in the agenda is minutes we have March 3rd regular meeting let's see we reviewed the
minutes we had a public hearing uh regarding the early voting municipal elections we decided to opt out of that um the as the Mass Ottabbon Society during their annual deer pellet count
police chief trial who was here presented a recommendation for a new police officer Andrew Porer talking about the budget in the police department uh and performance schools finance and operations subcommittee make a point there Don i know you asked at the
beginning if anybody is recording and it might be added to the minutes that when they came on WPA or whatever they were recorded that WPA did record when the finance committee came on right um talked about the with the advisory
committee draft budget over the budget the budget the budget and talked a little bit about Thorn Burgess move to yeah except I don't think Don made the motion to adjurnn he's pretty stickler that you know the chair doesn't make motion that's true he He
entertained the motion he entertained okay it was probably so fast we're getting so good at it you probably couldn't tell who it was i think the word barely gets out of your mouth and I second it right away which you haven't done this time with the minutes no we're still
correcting it oh okay oh that's another minute you're looking at the other motion to approve the minutes as corrected did you say as corrected i'll second i'll second yours all in favor i I
Okay now we have the uh the executive session minutes of March 3rd uh we had discussion regarding the highway union contract and the superintendent of the highways contract motion to approve without release
second all in favor i all right thank you the next item in the agenda is a recap of the March 19th meeting with the Wilberham Select Board uh we had a rather frank and honest discussion about
the different scenarios possible with with uh the amendment of the of the um regional agreement uh we agreed to meet again on April we agreed to both exe we did both we did
both i made one motion here second second second call in favor hi okay all right we're Okay the Where were we before you were talking about the great time we had
oh yeah yeah okay and um the we the is the issue of course remains about uh the the students at the Wilberham Middle School and uh how we should proceed i had a conversation over the weekend with the with Sue Bernell
the chairperson of the Wilberham committee and we agreed we did agree that the most important thing is to figure out a way to get the regional agreement uh finished so that the school committee can have the
flexibility have the flexibility to take care of overcrowding and utilization of the buildings how we get there we haven't agreed on and of course the one of the main sticking points is will Hampton uh pay a share a share of the
part for the children the Wilberham middle school i was disappointed to see that the Wilraham uh capital planning committee did not approve fixing the ventilation system in the school which is a ma one of the major factors in the
mole remediation and it was also pointed out in the 2015 uh feasibility study and I personally if I had a student there I was a parent there I'd be very upset that uh these things aren't being taken care of and need to be taken care of and should not
be a stumbling block to get to get this done uh I think there's a number of things we could do as as proposals but I'll like to hear from you guys first go ahead first all right i appreciate the summary Don i think uh a the
important thing was that we did meet with them we open the dialogue you know we don't run it it's best to go face to face let's not run it over email phone calls we all read the same thing the point you made is that we they've had eight years nine years to
address documented problems that really hamstrings us from doing something going ahead because it it has that perception i want to say that you're waiting for somebody to come along and help with that cost when you're aware
what's going on i certainly appreciate that the roof was done that's good was there a solution that could have been done to Yes they were offered at town meetings open agre agreement could have allowed go back to Craig's point there you could have
allowed crossline students and you could have had 250 students at TWWB and 400 at Wan Middle and kept them both open but that went nowhere so we're where we are right
now we're okay with changing the regional agreement i think the work that you've done with the rest of the committee done is admirable we need to figure out what's proper we care about the students but we're here elected here for the 5,000 people in Hampton we have to bring back a
solution to them that's right for the wallet and right for the students i don't think it's right to take on debt that's been known about without some type of I want to say compensate or something something bad
for us you wouldn't buy you don't go buy a new house get an inspection done and then pay the same price for that house that they were listing for before the inspection uncovered the flaws that's not how it's done i do look forward to again a
discussion I think the second time or when is it april 2nd april 2nd keeping it forward it's fortunate that the regional agreement doesn't need to be done at this Springtown meeting it gives us a little flexibility but as they said we do have some time
just to expand on what you said earlier about the idea I had proposed and it was before the school department had stated they had no use for Thorn Burgess where I had suggested that in a regional agreement change Thoren Burgess could use as a district-wide five and six and
the the middle school currently could be used as a district-wide seven and eight i think that would have freed up a lot of alleviation or alleviated a lot of crowding issues space issues and whatever have you and then you have the ability to expand on that but
since that didn't happen right you know that's no longer a talking point right um secondly it's no no secret that I've been adamant that I don't agree with Hamn funding any capital project within
the middle school as a investment that we would see no return on and I think the the excuse I heard of well we have to look at the kids you know it's what we're best for the kids i agree what's best for the kids should always be used but that shouldn't be the finger pointing at hand in because us spending
money on a building that we don't own that we don't have any stake in physically is bad investment business for any business person and I don't feel the need to dump money into a building that was even brought up by the chair of
the Wilberham committee that said we all know that building the dump that knows where it's going to be in 10 years from now so not really spreading confidence in an investment no go back to your point that right now Warraham has 100%
equity in the building mhm and going forward they'd like to alleviate some of that equity investment with a 20% contribution from him and 18% whatever and when all said and done they still have the 100% equity and that's what
we're saying isn't fair right and I I I'll go back to my water heater analogy you know I buy a water heater for my home it's got a 5year prorated warranty you know any investment that I put into that water heater if it goes in 5 years I'm going recoup some of that investment back in a new water heater you know so
there's there's options that we could look into for some type of prorated investment but I haven't seen those options yet no but I think they heard us which is the key part right there and I think you know I'm reaching out to Nick and Sue got it together and it was important
when you're talking about the equity issue it it's not a it's not a foreign it's not a foreign or a novel idea no the the Massachusetts uh building assistance program when they give money to a school for a new school or to
repair your school they in the in the law I think it's 70B they're allowed to recoup money if you sell that school or lease that school to somebody else they're allowed to recoup their investment their investment back so you know they say "We don't own the building
but we're giving you money we want some equity." So there's no there's no uh I mean I think I think on our next meeting we really need to concentrate on that but we also has to concentrate on there needs to be a comprehensive plan to fix the things that need to be fixed in that
building uh you know and I understand I understand that they talked a little bit about well maybe there'll be a new middle school well if they started that process today it'd be 10 to 15 years before it got done right so you still need you got 614 kids in that building
uh for a building that's supposed to only hold 420 for for the best educational pros and something needs to be done and we got to agree agree on a plan to get that done or at least a commitment that we get done so that's where I am on great and to your point
those issues have been there for since 2017 yeah that was one of the reasons they did a whole study i think John was on the on the committee they did a whole study about which school you know the declining enrollment was coming both schools were a year apart in age and
they did which school could handle it and they said "Okay Wilberham Middle School could but you got to do these things." And like I say a proposal was done to share the load between both buildings right by amending the agreement and that
went nowhere and is there a chance that the whatever you want to say that the outcome will be different right now i don't think we've seen a real change in that so move on and I think that's what Don said at the beginning we're where we
are right now we're not going back and relitigate the past we went through that but how do we work on providing a great education for the kids that's fair to all the taxpayers all right so next meeting with them is April 2nd mhm here
okay budget review what we got um it really hasn't changed since the last meeting um we moved the water district clerk we removed the water district clerk slide the responsibilities well or kept the responsibilities with the board of health and opt coordinator and we
increased uh emergency management slightly uh based on uh an invoice we got for uh Blackboard Connect that's the reverse 911 program that we use other than that changes there has been no changes to the proposed we talked to Doug today and
he's working on the full um spreadsheet obviously done you you online or or there the numbers we're getting from the our biggest portion aren't encouraging at this point no be a
tremendous strain on the budget this [Music] year and there was a um discussion at the school committee meeting about about the budget and the assessment may change
uh but they also have that time limit too you have a time limit they they they have to get us the assessment by April 1st which they said they would do but then they may send a revised assessment on April 3rd in the past which they've done in the past so but there again
we're running into time because the the advisory committee wants to hold their public hearing on the 14th they need 7 days to advertise so that's the 7th and here we are 24th so 14 days away from from that you know
so getting to be crunch time and um and and the the union contract and those things we don't have those numbers maybe we should just put two and a half in tell Doug to put two and a half in for the
union contract and and if it's not settled we'll have to come back at maybe some point or maybe it'll maybe we'll just stay at two and a half mhm and know typically we don't fund salary positions but we can adjust them which we've had to the past a the teacher contract and
the police contract as well we just don't create new position all right uh not really much review just a CPA article I think I saw yeah is there just one CPC i emailed Doug today i haven't heard back one CPC
article the shade umbrellas i believe there's still there were two things at the meeting okay i'm a bit concerned i Yes my understanding is that that may be
funds for design and engineering of parking area is that what that is on North Road yes conservation i'm a bit concerned about article 29 which is that's the grant of conservation restriction on North Road if if they don't know exactly where that
one and a So they're asking they're seeking a one and a half acre portion mhm if they don't know where that's going to be I'm I think it might be a little bit they're just you know it's one point for the number is approximately they're able to to draw that i believe they're already they've
already done the ANR so it should be great so yeah they're able they're able to send that to me because last time I asked for a plan they said uh so basically one I know they had flipped a couple of times John the house was going to be
here or the house lot was going to be there and then they there's going to be a strip across the back for access yes which way did it end up it ended up the as you're looking at the parcel the south is the house or the the south would be the house okay so the parking then is in between the new house and
correct and the old Audrey's house basically so there will be a strip behind for access correct is she trading it with the Yes they are okay and um CPC there were two one of them was for
the I'm going to say the plan for the parking area okay and that access driveway to get in there okay and then the other one was of course um the parking rack so if there was an
ANR that was submitted and voted then there's definitely a engineering drawing there is for the for the Eastman as well yes yes okay yeah cuz I'll need that to attach yeah to attach to the warrant before it's signed so Joan should have so yeah what was the one we went through
along was that Olga and Ponies was that three town meetings did they fix the uh election warrant you had mentioned the back with the planning board that was it okay yeah
if there's two planning board positions the what this article 26 is that coming out that way that's the miniature regional high school K Cabota RTV those are that one and then the the the Green Meadows parking lot one i just
highlighted those to flag them because I know there's been discussions about unless they withdraw those we can't so you're trying to create more discussion around it by flagging them i'm saying unless they withdraw them we can't take them off we are obligated to put a
motion yeah so I I just wanted to make sure that there definitely there's definitely some inconsistencies with that fire road thing i mean several stories so
John who do who gives us the amount for the school resource officer the the town yeah i reach out to Nick yeah but you know it's been around 11 grand every year John right hasn't changed much yeah no surprising about 11 11 and
a half at the most yeah see this is this is so the regional school district puts in for a parking lot repair and a fire road extension around Green Meadows mhm
and they put in for a K Cabota RTV whatever that is right and then in some of the other schools they put in things like fixing the parking lot or things like that you got 614 kids in a
school where the air isn't clean and wouldn't you think you'd say you know we can hold off on the parking lot and the C Kabota and the the fire road which the fire department here says there's no problem we can get a truck around there anytime right you know and
put some of that money into opening up a vent or something just saying mhm i mean that's what I mean i think one of the things we need to talk to this like board is there's we have to sit down with the regional committee and say look it let's be realistic about this there's
no middle school going to be built for the next 10 or 15 years so we got to fix this school cuz we got 614 kids in there they don't even have a library they got classrooms in the library teachers I I was there the teachers are teaching some of the special ed teachers are teaching out of closets they got the kid in a
closet well it's a priority thing i got I am more upset about the Green Meadows where Brian and I went down there spoke to the staff if you will and I heard their priority was safety fixing the doors and fixing the locks and that's
not even making sure the flooring is good i got that but that should been number one or two not a fire i'm So and to your point Don there's cubicles in the library where they're hosting classes cuz my son was in one of them
so All right is I mean it and you can't tell me that's educationally sound for the kids i'm sorry mhm you know anything else on
this did the ambulance did they contract come did they put in that subsidy thing it's not a not it's not a warrant article but um I reached out to them at the end of last week i haven't heard back okay we just got we need to wrap that up that's all yeah what do you want
to set for a date to actually uh publish the warrant that's a question so you're saying so we got the 14th for the actual hearing we talked about mailing out prior so we're actually hate to say kind of running out
of time for that yeah like you said at the beginning like you know slipping away i think next week we should make an effort to maybe have it out online at least yeah are we going to mail a copy
out like they did in the past or not i don't know how much it costs it's usually in the paper right insert it in the I mean in the times yeah it's like maybe a four point you know look at 31 articles plus then we got to throw the
budget on it as well or you know requested budget all right i'm going to do that next week all right uh which kind of covers timeline for annual town report warrant article financial amounts right mark
yeah when do you want to uh when do you want to sign this so we can sign this next meeting or I don't think there's a major change if you could have the signature sheets done yeah we got the signature sheets he's on 650 650 text of it tells Yeah stop following the
streets i got Yes John 31 articles is that what you said i think it was That's where we are right now 35 30 school committee I think let's get six from the school department
okay 35 articles hey what what now the the um your energy storage thing is all set right it's it's in with review okay with um rose rows yes and the accessory dwelling thing is going to be on
something with rose now they have to be attached to the war right i believe so they're they're somewhat lengthy yes are they We don't need to print them in the war i think we can attach it right
yes yes if we could just say as a you know appendix A or B or whatever it is correct y public hearing is April 16th to discuss the war april 16th hearing
yes all right what else we got here uh master plan master plan update so the master plan had their u second public forum was pretty well attended about uh 35 people were there and uh there the
the it should be completed uh by the middle of April and we hope to have it at least for uh distribution by town meeting time and it's eight chapters and the chapters are housing land use economic development public
facilities open space and recreation uh uh resiliency and climate and transportation and mobility and uh there we have charts what the action plans the actions that need to be taken
or recommended actions to be taken and hopefully I'll have them put up in the town hall here if anybody wants to stop by in the meantime to look at them but u it was a pretty good discussion and and the people uh what they do is they go to each station and They look at the plan
they put notes on there and then the the consultant is reviewing those notes and including them in the the people's thoughts and all that stuff so it's moving along well and the thing to think about is that it's it any of the recommendations or actions are just that
they're recommendation actions you know everything changes so you try to get things done as you can get them done and one of the big things we're going to need is people who are willing to get on boards and committees and commissions to help us implement these things or the next 10 years so that's the update on
that i was disappointed it wasn't on Zoom i understand it was more of a poster board type thing but I still think there was a decent component that people wouldn't mind reviewing it either live or afterwards anyhow all right
select reports are these about 10 minutes away okay select reports um not too much but I did want to bring up one thing that came up bumped into someone at the senior center and they're okay they were asking whatever happened to the crosswalk at North Road and I think
that was part of where we were hoping there was extra casino money and then there wasn't you talking about the signs you mean the flashing signs put another sign at the North Row Crossing mhm um and I think the total is in the 20 25 range by the time you put all the work
into it i know we did ask Mark to get he did get a quote on it but I did say to that person part of the consideration will be also maybe the need for it isn't as great when the town hall moves but it is in one place you do
switch from one sidewalk system to the other so I'm going to keep on the burner we did talk about it and it kind of fell off the radar we had submitted it with that um the plan for the the casino mitigation funds which they had denied right so that that was the plan to use
that we thought it was a sure shot back then oh we thought we also had extra money and then we found out that probably going to use some of the money for something else one of the uh MDP things or something but regardless if the town hall's here or at TABB it's still school crossing and stuff there
there is a crossing there yeah so I will say coming down Main Street I think it was yesterday and these two kids were crossing on a bike they flipped the thing and somebody coming east just went bit right through it the people in front of me no problem lined up
and you need that Craig you're a great designer you need that paintball thing built into your car to pop somebody i don't I think that's pretty sure it's illegal yeah firing an object from a moving vehicle so many times no directional
well that raises a question though you know Main Street here's pretty wide you know would it be sufficient for a bike lane you know we have the some of the old pictures like John when you see they used to park sideways you know hit the curb wow
i don't know it is you could but it wouldn't be fun boy you get right up to that right after Memorial Park and that lane goes away right but you see a lot of that you see a lot of when you're driving around you see a bike lane all of a sudden it ends
and you say to yourself "Oh sure." Converse it like disappears at the end of it exactly you know no report um I had an individual from town reach out to me over the weekend they had noticed the uh the flag pole was uh taken out Mhm by an
accident in the center of town and they own a flag pole company and they were offering to donate a flag pole so I um I told them I would just mention that in the report tonight to see where we wanted to go with that offer i think uh hopefully we'll hear back from the insurance company because I would
certainly think we would get something from them as well uh just to share that the other flag pole that was put in 18 maybe Don you and Mariel were on the board 19 19 was about that but it was around 8 something to buy a new pole
there was some talk about the height difference and stuff and that we don't want to go through that again that took a year of our lives about one being higher than the other and all that so a lot of lot of issues lot of issues
so certainly that offer is a wonderful offer i think it's a great So I'll see if willing you know I'll have him reach out to Brian and if we ever want to get the uh other the two bases to match I do have a full load of
cobblestones that match the first one that could be put around the other base you think you gave up on that cobblestone sidewalk in front of your house for the kids for the children bring back the old days you know if they take the buggies to school i
have nothing to record you're busy anyhow last week I had a call with charter talked about the cable license agreement and our proposal for uh our request for capital funding for uh AV and and
broadcasting things from uh for TWWB um so we have as a reminder we have two capital requests in the in the draft cable contract so um they're going to give us a response to that
hopefully within the next week or two um we're getting pretty close to uh but that's probably the only sticking point that remains is is those capital costs the rest of the license is pretty generic you got a quote from the AV company for the town meeting right
and got the date locked and all that there was a comment on um Zoom about the flag polls i didn't catch what it said can we bring it back up there was a cabinet there put the US flag up instead
of the town flag on the existing pole that was actually my suggestion was to put the US flag up and the town flag below it for right now on the existing believe Mark said he had to get a new flag right yeah yeah all the flag wreck
must have got run must have gotten well it hit the ground so that it needs to be disposed of right right i had a meeting with the gaming commission the community community mitigation grant fund folks from the gaming commission talked about our proposal for the outdoor recreation
and marketing they seemed uh um they felt that thought it was eligible and the way that the new grant program is structured is that it's a the block grant so they allocated 75,000 for Hampton so it's an eligible project so
is it's highly likely that that will be funded at that amount they are concerned for future years because the governor's budget did not include uh funding for the community mitigation grant program um and last year it was the house that
took the first step to remove it so they're not sure how that's going to how that's going to work out um they said if they get no funding this fiscal year they'll have 8 to9 million statewide for that for that uh
next grant round so that's not a lot of money for all the towns that are competing for it um I had a conversation with uh folks from the Pine Valley Planning Commission today and we talked about uh the
one-stop grant programs and what may or may not be competitive they said there seems to be a focus on municipal buildings for this round which is um makes me a little bit optimistic um we talked about so expressions of interest are due
actually on Wednesday so we talked about putting in an two expressions of interest one for improvements to TWWB and then another one for um money to for uh reuse planning for this building or the future of this building um to see if
we can uh find out what what the highest and best use is for this property in this building so those are expressions of interest they'll give us feedback it's it's at this point we're not committing to to anything
um there was a we had a previous community compact grant that was a digitizing documents grant uh that grant is closed out that ended and we could get no more extensions um it's middle of March so we closed that out we're um and
we wrapped that grant up by uh doing some additional document scanning uh with the building department um we got an email from Jonah Keane with a a draft MOA for it's the uh invasives removal of
invasive vegetation on that lap brook and a little bit on town property that we talked about that pitch pine we grant it before Don remember we granted that before so um we'll have to we'll have to I think
take that up probably at our next meeting when the gum of the deer pellets of course could it be possible that the deer pellets is leading to the growth of this invasive species because of the fertilization you that's why you are who you are that's great thinking outside the box
um so we are down one water commissioner so we're looking for a new water commissioner um there's an advertisement or a notice on the town's website um if anybody's interested they could uh email me are we down only one or two we're
down one at at the moment we're down one okay but yes there's another commissioner's term ends I believe in June and I don't believe that they're looking to extend so we would actually have a a position coming up as
well um we speaking of that did they hire that guy to put the line in do you know i believe so i'll follow up with um and
so we made an employment offer for uh a new board of health court board of health and operations coordinator and they have accepted and they will be starting work on April 7th so that gives us about two weeks overlap with our retiring board of health and ops
coordinator if she's actually leaving if she's actually leaving i heard it's serious this time you see the for sale sign in front of the house then you'll know it's Yeah that's all I have all right gentlemen do you have anything
i would say about the master plan that we're going to need some bodies and I know in town it's tough to get bodies but I'd say out loud to people listening and to anybody sitting here that if you've got any ideas on how to get some people involved in those committees in
theory we need eight committees to get that thing implemented so just saying we need some bodies since you're putting it out there what are the committees that you're looking to fill hopefully you said eight committees do you have any ideas yet well you mean for people not for people but you said you mean
committees what committ yeah that's list okay never mind it's I thought Don gave some on the list Don gave and some of some of those would be subcommittees of like the conservation committee because there' be things to do there there'd be select from the select
board there' be things to do there you know he'd work So all right uh just before we go we were meeting with the regional comm uh with the select board on April 2nd do you still want to meet on the 30 do we need to
meet on the 31st of March or can we do them you know what I mean april 2nd and we're going to meet with them at 5:30 and then just have our regular meeting or do we need to do things for the to get the warrant out i don't think it hurts to get things done for the war but I'm happy to consolidate in one
night if you like but uh since they're 5:30 you want to go after with our stuff or since that's open-ended I'm happy to start at 5 i don't think we'll have much to do five or tougher hard i can't come in at 5 yet i don't know that depends on a few
factors all right so we just say 5:30 April 2nd mhm that's a Wednesday it's a Wednesday all right 530 all right wraham 530 yes i'll entertain a motion to go in executive
session um under Mass General Law Chapter 30A section 21A to conduct strategy session and preparation and connect negotiations with non-user personnel the highway superintendent and we will not return to regular session
i'll make that motion second John [Music]